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Up from Conservatism

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I ordered this book based on a recommendation I found on Josh Marshall's blog. I was immediately enthralled with it and finished it over a weekend.

This book does a superb job of tracing several arcs of American political history from Thomas Jefferson, to Jefferson Davis, to George Bush.

For my own part, I recently left the Republican Party because it seemed increasingly obvious that it has become the province of race-baiters and mercantilists, not of individualists and pro-market (as opposed to pro-business)conservatives. The title, "Up From Conservatism", and the author's good reputation, convinced me to buy. I'm glad I did.

In this book, you will learn that the GOP's southernization is not a marriage of convenience - the south has fully taken over the party. This is now the party of creationists, religious fanatics, and the generally intolerant. I do not believe - for one minute - that George W. Bush is a racist. In fact, much of the party's leadership, in my opinion, are good people. But they've made a deal with the devil - they wink and southern racism as a way of appealing to low-income southern whites. This bloc of voters, along with the GOP's alliance with business elite, constitute a winning formula for the GOP. It is now THE national party.

This book has several serious flaws. It frequenly stoops to sneering and name-calling in lieu of analysis. And although the GOP is truly guilty by its association with southern-style racism, it uses the tactic of guilt by association far too much. For example, the book mercilessly mocks school vouchers as transparently impotent, and goes even further by stating (probably correctly) that the idea was first touted in the south as a way of allowing whites to pull out of integrated schools and form new all-white districts. Perhaps. A more honest appraisal of vouchers would acknowledge Milton Friedman as the true source of this idea. It may not be a new idea, but it's not a continuation of a racist policy of decades ago. To suggest that it is is breathtakingly dishonest, a really cheap shot.

Another of this book's failures is its treatment of supply-side economics. In fact, Lind should have taken his criticisms of Jude Wanniski, the father of supply-side, even further than he did. Wanniski is now a full-blown crackpot of the first order, referring (for example) to Slobodan Milosevic as Yugoslavia's Abraham Lincoln. Anyway, when Lind gets into the Laffer curve, he trips terribly and again stoops to mockery when analysis would have served his readers better. The Laffer Curve is a simply indisputable theory. Very simply, the Laffer Curve assumes that (a) federal revenue at a tax rate of 0% would be $0, (b) federal revenue at a tax rate of 100% would be, if not $0, at least very low, and (c) federal revenue at a tax rate between 0% and 100% would be higher than either 0% or 100%. Plot (a), (b), and (c) in a piece of paper, and there's your curve.

Therefore, if you start with a tax rate of 100%, and lower it, federal revenue will increase as tax rates decrease. But this does not hold forever. At some point, decreasing tax rates will result in lower revenue for the government as you approach a tax rate of 0%. Whether lowering tax rates will increase revenue depends entirely on what point of the curve you're currently on.

Lind's mockery of the Laffer Curve prove that he does not understand it well enough to even explain it. The problem with the Laffer Curve is how it's implemented in practice. Our tax rates are closer to 0% than 100% - that is, we're on the part of the curve where increased tax rates clearly do not result in lower revenue. The 1990s ought to prove that - Clinton raised taxes, and internal revenue soared.

The point is that Lind's smarter-than-thou attitude deprives him of a good opportunity to truly deconstruct supply-side economics, instead of merely mocking it.

There are other flaws in this book. Still, it remains an excellent guidebook to how the Republican party maintains an alliance of business elites and poor white cultural conservatives in the south - which, if you've been following the GOP lately, remains as timely a topic as it was when this book was written. It stands up well over the intervening years and is worth reading.

Lind makes a convincing argument that the American conservatism of Lincoln and Dewey has been hijacked by extremists like Pat Robertson, Patrick Buchanan and Wayne LaPierre. That much is easy for anyone to see. What made this book more interesting is the author's contention that there has also been a change in the Left's priorities, evidenced by the rise of neoliberalism (Carter, Clinton and the DLC, for example) and the shift from working class and immigrant concerns to that of identity politics. What remains is a gaping void where middle class working folks reside -- moderate-to-conservative on social issues and liberal on economics -- left-populists. Essentially, both parties are looking out for the economic concerns of corporations and the affluent, while each does its best to appeal to various special interests in order to get votes. When is the last time either political party decided to strengthen employees' rights, keep jobs in this country, reward workers for having the best productivity in the world, or eliminate the obscenity of a class of working poor?

It was interesting to read this book post-9/11. I expected a lot of it would be outdated and made irrelevant by that awful morning, but much of what the author said then still rings true, though at the time of writing he had no inkling (who could?) of GW and the 2000 election debacle to come. Lind discusses the religious right's stranglehold on the GOP even without knowing that they would sabotage John McCain with a disinformation campaign in South Carolina in 2000. He traces the myths of the success of supply-side economics and the failures of the public schools and social welfare even before knowing that the Bush administration would bankrupt the country for upper-income tax cuts and push faith-based programs and school vouchers through the back door. He denounces the whacko anti-Semitic, homophobic, misogynistic, irrational rantings of Pat Robertson that conservatives allow to go unchallenged because he controls a vast grass-roots network of voters. (This is what finally led him to renounce his own conservative affiliations.) But my favorite chapter has to be the one attacking the conservative myth of the Golden Age (the 1950s for Newt Gingrich, the 1930s for Trent Lott). It is very funny. Tragically, scandalously funny.

Lind calls attention to the hypocrisy of conservatives who call for law and order (at the same time they let the NRA halt even the most basic controls on weapons), smaller government (at the same time they establish the department of Total Information Awareness headed by situational ethicist John Poindexter), fiscal responsibility (at the same time they dip into Social Security in order to give tax breaks to the top 1%), pro-family (at the same time they tax families to give tax breaks to the rich), and non-intervention (at the same time they send young people off to die in order to divert attention from a poor economy and constitutional shenanigans).

Lind, most interestingly, makes the case that the GOP has shifted from American conservatism to southern conservatism, with its concomitant anti-intellectual, anti-government, pro-industry and separatist attitudes; at the same time, corporations have shifted from a pro-government (investment) model to a low-wage/non-regulation model favored by conservatives.

This is a big-picture book that will give you a lot to think about. If you are a curious and honest thinker, of any political persuasion, you will find this treatise, at the very least, thought-provoking.

The title's implication that current conservatism is bottom-of-the-barrel politics is bookended by the work's final lines: "It is too late to rescue American conservatism from the radical right. But it is not too late to rescue America from conservatism." You gotta love that.

An excellent companion book would be David Brock's Blinded by the Right. While Lind looks at the philosophical underpinnings of conservative thought, Brock's emphasis is on the evolution of the conservative movement since the 1980's and on specific individuals and the media.

I began reading this book with great anticipation, intrigued by Lind's call for a revival of old-fashioned populist/centrist "vital center" liberalism, a position that has almost completely disappeared from the radar screens of the nation's political and media elites. For the most part, Lind delivers; his comments regarding the professional-managerial overclass are right on the money, and go a long way toward explaining the current political "consensus" that combines cultural liberalism and economic conservatism, both of which are a slap in the face to the working and lower-middle classes, black and white alike. Similarly the usefulness of leftist "multiculturalism" and identity politics as useful tools for that same overclass are given much-needed exposure. However, his belief that the so-called "culture war" is purely a right-wing fabrication betrays a misunderstanding of the depths of people's convictions regarding issues like abortion, sexual morality, drug abuse, careerism, and materialism. While conservatives (and more than a few liberals) have proven adept at exploiting these convictions for political gain, they didn't invent them from scratch. Indeed, for all his jeremaids against overclass elitism, Lind himself seems oddly unwilling to recognize the validity or authenticity of cultural populism, dismissing it as the exclusive province of crackpot fundamentalists a la Pat Robertson. (A more thoughtful consideration of these concerns can be found in the works of Christopher Lasch i.e. "The Revolt Of The Elites." Despite this reservation, however, I found this book to present a compelling case for political reform, and more than worthwhile for the millions of us who are relatively lacking in wealth and privelege and dare to assert that we have a voice too.

Granted, this book is not an easy read, but it is well worth the effort. It lays out what has been lacking as a political choice for voters over the last quarter of a century: centrism in the tradition of FDR, Truman and Eisenhower. This book is not only critical of the radical right, it is also critical of the left and the lukewarm conservatism of Clinton. He predicts, and I sincerely hope he is right, there will be a re-emergence of the sort of centrism the country enjoyed from 1933 to the early 70's--as odd as that may sound--in the decades ahead. If you believe the radical right and the loony left are not representing the best interests of the vast majority of Americans, you will find this book compelling.

"The Republicans have a problem. The economic program of American Conservatives, if enacted in its entirety, would devastate the middle class while helping the American overclass. Income would be redistributed upward, while taxes would be redistributed downward.... How can conservatives expect to win votes for an economic program so inimical to the middle class? The answer is they cannot--and they know it. Therefore, most conservative ideologues... have done their best to change the subject from the economy to what they like to call, 'the culture'..."
Michael Lind
UP FROM CONSERVATISM
From Chapter Five, "Whistling Dixie"

My copy of this book is looking more and more as if I am studying for a final exam based on its contents; every other paragraph of every chapter is a ten-megaton bomb of an aphorism worth quoting.

"Perhaps however, my statement of the problem is mistaken. The question was, 'Why have there been no world-class American conservative intellectuals?' when it should have been "Why are there so FEW American conservative intellectuals [emphasis mine]?" By intellectuals I do not mean propagandists or causists, who provide the party faithful with the party line on the subjects of the day. I mean independent thinkers, who may be "conservative" or "liberal" or "libertarian" or "socialist" in terms of their basic principles, but who are free to draw their own conclusions without looking over their shoulders and fearing punishment for heterodoxy..."

"If further proof is needed for my contention that much of today's conservative political theory is merely Marxism with the substitution of "bourgeois" for "proletariat" and "culture" for "class," it can be found in Joyce's call for enlisting art and literature in the service of Republican conservatism, a program that is indistinguishable, except in its content, from the aesthetic orthodoxy of American communities during the 1920's and 1930's...the literary and artistic techniques used by communists and fascists alike would be adopted to disseminate conservative ideology...For the time being, it seems, Americans will have to be content with the work of conservative public policy intellectuals."

Michael Lind, UP FROM CONSERVATISM
From Chapter 3: "The Triangular Trade: How the Conservative Movement Works"

Michael Lind's detailed analysis of the overall psyche and political agenda of the power brokers of the Conservative movement in modern America is beyond prescient, beyond clear--and beyond frightening. It's also beyond superlatives.

"The resemblance between Marxism and the classical liberal economic utopianism of the American right is a family resemblance. Marxism and free-market fundamentalism are squabbling twins, the offspring of the Enlightenment's naive belief in inevitable progress.... In the former communist countries, the high priests of economic dogma were the Marxist dialecticians; in the United States and Britain (though not in Japan or continental Europe), neoclassical economists serve as guardians of the orthodoxy, promising "scientific" approaches to economic progress...Today's American conservatives, however, have adopted free-market fundamentalism, in its crudest forms, as their political religion."

Michael Lind, UP FROM CONSERVATISM
From Chapter Ten: "Soaking the Middle: The Conservative Class War Against Wage-earning Americans"

"American conservatism, then, is a countercommunism that replicates, down to rather precise details of organization and theory, the communism that it opposes..."

Michael Lind, UP FROM CONSERVATISM
Chapter Ten
Soaking the Middle: The Conservative Class War Against Wage-Earning Americans

What Alice Miller is to psychology, Michael Lind has become to American Politics.

Michael Lind's UP FROM CONSERVATISM uncovers the intellectual nerve center and primitive philosophical foundation for much of the dialectical arguments about virtually anything in culture today on both sides of the political fence, from the validity of Afrocentrism to the very existence of privacy and independent thought in our increasingly technologically fascist modern society--and the consequences of their gradual disappearance.

"...Today, having hijacked the Republican Party, [the leaders of the Conservative Right have become] 'radicals', seeking, in alliance with multinational corporate elite, to dismantle the New Deal [of FDR] and to impose their peculiar "New South" vision of the United States as a low wage, low tax, low regulation economy in which economic segregation replaces formal legal segregation not merely in their native region but in the country as a whole."

From Chapter Five: "Whistling Dixie"

This book is to the future of American politics and culture what Martin Luther's original Theses, nailed to the cathedral walls in the 17th century is to the history of Protestantism.

"The parallel between [anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist of the 1930's Father] Coughlin and [Pat] Robertson breaks down in one respect to be sure: Father Coughlin was soon silenced by the Catholic Church and politically disgraced. Robertson, after expressing almost indistinguishable views in almost identical language, continues to be defended by conservative intellectuals, including the leading Jewish conservatives... a leading conservative editor with whom I was...on cordial terms...replied: 'Of course [i.e. The Christian Coalition]'re mad, but we need their votes.'"

With all the irony of Shakespeare and the fright power of Stephen King, it reads like the perfect combination of a masterfully written textbook and a beautifully crafted novel. This is clear cut political and cultural analysis at its finest, with brilliant, erudite ideas expressed in the most common sense language. A truly important book.

I recommend this book to anyone who wants a lot of information about what went wrong with the Republican Party (Lind was a Democrat who switched parties then left the Republicans in disgust.) Lind isn't a partisan though, he has many problems with the Democratics and liberals in general, so his critique of the Right is clearly from the middle. It's is also rich with the names of the people who are the major players in the Party - whose names you see today on TV news shows or on op-eds in major news publications nationwide.

This book left me with a real sense, though, that much of Republican ideaology is just propaganda designed to maintain the power and profit of a super rich overclass -- and that the current Democratic ideology is nearly as bankrupt. The future, as I read the book, lies in a return to New Deal Liberalism, where the government is meant to benefit the working middle class and protect it from the abuses of unchecked capitalism.

Altogether a great insight into our modern History.

Michael Lind was once an up-and-coming conservative activist until he realized that his mentor, William F. Buckley, Jr., refused to condemn televangelist Pat Robertson for his book "The New World Order." Lind became disillusioned with the conservative movement as it veered away from the old-style conservatism to embrace the radical right.

Because he has the advantage of having been an insider, his book is much more powerful and persuasive than books by those outside the movement. Lind shows the reader the roots of modern day conservatism, he discusses the think tanks that are behind much of today's conservative thought, and he focuses on three conservative hoaxes very popular with the public.

The best part of his book, however, is a chapter based upon a review Lind wrote in the New York Review of Books about Pat Robertson's "The New World Order." Lind is absolutely brilliant in exposing Robertson's plagarism of anti-Semitic works which Robertson in turn sanitized to a more conventional conspiracy theory. And yet there was very little negative comment about Robertson, especially from fellow conservatives. Lind calls this silence a result of a "no enemies to the right" policy.

Lind's book isn't perfect. His explanation of the genealogy of American political thought becomes rather confusing in places. Some readers will no doubt object to Lind's attitude toward affirmative action (he's against it). But all in all, it is still an excellent book.

Lind, a former conservative, does several things in this fine work. First, he describes how the conservative movement has been taken over by the reactionary right, totally abandoning the great tradition of Daniel Webster and Dwight Eisenhower. He goes issue by issue, explaining why the right is wrong on education, welfare, economics and other issues. He explains the racism in three books that got me disgusted when I read them but which conservatives now use as their "bible" on certain issues. Lind shows how conservative populism is and always has been an oxymoron, showing the conservative fear of true populism even as they preach it on occasion. He shows how the modern right has catered to extreme groups that the Eisenhowers and Fords would never have dealt with. He also emerges as critical of the conservative Clintonites who would seek the wreck the progress created by FDR, Truman and LBJ. A very expansive work that lives up to the challenge of covering all those bases in considerable depth without-> getting dull. A good companion to this book is "Who Speaks for G-d?" by pastor Jim Wallis, which explains why the Religious Right is wrong and violates its religious roots.

The hostile reviewers of this book miss the point. Lind is not saying that all conservatives are racist. Rather, he's explaining how the modern conservative movement is influenced by racist and xenophobic thought. He openly admits that many conservatives are admirable. <P>Bottom line, this book needs some rewrites. And, Lind's economics and policy prescriptions are debatable at best. But, a good 15-30% of the conservative vote, nationwide, comes from people who'd be voting for the "One Nation" movement in Australia, or the National Front in France--a.k.a., rabid racists and intolerant religious fanatics. That's the truth, and Democrats and Republicans should read this book to understand the implications of that fact for "public discourse" and electoral politics.

Michael Lind has provided an excellent overview of the many ways that the modern Republican Party, particularly its conservative leadership, is a danger for current and future American society. From shifting the tax burden from the rich to the middle class and working poor, to lending implicit support to right-wing extremist groups, the agenda of the today's Republican party would create a country similiar to an East Asian or South American dictatorship.

While Lind provides an excellent discussion of Conservative economic, social, legal theories, his most valuable contribution is his demonstration of the danger to America of not having the views of the "vital center" liberals in the tradition of FDR, Truman, and LBJ represented in this country today. To that end, Lind advocates political support to anyone, either Democat or Republican, that does not identify, or is not beholden to the conservative GOP leadership.

This is an excellent, if sometimes dated, argument for a resurrection of that vital center that was destroyed by the Vietnam War after attackes from both the left and the right and an excellent takedown of the GOP.