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Ross Douthat's meditation on the Newton school massacre opens like a bad television melodrama: a scenic travelogue with a pretentious voice over, about the menace lurking under the veneer of bucolic small town America, the reality of suburbia’s quiet desperation wedded to the illusory search for an unattainable safety. Although he does manage, in a kind of mysterious literary alchemy, to create an atmospheric of a certain power, you must give him his due. Which then surprisingly, but inexorably turns to Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov for some decorous curlicues, made up of the literary musings of a politically terrorized sinner, that lend this essay of tactless hackery some weight. What he's trading on is the usual Christian sadomasochism, God works in mysterious ways etc., and the fact that 'evil' exists, and that it can't be overcome: the 'fallen state of man', we are cursed beings, the usual shopworn chatter of both his Conservatism and his Christianity, they are synonymous. Mr. Douthat revels in this scalding bath of Augustinian self-loathing, as a kind of theological realism, abetted by his dour, self-hating Russian ally. Mr. Douthat articulates his message to the hungering throng that desperately needs answers! One can almost hear the faint echos of hosannas, as fitting ending of this cinematically inflected essay.

Queer Atheist

In this age of failed experts and expertise, not to speak of the utter failure of Capitalism, and the total lack of an alternative, Mr.Niall Ferguson makes a lengthy appeal, in his essay of November 30, 2012 titled Turning Points, to his readers that he is the expert to which his readers are obliged to pay heed. One of the foremost exponents of 'Free Markets' and 'Empire' produces a set of arguments- well, not so much a set of arguments, but a set of assertion that he, of all the experts capable of demonstrable misreadings of current history and the future, must be trusted to provide the most pertinent historical narrative. Mr. Ferguson is an expert at the historical counter-factual, although his near contemporary Robert Harris in his brilliant literary debut Fatherland, demonstrated the poverty of that genre of historical analysis, when compared to the power of literature. The intellectual garnish is applied with a heavy hand, Kuhn's paradigm shift is the opening thrust: the other thinkers are not aware of the slowness of the approach of this 'event' in historical time, a resort to the high sounding reference, but a sign of a pernicious historical myopia. Here Mr. Ferguson enumerates the 'six slow acting drivers of history in our time'. There's just a whiff of Hegel here:

1. Technological innovation;

2. The spread of ideas and institutions;

3. The tendency of even good political systems to degenerate;

4. Demographics;

5. Supplies of essential commodities;

6. Climate change.

Mr. Ferguson points the way to a more enlightened practice of history, while scolding those lazy,dubious opinionators, who shroud their intellectual laziness in the mantle of Mr. Kuhn's salutary idea. That Decadence is number three is not surprising, that always dependable epithet, that is the passionately held obsession of Conservatism, across those once rigid national boundaries. And garnished with a telling quote from Bismark about American political naivete, or should we more accurately call it American witlessness? Mr. Ferguson makes himself an unwelcome, but candid guest. Yet we are only at the half-way mark in his essay, and the antagonists to American hegemony are the internal expression of American 'liberal isolationism', as threat to the imperial reveries of Mr. Ferguson, the perennial threat of the economic rise of China: the Yellow Peril economically  re-imagined and the Arab Spring turning into The Islamist Winter. This looks like Samuel P. Huntington's Clash of Civilizations with fresh fresh application of powder, paint and an almost flattering costume change.

Marcus T.T.     

                     

Page 4

http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0745653960.html

One can start with this ludicrously inflated title that Mr. Brooks tacks on to this self-serving essay about the argued Republican reappraisal,as it continues after the defeat of 2012. The Cold War Liberals and Conservatives thought that the very idea of Glasnost and/or Perestroika  were utterly impossible. The notion that internal reform was even thinkable within the Soviet political system was never considered by the Kremlinologist of yesteryear. Yet it happened under Gorbachev. That Mr. Brooks should find this term useful, demonstrates that he wishes to place the Republican reappraisal of 2012 in world-historical terms, the possibility of the impossible i.e. an end to the political nihilism and plutocratic obsessions of the Republican Party, in the persons of Marco Rubio and a more politically moderate Paul Ryan.This reeks of  the opportunism of a party hack: history accelerated to suit the needs of political expediency. Mr. Brooks, of course, solemnly admonishes the Republicans that failure to 'reform' will lead to political irrelevance. Mr. Brooks favors the role of the stern, unyielding prophet.
Political Cynic      

  

http://www.cambridge.org/us/knowledge/isbn/item6821595/?site_locale=en_US

http://www.ucd.ie/news/2012/12DEC12/031212-UCD-Philosophy-Professor-awarded-R…

 

“Sometimes you have to walk through the desert to get to the Promised Land. That’s the way it is for Republicans right now. The Republicans are stuck in a miserable position at the end of 2012, but, if they handle things right, they can make 2013 an excellent year — both for their revival prospects and for the country.”

Here is Mr. Brooks sounding like an Old Testament prophet, not the blood obsessed zealots of that loathsome document, but as re-imagined by Walt Disney, the American kitsch-meister: all very benign under a heavy coating of syrup.  All this is perfect for a generation of readers brought up with television as a constant companion.

This essay is more of the same advocacy for Simpson-Bowels austerity as the key to a prosperous future, with dire warnings about the political/ethical blindness of the present.  Mr. Brooks counts on the short memories of his regular readers.  Once an exponent of Free Market economics, this destructive mirage brought the world’s economy to near ruin, he has replaced that destructive folly with its ideological twin, austerity.  

Mr. Brooks has failed to address the continuing failure of Capitalism. Never will he address that issue, with any degree of honesty.The project of rescue consists in the Republican Party saved from their own plutocratic obsessions, their political nihilism. All of this is without surprise, just a slight change of tone. It should be kept in mind that the long term goal of American Conservatism is the destruction of what is left of the New Deal and the Great Society. Conservatives have accepted that a policy of slow but steady erosion of these programs will bring the desired results, argued as a response to dire political necessity.

Almost Marx   

       

To characterize Ross Douthat, in his essay of December 1, 2012 titled More Babies, Please, as sounding like some turn of the century Germanic prophet of doom and inevitable decadence. This, as more and more people realize that their lives are important in themselves, set free from a  ‘civilizational’, religious, nation state, even biological context:  the realization of the possibilities of human freedom, is revelatory of his linkage of the sine qua non of growth, in Capitalism, and the Catholic Church’s belief in unfettered procreation.

Philosophical Apprentice            

Reading the comments section of any posted opinion piece on internet sites can be helpful in focusing your attention on issues that seem less than clear upon your own reading: a way of paying attention through a third party, an intellectual refraction that brings focus to your thoughts. Mr. Douthat’s essay of November 24, 2012 titled Our Enemy, The Payroll Tax is more of the same from this Conservative opinionator. The Conservative project is to subvert what is left of New Deal and Great Society programs, Social Security and Medicare, dismissively called ‘entitlements’ ( I put this word in quotation marks because it is lie.) And the means to this end is to end the payroll tax. End the revenue stream and you end these programs. As presented by Mr. D.  it’s more like eliminating these programs on a kind of installment plan. His polemic, coming so quickly after Romney’s decisive defeat – one wonders at this moment of questioning for American Conservatism 2012, what Mr. Douthat is thinking?

He manages to rehearse the many rhetorical voices of that Conservatism: the screeching political theology that sees every political event as a mortal combat between God and Mammon, the cry of anti-tax fundamentalism, the inherent evil of bipartisanship and more importantly this paranoid gem:

“Payroll taxes are a relic of New Deal Machiavellianism: by taking a bite of every worker’s paycheck and promising postretirement returns, Franklin Roosevelt effectively disguised Social Security as a pay-as-you-go system, even though the program actually redistributes from rich to poor and young to old.”

The most salient question here is : when have the Republicans done anything for young or old?

But more importantly Mr. Douthat does not address the failure of American Capital to provide the good jobs that Americans need, this in the face of massive corporate profits, long after the government bailout. Good jobs with benefits:  in order to buy a home, support a family, send their children to college, and retire in economic comfort rather than want. After long argument is support of the renewal of the payroll tax holiday:

“So there is only one question conservatives should be asking about the payroll tax holiday: How do we make it permanent?”

Publius

.      

 

I read and thought about Mr. Brooks essay of October 25th 2012, What Moderation Means while I was reading, and wanting to concentrate on Jurgen Habermas' The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. But I found that this essay contains some of the central intellectual conceits, that govern the political opinionating of Mr. Brooks. It is long but I hope it offers some insights.   

In the past month, Mitt Romney has aggressively appealed to moderate voters. President Obama, for some reason, hasn’t. But, in what he thought was an off-the-record interview with The Des Moines Register, Obama laid out a pretty moderate agenda for his second term.”

Let us consign this opening bit of campaign detritus to it’s rightful place. But consider the arguments about ‘moderation’ as a description of Mr. Brooks’ political faith, his belief in his concept of ‘moderation’.

“It occurred to me that this might be a good time to describe what being a moderate means. First, let me describe what moderation is not. It is not just finding the midpoint between two opposing poles and opportunistically planting yourself there. Only people who know nothing about moderation think it means that.”

Mr. Brooks is unashamed of his ignorance of the evolution of the idea of moderation, but he also a political propagandist with no compunction in attacking the Golden Mean of Aristotle: symmetry, proportion and harmony. Buddha, who taught the middle way,  or Confucius who taught that excess is similar to deficiency. “St. Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Philosopher, in his Summa Theologica, Question 64 of the Prima Secundæ Partis, argues that Christian morality is consistent with the mean. He observes: "evil consists in discordance from their rule or measure. Now this may happen either by their exceeding the measure or by their falling short of it;…Therefore it is evident that moral virtue observes." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_mean_%28philosophy%29 )         Mr. Brooks self-servingly re-describes moderation as a political notion of his own making, producing an easily manipulated political shadow.   

“Moderates start with a political vision, but they get it from history books, not philosophy books. That is, a moderate isn’t ultimately committed to an abstract idea. Instead, she has a deep reverence for the way people live in her country and the animating principle behind that way of life. In America, moderates revere the fact that we are a nation of immigrants dedicated to the American dream — committed to the idea that each person should be able to work hard and rise.”

The notion of ‘moderation’ is historical/philosophical/political, not to speak of abstract and concrete; theory and practice. Reverence is not a part of the theory and practice of ‘moderation’ but a betrayal of Mr. Brooks’ theo-political bias. Live and let live is an old America credo, reverence is the province of the theologian. The attachment to the idea of social mobility as a product of hard work, of the cultivation of the virtue of sacrifice for future goods is pillar of the American idea, a political embodiment of the protestant ethic, but not an idea that fuels modern American Conservatism, except as amenable cliché.

“This animating principle doesn’t mean that all Americans think alike. It means that we have a tradition of conflict. Over the centuries, we have engaged in a series of long arguments around how to promote the American dream — arguments that pit equality against achievement, centralization against decentralization, order and community against liberty and individualism.”

Conflict/violence is the lynchpin of the Schmitt/Strauss political philosophy, based upon violence or the threat of violence as the root of the political. Here Mr. Brooks carefully grooms this construct as an in-order-to of his domestication of that unpalatable, yet utterly necessary argument of Modern American Conservatism. Aristotle’s idea of the concomitant birth of ethics/politics is another discard of Mr. Brooks’ historical/political re-write, complete with a dialectical garnish. Conformity to the prevailing political wisdom is the bane of American existence.    

“The moderate doesn’t try to solve those arguments. There are no ultimate solutions. The moderate tries to preserve the tradition of conflict, keeping the opposing sides balanced. She understands that most public issues involve trade-offs. In most great arguments, there are two partially true points of view, which sit in tension. The moderate tries to maintain a rough proportion between them, to keep her country along its historic trajectory.”

The political moderate seeks consensus not to preserve ‘conflict’ but reach the middle way of political consensus, that is the practice of moderation as the ‘art of the possible’.

“Americans have prospered over the centuries because we’ve kept a rough balance between things like individual opportunity and social cohesion, local rights and federal power. At any moment, new historical circumstances, like industrialization or globalization, might upset the balance. But the political system gradually finds a new equilibrium.”

The most elementary ‘political science’ or should we call it un-enlightening cliché, used here as intellectual filler. Balance/equilibrium is the agenda of the Republican Party of 2012?  

“The moderate creates her policy agenda by looking to her specific circumstances and seeing which things are being driven out of proportion at the current moment. This idea — that you base your agenda on your specific situation — may seem obvious, but immoderate people often know what their solutions are before they define the problems.”

Political pragmatism is a part of the Republican Party platform and standard bearers of 2012? One need only cite Mr. Romney’s thundering 47% as proof of what?

“For a certain sort of conservative, tax cuts and smaller government are always the answer, no matter what the situation. For a certain sort of liberal, tax increases for the rich and more government programs are always the answer.”

Mr. Brooks and the ‘moderates’ are the middle way, the mean between the extremes: the Paul Ryan budget, or the failed practice of ‘austerity’ that we view as collaborators, spectators of the European and domestic successor to the ‘Free Market’.   

The moderate does not believe that there are policies that are permanently right. Situations matter most. Tax cuts might be right one decade but wrong the next. Tighter regulations might be right one decade, but if sclerosis sets in then deregulation might be in order.

The Republican as nimble political pragmatist?, like the Eisenhower Republican, non-existent.

“Today, we face our own set of imbalances. Inequality is clearly out of whack. The information age, family breakdown and globalization have widened income gaps. Government spending and government debt are also out of whack. The aging population and runaway health care costs have pushed budgets to the breaking point. There’s also been a hardening of the economic arteries, slowing growth.”

Imbalances: Income inequality, family breakdown, globalization, government spending and debt, aging population, runaway healthcare costs, slow growth. A collection of Mr. Brooks favorite topics on which to found his moralizing chatter, in service to a ‘political renewal’ based on market principles, not on republican values and practice. Mr. Brooks fails to mention the obscene profits of American Capital in this period of recovery, and the scarcity of decent well paying jobs, that any worker could buy a home and start a family.

“The moderate sees three big needs that are in tension with one another: inequality, debt and low growth. She’s probably going to have a pretty eclectic mix of policies: some policies from the Democratic column to reduce inequality, some policies from the Republican column to reduce debt.”

Do Boehner/McConnell embody the political pragmatism Mr. Brooks advocates?

“Just as the founding fathers tried a mixed form of government, moderates like pluralistic agendas, mixing and matching from columns A, B and C. They try to create harmonious blends of policies that don’t, at first glance, go together.”

Mr. Brooks replaces thinking with more high-flown, clichéd political chatter.

“Being moderate does not mean being tepid. It will likely take some pretty energetic policies to reduce inequality or control debt. The best moderates can smash partisan categories and be hard-charging in two directions simultaneously.”

The Radical Center of American political lore: fostered by opinionators, who somehow must add some vulgar window dressing to their shopworn goods.  

“Moderation is also a distinct ethical disposition. Just as the moderate suspects imbalance in the country, so she suspects it in herself. She distrusts passionate intensity and bold simplicity and admires self-restraint, intellectual openness and equipoise.”

The moderate is nothing if not self-congratulatory in the search of the two roads taken simultaneously. With Mr. Brooks anything is possible.

“There are many moderates in this country, but they have done a terrible job of organizing themselves, building institutions or even organizing around common causes. There are some good history books that describe political moderation, like “A Virtue for Courageous Minds” by Aurelian Craiutu, a political scientist at Indiana University. But there are few good manifestoes”

The reader doesn’t discover that   Mr. Brooks builds upon a book titled “A Virtue for Courageous Minds” by Aurelian Craiutu. The complete title is A Virtue of Courageous Minds: French Political Thought, 1748-1830. The French context is simply left out, and the context in which Mss.  Craiutu makes his argument for ‘moderation’ is within the intellectual and political thought of pre and post-revolutionary France; political radicalism, political extremity and moderation take on a very different hue given this historical context. But  careful editing make for a shift that might appear to be just a bit disingenuous, although politically useful, as rhetorical frame for his argument for an heroic political moderation. Mr. Brooks styles himself as an enlightened moderate, in the heroic mould. One might even say that his extensive use of third person feminine pronouns in his argument tends to distance that emotion, and is a kind of rhetorical pandering , masquerading as political correctness. It also acts as a mask for Mr. Brooks’ palpable defensive anger.     

“Therefore, there’s a lot of ignorance about what it means to be moderate. If politicians are going to try to pander to the moderate mind-set, they should do it right. I hope this column has helped.”

Mr. Brooks both banishes ignorance and answers non-existent questions.

Political Observer