Scott McConnell, writing in the American Conservative back in December, took a look at the state of neo-conservatism.
This election season ends with neoconservatism widely mocked and openly contemptuous of the president who took its counsels. The key policy it has lobbied for since the mid-1990s—the invasion of Iraq—is an almost universally acknowledged disaster. So one can see why the movement’s obituaries are being written. But the group was powerful and influential well before its alliance with George W. Bush. In its wake it leaves behind crises—Iraq first among them—that will not be easy to resolve, and neocons will not be shy about criticizing whatever imperfect solutions are found to the mess they have created. Perhaps most importantly, neoconservatism still commands more salaries—able people who can pursue ideological politics as fulltime work in think tanks and periodicals—than any of its rivals. The millionaires who fund AEI and the New York Sun will not abandon neoconservatism because Iraq didn’t work out. The reports of the movement’s demise are thus very much exaggerated.
I don’t find anything here to disagree with. The biggest disadvantage we have is that the people that are trying to lead a counteroffensive to neoconservatism are not well funded. Increasingly it seems that they are not even very well respected by their own audiences. They rarely appear on television, they don’t get gigs at the LA Times or Washington Post, and their radio appearances seem limited to Air America. We don’t have paid internships. He have no think tank. And, as soon as anyone takes a paying job, they lose a ton of street cred.
Is there any way for progressives to overcome their money disadvantage? Are we so suspicious of power that we refuse to do the things that increase our power?
Is there any way for progressives to overcome their money disadvantage? Are we so suspicious of power that we refuse to do the things that increase our power?
In a capitalist, caveat emptor society, you can never have enough because you have to make your own security through power, the power of money. In more socialistic societies like Sweden, I think people see that you can live good secure lives without unending amounts of money and power because the societies have guaranteed certain basic needs for a decent life.
Therefore to answer your question IMO, you have a classic chicken and egg riddle. People need security and the system needs reform to get it to them in a different paradigm than what they have now in America. People are living their lives as we speak, so those making the bucks and having the power are not going to trust a change that might hurt them because it is unknown. However if a real social guarantee of certain life needs (retirement security including long term care and healthcare for example) COULD be guaranteed (I do not know how?) along with a campaign that you do not need unlimited power and money to live a good life, then people might well cooperate and mass together for that change!! How to start such a mindset change ball rolling on a widespread basis in this country is above my pay grade!
I’m afraid you are blaming the victim. The reason liberals don’t get media coverage or are not “very well respected” is not because of our deficiencies. It is because the media is owned by the same power groups that fund the conservative think tanks.
There are few media conglomerates which control the huge majority of the market: Bartlesmann, News Corp, GE, Disney and Time Warner and Viacom/CBS. (The list varies if you include music and film.)
Studies have shown that even “neutral” sites like the PBS News Hour are biased towards the right. A visit to FAIR will provide lots of evidence.
The fact that the wealthy set the public agenda is a problem that has persisted since the days when the King declared he had “divine” power. The progressives do produce lots of useful research and information, it is the distribution that is the issue. Groups can counter the wealth effect by mass action, good examples include the ACLU and MoveOn.
The fact that the internet levels the playing field is why the big media companies are working so hard to prevent net neutrality.
A big part of the question is what do you mean by power? Because our movements, by nature of major differences in worldview, will not look like those of the neoconservatives — if they do, we’ve lost our core.
I think to a large degree, the leftwing blogs are running as a kind of informal, low-fund think tank, organized in a much more publically-open way. That’s not to say that it’s inevitable that they will remain so open — I see a distinct danger of the blogs slowly becoming yet another arm of the pundit class, rather than giving voice (potential for distribution) to anybody who speaks their ideas clearly and argues their points well; the “bottom up” structure of blogs is something that IMO has to be constantly considered and defended from our social tendancies to work the other way. The other obvious problem in this format is that so far, distribution is very largely limited to the blogs — we don’t have a good way for blog discussion to extend outward, yet. But our network with the actual politicians is building, and I do actually have some hope that some of them are starting to treat the blogs as more than a place to get donations.
As for the more traditional media, they respond to power largely through money and through the networks they create among themselves. I don’t honestly see how we overcome the money disadvantage, and I would hate to see our movements come to be dominated, as on the right, by moneyed interests.
Larger point being: I don’t think the left has a fear of power that will prevent it from organizing, but I think the way we think of power is different (and has to be, as a consequence of our progressive values). Many of us are fans of and actors in a more grassroots style of organizing, one that doesn’t tend to create single leaders and formal hierarchies. That’s only a weakness to the degree that more traditional media structures — currently owned by a wealthy elite — tend to have no way to conceptualize the idea of information flowing “up” as well as “down”, and it’s why they’re constantly trying to find a person or a few people to dub as the “voices” of the left. It’s also why the Begalas and other professional pundits tend to get more airtime than real progressive voices — the system knows how to handle them. It does not know how to handle us blogging rabble yet, but the more we force our way into the discussion, the more it’ll have to work that out.
Honestly, a lot of this also isn’t a new problem — if the left ever figures out these questions of how to share power broadly through coalitions rather than formal hierarchies, while still forcing our way into the larger conversation, we win. That’s been our challenge for more than a century, and I think we’ve got a much better chance of figuring out now with the internets than we’ve ever had before.
On this:
And, as soon as anyone takes a paying job, they lose a ton of street cred.
I don’t think that’s necessarily true, but I do think that if they are being payed via interests that are considered counterproductive on the left, then you’re right. We need networks for paying people for this kind of stuff that don’t rely so heavily on that same power structure — through corporate ads, through funding from a few wealthy individuals, through traditional lobbying networks — that’s a challenge that has yet to be answered. We should hold our movement to a different standard, as far as I’m concerned, even though it’s going to take some real effort to work out how to make it work in this structure.
We already know how poor folks can overcome financial disadvantages. We need to get the working poor and middle classes unionized again and we need to again start conducting massive direct action campaigns.
As long as we continue to allow the rich to keep progressives in many small separate interest groups heading off in a thousand different directions at once, we are going to continue to allow the rich to focus their power on whatever small interest group is currently problematic to their goals.
I think that this is starting to change. Blogs are slowly gaining respect within mainstream circles. Digby had a good point the other day about Joe Klein being changed by his new experieces being a blogger. As more established media types begin to experience for themselves what blogging is about, they will open up to what is being said out here.
This works the other way as well. There will be a big moment when a blogger makes the pundit breakthrough. Look for Ezra or Matt Y to be a first candidate for this. Given that this happens and they keep blogging (and what would be the point otherewise), then we will have a voice up there.
This does not alleviate the overall problem that the white-tie set in Washington is inherently hostile to redistributive poliscies. And I would point out that this means hostility to policies that are redistributive of wealth or status. Pluralism and a decent standard of living are against their interests.
For now we just build the blogs. As the blogs become an established part of the social order (regardless of the inherent pitfalls therein, which we will have to guard against/deal with; eg. here vs. DKos), then we will be enfranchising a more liberal institution. It is somewhat inherent in the technology. It is even more something that we have a more or less shared vision of, and that is what is truly powerful.
Good question.
Many of these right-wingers are so because of the gravy train. If there was a purely ideological left-wing movement in this country — one that actually paid well — many of these same people would be spouting Maoist rhetoric (cough*David Horowitz*cough). Could Dinesh Dsouza find a job otherwise?
Another point: Would any of us here take money from a foundation, if we were forced to adopt a “party line?” I know I wouldn’t.
Part of this has to do with one’s ability to rationalize the fact that it’s okay to be “kept” by the movement.
So, while most of us on the left arrive at our positions through logic and reason, those on the right are force-fed ideological positions most of them don’t fully understand.
As evidence, I cite Glenn Greenwald’s complete evisceration of Frank Gaffney. By the end of the “discussion” you wonder whether Gaffney actually believes what he’s saying or if he’s just trying to stick to the script.
I think apart of the problem re opposition to the neocons is that the very group likely to be most effective against them is in fact a group which is, in the end not different enough from them to stimulate massive public repudiation of the neocon agenda. I’m speaking of the Carlyle Group types, (Baker, Scowcroft etc.), you know, the guys who used to control US foreign policy for decades until the neocon usurpers rode into power on the back of the hapless imbecile Bush.
When a lunatic powermad rightwing group’s chief opposition is another lunatic powermad rightwing group, you know the rest of us are in serious trouble.
When creatures like Scowcroft and Carlucci and Baker look good by comparison to those they oppose, this is an unequivocal sign that we’re in really deep shit. Add in the DLC and their effective destruction of the meaning of “opposition” in the concept of the “opposition party”, and we are left with no efective counterweight against the neocons short of a massive “pitchfork and torches” mob assault on DC.
events have a way of resolving these things. No depression, no New Deal. Without the exceptional service of African-Americans in World War Two, no integration of the army, (perhaps no Jackie Robinson, no dixiecrats, etc.
The people will eventually react to events and punish both the neo-cons and the carlyle group, and the Borens, Woolseys, Brzezinskis, will be ushered out with them.