Though Cowards Flinch

Mark R. Levin is a talk show host in America and is much considered by his critics to be like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh – idiotic but loud.

In 2009 he wrote a book called “Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto” in which he made a meager attempt at proving global warming to be false – at the despair even of fellow conservatives such as Jim Manzi, a contributing editor at National Review, who went on to call the book a case for “willful ignorance”.

But willful ignorance is the order of the day – and nowhere better can this be seen than in the very Republican circles that Levin treads.

Though this should not have affected Newt Gingrich’s standing – the candidate with a PhD! Surely as the heavyweight he would not water down his message – the people respect a guy who knows what he is doing, right?

With Herman Cain out the contest now (the author of the words uz-beki-beki-stan-stan) Gingrich is having to fill his place for dumbing down and, as aforementioned, willful ignorance.

So right on cue, at a church in Texas recently, he said:

“I have two grandchildren — Maggie is 11, Robert is 9,” he said.  “I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they’re my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American.”

A secular atheist country dominated by radical Islamists is not only a mouthful, but a bloody headfuck.

This is the same chap who was recently lampooned by conservative pundit George Will in the Washington Post for his “intellectual hubris” and “enthusiasm for intellectual fads” not to mention the charge that Newt “would have made a marvelous Marxist, [believing] everything is related to everything else and only he understands how.”

Now more than ever before should Paul Krugman’s words of wisdom about Gingrich should apply: “Newt Gingrich is a stupid person’s idea of what a smart person sounds like”.

It should be noted that after Manzi took issue with Levin’s book calling it willful ignorance, he then went on to say it was “an almost perfect example of epistemic closure.” Gingrich, I suppose, is only doing what is necessary of him.

Peter Hitchens said something on Question Time last Thursday that no politician could ever say: “thank goodness we don’t have a democracy in this country”. For him this means that above elected representatives should be a level of unelected scrutiny, in the form of peers or, as he was referring, a constitutional Monarchy.

There is also another school of thinking, positioned by a quote which may or may not have come from Fredreich Nietzsche, questioning thus: “Do everybody deserve the vote”?

One might easily contend, also, that in the event of true British democracy Katie Price or Jeremy Clarkson could be our prime minister – so in a way we should count our lucky stars that our democracy is only a shadow of its full meaning.

I, however, take a different view, being in favour of democracy on principle and not seeing it as a utility that ought to be used when it suits me. As tyrants fall in the Middle East I know full well about the possibility of there being a radical Muslim Brotherhood element to post-Arab Spring politics, but appreciate that this must be challenged with ideas and committed action.

It certainly shouldn’t bolster the idea that more Middle Eastern democracy will be bad in itself. It might open the door to a raft of bad choices, but the importance of the freedom to do that trumps the sort of risk which would utilise tyranny as a precautionary mode of government.

Regarding mass political intentions, take the UK as an example. According to an Ipso Mori poll studying 2010/11 matters of political importance, immigration was more focal than the NHS, crime/law and order and unemployment, and leagues away from the 1997 general election run up where immigration was of very minor importance indeed.

In February 2011, from a sample of 1004 adults, 37% felt that immigration was a very big problem, 37% believed it was a problem, 16% felt it was not a very big problem and 5% felt it was not a problem at all.

Further, according to a YouGov poll studying the same period, 35% of those who voted Conservative in 2010 appealed to family values over anything else, 41% voted for them on matters of traditional values (compared to just 19% for Labour) and 28% on patriotism – while only 6% voted for the Tories appealing to tolerance and diversity (which, actually, Cameron sought to highlight).

In his efforts to woo the small l liberals and the Guardian reading middle classes, David Cameron paid less attention to the things the Tories had always trumped Labour on during the campaign before the 2010 election (immigration being key) and developed his narrative around public services, the economy, the environment and international development.

But clearly Cameron is not naive here. As Tim Bale in a recent article for The Political Quarterly has drawn upon, Cameron suffered a tough loss in the Ealing and Southall by-election in 2007, looked weak after the so –called “Brown bounce” – then by no coincidence at all appeared on Newsnight, talking about how people were worried about the pressures of immigration on public services.

However after some time, he went back to concentrating on the small l liberals with articles for the Guardian and his softly softly approach to crime; and it didn’t pay. The election that should have been a walkover for Cameron was scuppered, meaning he relied on the Liberal Democrats to join a coalition with him.

He failed to secure an outright majority, not because he failed to modernise his party, a project which has been in the making since Hague and possibly before that (given a slight shelving during Howard’s time – which Cameron was actually key to, writing as he did the manifesto which concentrated heavily on issues regarding asylum, a subject on which the Tories were predictably stronger on, according to the public, than Labour, who did, however, lead on everything else), but because he neglected what I want to call the Tories’ “toxic constituency” – those for whom no previous Conservative voting typology (for example nationalist, federalist, atlanticist, European, free market, interventionist, liberal, collectivist) has ever concentrated on.

The camp, you could say, who vote in accordance with Daily Express headlines.

Like Blair with the left wing of his party, he knew they had no other choice, so could shift the party to the right in full knowledge that he’d still benefit from their vote. Cameron assumed he could toe the centre ground of politics and keep his toxic constituency. He was wrong.

But perhaps he has realised. In October Daniel Knowles, writer for the Telegraph, criticised Mr Cameron for what he called his dog-whistle politics on immigration. As he said in his article “Like Europe, immigration control is one of those things which it’s much easier to shout about than to change.” He concluded by saying “If he were truly a liberal Conservative, the Prime Minister would face up to that, instead of trying to distract us with Right-wing mythology.”

But maybe Mr Cameron is liberal. The point is, is his core vote liberal? Is Cameron thinking what they are thinking? Has the time come for Mr Cameron to shift rightwards in order to keep his eyes firmly on the prize of overall majority? Polls and e-petitions certainly suggest that if he took that course he may have a fighting chance, which is depressing for those, such as myself, with ideas to contrary – but such is the reality.

Of course Cameron and his party could try and change hearts and minds. But political parties are not there to deal with ideas; they are there to win elections. For now that is.

As may be known round these parts I love talking about conservative epistemic closure; and I do so for two reasons: a) it’s a good indicator of the Tory election strategy, as well as the state of play by our news pundits; and b) it’s a nod towards the small c conservatives, who I have more time for (and who abhor conservative epistemic closure more than I do).

In this week’s New Statesman the comedian Reginald D Hunter, on being asked what he thinks of the Republican party’s challengers to Barack Obama – replied:

The Republicans are suffering the aftermath of being infiltrated by something that looked like them, sounded like them and had a lot of money but didn’t share their core values. Genuine Republicans love a certain vision of America and, to that extent, they’re patriots. But something came into their churches and screamed, “Praise the Lord! More jails! The Mexicans are coming!” and it scared them. It happens in this country, too. Old people and middle-class people – if you scare the shit out of them, they vote.

Precisely.

He won’t tell me any details, but apparently Paul – yes, you know him, the one who writes on this blog – spoke to none other than Phillip Blond at the Labour Party conference, supposedly – and among other things – about me and my utilisation of the term “epistemic closure” to designate a good portion of the electorate who support the Conservative Party, despite being theoretically very removed from actual conservatism.

Paul has written some blog posts opposing my use of this term, so I can only imagine it was a critical conversation, but at least I got those two fogey’s talking.

Not one to blow my own, it turns out I’m not alone in thinking there is some parity in the Conservative Party and those for whom the charge “epistemically closed” had originally been levelled at by Julian Sanchez – those dreaded Tea Party folk in the US.

Four days ago, Patrick J. Buchanan of The American Conservative magazine – yes my favourite too – labelled Cameron the ‘Tea Party Tory’. (h/t Freddy Gray of the Speccie).

In fact, he goes further than I do. In my writings, I said Cameron is probably a limp-wristed leftie Tory who is able to sleep at night under the pretence he cares for the poor, but in order to be electable in his party, needs to appeal to a certain section of the party, what I call the epistemically closed section.

Buchanan, in fact, says that Cameron’s party’s cuts reflect exactly the ethos of the tea party – small government at a drastic scale.

No doubt as the money talks, Cameron’s soft social Toryism will be piss in the wind compared to the damage wielded by his cust agenda. Perhaps I didn’t go far enough in calling Cameron out for the epistemic closure inside his party.

Background articles:

The epistemic closure of the Conservative Party

Cameron will fail in reviving Conservatism

David Cameron and the Conservative identity crisis

Recently Paul (Mr Cotterill to you), in the comments thread to a post of mine on conservatism and epistemic closure, said that I’d probably at some stage detail some of my thoughts on the tea party movement. That’s what I am going to do now, albeit exploring another narrative simultaneously; that of black conservatism.

Unsurprisingly, some of the sentiments and placards that stand out from the tea party movement concern Obama’s race, nationality, religious background and myths about socialistic politics – all very low politics.

Some of the intellectual backbone of the movement is provided by such media personalities as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh – who the charge “epistemic closure” had originally been levelled at by Julian Sanchez. It remains almost impossible to separate the politics of conservative epistemic closure from the tea party movement therefore.

Another thing that springs to mind is Pastor Jones and the Koran burning, and the protests over Ground Zero Mosque, which drew support from that most disturbing blogger and tea partier Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs.

There are 61 posts on the above blog which are categorised as Obama’s Birth Certificate Forgery – which should tell you something about the content which appears there. Indeed, the tea party has become inseparable from ad hominem attack of Obama’s nationality, evoking criticisms that at the heart of the movement is racism. Further still, reports have emerged that the English Defence League are forging links with the tea party movement, which will add much fuel to the fire of such criticisms.

But it is of little surprise to me that certain black commentators have come out to deny the movement as ultimately a racist one. The Telegraph had an article on Saturday profiling Tom Scott – who will be the first black Republican congressman from the deep south in more than a century. In it, they quote him as saying, of the tea party movement, “this whole race issue is a diversion away from the real basic platform of the Tea Party”.

The Guardian has started to host a blog by a man called Lloyd Marcus, who is referred to on his homepage as a “Tea Party singer/songwriter, entertainer and speaker” as well as being a “black conservative”.

In a blog entry published last Friday entitled “Why I am a black tea party patriot opposed to Barack Obama” – a really terrible piece – he ends by saying:

…when I hear politicians, such as Barack Obama, pandering to the so-called poor of America, it turns my stomach. I’ve witnessed the deterioration of the human spirit, wasted lives and suffering that happens when government becomes “daddy”.

What is common to both commentators, and common to what Tom Scott called “the real basic platform of the Tea Party” is a dissatisfaction of high taxes and big state. Some of the patent crap about Obamacare having a death panel, uttered in lieu of research by Sarah Palin, was piss in the wind, but the movements’ opposition to universal healthcare was predicated on the idea that universal care is somehow un-American and at odds with the principle of low spending and less government.

In fact listening to some of the members of the movement who are dubious even of the Republican’s spending, views of whom Ed Pilkinton of the Guardian recently had the privilege of interacting with (see video here), one gets the sense that at heart of the movement is a kind of socially conservative, economically fiscal conservative/libertarianism exploiting a low politics platform to reach the hearts and minds of Obama-sceptics.

Therefore I should just clarify, that simply because the movement has black members, this in itself does not prove critics wrong about race – I’m not that stupid – but that there is a little more to the tea party than that – and in fact it hasn’t phased me at all that the movement appeals to black people.

In fact, it rather reminds me of an analysis of black conservatism by the US philosopher and academic Cornel West – whose voice rose once again in light of Obama’s presidency, after saying he wanted him to be a “progressive Lincoln” so that West can be the “Frederick Douglass to put pressure on him.”

It was the opinion of West, in his 1994 book Race Matters, that black conservatism gained much traction, among other things, as a response to a crisis in black liberalism. Black conservatives, for West, seemed inclined to support freedom movements abroad – Europe, Latin America, East Asia – but were disinclined to support the freedom movement in America.

Black conservatives according to West were rather scornful of affirmative action measures, but it is his contention that the well-heeled, middle class black American conservatives were actually biting the hand which fed them. 40 years ago, he stated, 50% of black teenagers in the US had agricultural jobs, 70% of those lived in the South, many jobs disappeared due to measures curbing industrialisation, and in 1980 15% of all black men reported no yearly earnings at all to the Census Bureau while the US army at the time was almost a third black.

In the same breath as questioning why black conservatives couldn’t see the obvious racial disparity in equality of opportunity, West also pours scorn on black liberalism limiting itself to in-fighting and petite squabbling, taking its eye off of the real crisis.

West contends that many viewed black liberalism as inadequate and black conservativism unacceptable, that is until black conservatism began to appeal to a classical liberalism in what West defines as a “post-liberal society and post-modern culture”.

Such a move is not alien to us in the UK; indeed listen to any Tory cabinet minister admit at the moment how the Conservatives are more radically liberal and supportive of the poor than Labour were.

The parallels in what West is saying and the sentiments of contemporary black conservatives and members of the tea party are that not only does Obama purposefully play down his white heritage, but that he is setting back the plight of blacks in society because of it; he represents a failure in black liberal leadership (or, in the words of Timothy Johnson, co-founder of the Frederick Douglass Foundation, a group that helps promote black Republican candidates, “His mother was white, his father was a person of colour but every time there’s a racial issue he plays the race card just the same as everyone else.”)

I don’t share this sentiment, but all it takes is the perception that Obama is setting black politics back, and thus arises the crisis of black leadership similar to one diagnosed by Cornel West.

In conclusion to this blog entry, which admittedly took many deviations, I will say that the tea party is marred by a pretty low level of epistemically closed politics, but that stripped down it is a PR-savvy version of the Taxpayers’ Alliance. In the process of its becoming in US politics, it will be a haven for many black people who feel, as Timothy Johnson does, that Obama is doing a disservice to black politics; this may well see a resurgence of black conservatism similar to that assessed by Cornel West – and through the same conditions too. It is incumbent upon Obama to take heed of this possibility, and counter the tactics of the tea party, not because it is racist, but precisely because it is opening itself to Obamasceptics of all stripes.

Unsurprisingly, the discussion on whether the Left within the Labour Party will reawaken has begun, in spite of Ed Miliband’s “left lurch” denial.

Contrary to what we’ve read in the papers, Miliband’s political direction will not rely on the union leg-up he received, largely because there will be advisors at the ready telling him not to let the tabloids have their cake and eat it too.

A nudge in political direction may occur depend upon who Miliband chooses as shadow chancellor, though it will not be sold as a political direction as such – and rightly so. Rather, the opposition should provide their analysis of the economy as necessary and sensible.

For me, out of the two main options – Balls’ growth model and the Darling inspired softer deficit halving programme – the growth argument is the one that holds the most traction. Therefore, I should like to see Ed Balls as shadow chancellor for the Labour Party.

As for a conscious political direction of the party under Ed Miliband, that path should be quite clear; though it will be somewhat disturbed by the right wing press – as I shall now discuss.

Miliband, when combating the “Red Ed” mantra during interviews, has insisted he stands for the centre ground in politics, but furthermore, wants to redefine what that means.

Alex Barker, in the FT, has noted that: “Britain’s new opposition leader [is] calling time on Tony Blair’s New Labour project and promising to “redefine” the political centre ground around reducing income inequality and raising wages for the poor”.

However, what is quite clear to me is that the redefinition of the centre ground has been influenced by the coalition government already.

In my discussion on these pages about the epistemic closure of the Conservative Party, what I have insisted is that today’s Tory administration is certainly no product of it. This, I conclude, is why it was unable to secure a larger proportion of the vote against an unpopular Labour government, because it spent more time alluding to social ills in a way usually the preserve of the left of centre, instead of those tacky things that pass for Conservative themes today; “uncontrolled” immigration, loss of “Christian” values, the relationship between crime and flailing discipline in schools, and the so-called handing of power to foreigners (i.e. the EU).

(Of course the Tories under Cameron did try and touch on this low politics, for example in Glasgow East, but has largely been characterised as a party, economically conservative, while socially liberal – particularly by Peter Hitchens, who recently described him as a smiling, willing prisoner of the Sixties Leftists).

Subsequently, many things usually considered centre left (crime often being linked to poverty, prison as one of many options for reform, the NHS as a good thing, bankers needing extra checks, not extra cheques), are almost universally accepted, even in the Conservative Party cabinet. Therefore, what goes for centre ground today has been shifted.

There are many strings to Miliband’s bow that he may now reconsider, or saturate rhetoric on, so as to counter the Mcarthy-esque media loons, and petit names dreamt up by idiots such as “deficit-denying, union-controlled, u-turning, decision-ducker” (do see also Panorama on Lord Cashpoint tonight). Those strings include salary differentials in the private sector; opposing VAT rises; becoming tough on greedy banker bonuses and what Polly Toynbee last night called boardroom kleptocracy; reforming the way in which a university education is paid for, where soon leading institutions could introduce fees of about £7,000.

Socially, the consensus marks a progressive shift, which defines the political centre as further to left than at any other time where the Tories have been in government. Where the importance really lays is in the economy, where in reflection of George Osborne’s cutting agenda, the moderate centre might depict something akin to the Darling inspired deficit reduction lite. In order to explore anything more radical than both these options – which ought to be preferable – there is no greater of enemy of the opposition leader than the right wing press.

Ed Balls, in a Guardian comment, made note that the Labour Party were defeated in 1983, not only because of a split, but because the argument on the economy was weak. Frankly, the party has returned to this position, only now it is loose talk by the right which could shape how effective Ed Miliband will be as leader of the opposition.

For this reason, and for the sake of the economy, it is my plea to fellow leftists not to dedicate all their time and energy exploring how meek the leadership of Ed Miliband is, but to focus on countering the low argument made by the right.

Tony Blair chose to counter right wing press by appeasing them and becoming rhetorically further to the right than they were. But his politics have come to an end. It is high time Labour took up the proper fight against the right wing media once more.

American columnists speak at the moment of conservative “epistemic closure” to describe the debasing of modern conservatism’s glorious legacy, first used in this context by libertarian writer and Economist blogger Julian Sanchez as short-hand for “ideological intolerance and misinformation”. The idea is to show that conservatism has hit a wall and is appealing to low, base politics of xenophobia or ad hominem attack, as opposed to its rich, great tradition.

British conservatism has had a fair deal of “epistemic closure” in recent years also, and it’s something for the left to consider when we vent our criticisms on the right wing. When we think of conservatism today we might erroneously think of Thatcher and Major – but they were merely leaders of the conservative party.

Those in the conservative camp of the Conservative party who believe the primary lie of neo-liberal capitalism – that it opens up a space for us all to become a little bit rich, and turns the fixed triangle shaped class system into a flexible circle of freedoms – would’ve hated what Thatcher was doing by listening to those woolly Austrian and Chicago-school libertarians.

We know now they had little to worry about.

But the Thatcher/Major legacy, truth be told, will be less seen in the scheme of things as expressions of conservatism, and seen more as a new and epochal means to counter working class empowerment and intolerance of the foreign other.

For this reason I had some respect for Respublica and Phillip Blond. Aside from all bloated, first year philosophy course, flower eating nonsense that he talks about on virtue and politicians, what Blond did succeed in doing was to show that conservatism in this country was not the sum of the Thatcher/Major epistemic closure, but something that could be committed to community and civic participation, and not simply at the beck and call of the markets (which is rightly seen as a perversion of conservatism of the type Disraeli would have aligned himself to).

Cameron was keen to pal-up with Blond in the early days, with that timeless gag about voting blue was to go green. Though with Blond to vote blue was to go “red”. With Blond’s hat-tipping to one nation conservatism, and Cameron’s “progressivism” (by which has always meant an emotional relationship with the NHS, and therefore informing the decision to keep it) the Tories had the chance to sweep up the centre ground and remain Europhobic enough to keep the right from joining the UK Independence party. In short, drop the nasty party image.  Cameron had five years to do that before the election – and he failed.

The right wing of his party, Redwood for example, might be silent now, but give it time.

If I was interested in politics to score points then I, as a Labour supporter and socialist, would not care a hoot about conservatism. But this is not the case. Conservatism is not the sum total of xenophobia, big business and nastiness; this is its own expression of epistemic closure. But what almost five years of David Cameron as leader of the opposition and leader of the Conservative party has shown is that the return to real conservatism has botched. And this does not bade well considering the conditions in which that project was tested – 13 years out of office, a melee of leaders of all shapes and sizes, a global recession, and still they couldn’t exploit this enough – to think everyone in their camp assumed it would be a walkover.