Hopefully I’ll have lots more to share afterwards. I want to actually write something positive and uplifting one of these days. Contrary to how whiny this blog gets, I don’t spend a lot of time complaining — I spend a lot more time reading. The hope is to increase that time reading, and spend no time whatsoever complaining.

Still, I just got through arguing with a conservative friend who was willing to give Breitbart a free pass merely because he’s successful. I know that in a country even remotely just, Michael Moore would have been sued successfully for libel over Fahrenheit 9/11 and bankrupted. It’s not only wrong not to hold Breitbart to the same standard — I see more from his sites circulating daily, as if lying is something all Americans should aspire to — but it’s definitely not healthy for us politically. It isn’t really the nature of politics to lie about other people’s reputation consistently and win votes (and yes, there are people who are accountable for the nastiness of what was/is said about President Bush).

We have to build up to the present consideration from a more general understanding. From Discourses I.7:

…I wish this example of Coriolanus to suffice among the ancient ones, concerning which everyone may consider how much ill would have resulted to the Roman republic if he had been killed in a tumult; for from that arises offense by private individuals against private individuals, which offense generates fear; fear seeks for defense; for defense they procure partisans; from partisans arise the parties in cities; from parties their ruin (I.7.2).

Machiavelli’s account: Coriolanus was opposed to the popular faction and tried to get the Senate, during a famine, to hoard grain for itself and give it out as it would to the people. The people, quite naturally, formed a mob and were about to kill him (“tumult”). The tribunes, representatives of the people, had him  instead appear in a court of sorts.

A major reason why we have procedures (“due process”) isn’t justice. It’s to prevent people forming parties purely out of fear of another faction, and arming themselves to the teeth. If one group feels they can’t prevent another from literally killing them, that’s pretty much the end of civic life. Note that these “parties” responsible for the cities’ ruin aren’t like our Republicans or Democrats, broad-based coalitions meant to take in a diversity and win nationally. These are parties that are much narrower, much more private, definitely not open to hearing what other people have to say. They’re primarily defined by fear. I’ll let you make of that what you will.

Now Coriolanus was “accused” by the tribunes, and that accusation took on a shape because of the laws and procedures. While the general logic holds, something about Christianity may change the political problem. Machiavelli gives us two Florentine examples following his discussion of Coriolanus. One man wanted to “transcend a civil way of life;” he had to be resisted with a “sect contrary to his” because there was no way to oppose him through laws and procedures (the “ordinary,” literally — I.7.3). Another actually was accused, but was tried only by the few/noble and eventually a foreign army was brought in because of the “scandal.” Part of the accusation seems not to have been his “ambition” but also his “living badly” (I.7.4). If the problems in pagan times are earthier — “he’s going to starve us, kill him” — the Christian world perhaps presents the problem that people want to look into each other’s soul, as Bush did with Putin. Machiavelli argues in this last case, still, for a serious mode of accusation. A serious mode of accusation would have made people who want to accuse him, say, of something like drug abuse to be able to take on those charges themselves and resist them. If he did lose for “living badly,” he could only be punished appropriately, with maybe even a mild censure at most.

All this is to say, before we get to I.8: even if the media considers itself a fourth estate, it is not a serious mode of accusation. It can completely destroy reputations and lives over nothing, and there’s nothing like a court where the other side has to be heard and evidence evaluated. You can pick what you listen to and only hear that. Do note that we’ve moved from examples of life and death for the populace to examples far less menacing for them, but still just as threatening to the republic.

I.8 shifts the discussion from “accusations” to “calumnies.” Accusations are useful — they’re a venting of sorts, an airing of grievance. Calumnies are “pernicious.” One general felt he did as much as another who was being honored, so he made up a story about some “private citizens” stealing money from the rest of the citizenry, causing no small revolt. His “calumny” — an utterly false statement, slander — was met with a formal accusation on the part of the Senate and the executive appointed by them. Not able to account for where the money he claimed was stolen actually was, he was put in prison (this is Machiavelli speaking. The account in Livy is a bit different).

Calumnies are very dangerous in Machiavelli’s thought, partly because they  end up turning on issues of property and rights which form a more secular basis of government (see esp. I.8.2 — the calumny/accusation distinction gives us procedural justice as we know it today). In other words: our order is constructed in such a way that we can’t really just throw any old lie around and say “1st amendment, can’t stop me from making anything I want up.” We note that the Sherrod case Breitbart is most famous for lying about concerns property as well as racism: would one group be inclined to steal from another if charged with responsibility? It’s a very dangerous calumny that Breitbart perpetrated, and there should be consequences beyond a bad reputation for his editing the tape and persisting in the lie. He should be formally accused and brought to justice in some way. That his voice is more powerful than yours, mine, in some cases even heads of state — that’s a disgrace, and we can stop that now by being better citizens and not listening to that piece of trash.

Not much to say — this and Piano Sonata No. 11 have been recent addictions of mine. Barenboim’s dynamics are clearer in this recording than in No. 11, and that matters quite a bit in the second movement especially, as well as for the end of the piece. The first movement is grand and vigorous, establishing an energy that carries throughout the whole.

Of course, sitting in a place I promote are something like 10,000 forum posts saying that college is worthless, the humanities especially are a waste of time, we don’t need any more professors, classwork is just busy work, etc. The older I get, the harder I find it is to state what makes an education valuable.

I guess my defense of getting an education nowadays is: without it, you see a lot less of life. A few of you who are older have commented to me personally how little this blog concerns itself with me whining about relationships, and to some degree, even less with the state of academia. I think that’s because there’s just too much awesome stuff to look at and share (and that’s not to say I’m particularly virtuous: it’s to credit the “stuff” more than me. Everyone’s aware I can whine and throw tantrums with the worst of them). In my experience, people who spend time putting down the humanities don’t usually have a lot to talk about, aside from themselves.

Anyway, it’s just a thought. The issue is: do you think this rhetoric has any chance of convincing surly 16 year olds, who I suspect are writing the forum posts?

I wish things were that simple. I wish I could tell you that the everyday viciousness of campaign-style politics always grudgingly conceded to necessity. But I think those of you sympathetic to my political views probably feel like health-care reform broke not only the bank, but that “rule.” That’s mild compared to our side of the aisle, where one can see that many there want to exclude others, no matter what the cost — they don’t even care how they look publicly.

Truth be told, my friend is very complacent. He’s just assuming things will work as they “always” have. I see no reason for such faith — there’s no reason why factionalism can’t get uglier, more divisive, and even outright violent. We don’t live in a world where families and morals and making serious friends matter; the private long ago became defined by the libertine. And those of you in more religious circles know just how materialistic things are there — many simply want to go to heaven, not lead the best life possible, and so much time is spent on self-help or apocalyptic rhetoric that the latter is almost impossible to discuss.

I’m not blaming Right or Left here. And I am aware this account is a bit exaggerated. Point is, it’s also difficult to refute, moreso than simply thinking “everything’s going to be alright.” We need a more serious starting point.

1. When it comes to politics, the best starting points may not depend on insight. They may be statements that everyone can get behind, with a little persuasion, and that benefit as many as possible. In other words: the absolute truth isn’t a necessity here. A good — somewhat imperfect, to be sure — is.

So I’ll say two things as a whole have to hold for conservatism to have a future:

• Whatever platform ends up comprising conservatism, it has to be as inclusive as possible, acknowledging that America has a future as well as a past.
• A conservative policy has to deliver people some real good that they can enjoy in their lifetime. The character of that good is one most — if not all — Americans can acknowledge and celebrate.

2. You can see why I’ve picked these two principles. Anyone going “that’s Progressive, reaching out to other groups of people and asking for others to actually get something in this life,” is going to expose themselves as a bigot and an idiot. The principles are too general to be specifically ideological. Even the most anarchist libertarian can agree that a future society probably needs some degree of fraternity to survive, and that the good for as many as possible has been maximized in that society.

I don’t think the principles are radical. What’s radical is that I’m calling for the “reset” button to be hit on the current platform. I don’t see the current crop of issues as going anywhere. Let’s say a Glenn Beck type got what he wanted: we’re no longer fighting in Afghanistan, schools teach Creationism (god help us all) and dubious history about the Founding, the Federal Reserve comes to an end and Congress has direct control of the monetary supply, there’s an end to all sorts of taxes, we’re on the gold standard, etc. Does any of that stuff necessarily make America better?

You know the answer: no policy alone makes us all better, especially not the ones designed to respond to conspiracy theories (you know you want Nancy Pelosi in charge of the money supply — that’s what you’re asking for when you complain about the Federal Reserve). Once the “Fed” drops out of the conspiracy theory picture, then the Illuminati comes up in their minds again in some other way. What’s really shocking is that more prudent policies don’t necessarily make us better. Let’s say we end our border problems, lower taxes (like we should), cut federal spending, wage war more efficiently and defeat the Taliban — policies more in line (though not exactly in line) with what I want. Does that necessarily make us all better?

Of course not. All the low taxes and won wars in the world don’t solve a tenth of our problems. We’ll still have kids being shot execution style in Newark — maybe even more kids, since a lot of the money going there in the first place  is aid from other taxpayers. And Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, is way more competent than most people. Beating back the insurgency in Iraq hasn’t given them a political system that’s united for the common interest of their country: remember, those people brave bombs routinely to go vote. Would you vote if people were certain to destroy the polling place with you in it? Forget policy: in terms of securing the good, it isn’t clear that virtue and prudence are enough.

3. That’s why the reset button has to be hit, and hit now. The conspiracy theory we see dominate contemporary conservatism is stemming from a larger failure: we conservatives never really had a vision of what this country should be. And even if some did, that vision excluded so many people and made no serious room for liberals that it was simply some bigot’s dream.

For me, a serious conservative platform would be something like what we  working with now — pro-life, anti-tax, skeptical of regulation, for school vouchers, hawkish on defense and serious about foreign policy (meaning: foreign aid isn’t a waste of money), for entitlement reform (and eventually, some privatization), for budget cuts (I don’t know that we really need a federal Department of Education, for example, given the role of the states in education). But again, that “platform” solves nothing: it doesn’t really articulate a sense of value, where we’re going. It threatens to bring back the problems we’re facing now — when we elect Republicans, many of things we ask for are simply unrealistic given the way DC works, and then we go crazy and threaten other people as if throwing a tantrum is the essence of politics. So I want to suggest that no matter what platform we pick, we establish an issue that there is no compromise on, one that the other party should adopt because it is simply an obvious good for all involved. That becomes the “heart” of the platform, and we tie issues into that as they take a moral priority. I have two suggestions for that “heart:”

• Prison and judicial reform — it is estimated 1/3 of those in prison are non-violent offenders. Every day news emerges that people have been spending years in prison for crimes they didn’t commit, if they haven’t been executed already. Given what goes on in prisons, you wouldn’t send someone who killed your whole family there. If we’re serious about being pro-life and spending money wisely domestically, this should be the heart and soul of our platform. Of course, there’s another issue we could and should put at the center.…
• Rebuilding Native America. Yes, we stole the land from the Indians. There’s no way around this, and we aren’t really paying for that theft. They are, still — the drug and alcohol abuse rates among those communities are stunning. We’re the richest nation in the history of the world. We can’t do a little something better than throw money away at a casino, or whine incessantly while we give a few million here and there in “welfare?”

The “heart” is meant to encapsulate the two principles of inclusiveness and delivering on an actual good. Without it, we’re not really engaging in politics — we’re just in some form of factional warfare, where we routinely “beat” coalitions of other Americans. Again, if you think you’re paying the price because you’re paying higher taxes — and remember, I don’t want you to pay higher taxes — try living in East St. Louis for a week. We need to deliver on actual goods, routinely: how is a life not lived for others worth living?

As Frost is best conceived
By force of its Result -
Affliction is inferred
By subsequent effect -

If when the sun reveal,
The Garden keep the Gash -
If as the Days resume
The wilted countenance

Cannot correct the crease
Or counteract the stain -
Presumption is Vitality
Was somewhere put in twain.

Comment:

“If when the sun reveal, / The Garden keep the Gash” ties light (sun) to water and blood (Gash) by way of a Garden. I take “Gash” to refer to the side of Christ pierced to know He had died. How such a “Gash” relates to a “Garden” (Eden?) is unclear initially; there is another way of interpreting the image. One can imagine the sky purple, even fiery red, at sunset. The color of flowers would be a memorial to that moment: all good things must come to an end.

The “Garden” links us, the earthly, with the sky. The catch is that the earthly is a nothingness (“Gash”). We are nothing more than the revelation of the sun, an image of the sky. The “Garden” only counts if we assume it keep the “Gash.”

The linkage of Christ’s suffering and Eden forces us back to the first stanza. We best conceive “Frost” — frozen water — through what it accomplishes forcefully. Similarly, any given hardship is known by its “effect.” It is as if the emotions are only byproducts of utility. Even coldness, a nothingness, is felt because of the “force of its Result.” How do Christ and Eden fit into this? The suffering of Christ resides in Eden, when the sun reveals. The revelation of the sun shows the only result of Eden to be the death of God. That’s actually orthodox to a degree, the “fortunate fall” which necessitates the Resurrection. The blasphemy is in the logic required to make this work: we only know our pain through effect? We only know what was joy through someone else’s pain?

That’s only half the poem. Dickinson’s critique of religion is never so simple, almost never without a critique of human love or reason. If “sun reveal” gave us a “Garden” where time was suspended, now the “Days resume,” perhaps. The garden is wilting, and if effect is all that matters, then we should be redeemed. In that case, we can’t be folded away from God, nor held responsible for His death. It’s easy to say this is just an extension of the critique in the first half of the poem. But we create creases, we create stains. Our very creation of clothes brought both forth; we were naked, innocent in Eden. We’re the ones — religious or not — who have the dumb idea that not getting what we want — providentially or not — reveals pain. We are incredibly cold beings, holding even our own pain to a standard of utility.

Between innocence and experience is “Presumption,” our true “Vitality.” Trying to locate human being in “what is pained” or “who is unjust” puts us in too direct a relation with the divine. The gods only know pleasure, only act justly. We’re not gods: the principle underlying us may be wholly different, “somewhere put in twain” if you will. The awful, stupid logic of figuring out we’re afflicted because we can’t do something is actually a fine starting point. It’s a presumption, taking into account cause and effect, trying to find the correct order in time.