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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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Sylvester Stallone has made a new movie called The Expendables, which apparently is a throwback to the old 1980s-era action films. A guy named Steven Zeitchik criticized the film’s “hard-charging, take-no-prisoners patriotism unbothered by the vagaries of the real world.” Which triggered this response from Stallone on The O’Reilly Factor:

Now, I have not seen this film. But I will say that I think O’Reilly and Stallone are misinterpreting Zeitchik’s criticism. They seem to be thinking his problem with the movie is that it’s some sort of American propaganda for people in other countries. Zeitchik was in fact complaining that the film was reinforcing American patriotism for Americans themselves. (I’m still surprised that Stallone even claimed Zeitchik was “reading in metaphors”. I would have thought he and O’Reilly would be openly patriotic.)

The really key exchange, though, is this:

O’Reilly: “[The movie] is macho guys like you, alright, killing bad guys.”

Stallone: “That’s right.”

Later, Stallone says: “It’s simple: You’re bad, you gotta go.”

With a few exceptions, movies in general rely on the simple formula of “the good guys” vs. “the bad guys”. The only thing that remains to be seen is: who are “the bad guys”? The writer’s choice of who to cast as “the bad guys” is what determines the political, social, religious etc. theories (if any) of the film.

For example, in James Cameron’s movie Avatar, the Native-American-like indigenous creatures are portrayed as “the good guys”, whereas the human, English-speaking, white male military contractors are portrayed as “the bad guys”. This offers some insight into the political thesis of the movie.

Which brings me to the point: are the “good guys” in Stallone’s movie Americans and the bad guys not Americans? That would seem to be the key question here.

(Hat Tip to Big Hollywood)

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Lots of people are outraged at BP CEO Tony Hayward for going to a yacht race, but not at President Obama for going golfing. This is indeed impressive hypocrisy.

Now, if you actually asked most pundits, they would, I think, admit that there is no actual reason why Hayward shouldn’t go to the damn yacht race. The problem, they’ll say, was not that he was neglecting actual duties, so much as that he was “sending the wrong message” or “it made him look bad.”

Well, yes; because the pundits and commentariat decree that it makes him look bad. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy, and an example of the extent to which the media creates its own reality.

Of course, the White House itself didn’t help matters by criticizing Hayward. Rahm Emmanuel himself used the “it’s a bad PR decision” line. I guess it is, but only because you all have decided to make it into one.

Let me make it clear, by the way, that there’s no reason Obama shouldn’t be golfing either. The fact is, there is nothing that either Hayward or Obama need to do that they cannot do from a yacht race or a golf course. I suspect that at their level, almost all of their “oversight” can be done using cell phones.

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“We are dealing with people who think they should rebel until they get their little kingdom like Satan did. You know what? Thanks, Mr. President, but I think we’re going to keep the Internet the way it is right now. You know — or at least until people who are worshipping Satan, you know, aren’t in office.” 

So said Glenn Beck last week, in a discussion of “net neutrality”. Charles Johnson writes “Once you’ve exhausted the Hitler analogies, this is all that remains.”

I’ve wondered in the past if all the Nazi comparisons are just the secular equivalent of yelling “This is the work of Satan!” (Or “She’s a Witch!”) I guess since Beck realized he’s not secular, he could go ahead and use it.

BTW, if the Devil thing doesn’t stick, I have three words for you, Beck: Great Old Ones.

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It’s not easy to blog regularly. I try to post as often as I can, but many times I find myself having to really work to make my blog posts worth reading. It takes a lot of time to compose a thoughtful post about an issue, and I often am pressed for time. I often wonder how those who keep active blogs for many years manage to do it.

One theory is that they’re smarter than me, and this is at least part of the reason, I am sure. But even so, maintaining an active blog, filled with cogent, thoughtful analysis of current issues is very hard. More than once, I’ve resorted to posting a link to some story and throwing in a brief wisecrack of my own.

That’s all very well, as far as it goes, and I have no plans to abandon the practice. But to try to do the more in-depth analysis that I’d prefer to do takes a long time. If you’re really going to examine an issue thoroughly, you want to do your research. And you want it to be something that not many people have said before. It takes work to do that kind of thing.

The reason I bring all this up is not to guilt trip you into leaving comments about how much you appreciate the lengths I go to in the hopes of giving you interesting information. I bring it up because I want to demonstrate that running a blog that comments on politics and analyze issues without just mocking one side or the other all the time is hard.

In fairness, it’s hard to run a purely partisan blog as well. But not for the same reasons. A purely partisan blogger knows what they’ve got to say; it’s all just a question of how to say it most persuasively. A challenge, no doubt, but a very different one than that faced by someone who is trying to get outside of this framework.

A lot of people blame the internet for the rise in “partisanship”, using the word in a rather colloquial sense of “someone who forcefully supports a cause.” But there is nothing inherently wrong with this. I myself am probably a partisan when it comes to, say, ending the war on drugs. I am not complaining about partisanship per se, but rather about the unthinking nature of these partisans. By this I mean the tendency of political blogs to not engage in conflict with the other side.

I know this sounds bizarre but, for all their insults and mockery of each other, liberal and conservative blogs don’t actually argue about their core philosophies much at all. They mostly just write posts attacking the other side for things that they have done. Then, when the trolls show up, the trading of insults begins.

Here it is necessary to say that mockery and insults are not the problem, but a symptom. A lot of people complain about the “lack of civility”, “the hurling of insults”, the comparisons to Nazis–which I myself complain about, but it’s a different problem–that goes on in internet debates. But, while these are annoying, they are not actually the problem. I don’t care if liberals and conservatives insult each other, but it would be better if they did so always with their respective reasons for insulting their opponent explicitly stated.

It’s commonly said that liberals and conservatives ought to listen to each others ideas, be respectful, and try to reach compromises and understanding. The people who say this are the ones who most often bemoan the lack of civility. That’s largely a naive and simplistic view of the issue. You can’t expect liberals and conservatives to compromise–their philosophies are wholly at odds with one another. The problem with insults isn’t that they’re mean; it’s that they can easily be used to cover up a lack of understanding of what you are actually fighting for.

And it’s this which makes me concerned about discourse: the very ease with which one succumbs to the temptation to merely insult the opponent, rather than to explain to him your own position. There is no wrong in hating your political opponent–if his philosophy is so opposed to yours, you basically have to–but there is grave danger in allowing hatred of the opponent to be your philosophy.

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Roger Ebert says no. Hot Air speculates that Ebert hates them because they many of them involve fighting terrorists, like the seemingly never-ending Call of Duty series. (I like Call of Duty, but it is not art–it is, however, more intellectually challenging than some may realize.) They speculate that the lack of nuance and depth in games–which they seem to like–is what repels Ebert.

Ebert is completely and utterly wrong. Hot Air is sort of right, except that they fail to realize that they are succumbing to the same sort of bigotry as Ebert.

“No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets. [sic]” Ebert writes.

Then I shall do so now:

Planescape: Torment 

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

Metal Gear Solid

Mass Effect 2

Those games are all at least as powerful as any movie, any poem or any novel.

(Hat Tip to Big Hollywood.)

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At the end of the film The Wrath of Khan, when Spock is exposing himself to deadly radiation in order to save the crew of the Enterprise, he reminds Kirk that: “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.Or the one.” When I saw this, my first thought–probably because of reading Ayn Rand–was “this is a rather neat description of Socialism.” It’s the sacrifice of the individual for the collective. And it is this notion from which all the other aspects of Socialism derive.

Supposedly, this idea is alien to the United States of America, where we value individualism. Part of the idea of “American exceptionalism” is that we are more friendly to the rights of the individual than other nations; hence, Socialism is a philosophy that Americans seemingly reject.

Or do we?

In an earlier post, I said that “War is a fundamentally Socialist undertaking.” And, indeed, it is in wartime that the Socialists and anti-individualist philosophies gain the greatest acceptance in the United States of America. Witness Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus in the Civil War, the efforts at managing the war economy in World War I, or even the very idea of conscription. All these sacrifice the rights of individuals for the purpose of winning a war.

One of the redeeming factors of Jonah Goldberg’s book Liberal Fascism is that he seems to have grasped this point. It sort of undermines his own thesis, of course, but nonetheless he figures out that the United States is, historically, susceptible to this sort of socialistic mood. Of course, Goldberg calls it “fascism”, and he may be right about that as well.

I have said in the past that “Fascism is nothing more than a particularly militaristic brand of Socialism”, and while I’m no longer sure if that’s the only difference, I think it’s clear that fascism is more militaristic than socialism. So, perhaps I should rephrase my earlier statement: war is a fundamentally socialist undertaking–and it’s called fascism. Again, Goldberg makes something of a decent case that socialism and fascism have some similarities that people don’t know about. (Of course, he seems to think they’re almost interchangeable.)

I realize this post is somewhat disjointed and confusing–it’s a combination of a post I’d been working on for a while, plus the stuff about Goldberg’s book that I was reminded of by this–but what I’m ultimately trying to do here is figure out just what the hell fascism actually is, and how it relates to socialism. Anyone care to help? So far, the best explanation I’ve read is here.

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 I leave it to others to be witty about this. For now, I’ll just say that I’d like it if he would explain why the hell he didn’t get Donald Rumsfeld out right after the Abu Ghraib scandal. If you want my opinion, that is the single most disastrous decision of his administration.

Any questions you’d like to hear him answer? (But know that he won’t.)