Those of us in the U.S. find ourselves embroiled in that recurring cabaret often euphemistically called “election season.” It is a time for those of us that prefer to be informed to prepare to read the political platforms that are to be revealed in coming conventions and to evaluate the candidates to which they have been matched.

As it happens, I’ve read an already released party platform a few days ago that offers a fresh look at many of the problems that we face as a nation and that ought to have a place in U.S. national political dialogue.

Though I certainly don’t agree with the entirety of the platform, I found much of it to be sensible or at the very least no more objectionable than what is expected from either of the major parties in the coming election.

Some Platform Highlights –

Because not everyone has the time (or wants) to read these things, I’ve taken the liberty of surveying and summarizing what I found to be some of the more interesting points of the platform in question. It calls, in part, for—

In the “Taxation and Fiscal Policy” section:

Reduction of government size only while safeguarding essential government services to the public. Reductions in taxes “with particular consideration for low and middle income families.” Tax policy with an eye toward the unequal effect of taxes on those being taxed. Strong support for the Federal Reserve and the tools available to it.

In the “Business and Economic Policy” and “Small Business” sections:

Massive highway, air, and maritime programs to support economic expansion. Federal loans to small businesses and strong support for the Small Business Administration. Closer federal scrutiny of mergers and enhancement of anti-trust enforcement. Vigorous SEC regulation to protect investors and small businesses.

In the “Labor” section:

Raising the minimum wage. Applauding collective bargaining and labor unions and suggesting that the government ought not interfere with these, save to protect their rights. Providing federal assistance to struggling workers. Guaranteeing the integrity of private pensions with the force of law. Equal pay for equal work.

In the “Health and Welfare” section:

Federal programs to accelerate the building of public schools. Federal support for free vaccines and adequate medical care. Historic increases in science research funding. Federal assistance for the training of scientists. Community organizing, vocation rehabilitation, home ownership stimulus and low-rent public housing. The “extension and perfection” of social security.

In the “Agriculture” section:

Regulating production to create a “soil reserve” for the future. Protection for clean water and soil. Coordination between federal and local concerns to implement research, education, service, and regulatory programs. Federal loans to ensure stability and productivity. Support for cooperatives.

In the “Federal Government Integrity” section:

The presumption that there ought to be legal limits to lobbying power and the determination to stop cases of improper influence of money in politics.

In the “Post Office” section:

Radically expand the service. Modernize operations. Promotion based on training and safety and increases in compensation and fringe benefits.

In the “Civil Rights” section:

Combating federal employment discrimination and discrimination in interstate commerce. Liberty, due process, and equal protection of the law for all people. The belief that “true progress” is attained through “education, understanding, and good will.”

In the “Immigration” section:

“[A]n immigration policy which is in keeping with the traditions of America in providing a haven for oppressed peoples, and which is based on equality of treatment, freedom from implications of discrimination between racial, nationality and religious groups, and flexible enough to conform to changing needs and conditions.”

In the section on “The Future” of the nation:

Continued “vigorous support” for the United Nations. Assistance to underdeveloped areas around the globe and a “policy of impartial friendship” for states across the Middle East, whether predominantly Arabic or Jewish. Freedom for all peoples and an end to colonialism. A “progressive elimination of the barriers” to the free flow of information around the world.

In the “Guarding and Improving our Resources” section and a few related sections that follow:

The conservation and safeguarding of natural resources for the greater good and for future generations. Extensive financing and protection of national parks, national forests, and wildlife refuges. Studies to gauge the effects of works projects on wildlife.

The Party in Question –

All of the detail above is prefaced by a statement of values that includes, amongst other things, the following:

“We are proud of and shall continue our far-reaching and sound advances in matters of basic human needs—expansion of social security—broadened coverage in unemployment insurance —improved housing—and better health protection for all our people. We are determined that our government remain warmly responsive to the urgent social and economic problems of our people.”

“We firmly believe in the right of peoples everywhere to determine their form of government, their leaders, their destiny, in peace.”

and

“America does not prosper unless all Americans prosper. Government must have a heart as well as a head. Courage in principle, cooperation in practice make freedom positive.”

Just who is this presumably center-left or even left-leaning party (at least by today’s standards), steadfast in support for the United Nations, unions, public services, regulation, and conservation? The Democrats? The Greens?

Hardly. This is the Republican Party platform of 1956.

I encourage those that are interested in what they read above to revisit, if only for a few minutes, a very different political landscape than the one seen in the U.S. today.

Important Caveats –

The items outlined above are a quick and selective reading of the 1956 platform. There are many statements in it that I didn’t include or summarize in the list above because they might have given up the (admittedly prosaic) game in this case, and that are more in keeping with the Republican rhetoric (though not rhetorical style) of the present. It remains possible that I’ve missed the part of the platform that clearly and directly foreshadows the Romney/Ryan campaign of the present.

These items have also been presented a-historically. 1956 was, of course, 1956 and 2012 is clearly not 1956. One could plausibly argue that it is not only the platforms that have changed, but the facts on the ground as well. I haven’t taken the time to find or read the Democratic platform from the same time period, nor to track the evolution of following Republican platforms with reference to history over the same period.

Despite these omissions, and the necessarily limited nature of the conclusions that can be drawn, what is striking about this list is the number of positions represented in it that in today’s U.S. political landscape have been framed as either left or far-left in nature, and the at times expansive, optimistic, and pragmatic tone of the writing, even about such economically risky and potentially oppressive (we’re told today) propositions as unions, environmental regulation, and the United Nations.

Where Are the Conservative Intellectuals? –

It was Jeff’s waning search for conservative intellectuals that led me to the document, and while it doesn’t provide names or faces, it supports the sense that the conservative intellectual of the present—inasmuch as today’s conservative movement is willing to own him or her—is a different kind of thinker than was the conservative intellectual of the past.

The search will no doubt continue, but for those on the right with aspirations to renew the conservative intellectual tradition, one flip answer to Jeff’s question as to the whereabouts of the conservative intellectuals might be that they have taken up residence in some cases in the past.

Might I suggest the Republican Party Platform of 1956 as an important initial resource for young, headstrong conservatives?

In the past week, I have published in Deliberately Considered and posted on my Facebook page a series of reflections on the implications of the nomination of Paul Ryan as Vice Presidential candidate of the Republican Party. And I have explained that the basis of my understanding of the present situation is a conservative insight concerning the dangers of ideological thought. The replies have been quite illuminating. The discussion starts with an interesting American irony: amusing, perhaps more.

Ryan’s nomination, I believe, assures the re-election of President Obama. The basis of my belief is a judgment that Americans generally are guided by a conservative insight, an American suspicion of ideological thought. Conservative insight defeats the conservative ticket.

Yet, on the intellectual front, there are few conservative thinkers who would illuminate this. Exceptions? Andrew Sullivan, perhaps also David Frum. (Anyone else?) But because these two are so guided, few, if any, conservatives recognize them as comrades in thought.

Aron Hsiao in a reply to one of my posts on conservative intellectuals explains the factors involved:

“The essence of the moment is that the mainstream demographic blocs of the Right have, as an ideological move, adopted anti-intellectualism as a central tenet of conservatism. Any marriage of democratic practice and political epistemology at the moment therefore precludes the conservative intellectual; if someone is intellectual in the slightest, the Right will disown him/her. They are the oft-maligned “RINOs” (Republicans in Name Only). To make matters worse, any intellectual at the moment of any value is loathe to be associated with the totality of the present (i.e. recent form of the) conservative project in America and thus tends to gravitate toward the (D) party. My suspicion is that rationally informed self-selection (they have careers and statuses, after all) results in a state of affairs in which few serious intellectuals can be found in the (R) party…”

Aside from the way he uses the term ideology, I agree completely with Hsiao. The implications are indeed scary.  I explained my understanding in my last post. I think it can help us understand the unfolding electoral debate.

Ideologists are more enamored by the purity of the ideological position, than they are committed to factual reality. This week we observed the strange case of the Republican candidate in Missouri Senate race, Congressman Todd Akin. Akin knows about wondrous powers of female biology “from what doctors have told him.” In cases of “legitimate rape” the reproductive system shuts down, according to the Congressman. I wonder what he thinks about the rape war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and beyond? From such ideologues we also “know” that there is no human induced climate change and that evolution is just a theory, persuasively challenged by creationist “science.” With the incredible power of the ideology induced human mind: fiction becomes fact; fantasy (in the technical Freudian sense of wish fulfillment) becomes science. Human suffering is ignored. Faced with a serious anti-abortion ethical dilemma, a new science is born.

Alvino-Mario Fantini, a conservative intellectual who has contributed to Deliberately Considered, I believe understands the problems here, the need to distinguish conservative thought from right-wing ideology. He responded to a commenter on my Facebook page, which he took to be an unwarranted dismissal of a significant conservative thinker. He asked:

What do you mean when you say “these days, Russell Kirk would be considered an ‘intellectual’ ?” Was he not? His seminal work The Conservative Mind was the work of a deep thinker (not an activist): an elegantly-written overview of literary and political examples of the “conservative imagination.” If anything, Kirk rejected ideology and would likely have very little to do with many of today’s GOP leaders.

Fantini shares my judgment that a serious debate between the left and the right needs to happen and hasn’t. He agrees with Gary Alan Fine that we live in partisan gated communities and that our ideas and our politics are diminished as a consequence. Fantini testifies that an important American conservative would have been appalled. Perhaps the most tragic consequence is that one party is now mired in an ideological fog, seducing a significant part of the public through ideology empowered media, i.e. Fox and company.

It is with this in mind that George Finch, disagrees with my observations and conclusions concerning the nomination of Paul Ryan. Finch noted on Facebook:

With all due respects, this country is very ideological, one that is based in the sanity of private property, individualism, the wisdom of the market, and a god-like capitalism. All are related of course. To top it off government is now seen as incompetent and part of the problem, not part of a solution. Ryan can appeal to this better than Romney, and with the right pr (lies) they may not scare people. Obama like most of the Ds do not help as they are now deficit hawks and have shifted to the Right and their ideology over the years. Obama will cut the safety net , and Ryan and his folk can use this to counter the D’s attacks and confuse people. The issue is not whether there are any Conservative intellectuals, but how far close we are coming to a form of Friendly Fascism.

And I responded:

I am not so sure that the American population is quite as nutty as you think, or that the market is worshiped in the way right wing ideologues hope and you fear. I think, and hope, that these things are in play and that the Republicans have over played their hand. I fundamentally disagree with you on Obama. He is not a deficit hawk and I think he has long fought the shift to the right and it is most clear now. Friendly Fascism is an epithet. I think it warns of the dangers of the rise of the hard right in one party, not both. Here again is a strong reason to vote for Obama and the Democrats.

Finch concluded the exchange by conceding that he has been hard on Obama, hoping that I am right in my electoral prognostication (“I would vote for a stale, bug infested baloney sandwich rather than Romney”), but asserting that Obama may be the conservative I have been looking for, given his commitment to stability and support of existing institutions and realities.

We, Finch and I, apparently, will vote the same way in November, though our reasons will be different. He will vote for “not Romney – Ryan,” holding his nose as he votes for a conservative, while, I, as a centrist who wants to move the center left, will vote for Obama, a centrist who wants to move the center left. Finch as a left-wing ideologist (as he and Hsiao understand the term) will vote against right-wing ideologists and their policies. While I will vote against ideology and a set of political principles with which I don’t agree, and vote for a candidate who I think is principled but also against “isms,” a politician looking for meaningful dialogue with his opponents, but holding to his own positions and visions, as he beautifully describes the reinvention of the American Dream. Finch, I suppose, imagines that the Romney – Ryan ticket is likely to win, given the pervasiveness of right-wing ideology in the American population. I agree that there is a problem, but think and hope that an ideology aversion will prevent this from happening.

I found this discussion here and on Facebook illuminating. It gets me thinking about the tension within conservative thought between anti-intellectualism and opposition to ideology, i.e. as I put it previously, opposition to all “isms.” We suffer from the former, would greatly benefit from the latter, in my judgment. And I am not convinced with Pait, as he responded to my last post, that ideologists get things done, while those who oppose modern magical thinking don’t.  But I agree with him, it is a challenge. More soon.