On Sun, 21 Feb 2010, SA wrote:
> I see what you mean, but I don't think there's any contradiction between
> wanting the "progressives" to get stronger than the "centrists" and wanting
> the progressives to get less dumb.
I certainly hope not!
But there does seem to be a contradiction between "admiring the right for their tenacity in the pursuit of crazy principles" and hating such crazy tenacity on our side.
My guess is there were at one point just as many 9/11 truthers as there now are birthers, and they believed just as crazy things about the then president. But we wanted nothing to do with them. For good reasons! But there's something wrong in saying we admire on the right what we hate on the left. We don't admire it at all. We only admire its results. We want nothing to do with its methods.
> Actually, the National Review crowd faced exactly the same problem in
> the early 60's. How they winced at the nonsense their grassroots allies
> would come up with - e.g., fluoridation of the water. In the end, they
> managed to exercise enough intellectual leadership to subordinate that
> stuff to a less frivolous program.
I'd love to hear more of how that worked -- is that part of what you'll be writing on?
But you sum up the difference right there: they "wince" but don't tell them they're stupid and wrong. They bite their tongue and ride their crazy tiger. We don't. And don't want to -- you and Doug least of all.
> I also think the left is somehow different from the right. If the there
> were a left surge it would be focused on some real movement somewhere
> (not just some ponytailed, t-shirt wearing fanatics), which would impart
> a measure of seriousness to the larger enterprise. I don't know, I'm
> just speculating.
That's exactly what we should hope. But that's exactly my point: such a thing would be different in essence from the right. They are not a model.
Our problem is not that we don't imitate and learn from them. It's that we don't want what they've got. But haven't come up with an antidote.
Michael