MWI Weekly 10.28.22

"viking 1" by chatirygirl is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.

This week: The trouble with tribes; the People and Pew Pew Pew; ConservaWhat Part II; and a heck of a gal.

With the midterm elections bearing down on us, the temperature in the country is rising by degrees. Part of the reason is the blizzard of campaign ads, of course. More than ever, they've been oriented toward demonization of the other side rather than much in the way of concrete proposals.

Some of that is to be expected, as is the dearth of truth in a lot of them. As Otto von Bismarck once famously said, “People never lie so much as before an election, during a war, or after a hunt.” At the very least, candidates have always, shall we say, shaded the narrative their way.

But this cycle seems to be worse than any in recent memory. Since it's a midterm rather than a general election, there are a lot of variances depending on where one lives. In places where the local, state and congressional races aren't in question the rhetoric is no doubt a bit more restrained.

In the so-called battleground states, it's a different story. And even in districts which are not up for grabs, the effects are more than a little concerning. As I write this, news is filtering in about the attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of the Speaker of the House, in their home in San Francisco.

We don't know the full story yet, and the Speaker herself was in Washington at the time, which is unfortunate in a way; her security detail always travels with her, and her husband is not entitled to one himself. Had she been home, the attack may not have occurred.

At any rate, while we don't know the exact motive at the time of this writing, we do know the Speaker was the assailant's target. Before taking a hammer to Mr. Pelosi, he reportedly shouted, "Where is Nancy? Where is Nancy?"

This is an absolutely chilling turn of events. But for anyone who has been paying attention, it's also not all that surprising. We've been warned about the possibility of political violence by numerous authorities, including the FBI -- who, along with other law enforcement, have become targets themselves.

There is no way to know where it really started to become this bad: how much responsibility we can assign to foreign influence, and how much is solely the inclination of our own people. Maybe we never will, at least outside the halls of our most secretive security agencies.

But there can be little doubt we're in a unique civil and cultural moment. While political violence is certainly not unheard of in our country, up to now it's been the province of extremists and fringe groups and radicals, many of whom have been inspired by revolutionary movements abroad. Now, it is framed within our own domestic politics, in the context of the contest between our two major political parties.

And the reason possibly can be found in the way we see things.

Pew Pew Pew

When looked at through the lens of the fault lines in our society -- fault lines which have always been there and will likely always be there in the future -- the picture starts to become clearer. For one thing, there are two opposing camps in our political system. Even independents who don't formally affiliate with either party lean one way or the other and vote that way at the same rate as party adherents.

And across the board, each side believes more and more they're on the losing end. That's especially true on the Right, at least when they're out of power. (Notably, when Republicans control the presidency, the sentiment shifts dramatically, much more so than on the Left when there's a Democratic president.)

It's hard to not see a creeping authoritarianism in that.

Yet, there's a lot more happening under the surface than is obvious in the top line numbers. For instance, the idea "America is a Christian nation" is a standard assertion on the Right. It's one which 45 percent of the population or so agrees with. But what we mean by Christian nation varies widely, as Pew Research found in a study published just this week.

It's worth a few moments to give it a full read: 45% of Americans Say U.S. Should Be a ‘Christian Nation’ | Pew Research Center

Two things stand out when one looks at the data. One is what we Whigs call the Grand Consensus, the true center of our political life. Generally speaking, there's broad agreement on most major issues, invariably to the tune of a little over 60 percent; those who go the other way usually total about a third.

And those general numbers come up in almost all the nodes of the Pew study. Time and again, there's a roughly 2-to-1 balance between the opposing views. If you look closely, you can see the Grand Consensus taking shape. If you dig a little deeper, you can see in the places where there is no majority consensus, it's because different people mean different things even while using the same words.

These are important lessons. Not only may we not be, in fact, as divided as some would make us think. Where we do disagree, the gulf may not be as wide and as deep as we are often told, whether by the media outlets who are competing for our eyeballs or the politicians fighting for our votes.

All of which begs the question, who benefits most from our divisions, and would like to see them deeper and wider and more violent?

It's a question each one of us needs to answer for ourselves, but while we're thinking about it, we should also keep in mind the campaign finance free-for-all we've been living with since the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision. We already know about the political spending of rich Americans, if not entirely, and there are ways to track the political spending of large corporations on their end of the pipeline.

But we have no idea how much money is being funneled into our politics by foreign interests, through networks of shell companies and offshore banks and other shadowy ways of moving vast amounts of money around. And there are people who know just how to do it: Russian Oligarchs Obscure Their Wealth Through Secretive Isle of Man Network - WSJ

Whether or not that's actually happening, and to what degree, is anyone's guess. It's entirely possible the subversion campaign launched by Putin and his cabal in late 2014 is still ongoing. It's also possible other actors -- the Chinese, the Iranians, the North Koreans, whoever -- are following the same playbook. Or, it could be we're just picking up where the Russians left off and doing it to ourselves.

All we can truly be sure of is the need for reform. Our system depends on a clear mandate from the People, expressed through the ballot, in order to function. It's the only way the Grand Consensus can be honored. We must preserve -- or, if necessary, create or re-create -- the conditions which make that possible.

Conserva . . . Wait, WHAT? Part II

In an excellent piece in the National Review, liberal (yes, I said "liberal") writer Kat Rosenfield hit too many nails on the head to even count. You may want to take a few minutes to read it before going any further [it's paywalled, but National Review allows you to read two free articles before you hit it]: Why I Keep Getting Mistaken for a Conservative | National Review

To a Whig, it all sounds so familiar. We often are called conservatives by our liberal friends and liberals by the conservatives. Which is fine. Our tribe, if one can call it a tribe at all, certainly has its own ideology. But it's an ideology driven by fundamental principles, and our way of looking at the world makes resisting the fall into reflexive dogma not only a feature, but an inherent and essential element of our character.

Were one to insist on placing us somewhere on the political spectrum -- something we abhor, since the boundaries are largely a matter of opinion to begin with, but so be it -- one could call us center-right without too much objection. And to say we're in line with Kirk's Ten Conservative Principles would not in the least be, as we said last week, unfair.

Which brings us back to the meaning of words. In most of Western Civilization -- and especially in Europe, with its long, long history -- conservatism refers to an affinity for the pre-Enlightenment system of monarchy and feudalism, or at least a discomfort with popular governance. Liberalism is the post-Enlightenment classical liberalism our country was founded upon.

Here in the United States, liberalism is taken to mean social liberalism -- basically, the progressive political agenda or, at a minimum, the belief in using the government as an instrument of social reform. Conservatism has come to mean the embrace of a certain cultural outlook rather than support for a laundry list of specific proposals (just witness the pivot of the Republican Party post-Trump).

Which may have been inevitable. As the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan (who may have secretly been a Whig himself, or at least Whig-adjacent, but we'll leave that for another time) said many years ago, “The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.”

He was speaking of liberalism and conservatism in the American sense, and in so doing may have encapsulated the entire foundation of our Culture War in just a couple lines. It explains why Rosenfield, as so many of us do, finds herself politically homeless. It explains why all of us who don't wholly adopt the blanket provisos of one of the warring tribes gets accused by its members of belonging to the other.

And it explains why those tribes simply can't meet in the middle. For them, there is no middle. Politics is a zero-sum game, where you either win it all or lose it all.

Where this all leads us is anyone's guess at this point. We can only be sure it's not where the majority of us wants to go. Which makes it incumbent on the majority of us (call it the tribe of the Grand Consensus if you must) to make sure we end up where we want to be. If we're fortunate, and good and righteous, it may turn out Rosenfield is right and so many people get kicked out of the tribes for not being pure enough there's almost no one left in them.

Odds and Ends

A member has pointed out a possible area of confusion in last week's newsletter which we need to clarity: The Federalist is an independent, standalone online publication and not the magazine of The Federalist Society. When we referred to the "hard-right outfit" we were talking specifically of The Federalist itself, and not about the organization with a similar name (which is undoubtedly and unabashedly conservative, but in an unquestionably principled way).

We've corrected the text in the online version of our newsletter to clear up any possible confusion. We hope this correction does the same for our MWI Weekly subscribers as well.

Speaking of political homelessness, member Dennis Sanders wonders whether the latest attempt to form a third party is a worthwhile one in our Members Blog: Is the Forward Party the Real Deal? — Modern Whig Institute

You may already have some inkling, but he's a fine writer and makes some very good points. So, give it a look anyway.

This week, Bloomberg Businessweek devoted its entire issue to an in-depth story on crypto by a single author, Matt Levine (his own newsletter, Money Stuff, is very much worthwhile if you're into finance at all, or at least want to keep up with the doings on Wall Street). It's about 40,000 words so it takes some time to read, but it's worth it: The Only Crypto Story You Need, by Matt Levine (bloomberg.com)

On the political front, political scientist and Democratic Party stalwart Ruy Teixeira has been sounding the alarm over the misguided approach Democrats are taking to electoral politics. His latest dovetails nicely with Kat Rosenfield's observations and points up how party "activists" can drag even the majority party dangerously off the rails: The Democrats’ Climate Problem - by Ruy Teixeira (substack.com)

It's also heartening to see such a prominent voice on the Left (there are some on the Right as well) point out the problems and peccadillos of their own -- pardon the expression -- tribe. And not only does Teixeira do it unblinkingly, but with a bit of style, too.

Meanwhile, election denialism continues apace. In Nevada, Nye County officials, certain there was rampant election fraud in 2020 and believing it will happen again, decided to take matters into their own hands. Literally. With almost comical results: Nevada officials begin unprecedented hand count of ballots | AP News

A judge has since stopped the fiasco, but they're vowing to give it another shot.

Perhaps there's nothing to be said other than, good luck.

Finally, we were saddened to hear of the passing of Lucianne Goldberg. If her name sounds somewhat familiar, it may be due to the fact she played a prominent role in the Bill Clinton impeachment saga as the representative of Linda Tripp, the woman whose audio recordings of Monica Lewinski opened up, as they say in Arkansas (or maybe would say, if they said things like this), a "whole 'nuther can o' worms."

She was also the mother of Jonah Goldberg, someone for whom we have a great deal of respect. Our deepest condolences go out to him and his family, and to all the friends and loved ones of someone who, by all accounts, was one of a kind. Do yourself a favor and read John Podhoretz's tribute to her in Commentary magazine: Lucianne Goldberg, 1935-2022 - John Podhoretz, Commentary Magazine

And with that, I wish you a safe and fun weekend. As always, it's a pleasure to be at your service. See you next week.

Kevin J. Rogers is the executive director of the Modern Whig Institute. He can be reached at director@modernwhig.org. When not engaged with the Institute he publishes independently to Commentatio on Substack.

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The Modern Whig Institute is a 501(c)(3) civic research and education foundation dedicated to the fundamental American principles of representative government, ordered liberty, capitalism, due process and the rule of law.