[PLEASUREMAN]

I put this in General Shit Talk because I don't think the subject matter is really that important, but it still might be interesting. Reagan is an interesting political figure because, long after his presidence ended, somewhat anti-climatically, he continues to be regarded as an important figure and Republicans still venerate him and find all his successors lacking. The fact that Reagan was a polarizing figure is somewhat obscured by this extended veneration. In his day, Reagan was not particularly popular, if you go only by his opinion polls, alhtough I think today Reagan would be hugely more popular than he was in the 80s.

What Reagan had more than sheer popularity is breadth of appeal. He didn't just beat Mondale, he beat him almost everywhere, on the strength of forceful (not, as in Clinton's case, anemic) policy decisions. Even so there were moments in the race where Mondale was either polling slightly ahead or close to even, and certainly a competent campaign and candidate would have avoided the historic bloodbath.

The subject of Reagan came up due to a post mlad made elsewhere which laid into Reagan and even called him the equivalent of Dubya, either intellectually or politically. I think this is grossly unfair. Dubya was perhaps Reagan as farce, but mlad's assessment severely understates Reagan's political and intellectual acumen. Reagan was not a dimwit or intellectually lazy; as politicians go he was more or less average in brains, but more importantly his temperament was world class. As we've seen in discussions about clever sillies and the general tenor of intellectual discussion today, there is some reason to esteem a politician who is not filled with intellectual hubris, and who does not fashion himself a member of the managerial elite.

What is most missing from mlad's remarks (which I will let him clarify here) is context. To focus on Reagan's weaknesses or errors (mostly with the benefit of hindsight, that is without sufficient knowledge to have made a compelling case at the time), while mentioning nothing about the cultural and the political landscape, his predecessors and successors, and so on, is to enter into a dry intellectual rumination over the moot question, "Was Reagan an ideal or perfect president?"

As a corrective to the worshipfulness typical of Republicans there is plenty that can be criticized about Reagan and his presidency. I expect a lot of that to be rehashed here. But without making a comparative case this becomes simply an extreme negative view balancing against an extreme positive view. The balance here is artificial, since both views contain error--error cannot balance error.

In chat, mlad remarked:

mlad:

I suppose more than anything Reagan irritates me for his optimism about the limits of American power, something that you can in no way deny he shared with Bush - we are a light unto nations, it's morning in America, etc etc. Panglossian pronouncements of this kind inevitably gloss over unpleasant realities about the boundaries of human power

He made a point of distinguishing himself from Carter, the 'defeatist' who naively believed that the public would endorse sober assessment of political and economic realities over superficially pleasing statements of action

As Spengler said, optimism is cowardice - which ranks Reagan among the most craven men to have ever lived

I replied:

PLEASUREMAN:

optimism is not cowardice, if spengler wrote that I'm sure he was writing about some sort of Nietzschean realism or something...optimism is a typical leader trait because who is going to follow a morose defeatist?

the context, which I don't think you fully appreciate due to age, is that America perceived itself to be in (and was) an existential struggle against communism, which the left was confident could not be won

moreover it was a response to the degeneration of both physicality and spirit that suffused the 70s due to the collapse engendered by liberal solutions (break with even more tradition)

utlimately of course the president, a single man in the executive branch, is powerless to change the big things that are wrong in our society, he is most effective as a vocalizer and motivator

his optimism or elan may irritate you, but that says nothing of his accomplishments (or failures) as president, and does nothing to put him in perspective (comparing to other presidentsof his era)

I think a balanced view of history will show him to overshadow both his immediate predecessors and those who have followed him up until at least the next decade

as for Nixon he is the most interesting political figure of the modern age, and the only one with any intellectual substance, which is the source of his appeal, but as president even setting aside his abuses of power he was largely a flounderer

To elaborate on a few hastily stated points, to say that Carter was naive (and sober!) is to impute to Reagan the con-artistry of the salesman, a charge commonly made from the Left, although frankly I have never felt it was convincing of anything more than the sour bitterness over an enormous political setback. Carter was a common type of religious liberal, whose crouching posture of "accepting reality" was the product of a self-flagellating and self-punishing impulse devoid of real religiosity. His solution to an energy crisis was not to rethink and reformulate American policy (particularly towards growth and consumption) but to admonish people to turn down the thermostat and throw on a sweater--in short, to willingly accept a future of declining standards of living. This is no solution to anything, and even today cannot be recommended for anything other than its comical masochism and passivity.

The existential crisis was not really with Communism proper, of course, but with the left-wing maggots which still fed on its corpse (it was truly a doomed and twisted system of government) and which had begun to infest Western societies--thanks not to "amiable dunces" like Reagan but to clever sillies who dominated the Left.

Others joined in at this point:

isamu:

There was a struggle with Russia, but that struggle involved both parties sitting on a pile of nukes and wasting shit-tons of money trying to flip 3rd world countries.

Russia is still there, with a pile of nukes.

Reagan never beat Russia.

Pangur:

"no existential struggle against communism" -- I'll disagree, oni, especially given Russian actions in Afghanistan at the time, as well as given the overwhelming support Russia had (and still has, if you care to check) on the lef tin the U.S.

We denutted Russia by outspending and outproducing it; and struggly by proxy (flipping 3d world countries) is still a hobby for us these day, although we've been a bit more up front about it recently

Fire away.

[BushrodButtram]

If the notorious David Goldman is to be believed, there were powerful figures in the CIA and the State Department who expected the USSR to win the Cold War right up till the day Ceausescu was shot on live TV. While actual Communist agents no longer occupied high office in the United States in 1980, there were and are Communist sympathizers in high places, at least in the broad sense of people with sympathies for Mao, Moscow, and Pol Pot; anti-American malcontents; once-kind-hearted people whose misguided senses of decency and entirely creditable outrage at some American actions pushed them to love America's enemies on principle; dabblers in radical chic. There has never been a shortage of twits whose frustration at being denied free reign to remodel the country in accordance with their utopian fever dreams fills them with librage. And in today's America, these twits are generally on the left.

Reagan's election and re-election were like piss in their eyes. Reagan's program (which he did not carry out, except in tax rates) was devolution. That is, the soi-disant elites were to be denied an ever-growing administrative state. It's instructive to note that the liberals who hated didn't trust the state, per se; they certainly didn't trust Reagan's administration. What they trusted was the idea of bureaucratic governance by the smartest graduates of the best universities. That, in a nutshell, is what Reagan was against.

Only the administrative state actually did grow under Reagan. The truth is that administrative power is on a one-way ratchet. Size of government is really just a proxy for the relentless growth of administrative power. The tide of society is inevitably to the left - not just now, but always, barring collapse or revolution. Has the state ever voluntarily given up its ability to meddle? And the hell of it is that, up to a point, this meddling is desirable.

In a highly regulated society, the state disburses wealth, and wealth flows from connections to the state rather than organically from the production that originally created the wealth. This appeared to change under Reagan, since money flowed back to the productive classes. But far more money flowed into the great banks and traders, creating the "vampire squids" of the modern era of capitalism.

In the end, I think Reagan failed, but he was probably better than any possible alternative. Even the vampire squids are probably preferable to what the Democratic consensus would have produced in the 1980s.

As for hatred of Reagan, it's a side issue. It comes from the ways that he offended a certain kind of people by his mere existence rather than any particular policy or action.

[antistoic]

PLEASUREMAN, 19 February 2010 - 01:51 PM:

To elaborate on a few hastily stated points, to say that Carter was naive (and sober!) is to impute to Reagan the con-artistry of the salesman, a charge commonly made from the Left, although frankly I have never felt it was convincing of anything more than the sour bitterness over an enormous political setback. Carter was a common type of religious liberal, whose crouching posture of "accepting reality" was the product of a self-flagellating and self-punishing impulse devoid of real religiosity. His solution to an energy crisis was not to rethink and reformulate American policy (particularly towards growth and consumption) but to admonish people to turn down the thermostat and throw on a sweater--in short, to willingly accept a future of declining standards of living. This is no solution to anything, and even today cannot be recommended for anything other than its comical masochism and passivity.

I'll comment on this first, then compose another reply that addresses Reagan later.


Carter's refusal to confront the energy crisis with ready-made, focus-grouped political nostrums and pleasant platitudes shouldn't be confused with passive inaction. He did rethink American energy policy, but he did so in a rather conservative way - he placed responsibility with the nation and American consumers instead of promising salvation through policies and economic 'restructuring'. I also happen to think he was right - here we are, decades later, without any meaningful change in our energy policy or our attitudes towards consumption, still beholden to foreign oil powers, still consuming, spending, and borrowing as if tomorrow didn't exist, and on top of all that, we're staring peak oil in the face and doing little about it.

But I'm not advocating research into 'alternative energy' proposals, either - Kunstler in The Long Emergency explains that most of these are impractical or cost-ineffective and usually involve fossil fuels during the initial production stages anyways. Instead, Carter's point was that we can't have our cake and eat it too - we can't sustain our lavish, technically advanced lifestyles forever without ruining our nation, our environment, and our culture. Whatever Carter's personal political identification, to me this attitude is infinitely more conservative and traditional than boasting of our progress and growth and ignoring the consequences our consumptive excess has on our communities.

This post has been edited by mlad: 19 February 2010 - 08:31 PM

[antistoic]

BushrodButtram, 19 February 2010 - 05:08 PM:

Only the administrative state actually did grow under Reagan. The truth is that administrative power is on a one-way ratchet. Size of government is really just a proxy for the relentless growth of administrative power. The tide of society is inevitably to the left - not just now, but always, barring collapse or revolution. Has the state ever voluntarily given up its ability to meddle? And the hell of it is that, up to a point, this meddling is desirable.

Mencius Moldbug (of Unqualified Reservations) thinks that libertarian policies actually increase bureaucratic bloat and the size of government:

Quote

My favorite analogy for official authority is the stellar cycle. If the authority of government is the temperature of the star, and the size of government is the size of the star, Washington is easily identifiable as a red giant, like Betelgeuse - enormous and cool.

For former libertarians, such as myself, this inverse relationship is critical. The paradox is that weakening government makes it larger. At least, to a libertarian, this seems like a paradox. Once it seems quite natural, you may no longer be a libertarian.

http://unqualified-r...alified_29.html

This post has been edited by mlad: 19 February 2010 - 08:28 PM

[BushrodButtram]

I'm not sure that I got the one-way ratchet language from Moldbug, but I've read a lot of his blog so it's certainly possible.

I guess I'd say that everyone just kind of expects the state to grow; everyone thinks that a large state is good.

[PLEASUREMAN]

N.B. the multiquote feature works pretty well, just tag each post and then click the Add Reply button at the top or bottom.

BushrodButtram, 19 February 2010 - 07:08 PM:

Reagan's election and re-election were like piss in their eyes. Reagan's program (which he did not carry out, except in tax rates) was devolution. That is, the soi-disant elites were to be denied an ever-growing administrative state. It's instructive to note that the liberals who hated didn't trust the state, per se; they certainly didn't trust Reagan's administration. What they trusted was the idea of bureaucratic governance by the smartest graduates of the best universities. That, in a nutshell, is what Reagan was against.

Only the administrative state actually did grow under Reagan. The truth is that administrative power is on a one-way ratchet. Size of government is really just a proxy for the relentless growth of administrative power.
[...]
As for hatred of Reagan, it's a side issue. It comes from the ways that he offended a certain kind of people by his mere existence rather than any particular policy or action.

Agree with this. But I want to call attention to the growth of the administrative state. I believe it is a function of scale (there are other variables but scale makes it truly unavoidable). The course we needed to chart was not merely a shrinking of government but a shrinking of all institutions and of course a statis or shrinking of the population. Barring this nothing Reagan (or anyone else) did was going to do more than delay.

But yes what the left stood for more than anything was rule by managerial elite--the mediocrities who are born and bred to manage by virtue of their conventional minds (conventional but having no respect for tradition). The Newsweek elite, if you will. Intellectually impoverished and complacent, they fear any kind of dynamism or belief system that does not call for their talents to manage things. This includes the competitive aspects of the market (they're fine with corporatism in the main) as well as religion. It's summed up in the derisive term "good government". Hard left progressives tend to be frustrated with this managerial left (for all the wrong reasons of course--the type of society the hard left would produce is evidenced on university campuses).

mlad, 19 February 2010 - 08:23 PM:

Carter's refusal to confront the energy crisis with ready-made, focus-grouped political nostrums and pleasant platitudes shouldn't be confused with passive inaction. He did rethink American energy policy, but he did so in a rather conservative way - he placed responsibility with the nation and American consumers instead of promising salvation through policies and economic 'restructuring'. I also happen to think he was right - here we are, decades later, without any meaningful change in our energy policy or our attitudes towards consumption, still beholden to foreign oil powers, still consuming, spending, and borrowing as if tomorrow didn't exist, and on top of all that, we're staring peak oil in the face and doing little about it.

But I'm not advocating research into 'alternative energy' proposals, either - Kunstler in The Long Emergency explains that most of these are impractical or cost-ineffective and usually involve fossil fuels during the initial production stages anyways. Instead, Carter's point was that we can't have our cake and eat it too - we can't sustain our lavish, technically advanced lifestyles forever without ruining our nation, our environment, and our culture. Whatever Carter's personal political identification, to me this attitude is infinitely more conservative and traditional than boasting of our progress and growth and ignoring the consequences our consumptive excess has on our communities.

I'll repeat what I've said before, which is that we have an enormous amount of slack in our system. That is, as prices go up our behavior will change without impacting us much. We have the ability to change a lot in fairly painless ways.

What we can't do is shed 100 million people in short order--which is why the failure to restrict immigration and to reorient cities around a static rather than expansive posture is going to make things worse than they ever had to be. Consider what our consumption would look like, as a nation, minus those 100+ million people we've added since 1970. It's a third of our size, and I think consumerism tends to rise as the population becomes more crowded (there are of course many parts of the world much more crowded than America, however the mix of ethnicities concentrates the feeling of crowdedness--of having no space in which to freely and safely exist).

In fact the "turn down the thermostat, wear a sweater" non-solution is just as dumb as the current orders to replace incandescent bulbs with CFC lighting or buy an electric hybrid--a pathetic, feel-good gloss instead of actual policy. Ditto the 55 MPH speed limit. It's not "rethinking American energy policy", it's a gross failure to lead, particularly as the crisis at the time was mainly a crisis of OPEC muscle flexing, not out of control consumption. Or perhaps you can explain why 30 years on we aren't living in an impoverished, Mad Max world--why all those projections of resource shortage fell so short of the mark.

Rethinking would involve stopping immigration, expanding real solutions like nuclear, and returning to institutions and policies that can make people feel safe and secure and hence not addicted to consumerist binging--which is the result not of moral shapelessness but of tremendous anxiety, so it does no good at all to castigate them or try to talk them into an ascetic lifestyle. That approach--"suffer more, it's good for you"--is doomed, not because people are greedy and shallow but because it leaves them worse off than ever--trapped in a terrifying world with not even the comfort of materialism. So in many respects the "morning in America" Reagan was far better for us than the "wear a sweater, learn to love the Reds" Carter. At least Reagan was speaking to real human needs, which won't go away no matter what liberals do.

[isamu]

PLEASUREMAN, 19 February 2010 - 09:07 PM:

I'll repeat what I've said before, which is that we have an enormous amount of slack in our system. That is, as prices go up our behavior will change without impacting us much. We have the ability to change a lot in fairly painless ways.

There is a limit to easy changes. For example, at some point in our lifetimes it will be too expensive for the average family to own and operate a motor vehicle. This will not be a slow, incremental transition, but painful and chaotic (Kunstler, etc.).

PLEASUREMAN, 19 February 2010 - 09:07 PM:

What we can't do is shed 100 million people in short order--which is why the failure to restrict immigration and to reorient cities around a static rather than expansive posture is going to make things worse than they ever had to be. Consider what our consumption would look like, as a nation, minus those 100+ million people we've added since 1970. It's a third of our size, and I think consumerism tends to rise as the population becomes more crowded (there are of course many parts of the world much more crowded than America, however the mix of ethnicities concentrates the feeling of crowdedness--of having no space in which to freely and safely exist).

In fact the "turn down the thermostat, wear a sweater" non-solution is just as dumb as the current orders to replace incandescent bulbs with CFC lighting or buy an electric hybrid--a pathetic, feel-good gloss instead of actual policy. Ditto the 55 MPH speed limit. It's not "rethinking American energy policy", it's a gross failure to lead, particularly as the crisis at the time was mainly a crisis of OPEC muscle flexing, not out of control consumption. Or perhaps you can explain why 30 years on we aren't living in an impoverished, Mad Max world--why all those projections of resource shortage fell so short of the mark.

Which predictions? The non-existent ones in Limits of Growth? The OPEC embargo gave a preview of things to come, and rightfully scared the crap out of a lot of people. Then the oils started flowing again and, per standard human psycology, everyone promptly forgot about it except for a few curmugeons.

PLEASUREMAN, 19 February 2010 - 09:07 PM:

Rethinking would involve stopping immigration, expanding real solutions like nuclear, and returning to institutions and policies that can make people feel safe and secure and hence not addicted to consumerist binging--which is the result not of moral shapelessness but of tremendous anxiety, so it does no good at all to castigate them or try to talk them into an ascetic lifestyle. That approach--"suffer more, it's good for you"--is doomed, not because people are greedy and shallow but because it leaves them worse off than ever--trapped in a terrifying world with not even the comfort of materialism. So in many respects the "morning in America" Reagan was far better for us than the "wear a sweater, learn to love the Reds" Carter. At least Reagan was speaking to real human needs, which won't go away no matter what liberals do.

Consumerism is an inevitable result of capitalism. Capitalism needs growth and therefore needs consumerism to feed growth to perpetuate itself. To attack consumerism - if that is even possible through government policy - would be to attack capitalism. If successful, this would cause widespread economic and social disruption, even to people who've picked up the anti-consumerism gospel. Being anti-comsumerist isn't going to make you feel better if you don't have a job. Either way - through policy or by waiting for the inescapable exhasution of material resources - the end of consumerism will lead to pain.

For someone who claims to be a "traditionalist", its pretty sad that you shit on Carter for advocating the very traditional values of thrift and frugality. Its makes people feel bad? Boo-hoo, so do a lot of traditional values.

That said, I'm typing this while wearing a sweater with the thermostat turned down (yeah, I'm really suffering here). I'm a frugal person because that's the way my parents raised me. But if my level of consumption were typical of the average American, the US economy wouldn't exist. Ultimately, I'm indirectly living off the overconsumption of everyone else.

[miles]

What we can't do is shed 100 million people in short order--which is why the failure to restrict immigration and to reorient cities around a static rather than expansive posture is going to make things worse than they ever had to be. Consider what our consumption would look like, as a nation, minus those 100+ million people we've added since 1970. It's a third of our size, and I think consumerism tends to rise as the population becomes more crowded (there are of course many parts of the world much more crowded than America, however the mix of ethnicities concentrates the feeling of crowdedness--of having no space in which to freely and safely exist).


That pretty much sums it up.

People remember Reagan so fondly because America was so much more likeable in 1982 than it is now. They remember how good it was back then. We were "the good guys" fighting the Soviet "bad guys". America was over 80% white back then also, with blacks being the only sizeable minority. The professariate was not as far-gone as it is now either. The Kulture was not nearly as abrasive as it is now. If you go to YouTube you can see preppy performers neatly dressed (Melissa Manchester for example) singing happy songs. A mere ten years later you could see The Red Hot Chili Peppers performing a pantomimed bacchanal during an awards show with oodles of half-dressed zombies on stage with them, http://www.youtube.c...feature=related . What we have now is generally beneath contempt.


The cultural ugliness has a depressing mental effect on people. Our commentariat's never-ending criticism of white America in general also has a wearying effect on people, and makes them long for "the good old days". Within months of the Berlin Wall falling down, the author Michael Crichton noted in his book, "State of Fear", that the media ramped up the use of phrases like "unprecedented" crisis, "alarming" developments, and began increasing the volume of eco-scares exponentially, in effect telling us that our consumption was driving the problems in the world. Its been one long guilt trip ever since. They still do it now. Remember bullshit like SARS, the West Nile Virus, The Avian Flu, The Swine flu (H1N1) pandemics that never occured? Y2K, Aids, Ebola, holes in the Ozone, resource depletion, overpopulation (i.e. telling white people to have one kid each), energy crisis, oil shortages, Three-Mile-Island nuclear-fearmongering propaganda, et cetera. Don't forget the biggest bullshit story of them all, global warming, which even Phil Jones admits hasn't been statistically happening since 1995 in a signifigant way. The populace gets frightened to death by the goddamned media. They also get called racist endlessly by the media if they aren't literally thrilled by their replacement with Central Americans and increasingly Somalis and even Muslims. Remember the sexual-harrassment mania that took place around the Anita Hill show-trial? The populace probably longs for the time when they were "the good guys" and men and women weren't diaclectically set agaisnt each other.


We will never be as happy as we were in 1980-87 again in all probability. That nation is pretty much gone now. There were no Jerry Springers, Maurys, Rikkis, Jenny Jones, and MTV "Real World" or "Jersey Shore" public advertisements for the mainlining of dysfunction back then. I dont remember tons of tattoed-pierced, kulture-freaks in those days, no wanna-be "gangstas" and oodles of women who dressed like cheap hookers either. The 80's in some way were a cultural fluke in the generalized downward trend we have been on since the sixties. People probably associate Reagan with the 80's, and since they remember them as good times, remember him as a good president. Even Bill Clinton evokes some happier memories because the economy (warbling along on credit) was decent during most of his term, despite what all he was.

[PLEASUREMAN]

isamu, 20 February 2010 - 12:34 PM:

PLEASUREMAN, 19 February 2010 - 09:07 PM:

I'll repeat what I've said before, which is that we have an enormous amount of slack in our system. That is, as prices go up our behavior will change without impacting us much. We have the ability to change a lot in fairly painless ways.

There is a limit to easy changes. For example, at some point in our lifetimes it will be too expensive for the average family to own and operate a motor vehicle. This will not be a slow, incremental transition, but painful and chaotic (Kunstler, etc.).

Predictions of future doom are a dime a dozen. Do you realize how many times those words have been typed? I don't say I know what the future brings--I say I don't know, and neither do you--but that there is an evident and quite large amount of change that can occur without the average lifestyle being affected in a major way. But of course I acknowledge a point beyond that--when and where we reach it is impossible to predict--where life is disrupted in a major way. But losing some of our consumerist prerogatives will have both good and bad effects on us.

isamu, 20 February 2010 - 12:34 PM:

Which predictions? The non-existent ones in Limits of Growth? The OPEC embargo gave a preview of things to come, and rightfully scared the crap out of a lot of people. Then the oils started flowing again and, per standard human psycology, everyone promptly forgot about it except for a few curmugeons.

We're getting off track of the topic, but are you serious? "Which predictions?" The Limits of Growth is exactly the sort of pseudo-intellectual trash Taleb attacks, a misguided and seriously wrong attempt to use mathematical models to make useless speculations about resourse consumption. But it's not what I had in mind, I was thinking more of Ehrlich, who, in calling attention to the problem of population growth made a series of ill-advised alarmist predictions, the most predictable effect of which was that he lost credibility. You will not alter behavior by making nonsense predictions. Instead of calling attention to the problems of scale being presented to society by unchecked growth, Ehrlich and liberals who followed him worried over their silly math. (To his credit Erhlich supported immigration controls, but this was never a major part of his public discourse.) In effect a golden opportunity was lost.

isamu, 20 February 2010 - 12:34 PM:

Consumerism is an inevitable result of capitalism. Capitalism needs growth and therefore needs consumerism to feed growth to perpetuate itself.

I vehemently disagree with this, and do not think you can show this to be the case.

isamu, 20 February 2010 - 12:34 PM:

For someone who claims to be a "traditionalist", its pretty sad that you shit on Carter for advocating the very traditional values of thrift and frugality. Its makes people feel bad? Boo-hoo, so do a lot of traditional values.

You missed the point. Do you realize how little putting on a sweater or changing your light bulbs accomplishes? It's a purely symbolic gesture, in lieu of substantive policy. It's the ultimate in penny wise and pound foolish. Carter could have gone beyond that, and did not--and people sensed that this was just an update of putting on a W.I.N. button (Whip Inflation Now!). Carter failed to realize that this approach was apparent for its threadbareness, and that the consequent psychological reaction would only increase the symptomatic patterns of consumption and social upheaval.

Traditional values don't make people sad (other than the intelligentsia). They comfort people enormously. I missed the part of Carter's presidency where he spoke hopefully of a return to traditional values. Does sound like someone else I know, though.

[PLEASUREMAN]

miles, 20 February 2010 - 01:13 PM:

We will never be as happy as we were in 1980-87 again in all probability. That nation is pretty much gone now. There were no Jerry Springers, Maurys, Rikkis, Jenny Jones, and MTV "Real World" or "Jersey Shore" public advertisements for the mainlining of dysfunction back then. I dont remember tons of tattoed-pierced, kulture-freaks in those days, no wanna-be "gangstas" and oodles of women who dressed like cheap hookers either. The 80's in some way were a cultural fluke in the generalized downward trend we have been on since the sixties. People probably associate Reagan with the 80's, and since they remember them as good times, remember him as a good president. Even Bill Clinton evokes some happier memories because the economy (warbling along on credit) was decent during most of his term, despite what all he was.

It's tragic how much normalcy and goodness we've thrown away, in favor of what? A morally and spiritually impoverished existence, but with smartphones. We can't even see that the latter is worth an infinitesimal fraction of the former. I'd trade all the technology around me in a heartbeat to go back to life circa 1980 or 1970.

[antistoic]

Undeniably, Reagan was not a bad president qua president. He was, by any reasonable metric, a successful and capable politician. His enormous charisma allowed him to build a large, diverse coalition (which unfortunately did not endure much longer than his presidency) to support his ambitious governing agenda. And it was very ambitious, even granting that Reagan's era was one of critical historical importance; he was not a 'hands-off' sitting president like Taft or Coolidge, aloof from public concerns. He launched numerous programs (which weren't always successful - SDI, anyone?), ended others, and seemed driven by a determination to see something, anything done to improve and defend America's standing as a wealthy superpower.

My problem with Reagan is that he broke long-standing patterns of conservative leadership - in endorsing public celebrity and national power for its own sake - and that he did so with eager, chauvinistic brashness uncharacteristic of the 'politics of prudence', as Kirk so aptly put it. Moreover, and contra Carter, Reagan rested responsibility for American woes not on the shoulders of private citizens (as he should have), but with the despised, scapegoated government, who can do no right (just as America can do no wrong), ignoring the traditional wisdom rooted in the Christian knowledge of the Fall that insists that moral faults are universal in man and not merely the product of external forces. Like Bakunin, Reagan saw people as inherently good but government (and elites in general) as oppressive and prone to moral corruption. He was not the first to discover that flattering the public yields high political dividends, but he was certainly among the best at manipulating that flattery to acheive political success.

It was this that remains Reagan's most enduring legacy, especially among today's Republican leadership - bringing reckless optimism to conservatism, which in its most common definition includes a love of restraint and humility, and accordingly, skeptical attitudes towards artificial human attempts to improve the fundamental conditions of society. It is, in short, a corruption of conservatism, one which remains with us to this day. While Reagan was, as I've admitted, a successful politician, this corruption lead directly to the long disaster that was the Bush era - rampant consumer irresponsibility, foolhardy and destructive proposals for 'democracy-building' in the most volatile region of the globe, untrammeled hordes of cheap-working peasants taking the "jobs Americans won't do", a simplistic, Manichaean foreign policy that has stretched our resources and military manpower (to say nothing of common sense) to the breaking point, an infantilized political culture, communities wrecked by free trade fundamentalism; the list goes on and on. Conservatives need to wake up and realize that their practice of idolizing Reagan has kept them under an ideological spell that must be broken if they are to ever regain credibility and articulate genuinely conservative solutions to the crisis of our age.

This post has been edited by mlad: 21 February 2010 - 02:39 AM

[Türschloss]

Mlad,

I think the point that grinds is a positive comparison of Carter over Reagan. Carter really was a train wreck of grinning impotence. If he was a better exemplar of "the politics of humility", then the Carter experience should send conservatives back to the drawing board to re-examine their priors. Experience should not be sacrificed to "conservative theory".

If your point is that Bush was a smirking parody of Reagan's virtues carved into human flesh, your point is well taken. But the oxymoron of "new"-conservatism and its fondness for Woody Wilson might be a better starting point for diagnosis, rather than Reagan.

[PLEASUREMAN]

mlad, it's a reasonable argument, and our main point of difference is in degree.

However, you attribute to Reagan at least one first that I think has another precedent. Kennedy (if not FDR) was the first celebrity president--Reagan was not greeted with fawning and toadying from the press and the intelligentsia. You do make the distinction that Reagan was the first conservative to embrace this, but I think he did not embrace celebrity as such, he merely used his personal popularity to appeal to America (particularly when stymied in Congress). Consider that Reagan would not have made Obama's demagogic appeal against a recent Supreme Court decision--he had well enough restraint. He did not make his personal story the centerpiece of his political persona, again as Clinton, Dubya, and Obama all have done to varying degreees (Obama obviously the most, because without his personal story he is nothing).

mlad:

Like Bakunin, Reagan saw people as inherently good but government (and elites in general) as oppressive and prone to moral corruption. He was not the first to discover that flattering the public yields high political dividends, but he was certainly among the best at manipulating that flattery to acheive political success.

Is the charge then that he did not believe what he saw? If he saw people as inherently good, and elites as oppressive, is it fair to say that he "manipulated the public's flattery" in advancing policies and using rhetoric which reflected this? For all that may be true about the inherent weakness and fallibility of man, I believe that our worst problems have been created by our elite--it would be simplistic to say all, but obviously the chief executive of the United States does not have a mandate (or the power) to address all our problems. The problems Reagan chose to address, the problems he had a mandate to address, were chiefly the fault of the elite, so why should he not say so?

Carter assuredly did not rest blame on the people, at least not while he was in office. (There is a very long-standing bitter strain over his eviction from office--which speaks to Carter's rather un-Christian nature despite the earnest poetry and the self-pitying reflections of having sinned in his heart. I think you will find that the liberalized Christianity that Carter was attached to is a despicable strain, so I am surprised to hear you even half laud him.)

Reagan had an effect on some of the few wholesome trends in the 80s, which should be put in perspective with the social decay and moral disorder of the 70s (a disorder that completely consumed Nixon). He also displaced, temporarily, the intellectual elites (who were all convinced he was a stupid, shallow man), which is no small achievement even though its effect was limited to his term in office. Note that this is what an effective president today must do, because it is the intellectual elite who are in fact most responsible for the malaise and distortions of modern life (the people, whatever their corruption, do not cry out for gay marriage, or racialized immigration, or even really the consumerism that is their pacifier in this disordered world).

That said, I agree with your point about the recklessness Reagan's sunniness has inspired in foreign policy and, I would add, in America's economic sphere. I do think it needs to also be put in perspective--there was a hopefulness necessary at that stage in the Cold War, which prior to Reagan had been lacking, and Reagan did not act with the militaristic hubris of Kennedy or Johnson (or Dubya), or with the amoral realpolitik of Nixon. It is hard for me to blame Reagan for being unaware how successfully the Cold War would be resolved in America's favor. It is also hard for me to blame Reagan for the failures of his successors in misapplying his approach to completely different scenarios. (Clinton turned the optimism into self-satisfaction; Dubya applied a Manichean view to a world that Manicheanism no longer described.)

Idolizing Reagan is not close to the main problem with what gets called conservatism these days. Reagan did not push the paleos aside or give Israel a brief for American foreign policy. He was culpable in the immigration debate; but as depressing as that outcome has been, its true orgins are in the 1965 legislation. I will grant you the idolization is annoying (especially to me) coming from neocons and other pseudo-conservatives who don't emulate Reagan's temperament or ideological virtues in the slightest. And I think here is where you make your error--you see the people acclaiming him, and this hardens your view of Reagan as president. It's understandable, but I remember that presidency much differently (although I'll have to admit I was only in high school for most of it).

[isamu]

PLEASUREMAN, 20 February 2010 - 02:18 PM:

isamu, 20 February 2010 - 12:34 PM:

Consumerism is an inevitable result of capitalism. Capitalism needs growth and therefore needs consumerism to feed growth to perpetuate itself.

I vehemently disagree with this, and do not think you can show this to be the case.

If the GDP per capita were to stay stable, then economic growth would equal the rate of population growth, which for developed countries is <1%. In such an economy it would be almost impossible for businesses to borrow money since repayment is expected to come from future growth (which is trivial) and there is little reason to borrow anyways. Any gains in efficiency would be wasted since the extra wealth created could not be reinvested in new ventures (that would be growth!). Ultimately, what you would have wouldn't resemble Capitalism. Capitalism needs growth as an outlet for and generator of profits -- which is what Capitalism is all about. And if that growth can be achieved by creating new consumer products, that is what good capitalists will do.

PLEASUREMAN, 20 February 2010 - 02:18 PM:

You missed the point. Do you realize how little putting on a sweater or changing your light bulbs accomplishes? It's a purely symbolic gesture, in lieu of substantive policy. It's the ultimate in penny wise and pound foolish. Carter could have gone beyond that, and did not--and people sensed that this was just an update of putting on a W.I.N. button (Whip Inflation Now!). Carter failed to realize that this approach was apparent for its threadbareness, and that the consequent psychological reaction would only increase the symptomatic patterns of consumption and social upheaval.

No, you missed my point, and really do not get it. The point is that I hold to the value of not wasting things needlessly, and that this is an intrisically good value, and that if more people held to that value, then we would live in a very different society. That my energy savings are trivial in the larger scheme, and that there are huge structural wastes of energy that I, as an American, cannot escape without going Kaczynski, is irrelevant. Even if Carter wasn't the person who should have been telling people this, and they should have learned it from their parents, he was right.

As for the afroementioned structural energy wastes, Carter did nothing, but so didn't Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Dubya or Obama. Why? Because its politically impossible. It would mean the government denying its citizens material wealth.

PLEASUREMAN, 20 February 2010 - 02:18 PM:

Traditional values don't make people sad (other than the intelligentsia). They comfort people enormously. I missed the part of Carter's presidency where he spoke hopefully of a return to traditional values. Does sound like someone else I know, though.

Traditional conservative values such as self-denial (for future profit or not), humility, and the fact that there will always be injustice and pain in the world are a bitter pill to swallow for most. Conservatives are not the ones trying to create utopias.

This post has been edited by isamu: 21 February 2010 - 12:45 PM

[PLEASUREMAN]

Capitalism does not require constant expansion (or constant borrowing), it is simply an economic system whereby the means of production are privately owned rather than held by the state or communally. In what sense is socialism (which usually has the burden of supporting a welfare state) not equally driven to expand also (or face bankruptcy)?

Presumably all waste is needless, but thrift for the sake of thrift (or, still more perversely, for the sake of self-denial) is an inversion of values--in my view. I am not a Christian or an ascetic. Gluttony is certainly a vice, but beyond certain obvious examples such as obesity or bankrupt hedonism it will always be a matter of dispute what defines gluttony (or "consumerism").

I find it silly to ask people to wear a sweater just because someone thinks it a noble (but useless) gesture. If you say that it strengthens the reflex against gluttony, doesn't every form of self-denial, and where do you decide that self-denial ends? At the level you find comfortable? Thrift, beyond mindless coupon clipping, is merely the sustainable arrangement of wants and needs, and Carter didn't address any of that, he said throw on a sweater because nothing can be done. He outlined no credible policy--you say because it was impossible. With Carter's small-minded approach it certainly was.

[isamu]

PLEASUREMAN, 21 February 2010 - 04:11 PM:

Capitalism does not require constant expansion (or constant borrowing), it is simply an economic system whereby the means of production are privately owned rather than held by the state or communally.

That is the most basic definition of Capitalism and perfectly correct, but behind it are a lot of implications you've left out. For example, the motivation of the owners of the means of production, which, according to classical theory, is to maximize profits. This motivation leads to innovation, which frees up capital, which, since the owners wants to maximize profits, they put towards more production. The capitalist who doesn't choose to expand and sits on his money will be eaten up by the ones that do. Hence production goes up, consumption goes up, material wealth goes up. This is why Capitalism is so successful. Historical, this is exactly what has happened, so to say that Capitalism doesn't require expansion would be to describe a Capitalism that has never existed. If you have a counter-example, I would be interested to know about it.

PLEASUREMAN, 21 February 2010 - 04:11 PM:

In what sense is socialism (which usually has the burden of supporting a welfare state) not equally driven to expand also (or face bankruptcy)?

Where did I advocate socialism, whatever that meaningless word means? All developed countries have a private capitalist sector and welfare state of greater or lesser extent. The welfare state needs the private sector to expand to deliver on its enititlement promises. The only command economies left are a few 3rd world basketcases.

PLEASUREMAN, 21 February 2010 - 04:11 PM:

If you say that it strengthens the reflex against gluttony, doesn't every form of self-denial, and where do you decide that self-denial ends?

You've the same problem. You criticize Consumerism -- how do you decide what is valid consumption and what is needless consumerist spending? You can't, its a matter of individual judgement.

[HopeAndChange44]

isamu, 21 February 2010 - 10:03 PM:

You criticize Consumerism -- how do you decide what is valid consumption and what is needless consumerist spending?

You don't need a fixed universal definition in order to criticize a general pattern of behavior. Pastor David Manning and I may disagree on whether eating an entire KFC 12-piece meal is gluttony, but we can still agree that gluttony is bad. Perhaps it would be more productive to discuss whether society's definition of gluttony is too lax, though.

By the way, I'm a big advocate of wearing Snuggies™ and turning the thermostat down myself. But those kind of token penny-ante efforts aren't really going to make a dent in our energy problems. When you're standing on the biggest soapbox in the world, it kind of behooves you to talk seriously about the issues.

[PLEASUREMAN]

isamu, 21 February 2010 - 09:03 PM:

PLEASUREMAN, 21 February 2010 - 04:11 PM:

Capitalism does not require constant expansion (or constant borrowing), it is simply an economic system whereby the means of production are privately owned rather than held by the state or communally.

That is the most basic definition of Capitalism and perfectly correct, but behind it are a lot of implications you've left out. For example, the motivation of the owners of the means of production, which, according to classical theory, is to maximize profits. This motivation leads to innovation, which frees up capital, which, since the owners wants to maximize profits, they put towards more production. The capitalist who doesn't choose to expand and sits on his money will be eaten up by the ones that do. Hence production goes up, consumption goes up, material wealth goes up. This is why Capitalism is so successful. Historical, this is exactly what has happened, so to say that Capitalism doesn't require expansion would be to describe a Capitalism that has never existed. If you have a counter-example, I would be interested to know about it.

I take your points...I was not accusing you of arguing for socialism, just curious what the possible alternatives might be. In general the problem of humanity is our biological drive to reproduce and compete for resources. Well it's a problem once it reaches a certain size.