It's the Conservatism, Stupid

[freespirit]

It's The Conservatism, Stupid

Paul Waldman

July 12, 2006



Paul Waldman is a senior fellow at Media Matters for America and the author of the new book, Being Right is Not Enough: What Progressives Can Learn From Conservative Success, just released by John Wiley & Sons. The views expressed here are his own.

Ask a conservative what the biggest problem in America is today, and you’ll get answers like overtaxation, a sexualized culture, lack of respect for authority, insufficient church-going or big government running amok. But if you then asked the conservative what the real source of the problem was—the beating heart pumping blood to each and all of these socio-politico-cultural wounds—you’d get the same answer: liberalism.

On the other hand, you could ask a liberal a hundred questions about the problems facing our country before you’d get to an answer that placed conservatism at the heart of the nation’s ills.

And conservatives learn these messages when still young. What does a “campus liberal” do? Well, it depends what his or her issue is: fighting sweatshop labor, or environmental degradation, or the Iraq war, or any of a dozen other problems about which liberals are concerned. What, on the other hand, does a “campus conservative” do? Fight liberals and liberalism.

You can hear it in the media as well. As any fan of Limbaugh, Hannity or O’Reilly hears every day, whatever the issue is, the problem is liberals.

Conservatives write books saying liberals are The Party of Death , who are Trashing Democracy, Waging War Against Christianity , ,Screwing Up America, Corrupting Our Future—and on top of it all, our whole ideology is A Mental Disorder. Liberals, on the other hand, write books about why George W. Bush is a terrible president. (I plead guilty.)

What we haven’t yet seen from the left is a sustained critique, not just of a particular politician or a particular policy, but of the entire ideology and worldview of conservatism.

As everyone knows, conservatives have succeeded in making “liberal” an epithet, something they throw at their opponents—who try desperately to dodge the label. The demonization of “liberal” has been successful in part because conservatives have effectively created what social psychologists call a “schema” with decidedly negative features around the term. A schema is a set of ideas that are connected in people’s minds, such that activating one idea—“liberal”—activates a whole set of related ideas, like lights on a Christmas tree. We assemble schemas as a way of storing and categorizing related information in memory. In this case, the related ideas are things like “soft on crime,” “weak on defense,” “sexually permissive,” and so on. The ideas liberals would like to pop right up in people’s heads when they hear the term liberal—“wants prosperity for everyone,” “supports universal health care” or “stands up to powerful interests”—are farther away from the schema’s center.

This didn’t happen by accident. It is the result of a relentless campaign against liberalism by conservatives. And liberals need to do the same thing to conservatism.

A good first step would be to never, ever again use the word with a positive connotation. How many times has a Democrat, in order to score a debating point, said, “A true conservative wouldn’t tolerate these Republican deficits?” How many times have solidly liberal Democrats described themselves as “fiscally conservative?” Those formulations accept that true conservatives are principled people with noble goals. They are not, and should not be talked about as though they were. When was the last time you heard a Republican call himself a “social liberal,” even if he is one? They don’t, because they understand that liberalism is an opposing ideology to which they will give no aid or comfort.

So allow me to offer a few points of attack on conservatism, ones that will resonate with the public and accrue both short-term and long-term gains to the liberals who use them.

1. Conservatism has failed. The overwhelming majority of the American public now sees the Bush administration as a failure. They failed in Iraq, they failed after Hurricane Katrina, they failed on health care, they failed to deliver rising wages, they failed on the deficit, they failed, they failed, they failed. Why? Liberals need to argue that it wasn’t a product of incompetence, it was a failure of conservative governance. As Alan Wolfe put it in a recent Washington Monthly article, “Conservatives cannot govern well for the same reason that vegetarians cannot prepare a world-class boeuf bourguignon: If you believe that what you are called upon to do is wrong, you are not likely to do it very well.”

Conservatives had their chance: a Republican president, a Republican Congress, Republican-appointed courts—in short, the perfect environment for enacting their vision with little to stand in their way—and they failed. Should we be surprised at the level of corruption? Of course not; they don’t think government is there to serve the people, so why shouldn’t they raid it for whatever they can grab?

In short, progressives should start talking about the Bush administration’s failures not as those of a president, but of an ideology.

2. Conservatism is the ideology of the past—a past we don’t want to return to. Liberals need to embrace the culture war, because we’re winning. The story of American history is that of conservative ideas and prejudices falling away as our society grows more progressive and thus more true to our nation’s founding ideals. Conservatives supported slavery, conservatives opposed women’s suffrage, conservatives supported Jim Crow, conservatives opposed the 40-hour work week and the abolishment of child labor, and conservatives supported McCarthyism. In short, all the major advancements of freedom and justice in our history were pushed by liberals and opposed by conservatives, no matter the party they inhabited at the time.

Conservatism is Bill Bennett lecturing you about self-denial, then rushing off to feed his slot habit at the casino. It’s James Dobson telling you that children need regular beatings to stay in line. It’s a superannuated nun rapping you on the knuckles so you won’t think about your dirty parts. It’s Jerry Falwell watching “Teletubbies” frame by frame to see if Tinky Winky is trying to turn him gay. Conservatism is everyone you never wanted to grow up to be.

3. Conservatives are cowards, and they hope you are, too. We’re afraid, they shout. We’re so afraid of terrorists, we have to become more like the things we hate. We’re so afraid, we have to let our government sanction torture. We’re so afraid, we have to let the government spy on us. We’re so afraid, we have to give the president dictatorial powers. We’re so afraid, we just want to rush to the arms of politicians who say they’ll protect us.

Progressives need to frame their rejection of the fear campaign as an act of courage: Al-Qaida does not scare us, and we will not dismantle our democratic system because we are afraid. The America we love does not cower in fear, as the conservatives want it to.

These are just a few ways progressives can begin to talk about contemporary issues in the context of the larger ideological conflict that shapes our political history. As an added bonus, when we make clear just what it is we are against at its fundamental, philosophical level, we define for the public who we are and what we stand for.

One of the troubling contradictions in contemporary public opinion is that while on nearly every issue the progressive position is more popular, the number of people willing to tell a pollster they consider themselves “conservative” still far outnumbers the number willing to say they’re “liberal.” It wasn’t always that way, and it doesn’t have to be that way. Winning converts isn’t just about convincing people you’re right on the merits of issues, it’s also about showing them that your side is one they want to join, and the other side is one they want to avoid.

The key challenge facing progressives right now is how—once George W. Bush decamps for Crawford in January of 2009—to maintain the increased energy motivating the political left in recent years. They will be able to do so if they come to understand that George W. Bush is not what they need to fight. What they need to fight is conservatism.

[suedanim]

Excellent article. May I repost on my blog?

Conservatives had their chance: a Republican president, a Republican Congress, Republican-appointed courts—in short, the perfect environment for enacting their vision with little to stand in their way—and they failed. Should we be surprised at the level of corruption? Of course not; they don’t think government is there to serve the people, so why shouldn’t they raid it for whatever they can grab?

Just look at the national debt, the deficit, how poverty among the people has grown and the policies that have caused it all.

A schema is a set of ideas that are connected in people’s minds, such that activating one idea—“liberal”—activates a whole set of related ideas, like lights on a Christmas tree. We assemble schemas as a way of storing and categorizing related information in memory. In this case, the related ideas are things like “soft on crime,” “weak on defense,” “sexually permissive,” and so on.

The press...which has given widespread favor to conservatives, not liberals for many years past, has been only too happy to convey that message nonstop. It began with Raygun and gained momentum during the Clinton years. Little did anyone know that Cheney and Wolfowicz had a plan to bully into the Oval Office.

It has always been important to conservatives to aggressively portray liberals in that fashion in order to win public support. Talk radio accomplished much of the mindset for them. Most of those supporters such as we see here on this board still do not realize they too were cuckolded.

Its been important to drive home fear and the belief that liberals are soft while conservatives are tough, hard, superman types who will save the world so as to allow the enactment of aggression upon oil rich nations.

I loved the rest of the article too!

[Beethoven's Cricket]

Hot Damn! My new hero! I've felt this way for a long time but never quite put it into words like this. I've called it the Hypocrisy of Conservatives. Now I have something to work with.

Thank you, Freespirit, for bringing this to our attention.

[Neko]

You have a blog, Sue? What's the address?

[01]

A good post, freespirit.

There is a third element in this and that being those to whom the ideological charge of liberal or conservative means little. To them these are labels that basically serve as distractions to keep people from addressing the real motivations involved.

As it stands, the situation is akin to someone like Al Capone if he had become mayor of Chicago and framed all his actions as being for the good of the city. The people of the city then go back and forth endlessly on the ideological pluses and minuses while Capone's bottom line is the only one adding up. The problem is obvious: how do you get rid of criminals who are operating with the protections of the highest office of the land?

For many it's a classic case of denial, they can't believe that those who hold such positions would actually be criminals. Throw in the fear factor and after awhile the most that many can do is continue with the delusion that it's about ideology, democracy and anything else that doesn't strip away the illusion to show what's really underneath. Some go halfway and say that the ideology is still good but not the person or persons representing it. Still, they can't bring themselves to wholly condemn the representative because of what it says not only about the vulnerability of the office but also about the gullibility of themselves in allowing said office to be compromised.

Another aspect - and not the nicest to consider - is that many agree with the gut attitudes of those who are in office, do whatever you need to do and to hell with the consequences and if others have problems with those consequences then to hell with them too. At that level then we have something a little rougher and not particularly disposed to ideological considerations and demonstrably not fond of those who bring up those considerations.

There are also many conservatives who see through the sham that's been presented in their name and who have a more reasonable attitude toward progress in that they are selective rather than offensive about it; they know change is inevitable and that it won't abate regardless what ping-pong game is in effect or how passionate the players.

In the end it's about education because if that's not there then ideology and just about any other element that contributes to the discourse and progress of education will be seen as 'liberal' along with the usual demonizing; a base of sentiment easily manipulated by others who think too much education is not in their best interests.

[ninjalooter1701]

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/r...7_lakoff.shtml

Framing the issues: UC Berkeley professor George Lakoff tells how conservatives use language to dominate politics

If someone owns a large home on a big piece of land with horse stables, a guest house and servants' quarters, and doesn't use the land for farming, what do you call it?
What if it's in Massachusetts or Pennsylvania?
What if it's in Texas?
Now try this: Every time you see or hear a reference to George Bush's "ranch," substitute the word "estate." When you see a reference to John and Theresa Heinz Kerry's "estates" in Massachusetts or Pennsylvania, substitute the word "ranch."

[freespirit]

Sue! I'm surprised that you ask if you can repost the article. I don't have any rights to it whatsoever. Those belong to Mr. Waldman and tompaine.com. As far as I'm concerned, hell yes, repost it! I'm sure the aforementioned parties wouldn't mind as long as proper credit is given to them.

And you're welcome, those of you who thanked me, but you should really thank Mr. Waldman, and tompaine.com.

[lily]

You can hear it in the media as well. As any fan of Limbaugh, Hannity or O’Reilly hears every day, whatever the issue is, the problem is liberals.

I've taken to watching Fox news, once in a while. Sometimes I can't believe the hate that comes out of their mouths.........but then I also have to admit to being disappointed........after watching O'Reily and Hannity, I already know what names I'm going to be called by the hard right and what their opinion is going to be.

This didn’t happen by accident. It is the result of a relentless campaign against liberalism by conservatives. And liberals need to do the same thing to conservatism.

I'd rather not be that petty or stoop to their level.

[sinterest]

Best article in a long time - I wholeheartly agree.

The challenge is to discredit conservativism and not individuals who lead us all into quagmires under cover of the conservative banner.

A great contribrution Free.

In short, progressives should start talking about the Bush administration’s failures not as those of a president, but of an ideology.

[sinterest]

Another thing, though not stated here, talk of impeaching Bush thinking such a course will appeal to 2006 mid-term voters is flat out wrong and probably would be counter-productive.

[lily]

Another thing, though not stated here, talk of impeaching Bush thinking such a course will appeal to 2006 mid-term voters is flat out wrong and probably would be counter-productive.

........but that's what the Republicans say.......so it must be true!

Honestly, we're as much to blame as they are....we fall for their speal every time!

[sinterest]

Originally Posted by lily

........but that's what the Republicans say.......so it must be true!
Honestly, we're as much to blame as they are....we fall for their spiel every time!

In this they are right IMO. Americans want much more than vengeance against one individual i.e. another impeachment dominating congress's time as critical issues dangle in limbo.

[lily]

Sin........I have a feeling, between now and the end of October, that congress is going to get more work done, than they have in 4 years...there'll be time for impeachment talk.

[freespirit]

I'd rather not be that petty or stoop to their level. -lily

That's exactly what I thought, when I read that line.

[Tom Joad]

Yep, this nails it! That's probably why the Wingers are hiding under their rocks on this one.

[ninjalooter1701]

I think a lot of the liberal posters here don't have problems with true conservatives. However, the conservative party has been taken over by the social censoring pro-war pro-business crowd, under the guise of Jesus.

I don't think it's the conservatism.

[contracycle]

..

[ninjalooter1701]

Originally Posted by contracycle

True conservatism is racism, warmongering, corruption, and kicking the poor out of your way. Thats what nit doesn, in every place, and every time.

I'll have to disagree with you, strongly, here.

Conservatism, at least to me, is a near total embracement of market driven capitalism...Again, to me, an ideal conservative is what we in the US today call a Libertarian. I like Libertarians, even if I wouldn't want them in charge. We might be talking apples and oranges.

[contracycle]

..