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Via Andrew Sullivan (seems like I find a lot of interesting stuff reading his blog) comes a great article by Michael Lind that points out that Southerners dominate the Tea Party. His idea is that, for one reason or another, southerners have been consistently willing to jeopardize the country’s stability to get their way from the late 1700s to the present. Lind writes:

 “Contradicting the mainstream media narrative that the Tea Party is a new populist movement that formed spontaneously… the facts show that the Tea Party in Congress is merely the familiar old neo-Confederate Southern right under a new label.”

Quite true, although I should point out that the populist movements of yore were not entirely separate from confederate movements. The South, at any rate, was certainly a part of the original populist movement.

One thing to know about the South is that it is more rural in comparison to the rest of the country, and has been almost since the beginning. As I’ve discussed before, nationalism seems to be stronger in rural areas, whereas city living lends itself, naturally, more to a cosmopolitan attitude. I suspect that the fact that the South has always had a strong military tradition is also highly significant.

Of course, there is also the issue of racism. Better writers than myself have tackled that major aspect of the question. But I sometimes suspect that even if there were no issues of racial prejudice involved, the Nationalistic part of the party would still be behaving in a manner similar to this.

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Via Krugman, an excellent post by Amanda Marcotte on the power of the Republicans in controlling the negotiations on the debt. Basically, her point is that whatever you think of Obama, the reason the debt struggle goes poorly for liberals is, unsurprisingly, the Republicans.

Democrats who are upset at Obama—like Krugman himself—puzzle me. Many liberals demand to know why he doesn’t demand more left wing policies. Much the same complaint, as Marcotte notes, was directed at Bill Clinton.

 If we use my crude materialist/nationalist/cosmopolitan model, we get the following: Obama, like most Democrats, is cosmopolitan. That means, essentially, he is out to improve the world, promote multiculturalism and human rights across the world, increase tolerance, increase economic and social equality, and so on.

The Republican party is a coalition of materialistic business interests, who promote laissez-faire capitalism (when it suits them) and in general pursue the philosophy of maximizing material wealth, and of nationalistic groups who demand that strict traditional social roles and values be upheld.

Like most triumvirates, this model has resulted in two ganging up to defeat the other one. Obama, like Clinton before him, is therefore completely at the mercy of the Republican party when it comes to economic issues.

One thing that will be noted by anyone who examines the phenomenon is that the Nationalistic wing almost never gets its way on social issues. Note, for example, that under Obama gays have been allowed to serve openly in the military. (Again, this had been something Clinton had also taken steps towards achieving.) The Republicans allowed this, by not fighting with nearly the same fury they put into the debt deal.

Almost all of this is quite obvious, and I am hardly the first to notice any of it. (For an excellent description of how this system works, read Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas.)  
So, in short, Democrats get to win on social issues—sometimes—as long as they do not tamper with the business interests. If they attempt to, the business interests will remind the nationalists that the Democrats put all this social liberalism into effect, and the Dems will promptly be voted out.

Again, this is where Thomas Frank is excellent: he points out that this scheme has been going on for decades now, and apparently the nationalists refuse to see it. 

It’s impossible to overemphasize that business interests and nationalism are almost completely opposed by nature. Nationalists have no use for businesses that know no national loyalty, and business has no use for non-materialistic bounds on where it may build factories or whom it may hire. Nationalists are not natural allies of the rich businessman who swears allegiance only to profits.

The alliance, therefore, ought to be fraught with incredible tension. That it isn’t is almost shocking; that it is considered the more stable and ordered of the two parties verges on miraculous—or supernatural, at any rate.

I suspect the price they pay for this shocking discipline is the number of… shall we say…”colorful personalities” they seem to attract. Paul Graham once pointed out that Democrats seem to be “earnest, but dull” compared to Republicans. I think this is because it’s impossible to honestly believe all of the things in the Republican party line without being a rather confused person. At least, I don’t see how you do it.

That’s not to say it makes no sense to have this strategic alliance between the nationalists and the materialistic groups—that’s what politics is all about, after all—but it is bizarre that it is regarded as completely natural.

This, by the way, is why they make attacks like this against the President. The constant “he is not one of us” drumbeat may play to racial issues, but it’s more than that. Almost every Democratic candidate Presidential candidate faces an allegation of not being “American” enough for some reason. 

It is absolutely necessary for the survival of this coalition that the nationalists remain convinced that the government itself is anti-American, or at least run by people who are when they make any attempt to regulate business.  If they don’t believe that, the greedy interests will not have the clout they currently enjoy. Until that day, Liberals will have to content themselves with the Obamas and Clintons of the world–people who do what they can with a bad hand.


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John Nolte, conservative film critic, decries an article about the new Captain America film:

“This approach to patriotism is all a lie, a ploy from the Left to turn what really is simplistic and lazy (nihilism, angst, irreverence, irony) into “art,” when just the opposite is true. What the Left despises about themes that lift the human spirit is that they’re more often than not, conservative themes — themes of self-sacrifice, selflessness, fidelity, manhood, bravery, and nobility. Whereas darker, simpler themes or a complete lack of theme, appeals to the all-about-me, chaotic narcissism that so defines the Left.” 

I love reading Nolte’s work–it reveals so much about the Conservative understanding of art. First of all, I think it’s quite telling that “manhood” is on that list of “good” themes, but that there is no corresponding female virtue. But secondly, I can almost hear Ayn Rand’s fury at the “self-sacrifice” and “selflessness” portion of the program.

What Nolte is describing here is strangely anti-individualistic in nature–I find that quite interesting. (Another example of this tendency in his artistic taste is his review of The English Patient.)

The truth is, the virtues he alludes to are not the virtues of a libertarian, but of someone who feels an actual sense of, dare I say it, community–specifically, nationalism. I only bring this up to point out that this is one more instance in which the inherent conflict between the Nationalistic and Materialistic sides of the group that calls itself “Conservative” appears.

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I will be very interested to hear the conservative reaction to this Newsweek article entitled “How to Raise a Global Kid”. I predict that what I call the “Nationalistic” wing will not like it one bit. Who knows how much “buzz” (I hate that word) the piece will generate, but if it gets much, I have to assume that some conservatives will be outraged by it.

This is especially significant since one of the advocates of “raising global kids” the article mentions is Jim Rogers, a prominent laissez-faire advocate and investor who endorsed Ron Paul in 2008. A stereotypical conservative as far as economics are concerned, in other words.

Perhaps I am wrong, and reaction to the article will not break down predictably along political lines. But I thought I’d make the prediction, just for the heck of it.

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It strikes me as ironic that at the end of a week in which David Brooks was denounced by Conservatives for a column he wrote, the Conservatives also have been unwittingly arguing for one of Brooks’ old ideas: “National Greatness Conservatism“. There’s quite a bit of chatter on Breitbart sites and the like about how the end of the space shuttle program is another symptom of Obama not believing in “American exceptionalism”. Even the guy filling in for Glenn Beck yesterday was talking about it.*

If you ask me, this is where the Nationalistic part of the Party really shows up. They don’t really hate government, they only want a government that aggrandizes American superiority. They will never want to cut Space spending, and they sure as hell will never cut the closely-related Military spending.

Personally, I think both are of tremendous importance, but the Space shuttle program needed to be ended. Human beings have a difficult time in space, and I personally believe that the near to mid-future of space exploration lies, as it should, with remotely controlled machines, like the Mars rovers etc.

*I’d like to provide you with a link to a transcript of this show or something, but I’m dashed if I can find it. It seems to be impossible to get at anything on the Glenn Beck site without taking a loyalty vow to the Esoteric Order of Glenn Beck.

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I haven’t been keeping up with the comic book news, so I hadn’t heard about Superman renouncing his U.S. Citizenship till today. It’s not really an anti-American story, but nevertheless, it has sparked a Conservative backlash.

I think this nicely illustrates what I mean when I talk about cosmopolitanism vs. nationalism in politics. It’s not that Superman has become anti-American, he is merely “taking a broader approach”. But nevertheless, to the nationalist, the difference is significant.

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So, there’s a big controversy about an ad showing the President of J. Crew and her son. It depicts the boy wearing pink toenail polish. The ad says that pink is her son’s favorite color. It wasn’t long before the Conservatives got word of this, and denounced it, in the words of Erin Brown, as ” blatant propaganda celebrating transgendered children.”

I wonder if they think playing video games as a character of the opposite sex makes you transgendered, too. I ask because right now I’m playing through the game Fallout: New Vegas again as a female. Last night, I got to the part where Caesar explains his philosophy. (The famed “Hegelian Dialectics” scene.) He says–and I’m paraphrasing here–that the individual must be subordinated to a “single, unifying culture”.

This, in turn, reminded me of Oscar Wilde’s quote: “Classicism is the subordination of the parts to the whole; decadence is the subordination of the whole to the parts.”

Back to the case of the pink toenail advertisement. In essence, the Conservatives are quite upset that the ad because it seems to glorify violating strict gender norms. But why do they care about that, anyway?

The answer, I believe, is that some of the Conservatives care about things like this as means of organizing society. They hold certain ideals of each person’s role in the society according to their gender, among other things. What makes it odd is that half the time, they are complaining of too much government intervention and going on about how individualistic they are. The other half, they’re complaining about things like the wrong people painting their toenails in the wrong colors.

Now, before I get carried away and go calling them hypocrites, I must note that none of them, to my knowledge, have actually called for government intervention to stop unauthorized toenail painting. So, this isn’t a contradiction, exactly. But it is nonetheless odd.

I think it goes back to the “Nationalism/Materialism” thing. The Materialistic side of the Republican party wants to be free to make vast amounts of money. The Nationalistic side, although they pretty much go along with this, don’t always see things that way. They believe people ought to conform to their idealized society.

(Hat Tip to Thingy)

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David Weigel on why the Tea Party isn’t against the Libya intervention:

“The Tea Party is libertarian in plenty of ways. But if it has one defining characteristic, it’s that it’s nationalist. If there’s a way to remove Qaddafi decades after he aided the Lockerbie bombers, then that’s more important than a debate over the deep thoughts of the founders.”

That’s pretty much my take on the Tea Party’s reaction, as well.

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On Christina Aguilera messing up the lyrics to “The Star-Spangled Banner”, Alexandra Petri says the real fault lies not with the singer, but the song. She makes note of numerous “flaws” in the song, but the one with which I must take issue is this:

“Not only is this [the lyrics] terrible, dated, and irrevocably attached to an oddly specific incident that Francis Scott Key suffered through during the War of 1812 — it is a question. As a nation, whenever we sing this anthem, we are asking whoever is listening if our flag is still waving. “We saw it last night when there was a lot of artillery fire,” we are saying, ‘but hey, is it still up there? Could you check?'”

I must protest! I think this is rather clever. Whether or not Key intended it I don’t know, but it works as a metaphor. As opposed to being a jingoistic hymn to national excellence, the anthem compels us to check the state of the flag–i.e. pause for reflection on the country, and think about its current state. To think, in other words. At least, that’s how I interpret it.

Having said that, I will admit that the syntax of the song is quite confusing, especially in the middle. I know nothing about music, so I can’t comment on that aspect of it.

I will also say that I personally believe the anthem generally sounds better sung by men than by women. (I hope that doesn’t seem sexist, and yes an exception must be made for Whitney Houston) Perhaps because it was originally a drinking song it was composed with men in mind. Like I said, I don’t know anything about music, I just know what I personally like.

Finally, I can’t help but quote the song from W.S. Gilbert’s His Excellency, concerning a King who is tormented by his country’s awful national anthem:

“Though its words but imperfectly rhyme, 
And the Devil himself couldn’t scan them, 
With composure polite 
He endures day and night 
That illiterate National Anthem!” 

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The adherents of cosmopolitanism are, by definition, always quick to repudiate the nationalism of their own country.

But, (in my experience, at any rate) they are usually not quite capable of holding all nationalisms equal. In fact, they tend to be more sympathetic to foreign nationalists, if only as a reaction to the xenophobia and/or imperialism of the nationalists in their home country.