I’m not a last wordist in general and I do appreciate that Sully replied to my comments on “makers and takers”, but I feel compelled to flesh out my objection to the notion of “makers and takers”. Andrew writes:
It’s about centering conservatism back on its individualist, free enterprise, small, transparent and effective government roots. Since I offered many details of the kinds of policies I’m against, it’s hard to see how this is “contentless.” I know it’s a very rough and ready framework. And I know too that many of us are both makers and takers. The point is to do all we can to encourage the making and minimize the taking.
I have two big problems with the idea of a “cultural divide” based on the division between “makers and takers.” First of all, such a divide is inevitably polarizing in a way that distracts from real issues. But for the grace of God, I or any of you could be a farmer receiving agricultural subsidies (one of the policies Sully courageously opposes). That’s too easy of course — I could also be working at a bank that received bail-out money. The reason to oppose agricultural subsidies or bank bail-outs is not that farmers and banksters are “takers” who are culturally inferior to the rest of us, it’s that giving money away is not a sound government policy. Mature people can vote to stop giving money away without mocking their political opponents as “takers” (the same way that mature people can support going to war without mocking those who oppose the war as “Fifth Columnists”).
The bigger problem is that doing “all we can to encourage the making and minimize the taking” has pony plan written all over it. Most real policy decisions have pluses and minuses (I support single-payer universal health care but recognize that it has drawbacks as well). The trouble with a lot of conservative thought is that it refuses to recognize this. Conservatives are so wedded to the idea of lower taxes that they claim lower taxes will actually increase tax revenue, just as they claimed that invading Iraq would so endear us to the Muslim world that we would soon see rose, cedar, and oak democratic revolutions all over the Muslim world. Christopher Hitchens may claim he is not a conservative but his notion of “a war to the finish between everything I love and everything I hate” is a perfect summation of the simple-mindedness that afflicts so much conservative thought. The same silliness plagues the Villagers who believe that opposing extramarital presidential blow jobs and supporting calls for sacrifice represent wise, brave political positions (this is why pundit thought so closely resembles conservative thought in many ways).
It’s very easy to be for makers and against takers, just as it is easy to be for freedom and against tyranny. But phrasing one’s positions with such child-like simplicity short-circuits the complex decision-making processes that result in sound policy. If conservatism is ever going to get its soul back, it’s going to have to spend more time on detailed policy prescriptions (no, saying you oppose farm subsidies and bank bail-outs does not qualify) and less time looking for new cultural divisions to exploit.
used to be disgusted
I certainly agree that personifying policy goals & problems does nothing to add clarity to them — and tends to turn policy into a simple-minded morality play.
But I’m not sure this disease is peculiar to conservatives. It definitely *is* characteristic of Sully, who sees the whole world as a morality play. But I’ve seen versions of it on the left as well. The way people got crazy in the primary is an easy example to remember. Somehow, "Obama voters" and "Hillary voters" came to stand for radically different approaches to the world, ways of being, seasons of the heart, never the twain shall meet, blah blah blah.
Well, somehow they just attended the G-20 together!
Curtis
This is probably the key sentence. It would be interesting to explore the connection between simplistic assumptions and emergent poor decision-making. One has to simplify the world just to come to grips with its affairs, but how much simplification is too much? One heuristic may be: You are probably oversimplifying when you reduce a topic to an easy dichotomy (as Sullivan has done here).
DougJ
I agree it’s not peculiar to conservatives but they are much worse about it. The supposed Obama/Hillary divide was largely a creation of the media. Given that the most prominent PUMAs are Gretta van Sustern’s husband, Lynn Forester de Rothschild, and myiq2xu, I have to question the power of the PUMA movement.
wilfred
To see a break with Hegelianism, search for a copy of Jane Addams’ short essay "A Modern Lear", a critique of the ways of thinking that emerged before, during and after the Pullman strike.
I still read now and again to remind me of what another way of thinking can and should be.
Brachiator
Sullivan can’t help himself. His training and inclinations leads him to look for neat philosophical bowties with which he can wrap up any issue. And he works from the assumption that falling back on Burke is sufficient to resolve any question.
But his distinctions are meaningless. He reminds me of a woman I know who received disability payments and who hadn’t worked for 15 years. And yet she thought that she was more entitled to support from the government than someone on welfare simply because she had worked in the past. Of course, the total amount of disability pay she had received and was still receiving far exceeded the total amount of her past wages.
She thought of herself as a maker. I wonder how Sully would have viewed her.
someguy
I agree with Andrew up to a point. Over the last few years, conservatism *has* gotten diluted, distracted from its central mission. It has become a laughing stock of a diffuse, incoherent philosophy. Is it minimalism or right wing Christofascist patriarchy? Is it tax cutting, or spending hundreds of billions on misguided wars? Is it hating teh brown peepul or… oh, nevermind, no alternative there.
Anyhow, conservatives should get back to their core mission of being a scary, greed-infested, ice cold shot of unmitigated evil. They’re a lot easier to take seriously when they aren’t being pathetic.
asiangrrlMN
I used to read Sully pretty regularly because I thought, how refreshing. I’m bi, so I was interested in his comprehensive coverage of Prop. 8. However, I quickly realized that apart for the LGBT issues, I didn’t agree with much of anything he wrote. In addition, I saw him on Real Time, and he was just an ass.
He actually represents (to me) a person who is pretty privileged in many ways who is pushing for the one equality he doesn’t have. Of course, I support that equality, but I think it’s hypocritical that he doesn’t seem to care as greatly for other inequalities. He’d rather let the free market take care of that. I am grossly over-simplifying his writing, but I find a lot of his social interests to be me-based.
my_name_is_what_who
Rarely inspired to comment, but I think this is germane. While the following description may seem polarizing as well, I think it is a useful perspective.
There have been various social experiments and studies – too lazy to look up – showing that "conservatives’" and "liberals’" brains and actions react and reflect, respectively, in a completely different manner when exposed to certain stimuli.
These studies indicate that some people view the world from a simplistic paradigm, without shades of gray. I think conservatives’ general proclivity towards authoritarianism also reflects this reality. Also, in general, they think and decide without empathizing with other people’s worldview.
Anyways, this proclivity results in people like Sully making broad "us vs them" type of statements without giving PROPER attention to the shades of gray in between those two opposites. He doesn’t realize the element of luck, of chance, that plays into individuals’ lives, and in his case, their arbitrary and usually temporary classification into "makers" or "takers". Take the recent book, "Outliers", for example.
It’s too easy for someone in Sully’s, or any pundit’s, position to classify people into "makers" and "takers" when they don’t understand how they got to their bully pulpit in the first place.
I don’t know if that makes sense, but I’m +4 on Thursday with no class tomorrow. Don’t get me started on the God-forsaken changes that FASB made official today on mark-to-market.
Mark S.
The biggest takers in the system are undoubtedly children, so we should minimize them as much as possible. Old people are probably second. If we could just get rid of those two groups of parasites we might have a decent society.
Oh, I almost forgot about pets.
tammanycall
I am confused by the definitions of "maker" and "taker". Most jobs are service-oriented, in one way or another. Bankers don’t make anything, they pass money around. The only true "makers" in our society are artisans, artists, and craftsmen, and Sullivan’s expressed disdain for at least two of those groups. So what is he talking about? Is "maker" code for "person who makes money" and "taker" short for "person who takes it"? Because if that’s the case, hasn’t our recent economic situation shown us that many "makers" are one or two missed paychecks away from being "takers"?
asiangrrlMN
@someguy: Hahahahaha. Ok, you crack me the hell up. Seriously. I wish you had posted two seconds earlier so I wouldn’t have to double up. Snort. Remind me never to have you be my attorney if I ever get accused of a crime. "Really. She wasn’t always a skank-ho crack addict. She used to be a hedge-fund trader who did blow in her spare time."
libarbarian
Is it just me, or is the issue less the existence of "takers", which I won’t contest, and more their actual numbers and percent of the population?
I think it’s a pretty small minority that really are just "moochers".
tammanycall
All cats are "takers." I think I read that on RedState.
asiangrrlMN
@Mark S.: I was with you right up until the pets comment. My cats give as much as they take. Why, the other morning, they gave me a dead mouse on my bedroom doorstep.
Herb
I love Andrew, but at times he can be quite slippery language-wise. Examples: The use of "genital male mutilation" as a euphemism for circumcision, or calling rich people the "successful." It seems like a deliberate way to cloud the issue.
I’m glad he’s getting challenged on this stuff. He’s been on a one-man crusade to call torture by its proper name and not any of the Bush-era euphemisms like "enhanced interrogation techniques."
So he should be called on it when he reverts to euphemisms like "makers and takers." Keep it up.
Mark S.
@asiangrrlMN:
They figure you’re not capable of catching one.
My cats used to rarely catch birds, but they have caught three this week. They always thoughtfully leave the half-eaten carcass on my back patio, just in case I wanted some.
Tattoosydney
I really like reading Sullivan, often for the things he says that I disagree with as much as the times I agree with him.
However, with the election over, I’m noticing it more when he says crappy things like this:
As a person with HIV+ friends who rely upon our soc1 alised medical system to make their medications (which allow them to live a normal life) at least vaguely affordable, it pisses me off to have a gay, HIV+ man like Sullivan say something that basically reads like "I’ve got an employer who pays for my meds, so fuck the rest of you."
Robert Johnston
Impossible. Nothing even close to that coherent and reality based has ever been published on RedState.
asiangrrlMN
@Mark S.:
The kicker is that they are indoor-only, so the mice are inside somewhere. Of course, once it was dead, they had no interest in it. I think they were disappointed that I didn’t eat the dang thing, but even for them, I would not go that far.
Your cats were thinking of you when they left the half-carcasses. See, they’re givers, which is close to being makers.
grimc
I’d be interested in hearing Sully’s thoughts on the fact that ‘conservative’ red states are overwhelmingly takers (more federal monies gained than paid)
my_name_is_what_who
The best is having a cat leave their bird in the backyard and a labrador to bring the carcass to my feet while I read the paper.
AnneLaurie
Bing-bing-bing — we has a winnah! I actually started reading Sullivan in his pre-Bell Curve days, and he can be an entertaining guy, but he’s also the very epitome of that fine British expression "I got mine, Jack — bugger you!"
dms
Talk about takers. Ask Sullivan who paid his health insurance long after he’d left The New Republic.
guest omen
i remember sully actually arguing to maintain the broken status quo of our current for-profit healthcare system. what drove his position? he wanted to protect big pharma’s interests! we’re supposed to ignore the uninsured and sick people driven to bankruptcy due to bad faith of insurers for the sake of big pharma.
is there a bigger "taker" than the pharmaceutical industry? which taxpayers subsidize while getting little in return?
does he know they’re responsible for $8 trillion dollars worth of our debt via the lack of competitive bidding in providing for medicare part d? nothing small and transparent about that.
link
link
guest omen
what i was trying to link:
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/06/the-drug-compan.html
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/07/big-pharma-and-.html
HitlerWorshippingPuppyKicker
Who doesn’t like a nicely packaged false dichotomy?
Makers and takers. Feh.
Sloganeering.
In a room with me, you are alone in thinking that conservatism ever had a soul. Fifty years of watching from here in Goldwaterland, and I haven’t seen it. Who could say "compassionate conservatism" without laughing out loud?
Policy presecriptions? The last 100 years in the West are a history of progressive policy, interrupted by upheavals like wars and depression and prohibition and Clarence Thomas. Can you name an idea represented by Thomas that could stand up as a legitimate policy position that has a future in a sane world? As opposed to, say, the ideas represented by Martin Luther King?
Until I see something that moves me to say otherwise, my whole attitude toward conservatism these days is: Fuck it. Fuck conservatism. It’s a fraud.
pattonbt
Sully’s blog is a fine read and I believe he, mostly, tries to honestly think things through. But when it comes to ‘conservatism’ he still hasnt realized it isnt an ideology, its a mask. A shape shifting mask selfish humans wear to justify and excuse their selfish behaviour and beliefs. Selfish people dont want to be called out on their selfishness so they go to great lengths to prove their selfishness isnt actually selfishness but rather an austere, noble ideology, and they shout ‘See, its an ideology, not my flawed selfishness, now I am blameless!’.
This is why no one can point to a ‘conservative policy’. There isnt one. Its all self interest protectionism and that self interest changes depending on the day (but primarily, like all things, simply has to do with power).
Will Sully get it? Probably not. People who believe that hard and that long probably cant get over it. To be that wrong as an assumed member of the intelligentsia that he claims to be would be too much for his ego. Hes too invested to change course now. Hes doubled down and the only position of influence and admiration he can hold is if somehow conservatism can be proven to be true. Because if it is disproved then he loses his pedestal and becomes wrong and thus ignored. So tortured logic is his best friend for the rest of his life.
He chose poorly.
Mogden
I agree with Andrew Sullivan on this one. It’s perfectly principled, indeed liberal in the true sense of the term, to support:
– elimination of farm subsidies
– elimination of bail outs of failed companies
– elimination of bail outs of overextended borrowers
– rejection of warfare and imperialism
– freedom to trade
– freedom to work
– freedom to marry whoever you want
– freedom to do drugs
– low taxation
Basically, opposing the collusion of political and economic elites against the individual, local, and small.
Thankovsky
Hey folks – long-time reader, first-time poster.
@asiangrrlMN:
I don’t think you’re wrong, but in Sullivan’s (rather lame, I admit) defense, he DOES seem to be coming around on a lot of social justice issues. Like everyone here, I think his makers vs. takers comments don’t reflect reality and ultimately play into the outdated stereotype of "titans of industry vs. welfare queens."
But I find I can forgive him for that, because what can I say – I respect the man. A lot of his worldview has come crashing down upon his head over the past eight years, and yet unlike so many conservatives in government and the media, Sully at least has the balls to admit it. So I don’t feel particularly compelled to join the circular firing squad when he feels like clinging to an outdated socioeconomic notion or two a little while longer.
(and for clarity’s sake, I’m not accusing asiangrrlMN of being part of that circular firing squad, either; that’s more of a critique of the left-wing blogosphere in general)
@pattonbt:
I’m not so sure I can agree with your comments on Sullivan not being able to alter his worldview in the near future. His mindset certainly has evolved pretty markedly in the past five or so years; I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t in the next five or so as well. I doubt he’ll ever be an out-and-out liberal, but he certainly may become more pragmatic. And right now, in the United States, liberalism and pragmatism are one and the same.
steve s
A relative of mine who got a very crippling form of diabetes hasn’t been able to work in about the same amount of time, 15 years, and has been solely supported by his wife, who is a school teacher, on a government salary and insurance. Nevertheless, when he recently got on the internet and started running into Randroids preaching that glorious rugged individualism, he started telling me that this "Ann Rand person really understood America" etc etc etc. My heart wasn’t hard enough to tell him that "Ann Rand" would have called him a scum-sucking parasite.
He’s a simple guy, I don’t expect him to understand much. But I do expect better of Sully, whose own personal glorious free market health care involves life-saving drugs developed with billions of dollars in federal research money.
steve s
warning to those using the blockquote tag. If, somewhere in your blocked quote, there’s an empty line, the blockquote will err and end there, leaving the rest of the quote outside the tag, as in my post above.
Just FYI.
guest omen
@Mogden:
sully supports a flat tax. that’s regressive and doesn’t benefit the non-elite individual.
the obama budget argues to cut out farm subsidies for big agra, preserving it for middle class farmers.
Beej
@DougJ: But us versus them is always easier to sell. Everybody likes a contest, whether it’s a football game or a battle of political parties. Much more exciting than "Let’s see what kind of solutions we can come up with and agree to disagree when we can’t come to a concensus." Nobody ever sold any tickets to watch that one. So the media and, to some extent, both parties first impulse is to go for the simple dichotomy. Ya gotta be an actual grownup to resist that impulse.
Phoebe
What Mark@9 said.
And this post was great, too. You’re right. But I want to give Andrew some points for posting continuous dissents he gets on this topic, as well as responding to yours.
His makers/takers formulation is a simplistic caricature of his own actual views, not that I agree with every part of those, and for someone who bemoans the culture wars, he shouldn’t be trying to come up with a new pair of teams.
That said, he does like to be disagreed with, to mull things over, and change his mind. That is why I keep reading his blog. His heart is in the right place, even when he’s wrong.
Cats: Mine wanted me to help her play with the mouse. More times than I can count I woke up to her pouncing all over my bed, with the live mouse running around somewhere. This got me good and awake.
gsp
It is good to see Sully finally being called on his simplicity. I remember seeing him on Real Time with Bill Maher (the one that also had Noami Klein on it) and thinking, this guy is considered a serious conservative thinker? It’s that very simplicity along with the inability to see things in different ways outside of their own experiences, values and beliefs that has conservativism in so much trouble.
Anyway, great posts, Doug. Keep it up.
cokane
The notion of farmers receiving government subsidies is interesting. They are considered a taker and thus not a maker? Yet civilization depends on the excess food generated by their labor. All this electricity and non-farming jobs would not exist without their labor.
yet they are the takers?
gex
What frustrates me about these debates is that social scientists and psychologists know why our brains try to work the way conservative brains do. We protect ourselves psychologically by assuming that the bad things that happen to other people were due to some flaw on their part. And if we can convince ourselves of that and that we don’t possess that very same flaw, we relieve ourselves of all the fear and anxiety that comes with worrying that the same could happen to us.
This is why conservatives oppose abortion until their teenage daughter gets knocked up. It’s why they oppose civil rights for gays unless it is their child who is gay. It is, in essence, why IOKIYAR.
There are tons of ways our brains are primitive. We aren’t rational actors, even the most rational among us. Hell, the field of marketing relies on having our brain do things on automatic. I like to follow social science, psychology, and neurology precisely so I can attempt to be aware of how my brain works and why my immediate responses are what they are so that I can evaluate them and modulate them if able.
Sully is caught in that trap though. Those who don’t make it have some flaw, unlike him, that prevented them from making it. In his bullshit health care system posts he proclaims himself "for equal opportunity" but not "equal outcomes". Does he really think that there is such thing as equal opportunity? Time and chance are such a big factor in opportunity that there really can be no such thing. We could try to make it so more people had more opportunities. Unfortunately, his Randian side opposes every modern liberal attempt to make that so.
flavortext
Off topic but since Brachiator brought him up – I finally had the chance to read Burke in my Romantic lit class. Dude is a twisted SOB who thinks liberty is the right to know your place. He also invented perpetual conservative victimhood with his weeping over the downfall of the Ancien Régime. Boo-fracking-hoo. And this guy is supposed to be foundation of modern conservatism?
/rant
gex
@my_name_is_what_who: I recall two recent studies that suggested 1) that conservatives respond to startling stimuli with a much greater fear response than liberals and 2) when presented with evidence showing false some belief held by the test subjects, conservatives responded by having more people hold that belief, while liberals responded by having fewer people hold that belief.
They are scared of the other, convinced that the other is bad, and no amount of evidence that the other is not what they make them out to be will ever convince them. As someone upthread pointed out, the only time Andrew breaks with this pattern is on gay issues. Gee, wonder why?
Creamy Goodness
But for the grace of God, I or any of you could be a farmer receiving agricultural subsidies
But for the grace of God, I or any of you might be executives at Arthur Daniels Midland, compensating ourselves "appropriately" for our skills at raking corporate welfare into our coffers, and duping the rubes into thinking that government "agricultural subsidies" are all about keeping family farms alive.
BethanyAnne
@Tattoosydney: I called him on that in email as well. He *is* convinced that inequality is the worst of all possible worlds when he gets the short end of the stick. See, for example, marriage inequality.
BethanyAnne
@gex: It’s like the cartoon scene in Farenheit 9/11. "The newly freed slaves took no revenge. But you couldn’t convinced the white people."
gex
I just don’t fucking understand how socialized medicine which would provide the opportunity for all Americans to have health care, while the ability of the more affluent to buy additional/alternate health care leading to different outcomes is something Andrew opposes.
He could be in England now, with his allegedly not as good as American health care, in a system where all HIV+ patients can get care. Or he can be in America where he can get slightly better health care but those who are less well to do must do without. And he considers THIS scenario to be the one of equal opportunity.
You, poor people. That money you don’t have? Use THAT to get yourself the opportunity to not die of AIDS.
Then watch me scold you for spending money you don’t have.
Taker. Too. Also.
Ash Can
@Mogden:
The fact is, principles are relative. Different people have different priorities; one person’s dearly held principle can be petty, if not altogether moot, in the eyes of someone whose values are ordered differently. Moreover, the issues you list are far more complex than you imply, as guest omen touches upon @ #31. In the case of most of the issues you claim it is "principled" to support, partial or complete rejection of them can be supported by principle as well. It just depends upon what those principles are. And none of these issues are clear-cut cases of "opposing the collusion of political and economic elites against the individual, local, and small."
This is one of my main gripes with libertarianism. It embraces a simplistic world view that doesn’t always jive with real life. This isn’t to say that I’m in complete disagreement with it. I agree with it as a social philosophy; it does jive with the very practical basic principle of not meddling in another person’s personal life. Economic issues aren’t nearly as simple, though — their ramifications are far more extensive and pervasive — and libertarianism simply isn’t equipped with the tools to resolve the often contradicting principles inherent in them.
georgia pig
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
– Galbraith
All you need to know. Conservatism mutates the recognition of the possibility of moral failing into trying to categorize the world into those who are morally superior per se and those that are not, e.g., "makers and takers." Obviously, one creating such a categorization strives to cast oneself as the former rather than the latter. With Sully, it’s all about him; hence, a blog with no comments, just his own errant, self-indulgent thoughts.
ploeg
On a railroad bridge in Trenton, NJ, there’s a sign that flashes in big red neon letters:
TRENTON MAKES THE WORLD TAKES
So obviously if we nuked everything outside of Trenton, that would be Sully’s ideal.
sgwhiteinfla
Conservatism is always going to be about sloganeering because otherwise they would have to actually offer opinions about specific policies and that would require thinking. Its also why they try to put liberals and progressives in a similar box.
They say they are for small government but thats only true when its an issue they don’t like. Lets take gay marriage and in this case I am going to say lets look at Sully himself. Now he says he is a classical conservative right? However he want’s big bad government to step in and change the law to allow gay marriage. Now thats what most of us think is the right thing correct? But in a conservative’s ideology its still a government over reach just the same as banning gay marriage is an over reach but of course Sully never acknowledges this.
They say they are for lower taxes and yet never offer any evidence that lower taxes is always sound policy. Hell most of them never realize that after Reagan cut taxes he then had to turn around and raise them just so that the deficit didn’t get TOO big. Bush 41 ran on a "No new taxes" pledge which he knew was bullshit when he said it. Sad part about it is he raised taxes which was the right thing and then lost the confidence of his party because they just don’t think raising taxes is EVER the right thing to do.
Like I have said before being a conservative often times means you are on both sides of an issue and end up contradicting yourself. We don’t want regulation of the financial sector but we also don’t want to bailout the banks when they run amok. And thats why "real" conservatives never govern anywhere for long. Because sooner or later either they have to break from their ideology to get shit done or they stick to their guns and fuck everything up so bad that they are run out on a rail.
The real problem with conservatism is its rigidity. If they could ever understand that there are times when you have to step out of your ideology to fix a problem then they would be much better off. And thats the advantage that liberals and progressives will always have over them. But as long as conservatives keep thinking they have the secret to eternal happiness and that they can never think outside the box then they will keep encountering problems where they have a square peg and they keep trying to shove it in a round hole.
cosanostradamus
.
I really could care less what "conservatives" pretend to think: Here’s how they act: "Me good, everybody else, bad." And "Whaaa, Whaaa, Whaaa! MIIIIIIIIINE!!!!"
Improperly socialized 2-year-olds.
Hey, you guys, this blog won a "Cosie," entitling you to more & bigger donations & subscriptions from everybody. OK, everybody, DONATE. Maybe you won’t have to look at Ann Coulter’s upper v-gina any more.
.
Malron
Let’s be Frank. Barney Frank, even. Conservatism never had a soul.
someguy
The upshot of all the recent studies of conservatism, basically, show that it’s a serious mental illness that affects how you view the world. Instead of talking about policy fights and partisanship the real discussion ought to be about human institutionalization policies.
Cat Lady
Proving the point made in the comments here, Dolphin Lady on Morning Joe holding forth on how it’s so great to not worry about your president being a gaffe machine overseas; Joe piping up about why a Republican hasn’t been able to be articulate since St. Ronnie; Eugene Robinson says that’s because if they actually had anything to say they might not sound like the idiots they are; Dolphin Lady tilting her nose up and proclaiming that it’s because Republicans must be separated from Conservatism. "Conservatives know what they believe, and can articulate it". So, since Reagan, conservatism has been and can only be failed. Republicans = FAIL. At least we can all agree on something.
Mr. Nobody
sgwhiteinfla:
This is not true. Sullivan has regularly argued for a Federalist approach to gay marriage. He has repeatedly said he would prefer the issue be handled by each state on its own and that it should be done with legislation rather than judicial rulings. Granted, he probably wouldn’t kick up much of a fuss if there was a court ruling that benefited his own views.
On the subject of ‘makers and takers’, it’s just a really clumsy and stupid phrase that’s more about sloganeering than promoting any kind of ideas.
vg
Ah, it’s smarmy kossack hour with DougJ…
I believe Sullivan has apologized rather profusely for his "Fifth Columnist" remarks before the war. But of course, if you’re from the Moulitsas school of political commentary, when someone apologizes, that’s all the more reason to shove it in their face at every opportunity. Anything that seems to help in the "framing battle."
Ya see, if you want to be a hack, I mean a real hack, you never apologize and you always throw whatever shit you have on hand. Now sure, after a while, you’ll only be able to engage a captive audience (for example, here, Sullivan will probably read your shitty little response and never bother to respond to you again), but at least you’ll know you’re hardcore. A true partisan. Someone who cares about winning.
Ash Can
@vg: Well, don’t you bring a lot to this discussion.
MikeJ
OT, but watching Obama in Strasbourg. Damn is he good.
Cat Lady
@MikeJ:
ZOMG no teleprompter! Generational Change! Carbon footprints! Sustainable energy! Close Gitmo! NO TORTURE! Policy wonkishness (Botswana diamonds?!)! Poverty leads to terror!
Wingnut head explosion alert!
jibeaux
Whoa, is that a Laura W ad on my sidebar? How cool! Especially since I already know everything I need to about jihad.
Comrade Jake
I’m pretty certain W would never have so much as dreamed of holding a town hall meeting in France.
Dennis-SGMM
@Comrade Jake:
He was going to but they couldn’t find any Republicans there to play the part of the crowd.
jibeaux
@vg:
Well, hi, Sully.
DougJ
@Phoebe
I agree. I give him lots of credit for publishing dissents.
DougJ
Because nothing is more partisan than suggesting that people on the other side of the political divide could do better if they got more serious.
Dennis-SGMM
Here’s the "fifth column" quote from Sullivan:
Fifth columnists are traitors who sabotage a nation during time of war. Speaking as someone who actually shed blood for this country, being characterized as a fifth columnist because I opposed the war made me pretty fucking angry. But that’s important only to me. What may be more important is that this remark was revelatory of Sullivan’s extreme view of the world: good guys and bad guys. The bad guys are traitors or moochers or whatever other deeply pejorative noun fits the situation. A non-hack, I mean a real non-hack, would resist simple dichotomies.
AhabTDefenestrator
Yeah, but he said he was sorry.
Seriously, Sullivan is Clayton Bigsby when it comes to health care. Anyone so far removed from reality, well it makes one wonder what really goes on in Sully-land.
flounder
Sullivan writes on the fucking internet, which was developed by the government and given to the takers–all of us, including Sullivan– for basically nothing.
P.S. I have frankly never seen Sullivan "make" a goddamn thing. He writes, and again, pointing to the Internets, there are quite a few people who do what he does better, for cheaper.
Xenos
I recall Sully taking back, or at least temporizing about, the fifth columnist comment. I feel no compulsion to forgive him. I like his site, I read him often, if I met him I would be glad to chat over a cup of coffee.
But I can not forgive that statement. Just can’t. Some things, like accusations of treason, are beyond the pale. Just have to be beyond the pale.
It is not like I was ever in love with the guy, so it is no big deal. But I will never trust him.
PeakVT
I don’t see where Silly Sully has the right to spout off about "makers" and "takers." If there was ever a group of people that could be considered takers, it’s opinion journalists. And opinion journalists who mostly blog? Yeesh.
DougJ
He took it back, I think.
Dennis-SGMM
As one of my crusty NCO’s once bellowed, "Sorry doesn’t cut it! Stop fucking up!"
Armando
FWIW.
This is an excellent post.
Left Coast Tom
I kind of read that as: making up reasons to call people "takers", and thence to oppose them, is little different than what Sullivan was doing before the war – making up reasons to call people a fifth column, and thence to oppose them.
He apologized for the latter, so he should avoid doing the former since it’s little different.
Napoleon
@DougJ:
I don’t recall him ever actually apologizing for it.
BTW, excellent post DougJ
Cyrus
@Mogden:
Principled, sure, and liberal, OK why not, but it’s not actually policy. It’s pie-in-the-sky ponyism. Everyone hates our current agriculture policy in theory, but rural Americans are overrepresented in Congress and even not-rural-overall states often have a strong emotional or historic attachment to agriculture, so the farm bill always passes and gets signed into law, and its critics like Sullivan and Matt Yglesias just chalk it up as a loss and forget about it for the next six years.
What’s alternative to subsidies is Sullivan offering, just an absence of subsidies? That would probably result in a dust bowl and the depopulation of half a dozen states, but don’t worry about it, because it’s Na. Ga. Ha. Pen. Smaller or better targeted subsidies? That’s definitely the improvement to push for on any given farm bill, but it’s just a band-aid, not a cure.
It’s a complicated problem and if I had the answers I wouldn’t be writing about them here. I think the best option would be some kind of bureaucratic shuffling or another: defanging ag lobbying groups, delegating subsidy responsibility and authority to some unelected agency, getting the EPA more involved with farm policy to have a stronger anti-agricultural-status-quo influence… None of those ideas is sure-fire and none of them are very fleshed-out, obviously, but just "opposing" farm subsidies is as contentless as the makers and takers dichotomy.
Hyperion
he wasn’t mocking.
he was accusing.
big difference, wouldn’t you say?
les
As noted above, Sully is perfectly happy with inequality so long as he’s on the privileged side of the line; at least he isn’t shy about announcing it, so points for openness about his hypocrisy. Given that he’s gay, favors same sex marriage yet pretends he’s a conservative Catholic, it’s a wonder he can be coherent through the cognitive dissonance. But this–
–drives me as crazy as anything. He’s in some happy-happy la la land, next door to Larison’s, with absolutely false memories about some era in which his fantasy of conservatism existed and worked. There never was such a time; conservatism has always been about mobilizing government to preserve wealth and privilege, and so it shall always be.
DougJ
@Armando and Napoloeon
Thanks!
Jamey
BAM! Suck it, Andy!
Sullivan often times sounds like I’d imagine the crazy guys at Port Authority Bus Terminal would sound if they spoke Oxonian and didn’t shout.
I mean, how many times has he mounted the hustings to assail views that portray GLBT people as somehow being immoral, compared to the rest of "non-deviant" society? Just as I oppose that either/or scenario, so do I oppose being labeled a maker or a taker.
Fuck’s sake!
Jamey
Yeah, because it’d be beneath a guy like Sully to try to do both in one fell swoop… /rolls eyes.
b-psycho
@Cyrus:
Ever consider that if we yank subsidies & the "dust bowl" happens, the real culprit was the inefficient (and, might I add, highly contamination-prone) corporatized agriculture structure we had been propping up in the first place?
Jamey
And with all the sincerity of a man who fucked up monumentally–in print, and with millions of witnesses.
I’d call it a Faustian move, but Andy has no soul to barter.
Bill Teefy
Conservatism is about "accepting" inequality. That is really the only ideal they have. Everything else is about maintaining inequality. I have not ever met a conservative who does not think she is better. More hard working, more pious, more deserving.
I cannot think of any time in this country when conservatives were the champions of equality over property rights or individual rights. You ever notice how conservatives use the Declaration of Independence? They rarely actually quote it. I think Rush at the conservative conference recently referred to it as the the Constitution but he basically approached the quote…
I find it hard to believe that the document was so quickly written that the all men are created equal part was thrown in as a filler. I have no proof but it seems by order placement it is the first and foremost idea.
I don’t believe we are all equal in the sense that we are individuals, we all have our strengths and weaknesses. But I think a democracy must proceed under the assumption that we all have equal value. That we all should have an equal starting point and equal opportunity. Our government was formed to
Not the defense of a few, or the free market, or access to raw materials. Not to protect the pursuit of hapiness of the individual over the common good.
I don’t think these things are all acheivable but they should be the goals of our laws and legislation.
As to Farm Subsidies and subsidies in general. I think it is in the interest of the common good that arable land be maintained. I think that having the railroads as a common defense and common good infrastructure is still important to the health of the nation. Having a ready pool of trained pilots is important to the common defense (in WWII Germany and Japan ran out of pilots not planes. I could go on (haven’t I already). I think we should revisit how the subsidies are distributed and be focused on where we want to be not where we were. But really. What does Sully make?
b-psycho
@Bill Teefy:
In practice it ended up only applying to men who were white landowners for a long time though. So in a way you could argue Rush was following the intent…
Cyrus
@b-psycho:
Sure. What’s your point?
b-psycho
The faster we’d realized the error, the less damage that could’ve been done. I just think to look at the status quo & basically say "oh well, might as well just keep digging" amounts to deciding to flame out much worse later when the current system collapses anyway.
Chuck Butcher
So, since I am a construction contractor as I don my nail apron and pick up my saw – am I a maker or taker? There is a mortgage interest deduction that has some effect on the volume of my business and in reaction how many I can employ to do the same work I do -minus risk and other ownership details. (I might have some business if the Masters Of The Universe hadn’t smashed the system)
There is more to the kind of thing Sully pretends to do than stringing words together in an attractive fashion, there is a little issue of getting shit straight once in awhile, really pretty frequently, if you’re to be taken seriously. Oddly enough, I have a better track record than he does – by a wide margin – and I’m no more than an opinionated nail banger from NE OR with a pissant readership. I don’t claim great wordsmithing, though.
Bill Teefy
b-psycho
I would add, to follow your point, that as we have expanded the definition of equality we have improved as a country and a society. We, like the founding "fathers," are of our own time. We can hope 200 years from now the "us" looking back at "them" will be able to say, "Back in 2009, they talked about all being equal, however they fell short of the equality we enjoy today. But I admire in them that they tried, that they strived to be better more than I regret their failure."
Thankovsky
@Dennis-SGMM:
Yet he has apologized for those remarks, and has since done a pretty good job of showing that he’s repented from this previous position. I don’t think you’re characterizing him very fairly.
Cyrus
@b-psycho:
Again, I agree with you, and again I don’t see how it has anything to do with my point, that simply opposing farm subsidies in general is a vacuous, policy-free opinion that has little or nothing to do with actual politics. No alternatives offered, no indirect steps to make the unlikely legislation more likely, just like "do all we can to encourage the making and minimize the taking."
b-psycho
Cyrus, I don’t propose policy on it because IMO the fact that such policy is pretty much impossible is just another reminder that representative government is a myth & this is all going to blow up in our faces anyway.
Ask Sullivan why he doesn’t have an alternative. He’s not an anarchist, so he actually holds out hope for this political system. I don’t.
Cyrus
@b-psycho: Ah, I see. I was just confused. You asked a question after quoting me, so I assumed that the question was directed at me, when you actually meant Sullivan. My mistake.
b-psycho
@Cyrus: It was a rhetorical question.
If you realize the real problem with ag policy & you’re waiting for a political solution to it, ok, I get it. I don’t think a political solution is possible since politics caused it in the first place, so we can agree to disagree.
AhabTDefenestrator
I think I would have liked that crusty NCO.
WB Reeves
”
John made a glancing reference to this in his post but I think it is possibly the most revealing line in the excerpted response. Sully thinks that simply presenting a laundry list of things he is "agin" amounts to content. I tend to think that content requires that you do more than voice a repetitive, kneejerk opposition.
As was pointed out above, it’s easy to say you oppose farm subsidies and call for their liquidation. However, it isn’t as simple as waving a wand. Getting rid of subsidies would impact more than just agribusiness. As referenced above, it could easily result in the decimation of whole communities and the businesses that service them. Does Sully present any positive program for dealing with such consequencies? Or does he ape the general "conservative" line of allowing such things to work themselves out? We are currently getting a sharp lesson on the economic and political consequences of that approach.
To be fair, we ought to remember that Sully is a Brit by birth and breeding. His conservatism comes out of essentially European cultural context that looks back toward the traditions bequeathed by a monarchical and theocratic past. Primarily the conviction that humanity is hopelessly flawed, if not fundamentally depraved and can only be kept in check by a rigid adherence to received authority. It follows that the proper response to the inequities of the status quo is to be resigned to them, since any attempt at tinkering with them is sure to let loose humanity’s innate beastiality.
Now one might assume that Sully eighty-sixed all of that when he emigrated and attempted to ingratiate himself with what passes for conservatism in the US. He may even think so himself. Certainly he sprinkles his arguments with enough quasi-Randian libertarian bromides to give this impression. I think that this is more appearance than reality though. One can’t reconcile Randian libertarianism, quasi or otherwise, with adherence to Catholic doctrine. Even when that adherence is as spotty as Sully’s.
I have no more objection to Sully’s Catholicism than I have to any other form of institutionalized religion. I do think it is signifcant to understanding his essentially european style conservatism and why it leads him to believe a stance of opposition alone is sufficient to provide his argument with content. Sully believes that society is subject to a preordained pattern and that if people would just cease their utopian tinkering it would be the best of all possible worlds. Why bother making constructive rather than wholy negative arguments when one believes that change itself is the enemy?
Of course, the glaring exception is when the status quo penalizes him personally. Then it’s time to pull the house down.
Superficially it may seem that this isn’t much different than the so-called conservatism of the US. Again, appearances are deceiving. While US conservatism talks about reverance for tradition and contains a large religious component, the content of these in the US context is antithetical to their meaning in the European setting. US conservatism, for all its distortion and mangling of our history, cannot escape the reality that the US was founded on the negation of the very traditions that historically lie at the heart of European conservatism: Monarchy, aristocracy and state religion. US conservatism is forced to replace this trinity with one of its own making: Money, markets and religious hucksterism.
This leads to profound differences in approach for the differing schools. European conservatism isn’t inately hostile to elite institutions or centralized authority. To the contrary. Elitism and authoritarianism, both religious and political, are central to its mindset. US conservatism, in contrast, cannot openly espouse such without sucumbing to political impotence. Hence the importance to it of Randianism and evangelical protestantism. The first powers an "individualist", "free-market" gospel that objectively supports a corporate and political elite as pernicious as any aristocracy. The second provides for a religious authoritarianism disguised by a decentralized, congregational form. Thus US conservatism can pose simultaneously as both innovative and traditionalist, libertarian and authoritarian.
This is more than a mere difference of style or presentation. European conservatism, for all its faults, would never accept the idea that the government should stand by, hands in pockets, while the economy collapsed. Nor would it base policy on the assumption that the second coming is just around the corner. The two wings of US conservatism advocate precisely these positions. No plan is superior to any plan and bring on the apocalypse. Nihilism uber alles.
Sully seems to have to have begun to recognize our native nihilism but he doesn’t appear to have grasped how much of it he himself has imbibed.
jcricket
Sully’s struggling to come up with a catchy phrase that covers a reality that has outstripped his meager mental categorization abilities. We’ve reached the end of his abilities as a writer, basically, so most of what he’s going to put out that’s "big and bold" is going to be crap.
Chris Andersen
Isn’t it interesting that those who argue about "makers and takers" always inevitably put themselves in the former category and put those they dislike in the latter.
You’re right Doug. It’s a paradigm that is guaranteed to divide everyone as we fall into endless disputes about what are the characteristics that define a "maker" and a "taker".
BTW, I think Andrew’s argument for means testing social security falls right into this. He thinks it will alleviate the political fights that occur when people see citizens of means getting a "handout" from the government. But he glosses over the fact that any attempt to define the terms of the test will inevitably lead to an even larger political fight.
R. Schmidt-Orren
@someguy:
Who says they got away from the evil? Conservatives can multi-task ya know.
R. Schmidt-Orren
BTW, Dougj that was a great post. Thanks.
The thing I do like about Sully is he is at times capable of shades of gray. Unfortunately not about this, which just so happens to be at the core of what defines a conservative.
On the other hand if he was capable of seeing beyond that simplistic either/or construct of ‘makers and takers’ he wouldn’t have made the effort to write an entire book about the so-called ‘soul’ of conservatism. The whole enterprise would have struck him as a ludicrous and embarrassing effort to rationalize stupidity and selfishness.
bellatrys
The problem with this rationale is that the branch of conservative British Catholicism that he’s latched on to – and it’s one that’s transatlantic, btw – is the one that *supposedly* follows GKC and Gerard Manley Hopkins and has that as the model of Real True Conservativism/Catholicism to follow, with inspiration from William Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites as well.
Which was all about the social justice for the poor and reforms against The Machine, aka anarcho-syndicalism, and the prototype for Rod Dreher’s "Crunchy Con[ned]" – I was raised in this subculture, and I understand the attractions of it, even if it’s totally unsupportable and incoherent as a six-year-old’s ideas of politics and the economy, full of airy-fairy idealism without grounding in hands-on experience of agriculture commerce etc at the grass roots level, a bunch of romantic academics theorizing about how to Heal The World without bothering to plan for roads or running water to their utopian communities (this really happened in the 1990s with the Society of St. John in Pennsylvania – the lawsuits were something else as you can imagine).
How such proto-Crunchy-Cons reconciled their "special consideration for the poor" that they boast of as justifying the Church and their aims of creating a just, wholesome, *natural* society where everyone will be Free to Create The Beautiful and Live Life To The Fullest, Expressing How Man Is The Image Of God, with their defense of plutocrats and big business and wage slavery and modern-day serfdom at the machines – well, such exercises in cognitive dissonance proved to be far too contortionist for me.
It does involve ignoring actual European history – full of things like Peterloo and the Corn Laws and the wasting and squandering of lords and landowners – in favor of pretend-history less real than the fantasies of the SCA and other re-enactors, phoney histories concocted by approved ideologues like Belloc and his latter-day emulators like Dr. Warren Carroll . But staying squarely inside the echo chamber is the only way to keep it up, and shouting louder and louder when people try to break through the bubble…
WB Reeves
Bellatrys,
Thanks for the instructive note. I was familiar with G.K. and Belloc but unaware that Sully identified with their current of Catholicism. One learns. One learns all the time.
WB Reeves
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Sully believes in a natural order to society and that most efforts at social change from the left are at odds with that order and therefore unnatural?