Why Obama thinks the ‘right’ is crazy.

Have you ever wondered why we disagree so much on the basics of how to construct and govern our society? I know we’re all busy arguing ideology with each other, but I think it’s worth taking a moment to understand instead of argue.

A great piece was recently published in National Affairs by William Schambra that I think goes a long way to shedding some light on the nature of our differences. Btw, for the record, I don’t like to group myself  with the “right” as a Libertarian – I can barely listen to Hannity or Limbaug, however, I do share a common foundation of belief in the virtues of individual sovereignty and free markets with the right, although one could easily argue that the Republicans show little more than passing interest in either.  Nonetheless, for the purposes of this conversation, a dyad of right/Republican and left/Progressive is sufficient and appropriate, so let’s not  distract ourselves by trying to tease out all of the varieties of ideology that are necessarily homogenized by the formulation.

Schambra points out that Obama’s Progressive ideology is born of the ‘policy movement’ of the mid 20th century. In essence, it is a set of beliefs built on the growing body of social science which, in it’s total, claims to be able to solve societies ills by the application of reason rather than those stale old tropes known as ‘ideology’. It claims to have risen above ideology – and let’s take our first stop right here. Do you recall Obama’s claims during the campaign to be ‘post-ideological’? Do you notice how, when someone on the ‘left’ is asked about socialism that they will be dismissive, and look at the questioner with a sort of pity over the apparent fact that he/she is so caught up in that silly way of thinking? This is the root of that view. One has to understand that the Progressive movement is one with the social sciences. In fact, most sociology departments and professors commonly blend Progressive political causes with their teaching of sociology. I don’t think that most folks on the “right” understand how important this is to the disagreements we have. One of the three  ‘fathers’ of modern sociology is Karl Marx – along with Emile Durkheim and Max Weber – and these teachings are the foundation of all sociology. This is not to suggest that theory hasn’t evolved substantially since then, but I think most right-wingers don’t understand how fundamental the notions of class, inequality, oppression and exploitation are in the pedagogy of sociology. The modern Progressive draws on these theories and the understandings of the underlying dynamics supposedly causing them to formulate policy to address these issues. They don’t view themselves as Marxists or Socialists – they view themselves as informed.

Obama’s ‘policy centric’ view of the world carries over into his dealings with the world at large as well. His entire posture of engagement, whether with Iran, North Korea or the Russians is based on the notion that reasonable and intelligent people will agree on solutions because there is a truth that all parties will arrive at if they only leave aside the useless ideologies of the past. In his Cairo speech, Obama cited three causes for the conflict between Islam and the west; imperialism, the Cold War and the crassness of American popular culture. Let’s pause again. Just this thought reveals his desire to reduce national behavior to drivers, to some kind of model of conflict that he believes we can all move past. Whether he’s correct or not isn’t my point – it’s that he sees an old way of ideological thinking driving the conflict and that if we just acknowledge our part in it, we can quite readily sit down with the other side and jointly reason our way through our disagreements.

At the core of his thinking – and I think this is fair to say generally about the Progressive mindset – is a collectivist view of the world. This perspective asserts the rights of groups and society as competing with individual rights, and in fact believes it is required in some cases to restrain individual rights in the cause of the greater good. This is an age old topic of great philosophical debate – I won’t try to rehash it here, instead, for the sake of clarity let’s look at some of the ways this puts the Progressives in conflict with the “right”.

Property rights of individuals vs. Social Justice

Free speech of say, talk-radio vs. the Fairness doctrine.

Right to bear arms vs. Crime reduction

I won’t labor over this – you can imagine many of examples on your own I’m sure. What I’m trying to point out is that these arguments have an ideological fault line that isn’t right vs. left  to the Progressives. It’s ignorance against knowledge and wisdom. It’s informed opinions fighting against old tropes like ‘if you work hard and play by the rules, you can make it in America’. They actually think they have scientifically proven how our current system is corrupt, oppressive, unjust and unfair – and that part of their challenge is to overcome the ‘right’  in order to serve humanity more justly.

Many adherents of this wordview do believe in socialism or communism, but if they don’t, they all agree that free market capitalism is an absurd notion,  taking now to calling its adherents ‘fundamentalists’. I don’t think Obama is a Marxist per se but I do think he sees many of the arguments about class and exploitation as valid, and of course accepts modern race orthodoxy, and his belief  is that we can all rise above these silly ideas to work together on solutions. Guys like me who believe that radical individual liberty has proven to create massive increases in well being, life expectancy, wealth and security are dismissed as overly simplistic – despite having ample facts to arm our beliefs. When we say that it’s axiomatic that every expansion of government authority is a loss of individual liberty – he just smiles at us like we’re dopey idiots, somehow missing the big picture. When we dare point out that his collectivist thinking is difficult to distinguish from Marxism, and that surrounding himself with so many avowed communists/socialists/Trotskyists/Maoists/Marxists gives us pause -  he claims we are engaging in the old arguments of the past that have so divided us.

There is a larger truth that I’m getting at here. It’s that he really does think that the right is stupid, corrupt and that some of us are crazy. He doesn’t respect our beliefs as wrong, but in some way valid – no, he considers them uninformed and outdated. That is his true radicalism. That’s why he’s willing to demonize his opposition because they can only be trying to keep the perquisites that the corrupt system gives them – say for example insurance companies, banks, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, talk radio or Fox News. This of course ignores vast swaths of interests (unions, trial lawers et al) who stand to benefit from his policies – but even that isn’t my point.

We have never had a president who is so ideological – and I use that word  in the sense that he believes he is in possession of revealed truths about society that are superior and must be followed. Classic liberals (only Libertarians are truly liberal anymore) believe in the value of liberty for it’s own sake and that it must be defended from the overreach of government, not based on some kind of science, rather, it is preferred on the basis of principle.  I realize this is a subtle difference, but it’s a crucial one. Libertarians don’t saythat society will necessarily turn out better because of individual rights being kept as pre-eminent in our society (also as enshrined in our constitution). Libertarians say that it’s the right thing to do as a matter of principle. According to Obama, that makes them – and me – crazy.

It’s this foundational difference that causes most left/right arguments to be unresolvable. One side believes the have intelligence on their side while the other believes they have principle on their’s, and both sides think they are morally superior. My view is that this is the only argument worth having. Both sides are – for the most part – well intentioned but until we resolve whether we are trying to simply have a space where individuals can act freely or trying to create a better society as our governments primary purpose, we are going to keep fighting with no good result.