As part of conservativism's campaign to avoid any blame for this mess falling on its vaunted pillars of deregulation, naked greed and bubblenomics, they have gone back to some golden oldies and are trying to blame uppity minorities for creating the mortgage crisis with all their crazy shiftless dreams of living in a house they own. This week, the National Review published an editorial on this, and another item from Mark Krikorian. Today we have Glenn noting that NR is blaming minorities for WaMu's failure. Paul previously attacked NR in a lengthy but righteous quick hit but this needs more light.
I'd just like to quote the National Review from an editorial published 1957 and remind them to think twice before opening their filthy racist sewer mouths again:
The Central question that emerges--and it is not a parliamentary question or a question that is answered by merely consulting a catalog of the rights of American citizens, born Equal is whether the White community in the South is entitle to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes--the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race...
National Review believes that the South's premises are correct. If the majority wills what is socially atavistic, then to thwart the majority may be, though undemocratic, enlightened. It is more important for any community, anywhere in the world, to afirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority. Sometimes it becomes impossible to assert the will of a minority, in which case it must give way, and the society will regress; sometimes the numerical minority cannot prevail except by violence: then it must determine whether the prevalence of its will is worth the terrible price of violence.
National Review, Editorial, August 24, 1957 - as quoted in p103 of Conscience of a Liberal by Paul Krugman
I was going to bold the worst parts of the second paragraph, but it's all despicable. And with the possible exception of overt statements of racism, none of this has changed. NR still believes the enlightened minority should prevail over the "atavistic" majority, and violence is an acceptable solution to make that happen.
"There should be no self-esteem crisis among the right side of the blogosphere," Malkin told a luncheon audience at the Americans for Prosperity convention in Austin.
[...]
"We don't need a change in tactics," Malkin told the audience. "We need more of you."
Uhm, not to concern troll the rightroots or anything, but Michelle, if you don't have people coming out, you certainly do need a change in tactics. Of course, that change would require putting the likes of you out to pasture, so I can see why you'd rather stay the course. Not that I really mind if the rightroots wants to remain irrelevant.
Perhaps this is a good clue why:
"These people in the papers and the people in the television," he said, paraphrasing Ronald Reagan, whose mug graces video screens here at RightOnline every time there's a pause in the programming. "They don't like us they don't agree with us - why would we take their version of their facts and take it as our own?"
Anyone really want to make the case that conservativism is anything more than a set of shallow authoritarian personality cults to rationalize socially destructive behaviour?
A good amount of attention has been paid to the ever larger party affiliation gap that Democrats are enjoying this year. Unfortunately there is not nearly so much attention paid to the underlying ideological alignment of voters (not much polling on it either). It is these beliefs that largely impact how elected officials behave with respect to policy, and particularly so for the Democratic party which still has a substantial conservative wing unlike the decimated ranks of the extinct or endangered liberal Republicans.
One thing I want to see the left doing more effectively is laying the blame for the disasterous policies of the Bush Administration and Republican congresses on the ideology that crafted them, namely conservativism. John McCain is still demonizing "failed" liberal ideas from the 70s and trying to raise the spectre of a second term for Jimmy Carter (a really weak and self-dating attack). Yet Democrats do not routinely link the failures of Iraq, Katrina and the Economy on the ideology that dreams up all these great ideas like invading unrelated countries after being attacked or handing a large state's energy system over to a bunch of unaccountable sociopaths happy to screw up the grid so prices will increase.
Despite the relative lack of effort in this area outside of blogs, I'm happy to report that some people are figuring it out, and the lead conservativism has on liberalism is the smallest is has been in decades (I went back as far as 1984):
Source is the General Social Survey.
Now that's the gap, whither conservativism and liberalism in the populace? Some more charts and observations below.
One of Daily Kos' resident economists (and a person largely responsible for many of the netroots' finest "I told you sos" over oil pricing and the housing bust) pens a broader piece on why he discusses the economic problems so much (please read it all):
But more importantly, this is about identifying causes and allocating responsibility for what's happening today. The crises I have been describing are a direct - and in many cases, desired - result of political choices that have been imposed on us, and it is fundamentally important that the underlying ideology be (i) identified and (ii) blamed for what happened, rather than amorphous and uncontrollable things like "globalization" or "economic cycles." There is a crime, there is a culprit, and there is a motive.
Even more vital is the need for an alternative discourse to take root against what still is an apparently overwhelming consensus amongst economists, analysts, pundits, politicians and other "serious" people about what should be done. Given that this dominant discourse still claims a lot of legitimacy by trashing out (an imaginary version of) the alternative model, there must be a coherent effort to underline that today's problems come specifically from the policy recommendations of that consensus, and that their calls for more "reform" today is quakery, not statesmanship.
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