The "Weakness of Liberalism," or: Doughfaces Revisted

Yesterday I read a column by Jonathan Chait at the New Republic. I sometimes amble over that way, curious to know what the dunderheads are crowing about. Every once in a while there's an acorn.

And sometimes there's a real jewel. Yesterday was one of the beauties. Chait, in defining the difference between liberalism and conservatives, hit this one out of the park. I couldn't agree more with his opinion on liberalism. Except it's not a weakness, it's a strength.

More below the fold.

In his column, entitled "No Really, You Should Go," Chait analyzes what Hillary's decision to stay in the race says about American liberalism. Let me say at the outset that I think Hillary ought to get out. But that's not the point.

Chait sees Hillary's continued candidacy as a symptom of all that's wrong with American liberalism. And right there at the opening--at the start of the second paragraph--he says:

The persistent weakness of American liberalism is its fixation with rights and procedures at any cost to efficiency and common sense.

Wham! There you have it. The difference between conservatives and liberals, in one simple statement: We favor rights.

Mr. Chait, allow me a response: Yes, I believe that rights are more important than efficiency and what conservatives call "common sense." I think it's interesting that you see "rights" and "common sense" as being on opposing sides, but that's for another diary.

This proud liberal says that "I believe that rights are more important than efficiency."

That's why:

• I believe that the administration has committed crimes by torturing detainees, and thereby violating their rights, at Guantanamo and elsewhere in the name of the "efficient" extraction of information.
• I believe that the administration has committed crimes through "extraordinary rendition" of suspected terrorists to third-party countries, and allowing those people to be tortured. All in violation of their human rights, and all in the name of "efficiency."
• When the administration contenanced pesuedo-lwayer John Yoo's opinion that "Our office recently concluded that the fourth amendment had no application to domestic military operations," you violated our rights in the name of efficiency, and in so doing violated a fundamental tenet of our Constitution.
• I believe that the administration has committed crimes by violating my rights through domestic spying, under the guide of the "efficient" gathering of information.
• I believe that the administration has committed crimes through its use of signing statements that Repugnicans claim will make BushCo more "efficient" in its governing.
• I believe that the administration has committed crimes by creating crypto-treaties with Canada and Iraq and thereby circumventing established Constitutional procedure, in the name of "efficiency" in the war on terror.
• I believe that the administration has committed crimes by arresting hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent civilians in the post-9/11 period, all on suspicion of terrorism, all in violation of their rights, and all in the name of "efficiency."
• I believe that the administration has committed crimes by using the Justice Department to influence the outcomes of domestic elections, all in violation of one of our most sacred rights, and all in the name of Repugnican efficiency.
• I believe that the administration has committed crimes by erasing untold numbers of e-mails from its central database, all in violation of our rights to transparent government, and all in the name of "efficient" governance.

You believe otherwise, apparently. I'm proud to say that I think rights are the single most important thing in our system. That's why our government exists: to protect those rights, and to ensure that we all have an equal chance to exercise those rights.

Fundamentally, I believe that Repugnicans like you don't understand rights. That you could make a statement accusing Democrats of favoring rights over procedure, of favoring rights over expediency, and think that you are somehow insulting us, calls to mind the ideals of Stalinism and Nazism at their worst.

But it's more than that simple kind of reductionism. Call me quaint Mr. Chait, but I believe that my government doesn't grant me rights. Rights exist naturally, and governments are formed to protect those rights. You and your enabling statist pals have systematically tried to reverse that idea and to abrogate the rights of people around the world--and right here in my country--in order to have efficiency.

Let me let you in on a little secret. Like modern liberals, the Founders understood that the Constitution didn't define our rights. It was a list of the ways that the government wasn't allowed to take them away. And, it wasn't intended to be exhaustive. Madison's and Hamilton's opposition to the Bill of Rights wasn't that they were against any of the enumerations.

It was that they feared that morons like you would come along later and think that just because a right wasn't listed there, that it didn't exist. In short, Mr. Chait, Madison was worried about people like you and your conservative cronies who argue that we should go by "original intent." Except that any halfway clearheaded reading of the Founders' writings, including the Federalist Papers, shows that the original intenders opposed original intent. They saw the Constitution as a living document.

More than that, though, people like Madison were worried about safeguarding the community against a small faction whose interests ran contrary to those of the entire community--those who would use their power as a faction to abrogate the rights of the people at large. Given the recent polls showing how the country regards Republican policy in general, and the Republican party in particular, that "small faction" would seem to be you.

Here's a free clue--original intent involves natural rights that are more important that efficiency, and require intellectual commitment and personal effort to uphold. You and your friends at the New Republic, the American Enterprise Institute, and in the Republican Party don't seem willing to make that commitment.

So here's a suggestion, taking a page from conservafreaks' playbook: If you don't like living in a country where rights are more important that efficiency, why not find a country where efficiency is more important that human rights? Because the crap you espouse about rights is downright un-American.

I'm not going to respond to the rest of Chait's article. It boils down to a few points:

1. The ends justify the means, but liberals don't understand this.


2. Party unity is more important than the democratic process.

You've got an interesting take on what it means to be an American. Good luck with that BS in November.

•  Tips, reccs

  SO there! Nyah nyah nyah!!

  by AndrewMC on Tue Apr 08, 2008 at 05:45:02 AM PDT

  •  Authoritarians "R" Us

    That's a very old song Chait's singing - the demands of "necessity" justify anything - seems I've heard that refrain a few times before over the centuries...

    by bellatrys on Wed Apr 09, 2008 at 04:51:32 AM PDT

•  Suggest that you

  read up on the history of European and American Liberalism.

  HRC staying in the campaign or not has absolutely nothing to do with Liberalism and plenty to do with American pay to play politics.

  If you knew your history you would know and understand the radical roots  of the philosophy that you are so dismissive of.

  This just perpetuates the Liberal as weak and cowardly perpetuated by the moronic right in this country.

  by stevej on Tue Apr 08, 2008 at 05:50:40 AM PDT

  •  Eh?

    Did you read the whole post? What is it you think I'm dismissive of?

    by AndrewMC on Tue Apr 08, 2008 at 05:51:41 AM PDT

•  Above "common sense"? No, ball still in the park

  Not a great definition of liberalism.  Reminds me why I don't read the New Republic.

  You're better off here:
  http://plato.stanford.edu/...

  What has come to be known as ‘new’, ‘revisionist’, ‘welfare state’, or perhaps best, ‘social justice’, liberalism challenges this intimate connection between personal liberty and a private property based market order (Freeden, 1978; Gaus, 1983b; Paul, Miller and Paul, 2007). Three factors help explain the rise of this revisionist theory. First, the new liberalism arose in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a period in which the ability of a free market to sustain what Lord Beveridge (1944: 96) called a ‘prosperous equilibrium’ was being questioned. Believing that a private property based market tended to be unstable, or could, as Keynes argued (1973 [1936]), get stuck in an equilibrium with high unemployment, new liberals came to doubt that it was an adequate foundation for a stable, free society. Here the second factor comes into play: just as the new liberals were losing faith in the market, their faith in government as a means of supervising economic life was increasing. This was partly due to the experiences of the First World War, in which government attempts at economic planning seemed to succeed (Dewey, 1929: 551-60); more importantly, this reevaluation of the state was spurred by the democratization of western states, and the conviction that, for the first time, elected officials could truly be, in J.A. Hobson's phrase ‘representatives of the community’ (1922: 49). As D.G. Ritchie proclaimed:

     be it observed that arguments used against ‘government’ action, where the government is entirely or mainly in the hands of a ruling class or caste, exercising wisely or unwisely a paternal or grandmotherly authority — such arguments lose their force just in proportion as the government becomes more and more genuinely the government of the people by the people themselves (1896: 64).

  The third factor underlying the development of the new liberalism was probably the most fundamental: a growing conviction that, so far from being ‘the guardian of every other right’ (Ely, 1992: 26), property rights generated an unjust inequality of power that led to a less-than-equal liberty (typically, ‘positive liberty’) for the working class. This theme is central to what is usually called ‘liberalism’ in American politics, combining a strong endorsement of civil and personal liberties with, at best, an indifference, and often enough an antipathy, to private ownership. The seeds of this newer liberalism can be found in Mill's On Liberty. Although Mill insisted that the ‘so-called doctrine of Free Trade’ rested on ‘equally solid’ grounds as did the ‘principle of individual liberty’ (1963, vol. 18: 293), he nevertheless insisted that the justifications of personal and economic liberty were distinct. And in his Principles of Political Economy Mill consistently emphasized that it is an open question whether personal liberty can flourish without private property (1963, vol. 2; 203-210), a view that Rawls was to reassert over a century later (2001: Part IV).

  by pontechango on Tue Apr 08, 2008 at 06:05:12 AM PDT

  •  thanks for that...

    bookmarked for later use.

    by gooners on Tue Apr 08, 2008 at 06:41:48 AM PDT

•  this "definition" sets up a strawman

  by suggesting "rights" and "common sense" are somehow fundamentally at odds. Those pesky "rights," like the Bill Of..., are fundamental to ours being a "nation of laws, not of men." Without the rights set forth and protected under the constitution, the framers saw us as little better than a kingdom. And it's clear that this is the case. Granted, one can find instances in which "common sense" was not applied, but in the main this distinction (between rights/sense) has been used historically as rhetorical and polemical justification for legal and constitutional abuse of power. As such, it's a distinction that does not hold up to scrutiny.

  by gnat on Tue Apr 08, 2008 at 06:31:58 AM PDT

  •  meant "illegal and constitutional abuse"

    by gnat on Tue Apr 08, 2008 at 06:32:53 AM PDT

    •  I knew that [N/T]

      by Just Bob on Tue Apr 08, 2008 at 10:11:06 PM PDT

  •  Absolutely.

    Yes. That's why it was such an odd statement for him to make. But I think it's also perfectly in line with how many conservatives now view rights, and how the Republican Party has come to view the role of government--not as a protector of individual liberty and rights but as a tool for abrogating rights.

    by AndrewMC on Tue Apr 08, 2008 at 06:34:48 AM PDT

  •  Did somebody say common sense?

    Thomas Paine: America's First Liberal

    by pontechango on Tue Apr 08, 2008 at 06:36:45 AM PDT

    •  lol

      Yes. The original common sense, and one of the more strident liberal thinkers in American history.

      by AndrewMC on Tue Apr 08, 2008 at 06:41:19 AM PDT

•  The founders would be liberals today

  You are right on target when you highlight how the views of the founders fundamentally reflect the spirit of liberals today.  It is ironic that Scalia, Thomas, et al. have this nutty judicial philosophy that appeals to the mechanics of how the founders tried to solve the particular problems of their day, but they completely overlook the larger fundamental principles that the founders were promoting.  I am virtually certain that people like Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, etc. would be horrified by the people who invoke the "framers' intent" these days.  In general, rights should trump efficiency, and any deviation from this must be very carefully considered.

  P.S. I think some of the comments above reflect a hasty and/or inaccurate reading of your diary.

  by Sedi on Tue Apr 08, 2008 at 06:36:27 AM PDT

  •  Re:

    Re: The judiciary--Absolutely. "Original Intent" is attractive because it is intellectually safe.

    Re: Reading of the diary--I think so. But I also wrote it late last night during/after three glasses of wine. So, there's that too.

    by AndrewMC on Tue Apr 08, 2008 at 06:39:42 AM PDT

•  I wish they would bring this public...

  I heard BillO almost slip one day, he said something like,

  "Liberals reject anything that infringes on their rig..... they think they should be able to do whatever they want to do".

  And there it is.  Good post Andrew.

  by gooners on Tue Apr 08, 2008 at 06:39:18 AM PDT

•  The first ten amendments

  to the Constitution are not called the Bill of Efficiencies, either.

  And in the Declaration of Independence:

  We hold these truths to be self evident (a fancy way of saying "this is common sense" in my interpretation)that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights...

  Conservatives...bleh.

  by zett on Wed Apr 09, 2008 at 03:59:18 AM PDT

  •  Nicely said

    Very well put. That's exactly what "self-evident" means in modern language.

    by AndrewMC on Wed Apr 09, 2008 at 09:23:55 AM PDT