tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-610803938756668468.post3432996199098580586..comments2024-03-28T03:16:27.198-04:00Comments on Todd Seavey: Broader Fusionism, in All DirectionsTodd Seaveyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08589187886030112999noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-610803938756668468.post-83011472801315475912009-10-01T17:53:00.000-04:002009-10-01T17:53:00.000-04:00[...] And Todd Seavey addresses the libertarians: ...[...] And Todd Seavey addresses the libertarians: … despite all the talk of a conservative crack-up. We need libertarians and conservatives to set aside and downplay their differences and focus on opposing the apocalyptic levels of government spending we’re now seeing (and likely accompanying upsurge in regulation), in much the same way Grover Norquist previously tried to keep them focused on tax cuts. They have to stay focused as though the final battle has arrived. And perhaps it has. [...]Blogging Politics 3http://the-classic-liberal.com/blogging-politics-3/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-610803938756668468.post-83886184121236632442009-03-12T10:56:00.000-04:002009-03-12T10:56:00.000-04:00And the goal is to ever more closely coordinate th...And the goal is to ever more closely coordinate the ideologues’ efforts with actual, impending, tweakable legislation. As I’ll explain in different terms on Sunday, what I am most opposed to is not “giving up” — which may be perfectly reasonable — but saying “I’m frustrated, so I’ll behave as if _the other side are my real friends_.” <br><br>Until then, a nice reminder that the ideologues do also have the job of nudging the _culture_ (and thus the context in which legislation arises) will occur tomorrow night at 10pm on ABC — but more about that tomorrow.Todd Seaveyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08589187886030112999noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-610803938756668468.post-32485463988174036362009-03-12T09:35:00.000-04:002009-03-12T09:35:00.000-04:00My question isn’t whether Todd accurately ascribes...My question isn’t whether Todd accurately ascribes the right underlying philosophies to the parties, but rather whether the supposed underlying philosophies have any practical relevance to the behavior of the parties at all. Todd, you may interact with people on both sides who work hard in pursuit of specific philosophies, but it seems to me that “understanding politics” involves recognizing how far, far away those people are from bills, budgets, hearings, bargaining between legislative committees, etc.Davidnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-610803938756668468.post-75174954981643551862009-03-12T08:56:00.000-04:002009-03-12T08:56:00.000-04:00The commenter can be forgiven for knowing little a...The commenter can be forgiven for knowing little about politics, but I _am_ a small-government conservative (that’s empirical, or at least Cartesian, right there) and deal with thousands of small-government conservatives in the course of my intellectual career. They are fighting, with little thanks from the likes of the commenter, the good fight year after year to nudge an ideologically amorphous Republican Party closer to its stated principles.<br><br>A similar cadre of ideologues who desire something akin to social democracy — and have never been the least bit ashamed to tell me so the countless times I’ve encountered them — work as ceaselessly to nudge an ideologically amorphous Democratic Party ever leftward toward socialism, with slightly more success, since _all_ government tends to grow, as we know.<br><br>There is, as you seem to have difficulty grasping, an admitted difference between the tiny band of ideologues in each party and the broader, sloppier, more moderate _party itself_ that each band is trying to steer. But the ideologues have never been shy about saying where it is they _want_ to steer things — you can find them in countless magazines, op-ed pages, and thinktanks (and hear them faintly echoed in politicians’ speeches and still more faintly in rarer actual policy tweaks).<br><br>You wouldn’t gauge whether Nietzsche was “really” an atheist by doing a statistical analysis of whether Germany became less church-going after he lived (though that might be standard methodology in the detached and eggheaded world of polisci classes for all I know), you wouldn’t call someone faith-based or un-empirical for saying Nietzsche was an atheist, and you don’t gauge the intentions of ideologues by what the idiot politicians who usually aren’t listening to them spend most of their time doing.<br><br>The hope, Leninist as it may sound, is for the correct ideologues to win eventually and grow more influential. We shall see, though we shall not hold our breath even while working toward that end. If we tried to hold our breath that long, we’d pass out and the voice of a writer from _The Nation_ would be heard instead, and — though you may not have noticed — he would not be praising Milton Friedman or free markets.Todd Seaveyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08589187886030112999noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-610803938756668468.post-3526298685716400142009-03-12T08:39:00.000-04:002009-03-12T08:39:00.000-04:00Must… resist… round 9,000… of… old.. argument…“The...Must… resist… round 9,000… of… old.. argument…<br><br>“There are worse things than Clintonian custodial mercantilism, I know, and, yes, sometimes those worse things have been on the right, but that’s not really the relevant standard of comparison right now”<br><br>And, when, exactly, have you ever conceded that it *was* the relevant standard? If the current crisis is somehow a distinctive moment in time that happens to require extra-special attention to what you’ve all along thought were the really important issues, whathave been the moments in time when you thought other issues would rightly be prioritized? <br><br>And, as always, evidence, evidence. The *open commitment* to unfalsifiability continues to surprise me. <br><br>You say that the actions of really-existing political parties can’t tell us anything about the merits of the underlying principles. But maybe they can tell us *whether the correct underlying principles are being attributed to the actors.* I deny that “the philosophy of leftist social democracy” is the animating philosophy of the Democratic Party as it’s existed in our lifetimes– or that “small-government conservatism” has been the animating philosophy of more than a small faction of the Republican Party. As far as I can tell, you continue to take the existence of “small-government conservatism” on faith no matter what really-existing self-described conservatives do– and continue to deny on faith that there’s a difference between social democracy and American left-liberalism.Jacob T. Levyhttp://jacobtlevy.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.com