With the sole (glaring) exception of their success in making abortions inconvenient, the conservative movement is clearly losing the culture war, and losing it badly. So, we should expect to hear more and more talk about how the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are much more about protecting the rights of (political) minorities than they are about representative government. It goes along with the right’s unflinching campaign to shrink the electorate while they freak out about the tyranny of insurance-provided contraception.
For George Will, there is a fundamental schism between conservatives who think liberty comes before democracy and progressives who think “a process, democracy” is the core of a free society.
Mr. Will uses a quote by Justice Stephen Breyer that the Constitution is about “one word, democracy” to suggest that the whole progressive movement feels the same way. What’s closer to the truth is that progressives feel much more strongly than conservatives that an elected majority ought to be able to enact an agenda without being filibustered to death. On what (political) minority rights should be constitutionally-protected there are obviously some differences, but there’s broad agreement on what kind of laws the Constitution forbids. What’s novel is the conservatives’ sudden insistence that the owners of large privately-held corporations should be able to dictate what is and is not covered in their employer-provided heath insurance plans. What’s novel is the idea that Catholic institutions like hospitals and universities should likewise be able to avoid any regulatory scheme that can be interpreted as crossing their church’s dogmatic beliefs. What’s novel is the idea that ranchers can use the assistance of armed militias to avoid paying grazing fees to the federal government.
That last example stems from a recurring spasmodic hostility to the federal government that crops up intermittently throughout our country’s history. But the former two are rearguard responses to a culture that is moving on without the right’s acquiescence. So, the more “traditionally” religious are asserting themselves as an oppressed minority and calling on the founding documents for protection. As part of that, they aren’t limiting themselves to heralding the wisdom and inerrancy of those documents but are going one further and actively diminishing the legitimacy of majority rule. And that fits right in with their efforts to limit the franchise and their obstructive behavior in Congress. Stuck in the minority for the foreseeable future, the right no longer believes in majority rule.
Maybe BLM should have called in a drone or two after all…
“stopped”?
LOLZ they never believed in it.
“The central question that emerges–and it is not a parliamentary question or a question that is answered by merely consulting a catalog of the rights of American citizens, born Equal–is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes–the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race.”
“National Review believes that the South’s premises are correct. If the majority wills what is socially atavistic, then to thwart the majority may be, though undemocratic, enlightened. It is more important for any community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority. Sometimes it becomes impossible to assert the will of a minority, in which case it must give way; and the society will regress; sometimes the numerical minority cannot prevail except by violence: then it must determine whether the prevalence of its will is worth the terrible price of violence”
(both from william buckley, 1964)
but i totally get how fun it is to lie and pretend that they used to believe in democracy.
The “Right” has never believed in democracy.
“The tactics of conservatism vary widely by place and time. But the most central feature of conservatism is deference: a psychologically internalized attitude on the part of the common people that the aristocracy are better people than they are.
“Modern-day liberals often theorize that conservatives use “social issues” as a way to mask economic objectives, but this is almost backward: the true goal of conservatism is to establish an aristocracy, which is a social and psychological condition of inequality. Economic inequality and regressive taxation, while certainly welcomed by the aristocracy, are best understood as a means to their actual goal, which is simply to be aristocrats.
“More generally, it is crucial to conservatism that the people must literally love the order that dominates them. Of course this notion sounds bizarre to modern ears, but it is perfectly overt in the writings of leading conservative theorists such as Burke.
“Democracy, for them, is not about the mechanisms of voting and office-holding. In fact conservatives hold a wide variety of opinions about such secondary formal matters. For conservatives, rather, democracy is a psychological condition.
“People who believe that the aristocracy rightfully dominates society because of its intrinsic superiority are conservatives; democrats, by contrast, believe that they are of equal social worth. Conservatism is the antithesis of democracy.”
http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/conservatism.html
A belief of small “d” democrats; Democrats not so much as they can’t wait to anoint Hillary Clinton as the dynastic nominee.
“essence of the Constitution…”
Whatever the hell you want to say about the US Constitution, its “essence” is the creation of a federal government for christ’s sake. And since it set up a democratic republic, Breyer is surely correct to say it’s about “democracy”.
All this yapping about “liberty” and I’d still like to know what tired old conservative losers like Will even mean when they bleat “liberty”. To the extent the founding documents deal directly with personal liberties that can’t be infringed, that’s the Bill of Rights, George. And the post civil war amendments about not denying equal rights. And it was various interpretations of the Bill of Rights and 14th Amendment by the Warren Court in the 50s and 60s that enraged authoritarian rightists and basically founded modern Buckleyian conservatism. Rulings clearly about personal “liberty” (like Brown v Board and Roe v. Wade) are still not accepted by Will’s rightwing America, and they never will be. The liberty of, say, blacks and wimmen don’t appear to be part of the equation to George…
So who’s LIBERTY are we talkin’ about? We know whose “liberty” the Koch Boyz are talkin about—plutocrat liberty, which Will agrees with. And of course the (white) ranchin’ West has (for decade after decade) somehow thought that they “own” all the land of the western territories by some legal magic that disappears the federal gub’mint and the rest of the citizenry of the country, not to mention irrefutable history. They think they have the “liberty” to be free riders and takers apparently. That’s the “liberty” we’re talkin’ about…
As for the newest strategery, claiming that progressive legislation is violating religious “liberty”, this is the truly new development, which has never gotten anywhere in American constitutional law until now. The precedents are uniformly against this nonsense that neutral laws governing the economic marketplace infringe the free exercise of the bizness owner’s religion. That is until the “conservative” legal team ginned it up before the many Bushco 50 year old conservative male activists masquerading as “judges”.
So yes, the American right and its plutocrat funders are certainly at war with representative democracy. (Another war that most Americans seem oblivious to.) This means the systematic obstruction of voting, paralyzing the working of government and using the rightwing federal courts to strike down whatever progressive legislation that miraculously gets passed.
Maximizing corporate profits—which is what “liberty” is mostly about to the American right–means that democracy must be severely controlled. And if some bones can be thrown to their Theocratic American Taliban allies, well that’s fine.
“a democratic republic” is a precise contradiction in terms. There could be such a thing as a representative republic, but there can be no such thing as a democratic republic.
The republic is one thing and only one thing: the rule of law, meaning a structure of institutions and processes (expressed in a corpus of law) that cannot be manipulated by majorities or minorities.
Democracy is factional rule — I do not say “majority” rule, because the ruling faction may not be, by every objective measure, a majority; they need merely be able to dominate the process, by some combination of numbers, force, and magic. Democracy has no real institutions, no real processes, no real laws: because any of these can be swept aside or disregarded at whim.
So today’s “Republicans” are democrats and today’s “Democrats” are republicans. (Today’s “Republicans” are also counterrevolutionaries and that may be how they are best studied; the nearest thing to a historical parallel may be Spain.)
Sadly they aren’t entirely wrong here. Our entire system of government is configured to allow a minority to block or slow progress, hold rearguard actions, and thwart the majority at will.
Our political parties screech about democracy and thwarting the electoral will of the people when in power. The key difference is that when out of power the Democrats tend to go along with the conservative majority, for both shared goals and a sense of fair play, where Republicans have no qualms about using all the tools available to thwart the will of the electorate for tactical and ideological reasons.
I see this as a gamer in a way….
Most hardcore gamers know there are actually three separate ways to win. The first is to actually play the game in the “spirit of the game” and win. The problem is that it’s very rare to find a group of players or even an opponent who agrees what the spirit of the game actually is, thus requiring a shit ton of gentlemans agreements and unspoken understandings or everyone involves ends up pissed off at each other. The second is to glitch out the game, also known as the loop hole solution or cheesing a victory. You figure out something or a set of somethings that’s obviously extremely advantageous and exploit the fuck out of it to a win. The third, and by far the most hated, is rules lawyering. Rules lawyering is simply trying to win the game entirely off the rules “as written”. It typically involves deliberate misreadings of vague rules to construe situations that are technically legal and correct, but justify all sorts of bullshit and idiocy.
All competitive gaming thus falls into a cycle that’s predictable as hell. First everyone tries to rig the rules in a way that clearly helps them and handicaps the competition, along with working the refs and all sorts other shenanigans. Second everyone looks at the rules as written and tries to figure out their glitch/loophole to exploit the fuck out of the system. Third everyone tries to rules lawyer their way out of setbacks and to thwart their opponent. Finally everyone screams that the other person wasn’t playing in the spirit of the game and is obviously Hitler.
I’m beginning to wonder if those imaginary FEMA camps that the tin-foil-hat crowd has been hyperventilating about for the last few years might not be such a bad idea. 😉
I kind of remember back when Dick and W were in charge, that Conservative Republicans believed that the Executive could rule by decree and had all sorts of amazing unilateral powers. But I guess that theory is not operative when there is a colored man in the White House.
The problem with liberals and progressives is that they keep pretending that the Republicans/Wingers have principles beyond desire for power. This is a serious problem which leads to a lot of stupid handwringing about precedent and other nonsense.
The “liberals” don’t necessarily believe in it either. We’re not a democracy but an oligarchy and have been from the start, with a few bumps where people shared in the spoils. John Jay wasn’t exactly a democratic supporter, nor were many founders (especially one of my favs, Hamilton).
The only kind of democracy is economic democracy. Anything else leads to elite or wealthy rule.
The “liberals” don’t necessarily believe in it either. We’re not a democracy but an oligarchy and have been from the start, ..
Just to take a recent example, “liberals” like Andrew Cuomo, Steve Israel and Steny Hoyer don’t believe in it.
It’s also why I think Greenwalds analysis of things falls short. It leads to support of decisions like citizens united under spurious free speech grounds.
While I’m not one of those lefty people who talks about how identity politics are bad, I do think that a foundation of viewing things through a class-based lens is important and supreme. Elections and “free speech” are meaningless if you have no power, and with no money and no organization and a rich class that has never once lifted their boots from our necks, you have no power.
Wow perfect timing. I didn’t even see this until just now but it gets at what I’m talking about perfectly:
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2014/04/17/on-money-power-and-how-john-roberts-forged-one-more-link-in-
the-history-of-white-supremacy-in-america/
In this vein, the tragic death of Athan Gibbs and his TruVote system. An amazing person, an accountant who wanted to give back by inventing electronic voting with a verifiable paper trail.
http://www.wheresthepaper.org/Tennessean03_14GibbsObit.htm
With the sole (glaring) exception of their success in making abortions inconvenient, the conservative movement is clearly losing the culture war, and losing it badly.
Guns?
With the sole (glaring) exception of their success in making abortions inconvenient… and guns more available…their two glaring exceptions, the conservative movement is clearly losing the culture war, and losing it badly.
There fixed for you… Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition…
Conservatives by definition don’t believe in democracy.
Conservatives are conservative because they believe that past traditions should be upheld, which inherently includes inequality between many different classes of people. Otherwise they’d be liberals attempting to decrease the power of arbitrary hierarchies.
What is different now isn’t that Republicans have all of a sudden decided to stop believing in Democracy. It is that they’ve become counter-radicals as I think was posited above in another comment.
They aren’t trying to slow the rate of change to ensure that certain hierarchies and power structures remain, with them conveniently at the top; instead, they are trying to create many hierarchies that were torn down or minimized in the past.
See: Arizona, laws particularly nullifying equal protection and due process, etc.
Republicans aren’t just trying to game the system; they are trying to topple it so that a real, no-bullshit aristocracy can emerge. That isn’t fucking hyperbole.
The people who think it is just hyperbole are deluding themselves.