As if it were some kind of brazen insult to the Founding Fathers, on the 220th anniversary of the codification of the Bill of Rights, President Obama signed into law an act that, according to most civil libertarians and Constitution-thumpers, negates those hallowed guarantees of individual liberty.

Writes one LewRockwell.com columnist:

The National Defense Authorization Act will make it official. It will confer upon the executive branch and the military (increasingly, the same things) the permanent authority to snatch and grab any person, U.S. citizens included, whom it decrees to be a “terrorist” – as defined or not by the executive or the military - and imprison them, indefinitely, without formal charge, presentation of evidence or judicial proceeding of any kind. These “detainees” will have neither civilian rights in the civil court system, nor – crucially – even the minimal rights to due process and decent treatment conferred upon prisoners of war. 

The writer claims that the U.S. has “crossed the Rubicon,” that is, become something akin to the “20th century horror shows,” Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany.

But has anything really changed? I don’t mean in terms of day-to-day operations of the government but fundamentally.

Most Americans are actually quite familiar and comfortable with Raison d’État (or what Alex Jones might call “black ops”), which has been around since time immemorial. Espionage, international intrigue, and state assassinations have, indeed, always captured the public’s imagination—from James Bond to GI Joe to Obama’s murder of Osama bin Laden. People of all levels of sophistication feel in their guts that the government should do things—bad things . . . illegal things . . . secret things . . . dangerous things—to “keep us safe.” 

Put in more scientific language, Raison d’État trumps legal and constitutional considerations. Only systematic libertarians and anarchists are much troubled by this fact. There are, of course, limits to what the public will tolerate in terms of the use of force, and actions must be justified in some way. But the key is that the state—and the state alone—is allowed to do such deeds.

It was my discovery of the European New Right that finally convinced me that one could be both a serious intellectual and a political rightist. My initiation came when I discovered Alain De Benoist’s and Charles Champetier’s manifesto for the French New Right eleven years ago. I had never seen rightist ideas presented in such a way before and I knew I had come upon something powerful. Previously, I had been more or less a left-wing Chomskyite. I had long found the left dissatisfying, particularly its victimological ressentiment and its PC bluenoses. Yet, when I looked at the bulk of the American right and saw the jingoist flag-wavers, Bible-bangers, Israel-firsters, plutocratic apologists, conspiracists, and knee-jerk militarists, I would wonder why would anyone could possibly want to be associated with that, for God’s sake? Murray Rothbard’s championing of the legacy of the “Old Right” notwithstanding, I considered the right to be an intellectual wasteland. Fortunately, the European New Right rescued me from such a narrow perception. It was from the European New Right that I learned one could be a progressive without being an egalitarian, a conservative without succumbing to vulgar economism, and a traditionalist without being a yahoo.

A major problem with bringing ENR ideas to North American audiences has been the fact that much of the scholarship produced by ENR writers has yet to be translated into English. For instance, De Benoist is the leading intellectual of the ENR and one of its founding fathers, yet only only two of De Benoist’s dozens of books, On Being a Pagan and The Problem of Democracy, have undergone an English translation and the latter appeared in English only this year thanks to Arktos Publishing. Two original English works surveying ENR thought have also appeared. One of these is by Tomislav Sunic and the other is by Michael O’Meara. If you are a college student and you want to shock and offend your politically correct professors and peers, then the distribution of copies of these works on campuses would certainly be an easy way to do so.

Because of the efforts of Arktos, more and more works of the ENR are gradually being made available in English as well as older works originally written by long-forgotten conservative revolutionary figures of the interwar era. Arktos also makes available works by leftist thinkers offering genuine insight and other writers whose ideas fall way outside the paradigm of what passes for “the right” within the context of U.S. style “conservatism.” Suffice to say we will not be seeing any of the plutocrat-funded and neocon-managed publishing houses of America’s “conservative movement” issuing the works of Lothrop Stoddard, Antonio Gramsci, Georges Sorel, Carl Schmitt, Michael Cremo, Andrew Fraser, or Pentti Linkola. Arktos has also issued an English version of Ernst von Salomon’s It Cannot Be Stormed. Salomon was a conservative revolutionary author whose success continued well into the post-WW2 period and earned the denunciation of TIME magazine in the process. I’m still waiting for English translations of Ernst Junger’s Der Arbeiter and of the works of Ernst Niekisch (hint, hint).

Several contemporary works by leading ENR writers, such as De Benoist, Sunic, and Guillame Faye have been given extensive review on Brett Stevens’ website. (See here, here, and here.) Sunic’s Against Democracy and Equality is particularly helpful not only as an introduction to ENR ideas on a more abstract level, but as a source of critical insights that shed extensive light on the realities behind some of the more important political and cultural phenomena of our time. As Stevens observes in his review of Sunic:

Liberalism dehumanizes its adversaries. According to Carl Schmitt as channeled through Sunic, the left abhors war — so it phrases every political action as a police action. The bad guys become inhuman because they are immoral, not nice, not egalitarian, etc. and thus can be exterminated not in a war but in the right-thinking people detaining or removing the bad ones.

De Benoist’s The Problem of Democracy subjects the most sacred of all modern pieties, the ideal of liberal mass democracy, to rigorous and unrelenting criticism. The only other contemporary work that I am aware of that offers such a thoroughgoing assault on modern democracy is Hans Hermann Hoppe’s Democracy: The God That Failed. I gave Hoppe’s work an extensive review when it first came out ten years ago. The twentieth century’s two leading critics of modern liberal democracy, with its tendencies toward mob rule, were arguably Carl Schmitt and Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn. Schmitt attacked liberal democracy from the perspective of a traditional conservative in the mode of Hobbes or Burke, while Kuehnelt-Leddihn offered a critique rooted in a synthesis of Catholic traditionalism and a monarchist variation of classical liberalism reminiscent of Lord Acton.

Hoppe’s work is clearly influenced by and somewhat derivative of Kuehnelt-Leddihn, and employs arguments one might expect a conservative Catholic and liberal monarchist to make. De Benoist’s observations on democracy more closely resemble and are influenced by those of Schmitt. While Hoppe and Kuehnelt-Leddihn defended classical eighteenth and nineteenth century liberalism against modern egalitarian democracy and its social democratic manifestation, De Benoist like Schmitt before him sees liberalism as the root of the problem. De Benoist offers not classical liberalism but classical democracy as conceived of by the Greeks as the answer to the “problem of democray” in its modern form. Whereas Hoppe postulates the concept of a society ordered completely on the basis of private property as the alternative to modern democratic institutions, De Benoist offers suggestions that at times resemble the notions of “participatory democracy” or “direct democracy” advanced by certain strands of the Left. These contrasts should make for interesting dialogue and debate on the alternative right.

Guillame Faye’s Why We Fight differs from much of the literature of the ENR in that while Faye incorporates the essence of the broader New Right philosophy into his analysis, he also demonstrates a greater concern for on-the-ground practical politics, strategic formulations, and particular policy prescriptions in a way that is atypical of ENR thinkers with their general focus on arcane theoretical abstractions, historical interpretations, or “metapolitics.” Faye’s geopolitical outlook in some ways resembles a melding of the “Eurasianist” idea advanced by Alexander Dugin and the anti-Islamism of Western European euronationalism. This puts Faye at odds with other strands of the ENR which leans towards at least a tactical solidarity with the Third World and regards Islam as a potential traditionalist ally against globalization and Americanization.

I am inclined to regard Faye’s view as appropriate for Europeans and the latter view as more relevant to North Americans. Islam is geographically far removed from North America, and poses no immediate demographic threat. Islamic terrorism directed towards the United States and its allies is for the most part the inevitable “blowback” generated by U.S. foreign policy or, more specifically, the exercise of Zionist influence (whether Jewish or Christian) over American foreign policy in the Middle East. An alliance with Russia against both Americanization and Islamication may serve the interests of Europeans, but America would be best served by a simple renunciation of globalism and a return to old-fashioned isolationism. Indeed, domestic U.S. Muslims may well be valuable allies against domestic Zionism.

The European New Right clearly has much to offer to ordinary conservatives looking for ideas of infinitely greater substance than what is typically found on talk radio, FOX News, or the subcultures of American right-wing populsim. But the philosophy of the ENR might well prove to be the bridge that also helps many disaffected leftists to eventually find their way to the alternative right. The thinkers of the ENR have developed a critique of globalization, imperialism, and Americanization every bit as thorough and radical as that offered by neo-Marxists like Immanuel Wallerstein, indeed even more so. Likewise, the ENR possesses a critique of consumerism, recognition of ecological issues, anticlericalism and critique Christianity that avoids the shrill bigotry of the “new atheists” that at times resembles but is more substantive than that offered by the Left. The ENR emphasis on the sovereignty and self-preservation of all peoples might even appeal to non-white nationalist, separatist, or autonomist movements.

Writers of the ENR have also advanced an intelligent and sincere but measured social and cultural conservatism that lacks the “homosexual-atheist-abortionist-under-every-bed” hysteria of the American right-wing. ENR thought upholds masculine and feminine identities without sinking into crass misogyny, and De Benoist has even controversially called for solidarity with Third World nationalism against US imperialism in a way that resembles a rightist version of Chomsky, and advocated a federated European “empire” of autonomous ethnic, cultural, and national identities that is reminiscient of the Holy Roman Empire (which, as Voltaire said, was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire). Meanwhile, the ENR-sympathetic Telos journal has postulated a critique of the modern liberal-managerial “new class” that greatly resembles Bakunin’s early critique of Marxism.

If we are going to build a rightist opposition in North America that is worthy of the legacy of Nietzsche, Pareto, Schmitt, Mencken, Ortega, and Junger, and is not merely a movement of useful idiots for the neoconservatives, military-industrial complex, and right-wing of the U.S. ruling class as so-called “movement conservatism” often is, then it would appear that the ideas of the European New Right are thus far the best thing going.

While watching the video of efforts by left-wing thugs to disrupt Richard Spencer’s recent talk on affirmative action at Providence College, I was reminded of a conversation I had sometime in the late 1980s with a former member of the 1960s radical group Students for a Democratic Society who had been involved with the movement to oppose the Vietnam War since its inception circa 1962. He recalled how in the early days of the antiwar movement, protest organizers were thrilled if they could get fifty people to show up for a rally. To publicly oppose the war at the time was physically dangerous, and such rallies were always at risk of being physically attacked by vigilantes shouting epithets like “communist” at the protestors. If organizers of the rallies could get police protection at all, they were happy to have it. Not only were public demonstrations in danger of such assaults, but so were quiet and peaceful meetings of those who opposed the war held in church basements or on university campuses. Of course, we all know that the anti-Vietnam War movement morphed into a mass movement just a few years later.

So it is indeed ironic that half a century later it is those who challenge the established dogmas purveyed by the Left who similarly experience the disruption of their efforts to peacefully speak and organize, who become the targets of epithets like “racist,” “sexist,” or “classist,” and who are threatened with physical violence. Incidents of this type are exceedingly common. It is now widely known that conservative speakers on university campuses, even entirely mainstream neocon-friendly “movement conservative” types, are routinely shouted down and threatened by leftists. As most readers are probably aware, right-wing organizations outside the mainstream, such as American Renaissance, have endured even worse attacks. At times, simply attending an anti-illegal immigration rally can be all that it takes for one to become the victim of a physical assault.

A number of observations could be made concerning the demeanor and behavior of the disrupters of Richard’s presentation at Providence. One is the obvious fact that they are so certain of their own moral superiority and the nobility of their crusade that they feel ordinary rules of civilized discourse or common courtesy no longer apply to them. Another is that far from their image of themselves as enlightened, free-thinking rebels, they come across more like brainwashed zombies similar to members of the LaRouche cult or the Moonies I used to encounter selling flowers on the streets of Washington, D.C. years ago. Their level of intellectual prowess seems to amount to little more than thinking that merely throwing labels at people and ideas they find disagreeable counts as a valid refutation of the opposing viewpoints.

Judging from the hysteria of their reaction, one would think that Richard was advocating genocide rather than arguing for the fairly standard right-of –center position that affirmative action is a bad idea, a position that even some minority scholars and analysts hold. It is also rather difficult to see how Richard was arguing for “white supremacy” given that the data he was presenting actually showed Asians to be the top performers with regards to SAT scores. As Richard pointed out in his talk, it was he who was the moderate and the protestors who were the extremist nutjobs.

For the diversitarians, affirmative action is not merely a policy preference, but a sacred article of faith, like the Holy Trinity or the Immaculate Conception. Affirmative action is a political tool the liberal establishment utilizes to maintain the loyalty of one of its core allies and constituent groups, the black elite and the middle class professional sectors of the black population. Affirmative action is an entitlement used as a reward for political loyalty from these sectors. It is doubtful that AA is of much benefit to genuinely impoverished or disadvantaged blacks, many of whom do not even finish high school, much less attend college or obtain professional-level occupations. And as Richard pointed out, if the goal of AA was to help the poor and disadvantaged in the first place, AA would be class-based rather than race-based.

Indeed, “black conservatives” like Thomas Sowell and Elizabeth Wright have documented a myriad of ways in which policies implemented by the welfare state and civil rights bureaucracy that has meta-morphed in recent decades have severely undermined the organic economic, cultural, and family life of urban black communities, and contributed exponentially to the social pathologies often found in those communities. Likewise, the black libertarian economist Walter Williams has produced rather extensive evidence indicating the contribution of efforts at intrusive economic micromanagement to high unemployment rates among urban blacks.

Additionally, there is some evidence that black children who are educated in culturally specific Afro-centric schools perform much better than black children who receive conventional public schooling. The reasons as to why this is so are inconclusive but what is interesting is that the efforts of either conservative and libertarian black scholars like Sowell, Wright, or Williams, or of Afro-centrists with a nationalist or separatist outlook, are routinely attacked or dismissed by white liberals and the captains of the civil rights industry alike. Indeed, such people are often reviled by the Left. The obvious reason for this is the fanatical egalitarian-universalist ideology that has come to dominate the Left, an ideology that just happens to coincide with the political and economic self-interest of those who push it. It is an ideology that seeks a society where all resources are controlled and managed by the state and administered according to a spoils system the ostensible purpose of which is the imposition of bureaucratically-managed “equality.” The ultimate outcome of totalitarian humanism taken to its logical conclusion would be a totalitarian state organized as a kind of caste system whereby individual rights are assigned on the basis of group identity and group rights are assigned on the basis of the position of the group in the pantheon of the oppressed or on the victimological family tree.

Given these considerations, it might be apt to compare our present day lefto-fascist, stormtroopers-on-granola with the Red Guards of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. The Red Guards were, of course, bands of youthful vigilantes who scurried about China during the 1960s smashing up cultural artifacts deemed “old” (e.g. conservative, traditional) and engaging in vigilante violence against persons deemed “reactionary” (mostly dissident intellectuals and those labeled “bourgeois” or originating from politically incorrect cultural or class backgrounds.) We see a similar though milder version of this today in the West today with attacks on expressions of traditional culture (like Christmas celebrations), historical artifacts considered to be reactionary (like Confederate Civil War monuments or streets named after Confederate generals), and vigilante actions against people given labels like “racist,” “fascist,” “sexist,” or “classist.”

I suspect that these “antifa” types, these Red Guards-on-tofu, would be every bit as murderous and destructive if the authorities would sanction it, as Chairman Mao did during the Cultural Revolution. We’ve seen hints at this already with the nonchalant attitude of the authorities towards threats of murder and arson against innocent people made by the Antifa in response to American Renaissance’s planned gathering in 2010. Plenty of other incidents have occurred where destructive or violent behavior by those claiming to act in the name of noble causes like “anti-racism” and “anti-fascism” have been overlooked or dealt with leniently by authorities convinced of the purity of their motives or restrained by political pressure.

The great irony presented by the Antifa is that despite all of their posturing as radicals and revolutionaries, they’re essentially doing the establishment’s bidding. The attitudes they subscribe to are not fundamentally different from those of the liberal elite overlords of the wider society. The Red Guards-on-tofu are simply a smellier, more ill-mannered, undisciplined, more in-a-hurry version of the liberal establishment itself. Wouldn’t it be an even greater irony if indeed the growing counterculture of the alternative right were to grow into a large influential movement as the leftist counterculture and antiwar movements did in the 1960s, with the Antifa and their ilk assuming the role of the “hardhats”?

If you spend any time on Facebook, you may have seen someone you know post the following copy-and-paste status message, which seems to have been making the rounds at least since the Arizona immigration law went into effect:

Your car is Japanese. Your pizza is Italian. Your beer is German. Your wine is Spanish. Your democracy is Greek. Your coffee is Brazilian. Your tea is Chinese. Your watch is Swiss. Your fashion is French. Your shirt is Indian. Your shoes are Thai. Your radio is Korean. Your vodka is Russian--and then you complain that your neighbor is... ......an immigrant? Pull yourself together! Copy if you are against Racism!

Let's just address a few basic problems with this.

First of all, my car is a Toyota, but as you can see from the VIN, it was actually made right here in the USA. In fact, we make Toyotas here in Indiana. And that pizza we had last week? That was made from all US ingredients, too. I’m pretty sure at least the cheese was from Wisconsin. I think the tomatoes were from California, though I realise some don’t consider that part of the US anymore.

With that out of the way, let's talk about what Stanley Fish calls 'boutique multiculturalism'. I read his article on the topic back in my college days and it has remained a favourite of mine ever since. Fish is a Leftist of the highest order, but he's an intelligent Leftist, so I do rather enjoy what he writes, even when I don’t agree with all of it. If you can find it, read it; I highly recommend it.

Boutique multiculturalism, as Fish defines it, is a superficial fascination with the Other: ethnic food, weekend festivals, and high-profile flirtations with the Other. Boutique multiculturalism is exactly what all this global consumerism nonsense in the Facebook status message means. Purveyors of this superficial brand of multiculturalism appreciate, enjoy, sympathise with, and 'recognise the legitimacy' of cultures other than their own. But they always stop short of approving these radically different other cultures at the point where it would matter most to the strongly committed members of the other culture. We may, for example, say that Jews should be allowed to practice their religion in our countries, but we certainly don't approve of kosher animal slaughter or of women being forced to shave their heads and wear wigs. But hey, that dreidl game is really fun! At the point where the boutique multiculturalist finds another's cultural practices inhumane or irrational, he withdraws his respect and appreciation. For this person, multiculturalism is just a matter of lifestyle.

In his comments on my discussion of alternate modernities, Paul Gottfried observes that in our present situation there's no educational program, system of alliances, or political and cultural strategy that seems likely to get us out of the hole we're in.

I agree. If we start with what I called the modern "attempt to base social order simply on this-worldly empirical man," we can't get anywhere, because we can't escape the problem of conflicting wills fighting over who gets what. The only way to deal with that problem is by some combination of force and fraud, and any new combination of programs, alliances, and strategies is just going to be one more configuration of force and fraud. Why should our force and fraud work out better than everyone else's? Haven't the possibilities been tried and found wanting?

The problem, it seems, is the basic modern understandings that make our present situation what it is and so condition all the programs, alliances, strategies, and so on that now seem reasonable and practical. Things won't get a whole lot better until those understandings change, and that won't happen because some group of activists and theoreticians puts together a system of understandings that's more to their liking and tries to get them adopted by the dominant forces in society.

In particular, as Paul notes, right-wingers aren't going to create a better world by getting together and aligning themselves with selected religious institutions, "command[ing] the political class and its allies in the media, the entertainment industry, and public education to change their worldview," and educating the masses into an outlook more to their liking. Among other problems, religious institutions themselves are affected by the dominant understandings.

But what then? If we don't like the way things are there must be some response--alcohol, skydiving, suicide, whatever--that makes sense even if political maneuvering is not likely to do much for us.

My proposal was to "go back to first things." What defines the political situation is what seems best and most real to the people involved, and if the situation is impossible those things must change. Current understandings have basic problems that (among other things) lead to a view of man as essentially asocial and eventually mean various forms of tyranny as well as "mindlessness and incompetence on the part of rulers and ruled."

It follows that the dissatisfied need first of all to understand the world better, and in a way that enables them to live in a manner more worthy of human nature. That, of course, is a prepolitical issue. It's worth dealing with in itself, since doing so will help ourselves and our families and friends. It's more than just a personal matter, though, since such initiatives can spread and transform social life. At some point some initiative will--it's happened before and will happen again--so why not ours if it's superior?

The present setup has basic contradictions, and won't last forever any more than other social arrangements have. With that in mind, those with an outlook and way of life that is more true and more worth living by should make their pitch and see what catches on and endures. As I commented, "revolutions begin in thought, and the way of thought that makes people most functional and enables them to deal most intelligently with the world has a good shot at winning eventually."

The proposal sounds impossibly conjectural and long-range, but when there is no obvious quick fix you drop day-to-day events as your reference point and do what you can for what could work in principle. If what's needed is a change in basic understandings then that's what you should pursue. Modernity makes effectiveness the measure of thought, but to deal with the world effectively you have to deal on their own terms with issues that precede effectiveness, like what is real and good.

Such an approach might get results soon: things might be better than they seem, late modernity might be a bubble about to burst, the Church (which like everything else has its own characteristic way of functioning) might be about to revert to type, or something nobody has thought of might happen. Or it might take effect slowly or not at all. The same is true of every approach, though, and the basic point is that this approach--unlike others--could work in concept, and is worth pursuing on its own terms even if it does not.

The big question is what a superior way of thought would be. On that point opinions differ and discussion is necessary. In order to deal with man as he actually is and the problems politics actually present we need an outlook that's adequate to the world as we experience it. It seems clear, to me at any rate, that such an outlook requires an understanding of practical rationality not limited to technology and of knowledge not limited to modern natural science.

Otherwise we cannot, among other things, understand people. To understand and deal with life and human beings as we find them, I suggested that "something like the Christian soul, or at least a human essence that by nature is oriented toward the good" is necessary. Whether I'm right on that is a matter for discussion. Still, each of us in his manner of life displays what he thinks is most real and most worth living by. We're more likely to make progress on basic issues to the extent we articulate and examine such commitments. Our problems today really are that basic, which is the reason there seems to be no exit from them.

More Deficits

In a democracy, politicians cannot help promising more than is deliverable. Even if the system is rigged to perpetuate its founding ideological paradigm; even if on every election voters are asked to choose between nearly identical options—as a minimum any given politician seeking to keep his job or improve his personal and professional prospects needs to ensure that he is regarded by voters as the least bad of available options. The similarity within, and between, the parties and the individual politicians creates a highly competitive environment that provides every motivation for politicians to overcommit, stretching the truth, if not outright lying, before an election, and worrying about how to obfuscate broken promises once (back) in office.

Any attempts to reduce budget deficits will be driven by the sudden fear of economic consequences likely to lead to social unrest; after all, social unrest could develop into a revolution where they end up in exile, in prison, or worse. Because in a capitalist system the economy becomes all important, growth being an ends in itself; because disciplined restraint and aim-directed privation are anathema to a consumer culture; because elections run in four or five year cycles—avoiding pain and creating the illusion of a recovery within the electoral horizon takes priority over creating an economy that is stable in the long term; thus for 2011 the premium will remain on reflating bubbles, on quick fixes, using every imaginable subterfuge to levitate economic indicators for as long as the ruling party remains in power. The obvious and most election friendly method to achieve this is running deficits—or, expressed more honestly, money-printing, which enables incumbent politicians to spend immediately without raising taxes or cutting social programmes, while also deferring the consequences (taxes, inflation) until after the next election.

Although there has been some alarm at the high deficit levels, and although there is anger at the bank bailouts, the economic pain currently being experienced by the voter is still being attributed to the recession, a recurring economic phenomenon with varying and nebulous causes. Therefore, I suspect ruling politicians will suffer further loss of prestige (mainly through their failure to get the economy going fast enough), but they will be able to manage the decline for another year. 

Noam Scheiber in The New Republic has written an article that sounds like just about every other establishment liberal piece of the last few decades. Smart people with money are fooling dumb whites without money into advocating against their own interests. Instead, the dumb whites should listen to the other smart white people, those whose jobs and power depend on an activist and interventionist state.

Scheiber here is specifically writing about the recent criticism of the Fed.  The smart rich people are represented by the Pauls (Ron and Rand), while the dumb poor people have Sarah Palin.

What exactly does the former Alaskan governor get wrong?

There was, for example, her discussion of quantitative easing as though it were sorcery. “And where, you may ask, are we getting the money to pay for all this? We’re printing it out of thin air,” she complained. True-ish.

“True-ish” is liberal for “true.”

Then there’s my favorite passage of the speech, which displayed Palin’s solicitude for European policymaking sensibilities. “The German finance minister called the Fed’s proposals ‘clueless,’” she said. “When Germany, a country that knows a thing or two about the dangers of inflation, warns us to think again, maybe it’s time for Chairman Bernanke to cease and desist.” But the starchy Germans always worry about inflation, even when it’s not remotely a threat. (In the same way, my Jewish mother always worries that I’m starving, but I don’t take that as a reason to gorge myself.) If, on the other hand, Zimbabwe started lecturing us on out-of-control inflation, that might get my attention.

In other words, it’s irrational to complain until Zimbabwe is criticizing your monetary policy.  Why does anybody even bother trying to keep up with the brilliant Mr. Scheiber?

In this way, Palin is a near-perfect symbol of a certain type of Tea Partier—the people who’ve had enough of the government’s arrogant scheming, even if their worldview falls a bit short of cohering. When The New York Times surveyed Tea Party supporters earlier this year, it conducted follow-up interviews to gauge respondents’ thoughts on Medicare and Social Security. Most resisted cuts to either program. “That’s a conundrum, isn’t it?” a woman named Jodine White told the paper. “I don’t know what to say. … I guess I want smaller government and my Social Security.” Like Palin, White’s opposition to government isn’t logical; it’s visceral.

Look, there’s no doubt that many Tea Partiers hold views that are silly and maybe even damaging to themselves in the long run.  But I’m not holding my breath waiting for The Weekly Standard or Wall Street Journal to go and interview the least intelligent members of the Democratic base probing for logical inconsistencies in their statements.  Any movement or ideology that’s going to gain wide support in a democratic society is going to have a lot of followers who are of sub-standard IQ.  Luckily for liberals, making fun of their stupids is hate speech. 

Not only do liberals often accuse lower class whites of failing to understand the issues of the day, but their errors are said to work against their own interests.  Since blacks and Hispanics do actually benefit from redistributionist policies, Scheiber may argue that it doesn’t matter if many of those who vote for his side are stupid because they make the right choices, even if for the wrong reasons.  This seems sensible enough, though one must notice that this is a philosophy which sees amorality as the trait of the ideal citizen.  If you’re old, take your Social Security and Medicare and don’t worry about the debt to future generations because that’s what’s in your interests.  If you don’t have health insurance you should support other people having to buy it for you without any further philosophical or ethical considerations.  Only when poor whites reach this advanced stage of moral development will the Left find them acceptable.

As the Palins are the dupes, the Pauls are the villains.

But more than anything else, the Pauls represent the interest of the affluent and educated. After all, the people most worried about the debasement of the currency are the people who, well, have a lot of currency. On the other hand, the working class, who typically have more in the way of debt than assets, actually benefit from inflation, since it eats away at the value of their mortgages and credit card bills. Likewise, when the Pauls rail against Social Security and Medicare, they’re being perfectly true to their class, since the two programs downwardly redistribute income. It’s part of the reason Ron Paul’s presidential campaign took off on college campuses and online, two places where the affluent and educated congregate. (By contrast, unpublished data from this recent Washington Post poll shows that college grads are much more likely than non-college grads to have an unfavorable view of Palin and to believe she’s unqualified to be president.) One of Ron Paul’s most indispensable online activists was an early Google employee who sold his stock at the peak of the market.

While it’s true that many in the working class with high time preference and moderate to low intelligence and earning power would be hurt by the abolition of say, Social Security and Medicare, I find it hard to believe that those conscientious enough to join a movement worried about what government debt means for future generations will be among those who lack the foresight to save for retirement.  True, inflation eats away at debt, but it also eats away at savings.  There is an aspect of rich/smart vs. poor/stupid to the debates about who benefits from different kinds of monetary policy and the extent of government spending, but these issues also pit the responsible and thrifty against the wasteful and capricious.

And in the end, if one takes Scheiber’s analysis at face value, there's the question of on what grounds the author can object to the wealthy, conscientious and prudent working for their own interests.

In case you missed it, Comedy Central’s John Stewart and Stephen Colbert hosted their “Restore Sanity/Keep Fear Alive” rally this weekend on Washington’s National Mall. The straight man in the act was Stewart (“sanity”), an open liberal concerned about extremism; the funny man was Stephen Colbert (“fear”), who appeared “in character” as an extremist conservative. Such an arrangement is all you need to know about what Comedy Central thinks of traditional Euro-Americans.

Though before I start bashing the rally, I’d be remiss in not pointing out that Stewart and his writers have no small amount of talent and mettle. Throughout the 9/11 years (2001-2006), the tragedy and farce of “movement conservatism,” I found myself agreeing with most of the Daily Show clips I came across in which Stewart would criticize the pompous “democracy spreaders” and their beloved “Decidor.” Certainly, no one else on mainstream cable was willing to report on then-candidate Barack Obama’s kowtow to AIPAC using a New York “Jewy” voice, as Stewart did in a now legendary segment, “Indecision 5768.”

But that was then -- in 2007, an “extremist” conservative was in the White House and Barack Obama was a plucky underdog -- and this is now -- Democrats run the country and grassroots conservatism has taken up the mantle of social protest. Stewart’s message has thus modulated to lampooning those who are anti-Establishment and offering the soothing counsel of take it easy, trust in your elected leaders, don’t question the system, in less subtle words, OBEY!

Among the many fascinating figures that emerged from the intellectual culture of Germany’s interwar Weimar Republic, perhaps none is quite as significant or unique as Carl Schmitt. An eminent jurist and law professor during the Weimar era, Schmitt was arguably the greatest political theorist of the 20th century. He is also among the most widely misinterpreted or misunderstood.

The misconceptions regarding Schmitt are essentially traceable to two issues. The first of these is obvious enough: Schmitt’s collaboration with the Nazi regime during the early years of the Third Reich. The other reason why Schmitt’s ideas are so frequently misrepresented, if not reviled, in contemporary liberal intellectual circles may ultimately be the most important. Schmitt’s works in political and legal theory provide what is by far the most penetrating critique of the ideological and moral presumptions of modern liberal democracy and its institutional workings.

Like his friend and contemporary Ernst Junger, Schmitt lived to a very old age. His extraordinarily long life allowed him to witness many changes in the surrounding world that were as rapid as they were radical. He was born in 1888, the same year that Wilhelm II became the emperor of Germany, and died in 1985, the year Mikhail Gorbachev became the final General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Schmitt wrote on legal and political matters for nearly seven decades. His earliest published works appeared in 1910 and his last article was published in 1978. Yet it is his writings from the Weimar period that are by far the most well known and, aside from his works during his brief association with the Nazis, his works during the Weimar era are also his most controversial.

In an age of checklists, decision trees, and zero tolerance, it's a puzzling notion.

People think it means giving up on reason. Or doing what's been done no matter what. Or accepting an external authority that has nothing to do with the situation we're actually dealing with.

What else could it mean, when each of us has his own thoughts and goals, reason is a matter of studies and statistics, and social authority is either following rules we've agreed to for our own purposes, or getting someone else's demands shoved down our throat?