My friends often wonder why I identify as a conservative in light of the existence of loons such as Pat Robertson. The problem from where I stand is that lunacy is found to your Left and your Right. My friends to the Left are often indulgent or ignorant of their loons to their Left, though they have a laser-like focus on the loons of the Right. Consider this piece in The New York Times Magazine, Oakland, the Last Refuge of Radical America. The “right-thinking” liberal often decries the know-nothing sentiments of the Creationists and their ilk, but what about the heads-in-the-sand attitudes of these “radicals”:
It is, in a word, gentrification, and what’s most striking about its arrival in Oakland is that it’s just now getting there — that the city has existed for so long as a kind of living museum of 1970s radicalism, its culture of militancy, poverty, crime rates and dysfunctional government all conspiring to delay what now seems inevitable. “For years, Oakland has been the black hole in the middle of the great galaxy of Northern California as it shimmered its way into the electronic age,” says Richard Walker, an urban-geography professor who recently retired from the University of California, Berkeley.
Oakland is not representative. Economically dynamic cities such as Palo Alto are moderately Left-Democrat in their orientation for cultural reasons. But there is part of the Left-coalition which is simply in denial about the reality that the activism, protest, and frankly parasitic lifestyles which they choose to lead are dependent on the market economy which they decry. This is no different from the social conservative who is wary of science in their rhetoric, but will always avail himself of the newest gadgets and best medical care.
My answer is that there are enough controversial political issues that I can’t expect anyone to dis/agree with me 100%. Federal politics has become a one-dimensional spectrum, in which you can pretty much infer a congressman’s position on abortion rights, environmentalism, gun ownership rights, labor unions, affirmative action, universal health care and military spending, by knowing their position on any one of them, even though on their face they don’t have much to do with each other. I know plenty of real people who are pro-gun rights and labor unions, or environmentalist right-to-lifers, although these combinations are rare among politicians.
State-level politics can get more complicated. Both houses of the Alabama legislature had been controlled by Democrats until the 2010 elections, even though in 2004 GW Bush got his highest percent vote there of any state east of the Mississippi.
(BTW, I’m enthused about the nomination of Mitt Romney. His brand of conservatism is more along the lines of City Journal than the 700 Club, and won’t embarrass an educated suburbanite to vote for him. He also won’t cite the doctrines of his silly cult as a justification for political positions.)
I should have thought the purely descriptive/empirical question would be trivial – anyone who’s not completely kool-aid soaked can see there are nuts in Berkeley, or see the bite in a funny SWPL type post, or see that there are plenty of cases where liberal positions have ossified into dogma.
The more interesting (to me, at any rate) Pat Robertson (or Glenn Beck) type challenge is the moral one. Do you actually find as many people adhering to views that you consider -immoral- on the left as on the right?
I think it’s fair to say that there are loons on every extreme of the spectrum. I think what frustrates so many Generation X/Y social liberals is that the loons on the right seem to be far more likely to impose their ideologies on the nation as a whole than the aging hippies you cite in Oakland. While not coincidentally claiming to want government out of their lives.
I don’t care one bit about morality in politics, I think it’s a hand that’s been overplayed. I care if a position is rationally defensible or not, not if it makes someone feel good. That goes for both the left and the right, both make entirely indefensible claims and place their justification on religion or the liberal agenda, neither of which impress me in the least.
What I wouldn’t do for more rational politicians.
… the social conservative who is wary of science in their rhetoric, but will always avail himself of the newest gadgets and best medical care.
Guilty as charged, but perhaps by reason of insanity.
You may have been thinking of social conservatives who have religious motivations — sometimes called the Christian Right. But there are social conservatives such as myself with no religious agenda whatsoever, who both embrace science (I’m a former computer network engineer, avid techie and gadget freak, and a firm believer in heart transplants, for instance) and fear it (I think there are social consequences of “transhumanism” we will not like and I wouldn’t want to see a robot become President {go ahead, laff … but in some circles, that is contemplated}). More realistically, I think “human colonies on Mars” is one of the biggest government hornswoggles ever devised (at least let the private sector do it, if it can afford it). So it’s all a bit more complicated than the picture you give above. What I, as a social conservative, object to about science is its potential to de-humanize humans. I don’t like its ability to look at a woman’s ovaries as a spare parts farm, because it reduces the value of the (potential) human being or embryon to its mechanical minimum so much that life becomes cheap. There is not enough intellectual and political space (not to mention moral space) between using conceived unborn human beings as disposable sources of cheap DNA and eating old people for lunch. This might sound like a crank comment (yes I’m being dramatic), but I do not want to slip down the slope to a world where nobody can tell the difference. If it’s done right, science is valuable and beneficial things can be done with it that nobody but a religious zealot could object to. But the scientific attitude does not naturally accommodate ethics; everything in the universe is a machine at some level. But ethics observes the non-mechanistic humanity in humans as a premise, not an afterthought and I’d rather live in a world like that, than in hubcap heaven. LOL …
the aging hippies you cite in Oakland.
does the individual in the picture look like an aging hippy?
However I do agree with your point that anti-capitalist neo-hippies could not survive without the capitalist prosperity around them.
Oakland is black, Hispanic, asian, and white folks are a minority usually a reason why a town is far left. People will think of Poland but most far left towns started before whites got into the act as black towns. Granted, even in a Republican town with the growth of his panics and Hispanic gangs and Hispanic radicals along with Occupy Anaheim had 20 business vandalized because leftist and Hispanic gangs were mad at the cops. Anaheim is run by Republicans because the poor Hispanics usually don’t vote or are too young,. They rioted over a police that shot and killed an Hispanic gang member in Anaheim.
Portland. Most older far left towns were more black like New York, Chicago, San Fran was a rarely in the old days.
Actually, the Occupy bunch are basically communists and anarchists. On one website there was a link to the International Workers of the world and yes they are worst than the Christian Right. In Cuba Castro has for decades had some gays in labor camps. So the left can once in power be more intolerant than the right. International Workers of World is an old communists anarchist group.
Well actually Jesse Helms did not favor Ronald Reagan’s legalization of 2 to 3 million illegal immigrants like a lot of the religious right does now like Richard Land and company. Personality what destroy California was illegal immigration after what happen in Anaheim since they would have been far fewer gangs in Anaheim if their parents or grandparents that came here illegality were unable to got a job.
Reading the book Black book of Communists: Many young people think of the right being intolerant even the religious right is more tolerant than the hard core secular left. Castro had a purge of homosexuals who were forced to admit their vice and had to give it up or face dismissal from their job with the University of Havana and Imprisonment. Granted, the Republican Platform of Texas has an anti-Sodomy statement but how many gays are force to admit their sexual behavior and lose their jobs and fact imprisonment.
Another thing Occupy is in counties that you would not think of 20 years ago, i think the rise of illegal Hispanics and their children who when they are political like LA Raza and so forth has lead to a new radicalism. Occupy La, Occupy Oc and Occupy San Diego have a blend of white radicals for the Hispanic underdog class on their websites. The Gang member shooting in Anaheim broght Occupy and radical Hispanic groups together with Mexican gangs in Anaheim. Most of Texas’s Occupy is whites and Hispanic radicals in Houston, Dallas, El Paso and so forth. They do the jobs people don’t but like immirgant groups a century earlier the left motivates the situation.