“My thinking was when we beat them in 2012 that might break the fever, and it’s not quite broken yet,” President Obama remarked at a Democratic fundraiser in New York City on Monday. He was referring to relentless Republican attacks, including hyperventilating efforts to find evidence that will somehow reveal a sinister, potentially treasonous Benghazi plot by either the President or Hillary Clinton.
I’m not going to analyze efforts to unearth a Benghazi scandal. For a clearheaded, balanced, and succinct analysis, I refer you to Richard Cohen’s excellent column, Symptoms of Benghazi Syndrome, in the Washington Post. What I want to discuss is the fever generally.
I am not one who believes that the wild attacks on the President – about Benghazi and other things – are entirely politically motivated. Yes, of course, there are some Republicans who know better but nonetheless cynically manufacture or magnify claims for political advantage. Yet there are others on the right who make wild-eyed claims and on some level believe them. I am characterizing these individuals as being on “the political right” rather than being Republicans – even though many are prominent Republicans – because that’s what is most germane.
What’s the origin of the fever? What explains it?
The first thing to understand is that the modern conservative movement is, at a fundamental level, driven by fear. In my book about how William F. Buckley Jr. refashioned modern conservatism, I write:
“Buckley was leading a movement fueled by fear: fear of international communism expansion; fear of domestic communist infiltration; fear that American leaders were naïve or perhaps worse; fear that the civil rights movement would destroy civilization; fear that American capitalism would be devoured by socialism; fear that Americans would lose their self-sufficiency and become soft, self-indulgent, and dependent upon government largess; fear that America would embrace secularism and cease to become a nation under God.”
One of the things that made Buckley such an extraordinarily effective leader of the right was that he could simultaneously give voice to those fears and serve as an antidote to them. Buckley was an upbeat, cheerful, confident, and witty person. He did not appear afraid. Much the same may be said of the other great leader of the American right, Ronald Reagan – and, looking across the pond, of Margaret Thatcher as well.
This does not mean that Buckley was not afraid. He feared all of the things on that list, and more. Here, in fact, may be the two most consequential sentences Buckley ever wrote, appearing in the preface to God & Man at Yale, the book that made him famous:
“I myself believe that the duel between Christianity and atheism is the most important in the world. I further believe that the struggle between individualism and collectivism is the same struggle reproduced on another level.”
Take a moment to reread those two sentences. Here’s what Buckley is suggesting: The world faces a titanic struggle between Good and Evil. The fate of the world hangs in the balance. And part of that struggle is taking place in the realm of politics and economics. On the side of Good is “individualism,” the term Buckley then used for conservatism and an absolutist vision of laissez-faire economics. On the side of Evil is “collectivism,” which, as God & Man at Yale makes clear, includes not only communism and socialism but liberalism and Keynesian economics. John Maynard Keynes and his devotees may not be Stalinists or Satanists, but through mistakenness and naiveté they are doing the Devil’s work.
This sentiment is at the core of modern conservatism. For most, that’s what it is – a sentiment rather than a fully-conscious belief – though that does not make it less potent.
When one understands this, one can better understand why some on the right are perennially suspicious of liberal leaders and take to conspiracy theories like catnip. Are the decisions made by liberal leaders merely foolish and misguided – or motivated by something darker? What lies behind Whitewater? Did Hillary Clinton murder Vince Foster? Is climate change a ""great hoax"" perpetrated on the American public to increase government regulation and weaken the free market? Was Barack Obama born in Kenya? Is he secretly a Muslim or a socialist? What really were his relationships with Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright? Is he secretly immersed in Marxist Kenyan anti-colonial theology? Did Barack Obama subliminally intone “Serve Satan” during his acceptance speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention? (More than three million viewers have watched this YouTube video suggesting that he did.)
By no means am I suggesting that all conservative fears are crazy. There are surely things about which we should be afraid, and many things about which we should be cautious. Conservative cautions, warnings, and fears – when sober and reality-based – make important contributions to American social and political debate. But fears can careen into paranoia. That has been happening increasingly over a decade or more, and we’re well past the point of its becoming unhealthy and destructive. And too often Republican leaders are trying to exploit rather than reduce the fever.
As I relate in my book, William F. Buckley Jr. took a considerable risk when, in 1965, he unequivocally denounced Robert Welch and the John Birch Society. Buckley was a staunch defender of McCarthyism (though he conceded that Joe McCarthy was himself often irresponsible), and Buckley was worried about communist spies and sympathizers in American government. But Buckley recognized the difference between the rational and the irrational. He was appalled by Welch’s claims that communist agents and fellow travelers included – among many others – the Secretary of State, the Director of the CIA, and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, not to mention Dwight David Eisenhower, then President of the United States.
In retrospect, Buckley’s excommunication of the John Birch Society from the conservative movement may seem an easy thing. It was not. The Society was quite large at the time, and many National Review editors, writers, key financial backers, and subscribers were members. In fact, because the Society was semi-secret and many members did not publicly reveal themselves, Buckley could not be sure just how many Birchers were within his own ranks.
Buckley did not take these risks to help the liberals who were then in power. He took these risks to excise a cancer and save conservatism.
Many responsible conservatives must realize that the illness has returned. This fever that threatens their movement will not break by itself. Denunciations by liberals and the media will only feed the fever. The medicine is for responsible conservatives to call loony-tune claims, wacky theories, and irresponsible attacks for what they are. Things will be more difficult today than when Buckley took on the Birchers. There is today no single individual who has the authority Buckley had then. Concerted action is required. Even in 1965 Buckley did not act alone. He enlisted a collection of prominent conservatives to join him in collectively denouncing Robert Welch and the John Birch Society. Compounding the difficulty today, the fever is more widespread. It is not confined to a single group. Lunatic claims and fact-less theories must be denounced as they arise, Whack-A-Mole fashion, even though conservatives who do this will be criticized for aiding and abetting liberal opponents and compromising short-term political advantages.
The long-term health of the conservative movement and the good of the nation are at stake. If the fever is to be broken, responsible conservatives should study – and follow – Buckley’s example.
Rats in their maze. They are the giant food conglomerates: Kraft, General Mills, Post, Kellogg, PepsiCo, Campbell Soup, and others. We are the rats.
I’ve just finished reading Michael Moss’ new book – Salt Sugar Fat: How the Giants Hooked Us – and want to recommend it to readers.
Michael Moss describes how scientists at the food giants have researched precisely what we like to eat, and how to formulate and market their foods accordingly. And I do mean precisely. They’ve learned, for example, exactly how much sugar hits the “bliss point” that’s most exciting and irresistible. They’ve studied exactly how to make a potato chip – how to configure the salt so it sticks to the surface of the chip and produces an instant rush when it touches your tongue, and how to combine that with fat and sugar for ultimate effect. Every aspect of the product has been painstakingly researched and calibrated, including how the product feels in your mouth, the crunch sound the potato chip makes when you bite into it, even how large bags should be – not so you'll eat a sensible amount (they’ve gone to great lengths so you won’t) – but so you'll buy a bag without feeling guilty.
Hey, you say, I understand the problem with potato chips. (“Betcha can’t eat just one.”) But the same goes for bread, cereal, cheese, yogurt, meat, fruit juice, soup, and every other kind of processed food.
The book is fascinating, both about the psychology of eating and the psychology of marketing. Michael Moss – who won the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting in 2010 and was a finalist for the prize in two other years – knows how relate facts and tell stories so engagingly that the book goes down as easily as, well, a high-fat chocolate milkshake with bliss-point-perfect sugar and a pinch of salt (to enhance the effects of the fat and sugar).
What could be a more overused cliché than calling a book a must-read? Here the cliché fits. After all, we all eat, and to a large extent we are what we eat, as individuals and as a nation.
Moss concludes his book by observing that information is empowering. If you read his book, you’ll never travel the supermarket aisles the same way again.
Today I checked the websites of leading gun control organizations, including the Violence Policy Center, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the Law Center to Prevent Violence, and the Brady Campaign. As of noon, all of those organizations were silent about whether they support or oppose the so-called Public Safety and Second Amendment Rights Protection Act, famously sponsored by Senators Joe Manchin (D-WVA) and Pat Toomey (R-PA), along with Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Mark Kirk (R-IL).
So far only one gun control organization – the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence – says anything at all about the bill on its website. The Coalition chose its words carefully. While it isn’t (yet) opposing the bill, the Coalition says that it is “deeply concerned with several elements of the compromise.” First, the Coalition says that what the nation needs is a system of universal background checks for all gun sales – regardless of whether they are sales by licensed dealers or transfers among private parties. This bill does not create such a system. It expands background checks to gun shows and other events, but it exempts other sales and gifts between private parties. Second, the Coalition says that this bill would – for the first time – allow people to purchase guns in states other than their home state. That would make it difficult, and perhaps impossible, for states with registration and licensing requirements – which includes California, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Connecticut – to enforce their laws. Third, the Coalition is concerned that the bill would give the FBI less time to conduct background checks for gun show sales than it presently has for gun store sales, even though the FBI is now having difficulty completing checks under a longer time frame. The Coalition reserved final judgment until it has a chance to read he bill (it posted its comments on April 10, when the bill was apparently not yet available, and some details of the bill may differ from what the Coalition previously believed the bill would include), but the Coalition’s bottom line was this: Why are compromises and loopholes necessary to get universal background checks when 91% of the public wants universal background checks?
Well, the answer may simply be politics. If this is the best bill that can pass, one may legitimately ask: Is it, on balance, good? But another question is this: Even if does both good and bad things, and the good marginally outweighs the bad, will passing it mislead the public into believing that Congress has enacted something equivocally good? Frankly, that's what happened when Congress enacted the Brady Law and the federal assault weapons ban. Both laws were fatally flawed and did very little good. But passing them persuaded Americans that meaningful gun control had been achieved, and that they could turn to other issues.
Undoubtedly, as I write this, gun control groups are working hard to understand the complicated 49-page Manchin-Toomey bill. (It’s no easy task. One has to read the bill side-by-side with existing law that it amends. Even for people well versed in the area, it can take many hours to read and understand the bill. The not-faint-of-heart can read the bill here.)
Gun control groups have undoubtedly seen this video of Alan Gottlieb, head of the extremist Second Amendment Foundation, who claims that he helped Senators Manchin and Toomey write their bill. Gottlieb says the bill is a Christmas tree hung with “a million ornaments” for gun owners. “I think we snookered the other side, and they haven’t figured it out yet,” he boasts.
Gottlieb may well be right. I haven’t yet fully figured out this complicated bill, but my initial impression is that it will do more harm than good.
It is likely only to change the customs and practices of private gun sales, while still allowing sellers and buyers to evade background checks. The bill expands background checks to gun shows – which are defined as events at which more than 75 guns are offered or exhibited for sale – and the “curtilage” thereof, that is, the enclosed space surrounding the event. Will this allow sellers and purchasers to evade background checks by finalizing sales just outside the building in which a gun show is held, say, from the seller’s car or truck in the parking lot? The legislation also exempts sales made from a seller’s private residence. And it exempts all manner of gun transfers among family members – not only from parents, grandparents, and siblings, but from uncles, aunts, and first cousins too. There is no adequate reason why any of these sales and gifts should be exempt from background checks. All a purchaser has to do is go to his local gun store, get a background check, and provide the seller or gift giver with certification that it has been completed. Will this be an inconvenience to a father who wants to give his son a rifle for a birthday present? Yes. But between convenience and public safety, the time has come to give public safety the higher priority.
The bill also seems to create a long and burdensome process to take guns away from veterans who have been determined to be mentally incompetent. As I read the bill, it would give veterans the right to administrative review, and then to judicial review, before their guns could be taken away. It can take a very long time to get judicial review, and a veteran could be declared to be mentally incompetent by the VA and yet maintain possession of his or her guns for many months, and perhaps even years, pending final judicial review. Veterans are – and should be – entitled to many benefits, but when it comes to possessing guns, they should be treated just the same as other citizens.
The bill also extends bizarre prohibitions on the collection and collation of records, which are necessary to the rational investigation and enforcement of gun laws, but which nonetheless send some gun nuts into orbit because – in their paranoiac fantasies – these records may someday be used by a totalitarian government to disarm the citizenry and enslave us all. Following along with this general “thinking,” the bill prohibits the Attorney General from collecting or centralizing records concerning the distribution of firearms unless the records contain material evidence of crimes. The problem with this is that the records must be collected and analyzed to determine whether they contain such evidence. We know, for example, that just a tiny fraction of bad-apple gun dealers sell the majority of guns used in crimes. But Congress has enacted legislation protecting such dealers from being properly scrutinized by regulators, such as ATF, or from being publicly identified. This bill continues to make it difficult for law-enforcement authorities to acquire information they need to effectively enforce gun laws.
What we need is simple legislation extending background checks to all gun sales and transfers, without exceptions and loopholes. That would be preferable to this bill.
UPDATE (April 15, 2013, 6:00 PM): It's been drawn to my attention that Mayors Against Illegal Guns did, in fact, endorse the Manchin-Toomey Bill last week. I missed it because I assumed that an endorsement of the legislation would be on the organization's home page. It's statement is here. On the same day, the Brady Organization also endorsed the bill, though in more qualified terms, here. And this afternoon the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence also endorsed the legislation here. So people who have studied this legislation far more closely than I think that, on balance, it does more good than harm.