Apparently, we're supposed to panic & do as the wingnuts & grownups command (aren't we always?), but digby pushes back:
Disavowal Movement Resurgent
by digby
So, I'm hearing on the internets that liberals had better disavow Grayson's Taliban ad or risk being seen as hypocrites when we complain about the other side doing it. All I can say is, "Oh dear, not that." (And I have never been much for the bi-annual "disavowal ritual" in general. You can look it up.)
Ever since Jesse Helms ran this ad and Daddy Bush ran this one I've haven't given the moral dimension of attack ads much thought at all. They are part of American politics and you can rail against them all you want, but they aren't going anywhere. Fretting about such things is the province of very upright, highly moral liberals who believe that it is better to lose than to run ads which sink to the other side's level. I guess I just don't think ads are more important than keeping corporate sponsored theocrats from being in positions of power, so we will have to agree to disagree.
At this point in the United States it is permissible for Republicans to attack Democrats as treasonous, Godless/Muslim socialists and compare them to Hitler and Stalin but Democrats are only allowed to attack Republicans for their differences in policy. Can we see the asymmetry here? Is it any surprise that they have dominated politics for the past 30 years? Sure, every once in a while there are moments when their act gets old and the nation will look for hope and change rather than fear and loathing, but let's just say that their willingness (and institutional support) will give them the advantage most of the time.
As for Webster, whether you call him the "T" word or not he's a theocrat --- the real thing:...
Liberals, Democrats, progressives, whatever, are supposed to drop everything and condemn any liberal, Democrat or progressive who says anything the least bit disrespectful of people who supposedly don't fart, especially if it's true. That's part of the rules, the Ten Commandments of Versailles. So this attempt to ostracize Grayson is about as newsworthy as any other dog-bites-man story you'll read this year, or next, or the year after that.
But what is worth noting is the content of what Grayson was saying, to wit, that rightwing theocrats are the enemies of America, on the same side of the global culture war as the Taliban and al Qaeda.
This is not just a minor, idle or theoretical point. Theocratic religious fundamentalists are really dangerous people, in part because they are totally immune to reason, and in part because they feel commanded by God to kill everyone who gets in their way, if it comes to that.
They do not believe in checks and balances, much less in separation of church and state. They believe in holy war. Period. And the very best thing they get to help them out in that regard is other theocratic religious fundamentalists, who just happen to call God by a slightly different name. That gives them a official designated enemy that they can hate absolutely, and more importantly it gives them an excuse for attacking everyone else who uses the same name of God that they do, but who isn't stark raving mad.
All this is very simple, very elemental. So much so that I almost feel like an idiot repeating it. Except for the fact that it's completely taboo to say of any of this.
Which is why Alan Grayson is being attacked in the first place. Because he told the truth about who's on which side in this War To End All Peace.
And we can't have that. Because, you see, if we had that, then the War To End All Peace would last about ten minutes. Fifteen tops.
And so we absolutely must, must, must! continue believing something somewhat like this:
The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11
....
From Publishers Weekly
Conservative pundit D'Souza (Illiberal Education) roots the blame for the 9/11 attacks in the left wing's "aggressive global campaign to undermine the traditional patriarchal family" in this mostly lucid but unconvincing argument. Pointing to Hillary Clinton, Britney Spears and Noam Chomsky, he decries those who have teamed up with Hollywood and the U.N. to foist an irreligious, sexually licentious, antifamily liberal culture-epitomized by Eve Ensler's play The Vagina Monologues and gay marriage initiatives-on a Muslim world that rightly reviles it. By deliberately attacking Islamic values, the left tacitly allies itself with al- Qaeda in its effort to defeat Bush's war on terror and thus discredit conservatism at home, he asserts....
Of course, if you believe in "Liberal Fascism" and believe that Martin Luther King was a white conservative, then why the hell not?
(Quoting "Loves Body" is a pretty sure sign of good things to come. - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
Constitutional originalism is the political variation of biblical literalism, it is an attempt to argue that there is one meaning and only meaning to the constitution. It applies a fundamentalism thought process to the Constitution, it treats the US Constitution as a religious document and responds to it with in the manner of religion, offering devotion and reverence rather than dialog and interpretation.
In his book Love's Body (1966), American scholar and classicist Norman O. Brown offers a fascinating insight on biblical literalism:
Literalism does not get rid of the magical element in scriptural or historical interpretation. The Holy Spirit, instead of a living spirit in the present, becomes the Holy Ghost, a voice from the past enshrined in the book. The restriction of meaning to conscious meaning makes historical understanding a personal relation between the personality of the reader and the personality of the author, now dead. Spirtual understanding (geistiges Verstehen) becomes a ghostly operation, an operatin with ghosts (Geisteswissenschaft). The document starts speaking for itself; the reader starts hearing voices. The subjective dimension in historical understanding is to animate the dead letter with teh living reader's blood, his "experience"; and simultaneously let the ghost of the dead author slide into, become one with, the reader's soul. It is necromancy, or shamanism; magical identification with ancestors; instead of living spirit, to be possessed by the dead.
Literalism combines fetishism of the book with shamanism of the interpreter; science and subjectivity . . . . (page 199)
On Friday, Bill Moyers Journal featured a nearly hour long interview with Karen Armstrong, religious scholar, former nun and author of books such as Muhammad: A Biography Of The Prophet, The Bible: A Biography, and The Battle for God. A major focus of the interview was her focus on compassion.
In his introduction, Moyers, "Karen Armstrong is now on a mission to bring compassion, the heart of religion, as she sees it, back into modern life."
BILL MOYERS: Last year, at an annual gathering of the leaders in technology, entertainment and design, she received their highly prestigious TED Prize, a $100,000 cash award that, like the genie in the lamp, also grants the recipient a wish.
Clip:
KAREN ARMSTRONG: I wish that you would help with the creation, launch and propagation of a Charter for Compassion -- crafted by a group of inspirational thinkers from the three Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and based on the fundamental principle of the Golden Rule.
BILL MOYERS: The Golden Rule: "Do not do to others what you would not like them to do to you." That universal principle of empathy and respect is at the core of all major religions.
Karen Armstrong's Charter for Compassion was launched last year with an interactive website, charterforcompassion.org. There, people of all faiths can submit their ideas about what the Charter should say.
Recently, she traveled to Geneva, Switzerland, and gathered with a group of international religious leaders to draft the guiding principles of her charter for compassion. Karen Armstrong, it's good to see you again.
KAREN ARMSTRONG: It's great to be back. Thank you.
While this was not the only topic of their discussion, it was a central element. Woven together with it were a number of other important ideas, or perspectives, which are not new for those familiar with her earlier work. These include an insight into fundamentalism that is sorely needed in our world today, which was the subject of her book, The Battle for God. Some of this she clearly restated, some remained implicit, and a small part, I think, was a bit mis-stated. But it is all important, because it provides a radically different way of understanding the clashing belief systems behind what Bush had branded the "war on terrorism."
If I could summarize these points-a bit too briefly, perhaps-in my own words, they would be:
(1) Fundamentalism is a response to wounding and alienation.
(2) Violent fundamentalism is a political movement.
(3) Violent fundamentalists are at war with their moderate co-religionists.
(4) Moderates in all religious traditions must restore compassion to its central place in their religious practice, both for themselves and the world, and to draw fundamentalists back into fruitful dialogue.
Although Armstrong did not discuss it, there is an important, though implicit distinction between violent fundamentalist extremists and fundamentalists who may support violent extremists, but can also turn against them. This distinction is extremely important in trying to think clearly about how to deal with the mess we've inherited from the Bush regime, particularly in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Wow. At first glance, that's all I can say about the comments from Pastor Hayes Wicker of Naples, Florida. Here's what he said at an anti-gay event last week:
This is a tremendous social crisis, greater even than the issue of slavery.
In my previous post, "Glenn Greenwald's Ron Paul Problem--And Ours", I argued that Glenn-following some very important lines of critical inquiry over the past few years-was predisposed not to reocgnize the troubling aspects of Ron Paul's candidacy that Dave Neiwart and Sara Robinson of Orcinus were particularly attuned to and familiar with. Glenn is focused on the rhetorical directness and simplicity of Paul's anti-Iraq War and anti-Imperialist/Imperial Presidency self-presentation. Neiwart and Robinson are focused on Paul's whole package, and the role he plays in the larger world of rightwing extremist influence on American politics.
In 2003, Neiwart-a professional journalist prior to taking up blogging-wrote a Koufax-winning series, Rush, Newspeak and Fascism. Rush, Newspeak and Fascism: An exegesis [PDF] [Illustrated HTML], which dealt at length with the role of Limbaugh as a righwing demogagic propagandist, and in particular with his role as a transmitter of extremist views into the conservative mainstream. It is Neiwart's familiarity with this entire world-which he had previously covered from the ground up-that informs his views of Ron Paul as well.
Neiwert notes that Limbaugh's closest parallel is probably Father Coughlin, a virulently anti-Semetic radio personality of the 1920s and 30s, however:
Limbaugh, in contrast, has always carefully eschewed conspiracy theories and anti-Semitism. Through most of the first decade of his radio career, his primary shtick has been to rail against the government and its supposed takeover of our daily lives. This anti-government propaganda has served one main purpose: To drive a wedge between middle- and lower-class workers and the one entity that has the capability to protect them from the ravages of wealthy class warriors and swarms of corporate wolves.
Although quite different in many ways, there is a clear parallel between Limbaugh and Paul-both serve to repackage and mainstream extremist views that are highly damaging to the fate of workers whom they appeal to on cultural grounds. If anything, Paul has more openly embraced classic conspiricism than Limbaugh has.
So far, none of this has impressed (or even visibly registered on) Glenn. My purpose here is not to dig deeper into the material Dave has already uncovered. Rather, it is to sketch out a framework for how we ought to understand Paul's politics, and why the issues Dave and Sara raise are not secondary concerns which can simply be ignored because of the primacy of the Iraq War and Bush Administration lawlessness. The framework for doing this was also introduced in the previous diay-it is Benjamin Barber's analysis of ethno-relgious tribalism and corporate globalization in his book, Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism Are Reshaping the World. Barber argues that both forces, although ostensibly oppossed to one another, actually work synergistically to undermine democratic republicanism, the only truly viable way for people to democratically and collectively control the larger outlines of our collective destiny. Barber's analysis helps clarify why Paul's opposition to Bushism is, in the long run, more injurious to the progressive cause than it is helpful. That is the argument developed on the flip.
Regardless of how much attention the media pays, the explosion of support for the Paul campaign yesterday is much more than a one-time event. The Paul campaign is now a bona fide phenomenon of real significance, and it is difficult to see this as anything other than a very positive development.
It is, in fact, quite easy to see the Paul campaign as quite negative in several respects. For example: (1) It promotes rightwing conspiracy theories. (2) It provides organizing opportunities for racist and nativist hate groups. (3) It promotes emotionally satisfying, but simplistic political analyses that short-circuit development of more mature critical analyses. (4) It's a form of tribalism that, per Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism Are Reshaping the World, works synergistically with the globalization it ostensibly opposses to undermine democratic republicanism, which is the one thing that can actually save us. Taking just those four aspects into account, the end result is that Paul's candidacy must be judged a mixed bag, at best. So far, however, Glenn has dug in his heels, refusing to address more than the surface of the objections raised about Paul. Although mistaken, in my view, Glenn's approach to Paul deserves serious reflection. It has a consistency with his overall work, which is grounded in his earlier career as a constitutional lawyer. He is thinking in terms of procedural fairness, and the attacks on Paul seem both unjust and fallacious-primarily in the way of guilt-by association. This individidualist/case-oriented approach differs significantly from the group/social historical approach that informs David Neiwart and Sara Robinson's work at Orcinus, which I referenced.
Not only is Ron Paul a rightwing nut, as others have noted (the most conservative member of the House, by the DW-Nominate scale, compared to Tancredo who fell short by 7, 13 and 16 slots in the 108th, 109th and 110th Congresses, respectively), he's a longtime magnet for the white supremacist fringe, and the rest of the hard right.
Glenn responded:
Paul Rosenberg:
I'm really uncomfortable with judging someone by the support they attract. When The NY Sun wanted to discredit Walt/Measheimer, they did it by asking David Duke if he agreed with their book, and when he said that he did, they published a big article about it, implying that Duke's agreement must mean the argument is racist.
And, of course, a lot of the money that has been donated to Clinton and Obama -- A LOT -- is from the largest corporations that many of their supporters blame for most of the nation's ills. Should Clinton or Obama be responsible for the actions of their corporate donors?
Paul is out there arguing against worldwide organizations as well as clearly oppposing our unbending support for Israel. That is going to attract some anti-semites and other assorted crazies and haters, but that is most assuredly not the same as saying that Paul himself is anti-semitic or hateful.
Connecting a candidate to the views of some of his supporters without more smacks a little of guilt by association (not say you're doing that), and I doubt any candidate is really immune to that sort of thing.
The only problem is that I wrote a good deal more than that single paragraph. I referenced some of the long-running commentary on Paul at Orcinus, among other things, and although Glenn has responded ("Ron Paul distortions and smears") to a more recent post by David at Orrinus ("Ron Paul's record in Congress"), he did so in an uncharacteristically superficial way, while ignoring another post altogether ("Ron Paul and his followers"), which went much more directly into the material that Greenwald was not examining, which details Paul's history of intentionally courting "anti-semites and other assorted crazies and haters."
There are, as I see it, at least two major factors at work here. One is a difference in fundamental operating orientation, the other is political orientation. On the flip, I begin the process of critiquing Glenn's analysis of Paujl, and what it leaves out, by explaining what I mean about these two factors.
I'm not going to do a full review because I don't have the energy for it, but everybody should watch Christiane Amanpour's three part series "God's Warriors" on CNN.
It is a truly remarkable piece of journalism.
We bloggers do a lot of criticizing of bad reporting. That's our stick. When a true journalist produces a high quality, informative documentary, we should reward their efforts with our viewer-ship.
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