Populist Chic vs. the New Populism
Posted on January 14th, 2009
by Sean Scallon |
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In less than a week Barak Obama will be inaugurated as President and what has come of the time of reflection the new loyal opposition has supposedly gone through from the day he was elected until his moment next Tuesday? Well, Fred Barnes is writing mash notes to outgoing President Bush II, the would-be chairmen of the Republican National Committee are competing to see how many times they can drop Ronald Reagan’s name and the neoconish Pajama’s Media is employing “Joe the Plumber” as their war correspondent in the Middle East who believes their shouldn’t be any war correspondents at all, lest they get in the way of the war.
In other words the social democrats who control the Right have learned nothing new about themselves so they revert to type, especially when it comes to ”Populist Chic”, their supposed love affair with the middle and working classes which is why Mr. Wurzelbacher is covering Israel’s attacks on Gaza instead of snaking pipes. Oh well, I supposed its better than sending Richard Perle to Gaza to be their war correspondent or Douglas Feith. It’s just less believable.
Dan Larison has a nice column on Eunomia about how the Wurzelbacher dispatches won’t make anyone forget Edward R. Murrow from London. How long the social democrats wish to keep pretending that they’re just ”keeping it real,” is up to them, for however long it’s politically expedient I suppose. Leonard Bernstein held just one fundraising soiree for the Black Panthers as far as I know, so maybe the Cosmos will come to their senses and realize they are who they are, and no amount of fantasizing that they’re all just God-fearing, pick-up driving coal miners in their glass tower, Beltway think tanks is going to change their status as Bobos. Say what you want about David Brooks but at least he’s honest about who he is.
It has distressed those provincials and paleos whose part of the country has been filled with populist movements of long ago from the Wisconsin Progressives to the Virginia Regulators, from Minnesota’s original F-Lers to the North Dakota NPLers, Nebraska’s Bryans and Louisiana’s Longs, from the Grange to the Greenback Party, to see populism reduced from a movement of substance to a cultural archetype as we saw so clearly in 2008.
But we should not despair because real populism may very well be making a comeback as Rod Dreher wrote in his Dallas Morning News column last Sunday. He gave the specific example of one Caleb Stegall, a Kansas lawyer who ran for Jefferson County DA and won. Stegall was also a contributor to Takimag.
“Last year, Stegall, a conservative of strong agrarian sympathies, got so fed up with the Republican machine that he ran for Jefferson County district attorney. He won and will be sworn in tomorrow. Today, amid the wreck of conservatism nationally, he sees America as ripe for a populist revolt.
“There is a widespread angst that crosses all political lines that we are losing those things we have loved most, that we are powerless in the face of this loss, and that those with the power are far away and don’t care very much about what we are losing,” he tells me.
A time like this is also ripe for a populist demagogue, a fact of which Stegall is keenly aware. This is partly why he warns conservative populists not to make the same mistake that the Prairie Populists made in the 1890s and believe that ceding more power to the state is any solution.
“My message would be a simple one,” he says. “Stand up! Stand up on your own two feet. Stand on your own ground, with your own family and culture to love and care for. And if anyone comes to take that away, you give them hell!”
While Dreher is dismissive of Sarah Palin, I do believe the Alaska Governor can be rehabilitated from her social democratic addiction. First she needs to get rid any and all Beltway consultants around her and realize that Fox News is not her friend and that the Beltway conservatives who she thinks are her friends and supporters are only just using her because they don’t love her as a real person, they love what they think she represents for political reasons. Then she needs to spend the next four years doing what Dreher recommends:
“Sarah Palin, who has many admirable qualities and a scintillating political talent, would be perfectly positioned to lead the next conservatism if she had “prepared for leadership through constant reading, historical understanding and sophisticated thinking.” But she has not. To say that a politician has to have either the common touch or be conversant with ideas and intellectual discourse is to accept a false choice. “
Hopefully she’ll get the help she needs and as always, we provos and paleos are ready to provide it.
Filed under: Conservatism, Election, Politics
Populism has real dangers but what is one to do when the ruling class of your society is as decadent, and parasitic as ours? I agree about Palin. Her best bet apart from educating herself (and in this she needs a real mentor) is to be a really great Governor of Alaska. If her deeds are unquestionable she will be unquestionable.
Meanwhile Obama is defining Conservatism by meeting with the Neoconservatives. We need a reaction to this now. I look forward to a serious Paleo response in the very near future.
BTW, Who or what are PROVOS?
I think that believing that Palin will suddenly develop some sort of intellectual curiosity, let alone honesty, is a mistake. The Bryans of the world seem to reside more in the person of people like Stegall. I had hopes for Huckabee, but he plays the cozy-up-to-the-Washington types game pretty well.
Caleb Stegall was not just a commenter at Takimag, he contributed numerous articles and blogs:
http://www.takimag.com/search/results/6225405e7823f1295a05808e67520879/
Swarie=Soirée?
[...] song comes to mind as @TAC’s Sean Scallon declares that if Sarah Palin were a completely different person and politician, she could become a hell of a [...]
That was the nearest thing I could find on the spell check.
It may very well be wishful thinking to see Gov. Palin crack open a copy of TAC or Chronicles, but would I still send one to her anyway and hope that she has the same reaction otherd have had when they read their first issues. If not, well then she is doomed in 2012, perhaps even earlier. Running for President from Alaska has enormous logistical difficulties to begin with. Doing so while trying to be the Great White Hope will be even worse.
Provo a.k.a provincial, those living in the provinces.
I’m with the others here thinking Scallon is way way wrong about Palin. Why is she any different than Bush was? Never an iota of any serious prior thinking about national issues or politics or etc., you pluck her out and make her President and God knows what she’ll end up doing in the name of “conservatism.” Indeed, if anything her record is worse: a one-time admirer/supporter of Buchanan, and then McCain taps her and suddenly she’s an uber-war hawk willing to ally with Mr. Illegal-Alien Amnesty himself. Indeed, news reports are that for awhile at least she was even on board with some group that says Darwin and all of modern science is just a conspiracy of some kind. Yeesh. People were rightly horrified when Bush tried to put unknown and unknowable quantity Harriet Miers on the Court exactly because no one could know what she would do. (Precisely because *she* had no idea what she would do.) Is the Presidency less important?
Brooks is clearly right however that modern conservatism was a dissident movement, but, as he said, it was a dissident *intellectual* movement. Plucking out a Bush or a Palin is if anything celebrating the antithesis of an intellectual approach. Just because you wouldn’t mind sharing a box seat at a baseball game with Bush or sharing a tent with Palin on a moose-hunting trip don’t mean they make good presidents.
Otherwise though I think Scallon’s post is a very important one. Someone ought to sit down and think through, issue by issue, just where non-liberals have gone right and where they’ve gone wrong and to try to make some sense of the results. To me one good place to start is to celebrate Bush II’s tenure as illustrating any number of issues where it has gone way way way wrong. (Might as well make *some* use of the guy.)
I just wonder if the common thread to where it went wrong doesn’t correlate with where it has veered most significantly from a more libertarian perspective. After all that original “dissident intellectual” movement might be said to have had at its core the concern that individualism was being swamped out. And Reagan and indeed Reaganism—i.e., the triumph of that movement—can seem to have especially embodied the idea of individualism and personal responsibility in the wake of Jimmy Carter crying about our “national malaise.” Is there any reason to believe that for some strange reason people have suddenly veered away from believing in individualism and individual responsibility? Is there some reason, for instance, that they won’t understand that big big problems can result from government encouraging, subsidizing and even commanding the giving of mortgages to people who simply cannot afford them?
So maybe the common kernel of what’s gone wrong with conservatism is where it has gotten away from that focus on individualism and more libertarian approaches. Saying that we all had to pay in blood and/or treasure to go crusading about the Middle East for their alleged benefit is certainly is about as anti-libertarian as can be imagined. As is the idea of a “national security state” spying on all of us and using military-style means of policing us and etc. As is taxing the hell out of us so as to funnel billions to the AIG’s and Citibanks of the world isn’t exactly a lesson in responsibility. And one doesn’t even need to characterize what it says to the public to play the respectful and even worshipful admirer of those kinds of religious fundamentalists who just ooze the demand to impose their understanding of God’s will on us all.
I’m not sure of any of this, but Scallon’s post is a great one for noting that non-Lefty’s ought to engage in some serious thinking instead of just trying to push some mindless culture buttons. The problem however just might be that mindlessly pushing culture buttons is about all that the Republicans know now. They’re still dissidents, but hardly the intellectual sort.
Provincials yes! Let’s hope someday we provincials descend on New York and DC like our French confrère’s did on the Paris Commune.
Provincials yes! Let’s hope someday we provincials descend on New York and DC like our French confrère’s did on the Paris Commune.
Yes, because that ended well.
Let’s hope you’re being sarcastic. The country doesn’t automatically produce better, kinder, wiser, people than the city, and even if it did, Lord Acton’s maxim would still more than cover the difference by the time “descending on the city” was suggested.
I beg to differ. The countryside does indeed tend to engender a better class of people if for no other reason that the people of the countryside must deal with nature and each other in a less artificial environment. Our cities attract people who were unfit to fill a niche in a more organic society. Thus over time, cities fill up with misfits, manipulators and parasites. Unfortunately it’s also the city that is the cradle of high culture. So a periodic purge of the riffraff by the citizens is a good thing. As for Acton, a righteous spasm of indignation does not an empire make.
Provincials. Why Provincials? - Because we hope that they represent “individual american” goodness, and are somehow less tied to the “machines” that have gone rotten.
Our “provincials” in government, are our congresspersons. Here is my idea of a “new contract” with our federal politicians. A “contract” they have to sign, before we send them to the Hill.
The problem we are dealing with, here, is what are we going to have to offer, when this current mess hits it’s “brick wall”? More “pseudo-conservative” crooks?
Check this out:
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A contract:
The party of the first part, shall be the electorate of the candidate’s state, offering to tender votes sufficient to place that person into office
and
The party of the second part shall be the Candidate, seeking such votes as to place themselves into office, in return for agreeing to support the tenants of this document, and promising to make earnest and continuous efforts to bring about the goals of this document, to include proposing such amendments to governmental rules as may become necessary.
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DECLARATION II - A New Declaration Of Independence
As the 4th Estate has ceased to perform the function that aids the US Politicians in policing themselves, It is necessary to establish a new set of checks and balances, politically, to reclaim Government, OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, AND FOR THE PEOPLE.
Therefore, this document shall become an implicit part of the contract that exists between a Federally elected Official, and those who voted for Him/Her.
The responsibility of the exact wording of this document, shall be by general election of voters, state by state, as is the responsibility for posting it on the State website, and also posting the list of officials who have signed (or refused to sign) this document.
The wording of this document, will be simplified, where possible, to accomodate the maximum number of political interests, consistent with restoring the government to the American People.
Article 1: Required contract to hold public office
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You agree that the following shall be punishable by fine, or imprisonment, or both (and for a politician, impeachment, and/or disallowing of re-election): (Governed by State Law)
If you have ever voted in favor of a bill, that involved $10,000 or more, that you, or your immediate staff, haven’t personally read IN IT’S ENTIRETY.
If you have ever participated in passage of a bill, that involved $10,000 or more, that was not available to any and all constituents effected by the bill, in it’s entirety, for at least 48 hours before passage.
(A possible exception to actions prior to 01/01/2009, shall be if you have since read ALL passed legislation, that you participated in, and ALL expenditures thereof are made public, and classified by the CBO as outlined in Article 2 of this document, and you present publicly any “proof” as to the subsequent impact of such legislation)
If you have ever participated in “cover up”, to keep public or news agencies from determining where money has been spent.
If you have ever participated in “cover up”, to keep public or news agencies from determining if public expenditure has benefited a member of a politician’s family, or political support group, or can be classified as “political payback”.
If you have “leaked” classified material for political gain, or to damage the opposition, or materially failed to assist in investigation and prosecution of those who have.
A “Whistleblower” reward fund shall be set up, and shall be approximately 10% of the dollar amount of the impact of the issue being investigated, with the CBO responsible for determining distribution of this.
Any person falsely pretending (with malicious intent) to be a “whistleblower”, under this article, shall be responsible for payment of financial impact to the public, in addition to fine and/or imprisonment.
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If you, as a politician, cannot sign this contract, then you do NOT deserve public office. If you will not sign, and currently hold public office, members of all political parties may work to get you unseated as soon as possible.
Along with signing, if you currently hold office, you must immediately declare any exceptions that apply to you personally, with a public explanation. Failure to adequately explain, can be grounds for calling for a new election for your position.
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Article 2: Required declaration of expenditures
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Any politician thwarting the intent of this article, shall be impeached, and barred from holding a similar office in the future. Any private individual, company, or political organization found to be thwarting the intent of this article, shall be fined and/or it’s officers imprisoned. (Governed by State Law)
The CBO shall be tasked to publish an open and accessible list of ALL public expenditures, not related to “classified” projects: (One or more may apply)
(CLASS 1) Does this expenditure create (specific and immediate) jobs that produce goods or services of sufficient value as to be self-sustaining on the open market, without further government expenditure?
(CLASS 1a) Does this expenditure contribute directly to the expectation that “CLASS 1″ jobs will be created.
(CLASS 2) Does this expenditure create (specific and immediate) jobs that produce goods or services of sufficient value as to be self-sustaining on the open market, with some continued government expenditure and/or legal protection?
(CLASS 2a) Does this expenditure contribute directly to the expectation that “CLASS 2″ jobs will be created.
(CLASS 3) Does this expenditure serve to build or maintain national infrastructure (not counting recreational, artistic, aesthetic, or environmental purposes)?
(CLASS 4) Does this this expenditure serve necessary governmental services (not counting recreational, artistic, aesthetic, or environmental purposes)? (For example, a “fireman” would count as “Class 4″, but Forest Service and Park Ranger would not.)
(CLASS 5) Environmental protection, recreational
(CLASS 6) Artistic, aesthetic, cultural, or historical
(CLASS 9) “Classified” for national or local security
(CLASS 10) Other
Each expenditure will ALSO include the following “FLAGS”:
Does this expenditure create jobs that will later require the federal government to collect additional taxes to maintain?
Does this expenditure create jobs that will later require the state or local government to collect additional taxes to maintain?
What political and local constituencies does this expenditure benefit? (This includes companies and contractors, where individuals belonging to that company or contractor, when added together, shall total $10,000 or more)
Does this expenditure benefit a politician, a member of a politician’s family, a member of that politician’s support group, or serve as “political payback”.
The minimum acceptable increment for financial accountability, for purposes of this document, shall be $10,000. NO AMOUNT over $10,000 (except classified expenditures) shall escape being made public. Where one government agency gives an amount to another agency, or private corporation, and where that corporation transfers large amounts to another agency or private corporation, EACH Governmental agency, or private corporation, shall be responsible for full public disclosure of ALL public monies received, handled, transferred, or disbursed in any fashion. It is to be publicly disclosed, what money was used for, and through which domestic companies such money has passed through, regardless of how many companies are involved. “Economic disadvantage”, and “private company proprietary secrets” shall be no excuse for failing to fully disclose use of public funds. Private companies and services, shall declare funds expended on salaries and expenses, of all public monies, over $10,000 annual (and/or received “one time”).
(Classified expenditures shall be publicly labeled in aggregate, as such, and identified as to which department classified the expenditures, such as “FBI”, “CIA”, “Army”, “Navy”, “Air Force”, “National Guard”, etc. Such classified expenditures shall be identified separately from the standard budget for those agencies. It shall be made made publicly available, the aggregate amount, the agency requesting that the amount be classified, and the name of the oversight committee.
Classification shall be made by the CBO, with all information made available to the public (ie., establish a national database of federal expenditures, available to the public). Public financial investigations relating to the Congress, shall be made by a Senate Oversight Committee. Public financial investigations relating to the Senate, shall be made by a Congressional Oversight Committee.
All oversight committees shall have 100% turnover of membership, not less than every 4 years, with all minutes, notes, and information available to the incoming members. ALL Oversight Committees shall be comprised of 40% from each of the two national political parties, and 20% independent or minority party.
Where a “member of an independent or minority party” cannot be found, national election will determine such “public delegates, for a period not to exceed 2 years. The US must have term limits on ALL ethics and oversight committees.
Congress’s salary shall be set by full rollcall vote of the Senate, bi-annually, and the Senate’s salary shall be set by full rollcall vote of the Congress, bi-annually. Salary, expenses, and operational allowances (including “full cost to the public”), as well as benefits (such as health, entertainment, retirement, etc) shall be made fully available to the public, for each individual of the Senate, the Congress, The Supreme Court, and the Presidency (to 3 layers down of those who report to the president, public and private). ANY funds transferred through ANY of these individuals, to ANY entity public or private, shall be subject to the provisions of this article.
ALL CHANGES must be made directly to this document, and NOT by way of any reference within another document as to modification of the wording herein. (This contract is NOT binding upon any agency, it is a contract within each state, between the voters, and the politician they elect)