Recent posts and discussions at Deliberately Considered have been about fundamental problems in contemporary democratic culture: the need to engage in political discussion beyond clichés, the consequences of the persistence of modern magical political thinking, and the danger of transition to dictatorship from democracy. It makes me think about the state of the right and the left and the ideal of a contested political center.

Ideology has not ended, to my dismay (as I reported in my New Year’s post). People believe that they have the truth in politics in a variety of different forms, on the left and right, in the U.S. and globally. In a strange mirroring of Socrates, who confirmed that he was the wisest of men because he “knew that he didn’t know,” contemporary ideologues know that their opponents don’t know. Opponents don’t only think differently but incorrectly, politically incorrect. Material interests, character, moral failure and ignorance are used to explain the other’s mistaken position. Alternative views are dismissed instead of confronted. True believing market fundamentalists know that the problem of the economy will be solved through de-regulation. They will not pay attention to the arguments and evidence of those who explain how such de-regulation is the cause of our global economic crisis. Those who are sure that capitalism is the root of all evil won’t pay attention to those who examine how all attempts to construct a systemic alternative to capitalism in the last century have ended in economic and political failure. It is not the convictions that I find disturbing. It is the unwillingness of people to actually take into account the insights and evidence of those with whom they disagree.

Thus, I think that Gary Alan Fine’s imagined magazine is not only a matter of idiosyncratic taste. As he put it in his recent post:

“I hold to a somewhat eccentric contention that there are smart liberals (neo- and old-timey, pink and pinker), conservatives (neo- and paleo-), progressives, reactionaries, socialists, libertarians, and more. Is my generosity so bizarre?”

No, not at all bizarre. I think there is a pressing need for Fine’s generosity, that we need deliberate debate about the problems of our times, drawing upon diverse opinions and orientations. It is my hope that over the coming months Deliberately Considered becomes more and more like the magazine of Fine’s dreams. Indeed, I think we have from the start been moving in this direction.

“People reside in gated communities of knowledge.” Fine notes. I trust we contribute to opening the gates, a place for serious discussion about the problems of our times. The pungent political speech that Fine sometimes enjoys, though, from Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and company, is not particularly welcome. This is not the place for shouting heads. I suppose Fine would be fine with that.

It is with my concerns about true-believing and the need to take into account the positions of those with whom I disagree that I reported my response to the Iowa caucuses. I don’t want the eventual Republican nominee to win the election. This is my partisan position, not only because I support President Obama, but also because I think there is a fundamental crisis on the right in our times, which has not yet been addressed. A shellacking would help. I think there are real signs that a day of reckoning is upon us. I think the fissure in the Republican Party, clearly revealed in its primary campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination, is a hopeful sign. Thus, Michael Corey in his response to my post misunderstands me. My point is not that the Republicans are fighting with each other, therefore my candidate will win, or my position will prevail. Rather, my point is that the odd combination of the Reagan coalition, including true-believing free market, neo and Christian conservatives, along with Main and Wall Street moderates, is breaking down, and that this is good not only for Democrats, but also for Republicans, and for the Republic. I understand that Romney will likely win the primary campaign and that he may even defeat Obama. But the lack of enthusiasm for Mitt underscores that the coherence of Reaganism, with its unexamined dogmatisms, is at last over. The only thing that now holds it together is an extremely dark force, hatred of Barack Hussein Obama.

I agree with Lisa Aslanian in her reply to my post, in which she emphasizes the dangers of hatred. I also agree with her that Obama’s opposition enflamed by hatred could conceivably persist into his second term. But I suggest that the power of hatred, like the power of love, has its limits. I think the limits of Obamaphobia are already evident, as the President is taking the initiative against the Republicans (more on this in a later post). I also think his new tough turn does make an appeal to OWS and Ron Paul skeptics (as Lisa desires). My hope, which is pitched against hopelessness, is that those who are committed to libertarian principles, conservative morals and the wisdom of habit and custom, learn to proceed with their commitments in a less dogmatic fashion. A reinvention of Republican political culture is something that is pressingly needed. Such reinvention is already ongoing among Democrats, led by Obama, as I explore in Reinventing Political Culture.

Scott in his reply to my Iowa post ends with the assertion that we are all liberals. I assume he is referring to the legacies of 19^th century liberal thought, that unites present day conservatives, i.e. free market liberals, and progressives, i.e. those who think that state interventions are necessary to assure individual opportunity, along with those who want to keep the government out of the bedroom, along with those who want to keep it out of the market. While I think Scott is making an important point, there are also many who are motivated by principles outside the liberal tradition, as I am sure he realizes. Some conservatives believe in the priority of community, tradition, religion and an inherited order. Among the Republican Presidential hopefuls, this is the emphasis of Rick Santorum. And, of course, there are those who are in principle socialist, as well. Although the self-proclaimed socialists are rare in American society at large, they are quite common in the academic world. In fact, while I am extremely skeptical that there is a systemic socialist alternative to capitalism, I do think that socialism is an important principled position within a democratic society with a modern economy, a real utopia that suggests that the way things are now is not the way they will always be. Vince Carducci has been developing this position in his posts here.

Rather than declaring that we are all liberals, I would suggest that we all should be democrats and republicans, in favor of a free public life and rule of the people, committed as we are to competing partisan positions. I imagine Deliberately Considered contributing to this, in its small way, at least as an exemplar. Crucial to this is having a center where left and right meet, for common debate and action, for deliberate consideration.

Final note: This past week I posted a letter authored by former dissident activists, key figures of the democratic opposition to Communism in Hungary, expressing their deep concern on the recent developments in their country. The post attracted a wide global readership. Later this week we will follow through with a series of reflections on the course democracy is taking in that specific Central European country as seen by critical observers in another country in that region, Poland. We also will be taking stock of the developing American political drama. Comparing developments there and here, I trust, will highlight the importance of a free public for democratic culture and also provide us an opportunity to understand the fragility of democracy.

I have made this editorial decision because I am not an optimist. While I take it as my intellectual project to illuminate hopeful alternatives to the prevailing unjust order of things, I think it is important to realize that dangers loom.  The path from democracy to dictatorship is not only a danger in Hungary.

It’s déjà vu all over again, a nursery rhyme with a political twist.

“The Republican Party sat on the wall. The Republican Party had a great fall. All the Party horses and all the Party men couldn’t put the Party back together again.”

Last night in the Iowa caucuses, the Reagan revolution died before our eyes, and no one seems to be noticing. The fundamental components of the Republican Party, forged together by Ronald Reagan in1980, are no longer part of a whole, ripped apart by the Tea Party and its unintended consequences. The only thing that may keep the party going is hatred of Barack Obama.

“Reaganism” was never a coherent position. It involved tensions that were unified by the power of Reagan’s sunny televisual personality.

In 1991, in The Cynical Society, I observed:

“The ‘conservative mood’ was not a … natural creation. It was constructed … by Reagan himself…his package brought together a new combination of symbols and policies…Fetal rights, a balanced-budget amendment, advanced nuclear armaments, tax and social-welfare cuts, and anti-communism do not necessarily combine. Reagan combined them.

As the satirical columnist, Russell Baker glibly put it, some supported Reagan so that he could be Reagan (the ideologues – this was the well-known refrain of the New Right), others supported him so that he could be the Gipper (the nice guy) he portrayed in an old Hollywood football film. But both sorts of supporters, who were fundamentally in conflict, created the new conservative mood. They constituted the Reagan mandate. Reagan did not represent a diverse constituency. He created it as the political majority.”

Neo-conservatives concerned then about the Communist threat, now are concerned with Islamofascism. Christian moralists, libertarians and corporate conservatives conflict on many issues. Reagan minimized this through his media presentation of self in political life.

The coalition persisted through the one term presidency of Reagan’s vice president, George H. W. Bush and his son’s Presidency, George W., who also used a down home personality to win a contested election and then fear as the basis of his re-election. But now the grand Reagan coalition of the Grand Old Party is falling apart. The Tea Party has radicalized Republican rhetoric, and atomized its political positions, making the coalition impossible.

The tepid front-runner status of Romney, combined with the persistent strength of “not Romney,” is a clear indication of the present state of affairs. Yesterday, Romney couldn’t break through his glass ceiling, only 25% of the vote. The religious right coalesced around Rick Santorum, and Ron Paul revealed his libertarian power. Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry lost because of their substantial political weaknesses, while Newt Gingrich, the object of relentless attacks, promised to attack in turn in New Hampshire. There is serious contestation, with foundational disagreements. The thing that holds these disparate politicians together is a common rejection of Barack Obama, which has dark undertones, strikingly different from the lightness of Reagan’s personality.

The talking heads have noted the likely practical result: there will be a longer primary season that might have been. It may take some time for Romney to seal the deal, though he still will seal it. The election will be between Romney and Obama, with the vaunted enthusiasm for the right greatly diminished. Romney lacks both the clear convictions and the personality that Reagan had to keep the coalition together. Paul may run as a third party candidate. True believers, Christian conservatives along with libertarians, will probably continue to doubt Romney’s conservative bona fides. And there are just not that many neo-conservatives and corporate conservatives. The Republicans are falling apart.

Barbara Ehrenreich posted a witty note on her Facebook page yesterday that went viral:

“In a race between a white supremacist, an advocate of child labor, a couple of raving homophobes and an empty suit, there can be no “winner,” so please don’t bother trying to wake me with the news.”

I think Ehrenreich needs to wake up. The Republican Party is one of the two parties in this institutionalized system, with a distinguished past. Its twists and turns, its rise and fall, will determine what is possible in the United States, as well as what is impossible. This has been quite clear since the election of President Obama. Imagine where we would be if he had a loyal opposition. And it will continue to be true if Obama wins yet again, which I think is likely.

My conclusion: the Republicans are at the brink of disarray. They could conceivably prevail in the November elections, but if they do, there would be a contradictory mandate, Reaganism beyond Reagan, with fear and hatred holding it together. More likely, after the Iowa caucuses, will be the re-election of President Obama, with a disorganized opposition permitting him to operate more freely. That, along with a social movement pushing him forward, making “change we can believe in” likely. But then again,  maybe I am being a bit too optimistic.

Even as we are bombarded by crazy assertions that the American President is not an American citizen and that he is a secret Muslim, we need to recall that this sort of paranoia is reactionary.  It’s a response to an American triumph, the American people elected an African American, Barack Hussein Obama, to be President of the United States.  Even as his popularity waxes and wanes, he is our President.  We elected him by not succumbing to fears and hatreds, revealing our better selves.  This triumph goes beyond our evaluation of President Obama’s job performance.  It stands as a challenge to those who work to revive a politics of fear of the different.  It challenges those who speak about “taking their country back.”

I came to know the dimensions of the triumph, along with my fellow citizens, on the night of the Iowa Caucuses and the day after.  Obama won in an overwhelmingly white state.  The previously excluded was chosen, and the seriousness of Obama’s candidacy was clearly revealed.

The next day when I went for a swim at the Theodore Young Community Center (link), I saw how my African American friends, the whole gang, but especially the center of the social circle, Beverly McCoy, finally came to believe that I wasn’t crazy in thinking that Obama had a chance.  In our community center, we started thinking differently about our country.  I stopped being the naïve Jewish Professor.  Perhaps, I was instead a realist.  Together, we realized that we may live in a better country than we had imagined the day before.   I think that we started looking at each other differently.  We more openly spoke about race, about our fears and hopes, about being black and white, Jewish and Christian, in America.  During the past two years, we have talked about lots of troubling developments, but we talked about it in ways that were not possible before Americans revealed that they could act beyond fear and hatred.

I realized the breadth and depth of the achievement when talking to my mother by phone on the night of the caucuses.  She was very happy, as was all of my extended family.  And then she said to me in tears: “You know Jeffrey, maybe a Jewish person can become President.”  This may seem strange if you think about America exclusively in black and white.  But what my mother perceived was that the election of Obama was a triumph of the previously excluded, of all who were not “typical Americans,” a victory of understanding over suspicion. Suddenly she sensed that we were more fully American citizens, more insiders than outsiders, we, along with blacks and browns, Asians and Latinos, women as well as men, gays as well as straights.

My mother is not a person particularly engaged in politics and political analysis, not even a news junky, but she understood that the paranoia of race was defeated in Iowa, and later in the general election.  A different America appeared, or at least the potential of a different America.  A significant battle was won, that night and the night of Obama’s election.  Now the crazies are fighting back. But I don’t think that they will get to take the country back.