From the Right: A Vision of 'Communitarian Conservatism'

Interesting things are happening on the Right, such as a movement to take what’s seen as the positive elements of Trumpism to formulate a new conservatism opposed to both the neoliberal consensus founded by Ronald Reagan and free-market fundamentalism.

Julius Krein, thirty-something founder and editor of American Affairs, promotes a kind of economic nationalism he calls communitarian conservatism. It’s built around the idea of “grounding the economy in society”—as in, the structures and relationships of a stable, functioning community (he's vague on this point, maybe by design)—rather than the ideology of think-tank intellectuals.

This includes more government intervention in some situations. Regulation is not always bad, he says, if balanced by strong democratic institutions and accountability. He’s highly critical of free trade. 

Paraphrasing Krein: the Right reflexively celebrates capitalism without thinking of how modern capitalism is different from Adam Smith or the founding fathers, or how “corporate cartels” are harmful to classical free-market principals. 

Krein even hints that socialized healthcare may be an inevitability: “The idea that the only health care is free market health care is basically impossible and doesn’t make any sense.”

But he’s no Bernie Sanders in a suit. The racism and xenophobia of Trumpism clearly does not bother him. He is generally dismissive of such concerns or even sympathetic where he sees the result as helping to define society and strengthen its boundaries.

This is where you start to get the unsettling feeling that this vision, an intellectual projection of values at the core of Jacksonian communalism, could slide into something like National Socialism.

Klein outlines his views in a podcast from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. It's worth a listen for anyone interested in trends across the political spectrum.

http://wws.princeton.edu/news-and-events/news/item/politics-polls-35-future-conservatism-trump-era

Enough With the 'False Flag' Bullshit

I really hate the throwing around of the term “false flag.” I’ve heard it applied to the Boston bombing, Newtown—a lot—and now, the Syria gas attacks.

In addition to being ignorant and cynical in a teenager-at-the-breakfast-table sort of way, it is an egregious insult to the soldiers and first responders who deal with foreign and domestic horrors on the ground, journalists who risk their lives reporting violence, and of course the grieving loved ones of innocent victims of terrorism and mass shootings.

Does the Alex Jones crowd really believe their vast conspiracies involve inconsolable parents, sheriffs and police officers, GIs and guardsmen, journalists, community witnesses, local and federal investigators, lawyers, psychologists, social workers, etc, etc—with not one whistleblower among the vast legions of deep state lackeys ever spilling the “truth” about what really happened?

Do these keyword-banging paranoiacs, safe in their suburban homes, understand what it is to have their families, neighborhoods or towns rocked by violence of the sort perpetrated in Syria and Newtown?

It’s easy, when you’re comfortable and safe, to flippantly dismiss the sufferings and labors of those who do the hard work of propping up civilization.

But who cares, amirite? You’ve got some guns locked away in that cabinet over there. 

Seriously though, enough with the false flag bullshit.

Is Viktor Orbán a Bellwether for the U.S.?

Hungary's Viktor Orbán is providing the world with a particularly stark example of how a populist leader with authoritarian tendencies can lead a modern bureaucratic state away from openness, free discourse and the checks and balances of civil society. 

Orbán, who praises “ethnic homogeneity,” is seeking to shut down Budapest’s highly regarded Central European University.

This really is one of those “which side are you on?” signifiers. Do you support liberal democracy or the illiberal state? In the name of security and identity, should America become more like Russia and Turkey? (They are democracies, after all!)

This is where all the Nazi talk in recent years from both the Left and the Right is revealed as stupid and distracting. If you believe in plurality, openness and accountability, a free press, research independence and government checks on oligarchy… then a slide toward Viktor Orbán’s Hungary is what you should fear.

MOVE Bombing: Cops Forced to Act Like Soldiers

It’s been announced that the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission has approved a marker for the site of the 1985 MOVE bombing in West Philadelphia. A statement from the Jubilee School, sponsor of the monument, states the dropping of explosives on a rooftop bunker during an armed standoff “paved the way for government assistance to, and tolerance of, police brutality.”

There should be a historical marker about MOVE. I’m troubled though by the framing of those terrible events as an extreme instance of police brutality. It’s better to talk about MOVE alongside groups like the Branch Davidians or Symbionese Liberation Army—radical movements occupying heavily-armed compounds that became sites of showdowns with law enforcement.

In all these cases police were put in the position of having to conduct essentially a military operation against people hunkered down with an arsenal of weapons. MOVE had already shot and killed a Philadelphia police officer in an earlier standoff. The decisions made by the police were terrible but the options before them were also terrible.

These things always seem to end in fire. In Waco, better trained and equipped ATF agents could not stop the carnage. The difference with MOVE was it occurred in the middle of a densely-populated city neighborhood.

If we’re going to allow private citizens to hoard weapons then police need training in urban warfare. It’s the unintended consequence of Second Amendment fundamentalism.