Naturally, conservatives are on the defensive.
I want to say up front that I will agree with any conservative who protests that what happened in Tucson is not directly related to anything said or done by anyone on the near or middle or even the far Right.
But as George Will demonstrated in his column published today in the Joplin Globe, conservatives have a problem with that choice of words:
On Sunday, the [New York] Times explained Tucson: “It is facile and mistaken to attribute this particular madman’s act directly to Republicans or Tea Party members. But . . .” The “directly” is priceless.
The basis for Will’s snooty objection is that progressives, acting as charlatans and political opportunists, always use “bad sociology” to explain to superstition-riddled minds that there is a connection between ideas and behavior.
The argument, which Will has used frequently in some form or another, goes like this (using my George Will Disgronificator, the translation is in the parentheses):
1. There exists a “timeless human craving” for “banishing randomness and the inexplicable from human experience.” (Translation: People don’t like leaving things to chance or mysterious forces.)
2. “A characteristic of many contemporary minds is susceptibility to the superstition that all behavior can be traced to some diagnosable frame of mind that is a product of promptings from the social environment.” (Translation: Non-conservatives are gullible and believe that every single act by a human being can be traced to something in society, often something bad. Conservatives, of course, know better.)
3. Progressives have created a “political doctrine” (“the crux of progressivism”) that exploits the above two Facts about humanity. The doctrine goes like this: “given clever social engineering, society and people can be perfected.” (Translation: Liberals tell the gullible masses that if we just get rid of all the bad stuff in society, people will stop doing bad things.)
Now, if you are a liberal or a progressive and you don’t recognize yourself as the charlatan in Will’s argument, don’t feel too bad about it. I am a liberal and I know a lot of liberals and I don’t know one single liberal who believes what Will claims we believe.
I’m not saying there aren’t such people; I’m just saying that I don’t know any of them. It may be that, in the lofty world George Will inhabits, people with frontal lobes the size of watermelons say such things. I suppose that’s possible.
But I and the liberals I know don’t think human beings can be perfected by any means here on earth. What we do think is that we can make society a better place to live and we don’t have to leave things completely to chance, or to the Darwinian brand of conservatism in fashion today.
Indeed, Will himself has been a critic of that Darwinian brand of conservatism—libertarianism. Early into the Age of Reagan, he said that the label “Libertarian conservative” is as self-contradictory as “promiscuous celibate.” He wrote that a misplaced attachment to laissez-faire philosophy makes conservatives,
deeply ambivalent about government, and reluctant to use it as an instrument of conservative values, tempering and directing social dynamism… Real conservatism is about balancing many competing values… and always requires resistance to libertarianism (the doctrine of maximum freedom for private appetites) because libertarianism is a recipe for the dissolution of public authority, social and religious traditions, and other restraints needed to prevent license from replacing durable, disciplined liberty.”
This was, of course, long before the rise of the anti-government Tea Party and a revival of Ayn Rand’s ideas of dog-eat-dog capitalism, but it demonstrates, as does Will’s 1983 book, Statecraft as Soulcraft: What Government Does, that once George Will understood that in any society ideas have consequences, although it is often hard to measure with precision the exact causes and effects.
No, conservatives or libertarians or libertarian-conservatives or Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck didn’t directly cause the massacre in Tucson. And it is entirely possible that the anti-government propaganda shouted night and day on television and radio by people on the Right—aided and abetted by Republican politicians—had no indirect effect either.
But it is unworthy of an intellectual spokesman of the Right—who makes a living by sharing his ideas—to argue that liberals are charlatans who exploit the superstition of the masses because we take seriously the notion that cultural ideas do have cultural consequences, as hard as they are to measure. And it is folly to criticize us because we also take seriously the notion that we may be able to avoid the bad cultural consequences by countering the bad ideas.
As Edmund Burke, one of George Will’s heroes, said,
The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please; we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.
The Erstwhile Conservative: A Blog of Repentance 
Gene Garman, M.Div., '67
/ January 11, 2011“Will’s snooty objection.” Well said, Duane. Thank you!
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scott
/ January 12, 2011I have to say, Duane, I’m somewhat surprised that you don’t think there could be any influence between the rhetoric, imagery, and language and an individual’s actions or behavior, whether Loughner’s or someone else’s.
I really can’t believe this is happening! Not your view in particular, rather the fact that so many are echoing the view.
Obviously, we can’t establish, or prove any link. However, it’s a well known sociological concept that language can create reality.
Maybe one or two metaphors or instances of hate speech don’t elicit a reaction, but what about months of it, on a daily basis? Simultaneously creating fear of an enemy that happens to be the subject of your rhetoric?
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Duane Graham
/ January 12, 2011Scott,
I think I made the point that I do believe what you are asserting. I wrote that as liberals, “we take seriously the notion that cultural ideas do have cultural consequences, as hard as they are to measure. And it is folly to criticize us because we also take seriously the notion that we may be able to avoid the bad cultural consequences by countering the bad ideas.”
In fact, I am very aware of just how much influence the “rhetoric, imagery, and language” you reference can have on society at large. I have been on both sides of the divide, and I think I understand just how powerful those things are. However, in the case of the shooter in Tucson, I don’t want the point you (and I) are trying to make to get lost in the rather obvious fact that he is mentally disturbed and in possession of no coherent political philosophy. If we put all of our eggs in the Tucson tragedy basket, then our criticisms of what you correctly point out is the ongoing demonization of liberals through hate speech and other vehicles will lose its force. There are plenty of acts that are directly related to the poisonous commentary without directly attributing this latest one to it. (Whether it is indirectly related is quite plausible, in my view.)
And although I believe very strongly in the validity of what you say, I also want to be careful and not push the point too far. We have a tradition in this country of a mixing hyperbole with our political speech, and exaggeration and sarcasm and the like can be effective tools in making one’s case for or against an issue. Of all people, I don’t want the vigorous debate between those who feel strongly about politics to devolve into a passionless exchange of ideas. I just wish the right-wing would stop accusing those of us on this side of hating America and wanting to destroy it or turn it into some kind of Communist gulag.
Duane
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ansonburlingame
/ January 12, 2011to all,
The discussions herein about the proximate causes of Tucson are constructive in my view. I also liked Wills’ “take” as at least a point of view. I even like Al Sharpton’s column in the Wed Wash Post along with that of Krauthammer’s. ALL here and there have constuctive views, IMHO.
BUT, consider the Sheriff of Pima County (Tuscon) and what HE had to say. Then consider the Sheriff of Maricopa County (Phoenix) and HIS views on THAT “other” sheriff. Not very constructive in those two cases, IMHO.
I also found it interesting that the right wing sheriff had his head symbolicly severed (from a pinata) while giving a speech in the left wing guys town with no protection or expressed outrage from the left wing guy!! Might both practice what they preach?
Then our friend Sara Palin puts a crosshair on the left wing guys (and Gabby’s) district.
Then some crazy nut ecumenically shoots anyone around the whole area. I doubt that the nine year old had much political opinion.
I wonder what Rawls would have to say about all of that?
I am not trying to be cynical. I am just confused.
Anson
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Duane Graham
/ January 12, 2011Anson,
You might like today’s post on Lincoln.
Duane
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Gene Garman
/ January 12, 2011I asked an area university Professor of Sociology (not named, because I did not ask his permission to share his opinion) for his assessment:
“It seems to me that right wing conservatives want to deny responsibility for their extremist rhetoric that fan the flames of racism, paranoia, and hypernationalism. It has not been the Democrats or progressive folks who have lied about Obama’s birth place, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, death panels, government take over of health care, Obama is a socialist, Marxist, communist, and used propaganda depicting their opponents as un-American, with targets on their backs and so on.
“So, George Will, please, excuse me, you are nothing more than an apologist for the extremists who maintain that means justify the end of winning political power, the same political philosophy of fascism. And now main stream media want “both sides to tone it down.” Why? Because without both sides, pundits would have nothing about which to talk.
This is what I think, Gene. The media are not liberal. The media are controlled by the very wealthy and powerful, who are conservative.”
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Duane Graham
/ January 12, 2011Gene,
I share the criticism of those who say “both sides” should tone it down. I have been writing about politics in earnest for about two years now, as one who wants President Obama to succeed. And I have listened to my former conservative friends wish—openly—for his failure, in essence for the failure of the country just so their ideological soul mates can return to power.
No, there is no comparison these days in terms of the vitriol and wrath directed at Democrats, liberals, progressives, and the Kenyan in the White House. This myth of equivalence is one of the hardest things to swallow, as one watches or reads mainstream news. This is not the 1960s, when anger on the left was driving a lot of our political disputes.
And I just wish that point could me made clear by the pundits, who like the professor said, have an interest in pushing the idea that “both sides” are equally guilty.
Duane
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ansonburlingame
/ January 13, 2011To all,
The man that perpetrated the Tucson Affair was crazy by all accounts. He also had easy access to a semi-sutomatic hand gun with 30 shells and multiple reloads in his pocket.
Did the media make him crazy? Did only Sara Palin or Rush make him crazy? Did the law allow him to have access to the handgun? (I don’t know the answer to that one but even if he possessed the weapon illegally, he still had it)
Somewhere recently in Duane’s blog I commented on “living through the 60’s and 70’s” an era filled with radicalism from the left. It didn’t make me crazy but it sure pissed me off. Now how about the “crazy hippie” that tried to gun down President Ford long ago.
Crazy people do crazy things. And they don’t need a newspaper or TV show to cause them to act, one way or the other. THAT, in my view, is what caused Tucson, simple craziness, not rhetoric.
HOW to PREVENT such crazy acts should, again, in my view, be our current political debate.
Anson
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