Blog entry

Cleaning Up After The Con

Ben Shepard — Mon, 12 May 2008 01:36:33 -0400

Again and again and again and again and again and again and again , this blog has chronicled the mess conservative ideology has made of our national infrastructure. But how do we clean it up? How are we going to come up with the 1.3 trillion dollars needed to get our infrastructure back in shape?

In a recent editorial, Andy Stern (head of the Service Employees Industrial Union) and Kathleen Sebelius (governor of Kansas) offer up a proposal: let pension funds team up to directly invest in the national infrastructure. The plan isn't crazy. There's enough money. American pensions have about three trillion dollars in combined assets. And there seems to be a motive. Pension funds are owned by workers, workers have an interest in work, and rebuilding our infrastructure is going to take a whole lot of work. The plan seems a whole lot better than the alternative:

The financiers on Wall Street already have positioned themselves to take advantage of this national crisis for their own gain. Where most Americans see crumbling bridges and traffic congestion, the money managers see a treasure trove of fees, profits, and more record bonuses for CEOs.

It's why some private equity firms and banks on Wall Street are raising massive funds to buy these assets that have typically been owned and managed by the government.

In recent years, new infrastructure funds have been established in North America with capital commitments of $40 to $45 billion. These private funds have sprouted up like weeds, structured for short-term profits and sky-high fees – usually up to a 2 percent management fee plus up to 20 percent of the profits.

It would be a monumental mistake to turn the future of America's infrastructure over to the same crowd that brought us the subprime crisis, an economy loaded down with debt, and recession.

But there's a problem with the argument. It turns out that finance capital runs the pensions too!

Robin Blackburn, dean of leftist pension studies, notes that pension funds are

legally obliged to invest the money as a ‘prudent expert’ would; but since the standard of prudence and expertise required is that of the financial services industry itself, the end result is a further boost to the power of the huge financial corporations that offer fund-management services—Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Fidelity, State Street, Barclays Global Investors and so forth. These giants need non-financial corporations to give them business so they do not often make aggressive use of their power as proxy shareholders. The banks anyway make more money from underwriting, and help with mergers and acquisitions, than they do from fund management.

As for the policy holders, they have precious little leverage over trustees and still less over fund managers. Most public-sector funds, and a few private-sector schemes, give some representation to trade unions, but they are still bound by the ‘prudent expert’ rule. In the great majority of schemes employers call the shots and cut deals with the financial corporations. The fund-management services offered by the latter are supposedly separated by ‘Chinese walls’ from the investment-banking services they may also supply. But the overall effect is what Allen Sykes terms a ‘double accountability deficit’, at the expense of the pension-plan holder and (nominal) shareholder.

Changing the system will take serious work. Pensions are big business to financial corporations, and financial corporations are big donors to both parties. There is, of course, an easier, time-tested funding source: Taxes. Stern and Sebelius will have none of it.

Leaders of both the Republican and Democratic parties know the US cannot raise money from traditional public sources of financing, including municipal bonds, user fees, and taxes.

It may seem impossible to raise money for infrastructure through taxes. But this is not a permanent or natural condition. It is the result of conservative hegemony. If we want to reinvigorate our nation's infrastructure -- whether through taxes or through pensions -- that hegemony must end.

P.S: For anyone interested in the wild world of pensions, Blackburn's massive BANKING ON DEATH, is well-worth a read.

George Will Reviews "Nixonland": Quick Thoughts

Rick Perlstein — Sun, 11 May 2008 12:53:03 -0400

1) Will says the most important thing to know is that I'm a condescending liberal. For me the fascinating thing is that I think I'm a better critic of liberal condescension in the 1960s and '70s than he is. It's just that—there's no way to sustain the argument that liberals are condescending now in anything like the way they were then. (When Reagan's campaign for governor began, Esquire said there was "rejoicing at Lassie for President headquarters"--can you imagine such patronization now?) But in the end, the deified "liberals are condescending" trope is the only way a conservative like Will knows how to talk about liberals; Whatever the actual facts on the ground, he's still stuck in the frame bequeathed to us by Nixon—which, of course, is the point of the book, which he admirably reinforced.

2) He appends a strange and gratuitous list of my "errors." One is that there were not, as a I claim, tanks at Kent State. I welcome Mr. Will's input as to how to identify the hulking, armored tracked vehicle depicted on page 200 of James Michener's Kent State: What Happened and Why. He can answer care of this blog.

3) Once here, I hope he joins the Facebook group.

Learning from Gerson

Ben Shepard — Sat, 10 May 2008 23:39:49 -0400

For any student of contemporary conservative rhetoric,a recent column by Michael Gerson provides a fine specimen. Bush's chief speech writer until 2006, Gerson now roosts in the Washington Posts' op-ed section. His Wednesday column is a choice piece of revisionism.

There is, according to Gerson, no Republican war on science. In Gersonlandia, the Republican School Board in Kansas never removed evolution from state-wide standards. Republican strategist Frank Luntz never urged the Republicans party to "make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate" on Global Warming. And, of course, the Republican White House never repeatedly doctored EPA reports.

Gerson doesn't deny any of these examples. He just doesn't mention them. Selective amnesia is not the only tactic in the Gersonian playbook. Here are three more.

1. The Strawmen (Old and Forever Effective)
Accusations of a Republican War on Science are, Gerson argues,

a political ploy -- actually an attempt to shut down political debate. Any practical concern about the content of government sex-education curricula is labeled "anti-science." Any ethical question about the destruction of human embryos to harvest their cells is dismissed as "theological" and thus illegitimate.."

Liberals wish to end the conversation, to impose their own 'scientism' upon the mild-mannered opposition. Of course, not even the shrillest liberal is so censorious. And it is the conservatives who actually manage to 'shut down' inquiry. It is a lot easier to deal with an imaginary position than an actual argument.

2.Turn The Tables
Gerson alleges a

"war within liberalism between the idea of unrestricted science in the cause of health and the principle that all men are created equal -- between humanitarianism and egalitarianism."

Sometimes 'humanitarianism' wins out over egalitarianism. That's why some liberals supported eugenics. Today, again, liberals risk sacrificing their commitment to equality. Genetic screening is (somehow) a new form of eugenics. Liberal support of genetic screening and abortion (somehow) constitutes a 'war on equality.

This summary makes it sound like Gerson is actually making an argument, however bad that argument might be (No one is forcing mothers to abort in the name of a strong and healthy society!) This is too charitable. Gerson doesn't make an argument. He conjures a mood, a fog of associations and implications. This is intentional. It's easy to rebut an argument, but hard to see through a fog.

3. The Nazi-Implication
Gerson is smart enough to know that a direct comparison with the Third Reich not fly. He invokes, instead, the Nazism through some sympathetic magic:

"Nazism largely discredited the old eugenics. But a new eugenics -- the eugenics of genetic screening and abortion, the eugenics of genetic selection in the process of in vitro fertilization -- is alive and well"

Nazis used Eugenics. Genetic screening and abortion are a new form of Eugenics. Liberals support genetic screening and abortion. See how close it all is!

Leaving Gerson's dreamworld: there is a real and important crusade against open research and inquiry carried out by GOP and corporate interests. For a detailed account, check out Chris Mooney's The Republican War on Science.

P.S: . Gerson is not universally loved on the Right. Ramesh Ponnuru considers Gerson representative of a degraded 'Bushist' faux-consvervativism: statist, idealistic, and bumbling. In a lengthy Atlantic take-down, fellow Bush-speechwriter (and lonely conservative vegatarian) Matthew Scully accused Gerson of puffing up his own 'speechwriterly' achievements, and general megalomania.

Parting thought

Rick Perlstein — Sat, 10 May 2008 16:44:36 -0400

I hereby decree PERLSTEIN'S LAW:

In an online argument, the badder a wingnut gets his butt beat, the more likely they are to excoriate the butt-beater for using bad words.

Weekend Watchdog

Bill Scher — Sat, 10 May 2008 00:27:46 -0400

Every Friday in our Weekend Watchdog feature, we post suggested questions for scheduled Sunday guests. You can add your own questions in the comment thread. We'll also include contact information for the shows, so we can let them know what their viewers want asked.

May 11 will be the last Sunday that Air America Radio's "Seder on Sundays" will air live, so it will be the last time we do the Weekend Watchdog Wrap-Up on-air. But we will continue to offer the wrap-up right here on the blog every week. Tune in 4 PM ET this Sunday!

For McCain campaign adviser Carly Fiorina (ABC's This Week): Let's revisit one of last week's unanswered questions.

You have previously said that the off-shoring of American jobs should be called "right-shoring," and that "there is no job that is America's God-given right anymore."

As Sen. McCain is a staunch defender of our current trade and global economic strategy that has contributed to the loss of 3.4 million manufacturing jobs, and is putting 40 million service jobs at risk of offshoring, does he share your comfort level with the continued loss of American jobs?

For Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (ABC's This Week): The ACLU sent out an alert to its members this past week, saying "House leadership is on the precipice of caving in and handing over everything the President has demanded: expanded surveillance powers, and immunity for big phone companies that broke the law."

Soon after that, on Wednesday, Politico reported, "Although it remains to be seen if congressional Democrats will accept the telecom companies' proposal, the communication between the two sides signifies that progress is being made."

Do you know the contents of this proposed deal, and would you support it if it grants immunity to the telecom companies?

For former Senator John Edwards (CBS' Face The Nation): You have a new anti-poverty initiative that sets a goal of cutting poverty in half over the next 10 years. What's in it?

***

Email CBS' Face The Nation at ftn@cbsnews.com

Contact ABC's This Week by clicking here

Remember: always be brief, polite and respectful when contacting the media, so our voices will be taken seriously.

NIXONLAND News

Rick Perlstein — Fri, 09 May 2008 18:47:20 -0400

This weekend I leave for a two week tour to promote my new book, the product of seven years' labor. I'll be blogging here sporadically if at all.

Folks interested in keeping up on the latest NIXONLAND news should join the Facebook group.

Seattle folks can come see me Monday, May 12 at Town Hall at 7:30; Bay Area friends can join me at Book Passage,
51 Tamal Vista Blvd. in Corte Madera, Tuesday afternoon May 13 at 1:30 at Cody's in Berkeley Wednesday night May 14 at 7; SoCal types can track me down Thursday, May 15 at Pi on Sunset, 8828 Sunset Blvd, at 7.

Week two: Friends in the Washington D.C. area should join us for the panel and reception May 20 being jointly sponsored by Campaign for America's Future and the Nation—and featuring the great Helen Thomas! Details: see the ad at upper right. I'll also be reading the previous evening at Olsson's at 418 7th St. NW. New Yorkers can boogie down on the NIXONLAND tip May 21 at Borders at 461 Park Avenue, and fans of adult beverages shouldn't miss the book party the next night, Thursday the 22, at Brooklyn's Last Exit bar at 7, 136 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn.

I hope to meet some of you there. My engagement in the progressive blogosphere was more than incidental to this project, as I explain in the acknowledgments

When I wrote my first book, my ability to reconstruct the mental world of activists working for political change was profoundly enhanced by my work as a participant-observer with the New York Working Families Party. This time, I enjoyed a privileged perch within a sui generis movement for political change and media accountability as extraordinary in its way s the rise of the CIO in the 1930s and the Moral Majority and Christian Coalition in the 1980s and '90s: the progressive blogosphere, or 'netroots.' Here's where the paring gets pretty ruthless, but I'd at least like to recognize John Amato, John Aravosis, Duncan Black, the late Steve Gilliard, Jane Hamsher, Ezra Klein, Howie Klein, Josh Marshal, Markos Moulitsas, Max Sawicky, Pastor Dan Schultz, Matt Stoller—and, first among equals, the one person besides my wife with whom I've enjoyed my most important intellectual partnership, Heather 'Digby' Parton.

I should have mentioned my readers, as well.

Complacent Conservatism

Terrance Heath — Fri, 09 May 2008 10:38:13 -0400

I'm sure this has been covered by everyone and his brother, but I couldn't help being amused by this study suggesting that conservatives are happier than liberals. But before any conservatives start gloating, there's another thing to consider.

Being happy is a cinch, if you can rationalize not caring much about injustice and inequality.

Regardless of marital status, income or church attendance, right-wing individuals reported greater life satisfaction and well-being than left-wingers, the new study found. Conservatives also scored highest on measures of rationalization, which gauge a person's tendency to justify, or explain away, inequalities.

The rationalization measure included statements such as: "It is not really that big a problem if some people have more of a chance in life than others," and "This country would be better off if we worried less about how equal people are."

To justify economic inequalities, a person could support the idea of meritocracy, in which people supposedly move up their economic status in society based on hard work and good performance. In that way, one's social class attainment, whether upper, middle or lower, would be perceived as totally fair and justified.

If your beliefs don't justify gaps in status, you could be left frustrated and disheartened, according to the researchers, Jaime Napier and John Jost of New York University. They conducted a U.S.-centric survey and a more internationally focused one to arrive at the findings.

It makes sense. If you can rationalize inequities as right and just, then no matter how bad things are for someone else, you can rest assured that things are just as they ought to be. So, naturally you're not bothered by economic injustice. You're not bothered by discrimination either.

In other words, going back to a previous post, you don't have to acknowledge your privilege.

No one likes to be reminded of their privilege — whether it’s white privilege, heterosexual privilege, male privilege, or class privilege — because acknowledging that privilege commutes responsibility for that privilege, and the day-by-day, moment-to-moment decision to perpetuate that privilege or know — while knowing the consequences it imposes on others.

Whether we asked for our privilege or not — acknowledging it, if we don’t want to be responsible for perpetuating it and the injustice it perpetuates, means changing how we are in the world, day-by-day and moment-to-moment.

That is difficult and never-ending work, to be honest. It’s easier not to acknowledge it. It’s even easier to pretend it doesn’t exist. In fact, the first essential rule of perpetuating privilege is to pretend it doesn’t exist. That becomes difficult when the voices of those who can confirm the existence of that privilege, because they (a) do not possess it and (b) live with the consequence of its existence every day, become unavoidable.

And, the truth is that even though almost all of us enjoy one or more of the privileges above (especially if you consider class or economic privilege on a global scale), we also live with the consequences of not having one or more of the privileges above. The lack of one privilege can mask the existence of the other. (i.e. “What do mean I’m privileged? I’m barely making ends meet, just got laid off, and don’t have health insurance because my spouse and I aren’t married and he/she can’t carry me on hers, etc.”) That privilege doesn’t go away, but it becomes something taken for granted, as natural as breathing out and breathing in, so that we don’t take it as privilege anymore.

If you can rationalize your privilege, and rationalize related inequities on the flip-side, then you don't have to change how you are in the world; because all is right with the world, no matter how bad it is for somebody else.

In fact, your privilege — whether it stems from your race, gender, sexual orientation, economic status, etc. — doesn't even exit. The whole world is suddenly a meritocracy. What you have, you deserve, basically because you have it. And the "have-nots"? Well, if they deserved it, they'd have it.

Essentially, the have-nots deserve whatever they get. It's an aspect of conservatism that we saw play out during Katrina. We've heard it paraphrased by the likes of George Will and Bill O'Reilly, as well as Neal Boortz. Still I haven't heard anybody put it any better than George Lakoff.

Worldly success is an indicator of sufficient moral strength; lack of success suggests lack of sufficient discipline. Dependency is immoral. The undisciplined will be weak and poor, and deservedly so.
… The role of government is to: * Promote unimpeded competitive economic activity so that both the disciplined moral people and the undisciplined immoral ones are able to receive what they each deserve, based on their own choices; … The Economy and Business: Promoting unimpeded economic activity means favoring those who control wealth and power, who are seen as the “best people,” over those who are unsuccessful, who are seen as morally weak. Corporations are more heavily favored than non-corporate businesses, because big businesses (like wealthy people) have gotten big precisely through working hard and being disciplined.

Norman Vincent Peale, as I recall, came close.

Over the years, others have had uneasy doubts about the Narnian brand of Christianity. Christ should surely be no lion (let alone with the orotund voice of Liam Neeson). He was the lamb, representing the meek of the earth, weak, poor and refusing to fight. Philip Pullman - he of the marvellously secular trilogy His Dark Materials - has called Narnia “one of the most ugly, poisonous things I have ever read”.

Why? Because here in Narnia is the perfect Republican, muscular Christianity for America - that warped, distorted neo-fascist strain that thinks might is proof of right. I once heard the famous preacher Norman Vincent Peale in New York expound a sermon that reassured his wealthy congregation that they were made rich by God because they deserved it. The godly will reap earthly reward because God is on the side of the strong. This appears to be CS Lewis’s view, too. In the battle at the end of the film, visually a great epic treat, the child crusaders are crowned kings and queens for no particular reason. Intellectually, the poor do not inherit Lewis’s earth.

The best I could do to paraphrase it was this.

The better off are so because they are better people. Thus if the poor were better people they would be better off. Therefore, there are very few good people who are poor, and probably even fewer well-off people who are bad. What we saw in the post-Katrina suffering was simply bad things happening to bad people. Most, if not all, of the good people had the means to get themselves out of the hurricane’s path and did so.

Though I did manage to take it a little further.

Mix it all up together, stick it in an oven until it’s half-baked, and you end up with an ideology that people will eat up with both hands if they have any economic strength, or hope to have any because they are sure of their moral virtue and know they will be justly rewarded (even if it means buying another lottery ticket or two), because it at once elevates and absolves them. It elevates them above others who have less (or whom they deem less moral), and absolves them of helping the great many of the poor because the poor are right were they deserve to be. Heaven has mandated it so.

I didn’t say it made sense or that it holds together, just that an awful lot of people happily swallow it whole. Once they do it’s easy to see things as portrayed above and accept it as not just reality but as the way things ought to be.

If you accept all that, then depending on charities to deliver services to the poor isn’t “punishing the good guy.” The good guy has all he needs to take care of himself and his, and if he decides to reinvest his tax cut rather than donate it to charity, that’s his business. Besides, who are we to question the righteous?

And it doesn’t matter that charities will not be able to deliver the same level services to the same amount of people as the government, because the whole idea is that there will be fewer services, and there should be fewer services. The government may be able to help more people, but the problem is that it will inevitably help people who shouldn’t be helped. So less help is better, even some of the folks who may deserve it don’t get it. After all, if they were better people they wouldn’t’ need services in the first place.

Convince yourself of that, and you spend the last few hours before your winter break cutting heating assistance to poor families, and feel good about yourself. (You might even hum "Winter Wonderland" as you cast your vote.)

President Bush says that his 2006 budget "is a budget that sets priorities." Examining those priorities is a moral and religious concern. Just as we have "environmental impact studies," it’s time for a "poverty impact statement", which would ask the fundamental question of how policy proposals affect low-income people. Such a moral audit might reveal unacceptable priorities for many of us, including in the religious community where the president finds much of his political base. In a recent letter to the president, nearly 80 prominent evangelical leaders warned: “We know there will be powerful pressures, from some places, as you and the Congress work to reduce deficit spending, to cut even effective programs for poor people. We pray that you will not allow this to happen.”

But it is happening. In this budget, the cost of deficit reduction is mostly borne by those least able to bear the burden—the lowest-income families in America, rather than by those most able to afford it—the wealthiest Americans who benefit from the largest tax cuts. The budget projects a record $427 billion deficit, along with a promise to make tax cuts permanent. Does that make fiscal or moral sense?

Religious leaders have spoken clearly in past years about the perils of a domestic policy based primarily on tax cuts for the rich, deep program cuts for low-income people, and an expectation of faith-based charity to make up the huge gap. This budget runs directly counter to that religious wisdom. Billions of dollars are cut from programs that most directly impact America’s poorest families—in education, nutrition, child care, health care, affordable housing, job training, heating and cooling assistance, and in community and rural development. At the same time, mere millions of dollars are added as increases to a number of faith-based programs focusing on marriage, fatherhood, and abstinence. On the street, that would be called “chump change.” The warning that faith-based initiatives should provide a partnership with effective government anti-poverty programs—and not a substitute—has not been heeded. And the added tax cuts for the rich merely compound the moral and biblical offense.

You can even successfully sell that idea to the disadvantaged themselves, as purveyors of the prosperity gospel have shown. And you can grow quite wealthy doing it, even if your followers don't.

The message flickered into Cindy Fleenor's living room each night: Be faithful in how you live and how you give, the television preachers said, and God will shower you with material riches.

And so the 53-year-old accountant from the Tampa, Florida, area pledged $500 a year to Joyce Meyer, the evangelist whose frank talk about recovering from childhood sexual abuse was so inspirational. She wrote checks to flamboyant faith healer Benny Hinn and a local preacher-made-good, Paula White.

Only the blessings didn't come. Fleenor ended up borrowing money from friends and payday loan companies just to buy groceries. At first she believed the explanation given on television: Her faith wasn't strong enough.

"I wanted to believe God wanted to do something great with me like he was doing with them," she said. "I'm angry and bitter about it. Right now, I don't watch anyone on TV hardly."

All three of the groups Fleenor supported are among six major Christian television ministries under scrutiny by a senator who is asking questions about the evangelists' lavish spending and possible abuses of their tax-exempt status.

The probe by Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, has brought new scrutiny to the underlying belief that brings in millions of dollars and fills churches from Atlanta to Los Angeles -- the "Gospel of Prosperity," or the notion that God wants to bless the faithful with earthly riches.

On the other hand, someone more liberal or progressive, and lacking such simple (not to mention self-serving) rationalizations for the inequities the witness might be more inclined to question — to ask why they exist and why they persist — and keep questioning until they reach a more challenging (and perhaps less self-serving, depending on their relative degree of privilege) answer, rather than simply accepting that they exist and that they persist because they ought to.

Essentially, progressives see injustice and ask "Why?". Conservatives, on the other hand, see in justice and ask "Why not?"

If you ask why, without settling for simplistic answers, you might conclude that inequity an injustice do not exist in a vacuum and do not persist according to some law of nature, but because they serve as the basis for the privileges of some, and thus the privileged perpetuate them in order to preserve their privileges. You might be inclined to believe, then, that inequities and injustices are not "inevitable" or "natural" and you might also be inclined to do something about them.

You might join something like the Mississippi Freedom Summer, and spend what h have been your vacation registering people to vote who had been systematically denied the right to vote for generations. You might give your life doing it.

Or , if you have a simple explanation handy, you might just leave things be, since everything is a it should be already. Of course, you might also wonder why other people don't see it the same way you do — especially the have-nots. You might wonder why they make such a fuss over it, and you might wish they would stop. You would definitely start to worry when the don't stop.

I think, then, that the study might have confused happiness with something that can look a lot like it, but isn't: complacency.

a feeling of quiet pleasure or security, often while unaware of some potential danger, defect, or the like; self-satisfaction or smug satisfaction with an existing situation, condition, etc.

Then again, maybe there's a simpler explanation.

Blast from the Past: That Sinking Feeling

Rick Perlstein — Thu, 08 May 2008 19:43:58 -0400

Longtime fans of this blog who recall my epic 67-part series on sinkholes and their relation to conservative failure may wonder why I haven't yet weighed in on the 600-foot gargantua that has been opening up in Daisetta, Texas. The reason is that my interest was in sinkholes that opened up as a result of public infrastructure, specifically the nation's underground wastewater pipes which, I never tired of pointed out, are rated a D-minus by the American Society of Civil Engineers, not ones that are the result of private infrastructure, as appears to be the case with this one caused by Sunoco crude oil pipelines.

But I can't resist this one comment. The AP article cites a geologist in claiming, "Sinkholes are rare."

I used to have a GoogleNews alert for sinkholes, and after getting ten emails a day, and figuring I'd already quite made my point, I quit. But—did I mentioned this?—because of the conservative principle of tax-starvation that has earned our underground wastewater infrastructure a grade of D-minus by the American Society of Civil Engineers—let us make no mistake: sinkholes are in no way rare.

F'rinstance consider this story, which appeared an hour ago:

PEARL CITY, Hawaii -- An 8-inch main broke on Hoomoana Street and it created a hole big enough to swallow a car. No one drove into it.

Residents said they heard running water at about 4 a.m. and called police. Officers kept watch until a Board of Water Supply crew arrived.

The sinkhole buckled the asphalt and literally lifted part of the street.
The main break left 18 homes without water for a short time.

These are Our Debating Partners

Rick Perlstein — Thu, 08 May 2008 18:25:35 -0400

I'll be writing more in weeks to come on the conservative response to my book. Briefly, I'm fascinated by how many conservatives have been defending Watergate and arguing that America was lucky to escape the Sixties with no worse than Watergate—that Richard Nixon, in other words, wasn't that much of an authoritarian anyway as these things go, so what's all the fuss about?

But here's a new one on me: a conservative blogger from Canada who uses the occasion of my book to flippantly suggest (lighten up!) that the "hard hat riot" of May 8, 1970—Happy Hard Hat Riot Day, everybody!—was kind of nifty, or at least nothing worse than what the left was typically responsible for. And here is the NIXONLAND excerpt by which she affects to support her "argument."

‘These hippies are getting what they deserve,' said John Halloran, one of the construction workers, while the mêlée was still going on. As he talked a coworker standing with him yelled, ‘Damn straight,' and punched a young man in a business suit who said he disagreed."

The mob moved on to nearby Pace University, setting fire to a banner reading VIETNAM, LAOS, CAMBODIA, KENT. The glass doors to the building were chained shut from the inside against attack. Hard hats crashed through them and chased down unkempt students, joined by conservative students angry at strikers interfering with their education. Some longhairs were beaten with lead pipes wrapped in American flags. Trinity Church became a makeshift field hospital (the mob ripped down the Red Cross banner). The New York Times ran a picture the next day of a construction worker and a man in a tie charging down a cobblestone street to beat someone with an American flag. Pete Hamill, who had only the previous year offered his solidarity to "The Revolt of the White Lower Middle Class," now withdrew his endorsement in horror: "The police collaborated with the construction workers in the same way that Southern sheriffs used to collaborate with the rednecks when the rednecks were beating up freedom riders."

Police made only six arrests. Perhaps they agreed with the construction worker who told The Wall Street Journal, "I'm doing this because my brother got wounded in Vietnam, and I think this will help our boys over there by pulling this country together."

Clipping the Eagle's Wings

Rick Perlstein — Thu, 08 May 2008 15:33:38 -0400

Kathy G weighs in at Crooked Timber with just about the definitive post on this obscene business of Washington University in St. Louis conferring an honorary degree on Phyllis Schlafly. Two more things worth saying, however.

First, I want to respond to commenter Milton Appling below. He points out what he claims should be a mitigating factor: that no one should be surprised that Wash U. is wrapped up in this nonsense, given that they host a right-wing business school named for conservative benefactor John Olin: "That should be all that you need to know about Wash U regarding giving the Eagle an honorary degree." Another friend, a St. Louis native, likewise writes in to point out the institution's historic conservative, citing the way they dissolved their sociology department in the 1980s as a way to shake loose all the suspect lefties lodged within.

In fact, the Olin business is all you need to know why it's so important to press forward with the movement to shame Wash U. on their egregious lapse of intellectual standards.

One of the first principles of politics is to choose battlefields to fight on that unite your side and divide the opponents. The fact that Wash University's administration and benefactor class is lousy with the sort of conservatives who love Milton Friedman-style business schools is all the more reason to point up the absurdity of Washington University association with Phyllis Schlafly. Schlafly believes a secretive cast of bankers—the "Bildergergers"—are conspiring to impose One World Government on the United States. She believed it in the 1960s, when she said the Bilderbergers were fronting for the International Communist Conspiracy, and she believes it now (or, at least, she believed it in 1997 when I interviewed her; I have it on tape) that that International Communist Conspiracy is fifteen years gone. Schlafly believes—or claimed to believe—that if the Equal Rights Amendment passed, boys bathrooms and girls bathrooms, would be outlawed, and that little girls would be forced to see little boys' wee-wees each and every day; and thatwomen would not be able to refuse their husbands if their husbands demanded they went out to work—would be slaves of their husbands. And yes, these things are crazy. And Phyllis Schlafly believes them, because Phyllis Schlafly—for all her brilliance, organizational accumen, and ability to gain get granted respect among the councils of the respected and powerful—is crazy.

If the city of St. Louis learns, if the greater Washington University community learns, if America learns, if the world learns just how crazy she is, thanks to the efforts of this movement, the respectable business conservatives of Washington University's Oilin School will want nothing to do with her. She will be, as she should be, an albatross around their respectable conservative necks.

The Age of Reagan cannot survive the successful wedging of its business constituency, which craves nothing so much as respectability, and its lunatic constituency, who appear the more unrespectable the closer they're held to the light. And so, progressives, hold Phyllis Schlafly to the light. You have nothing to lose but your chains.

Here's the other point, and it's a depressing, disconcerting one: in l'affair Schlafly we have already lost. If this campaign succeeds, there will still be not inconsiderable collateral damage to the progressive movement: conservatives will once more be able to claim themselves free speech martyrs, "silenced" by political correctness. It reminds me—yes, I truly am the hammer to which everything in the world of politics is a nail—of a story involving, yes, Richard Nixon.

Early in 1966 Richard Nixon was offered an honorary degree from the University of Rochester. His political friends in New York—who understood themselves to be re-grooming the disgraced two-time loser's image as a responsible statesman, with an eye toward his 1968 presidential run—were ecstatic: occasions like his robe-bedecked commencement speech in Rochester were what would kill the poisoning image of the slashing, low-brow "old Nixon" at long last.

Only problem: the previous year a (then-Marxist) history professor at Rutgers said that he would "welcome" a Communist victory in Vietnam; the Republican gubernatorial candidate made it his marquee issue for the fall; and Nixon came to the state to campaign for him, braying thus:

I do not raise the question of Professor Genovese's right to be for segregation or integration, for free love or celibacy, for Communism or anarchy--in peacetime. But the United States is at war. [ed.: Anarchistic multiracial orgies, in wartime, no less!... If anyone had welcomed a Nazi victory during World War II there would have been no question about what to do. Leadership requires that the governor step in and put the security of the nation above the security of the individual.

The Rochester faculty, enraged that an enemy of academic freedom could be honored at their free academy, got up a petition to bar him from speaking. Nixon wrote a long and legalistic letter to the New York Times arguing that he as actually arguing for the preservation of academic freedom "by defending the system of government which guarantees freedom of speech to individuals." The swells at Nixon's Wall Street law firm, Len Garment wrote in his memoirs, were annoyed that he just didn't fold his cards and admit the mistake. The boss was nonplused. He told Garment to stop listening to the "damned press." Nixon understood that in fact he held all the cards in this game. In the Gallup Poll, among presidential contenders, he was the leading Republican by 13 points. Sticking it to the liberal intellectual elites didn't hurt him. It helped.

He spoke at Rochester in June in defiance of a successful faculty petition not to offer him an honorary degree, lying that "since leaving the office of Vice President it has been my policy not to accept honorary degrees." He both got across his right-wing message ("If we are to defend academic freedom from encroachment we must also defend it from its own excesses") are cloaked himself in the martyr's mantle of moral superiority.

Phyllis will, too. Even if she doesn't speak.

We have to stop these invitations before they start. Venal conservatives lobby for them. They harass liberal institutions to get them, by baiting boards of trustees that they will be excoriated for ideological "intolerance" for not extending them. Then—win win—they watch the fun that ensues.

No reason, for all that, not to fight this fight anyway. We can get ahead of the game, and force them to play it on our battlefield for once. Tie Phyllis Schlafly to Washington University, whether she speaks there or not. Make it poisonous for "respectable" conservatives to have anything to do with lunatic, lying conspiracy mongering constituency they need in order to succeed politically. Unite progressives. Split conservatives. Wash, rinse, repeat. We shall overcome.