The Community of the Smugly Indifferent
by KTKAugust 22nd, 2008
“Cernig”, of Newshoggers, riffs on conservatism from a Scots/British perspective, seeing in it (not surprisingly) a strong Classical Liberal case for Obama and against McCain and the Republican party. It’s a fascinating reminder that there used to be such a thing as principled conservatism (and apparently in the UK it’s reviving, now that Thatcher is thankfully gone), and that any reasonable version of it has to include much of what liberalism has, slowly, won over the years. Go there to see why Obama is a better and truer conservative than McCain, and why he owes that to liberalism.
The Community of The Realm is the idea that it takes all of a people to make a nation and that in that sense even a King is only one of the many. . . .
Where most conservatives err is in believing that economics takes precedence to morality or that economics can regulate morality just like any other market. The utilitarians - inspired by [Adam Smith and] that other great Scot, J.S. Mill - were to point this error out very well (and indeed Mill became far more of an influence on the Founders of America than Smith ever was). Smith was never that dumb. He himself advocated for a Government that was active in sectors other than the economy: he advocated for public education of poor adults; for institutional systems that were not profitable for private industries; for a judiciary; and for a standing army. . . .
As a consequence of that Scottish pragmatism, a strong British conservative tradition that includes Smith, Benjamin Disraeli (One Nation) and the younger Winston Churchill that predates both Marx and Thatcherite/American Republican thugonomics evolved . . . but that tradition never made its way into the “I’m Alright, Jack” variety of American conservativism exemplified by the modern Republican Party. All Republicanism today is interested in are negative freedoms - the freedom to be without government supervision as much as is concommitant with public safety. But the British variety, like more left-wing political theory, also concerns itself with the need for the government to provide positive freedoms through legislation - such things as rent assistance, food stamps and other social programs enable the people to not be free to starve, go cold or go without shelter.
And here’s where I think the crucial difference between barrack Obama and John McCain lies. Obama, although doubtless fond of rhetoric which he may not deliver upon, seems to really get the Community of The Realm. “Eight Houses” Mccain doesn’t, as when he backed predatory lenders over the people suffering real privation because of the credit crunch those lenders created for themselves. Neither do George Bush or the current mainstream of Republicanism, which is why we’ve seen such a strong push for an Imperial Presidency this last eight years.
As America is asked to choose between the Community of The Realm or the Imperial Presidency, then it would do well to emulate the Founding fathers, who brought their studies of Mill, Adams and the Scottish Declaration of Independence to the fore as they drew up their own and the subsequent Constitution.
Categories: Culture, Economics, General, How Capitalism Will Ruin You, Libertarian Problem Solving, News & Current Events, Politics |
You’re kidding, right? Cernig doesn’t know what he’s talking about regarding either Scottish or American history. He’s also lying. What he’s calling ‘“I’m Alright, Jack” variety of American conservatism’ is an attempt to use a movie, a British one at that (which makes sense, since Cernig is an immigrant from Britain, and he knows nothing of America), to describe concepts he knows nothing about: America and conservatism.
What’s better is he tries to say that the concepts he promotes, what he calls British conservative tradition, are pre-Marx, and cites Disraeli and Churchill; Disraeli was known to be a huge promoter of expanding the British Empire (imperialism, which Marxists claim is evil), and Cernig doesn’t bother linking his claim about Churchill. I’m guessing that because Cernig is a sycophant of Marx and Marxism, he will say what he does without proof because he can.
SteveIL:
None of that seems to make any sense. I have no idea what you’re talking about, and I suspect you have no idea what Cernig’s talking about.
To take it from the top: “I’m alright, Jack” is a common expression, mostly British, sometimes heard in the US; it implies that the speaker has what they themselves need and doesn’t care about anyone else’s needs. (Note its appearance in the Pink Floyd sendup of rock star greed, “Money”, from Dark Side of the Moon: “Money: It’s a gas / I’m all right, Jack / Keep your hands off of my stack / Money: It’s a hit / Don’t give me that do-goody good bullshit”.) I don’t know what movie you’re referring to, but it’s almost undoubtedly not the source of the expression (consider that they wouldn’t have titled a movie that if the expression wasn’t already known).
In its canonical form, the expression is a perfect encapsulation of US Republican greed and indifference. (See Grover Norquist on reducing social services to the point that you can “drown the government in a bathtub”, or John McCain on reducing taxes for “middle class” people who make up to $5 million per year.)
Regarding Marx, you simply don’t seem to understand what Cernig said. As he notes, there is a certain perspective on conservatism in Britain that has been around for a long time, stretching back at least to Adam Smith and Benjamin Disraeli (and note that if it does go back that far, then it is at least contemporaneous with Marx). His claim is that it is a kind of centrist conservatism that emphasizes both individual freedom and the obligations of the community to the individual, which he then contrasts with both Marx and Thatcher and the US Republicans. Marx is on the left and Thatcher and the GOP are on the right: his version of conservatism is in the middle, get it? Marx emphasized societal provision for personal needs; Thatcher and Reagan emphasized letting the poor die in the streets gnawing the flesh off each other’s bones. The Community of the Realm, as he explains it, would reject both those options, in favor of robust personal freedom with some guarantee of at least basic necessities.
He’s clearly not a Marxist, not that that matters other than as yet another stupid catchword for the right to whip up canned emotions with. We know he’s not a Marxist because he explicitly cites Marx as one of the things he contrasts to his own ideology. By the same token, he’s not a Thatcherite. (Why did you not accuse him of being one? He mentioned her in the same sentence, literally two words after naming Marx. By your lights, that makes him her “sycophant”.)
I don’t know how he feels about imperialism, and I can’t imagine why you think the fact that Disraeli favored it would be evidence against Disraeli’s being a conservative. (Also, the fact that Disraeli was twice elected Prime Minister by the British Conservative Party is another clue.)
Whether Disraeli, or Churchill, or any of the others was an explicit advocate of “The Community of the Real”, I don’t know; I’m willing (provisionally) to believe they did, because Cernig says they did and he appears to know something about the matter while you obviously know nothing. It hardly matters, since Cernig’s point was the concept itself; who did or didn’t espouse it was merely by way of illustration.
Obviously again, the concept of the Community of the Realm is compatible with British imperialism, since it arose within the British empire, on the part of conservatives. At any rate, Cernig didn’t actually mention imperialism - he mentioned the US “Imperial Presidency”, which is something very different.
I really can’t tell what points you think you have proven, since you don’t make any recognizable argument and most of your sentences are not actually directed at anything Cernig wrote. To paraphrase a movie that may be more relevant here: “You keep using words. I do not think they mean what you think they mean.”
The Scottish declaration of independence.
The one from 1320.
The ones warning a British King, written by the rich and the religiously inclined rulers. The ones written by unelected nobility, saying that they’d replace a bad Scottish king by force.
That’s a relevant predictor about modern-day concepts of democratic rights.
The Chomsky-ized version of Adam Smith this individual presents is so far from the any of the man’s writings or presentation, in any version, that the blogger almost looks to be self-parodying if Chomsky didn’t do it better first.
Does this individual actually read the books and texts, or did he or she just pick up the popular version on the television?
Beyond that, I’ll try not to rant about the idiocy that is , but do you really want to take political advice on freedom from a bunch of people who think collectivism on the matter is such a huggy bunch perfect idea. This is, need I remind you, the same place where a written negative right to bear arms and an unwritten positive right to feel safe have resulted in a pleasant combination where violent crime has stayed stable or raising, while men are banned from carrying fucking candy. They do feel safe. This is the same country where the unwritten positive right to not be offended and the written negative right to free speech have lead to the strictest libel laws on the continent — even truth is no absolute defense, as those calling men with spent convictions ex-convicts have found. People are still offended, but they get money in return.
I think there’s an underlying issue with either your definition of freedom or rights, or mine. Given that the libertarian definition prevents the government from doing things to you, while your version appears to mandate that a government force individual A to provide X to individual B who may or may not want X, I think it’s a safe bet to say that word you keep using… I do not think it means, what you think it means.
It’s not the ridiculous nature of the statement. It’s the friendly phrasing. “Extra crispy” is a bit understated a term, isn’t it?
It’s the friendly phrasing. “Extra crispy” is a bit understated a term, isn’t it?
You want that super-sized?
Am I the only one who has failed entirely to understand the meaning of “extra crispy” here?
It’s been less than a week, people.
The movie Stevie mentioned was a 1959 comedy called “I’m All
Right, Jack” starring Peter Sellers. So even if the movie had originated the phrase (which it didn’t; it’s described as “a traditional English saying”), it’s been around nearly 50 years. A quick check of my computer files reveals that I’ve been using the expressed for at least 17 years.
Seems to me that Stevie’s xenophobia is showing here.
As for gatt:
The Scottish declaration of independence. … written by unelected nobility, saying that they’d replace a bad Scottish king by force. That’s a relevant predictor about modern-day concepts of democratic rights.
1. Cernig wasn’t talking about “modern-day concepts of rights” but about the concept of “the commons.” In that light, the fact that even then the king was the king of the Scots (the people) rather than of Scotland (the physical place) was entirely relevant.
2. As for being a “relevant predictor,” considering that this was nearly 700 years ago, I’d say yeah, it is. The concept of replacing - forcibly if necessary - a bad ruler was good enough for the Declaration of Independence:
“That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”
But I guess we have to dismiss that document because it was written by some rich elitists who were elected, when they were elected at all, usually by white male landowners who sometimes had to belong to a certain church.
The Community of the Smugly Indifferent…
Bookmarked your post over at Blog Bookmarker.com!…