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ANOTHER RESPONSE TO MARK SCHMITT.
Editors' Note: The Propsect has invited several writers to respond to Mark Schmitt's cover story in our most recent issue. Our second contributor is Reihan Salam, an associate editor at The Atlantic Monthly, co author of Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream and the founder of the group blog The American Scene.
Mark Schmitt is a tremendously insightful thinker, and I found his recent essays on "Obama-ism and the future of the Democrats" and the thinness of John McCain's record as a reformer invaluable. But I'm afraid I don't fully buy Mark's latest essay on Republican identity politics. From what I can glean, he is saying the following:
Nationalism is ugly and unpalatable. What Schmitt calls "the politics of American-ness" is also known as nationalism, and he understands it as first and foremost an effort to deny the "American-ness" of vulnerable minorities, in particular minorities of conscience. There is no denying that, as Anatol Lieven among others have argued, American nationalism has at times taken on an ugly form. But the most prevalent form of American nationalism is a liberal or cultural nationalism, not a narrow ethnic nationalism.
Anti-nationalists believe, by definition, that nationalistic appeals are illegitimate, or at the very least distasteful. But anti-nationalists are few and far between in American politics. And indeed, though American nationalism has come to be associated with right-wing jingoism, there is a distinct undercurrent of nationalism in grassroots opposition to the Iraq War. It also goes without saying that nationalism is integral to the popularity of the hard-edged economic populism of Jim Webb and John Edwards, who vigorously oppose a different set of deracinated cosmopolitans, namely the transnational corporate elite.
When a party hits rock bottom, we see its true self. Now that the fig leafs of welfare, crime, and immigration have been taken off the table, and now that "global belligerence and eternal tax cuts" have lost their appeal, we see Republicans for what they are -- narrow nationalists.
But are welfare, crime, and immigration symbolic fig leafs? My sense is that the salience of these issues will likely increase. Welfare, crime, and immigration are, as we all know (or should know), deeply intertwined with inequality, poverty, and the fate of our cities. The mere fact that crime has sharply decreased since the early 1990s doesn't mean we don't have a crime problem, as Robert Gordon argued in The New Republic a few weeks back. Welfare has been "reformed," yet millions of Americans remain trapped in low-wage work. As Douglas Besharov and Harry Holzer and others have been arguing for years, more reforms are necessary, particularly reforms aimed at men and ex-offenders. As for immigration, well, it has a powerful and direct impact on wage dispersion, on human capital policies, and, of course, on our shared quality of life.
At the risk of impugning Mark's American-ness, I really do think these issues matter, and that conservatives are developing distinctive, effective policies that are superior to the liberal alternatives. One reason why these approaches are superior, in my view, is that they are predicated on a more appealing vision of American democratic nationhood. I imagine others will disagree.
The conservative ideological cupboard is bare. Mark argues that conservative reformers aren't in fact offering "plans for renewing the party by anchoring it in a rediscovery of the moral absolutes of conservatism." Instead, they are offering merely improvisational efforts to address widely held anxieties about the future of healthcare and the environment without embracing expensive, centralized, state-centered approaches. (I'm putting this in my own words, as you can no doubt tell.) Given that I don't think conservative policymaking is or ought to be rooted in "moral absolutes," or in ideological preconceptions, I have to say that I consider this a feature, not a bug. Russell Kirk described conservatism as the negation of ideology. If that's not true now, it ought to be.
For all the failures and limitations of the American social model, its great strength is its openness to the improvisation that rapid change requires. The great danger we face is that our political life has grown so contentious, and our institutions have grown so ossified, that we won't be able to meet the _sui generis_ challenges this big, rich, sprawling, fractious society will face in the decades to come. So as much as I admire the French or Danish or Icelandic social models, my gut instinct is that we Americans -- there's that nationalism again! -- will have to carve out our own path on healthcare, and that we will want all of our social policies to respond to changing conditions on the ground.
I have a lot more to say, but I fear I've overstayed my welcome. Thanks for letting me stop by! (This response was originally submitted on Thursday)
Reihan Salam
COMMENTS (5)
To respond, last point first.
While you deny the inherent harms in a nationalistic vision, you say that the US should find its own way. However, isn't that proving the point by essentially saying, "Forget what the evidence and experience of the world shows, we're Americans and we'll do what we want"? How is that not a narrow nationalistic view?
So, if I understand it right, Conservatism is a negative-ideology, and therefore it's appropriate response oftentimes is, "We won't do anything and let the markets work it out"? How do you deal with the overwhelming majority of Americans that favor active government intervention in any number of areas? How do you deal with targeted tax breaks, and other forms of economic activism directed at favored groups? How does that deal with those 'pernicius' multinational corporate elites?
On welfare, crime and immigration, isn't the conservative response rooted in, "They are not like us" first? On all three policies, isn't the conservative response, "These 'Others' are different from us and we need to do something about them"?
Finally, I would contend that the main thrust of Jim Webb's and John Edwards' economic populism is not against multinational/de-nationed others, nor is it nationalistic in origin. It's targeted against Americans primarily, but ones that exist in another realm of wealth and privilege and who use special interests, lobbyists and PR firms to deny that they exist in another realm. There isn't nationalism there because, while it is "us vs. them" in scope, the 'us' and 'them' are both American.
Posted by: William Smith | June 2, 2008 11:35 AM
Anyone who can talk about "welfare, immigration and crime" as signature political issues without recognizing that *from the get go* these have been code words for n*gger n*gger n*gger in republican speak is just pretending to have an honest discussion. Go back and read your Reagan, your Nixon, your wallace, your buchanans and your lee atwaters. In a mixed race and multi ethnic society "nationalism" as practiced by a soon to be minority of white voters is a code word for racial suppression and white superiority. Like "christian identity" doesn't actually refer to christianity as such.
back to school.
aimai
Posted by: aimai | June 2, 2008 1:40 PM
So the only people who prefer not to be murdered or robbed are people who hate niggers. Gotcha.
Posted by: John Doe | June 2, 2008 3:20 PM
Well said aimai, though in the interest of being precise, it should have been more like, n***er, border n***er, n***er.
I find it hard to read people like Salam and his fellow Atlantic conservative Ross Douthat because they refuse to acknowledge that the political success of the Republican party is based on racism, xenophobia, and religious prejudice. This would force them to admit, of course, that whether or not their own particular public policy beliefs might work better on their own scale of measure, there is no hope for their policy preferences becoming those of the Republican party.
What I would also like to see these supposedly thinking and reality-based conservatives admit is that, in economic terms at least, even if you admit that there is some theoretic truth to the Chicago school assertion that, aside from protection of property rights and violent crime prevention, the economy grows fastest with government inaction, what you're arguing for in supporting that is, say, a yearly growth rate of 2.835% in a plutocracy with wealth distribution edging towards Guatemalan levels, instead of, say, a 2.833% yearly growth rate with distribution more like the Nordic countries.
Posted by: Matt | June 2, 2008 3:27 PM
Matt - It might be more productive for you to pressure "progressives" to lead the way on the wealth distribution issue instead of waiting for conservatives to come around.
Economists from that Chicago school are very popular in some Democratic circles.
Posted by: populi | June 3, 2008 3:38 AM