The Extinction of "Intellectual" Conservatives

Once upon a time the political and social right had serious intellectuals.  Those day are gone as what now passes as intellectualism on the right is embodied by hacks and mental midgets on Fox News and even more insane types at Breitbart and more scurrilous "news" outlets (what intellectual conservatives that existed have more or less exited the right wing media as if they were fleeing the sinking Titanic or Lusitania).   This reality was recently underscored by the hiring of a "conservative" columnist by The Atlantic who was then fired once some of his heinous views came to light.  Obviously, more serious vetting should have been undertaken, but the saga shows the danger of giving a platform to demagogues and misogynist in the quest for "balance."  A column in the New York Times looks at both the debacle at The Atlantic and the extinction of intellectual conservatism.  Here are excerpts:

The hiring-then-firing of Kevin Williamson followed a familiar script. A mainstream media organization hires a conservative in the name of intellectual diversity, then is shocked, shocked to discover that he’s dishonest and/or holds truly reprehensible views – something that the organization could have discovered with a few minutes on Google. But when the bad hire is let go, the right treats him as a martyr, proof of liberal refusal to let alternative viewpoints be heard. Why does this keep happening?

As others have pointed out, the real problem here is that media organizations are looking for unicorns: serious, honest, conservative intellectuals with real influence. Forty or fifty years ago, such people did exist. But now they don’t.

To understand why, let me talk about what I know: the field of economics. This happens to be a field with a relatively strong conservative presence compared to other social sciences, and as far as I can tell even contains considerably more self-identified conservatives/Republicans than hard science. Even so, trying to find influential conservative economic intellectuals is basically a hopeless task, for two reasons.

First,. . . What the right wants are charlatans and cranks, in (conservative) Greg Mankiw’s famous phrase. If they use actual economists, they use them the way a drunkard uses a lamppost: for support, not illumination.

The appointment of Larry Kudlow to head the National Economic Council epitomizes the phenomenon. . . . under Obama the director was always someone who was interested in real policy research, listened to what experts had to say, and was willing to change views in the face of evidence.  Obviously none of this is true in Kudlow’s case. He’s basically a TV personality, whose shtick is preaching the magic of tax cuts, and nothing – not the Kansas debacle, not the Clinton boom, not the strong job creation that followed Obama’s 2013 tax hike – will change his mind.

All this means that if you get a conservative economist who isn’t a charlatan and crank, you are more or less by definition getting someone with no influence on policymakers. But that’s not the only problem.

The second problem with conservative economic thought is that even aside from its complete lack of policy influence, it’s in an advanced state of both intellectual and moral decadence – something that has been obvious for a while, but became utterly clear after the 2008 crisis. . . . By the time the Great Recession struck, the right-leaning side of the profession had entered a Dark Age, having retrogressed to the point where famous economists trotted out 30s-era fallacies as deep insights.

But even among conservative economists who didn’t go down that rabbit hole, there has been a moral collapse – a willingness to put political loyalty over professional standards. We saw that most recently in the way leading conservative economists raced to endorse ludicrous claims for the efficacy of the Trump tax cuts, then tried to climb down without admitting what they had done.

What accounts for this moral decline? I suspect that it’s about a desperate attempt to retain some influence on a party that prefers the likes of Kudlow or Stephen Moore. People like John Taylor just keep hoping that if they toe the party line enough, they can still get on the inside. But so far this keeps not happening – and for sure it won’t get better under Trump.

Am I saying that there are no conservative economists who have maintained their principles? Not at all. But they have no influence, zero, on GOP thinking. So in economics, a news organization trying to represent conservative thought either has to publish people with no constituency or go with the charlatans who actually matter.

And I think that’s true across the board. The left has genuine public intellectuals with actual ideas and at least some real influence; the right does not. News organizations don’t seem to have figured out how to deal with this reality, except by pretending that it doesn’t exist. And that’s why we keep having these Williamson-like debacles.

Intellectual Integrity - A Missing GOP Trait

I continually bemoan the state of today's Republican Party where ignorance is embraced and celebrated and where ideological purity trumps objective reality be it in economic matters or the on going denial that climate change is a real phenomenon.   The problem is exacerbated by the growing extremism and ignorance of the party base - in good measure due to the rising of the Christofascists who are mutually exclusive of logic, reason, and intellectual curiosity - and the party primary process which forces the best candidates from campaign contests since the base only votes for know nothings and extremists be they religious extremists or white supremacists who merely don't wear KKK robes in public.  A column in the New York Times looks at the shrinking intellectual integrity in the GOP.  Here are excerpts:

The 2016 campaign should be almost entirely about issues. The parties are far apart on everything from the environment to fiscal policy to health care, and history tells us that what politicians say during a campaign is a good guide to how they will govern.

Nonetheless, many in the news media will try to make the campaign about personalities and character instead. And character isn’t totally irrelevant. . . . . But the character trait that will matter most isn’t one the press likes to focus on. In fact, it’s actively discouraged.

You see, you shouldn’t care whether a candidate is someone you’d like to have a beer with. Nor should you care about politicians’ sex lives, or even their spending habits unless they involve clear corruption. No, what you should really look for, in a world that keeps throwing nasty surprises at us, is intellectual integrity: the willingness to face facts even if they’re at odds with one’s preconceptions, the willingness to admit mistakes and change course.

As Franklin Roosevelt put it in a celebrated speech, “The country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.”

What we see instead in many public figures is, however, the behavior George Orwell described in one of his essays: “Believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right.” Did I predict runaway inflation that never arrived? Well, the government is cooking the books, and besides, I never said what I said.

So what’s the state of intellectual integrity at this point in the election cycle? Pretty bad, at least on the Republican side of the field.

Jeb Bush, for example, has declared that “I’m my own man” on foreign policy, but the list of advisers circulated by his aides included the likes of Paul Wolfowitz, who predicted that Iraqis would welcome us as liberators, and shows no signs of having learned from the blood bath that actually took place.

Meanwhile, as far as I can tell no important Republican figure has admitted that none of the terrible consequences that were supposed to follow health reform — mass cancellation of existing policies, soaring premiums, job destruction — has actually happened.

The point is that we’re not just talking about being wrong on specific policy questions. We’re talking about never admitting error, and never revising one’s views. Never being able to say that you were wrong is a serious character flaw even if the consequences of that refusal to admit error fall only on a few people. But moral cowardice should be outright disqualifying in anyone seeking high office.

We really, really don’t want the job of responding to that crisis dictated by someone who still can’t bring himself to admit that invading Iraq was a disaster but health reform wasn’t.

I still think this election should turn almost entirely on the issues. But if we must talk about character, let’s talk about what matters, namely intellectual integrity.

State Department Offical Forced to Resign for Merely Speaking the Truth

The Obama administration (and its Jello-O spined leader who is working hard to become a version of Chimperator Bush) has pressured State Department spokesman, Philip J. Crowley (pictured at right), to resign yesterday. Crowley's offense? Calling the Pentagon out on its equivalent of torture treatment of Bradley Manning. Anyone following the Manning sag with any degree of attention cannot help but realize what's going on makes America's supposed rule of law a total farce. What's even more ironic is the fact that even as rank and file citizens in the Middle East yearn for American style democracy - or at least the form we once had - the USA is sliding towards something more akin to the pattern of a Middle Eastern oligarchy. It's a trend that is most disturbing and doesn't bode well for the future in this nation which is spiraling downward economically and politically. Here are highlights from the New York Times on the White House's effort to kill dissent:
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The State Department spokesman, Philip J. Crowley, resigned on Sunday, three days after publicly criticizing the Pentagon as “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid” in its treatment of Pfc. Bradley E. Manning, the soldier imprisoned on charges of leaking classified government documents to the antisecrecy group WikiLeaks.
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Mr. Crowley’s comments, which were made to a small group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, stirred a political tempest in Washington and were rejected by President Obama at a news conference on Friday. . . . . White House officials were infuriated by the episode, administration officials said, which one described as “the last straw” in a series of incautious remarks by Mr. Crowley.
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Mr. Crowley, in his statement, did not retract his critical comments about the Pentagon, which he said “were intended to highlight the broader, even strategic impact of discrete actions undertaken by national security agencies every day and their impact on our global standing and leadership.”
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For the last few months, Mr. Crowley had devoted much of his time to dealing with the fallout from the release of State Department cables by WikiLeaks. Officials credited him with handling that difficult task well, and he has developed strong opinions about the role of the government and the news media through this episode, some of which he voiced in his M.I.T. talk.
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Just because the truth is inconvenient, it doesn't make it any less the truth. Obama needs to take a lesson from what has happened to some Middle East tyrants who found themselves no longer able to hold back the truth. Would that there was any real prospect for an alternative to Obama in 2012. Personally, I would like to see him shown the door. I'm long past believing much of anything the man has to say.

Celibacy Should be Rethought

UPDATED: An anonymous commenter -the negative comments are always by "Anonymous" wimps afraid to put their names behind their comments - challenged me as to why I have any standing to question the Roman Catholic Church's internal affairs if I am no longer Catholic. My reply is that the Church still owes a debt to me for the spiritual poison it inflicted on me. for many years. Secondly, it is the Church's bizarre obsession with all things sexual - with celibacy being but one manifestaion of it - that helps fuel the Church's constant anti-gay agenda and its efforts to deprive me and other LGBT Americans of equality under the CIVIL laws. When the Church stops trying to restrict my rights under the civil laws, then I will stop pointing out the dishonesty and dirty laundry of the Church.

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As a former Catholic for roughly 49 years of my life I am well acquainted with the idiocy of many aspects of Catholicism, priestly celibacy being but one of them. In my view, because of the rule of mandatory celibacy, the priesthood became a haven for the sexually/emotionally dysfunctional - and by this I do NOT mean gays - and led to a priesthood utterly devoid of common sense knowledge of real world life: pressures of marriage, child rearing, managing a family budget - the list goes on and on. Since joining the ELCA, I have seen first hand the difference it makes having married clergy who have practical experience on which to base their counseling. Thus, I believe even more firmly that Catholics are done a disservice when forced to deal with celibate priests for family guidance. But then, celibacy became the rule a millennium ago for monetary reasons, not spiritual reasons. Rev. Donald Cozzens, writer in residence and adjunct professor of theology at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio, has an opinion piece on CNN that looks at why celibacy needs to be rethought and also the fact that for nearly 1,000 years priests and even Popes married and had families. Here are some highlights:

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It's an issue that simply won't go away. In spite of signals from the Vatican discouraging even discussions of obligatory celibacy for Catholic priests, the almost 1,000-year-old rule is under the microscope. And it will be for decades to come.

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Public opinion surveys indicate that most Catholics, priests included, believe the discipline of celibacy needs a serious review. Recently the retired archbishop of New York, Cardinal Edward Egan, observed that obligatory celibacy is open for discussion. It is not, Egan noted, a matter of dogma. For decades now, bishops from Asia, Europe and the Americas have asked Vatican officials to consider optional celibacy for priests. The church's official response is consistent and succinct: As a precious gift from God, the discipline of celibacy for priests will remain in place.

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More and more Catholics today are coming to understand that celibacy as a universal law for priests had its origins in the 12th century and that during the church's first millennium, priests and bishops -- and at least thirty-nine popes -- were married. Still, most well-read cradle Catholics are surprised to learn that St. Anastasius, pope from 399 to 401, was succeeded by his son, Pope St. Innocent I, and that a century later Pope St. Hormisdas' son, St. Silverius, also was elected to the papacy.

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For some years now I've been teaching in the religious studies department at John Carroll University in Cleveland. I've asked dozens of serious, healthy young students if they have given any thought to being a priest. They seem flattered by the question. With only one exception, each has answered, "Yes, I've thought about being a priest, but I want a family." There are, of course, other factors, urgent and pressing, that will keep the celibacy issue alive.

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Parish staffing challenges alone will press for a review of the celibacy rule. Catholic bishops simply do not have enough priests to meet the pastoral and sacramental needs of the Catholic faithful. Closing and merging parishes may offer some temporary relief for overworked priests, but the shortfall of priests will continue to challenge the vitality of Catholic parishes and the health of Catholic clergy for decades to come.

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don't know Father Alberto Cutie. He appears to have touched the lives of many and preached the gospel with power and conviction. I suspect he feels called by God to be a priest, but not a celibate priest. Surely he knows that Easter Rite Catholic priests are allowed to marry and that the church welcomes into the priesthood married convert ministers from other Christian denominations. Surely he knows that in many parts of the Catholic world, clerical celibacy is openly flouted, and church authorities choose not to notice.

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Certainly, a married priesthood will have burdens of its own and, sadly, scandals of its own -- infidelity and abuse among others. But it should be left to the individual priest and seminarian to determine whether or not he is blessed with the gift of celibacy. A mandated "gift," after all, is really no gift at all.

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Mandatory celibacy in my view is yet another example of the rampant hypocrisy within the Church hierarchy. It is a non-theologically imposed requirement which is shown to be artificial by the fact that Eastern Rite Catholic clergy have been allowed through out the last 1,000 years. As is all to typical, the Vatican isn't even honest as to why one rule applies to the western rite Church and an entirely different rule applies to the eastern rite Church. To be merely intellectually honest, it has to be one rule or the other, not both. But then, intellectual honest - or even basic honesty for that matter - are not the Vatican's strong suit.