The American Left vs. the American People?

Great Debates
1

I came across the following on Le Monde Diplomatique (http://mondediplo.com/2004/02/04usa). The author (Tom Frank) is not a member of the Limbaugh-wannabe society but a leftist of long standing. Reading through his essay, I found myself quite surprised to discover a leftist who finally gets it. I especially found the following sections to be quite on-the-mark and I was wondering if they agreed with what other people have seen.

As one of a small handful of Midwesterners to attend my own college, and from having lived in Ithaca, NY, for nearly a decade, I must attest from personal experience that this sort of attitude is not an isolated incident. I was subjected to it over and over. It was very often presumed that “working class Midwesterner” was identical to “racist extremist”, and that there was no point in actually trying to talk to such people. I actually astonished some people who got to “know” me before they knew where I was from. Likewise, I’ve seen this on online forums, as well–there is the presumption that common people are innately stupid, not worth talking to if one is already of the elite liberal intelligentsia.

I ran into plenty of these, too. Unfortunately, it seems that these people are the core “leadership” of liberalism in the USA, thus ensuring that it becomes an entrenched aristocracy, morally indistinguishable from the right. Fortunately, I’ve not seen that online–probably because trust-fund babies generally would consider it beneath them.

This is probably the most common trait I’ve seen. Politicial righteousness and finger-pointing trump building common cause. Of course, the whole political spectrum does this, but it seems rather odd for self-styled progressives to do so.
Anyway, so what is the matter for debate? It’s this: Is Tom Frank right? Has the American left abandoned the American people and relegated millions of human beings into the camp of the “irredeemable”, writing off millions of people as being innately too racist and/or stupid to be reached out to?

2

Simple answer: no. Anything else on your mind?

3

I’ve seen some of this, but not other parts. Specifically, during college I hung out in the anarchist/socialist/radical environmentalist crowd, and there was definitely a sense that the more radical your politics, the better they were. I actually found myself once talking to a guy who said that during the revolution, the children of bankers and other capitalists should be rounded up and killed. That’s not hyperbole – that was his serious position. The worst part was that in a room of half a dozen people, I was the only one who bluntly condemned his bloodiness; the best anyone else would do was say that such a measure might not be necessary…

And certainly while growing up it would’ve been coolness suicide amongst my friends to like country music. It wasn’t until my early twenties that I began to appreciate it.

However, I’ve never in my many travels amongst leftists seen any sort of aristocracy of leftism. Perhaps this is more prevalent in the Northeast than in the South or the Northwest? And I’ve also seen plenty of leftists who WEREN’T raving nutballs, leftists who were part of their community. I’ve been at conferences at which leftists vehemently argued about whether organizers in low-income communities could ethically suggest a course of organization to the community, or whether they must remain purely silent except when discussing the logistics of activism. That may seem like angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin, but it certainly bespoke a refreshing political humility: rather than telling poor people what to do, they were trying to figure out the best way of helping impoverished communities achieve their own goals.

So to some extent it’s a valid criticism of the left – but it’s only as valid as would be criticizing the right for being racist. That is, it’s a charge valid for too many leftists, but not, in my experience, valid for a majority of leftists.

Daniel

4

Dogface: *The author (Tom Frank) is not a member of the Limbaugh-wannabe society but a leftist of long standing. Reading through his essay, I found myself quite surprised to discover a leftist who finally gets it. *

I think your selectively quoted excerpts are kind of obscuring Frank’s characterization of these people as “a smaller coterie of liberals” and “a small but very vocal part of the left”. I agree that Frank’s criticisms of certain leftists are insightful, but I question your attempt to deduce from that that he’s trying to apply them to American leftists in general.

Just curious: do you also agree with Frank’s main thesis that conservatives manipulate the “anti-elitist” backlash by portraying liberals as elitist and disdainful of the little guy, when in fact it is conservative policies that tend to cater to wealthy elites and make the little guy’s life much harder?

Your gleeful seizing on Frank’s criticisms of elitist liberals while ignoring the fact that his fundamental theme is the anti-liberal propaganda of elitist conservatives, I think, kind of supports his argument.

5

Just to give a more balanced view of what Frank is actually driving at in that article:

Tom Frank is a liberal who “gets it”, indeed.

6

First of all, quite a loaded question. We might as well ask, “Has the American right set our democracy on a path to sure destruction by concentrating economic and political power in the hands of fewer and fewer people who shamelessly exploit millions of people who are too lazy to work for a living and make money their own selves.”

Second, and more important - Did you honestly conclude from reading Frank’s article that his central point was “the American left has abandoned the American people”? Wow. Just…Wow.

Frank’s reference to the two sub-sets of liberals, which you so excellently have posted out of context, is what some of us refer to as intellectual honesty - the process by which when making a point an author acknowledges that the issue is not 100% black-and-white.

Were I to be writing a critique of capitalism, I would certainly speak of it in glowing terms, infinitely superior to other economic systems and with a proud history of promoting innovation and material prosperity. But I would be remiss if I did not remark on the existence of monopolies and greedy bastards as threats to the overall benificence of a capitalist system. Would you then read my critique, quote my references of corporate greed, then conclude that I am speaking against capitalism? Because that’s what your remarks on the Frank piece resemble.

There are bad apples on the left end of the political spectrum. Some are probably snooty. Some are undoubtedly egotistic as a consequence of higher education. I would consider it axiomatic to likewise conclude these snooty intellectual leftists have their mirror images on the right - individuals with similar educational gifts and/or social privilege who just as erroneously conclude that they know better than their fellow citizens.

Of course the American Left has not abandoned the American People. The American People are the American Left. For every George III, there’s been an American Revolution; for every Great Depression, there’s been a New Deal; for every World War, there’s been a Marshall Plan; for every Jim Crow, there’s been a Civil Rights movement. The history of the United States is an examplary string of accomplishments by the left side of the political spectrum, Lincoln’s “better Angels of our Nature”, occasionally and unfortunately interrupted by small but powerful groups of individuals desiring ascendancy over their fellow citizens.

7

I do worry that the left alternately overlooks or condescends to white working class and middle class Southerners. This should be a natural constituency for the Democratic Party (as Howard Dean grasped). They are currently in the thrall of Limbaugh et al. and are voting against their own economic interests. Instead of fighting to convert them, the Democratic Party seems to be abandoning the field. I’m not sure why, but I suspect it is a mistaken sense among some Northern Democrats that all white Southerners are irredeemable racists/bible-thumpers.

8

spoke: *Instead of fighting to convert them, the Democratic Party seems to be abandoning the field. *

IMHO that was a result of the DLC-inspired rightward shift of the party during the ‘90s. Trying to capture middle-class swing voters, the Dems downplayed their traditional planks of economic democracy and workers’ rights, leaving them without much common ground to share with the more socially conservative white working-class Southern constituency.

This, of course, assumes that you can usefully identify the categories of “Democrat” and “liberal”, which a lot of people would argue with. :slight_smile:

9

The Democratic party abandoned those poor white Southerners because they didn’t fit into the patchwork quilt of divergent interest groups that now makes up the Democratic party. Economic interests are one thing… a BIG thing, but still only one thing. Alot of the midwestern and Southern working class folks have social conservative values. They may very well want laws friendlier to labor unions, and some aspects of the social “safety net”. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that they approve of affirmative action, gay rights, abortion, anti-gun laws, and so on. I’d suspect the set of people who believe in all of those things is relatively few, apart from those who are blindly partisan, and is probably not a majority of Dem voters. The Dems get their votes by catering to all these interest groups, and convincing them that they have “nowhere else to go”, suggesting “what are you gonna do, vote Republican?”

The left’s cultural values aren’t in sync with those of the social conservatives who might otherwise vote Dem in the belief it would benefit them economically. When the left continues to court all those single-issue interest groups at once, it should be no surprise to them when they eventually face the choice of either embracing contradictory policies or simply dropping one of those groups of potential voters. When you add in the more complex tapestry of a real voters’ interests, which are not one-dimensional like those of the groups the Dems raise funds from, the failure should be quite predictable.

10

Kinda bizarre analysis, Rex. Are you suggesting that supporters of “affirmative action, gay rights, abortion, anti-gun laws, and so on” are “single-issue interest groups”? Are those who oppose affirmative action, gay rights, abortion, and anti-gun laws also “single-issue interest groups”? If so, how do they fit into the Republican “patchwork quilt”?

it should be no surprise to them when they eventually face the choice of either embracing contradictory policies or simply dropping one of those groups of potential voters

Are you agreeing with Frank, then, that the right is following the first policy (embracing contradictory policies) and the left the second (dropping a group of potential voters)?

11

Ironically, this quote from Frank has the very air of condescension he supposedly deplores:

“Republicans are still the party of corporate management, but they have also spent years honing their own populist approach, a melange of anti- intellectualism, promiscuous God-talk and sentimental evocations of middle America in all its humble averageness.”

The Right has done a better job of selling its supposed solidarity with people whom portions of the Left deride as red-state, flyover America. And when you see a frustrated denunciation on this board of the stoopidity of the common folk who, for instance, cannot see through the Lies of Bush, it is more likely to come from a self-identified leftist than a conservative.

The effects of government policy (as undertaken in recent years by both presumptive liberals and conservatives) aside, there is an outward condescension gap between the Left and Right. It may have to do with that old-time contempt for the bourgeoisie that pervades elements of the far Left.

12

I was trying to say that, by and large, there is an interest group promoting affirmative action, an interest group promoting gay rights, an interest group promoting abortion, and an interest group promoting anti-gun laws. The only thing those interest groups have in common is that their agenda is more likely to be furthered if Democrats are in power. There is no essential ideological link between those interests, such that a person advocating one would automatically advocate the others. OTOH, there is no inherent contradiction between those positions, they are neutral with repsect to each other.

Sort of. I think the Dems add together as many single-issue interest group positions as they can but stop short of outright contradiction. If they were to embrace the social conservatives whose economic interests align, and recruit them into the party, there is the chance that pro-abortion, anti-gun, pro-affirmative action positions would be less secure in the Democratic party platform. Those culturally-liberal interest groups may decide to bolt at that point, shifting support to a 3rd party or at the very least reducing the amount of $$$ they send to Dem candidates. They shun those voters, or at least don’t actively recruit them, because to do so they would have to embrace people with contradictory ideologies and would have to be open and flexible about the key platform points they’ve used to create this patchwork quilt party.

The Republicans, OTOH, mix their free market ideals with the restrictive social mores of their voting base. Some sell out their free market ideals to hand out corporate welfare, to keep that $$$ flowing into the campaigns. In the other direction, some even advocate tariffs and protectionism as a way to garner working class votes. They have cultural conservatives and fiscal conservatives under the same tent, despite the contradictory beliefs of the two camps.

Now, as a libertarian myself, I don’t think the interests of the working class and the interests of business are necessarily at odds. But with the type of policies generally advocated in this country, they tend to be placed in opposing camps. Free market positions can only be honestly maintained with appeals to the fundamental principles of liberty and natural rights, which the GOP betrays constantly.

In short, I think neither party has a clear and consistent ideology. The Dems assemble a series of disconnected positions, the GOP embraces opposing positions.

13

Money can buy a better childhood environment and education. It doesn’t buy intelligence. A lack of money can get a bad childhood environment which may have adverse effects on intelligence and will strongly affect the kind of people you associate with and ideas that influence you.

I think the entire educational system is being sabotaged. We have had television influences for 50 years and now we have the internet.

You can’t tell what class someone is on the internet.

The people the system has treated well think the system is great. The system creates rebels that don’t necessarily know how to change the system. Now we have technology to spread ideas cheap. Why do we waste everyone’s time with Shakespeare when we could teach everybody accounting. It’s easy. We are supposed to believe someone who can pull the engine out of a car, take it apart, put it back together, put it back in the car and have it work can’t understand accounting.

A major part of classism is keeping the lower classes properly ignorant.

Dal Timgar

14

The problem is that these are the ones who are running for president and other elected positions Just think Bush, Gore, Kerry, Kennedy, Bloomburg and your talking about elitists. Does anyone really think that Kerry wants to tax the rich in anyway that would actually touch any of his wife’s (or his) wealth?

15

Actually, yes, I do think that. As well, when James Carville sneers and says “I don’t need a damn tax cut, I got bucks out my coon-ass wazoo!”, I believe him too. Some peope do, in truth, have a concept of “enough, already!”

16

Yeah, but once you get to know me I’m not that bad.

17

All right, I’m confused.

Who is “sabotaging” the American educational system and why?

If “You can’t tell what class someone is on the internet,” does that mean the existence of the Internet furthers an egalitarian agenda or an elitist agenda?

What’s this about “keeping the lower classes properly ignorant”? I fail to see how the Internet or even television serves to keep the lower classes ignorant.

As for “rebels that don’t necessarily know how to change the system” – what kind of knowledge would be of most practical use to a social revolutionary? Knowledge of Shakespeare? Knowledge of accounting? Or knowledge of auto mechanics? (For my part, I think the most useful kind of knowledge would be the kind you pick up doing a hitch of military service . . .)

18

The book: STANDARDIZED MINDS (sorry don’t recall author)

should give you some idea who is sabotaging the system and how.

As for knowledge of how to be a revolutionary I like:

MASTERING THE ART OF WAR by Thomas Cleary

I think Sun Tzu’s philosophy of war is superior to the European style so I don’t think much of a stint in the US military. I’d probably frag somebody.

The US is a schizoid country. I think there were plenty of people at the time of its founding who did not agree with the philosophy of the founders. We have been engaged in continuous ideological struggles in the name of FREEDOM since then.

I find it curious that all of the labor unions in the US don’t suggest that their members understand accounting. Accounting is easy it is just made to look mysterious. All this business about debits and credits is useless complication. Money has to come from somewhere and it has to go somewhere. Subtract from where it comes and add to where it goes. Real complicated. I was looking thru a number of books about money and wealth at a library this morning, including a book by Suze Ormand. None of them mentioned depreciation in the index. How are people going to accumulate wealth if they don’t know to think about depreciation of automobiles and computers before they buy them?

Buy a $3000 laptop and finance it for $90/mo and only loose $100/mo in depreciation because it will be worth $600 in two years. Instead buy a used laptop for $400 and put Linux on it and buy a $2600 oriental rug at an estate auction.

If the lower classes learn to do accounting on their “von Neumann machines” we may not have economic lower classes in a couple of generations. Maybe Left and Right won’t matter then.

Dal Timgar

19

Trust funds kick ass.

Everyone that is capable of it should leave substantial income to their children in the form of a trust. That’s the “American Dream” in a nutshell. A trust is used to avoid probate. A will helps also. But, please, don’t just rip “trusts” the way people rip “corporations.” I hope to leave my kids some money some day also. Eh, if I ever have any (really big money or kids). The alternative is letting the government absorb all that income that has already been taxed multiple times. I’m not making an argument against the Federal Estate (“death”) Tax. Stupid yet somehow really rich people should take a hit, since the combination of the two is rare and usually illegal. Only the VERY wealthy or criminal can’t protect the bulk of their estates already.

But, if you (cuz all SDMBers are productive and honest) do make money – that’s the idea, not racing to admired-by-collectivists but inherently useless poverty – protect it!

Last I checked, “corporations” (free enterprise) – assuming rule of law, and democratic republican government – have increased the standard of living and the technological level of living on the Earth more in 150 years than Communism, Socialism, Fascism, Autocracy, progressive caring bureaucracy, Aristocracy, Junta, tribal chieftan – or any other system yet devised for creating and distributing wealth, COMBINED IN TOTAL. YES, CEOs MAKE TOO MUCH MONEY! Baby, bathwater.

The most fundamental problem of the “Left” is their belief in “social justice,” and the hatred of the productive elements of society that it entails. Social justice, of course, being no justice at all. The Western historical concept of “liberalism” is best expressed in the, eh, good parts of the US Constitution. No, NOT the Three-Fifths Comprimise. "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (property). Obviously, if you study history, these three things are the exact antithesis of the modern leftist ideal.

Put simply, social justice (Communism) is when the non-productive elements of society get to run things or determine where the wealth goes. This, INVARIABLY, leads to killing off the producers that don’t go to re-education camps and putting the idiots in charge. The “banality of evil” is best expressed as “bureaucracy.”

OTOH, I’m not saying that there should be NO social safety net. The unavoidable law of unintended consequences vis welfare is, the more welfare you provide, the greater the incentive to not work or to fake the the requirements for the money. That’s reality, always has been, always will be.

The other thing is this, immigration. Hard workers will move from collectivist nations to capitalist nations. That’s reality, always has been, always will be.
So, in a nutshell, let every other nation be bureaucratic, centralized, Leftist, haughty, and self-loving. We’ll make the money and save them when their systems fail. That’s been reality since WWI.

20

The inability of people like Beagle to understand leftist ideas of social justice does nothing to discredit those notions. It simply demonstrates the limits of their intelligence and affinity for honest inquiry.