Orson Scott Card has an article on the Wall Street Journal’s website today, explaining why most Democrats are un-American slime (I paraphrase).
OK, really, but he does take certain Democrat’s to task.
He identifies himself as a Democrat in the essay. Some might wonder about that, given his views. As best I can tell (having read everything that Mr. Card has ever written, yes, everything) although socially conservative and in favor of vigorous foreign policy responses, Mr. Card still considers himself a Democrat because (1) he thinks most Republican politicians are incompetent, spineless boobs (true) and (2) because he thinks laissez-faire capitalism is contrary to charity (debatable, although my defenses are being weakened). Anyway, he currently writes more about his social conservatism and foreign policy than he does his welfarism–he hasn’t worked all the Clinton antibodies out of his system.
I’ve often thought it would be fun to go home to NM and run as a Democrat. I could be a New, New Democrat–socially conservative, environmentally moderate, pro-tax cuts, against government, for a strong foreign policy . . . . What do you think, huh?
I’d be in favor for the following reasons:
1) We need more democrats who are conservative.
2) We need more Mormons who are Democrats.
I personally share a little more in common with Card’s politics than most other politicans. But I won’t elaborate here.
It is interesting that Clinton ran as a new Democratic, but had to frequently appeal to his base. (Although he alienated them quite regularly as well) I think Leiberman or possibly Clark are the only two Democrats right now who fit the “New Democrat” label. Perhaps Dean will swing back to the middle heavily once the nomination is wrapped up. But right now he seems to have abandoned that position and has portrayed himself as far more liberal than he governed as. This strongly risks Democratic moderates like Card and probably will give the Republicans more strength.
I agree with Card that far too many Republicans are idiots. Bush, while no where near as bad as liberals would have you believe (and certainly not as conservative), also has been a fair bungler. Further he hasn’t clamped down on a lot of Republican issues, such as various civil rights issues related to the Patriot Act. He also hasn’t exactly been a free trader either.
While neo-cons make up a lot of his cabinet, I sometimes wonder if even they describe his position. Say what you will about Reagan, but he had a fairly clear philosophy. With Bush I see something much more like Clinton with a definite lack of consistency.
BTW – Adam. Where in New Mexico are you from? I lived in Los Alamos for a while and have considered moving back several times.
Based on the performance of the parties and their “leaders” I think we could use fewer party members Democrat or Republican. Politicians are idiots, regardless of their political persuasion. I think many of the problems we have are the result of partisan politics. George Washington was nearly prophetic when he warned against the formulation of national parties in his farewell address.
If Orson Scott Card really does affirm all the policies that he at different times has claimed to affirm, he and I would have a tremendous amount in common: economically liberal, socially conservative, with a “nationalist” (not the best term, but it’ll do) foreign policy and a communitarian attitude towards civic matters. In other words, your classic 1940s Democrat; the sort of person who would have proudly voted for Harry Truman. But to be honest, I wonder if he really does hold to all those positions; I fear his claimed allegiance to the Democratic party has essentially just become part of his “a pox on both your houses” routine. Maybe his website isn’t the best place to appreciate his political views, but after having read his essays regularly for the last few years, I’ve come to the conclusion that OSC has tragically suffered the same fate of many other otherwise balanced and intelligent Mormons I know: Clinton drove him insane.
As for political parties and organizations, outside the Catholic Worker movement I’m pretty much homeless, so I vote for whomever I can. (Nader in 1996 and 2000.) Perhaps someday there’ll be a Christian Socialist-type party in the U.S., but I’m not holding my breath.
Lieberman is a Democrat? ;)
In light of Russell’s comments about his hopes for a “Christian Socialist type” party, I would enjoy hearing from the Times and Seasons bloggers and commentators on this idea. I wonder if there can be such a thing as a Christian Socialist-type party given most socialists and their antagonism to religion. Personally, I don’t think it could happen. It would also be interesting to hear how those who favor more socialist policies reconcile the views of Joseph Smith and other latter-day prophets, especially Ezra Taft Benson, on socialism.
That’s a big topic Brent. I would point out, just in a preliminary sort of way, that socialism needn’t arise via Marxism; the antagonism to religion which has characterized most self-described “socialist” movements in recent history isn’t by any means inherent to the many various efforts to give “social” arrangements priority in how one organizes society (i.e., an egalitarian economy rather than a strictly competitive one). As to Ezra Taft Benson’s (and other’s) feelings about socialism and communism, well, that’s another big issue. Suffice to say that, while anti-communist general authorities like President Benson may have been right when they denied that the church’s experiments with the United Order in 19th-century Utah had anything to do with “socialism” (in the Marxist European sense), such experiments most certainly WERE profoundly anti-capitalist, communitarian socio-economic projects. To claim otherwise is to do an injustice to the historical record.
Also, as should be clear from Fox’s Catholic Worker reference, the Catholic church has long espoused a sort of Christian welfarism (probably not socialism, but hey) although the Pope backed off in his latest encyclical on the subject, Centesimus Annus. One gets the sense from it that, while not altogether pleased with the American life, he’s found the various alternatives world-wide to be even less palatable.
But on the whole, I think Mr. Fox’s program suffers from a certain Quixotism. If we’re allowed to espouse truly impossible goals, I shall have to resurrect my long-buried monarchical Jacobitism.
Russell: I understand ‘communitarian’ and ‘nationalist’ (by which I gather you mean not nationalist but a moderate realism suspicious of cosmopolitanism). But “economically liberal, socially conservative”? This dichotomy (social v. fiscal or economic) seems to me to be one of the most nonsensical and most commonly invoked in American political rhetoric. Are public school funding and taxation merely economic issues? Worse yet, “the fiscal”, as if social programs had only to do with the debits and credits of the treasury. At root I think that the fiscal/ social distinction favors heavily those who invoke it most, libertarians.
Leo XIII and much of Catholic social teaching has a much more coherent way of speaking about it: “the social question” in Rerum Novarum is the realm of collective life that involves not only wages and public programs, but also the church’s public role, the life of the family, and the way workers spend their time. I mention this, Russell, because you are familiar with and clearly sympathetic to this tradition.
Brent: Your question is a good one, but I think that Christians, and especially American and Mormon Christians, need to beware of taking for granted secular associations between political ideas. The idea that there are two general foci of coherent political belief, or that political belief must lie somewhere on a two-dimensional spectrum, should be questioned especially earnestly by Christians, who have a great incentive to stake out their own position. The alternative is that we pick the most palatable side of and either/or and then ideologize the public side of our faith to fit with our current coalition. See CS Lewis’s “Mediatation on the Third Commandment”. The notion that “we need more Mormon Democrats” is a good one, I think, if it is a result of the deeper notion that we need to do political theology, in the broadest and least academic sense.
Russell again: Your invokation of Truman is interesting, not because Truman should be the favorite of us all necessarily, but because his administration was near a turning point in Mormon political culture (a “zone of choice”?). If I remember correctly he may have been the last Democrat Utah voted for (I don’t think they went for Kennedy, correct me). It was also a period of some interesting, somewhat independent Mormon thoughts on politics. J Reuben Clark and D.O. McKay are two that come to mind. We seem to have gone downhill since JR.
I realize that both are big topics. I am continually impressed though with the thoughtful commentary on a variety of topics addressed here. Undoubtedly, as time goes on, some of these topics, or certain related subtopics will have occasion to be discuss.
Hi Russell,
The GA’s who spoke most strongly against collectivism (esp. JR Clark, McKay, Benson) emphatically stressed the voluntary nature of the gospel’s attempts to create a utopian society. The chief target of their complaints against communism and socialism was the underlying coercion. That the socialist societies tended to claim independence from God was another frequent line of attack.
I have a book of statements made by apostles that deal with politics, called “Prophets, Principles and National Survival.” It’s an excellent resource of prophetic denouncements of coercive social experiments.
Yes, slow down everyone. We don’t want to discuss every topic under the Mormon sun in just a week. Save something for 2004.
I really am interested in what people have to say about Benson’s views on communism though…sincerely…blog away.
Jeremiah,
“But ‘economically liberal, socially conservative’? This dichotomy (social v. fiscal or economic) seems to me to be one of the most nonsensical and most commonly invoked in American political rhetoric.”
I agree: that kind of language is mostly absurd. Unfortunately, it’s the language of our political culture: if you oppose abortion rights, you’re “socially” conservative, whereas a desire for universal health insurance makes you “economically” liberal. No, it doesn’t make much sense, but that’s the best one can do, I think, within the confines of American political rhetoric. (Oh, and I agree with you that the use of these two axis tends to make libertarianism look good, to the detriment of other positions, something I’ve blogged about at length (oh look, another plug!) here: http://philosophenweg.blogspot.com/2003_11_01_philosophenweg_archive.html#106804813371424341 ).
1. Try http://www.politopia.com if you want to try an alternative (ok, libertarian) look at political parties/alignments.
2. re: Coercision/Socialist/Leftist type governments…A few of you have heard this before; but essentially, I think that a political party could be found upon a base of agency and accountability for actions. The problem is how to account for externalities that are hard to prove “scientifically”.
Thanks for those comments Russell. I’ve long thought that Libertarians, while rightly criticizing the single dimensional axis of liberal/conservative, have stacked the deck with the two dimensional one.
The problem is, I think, the tyranny of the sound bite. It is very hard to actually explain a political position anymore. While I am sympathetic to many of the *concerns* of libertarians, their solutions seem a tad naive in my opinion.
Bayden, one of the more interesting comments by Benson on communism was one my parents told me about. (He had a cottage near ours in Waterton Park. Pres. Tanner had one there as well) Anyway they told me that he told them (yes second hand info – use at your peril) not to be concerned about the USSR or most of the Marxist forms of communism. He felt that they would fall apart of their own making and that the real threat was the Chinese form of communism. (Which, of course, isn’t terribly marxist) They claim he prophesied something along those lines with a war with China being in the last days. This was way back in the late 60′s, early 70′s – long before Reagan came to power.
Interesting. China’s “communism”, as you note, isn’t really Marxist at all. It’s rather more of a strong-state, socialist-capitalism the likes of which the world has never seen. China, unlike the USSR or other former Soviet-bloc countries, could very well be an economic threat to the Western capitalists. It will be interesting to see how their economy does over the next twenty years or so.
Kristoff has a decend oped in the NYT today re: Chinese Nationalism. Of course, no one can agree with China is already the superpower, soon to be, or…going to splinter into a million ethnic groups/SSRs like Russia.
What does it mean to be an “economic threat”?
Interesting question, Nate. Speaking strictly economically, I don’t think economic growth in one country “threatens” any other countries. In fact, it should help promote growth in other countries.
I imagine that speaking of an “economic threat” is more a political statement. People probably imply that if another country’s economy surpasses that of the US (or even comes close to being as influential), it brings with it global political power and serves to validate the economic/political framework that enabled it.
It is not true that one country’s prosperity necessarily benefits another. There are many reasons why this would not always be so. Let me clarify my thoughts a little.
Here is an example of how one country might be perceived as an “economic threat” to another – the manufacturing sector increases at a greater rate in country A than it does in country B, causing businesses located in country B to lose market share to companies in country A. This is what happened, or was believed to have happened, during the 70′s and 80′s when Japanese companies seriously outperformed American companies in some hi-tech industries. Of course, since then Japan’s economy has fallen flat, but before that happened you may remember the shrill call of “Buy American” that was often made in the face of the perceived threat.
This sort of threat happens all the time in state-to-state competition for manufacturing jobs. Income inequality increased greatly during the 1970′s in the Midwest as many industrial plants moved to more tax-friendly Sun Belt states. During the late 90′s many of those same industries exported a large proportion of their manufacturing jobs to foreign countries. While this was certainly not a threat to the companies in question, who saw an increase in productivity and profit margins, it was definitely perceived as a threat to the languishing economies of the Midwest and Southern states. Many people believe that job exportation in the manufacturing sector is one of the reasons income inequality has increased so much in the U.S. since the mid-70′s.
Concerning China – I wouldn’t go so far as to say that China is threatening to take away all of the jobs from the U.S. Clearly, the U.S. service sector is growing at a very high rate, in comparison to losses in our manufacturing sector, but no one really knows what sorts of long-term effects the shrinkage of the U.S. manufacturing sector will have. It’s probably too early to even speculate.
That was my main point. Sorry for not being very clear.
A country might be an economic threat if in the natural course of things they get in a position of leverage–by hurting themselves some economically they can hurt you worse. This is much the position OPEC used to be in, and as the OPEC example shows, is most dangerous when the threat country has a strong regime capable of making its populace accept a little pain whether they want to or not. (In that sense, a country might be an economic threat even if it would suffer worse than us, because we are a democracy and are likely to cave first).
Further, economic strength allows bigger and better militaries. The US is probably poorer and safer if China’s economy doesn’t become a giant (and if it does, let’s hope that India’s does too and that Japan gets out of its doldrums).
Brayden: Speaking strictly economically again, if another country or region can produce something more cheaply (and thus take the jobs), the entire country (and world) can get those goods at a lower price, and the total economic benefit of the country would increase. Theoretically, through taxation the loss in economic well-being suffered by the job-loser could be returned to him or her without taxing the entire increase in economic efficiency from the public, making everyone better off without making anyone worse off (a Pareto improvement).
Basically, the point is that doing something artificial to keep jobs (through taxes, tariffs, etc.) where they aren’t the most efficient isn’t actually in the best economic interest of a country. This isn’t to say that there couldn’t be any reason to keep jobs from going elsewhere, just that the argument can’t be made economically (ie, it must be made from the standpoint of politics, national security, or whatever else). That’s fine, it just means that the term “economic threat” isn’t perhaps as accurate as it could be.
Adam: While those threats you mentioned are real, they, too are only pseudo-economic issues. It’s hard to see how economics (at least good economics) would cause countries to use their own leverage to hurt someone else by hurting themselves. And larger economies could certainly support larger militaries, but I think those are questions of geoplitics and foreign policy and such. But, like Brayden, you may well be right when you say that that’s what people mean when they talk of an “economic threat.” It’s just that I think that it’s only loosely related to economics, and the real issue has more to do with other things.
Logan,
Your comments focus on the supply-side of the economic question. My comment was merely to point out that although the global economy as a whole may be better off due to efficiency improvements, pockets of the economy do not experience this as a gain and that this may lead to serious deficiencies in the demand-side of the equation. The idea of describing job migration as a Pareto improvement only seems to hold true if the lost jobs are immediately replaced by equally beneficial jobs. Of course, in reality this rarely holds true. I’m not arguing that we should stop innovation or productivity gains for this reason; I’m merely pointing out that from a particular group’s point-of-view, productivity gains in an industry could be seen as very detrimental to their way of life. The people in Michigan, who lost thousands of jobs to foreign labor competition, are there to attest to that fact. Try to tell them that what they’ve experienced over the last twenty years is a Pareto improvement.
By the way, nowhere in my comment did I suggest that the answer to the problem was to impose artificial constraints on economic growth. You came up with that one on your own.
Brayden: Just to nit pick a bit, Pareto improvements don’t require immediate and equally valuable replacement jobs. That might be sufficient for Pareto improvement but is not necessary. For example, a future job with greater returns might have a present discounted value greater than a present job with equal returns. Obviously, this will depend on subjective time values of money and the like, but it is important to remember.
It is also important to realize that what you call the supply side is closely linked to indvidual welfare. For example, a person thrown out of work will still benefit from decreased prices, even if the benefit is insufficient to compensate him for the lost job. Over the long term, the effect of prices on individual wealth can be very, very important. One of the (many) reasons for the failure of classical Marxism as an economic predictor of English society (which was its main target after all) is the fact that the plight of the proletariate steadily improved over the course of much of the industrial revolution. In part this was due to government action that amelerioated certain problems — safety conditions, certain minimum kinds of social welfare etc. However, an equally important fact (perhaps more important fact) was that increased efficiency dramatically decreased the prices of most of the goods consumed by the working classes (food, clothing, etc.), which increased the real purchasing power of their incomes. At the same time, those incomes increased in nominal terms as the labor glut created by land enclosures and initial industrialization gave way to an increasingly tight (or at least “less loose) labor market as economic growth spurred the demand for industrial labor. Of course, this particular “market clearing” took a generation or two, so I don’t mean it as a dismissal of any of the abyssimal conditions of the industrial revolution, particularlly the early stages of it. My only point is that sorting out the real economic consequences of particular changes, particularlly over the long term, is very, very difficult.
Also, I am a bit doubtful that the problems in Detroit in the 1980s were caused by foreign competition as much as by gross mismangement by a lot of auto executives in the 1970s. Directing attention away from these issues by playing on xenophobia and chanting the-Japanese-are-going-to-get-us mantra always struck me as a kind of ugly throw back to fears about “the Yellow Peril.” I further suspect that the unions got on this band wagon for the simple reason that they had been complicit with management in the awful, stupid decisions made in the 1970s. “Blame the Japanese” provided good political cover. But then, there were a lot of ugly deals made between union leadership and management in the 1960s and 1970s, e.g. management promising benefits they did not have the economic wherewithall to deliver in return for union peace and union bosses knowingly accepting the empty promises as a way of winning the next union election and pushing the costs far into the future. Democracy (political or industrial) can be an ugly thing at times…
Brayden: When I mentioned Pareto improvements, my example was that taxation could transfer some of the economic benefit gained through lower prices back to the person who lost the job through a direct redistribution, and nobody would be worse off while many are better off. I don’t mean to say that this particular method is necessarily the answer, just that it can indeed be Pareto efficient for jobs to be performed by the most efficient worker. As Nate said, a Pareto efficiency doesn’t have to include the immediate replacement of an equally beneficial job.
I’m not sure what about my argument is “supply side” as you say. And I’m sorry if I mischaracterized your argument by implying that you advocated economic restraints.
i don’t understand econ well enought to figure all this out, but the pithy ‘all dead in the long run’ seems apt to the detroit/u.s. situation. currently, the u.s. economy is growing…better efficiency/productivity, but less jobs, and the start of white collar exporting jobs in significant numbers.
this has led me to question, for the first time, the libertarian-economic free trade mantra. power is power, whether made up of economic/social, or other components. if China does take over a critical mass of the manufacturing center, and u.s. workers can’t retrain/find new jobs and thus don’t have the $ to buy the ‘cheaper’ priced goods, and the u.s. loses out to china, or anyone else…i don’t see a net increase in human rights/agentic freedom of individuals through these pareto improvements.
please…someone take me to task and correct my misunderstandings. i don’t want to lose my theoretical faith in the face of short-run praxis costs.