(8:28 PM) | Adam Kotsko:

Conservatism

Can we, at long last, dispense with the word "conservative"? I don't understand what those who deploy the word are supposed to be conserving, other than their own tenuous hold on power. It is time, and past time, for us to bring out the old categories of left-wing, right-wing, and center, and it is time for us to acknowledge the following:

• The Democrats are in the center. They are both classically "liberal" in the sense of generally favoring the deployment of market forces in moderation for the good of society and of generally supporting the basic institutions of democracy and classically "conservative" in the sense of maintaining the status quo of the distinctively 20th Century achievements of American democratic capitalism (the New Deal and, to a more limited extent, the Great Society). Liberal and conservative, in our current context, effectively mean the same thing, but not in the cynical sense that both parties are simply "the same." Even if the Democrats are not finally the party that our country needs and desires, they are also not finally "the same" as the Republicans.
  
• The Republicans are on the right wing. They are radical nationalists who only support the free operations of capital and the preservation of democratic institutions insofar as it assists their nationalistic ambitions. They are not conservative in any meaningful sense of the word -- their primary ambition is to destroy the hard-won achievements of the 20th century left in order to maintain the United States in a constant state of emergency that will legitimate everything they wish to do. As Lacan points out, the right winger is not afraid to admit that he's a crook, and so we should expect nothing other than lies and cynical manipulation out of right wing politicians. It is neither insightful nor helpful to point out individual lies (such as the Niger thing)--that simply helps them all the more, in that it assumes that in general, they are playing by the rules.
  
• The left wing is in a state of radical crisis. Slavoj Zizek, Frederic Jameson, Judith Butler, et al. are all wonderful and brilliant thinkers, and their analysis of the contemporary landscape is consistently right on, but I can't really tease out a concrete plan of action. Marx's greatest disservice to us may have been the example of lovingly detailed description, coupled with the sense that history will finally take care of itself. It is perhaps not by accident that Marxism now survives as a primarily academic movement.

We are not in a situation in which the truth will set us free, if by the truth we mean the exposure of the tissue of lies surrounding the actions of our government. It is difficult to imagine, however, what kind of action we could take that would not end up reinforcing right-wing rule. As we've seen, in a movement that is its own legitimation, literally anything can be taken as evidence. Terrorist attacks only serve to strengthen the movement. Criticism "proves their point." As a good leftist, I can only recommend that we wait it out, even if we end up waiting for forty years. We can only pray that the next terrorist attack does not come, since that may very well mean the end of our way of life -- inflicted upon us not from the outside, but by our own leaders.

See below for my criticism of other blogs as hysterical.

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