Daily Archives: August 15, 2017

Last November, a week after the election, a liberal political theorist at Columbia University published an essay in the New York Times titled The End of Identity Liberalism.

Authored by Mark Lilla, the essay was a direct rebuke of Hillary Clintons campaign. Clinton was at her best and most uplifting when she spoke about American interests in world affairs and how they relate to our understanding of democracy, Lilla wrote. But too often she would slip into the rhetoric of diversity, calling out explicitly to African-American, Latino, L.G.B.T. and women voters.

By appealing to specific groups rather than the country as a whole, Lilla argued, the campaign alienated white working-class voters and thats why Clinton lost.

Critics responded immediately. Slates Michelle Goldberg said Lillas reduction of identity politics confuses the absurd excesses of political correctness with race and gender politics themselves. Voxs Matthew Yglesias wrote that People have identities, and people are mobilized politically around those identities. There is no other way to do politics than to do identity politics.

Lillas response was to turn his essay into a short book, which is out this week and titled The Once and Future Liberal. The book extends his argument to include the entire Democratic Party and the American left.

I reached out to Lilla to talk about the book, which he says offers a path forward. Our conversation, posted below, explores what that path looks like and why it might be more complicated than Lilla suggests.

Why write this book? What are you trying to achieve?

If there's one message I want to get across in the book, it's that you cannot help anyone if you don't hold power. To hold power in a democratic system means winning elections, and in a federal system like ours, it means winning elections everywhere geographically. It's a fantasy to think that we can retreat to our base, hold the two coasts, and somehow hope for the best.

The numbers are very bad. We've had two pretty good presidents since Ronald Reagan was elected, but they were stymied at almost every turn by a recalcitrant Congress and Supreme Court. During the Obama years, we lost over 900 seats in state legislatures. The Republican Party now controls both governorships and statehouses in 24 states. If they win two more, they can call a constitutional convention. This is serious stuff.

Why have Democrats been swept out of power?

Let's talk first about where we are right now. A large segment of the population now has an allergic reaction to the left. A lot of things have gone into that the way we talk, the way we campaign, the issues we stress, what Fox News does. Id say two-thirds or maybe more of the country is unreachable. Liberalism has simply become a dirty word.

The task isn't to deliver a moral judgment on whether appealing to identity is a good or bad thing. We're talking about trying to seize power in this country.

Right, but how did that happen?

Lets go back to Reagan. He was elected on an anti-government message if you get the government out of the way, everything will go well. There's no such thing as society. There are just individuals, families, church groups. Politics and government really have no dignity, and they're the problem.

At that moment, liberals needed to offer a political vision that said, "We're not just individuals. We're actually a republic based on certain values. We stick together. That's what Americans do, and we use government to help each other and to build something together."

Instead, they started talking about groups. Not only was there a shift from coming together as citizens to different identity groups, but also there was a shift from electoral politics to movement politics.

Explain the logic of movement politics and how its different from electoral politics or institutional politics?

The logic of movement politics, especially identity politics, is not the logic of electoral politics. Social movements are effective when they focus on one issue, push as hard as they can on that issue, and ignore other issues. For 30 years, from the 1950s until 1980, social movements had a big effect on this country. That's where the action was.

Since 1980, movement politics has been dead. What has really changed the country is the electoral strategy of the Republican Party and conservatives, along with conservative media. A focus on groups, a focus on ourselves, and a focus on social movements rather than winning elections in out-of-the-way places, combined with campus politics and Hollywood politics, simply turned off a good part of this country.

Part of what we need to do right now is to calm that allergy down. We need to have a message that helps people see that the principles we stand for will actually improve their lives and offer an inspiring vision of what we share and what we can do together.

I think thats a little naive, and Ill explain why in a minute, but lets linger on Reagan. Reagan played the identity game too. Alongside the rainbows and the sunshine and the shining city on a hill was a whole lot of racial pandering and dog-whistling rhetoric about welfare queens. So the Republicans won by employing the very tactics youre now denouncing on the left.

It works for them. It doesn't work for us. It's that simple. It's killing us. The task isn't to deliver a moral judgment on whether appealing to identity is a good or bad thing. We're talking about trying to seize power in this country.

The other difference is that when Republicans signal in that way, when they use dog whistles, as you say, they are not calling out explicitly to groups. We do that constantly. It's the first thing we think of. It's our mentality now, to immediately think about how different groups are affected, about our social differences.

Some of that you have to do, but we do that in public in a way that leaves the impression, and it's not an entirely false one, that we have no picture of what we share as a country and how we can pull everyone together to achieve something. We don't have a sense of a national destiny and a national project because we can't stop talking about our differences.

Lets not speak in generalities here. Can you cite an example of a platform or a candidate or a political strategy on the left that typifies what youre talking about?

The Women's March is a very good example of this. It was the brainchild of Teresa Shook, a white woman from Hawaii. She posted something on Facebook saying, "It's outrageous that this man is president, given the way he has talked about and treated women. Why don't we march on Washington?" A very simple idea, one that could have brought together women from every walk of life in this country, every group, including men and families.

Immediately she was criticized for the name of the march, because it had echoes with black women's marches and the Million Man March, and because there weren't people of color on the organizing committee. They didn't feel represented. She should have said, Look, this is about one issue only. If you want to come, come. If you dont, dont. But we liberals are susceptible to this kind of pressure, and so she caved.

All of this played out in public. Everyone could see this happening. For me, it was just a typical example of how we can't keep our eyes on the ball, how were susceptible to these activists.

Id argue that Republicanism has been intellectually bankrupt for a very long time. Theyre not selling substance its fearmongering and puffery and bullshit narratives about rugged individualism. I dont see them offering a positive vision of a shared future. I see them funneling dark money more strategically than Democrats, I see them exploiting the media ecosystem better than Democrats, I see them gerrymandering more effectively than Democrats.

We are partly responsible for the fact that the Republicans have been successful at gerrymandering. Why? Because we haven't focused on winning state and local elections in every corner of the country.

We have a daddy complex about the presidency. We think if we can just capture the presidency, then daddy, whether it's a man or a woman, is going to deliver all the goodies. When daddy can't, because the party doesn't control Congress, doesn't control the Supreme Court, is not present in so many states, then we complain about his compromising and becoming impure. It's a recipe for losing and marginalization.

The other thing is that Fox News and conservative radio have managed to take characteristics that we have, exaggerate them, and turn us into a kind of specter. This specter, for people who don't come from our classes, don't share our education, don't share all of our values, is something that leaves them with the impression that we have contempt for them, and they have developed contempt for us. We're unable just to make people feel culturally comfortable.

If we can just stop thinking and talking about ourselves, and sacrifice some of our sacred cows, and start focusing on articulating in a very simple way the kind of America we want to build, we can become the country we ought to be

Culturally comfortable is a curious phrase. Where do you draw the line between giving people something they're comfortable with and just capitulating to the sort of nativist rhetoric that helped sweep someone like Trump to office?

The word capitulation is the problem. That's movement politics thinking. People in movement politics are very worried about getting their aprons dirty, and I am sick and tired of noble defeats. We have to get dirty. This is a struggle for power. This is not a seminar. This is not a therapy session. We are out there struggling for the future of this country.

So yes, we have to emphasize certain things and not emphasize other things. We compromise. We try to remain silent on things that will be too contentious. It's not about being morally pure. It is about seizing power so you can help the people you care about. That's all that matters right now.

I guess it's a question of how much do you have to compromise rhetorically in order to seize power? If it means papering over injustices or ignoring racism, a lot of people wont accept that and Id argue they shouldnt.

Sure. As liberals, we're worried about all those things. We're worried about racism. We're worried about homophobia. We're worried about single mothers who, because of work, have to travel long distances and don't have child care. Those sorts of things we care about. This is what charges us up and makes us want to win power.

But when you're in an election, you're trying to convince someone else to join your effort. It revolves around the voter and where the voter is. It's not about self-expression. It's about persuasion. When you're trying to persuade someone, you try to figure out what will hook them. What we need is a vision that focuses on what we want to build together and our basic principles.

Politics is about the assertion of values in the public space, and values are bound up with personal identity in all kinds of ways. So its not clear to me that something like a post-identity politics is even possible.

One reason why you might believe that is that we live in a highly identity-conscious country right now. This was not the case when I was young. This is not the way people talked and thought about themselves, certainly as Democrats. We talked about issues that we were worked up about, but we weren't talking about ourselves. We've helped to create this world in which everything seems to be about identity, and now we face the problem of winning back the country where our voters are so sensitive about this.

There's one way in which you're right, and that is that all politics at some level is about identification. But thats not quite the same thing as identity. We think of identity almost as a person inside us, this little thing we cultivate that is the real us. Identification is about getting outside of yourself. I identify with this country as a citizen because of its institutions and its principles. I identify with the Democratic Party not because of my identity or the identity of those who belong to it, but because historically it has been the party that has defended the well-being and the rights of the vast middle of this country.

I want to challenge this notion that identity has to be so important. This is a historical blip. It's become our obsession. There have been times when that was not the case, and there hopefully will be a time when we're not thinking of identity as this little inner thing. We want to help people identify as Democrats and identify as citizens. That's how we reach other people.

Is it possible to defend the cultural status of traditionally marginalized groups without also alienating Americans that are uncomfortable with the elevated cultural status of those groups?

I think it's crucial that we do it. Let me give you an example. I am not a black motorist. I've never been stopped by the cops time and time again, been searched and been humiliated. I can't fully know what that is like, but I want to persuade someone who's indifferent to someone who's experienced that that they ought to care.

How do I do that? Do I tell them they're racist? Do I deliver an indictment of our police force? Do I offer an indictment of our history? No. I've got to appeal to something so that this person identifies with the motorist. Race isn't going to be the way that you help a white person identify with a black motorist.

No, what you say is that every citizen should be equally protected by the law. Certain people shouldn't get special protection, and other people shouldn't have to bear certain burdens. It is simply an outrage when some of our citizens are singled out in this way.

Heres what defenders of the identity left would say: The liberalism you praise, the post-WWII liberalism of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was myopic. It achieved a lot of economic progress, but that progress went disproportionately to white males. The plight of minorities and other oppressed groups was an afterthought. This was a moral failure the cultural left sought to correct.

No doubt about it. The economic prosperity was not equally shared, and race is a big part of that story. We now understand how rules were written so that African Americans could not benefit from a lot of the programs that were in the New Deal. That was a scandal. The reason it happened is because to even get these programs passed for anybody, it was necessary to make compromises with Dixiecrats.

Let's say that's the situation you're in. How do you change that? You have to reaffirm the principles on which the New Deal was built and make sure that we live up to the promise of equal citizenship. It's important to talk about people who've been left behind. But if you want to actually help the people whove been left behind, you have to win elections.

The other thing is that Fox News and conservative radio have managed to take characteristics that we have, exaggerate them, and turn us into a kind of specter

Its obvious that liberals arent going to win by flattering the Joe Six-Packs of the world. So what do they do? What story do they tell?

We need some introspection. We need to ask ourselves, "What do we actually stand for?" I think that what we've always stood for are two principles: solidarity among citizens and equal protection under the laws.

Most of the concerns of Bernie Sanders progressives can be put under the rubric of solidarity. Most of the concerns of ethnic groups, racial groups, and gender groups can be put under the principle of equal protection under the law.

Maybe there are other principles we also stand for. Maybe we want to give these things different labels, but we need to look within and get back in touch, not with our identities and the groups we need to please but with fundamentally what we're about.

Im not sure how appealing a truly liberal message would be in a hyper-individualistic society like ours. Things have changed. This isnt the world of FDR. Theres a deep libertarianism baked into our national consciousness that leaves little space for a language of obligation and social duty.

I share your view of where we are. I simply don't see any other way out. I also note that no one has tried. It's very interesting that since Reagan, not a single president of ours has asked us to make a sacrifice.

What I'm looking for is a Democratic candidate who will say, All I can offer you is blood, sweat, and tears. This is not Christmas. There are no presents under the tree. We are facing a national emergency in this country, economically and socially. For the next four to eight years you may have to pay more taxes. You may be asked to volunteer, because your country needs you. We're all in this country together, and we need to lock arms. We're going to set up programs to retrain people. We're going to set up language programs for immigrants, and we're going to ask young people to go to small towns across America and help families rebuild their lives. I'm asking you for a sacrifice.

You write that our politics has been dominated by two ideologies that encourage and even celebrate the unmaking of citizens. What do you mean by that, and why is it important?

We need to have a message that helps people see that the principles we stand for actually will improve their lives and offer an inspiring vision of what we share and what we can do together

Republicans and Democrats, or rather liberals and conservatives, have unmade citizens in different ways. The anti-political message of Reagan that I mentioned essentially offered a picture of society that was of small towns, small church groups, families, and entrepreneurs. That was the grid for looking at the country. When you see the country that way, you assume the government is the problem. It's okay for people to cooperate. It's good that they cooperate, but they have to figure that out themselves.

Oddly enough, Republicans who have been very bellicose from Reagan on have never really spoken about why, as citizens, we have to sacrifice ourselves for the national interest. Instead, they prefer to run up a deficit, pay people to be soldiers, and send them on their way. The whole rhetoric of citizenship dropped out of the right in the '80s.

The left has lost the ability to do that for the reasons we've been talking about, because we think of people in terms of groups. We also think of ourselves very much as self-determining individuals. We get to define who we are. Everything is malleable. Our identities are malleable, and so we don't talk about what we share, and we don't talk about what it is to be a citizen and what it is to have duties.

You refer to this moment as a test of our preparedness. Trump has basically destroyed conventional Republicanism and whatever remains of principled conservatism. There's an ideological vacuum right now. So how does the left fill it?

Despite all the problems that I point to in our society, I'm actually hopeful for the first time. Donald Trump did half of our job for us. What we're living in is really a visionless America. Not all countries have vision. Other countries aren't a project. I don't know what the Sri Lankan project is, or the Belgian project. They just go along. They're countries. We are a project. That's how we got started. We're not ethnically based. We need some sort of vision of where we want to go with our project. That's how the country works.

If we can just stop thinking and talking about ourselves, and sacrifice some of our sacred cows, and start focusing on articulating in a very simple way the kind of America we want to build, we can become the country we ought to be.

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Debating the liberal case against identity politics - Vox

Washington Times

NRSC ties Tester to 'ultra-liberal' Schumer in new ads Washington Times Tester broke his promise when liberal Sen. Claire McCaskill paid $15,000 for Sen. Tester and ultra-liberal New York Sen. Schumer to go on a lavish vacation with her to Cancun. Tester's changed. He's one of the three amigos: McCaskill, Schumer and Tester.

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NRSC ties Tester to 'ultra-liberal' Schumer in new ads - Washington Times

What is the single most important issue before us?

To ask the question is either to invite scoffing (how can any one issue be described in this way?) or to call forth a cacophony of replies. For starters: the North Korean confrontation, globalization, climate change, rising inequality, terrorism or the ongoing troubles in the Middle East.

But at the risk of being accused of cultural imperialism, I'd argue that the challenge to liberal democracy is far and away the most consequential question facing the world. If liberal democracy does not survive and thrive, every other problem we face becomes much more difficult.

The very phrase "liberal democracy" is vexed. In the United States, "liberal" is associated with a New Dealish center-left. Elsewhere, particularly in Europe, it often implies minimal governmental interference with the workings of capitalism.

E.J. Dionne

Photo by Contributed Photo /Times Free Press.

But liberal democracy is, in principle, a simple if also profound idea: a belief in governments created through free elections and universal suffrage; an independent judiciary; and guarantees of the freedoms of speech, assembly, religion and press. Some of my more libertarian-leaning friends and in our shared desire to defend liberal democracy, we are friends would define it as excluding various forms of regulation and redistribution.

I'd agree with them that the right to private property is a characteristic of liberal societies but insist that there is also an important place for social insurance, government provision of various services (education and health care among them) and rules protecting workers, consumers and the environment.

For those who claim that liberal democracy is simply a Western idea, consider that India is the world's largest democracy and that many nations in Africa, Latin America and other parts of Asia are working democracies or struggling for democratic rights.

Liberal democracy is essential for solving every other problem because it assumes that history is open and that free electorates can change their minds and their governments. Oppressed groups have a right to agitate and organize against injustices, and new ways of reforming society are given room to emerge.

But is there a crisis of liberal democracy? We could argue for days over whether the word "crisis" is appropriate, which is why I like the more modest title of Financial Times columnist Edward Luce's compelling book published earlier this year, "The Retreat of Western Liberalism." Crisis or not, liberal democracy is in trouble partly because, in the years after World War II, liberal democrats became complacent.

History is starting to scowl as once-solid democracies (Hungary, Poland and Turkey, along with many outside Europe) move in an autocratic direction. China, meanwhile, offers a path to development and growth that involves neither freedom nor democracy.

Even where liberal democracy has its strongest foundations, authoritarian brands of populism have gained ground by exploiting widespread discontent. Luce is especially powerful when taking to task those at the global economy's commanding heights for failing to address the stagnation of middle- and working-class incomes. "The world's elites have helped to provoke what they feared: a populist uprising against the world economy."

In 2017, there has been something of a liberal democratic comeback in France, the Netherlands and, it would appear from the polls, Germany. Movements of the far right are (at least for now) receding.

We are far from such a catastrophe, but I'm grateful to Luce and others for warning us not to take liberal democracy for granted. When liberal democrats become arrogant and forget that governments have an obligation to create the circumstances for widespread well-being, autocrats will always be there offering security and prosperity in exchange for less freedom. Liberal democracy must be defended. It must also deliver the goods.

Washington Post Writers Group

Link:

Dionne: Standing up for liberal democracy - Chattanooga Times Free Press

PRINCE EDWARD COUNTY-

Mayor Robert Quaiff is leaning toward jumping into the race for the Bay of Quinte provincial Liberal candidacy. After being approached by the Liberal brass, including MPP Lou Rinaldi, in recent months about his interest in entering provincial politics, Qauiff started to give it some serious thought. There is some interest, but I havent gone through the process of filing any nomination yet, Quaiff said. There is a bit of interest there, I wont deny that. Im seriously taking the time to consider it. Quaiff was sought out by the Liberal brass. I had a lot of conversations with some within the Liberal party and theyre looking for a candidate for the Bay of Quinte riding, he said. The resources being offered to me is enticing. I feel honoured that any political party would be interested in me. It was initiated by Lou Rinaldi quite some time ago. Queens Park might be unfamiliar turf for Quiaff, who has spent most of his political life on municipal council, but the mayor said he has been exposed to regional and provincial issues from his service in other capacities such as chairperson of Eastern Ontario Wardens Caucus and chairperson of the police services board since 2001. If I didnt think I was ready, I wouldnt even begin to consider it, Quaiff said. With all of that background and visits to Queens Park and the federal level, I feel confident I have the ability and experience to go forward with this initiative. Quaiff first got elected in 2000, before taking a sabbatical, then returning for a brief stint to fill in following the untimely death of Coun. Ron Everall. Quaiff took another break before winning back a council seat in 2010. He ascended to the mayors chair in 2014. If selected, Quaiff would have to go up against a strong incumbent in MPP Todd Smith. I dont participate in anything to lose, he said. Im going to have to step back and weigh those odds. I have to do whats right for my family first, but I love serving people and I love doing the job I have now. Its going to be difficult process for me but at the end I hope i come up with the right decision.

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Quaiff eyes Liberal position - County Weekly News

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Posted: Aug 14, 2017 12:01 AM

I wish I could say that its a shock that someone died in Charlottesville, but Ive been predicting just this sort of thing in radio appearances for months. The liberal media is dying to blame it all on Donald Trump, but it should look in the mirror.

To begin with, the liberal media is almost entirely responsible for growing the Alt-Right merger of hate groups and internet trolls. Most people are well aware of the stifling political correctness that reached an apex under Barack Obama. People are sick and tired of being attacked and scolded by the humorless left-wing thought police every time they stray from the latest liberal doctrine. That created a large group of people who enjoyed tweaking social justice warriors and some of them realized the easiest way to do that was with racial slurs. Every time some doofus leaves a noose on a college campus or says the N-word, its treated like a national crisis. If youre an anonymous troll who enjoys getting people to react to everything you say, thats a FEATURE, not a bug. All you have to do is say something racially offensive and all these people who studiously try to ignore you will go out of their minds.

That racial element gave the Nazis, white supremacists and KKK mouth-breathers a way to connect with the more socially adept trolls making the Pepe the Frog memes. Of course, the media liberals fueled them as well with their hypocrisy. They painted EVERY white supporter of Donald Trump or the Republican Party as a racist even as they ignored and defended the vicious anti-white rhetoric that has become commonplace on the Left. Just to give you a quick example of that, there was a hashtag that trended on Twitter after the attack called #ThisIsNotUS. It started out as a way for white liberals to virtue signal, but it quickly turned into an all too typical attack on white people, America and Trump voters. Here are some of the most popular comments from the hashtag

#ThisIsNotUs Then who is it? 63% of white men & 53% of white women voted for KKK-endorsed Trump. The majority of EVERY OTHER ETHNICITY didnt

If you are white and you are trying to say #ThisIsNotUs you are part of the problem.

If you're earnestly tweeting #ThisIsNotUS, know that the you might as well have been one of the white supremacists walking w/ tiki torches.

Every white person that tweets #ThisIsNotUs is being complicit in not addressing the rampant racism and bigotry that in their community

#ThisIsNotUS? Easy to say so. Unfortunately you can't have the Black, Brown, Asian, Jewish, Muslim or LGTBQ "experience" to know #THISISYOU

Gaga, prime example of a white woman using tag #ThisIsNotUs like this country wasnt built on slavery & racism. THIS HAS ALWAYS BEEN AmeriKa

#ThisIsNotUs is how white people try to absolve themselves from their complicity in white supremacy; it v much is you, your inaction fuels it

The biggest talking point white supremacists have are comments like these. Would that be true if the mainstream media actually treated these comments with the same sort of contempt it has for the Alt-Right?

Nope.

Yet these sort of comments are MAINSTREAM on the Left. Let me repeat that. They are MAINSTREAM on the Left.

On the other hand, white supremacists are nothing on the Right. David Duke is a joke. Richard Spencer? Let me tell you a little story about Richard Spencer. I was walking around CPAC and noticed an enormous gaggle of media surrounding someone I didnt recognize, who didnt seem to be drawing a crowd of regular attendees. As it turns out, the massive group of media people werent following a big name. They were following Richard Spencer, who was later kicked out of the conference, presumably because the organizers never wanted him there in the first place.

Yet Richard Spencer, like David Duke before him, is treated like some kind of rock star by the media liberals even though hes a nobody in the conservative movement. Why? Because they dont care about conservative opinion. They dont care about conservative views. They care about creating propaganda that paints the Right as a bunch of hood-wearing, Nazi-saluting scumbags. So, they treat Richard Spencer like a rock star.

This creates a sort of Kim Kardashian effect. Ninety five percent of any influence Spencer has comes from the fact that anything he does is a big deal to the media. Why were Spencer and Duke able to gather even 500 Tiki torch-waving idiots in Charlottesville? Because the media would cover everything they did with bated breath. It gave them a chance to feel important, to feel like they were making an impact. In fact, white supremacists have started to believe their own BS because they keep hearing it from the media. After fighting with Richard Spencer on Twitter, I still remember one of his fans claiming that white supremacists were an essential part of Trump getting elected. My response was.

Yeah, you guys made a bunch of Holocaust memes & called people cucksand then you're all....I'm helping.

The hardcore racists out there are pariahs everywhere except in the mainstream media, where theyre treated as incredibly important.

On the other hand, the same mainstream media that has elevated the Alt-Right has been silent as violence has increasingly become a mainstay at liberal protests, including the counter-protest of this event. A few shops getting looted or people getting hurt doesnt stop the media from describing a liberal event as a peaceful protest. Even the counter-protests in Charlottesville were widely described as peaceful. Yet, protesters chanted From the Midwest to the South, punch a Nazi in the mouth, a female reporter was punched by one of those counter-protesters, the organizer of the rally was hit, and other people were attacked. Thats not peaceful. Thats something LIBERAL POLITICIANS should be asked to condemn.

In other words, Nazi and KKK members are HORRIBLE. The violent liberal counter-protesters are ALSO horrible. James Alex Fields, Jr? Who appears to have marched at the rally before plowing into a crowd? I condemn what he did. I also condemn the Bernie supporter who shot up a congressional Republican softball game. Additionally, I will condemn the next person on the Left or the Right who kills someone over politics, which seems inevitable when you have opposing sides carrying shields and weapons to political rallies. Those condemnations dont make a damn bit of difference as long as the liberal media keeps elevating white supremacists and excusing the violence of the Alt-Left. Im genuinely sorry people are dying at political rallies, but it would be surprising if the death at Charlottesville were the last one. Their blood will be on the hands of the liberal media.

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How the Liberal Media Created Charlottesville - Townhall