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Interesting piece by Charles Oakland at Conservatives4Palin about Sarah Palin’s charisma. More specifically, it’s an examination of just what charisma is and why Palin appears to have it. I am, of course, delighted to see other people discussing the phenomenon of charisma, as I have done so myself very often on this blog.

It’s piece worth reading, in my opinion, regardless of your views on either Sarah Palin or Mr. Oakland.* Putting the political aspects of the thing aside, it is a very interesting read, and touches on many of the same points I have in my ongoing blogging about charisma.

Having said all that, I have to confess that I’m shocked that one could write such a long article on the nature of charisma and not mention the work of Max Weber, who is probably the primary reason we have the word charisma today. But quite apart from that, Weber’s writings are indispensable for understanding the concept of charisma. As he described it, charisma is:

“…a certain quality of an individual personality, by virtue of which one is “set apart” from ordinary people and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These as such are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as divine in origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a leader.” 

No question, the religious origins of the word are indeed important, and Oakland is surely right to discuss it. But Weber has studied the implications of charisma with particular regard to politics, and therefore it is surely worth mentioning his efforts in an examination of a political figure’s charisma.

*For those readers who really don’t enjoy reading words of extreme adoration for Sarah Palin, you only have to read the article from the passage beginning: “As some readers know, my interests also include languages and biblical studies….”

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It is the opinion of this humble blogger that you are entirely too concerned with recent redecorating of the Oval Office.

Now, no doubt decoration is a fine thing, and a worthy endeavor deserving of thoughtful criticism. But I don’t think it is worth expending the journalistic and rhetorical resources needed to write entire columns and blog posts on.

This is all the more important to understand because, like everything else politicians do, this redecoration will undoubtedly become the subject of what passes for debate between the Republicans and the Democrats. The Republicans, I’d wager, are even now trying to find something unpatriotic about the color of the new coffee table. Democrats, on the other hand, will leap to the defense of it, probably even if they privately hate it.

Now, I admit, this state of polarization is not itself the fault of either the blogosphere or even the mainstream media, even though everyone says it is. For decades, the political system in the United States has been relentlessly, and perhaps inevitably, moving towards a point at which agreement on anything between the two parties is inconceivable. This is the result of forces beyond the control of any one individual or entity.

Here’s the thing, though:  if the two parties can at least battle each other over actual issues concerning the state of the real world, the military, the economy, the culture etc., there is a chance–admittedly a slim one–that the disagreements between the two parties may actually be susceptible of resolution based on actual material evidence.

The decoration of rooms, however, is not such an issue. Neither are countless other arguments over what boils down, at then end of the day, to questions of taste and symbolism. The fact people allow themselves to continually argue over such irresolvable and subjective issues is a serious obstacle to anything like actual competition on matters of policy.

All comments are welcome, and disagreement is encouraged. 

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Conservatives and Libertarians are fond of saying that Liberals put too much faith in the power of “Big Government.” Some of them have even gone so far as to say that Liberals have a religious devotion to the Government, treating it, the claim goes, as a sort of omnipotent deity. (This rather libertarian-minded charge, incidentally, dovetails nicely with the Religious branch of the Conservatives’ deeply-held belief that Liberals are godless, hedonistic decadents.)

As I’ve mentioned before, I myself was once a libertarian, and I will confess that perhaps there is some truth to the claim that liberals believe overmuch in the power of government, though surely the idea that they see Government as God is rather hyperbolic. But that’s an issue for a different post.

For now, I wish to examine rather the conservatives’ view of government. For, if liberals overestimate the government’s power to good, I think the conservatives overestimate its power to do ill, or at least have a misguided view of what a government behaving badly might look like.

Conservatives spend entirely too much time nowadays harping on the theme of alleged tyranny by the U.S. government. It’s a dramatic thing to say, of course, and is surely likely to arouse people’s interest in small-government philosophy. And furthermore, it is certainly a good idea to be constantly vigilant for signs of tyranny. Did not all the tyrannical dictators of history arise because not enough people were wise enough to be on the lookout for the first hints of their plans?

It is my opinion that tyranny, dictatorship, Stalin-esque police states, etc., are the more terrible but (fortunately) far less common type of government failure. The problems the average, law-abiding U.S. citizen is likely to run across when dealing with the government stem not from dictatorial brutality, but instead from the dull inefficiency of a massive bureaucracy.

Now, I do understand why, say, the Tea Party crowd feels a need to talk more about tyranny and less about bureaucracy. Tyrannies are fun to rebel against, bureaucracies are boring. More importantly, the monstrous atrocities committed by tyrants litter the pages of World History, whereas the comparatively banal problems of bureaucracies are the stuff of dull Economics textbooks.

So, perhaps it is inevitable that Tea Party propaganda (to use the word in its neutral, Bernaysian sense) will always rely on the rather dramatic idea of the current Government engaging in Tyrannical and Authoritarian behavior. For propaganda, like humor, relies on exaggeration to make its point.

Nevertheless, I feel it is dangerous–indeed, potentially ruinous to the libertarian streak in the Tea Party–to continually argue against governmental brutality that, while no doubt a thing to be avoided and guarded against, is far less often a problem for the average citizen than is the near omnipresence of inefficient and incapable governmental red-tape.

Bureaucracy is a far less interesting thing to oppose; and is far harder to solve, but I believe that it is the true problem with “Big Government”.

All comments are welcome, and disagreement is encouraged.

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I’m currently working on one of my long, politics-related posts. I’d hoped to have it done by tonight, but that isn’t happening.

In the meantime, you may amuse yourselves at this excellent site I discovered. I’m thinking it may be the solution to my problem coming up with titles for posts.

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The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers.

I was re-reading this book the other day, and I had forgotten just how good it is; particularly the first story “The Repairer of Reputations.” I first came across it about a year ago while reading about H.P. Lovecraft, and I must admit that, while Lovecraft’s ideas are more carefully thought out, Chambers’ writing is actually superior to Lovecraft’s, and his overall technique makes for some of the best weird fiction I have ever read, period.

If you happen to like that sort of thing, check it out.

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Disturbingly, the number of posts per month on this blog has been declining almost every month since March. The only exception was slight increase in July vs. June. Even more troubling, August is on pace to have the least posts since last December. (Unless I come up with four more posts in the next three hours.)

I guess it’s just a “Summer lull”. I predict that, as cold weather returns, there will be both more time to blog and more things to blog about.