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Tuesday, April 18, 2006
The Music Of The Icosahedrons: Self-Marginalization
Fran here. The Curmudgeon really wanted to write this one -- he said he had "a lot of pent-up snark to work off," whatever that means -- but as there are enough personal references to make for intolerable syntactic convolutions, I decided to take the wheel from him.
The evolution of our political environment -- not our formal, Constitutionally defined governments, but the political parties and ideologies that contend for power over them and the settings in which they function -- has been a bit jagged, which can make for interesting reading but also raises a forest of questions in the mind of the thoughtful observer. For example: When the Democratic Party nominated William Jennings Bryan as its presidential candidate in 1896, it was easily foreseeable that it would lose the election and much else besides. The Cleveland Democrats whom the Progressives had ousted were too numerous, and too devoted to their convictions, to remain in the party once its reins were in the hands of statist-inflationist forces. Therefore, the nomination itself lost the 1896 election and forfeited Democratic sway over the federal government for the next sixteen years.
So why did they do it?
Don't ask me; I'm a rational man. Except on Sundays, I worship at the Church of What Works (an affiliate of Og the NeanderPundit's Church of What Were You Thinking?). Of course, "what works?" is a question one cannot answer without reference to a set of values and priorities, which is where individuals differ most dramatically. Since one's values cannot be justified by argument -- go ahead, try it -- differences of opinion founded on clashing sets of values or differently aligned priorities for them are fundamentally irresolvable. So the most I can say about the events described above is that to the Jennings Bryan Progressives, what they got was more important to them than a Democratic victory at the polls.
In recent days, I've watched this pattern repeat several times, on stages large and small. In the small, I've watched a political idea that could have been the renewal of this country commit itself to propositions that would surely guarantee its excoriation and rejection. That idea is minimum-state libertarianism, alternately known as classical liberalism. I was the chairman of two of its political arms for quite a while. As such, I had a front-row seat as persons of erratic mentality and an ill-concealed desire to shock and offend orthodox Americans swarmed into the cockpit and flew the movement right into the ground. The experience made me a libertarian expatriate, more comfortable among conservatives with whom I still have several significant disagreements than among libertarians with whom I still mostly agree.
In the large, both our major parties are evincing suicidal tendencies. However, present trends continuing, in the process of killing themselves they could well take the country down with them. Consider:
- The Democrats are so desperate to return to power that they'll slander and vilify anyone on the other side of the aisle, regardless of his accomplisments or his character. The relentless personal attacks on President Bush, his Cabinet officers, and various Republican legislators, often expressed in terms so foul that I could never repeat them here -- it causes me discomfort even to recall them to mind -- make this perfectly clear. However, when pressed for their own policy proposals, the Democrats swiftly reveal that they have none, even on those subjects where their condemnation of the Republicans has been most savage. Their entire message is that "we could do it better." It recalls the decades of Republican impotence from FDR up to Reagan, when the whole G.O.P. message seemed to reduce to "we could do it cheaper."
- The Republicans, brought to power on a message of stronger national defense and smaller, less intrusive, less expensive government, are all but openly betraying every one of their stated principles. The Republican majorities in Congress have never seen a spending measure they wouldn't ratify. Republican legislators are setting new records in the Porkbarrel Derby. No prominent Republican, not even the generally admirable President Bush, is willing to take a strong stand against illegal immigration, even in the face of the massive, and massively hateful, demonstrations by illegals in several major American cities. As for national defense, the G.O.P. is almost immobile in the face of the Iranian and North Korean threats, has been ineffective at marshaling support from our nominal NATO allies, and tolerates systematic opposition from several core federal institutions, most significantly the State Department and the intelligence agencies.
- Meanwhile, "unofficial" affiliates of the Democrats engage in behavior that bankrupts my stock of adjectives. Consider the frequent and scurrilous anti-military demonstrations at various universities. Consider the barrages of hate mail that shower upon conservative commentators. Consider liberal-left activists' willingness to contradict their own stated convictions and destroy others' rights to advance their preferences. Consider the Cindy Sheehan phenomenon.
- Yet Republican sympathizers appear incapable of maintaining any sort of united front. Whether we focus on national security issues, on taxation and spending, on international relations, on matters of war and peace, or on domestic social issues, the picture is of division, an inability to conform to core principles or agree on what they mandate, an absurd degree of deference to special interests who'd like nothing better than a Republican collapse, and an unwillingness to defend the characters and actions of their brethren when the cameras and microphones swerve their way.
These are "major" parties that, were there any non-ludicrous replacement candidates in the wings, would not long endure. But there are no such. At a time when much of the country is desperate for a reduction of government spending and the stabilization of the dollar, and increasingly concerned about government incursions on privacy and property, party Libertarians are promoting same-sex marriage:
The government should get out of the business of deciding who can fall in love and get married -- and should eliminate all laws that prohibit same-sex marriages, the Libertarian Party said today....deriding American efforts in Iraq:"If two adults want to legally say 'I do,' the government shouldn't have the right to say, 'No, you don't,'" Libertarian Party Chairman Steve Dasbach said.
"Marriage should be a private contract between two consenting adults and their church. Intolerant laws shouldn't be part of the picture," he said.
Former president Jimmy Carter recently issued a gutsy call on the U.S. government to pull out of Iraq as soon as possible.... Not only is it reasonable, it's the only sensible course of action for the U.S. government to take. Most Americans now realize that the Iraq War is a tragic mistake that has failed to make us any safer. It has only inflamed anti-American sentiment in the Middle East, made us more vulnerable to terrorism, and served to distract us from the fact that the 9/11 terrorists are still out there. Al-Qaeda's ranks have swollen as a result of a war that has left many thousands dead. The Abu Ghraib prison scandal was the last nail in the coffin – we are out of chances to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people.
...and demanding an end to federal enforcement of the national border:
We would have only very limited, localized "border issues" were the libertarian ideal of individual rights above all others in force. You see, landowner Property Rights would negate half of the problem. Libertarians support the right of landowners to enforce their property rights however they deem necessary (read: SHOOT trespassers), after all it is THEIR property, not that of the "collective." Now, assume hypothetically that there is a landowner in southern Texas that simply allows free passage for illegals on his/her property. So what? Does that negatively affect you? No. Only if said illegal interferes with YOUR property rights.
Even if one grants the sincerity of these convictions, one must ask: What are these people thinking? Can't they see how such emissions reduce their acceptability to the electorate? Why do they prioritize their ideological purity above the good they could do on economic and civil-liberties matters if they could get a respectful hearing?
John Birch conservatives, eager to rescue America from its international entanglements, are in a similarly self-defeating position. Their insistence upon promoting their conspiracy theories, rather than hammering home the immense practical negatives that arise from our participation in the United Nations, NATO, and other trans-national groups, causes ordinary Americans to deny them all legitimacy. Even if their conspiracy theories are accurate in every respect, isn't it more important today to set to work on the practical matters they've fingered, upon which a large fraction of the electorate is in substantial agreement with them?
Madness, madness everywhere.
Psychologist Abraham Maslow is famous for the hierarchy of psychic needs he promulgated, which runs as follows:
- Level 1 (most fundamental): Defense of the body.
- Level 2: Security.
- Level 3: Love and acceptance.
- Level 4: Self-esteem.
- Level 5 (most abstract): Self-actualization (alternately, growth or self-improvement).
In its pure form, the Maslovian thesis suggests that these levels motivate an individual in strict order from 1 to 5, with level N taking precedence over level N+1 until it has been fully met. More recently, it has come to be believed that the levels overlap somewhat; for example, one can "be at work" on his self-esteem even while attempting to gain the love and acceptance he craves.
But the Maslovian thesis concerns the development of the individual in something like isolation; it does not directly apply to the behavior of groups. Perhaps it's time for a hierarchy of group needs:
- Level 1 (most fundamental): Emergence and articulation of goals.
- Level 2: Coalescence of the like-minded.
- Level 3: Organization for sustenance.
- Level 4: Mobilization for growth.
- Level 5 (climactic): Implementation of agenda.
The above is premised on a very simple wisdom:
The more goals are included in the set, the less likely they are to be coherent.
As we have seen, political parties in a democratic order have a lot of trouble maintaining coherence among their goals, and even more trouble implementing them when the opportunity arises. The explanation lies in the dynamics of political growth when government is unrestrained. A party bidding for majority status can only grow beyond its "base" by attracting single-issue groups into its fold. But a single-issue group, whose members are typically far more passionate about their issue than, say, a Republican is about the grand Republican platform, won't "sell" its allegiance. At most, it will rent it -- and on a month-to-month lease, at that. So the obvious strategy for growing a political movement runs onto what we might call the Shoals of Success. When it finally attains a majority, that majority will fractionate into a multitude of groups, all of which will want their core issue to be made the top priority. The disappointed among them will become targets for acquisition by the political opposition.
Therefore, instead of a smooth, purposeful movement through Porretto's Hierarchy of Group Needs, political parties tend to veer and stagger as they enter Level 3 (organization for sustenance), become progressively less coherent and directable as they traverse Level 4 (mobilization for growth), and essentially unsound before they can operate effectively at Level 5 (implementation of agenda). We might call this the Schematic of Self-Marginalization: the pattern by which a political party destroys the very basis for its continued influence and success. The Democrats have enacted it before our eyes; the Republicans are following briskly in their train.
I don't expect everyone to agree with my thesis. (I certainly expect substantial numbers of Republican and Democratic loyalists to differ with it.) But I challenge you all to find counterexamples, in our post-Constitutional milieu, of political parties that grew sufficiently to achieve electoral success, succeeded in implementing their agendas, and retained their cohesion in the process. The Wilson and FDR Administrations retained power for long periods due to the nation's participation in the World Wars. Are there any other cases of note? If so, how did the reigning party avert the destruction-by-fractionation mechanism that I've delineated above? And why have nascent third parties, several times confronted with opportunities to "move on up," been unable to keep the fringies from swarming over their walls?
Comments
Og has a two step program. Og likes it better.
Step one: OG SMASH!
Step two: OG SMASH!Hey, it lacks the elegance of yours, but it has effectiveness going for it.
Posted by og on 04/18/2006 at 08:51 PMWhile the libertarians had some good ideas, I was lost on some of their more extreme positions. It seemed to me when dabbling with libertarianism the folks seemed to want to take all of their positions to the logical extreme. I had trouble accepting some of that.
Especially troubling were those of the anarchist bent. Those who preach of private security forces in lieu of police, or of privatizing all roads, imagine stopping every few miles to pay a toll, come to mind. I don’t believe that idea would ever sell in mainstream America, nor should it in my opinion.
Posted by Heather on 04/19/2006 at 01:31 PMHeather: Much of what you, and many others, would deem extreme derives from a high confidence in the power of self-organizing systems. Social systems do have considerable ability to “straighten themselves out,” often by Darwinian selection mechanisms, and sometimes through the operation of Coase’s Theorem (When transaction costs are sufficiently low, assets and rights will be traded until each resides with the owner to whom it’s most valuable). So in the all-private-roads scenario, the belief is that, given sufficient time, roads would not be partitioned into short stretches of ownership, but rather would be coalesced in a fashion that maximizes owner value—which would also maximize customer satisfaction.
Granted, one must have a considerable degree of confidence in automatic and systemic processes to predict such an outcome, but the economics of the thing is plausible. Moreover, the climax state would definitely be superior to the initial condition (i.e., the current status quo), since literally everything is done worse and more expensively when done by government. The major problem is one I think of as “defeating the potential well.”
Imagine a mountain five miles high, at the top of which there’s a crater ten feet deep. If a tennis ball were placed in that crater, it would remain there unless a really powerful gust of wind were to blow it all the way up the ten-foot wall of the crater. If such a gust were to occur, then of course the ball would roll all the way down the mountain side...but getting out of the crater is a prerequisite.
This sort of “potential well” problem is characteristic of many libertarian proposals. To get to the point where events would start to roll in the desired direction would require an initial commitment of effort, and sometimes a willingness to endure temporary cost or inconvenience, that’s difficult to credit. That doesn’t make the thing impossible, just more difficult...and of course, more difficult to “sell.”
Posted by Francis W. Porretto on 04/19/2006 at 02:37 PMI have my own humble addition to the Church Blogroll. It is: The Church of What You’d be Happy Seeing Done to Your Kids.
Posted by on 04/20/2006 at 06:18 PM
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