Well, I’m currently out of work. Rent is due today.

But what if I refuse to pay the rent UNLESS my landlord agrees to change the lease, lower the rent, give me my security deposit back, allow for pets and let me borrow his car once a week to pick up groceries? Better yet, no rent will be forthcoming unless he immediately cancels the lease, sets it on fire and allows me to decide how much rent I feel like paying each month. No? I simply won’t take no for an answer, even if it means I’ll be evicted next month.

I’m really tired of being thrown under the bus by these backward-thinking extortionists in the House of Representatives. Today America is really, literally broken. Still, I hope that congressional leaders and the president do not appease the hostage takers. That would be a very bad precedent to set for future congresses and presidents. Paying the ransom would only encourage the hostage takers to exact more demands the next time rent is due, no matter how unrealistic or unrelated the demands may be. The DC gridlock would continue indefinitely. It’s BAD FAITH to include the same poisonous pills in what should be routine legislation to keep the government running and pay the bills that are already racked up.

Who cares about election results? Who cares what the Supreme Court says? If you don’t agree to X, Y and Z, we will blow up the government and force the first default in American history! What kind of governing is that? Is that a democratic way to resolve disagreements?

House Speaker John Boehner refused to let the House vote to temporarily keep the government open at the current sequester levels, with no other strings attached, just to buy time to negotiate an actual budget. But because this approach would not destroy Obamacare, the Tea Party has instructed Boehner to block it. Why won’t Boehner allow the democratic process to play out in a full House vote, like the Senate did? Because the simple stop-gap bill would pass with BI-PARTISAN support, throwing the Tea Party destructionists into a tizzy. His job as Speaker would be in jeopardy.

Playing into the House’s new approach to negotiating a budget and paying the bills would reward and promote a new and destructive form of governing–one that is completely undemocratic. Democracy CANNOT work this way. It’s closer to how terrorists do business. The full faith and credit of the United States just doesn’t seem to matter to them. It’s only a bargaining chip to be used to force their narrow vision on the rest of the country, without going through the electoral and legislative processes that are established by our Constitution. So much for the rule of law! The US and global economies be damned.

Public servants work hard to help their families, neighbors and perfect strangers live better lives. That’s the point of choosing a career in public service. To give something back to the community. To empower your fellow citizens to make things better. To ensure that laws are enforced–laws that Congress passed to make sure buildings and bridges don’t collapse, to make sure your food won’t make you sick or kill you, to keep the air and water safe, the list goes on and on. Because of their work we are undoubtedly safer, healthier, smarter, faster, more productive. Public servants, like most contemporary Americans, believe their government should be there to help people and communities and businesses work together in mutually beneficial ways. Public service should be an honor, a privilege, something worthy of respect.

But then these friends and neighbors, who work for you, start hearing from some in Congress that they are out-of-control, greedy, lazy, job-killing leeches who do nothing more than push worthless papers around all day in pursuit of destroying liberty and freedom, providing no real service or value to anyone except themselves. They wonder how they could have become the enemy. They wonder why they are being blamed for things that are not their fault. They wonder why their paychecks are being cut while the true culprits of fiscal insanity walk away and get fatter. They wonder: “Why do I care anymore?”

So, with that, I’m heading into my office to close down. I’ll change my voicemail and email messages, get all of my stuff from the fridge and lock my door. Clean air will have to wait for another day. This is EXACTLY what many House Republicans have been dreaming about since 2010. And it’s all on the record, well-documented history in the making. The battle for the soul of America rages on. It’s time to confront the hostage-takers and to show them there will be NO RANSOM in exchange for simply doing their jobs, performing their most basic constitutional duties.

Maybe I’ll be back to work tomorrow, or the next day, or. . . . But in a sense the damage is already done. A small minority found a way to throw the whole country over the edge, and they didn’t flinch when executing their plan. A group of legislators clearly demonstrated that they do not care about democracy or value the rule of law. Well, I still do care. And I’ll wait here until I’m authorized to participate in my democracy and uphold the rule of law again.

To the House GOP: Negotiating in bad faith is NOT negotiating at all. Stop holding the country hostage. Do your basic job and keep the government running, pay the bills. Then sit down and figure out how to resolve your differences in an intelligent, professional and CONSTRUCTIVE manner. This means having to compromise, and not bringing the rest of the country down with you when you fail to get 100% of what you want.

Today I explore the relationship between Obama’s national security address with his surveillance policies. Many see the distance between his speech and action as proof of their cynicism about Obama and more generally about American politicians. I note that the distance can provide the grounds for the opposite of cynicism, i.e. consequential criticism. But for this to be the case, there has to be public concern, something I fear is lacking.

I am an Obama partisan, as any occasional reader of this blog surely knows. One such reader, in a response to my last post on Obama’s national security address, on Facebook declared: “your endless contortions in support of this non-entity make you look increasingly ridiculous.” He wondered: “Is this really what a ‘public intellectual’ looks like today?” I am not profoundly hurt by this. I am enjoying the one time in my life that I actually support an American political leader in power. I was an early supporter of the State Senator from the south side of Chicago and find good reasons to appreciate his leadership to this day. Through his person and his words, he has changed American identity, to the pleasure of the majority and the great displeasure to a significant minority. Obamacare is his singular accomplishment. He rationally responded to the most severe economic crisis since the Great Depression, despite sustained opposition. Perhaps he could have done more, but powerful forces were aligned against him. He has carefully redirected American foreign policy, cooperating with allies and the international organizations, engaging enemies, working to shift the balance between diplomacy and armed force. Obama has worked to move the center left, as I analyze carefully in Reinventing Political Culture,  and I applaud his efforts even when he has not succeeded.

That said I have been disappointed on some matters, and I want to be clear about them here. In my judgment, the surge in Afghanistan didn’t make much sense. The escalating use of drones, without clear and public guidelines, has concerned me: the killing of innocents was not recognized, as drone warfare contributed to the long history of placing civilians and non combatants at increasing risk. (In this sense, drone warfare and terrorism are two sides of the same coin.) And now this week, there is the news about “Obama’s dragnet” (as The New York Times put it), Obama’s continued and even escalating mass surveillance. Although this was very much implied in news reports before the revelations (they are not really shocking to the informed), reading the details, particularly as reported by Glenn Greenwald in the Guardian,  underscores fundamental problems.

I wanted to see a “strong black line” drawn between the war on terrorism and the rule of fear after “9/11,” and the Obama era. I wanted to see national hysteria replaced by sensible policy, to bracket the governance of Bush-Cheney in the same way that McCarthyism was bracketed and criticized. The latest news underscores that in significant ways this has not happened. The line has been thinly sketched rather than clearly drawn. Some things have changed, much hasn’t.

This is why I thought Obama’s national security speech was so important. He was announcing a change in policy, moving from a “war on terror” to a struggle against terrorists, using normal law enforcement methods. This was a change I had been waiting for. But what then to make of the latest revelations?

Many have expressed outrage, with the editorial writers of The New York Times leading the way. Others see confirmation of their strong civil liberty criticisms of the President on national security, with Greenwald leading here, and a broad swath of media commentators following. I find myself in between these positions, not persuaded by either, but also crucially not convinced by those who suggest that the surveillance is no big deal and argue that it is legal and necessary. That is the reasoning which must be put to rest.

Although clearly Obama’s speech and action conflict, drawing the conclusion that he is just a hypocrite, another cynical politician administering American hegemonic power, I believe, is mistaken. This is how Greenwald responded to Obama’s national security speech, as I analyzed in my last post written before the publication of the Snowden revelations. We now know what Greenwald knew, but we didn’t. He had inside knowledge of Snowden’s leaks. Yet, as Greenwald explains his position now, I am uncomfortable. He is too sure that the only reason for secrets is to protect the prerogatives of the powerful: too fast to dismiss threats to national security.

On the other hand, I find Obama puzzling, even schizophrenic in his response to the Snowden leaks. He welcomes the debate we must have (especially now) about the need to balance security and civil liberties concerns, while he also denounces leaks and leakers who instigate discussion. He is obviously caught between his desire as a principled centrist to have all with opposing views discuss a pressing problem, and his belief that national security requires official secrets. He wants to have a full public debate, taking into account all reasonable points of view, but he worries that this may lead to giving “aid and comfort to the enemy.” Disciplined governance is pitted against democratic deliberations. And there is a clear political calculation. Public opinion is more moved by security than by civil liberty concerns.

Here is the significance of his speech at the National Defense University, remembering that the speech preceded the revelation for the public, but for Obama it was the other way around. The speech was a response to the overt and covert policies that together have made “the war on terror.”

Perhaps, if we are still in a post 9/11 “war,” the argument for official secrets and escalating compromises in civil liberties is justified. But, if in fact, the war is over, as Obama announced in his speech, the continuation of war policies has to be critically appraised. Obama suggested in his speech a logical conclusion: “We must define our effort not as a boundless ‘global war on terror,’ but rather as a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America.” In these terms: how can the broad, not just targeted, surveillance by the National Security Agency be justified? Obama’s speech strongly suggests that it can’t. Obama’s words provide solid grounds for opposition to his administration’s policies, including those revealed about the NSA.

I still support Obama. I hope that under public pressure he follows the logic of the position he outlined in his national security speech. But I am concerned that the pressure may not be there.

I anticipated the State of the Union Address, more or less, correctly, though I underestimated Obama’s forthrightness. He entered softly, calling for bi-partisanship, but he followed up with a pretty big stick, strongly arguing for his agenda, including, most spectacularly, the matter of class and class conflict, daring the Republicans to dissent, ending the speech on a high emotional note on gun violence and the need to have a vote on legislation addressing the problem. Before the speech, I wondered how President Obama would balance assertion of his program with reaching out to Republicans. This was an assertive speech.

The script was elegantly crafted, as usual, and beautifully performed, as well. He embodied his authority, with focused political purpose aimed at the middle class. This got me thinking. As a sociologist, I find public middle class talk confusing, though over the years I have worked to understand the politics. I think last night it became clear, both the politics and the sociology.

Obama is seeking to sustain his new governing coalition, with the Democratic majority in the Senate, and the bi-partisan coalition in the House, although he is working to form the coalition more aggressively than I had expected. He is addressing the House through “the people,” with their middle class identities, aspirations and fears.

In my last post, I observed and then suggested:

“Obama’s recent legislative victories included Republican votes on the fiscal cliff and the debt ceiling. I believe he will talk about the economy in such a way that he strengthens his capacity to draw upon this new governing coalition. He will do it in the name of the middle class and those aspiring to be in the middle class. This is the formulation of Obama for ordinary folk, the popular classes, the great bulk of the demos, the people. In this speech and in others, they are the subjects of change, echoing Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address: government of the middle class and those aspiring to be in the middle class, by the middle class and those aspiring to be in the middle class, for the middle class and those aspiring to be in the middle class.”

Americans in large numbers think of themselves as being middle class, though this is hardly an identity that distinguishes much. The middle class, in the American imagination, ranges from people who barely sustain themselves to people who earn hundreds of thousands of dollars, own multiple homes and all the latest consumer trophies. The imagined middle class includes all the workers who earn a living wage in a factory, and the owners of the factory, and the managers and clerks in between. If Marx were alive, he would roll over in his grave. This American sociological imagination seems to be an illusion, a case of false consciousness if there ever was one. The puzzle: “What is the matter with Kansas?

Yet, I think it was quite clear last night that the way the middle class is imagined opens American politics. Both Obama and Marco Rubio (in his Republican response) delivered their messages in the name of the middle class. While Rubio used it to denounce Obama, big government, taxing of the wealthy and spending for the needy, Obama invoked the great middle class to defend and propose programs that clearly serve “the middle class” directly, especially Social Security and Medicare, but also aid to education, infrastructure investments and the development of jobs. The undeserving poor loomed behind Rubio’s middle class, (and made explicit in Rand Paul’s Tea Party response), while those who need some breaks and supports were the base of Obama’s middle class. Thus, the middle class and those aspiring to be in the middle class, as I anticipated, was Obama’s touchstone.

I, along with many progressive friends, have been impatient with all the talk about the middle class over the years. I wondered: where are the poor and the oppressed? In this State of the Union, the President made clear that they are central to his concern: an endangered middle class, both those who have been down so long that they haven’t been able to look up, and those who through recent experience know that they and their children are descending. Obama spoke to both groups, the frightened middle class, working people who have experienced rapid downward mobility, and those who have long been excluded from work that pays sufficiently to live decently.

Obama, using straightforward prose, addressed the members of Congress through this middle class. He advocated for “manufacturing innovation institutes,” for universal high quality pre-schools, strengthening the link between high school education and advanced technical training, addressing the costs and benefits of higher education, and raising the minimum wage. In other words, along with his discussion of Medicare, Social Security and Obamacare, he raised the immediate economic concerns of a broad swath of the American public. Noteworthy is that the concerns of the “aspiring middle class” (i.e. poor folk) were central in his presentation.

And then there was the passion focused on immigration, voting rights and gun violence. The closing crescendo, with Obama calling for a vote from Congress on gun violence, dramatically referred back to Obama’s opening, calling for concerted bi-partisan action on the crises of our time. As I heard it, this was about gun violence and its victims, but also the victims of Congressional inaction on jobs and the economy, on the sequester, on the need to invest in our future, i.e. on pressing issues concerning the middle class and those who aspire to be in the middle class. The closing was powerfully delivered, as the response to the delivery was even more powerful. As Obama takes his message to the country in the coming days, and as Democrats and Republicans start negotiations about the budget, I think that there is a real possibility that the coalition that formed in negotiating the resolution to the fiscal cliff and debt ceiling conflicts may very well lead to necessary action, at least to some degree, and they will be debating about the right things, at last.

As a strong supporter of Barack Obama, I found the debate last night painful. Romney performed well. Obama didn’t.

I take solace in a dial group session by a respected  Geoff Garin, which found that sixty percent of the study group of undecided voters and weakly committed Democrats viewed Obama favorably for his performance, and that eighty percent of this crucial group after the debate saw the President as more likable and down to earth. And on key issues, Obama decisively prevailed on improving the economy and on Medicare, though the group did marginally shift to Romney on taxes. A small study suggested that a key target audience of the debate didn’t go along with the talking heads.

I also am somewhat relieved by Nate Silver, the statistics guru now publishing at The New York Times, who first made his name in sports, then in politics. He judged, using a football analogy, that Romney in his strong debate scored a field goal not a touchdown or the two touchdowns that Silver earlier declared Romney would have to score to win in November. He gained only a slight advantage.

Yet, as I watched the debate and then listened and read a great deal of commentary, not sleeping through most of the night, I worried that an Obama defeat seemed again to be a possibility, if not a probability. Just about all the commentators and instant polls judged that Romney won the debate, though the meaning of the victory was contested: from nothing has changed, to a reset, to the beginning of the end for Obama.

I want to believe, as also has been discussed, that the debate presents an opportunity for Obama (with the support of his powerful campaign staff), known for his impeccable timing and strategic prowess, to counterpunch in ads and speeches and in the coming debates. I certainly would like to believe that Barack Obama, as Muhammad Ali would put it, was playing “rope – a – dope,” and still “floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee.”

But beyond the winning and losing, and the sports analogies, I think that the debate itself was a success and a failure to the degree to which it actually provided an opportunity for the public to consider the pressing issues of the day and the alternative approaches Romney and Obama are proposing.

They mostly debated the question of the role of government in supporting economic growth and the creation of jobs, along with taxes and Medicare and Obamacare, but they didn’t debate many other key domestic issues: race, immigration, abortion, the courts, LGBT rights, the power of corporations and as I suspected yesterday, the profound problem of poverty in the United States, in a society that has been defined by not only freedom but also equality, as Tocqueville explored, but has become ever more and profoundly in-egalitarian. The moderator, Jim Lehrer, ignored all this and more. This is deeply troubling.

Nonetheless, the competing political philosophies of the two candidates and the two parties were in clear view, as a solid piece in this morning’s New York Times reports. In this regard, despite Romney’s much better performance, I am not sure that he was convincing. Indeed, the study of independents’ response suggests that he may not have been.

Romney and Obama both underscored last night, as they have been highlighting throughout the campaign, that this election posed a clear choice. Yet, note that Romney tried to fudge this when it came to his hyper–individualist, pro-corporate approach on Obamacare and Medicare, on tax justice and the means of promoting job growth, and on regulations. The fudging was a key to the success of his performance, but I am not at all sure that it was convincing.

While he made it clear that he opposed Obamacare for pragmatic and principled reasons, he pretended that he supported all that is good with Obamacare, without explaining how this would be possible. He promised he would lower tax rates, avoid any tax increases and cut deficits (also increase the military budget as Obama highlighted) simultaneously by closing unspecified loopholes and limiting unnamed tax deductions of the rich, but not the middle class. This fantasy which defies both common sense and expert opinion, he claimed, will unlock the power of the market and the job creators (aka the rich) to do their work to produce jobs (not just to enrich themselves). And most remarkably, he suggested that he would control the abuses of Wall Street, without supporting the major legislation that moves to do this, Dodd-Frank. Eliminating unnecessary, job destroying regulations is central to his economic plan, but last night he amazingly presented himself as a rational regulator. And he would do all this and be bi-partisan too.

Although he was slick in his presentation, I doubt that this was convincing to a public that has grown to be skeptical about his constancy and uncertain about who Romney really is, what he believes and what he will do. For Republican moderates, such as David Brooks and Mike Murphy, a former Republican campaign operative, , the polished technocrat on the stage last night was the real Romney. They were ecstatic on the Charlie Rose Show on PBS (support of which Romney promised to cut out, despite his professed love for Big Bird). Yet, given the performances Romney has been giving for the last two years, Romney, the severe conservative, I am not at all sure that the public will understand. No wonder un-decideds and weakly committed Democrats were apparently not as convinced as the initial commentaries were. And the instant polls were about who won, not who was convinced. A real argument did happen, but the judgment of the public is very much still out.

Maybe the night didn’t go as badly as I had first thought.

I am now in Wroclaw, Poland, having just arrived from Paris – at home abroad, to borrow from one of my favorite New York Times columnist of the past, Anthony Lewis. I find following American politics and culture from afar particularly illuminating. I enjoy being in the middle of things at home, sometimes in the middle of politics, and then moving out for a while and looking back. Special insights result. With regular teaching and lecturing in Europe, I have been doing this for over thirty years. Being away has offered special critical insights, even as it has sometimes obscured important political and cultural details.

This was most dramatically the case when I lived in Communist Poland in 1973-4, when I was doing my research on independent politics in culture there, while the Watergate scandal raged in the U.S. I got my news from old issues of The New Yorker (given to me by a junior officer at the American Embassy in Warsaw) and from the Voice of America. Access to western news was severely restricted. The New Yorker supply was a prize, which I passed on to my Polish friends. Voice of America came in with some irregularity thanks to jamming by the Polish authorities. Yet, even when it got through, it was not reliable. Part of the Watergate revelations was that VOA was heavily censored back then. Long articles by Elizabeth Drew provided my basic information and perspective. I read accurate updates, a bit delayed. Because of distance and time I didn’t really appreciate how severe the constitutional crisis of that time was.

But on the other hand, by living in a truly undemocratic society, I came to appreciate the way democratic norms and values persisted in American life even in a crisis. There was Nixon, but there was also the Watergate hearings and the eventual forced resignation of the President. The way “high crimes and misdemeanors,” democratic ideals, propaganda, skepticism and cynicism interacted and defined the American experience helped this then young New Leftist to learn about political complexity and its importance.

This lesson was the starting point for my much later study of American political culture, The Cynical Society. I carry its perspective as I view the American political scene now, as revealed in recent posts on Chief Justice Roberts, Mitt Romney and his party and in  a review post concerning the politics of emotions, political developments in Middle East and in Peru and the crazy politics of the U.S. that for a moment took Donald Trump seriously. These and much more of my observations of the American political scene are informed by the sensibility of thinking about home while abroad.

I am planning to publish a series of at home abroad posts, written while I am on the road and looking back at American political and cultural developments. A report about the relationship between Rupert Murdock and his Media Empire and Mitt Romney his campaign stimulated me to do this. The report was formulated around the theme of election prospects. How Murdoch’s reticence about Romney may affect the chances of the Republican ticket. The main idea: anyone but Romney has replaced anyone but Obama, but without much enthusiasm.

But reading the report in Europe reveals something else: the fundamental fissure of the right with short but also highly significant long-term impact, demonstrating a crisis on the right that will mirror the crisis on the left of the recent past. Politics based on an ethics of ultimate ends will destroy the politics based upon the ethics of responsibility in the language of Max Weber. In everyday language, the politics based on tea party sensibility will isolate and undermine conservative politics and the effectiveness of conservative social movements, even though they have been highly effective in frustrating the progress of the first term of the Obama administration.

For Murdoch and company, including the editor of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, Paul Gigot. Romney is not sufficiently and clearly resolute in his political positions. He moves from right to far right as the immediate political winds blow. He confuses business management with political principle and leadership. For the general public this presents the question of who Romney really is. Is he the right wing ideologue who denounces Obamacare, would be tougher on China, more supportive of the extreme right in Israel, defends traditional marriage, works against “the gay agenda,” would build high fences to keep illegals out and urge self deportation for those who are here, or is he the pragmatic conservative who developed “Romneycare,” seeks expansion of American exports, be understanding of the complexities of immigration policy, follow compassionate conservative policies, foreign and domestic. “Who is the real Romney?” is the question for the electorate, especially for the independent undecided (a group that bewilders me). But for resolute conservatives the question has already been answered even as Romney desperately seeks their approval and support. He is not one of them.

FDR pushed the center left. He succeeded in this because of the crisis of the Great Depression and because the answers he proposed for the crisis made sense to the public and seemed to improve their lives. Ronald Reagan moved the center right. His  rugged individualism performance and expression of anti-government rhetoric made sense to the American public (to my dismay) and appeared to improve the lives of the middle class. These successes had to do with the leadership qualities of FDR and Reagan, but as well, were a consequence of the simple fact that their opposition made no sense. They didn’t provide cogent alternatives.

Romney and conservative Republicans more generally were for Obamacare until they were against it. They were against the corrupting effects of big money in politics, for conservation and environmental standards, for science, for understanding of modern economics, all, until they were against them. They challenge common sense.

A shift in political culture is evident on the horizon.  Obama’s task has been to move the center left, as I have argued here and in my book, Reinventing Political Culture. During his first term he has met concerted resistance. But as Murdoch expresses his dismay with Romney, the resistance is weakening. The prospects for Obama’s re-election are good, as are the prospects of a successful second term. Deep trends are more apparent when one looks back at home when one is abroad. This is how it looks to me as I begin teaching my course in Wroclaw on “The New “New Social Movements.” More to soon follow.

When I wrote The Cynical Society, I was guided by two opposing propositions: that democracy was deeply ingrained in American everyday practice, and that cynicism was as well, presenting a major challenge. This dynamic between democracy and cynicism was clearly evident in the case of the recent Supreme Court decision on the constitutionality of “Obamacare.” Chief Justice John Roberts demonstrated how individual action matters. He apparently acted in a principled fashion, defying cynical interpretation. In my judgment, he made a significant principled contribution to the health of the body politic, as well as to the health of many American bodies.

I had an inkling that this could happen in April:

“I worry that this [cynical] kind of attitude has even become the common currency of the Republican appointed justices of the Supreme Court, as they express Tea Party talking points about the health insurance mandates, with Justice Scalia pondering the forced consumption of broccoli and the like. But I have hope. It seems to me that it is quite possible that the Court, with Chief Justice Roberts’s leadership, will seek to make a solid decision based on the merits and not the politics of the case, in the shadows of the Citizens United decision and Bush v. Gore. The integrity of the court, its reputation as a judicial and not a political institution, may very well rule the day.

The way the Court handles this case is a good measure of the degree cynicism has penetrated our politics and culture. My guess is that the health care law, in whole but more likely in part, will be overturned in a political 5 – 4 decision, or if the Court wants to fight against cynical interpretation, attempting to reveal principled commitment, the decision will be 6 – 3 upholding the law, with Kennedy and Roberts, joining the liberals. If the law is overturned, from my partisan point of view, the chances for a decent life for millions will be challenged. But I also worry about what this says about the state of our political culture.”

I was close to predicting the outcome. I thought Roberts was key. I was pessimistic, but had some hope. My mistake was thinking that if he affirmed the constitutionality of the law that Justice Kennedy would follow Roberts.

The talking heads on cable and the print pundits of various political orientations are now mulling over the partisan significance of this. Particularly interesting is the split among conservatives. Elite conservative pundits, David Brooks, George Will, et al., see the principled conservative grounds of the Roberts decisions. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and company see betrayal. In the long run, the elite perceive a smart move in the grounding of Roberts’s opinions. Relying upon Congress’ taxing power and restricting the use of the commerce clause serves the conservative project. Right wing populists see treason to their cause. Generally speaking, Democrat and liberal judgments are parallel with those on the right. While most see victory and support for their cause, there is concern that the precedent has been set for future conservative judgments, building upon Roberts’s actions. Of course, there are also some on the anti-Obama left who read the decision as a diabolical indication that the two factions of the corporate elite are in lockstep, solidifying the final defeat of the single payer plan, promoting the interests of the insurance companies, limiting the power of the federal government to advance social justice.

I have my own partisan judgments. I think Obamacare is flawed but that it significantly moves in the direction of decency. Millions will have access to health care, use it and be healthier, as a result of this law. The principle of universal health care will become more broadly recognized as a right. And over time the flaws in the system will be addressed, resulting in a more efficient and effective health care system, with improved public health. The Supreme Court properly let stand one of the great accomplishments of President Obama.

But as a sociologist of political culture, beyond partisanship, I see another important advance: a small but significant blow against cynicism for the democratic side of the democracy–cynicism dynamic. Roberts appeared to do two things in his judgments by going along with the conservatives in his reading of the commerce clause and by going along with the more liberal justices in confirming the constitutionality of Obamacare. On the one hand, as in all proper court decisions, he confirmed his position with reference to the constitution and to previous judgments of the courts. This is certainly open to cynical interpretation. Whether it is original intent of the founders, or precedent, or in the reading of the facts of the case, the partisan will read the case in a partisan way often unintentionally. In fact, as the most basic sociology of knowledge teaches us, for example Mannheim’s, we all inevitably do this. But, on the other hand, by going against the partisan grain, Roberts confirmed the ideal that the law exists beyond political interests and calculation, beyond the immediate politics of the day.

Ironically, Roberts may have come to this position in a highly calculated, even cynical fashion. It is possible that he found the grounds to make a decision that both was true to his conservative commitments and enhances his court’s reputation. Did he actually cynically and hypocritically strike a blow against cynicism? Did he calculate that the reputation of his court beyond his conservative enclave is worth a little flexibility and act accordingly in his own interest? Is Roberts a hypocrite? If so, I say once again, two cheers for hypocrisy!

Some thirty years ago the legislature of the state of Minnesota, where I was teaching at time, decided to enact a seat-belt law. If memory serves, Congress had made the distribution of highway funds dependent upon such a revision of vehicular safety standards. Driving without seatbelts transformed accidents into fatal crashes and fender-benders into emergency room visits. Minnesota drivers and front seat passengers were to wear a lapbelt. (At first there was no fine, only a merry warning from a state trooper).

We considered this law in my undergraduate social theory class, considering the right and the responsibility of a government to restrain the freedom to choose. One of my treasured students, let us call this jeune femme fighter for liberté Marianne, informed us that she used to wear a seatbelt while driving, but as a result of the legislation, she no longer did. She sat athwart her steering wheel as an act of protest. For her, the core of freedom was to say “I won’t” to what she considered state intrusion, and there was much that she considered intrusive. While it might be a suitable coda to announce that I last saw her on a gurney, her survival paid for by fellow citizens, as far as I know she is still on the road. But principled libertarians like Marianne demand that we question the uncertain divide between community and liberty. Some of our fellow citizens instinctively reject any collective mandate.

I recall Marianne when I consider the travails of Mitt Romney and Barack Obama in their desires to defend a mandate for health care. Mandate is from the Latin mandatum, commission or order. As the opponents of mandated health care, whether in the Bay State or from coast to coast complain, a mandate orders citizens to purchase health insurance – with exceptions for those who cannot afford it – or to pay a fine. (A subtle constitutional debate concerns whether states can do what is prohibited to the Feds). The irony is that a single payer system is clearly constitutional. It would not require citizens to purchase a product, but rather it would tax them for yet another government benefit. I imagine that those who object to a mandate to purchase health care would be no more jovial had the cost been swiped from their paycheck.

The visceral opposition of so many Republicans to insuring that all Americans have access to health care: Romneycare or Obamacare, as one will, is a puzzle. For the fact of the matter is that when the government determines that the promotion of the common welfare is required – a moving target as conceptions of rights alter – we determine how that collective good will be provided and who will be responsible for its cost.

The social democratic solution is for the state to be the tax collector of the commonweal, and the distributor of shared mercies to all. As Andrew Jackson put the matter: “There are no necessary evils in government. . . . If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing.” In other words, if the State would shower medical care on rich and poor, a thousand robust flowers would bloom. One system for all, watered by an efficient and wise regime.

Wishful thinking, perhaps. In contrast is the mandate, bolstering a marketplace in which citizens and their employers select among competing health plans. Some measure of competition is preserved. Given the desire to preserve choice, corporate investment, and private enterprise, this was – and still is – a fundamentally Republican plan showing deference to free-market principles in a society in which prior to national health care the Feds were already picking up over 45% of health care costs. Even Ann Coulter agrees, writing “Three Cheers for Romneycare!” and noting that the Heritage Foundation helped design Romneycare. Perhaps not libertarian, but conservative.

Forcing everyone to purchase health care involves forcing everyone to purchase health care, as Marianne would intuit. And perhaps she would be willing to give up her doctors in order to breathe the rarified air of freedom. However, if deliberately considered, the primary victims of this scheme are young people willing to bet on invulnerability. There would have been logic to the Occupy Wall Street kids opposing mandatory coverage. But why should the middle-aged, middle-class, entrenched Tea Party boosters be so opposed to the mandate to continue to purchase what they have purchased all along. They are the very people who would not consider being without health care themselves. Marianne has reached midlife.

There are reasons to be skeptical of market-based mandated healthcare: suspicions from left and from right. Are all health plans – and, thus, all medical care – equal. Will the accountants of the market call the tune? Even though the mantra of the mandate has dominated opposition on the right, surely one could fret about the over-regulation of the market. Do public bureaucrats know better than private bureaucrats? Will no frills plans be pushed from the market? Will government regulators permit too much care (contraception) or too little (end of life care, aka death panels)?

Yet, these concerns are separate from mandates themselves. Should the government insist that we purchase what most of us purchase anyhow? Perhaps not, but if we recognize the necessity of universal health care, the alternative is a single-payer system. No mandate, just taxes. And taxes are as inevitable as death itself.

Paul Gottfried and I disagree. He positions himself in opposition to “the post – Marxist PC left.” I suspect that my commitments to feminism, gay rights and the victories of the civil rights movement, while thinking that Marx was an important 19^th century thinker, but not a guide for politics in our times, means that the phrase applies to me (even though I am not sure what it means exactly). Yet, I am pleased that I found a prominent conservative intellectual to contribute to our discussions. I have already learned something from Gottfried, and want to explore what the practical implications of an exchange of views between us, along with other Deliberately Considered contributors and readers, can be.

We certainly won’t come to agreement on some fundamentals. I don’t believe that the confrontation of our ideas will yield a higher dialectical truth. I am pretty sure that on some issues it is a matter of prevailing, not convincing. He writes about the “our oppressive anti-discrimination apparatus,” while I see only reasons to celebrate the struggle against discrimination, racism, sexism and the like. I see no possibility of compromise here. In fact, I regret that things haven’t changed as much as I think they should and welcome political action to move things forward.

Yet, I believe that there is a possibility that differences such as those that divide Professor Gottfried and me can be civilized, and not simply be about confrontation. A starting point is sharing insights, and I think I see one based on our opposing appraisals of the present state of American political culture. I see, and worry about, an ascendant know-nothing right, while Gottfried is deeply concerned about the ascendance of the post Marxist left. These differences, I believe, ironically point to a compatible understanding.

Gottfried’s diagnosis of the present political climate does indeed surprise me:

Those who oppose this [post Marxist pc] Left are fighting from a steadily weakening position. They have lost the cultural war to the state, our educational system and MTV; and as the predominantly left-leaning Latino population and the lifestyle Left continues to grow, the real Right and the faux right GOP will be driven into a less and less promising minority status. The only way out of this worsening situation for those who don’t like the direction in which the multiculturalists and our two national parties are pushing us is a vast reduction in federal authority, together with the increase of state and local powers. This will not deliver New York City or San Francisco from the Left, but it will limit the power of New York City to control what goes on in Augusta, Georgia or Ames, Iowa.

In contrast, I have good reason to worry about the ascendency of the right wing in America. Each year, it seems to me, the Republican Party has moved to the right. What they proposed in the last decade of the 20^th century, healthcare reform with mandated participation of the public, and a cap and trade approach, using a market, to control the ill effects of industrial development on the environment, they now denounce as socialism. And conservative political leaders step by step have moved radically to the right, from Nixon to Reagan to George W. Bush to Mitt Romney, indeed given the unsteadiness of his commitments, from Romney to Romney. And at the same time, despite my expectations and fears, these men have repeatedly won elections, the worse case for me was the re-election of George W. Bush, despite his extremist security and foreign policies. Now opposition to abortion rights is absolute among Republicans, and their approach to the reading of the constitution, original intent, has moved from the margins of judicial philosophy to a near majority on the Supreme Court.

Yet, I must admit, Gottfried also has good reasons to be concerned by the direction of things. From the point of view of the right, much has changed for the worse, despite the cascading right wing successes at the center of political power. We do now live in a much more multicultural America. The political and social rights for women, African Americans, gays and many other groups of the formerly excluded have expanded, sharply represented by the first African American president. The typical American looks very differently than a generation ago. The successful passage of “Obamacare” has extended state mandated and supported social benefits. The promise of the New Deal is more of a reality today than when FDR was at the height of his powers, free of its initial racist limitations and greatly expanded by the Great Society reforms and the accomplishments of Barack Obama in his first term.

Thus, I think that both Gottfried and I perceive real changes in the American political landscape. The left’s victories until Obama, since Reagan, have been for the most part off the center stage. Despite the elections of right wing Republicans, a slow and steady transformation has occurred in America. People are changing their relations with each other in their everyday practices: gay and straight, black and white and Latino and Asians, men and women. Little victories concerning the extension of citizenship have transformed the country. The right has mobilized against these victories, winning most of the major electoral contests over these changes since 1968, threatening real progress, in my judgment. But, nonetheless, there has been progress from my point of view. Because Gottfried believes these changes are being forced by a repressive state, liberal educational institutions and the media apparatus, the situation is grave from his point of view.

The threatening storm of a right wing backlash looms, as does the spread of the PC left.

Gottfried and I have grounds for our concerns, given our commitments. But I wonder: shouldn’t a reasonable conservative, in the tradition of Edmund Burke, understand the progress that I see as an instance of the power of slow and steady social transformation, as a healthy kind of conservative change? This is clearly the position of Andrew Sullivan. I wonder about recent Deliberately Considered contributor Alvino-Mario Fantini. Can he perceive that the state presents both a reasonable promise for the fulfillment of and a possible threat to the defense and extension of our liberties? And can my friends on the left appreciate that small victories add up to major change and abandon utopian dreams of sudden and complete transformation?

As someone who for decades has been kept out of the media-manipulated political conversation and who has had none of his many books reviewed in the mainstream press, despite being published by Cambridge, Princeton and other prestigious presses, I regard my presence in this forum as the equivalent of gate-crashing. Having said that, I see no reason why those who ignore me should want to treat me any better in the future. I have shown my contempt for their orchestrated discussions on whom or what is “conservative.” For thirty years I have argued that the Left enjoys the prerogative of choosing its “conservative” debating partners in the US and in other Western “liberal democracies.” Those it dialogues with are more similar to the gatekeepers, sociologically and ideologically, than they are to those who, like me, have been relegated to the “extreme (read non-cooperative) Right.” At this point I have no objections to creating new categories for “gay conservatives,” “transvestite reactionaries” or any other group the New York Times or National Review decides to reach out to. I consider the terms “conservative” and “liberal” to be empty decoration. They adorn a trivial form of discussion, diverting attention from the most significant political development of our time, namely the replacement of the Marxist by the PC Left.

While the American Right was once geared to fight the “Communist” threat, today’s “conservatives” (yes I am inserting quotation marks for obvious reasons) have capitulated to the post-Communist Left (to which in this country an anachronistic nineteenth-century designation “liberal” has been arbitrarily ascribed). The “conservative movement” happily embraces the heroes and issues of yesterday’s Left, from the cult of Martin Luther King to the defense of “moderate feminism” and Irving Kristol’s confected concept of the “democratic capitalist welfare state” to David Frum’s and Ross Douthat’s praise for gay marriage as a “family value.” When our conservative journalists and talking heads are not engaging in such value-discourses, they do what comes even more naturally, shilling for the GOP. Conservatism and whatever the GOP may be doing at a particular moment to scare up votes have become so intimately associated in the public mind and certainly in the media that there is no longer any recognizable distinction between them.

This party-lining never ceases to amaze me. Earlier this month, I was shocked to learn that a number of Catholic traditionalists, including Robert Bork and Mary Anne Glendon, were lining up to express their enthusiastic support for the establishment Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. None of these newly won enthusiasts, all of whom grossly exaggerate Romney’s “conservatism” as governor of Massachusetts, has to perform his current task to keep a position or to earn money. These eminent GOP advocates are impelled by the desire for conservative respectability, which means first and foremost being a dutiful Republican. This is not surprising since conservatism and the GOP seem to crave respectability equally, which in our time and place can only come with the approval or at least neutrality of the reality-spinners on the other side. It is the post-Marxist Left, which distinguishes that which is sensitive from that which is not, or respectability from extremism.

Even more significantly, the Republican Party has been an utterly corrupting influence on the American Right. The party bosses and spin doctors have pursued an unprincipled form of centrist politics. This revolves around catering to leftward leaning independents, after throwing a few rhetorical bones to the Religious Right during primary season. It is one thing for a person of the Right to prefer a slightly less contemptible party to one that seems even worse; it is another thing to devote oneself heart and soul to a waffling, middling party as the sacred vehicle for achieving one’s high principles.

Were it up to me, I would ban the term “conservative” from our political discourse, the way Germans go after people who sport Nazi-associated symbols. The word in question is misleading and perhaps downright dishonest, particularly when it refers to a social democrat favoring most of what is favored by the Left, but wishing to do leftist projects more slowly while attaching to them such tags as “family values” or “individual initiative.” I am pleased that the GOP opposes Obamacare (so do I). But I doubt it will do much to roll back this costly scheme, the way it did nothing to roll back the Great Society or other additions to the federal welfare state and our oppressive anti-discrimination apparatus since the 1960s. “Conservatism” now means in practice getting back to the year 2008, that is, to the last time the GOP more or less ran our vast administrative state—for their own  patronage use.

As a reference point we might recall that “conservatism” once meant the principled opposition to the French Revolution that arose with Edmund Burke and other critics of the democratic and human rights ideology of the radical revolutionaries of the late eighteenth century. It makes no sense to apply this tag to our “conservatives” and GOP presidential candidates who are seeking to impose French revolutionary principles on the world, if necessary by force of arms. Why would I describe as conservative the exact opposite of what the original conservatives were struggling to resist? Sending American armed forces, rigorously adapted to gay and feminist standards, to spread our global democratic values beyond our shores may be classified according to more than one category. Conservative, however, is certainly not one of them.

Allow me however to substitute, in the fashion of my now deceased friend, Sam Francis, the designation “rightwing” for “conservative.” Whereas “conservative” seems to me as an historian to have little or nothing to do with our historical situation, the less time-conditioned description “rightwing” may still be relevant for us. The Right opposes the Left out of conviction, but what the Left opposes will vary from one age to the next. For example, the authoritarian Right that ruled Spain in the 1950s and 1960s arose to fight the Communist and Anarchist Left. In the US today, the Right is taking a libertarian or decentralist character, because the Left it combats has its power vested in public administration, public education and the culture industry. Needless to say, the cultural-social Left that holds sway today and which has evoked a relatively manageable opposition, is no longer focused on revolutionary socialism or the nationalization of productive forces, except in a very marginal way. This post-Marxist Left advances gay and feminist rights and the self-validation of non-white minorities, and it uses government control and a crusade against discrimination to increase its leverage.

Those who oppose this Left are fighting from a steadily weakening position. They have lost the cultural war to the state, our educational system and MTV; and as the predominantly left-leaning Latino population and the lifestyle Left continues to grow, the real Right and the faux right GOP will be driven into a less and less promising minority status. The only way out of this worsening situation for those who don’t like the direction in which the multiculturalists and our two national parties are pushing us is a vast reduction in federal authority, together with the increase of state and local powers. This will not deliver New York City or San Francisco from the Left, but it will limit the power of New York City to control what goes on in Augusta, Georgia or Ames, Iowa.

The Right should properly assess the mediocrity of its circumstances and work to create enclaves that will allow it to survive in what is likely to be a harsh environment. In this respect, it may be like the Christian kingdoms of Northern Spain that survived the Moorish conquest and which later combined to take back the peninsula it had held before 710. The Right however must now work without the hope of “winning back” a central government it never really held. Appeals to the “people” are equally foolish, since the Right can no longer rally to its banners a majority of America’s residents. The notion, propagated by the neoconservative media, that most Americans are “conservative” or right-leaning,” is meaningless or mendacious. On all social issues, the US has been rushing toward the left for decades, and in 2008, a majority of voters, among whom we have to assume were many “right-leaning” types, gave their support to the most leftist president in US history.

It would also not be advisable for what remains of a serious Right, as opposed to dutiful Republicans or neoconservative zombies, to avoid nationalist postures. Contrary to the hopes of well-meaning populists, nationalist rhetoric is now entirely in enemy hands—and it is likely to stay there. Talk about “national” uniqueness no longer evokes historic communal or cultural identities (to whatever extent it ever did in the US) but a radical leftist vision of global troublemaking. Neoconservatives, aided by the Religious Right, have made American nationalism identical with global democratic imperialism and a view of America as a “propositional nation.” The Right, as opposed to these latter-day Jacobins, should think not about expanding a homogeneous, late modern empire, but about what it can salvage after being routed and marginalized. Survival should be the immediate concern of a non-aligned Right. An America without a Right will become like Western Europe, a population controlled by two variations on the post-Marxist, multicultural Left. This may happen in the US no less than in Germany, France or Sweden, unless the Right can identify its interests and work to gain its own biotope. In this demanding task, it should expect no help from Sean Hannity, Bill Kristol, or Mark Lilla. They are, to repeat the cliché, part of the problem.

The Right (I no longer address “conservatives”) should choose wisely, if it intends to back a presidential candidate. I would urge the Right to reject the defective candidacy of our former Pennsylvania senator, Rick Santorum. Despite his reputation as a “social conservative,” by which is meant traditional Catholic, Santorum has proposed no plan for decentralizing our administrative Behemoth.  And his value mantras are certainly no substitute for such a plan. In foreign policy, Santorum seems to switch roles, going from playing Savonarola at home to proclaiming an American mission to implant human rights everywhere on the planet. His neoconservative ebullition bodes ill if Santorum ever became president, although that does not seem likely.

The least problematic candidate from a rightist perspective is Ron Paul. An outspoken seventy-seven year old candidate, Paul is the least likely to receive the GOP nomination because of his identification with what the GOP was at an earlier point in its checkered history. He holds tenaciously to constitutionalist principles and is averse to ideologically driven interventionism abroad. What may turn off the traditional Right, however, are his libertarian inclinations, appeal to individualism, and his willingness to give outspoken foreign enemies the benefit of the doubt. In an imperfect world from the perspective of the Right, however, Paul seems head and shoulders above his rivals for the nomination. He may in fact be the only (at least nominal) Republican candidate, whose election would not put the Right in an even worse situation than it is now. In the second best of all worlds (the best being that he’d be elected), Paul would send a telling message as a third-party candidate, by making the GOP-neocon nominee suffer a well-deserved defeat. Only once that occurred, would it be possible to reorganize the GOP or build up a third party around the principles of decentralized government and foreign policy retrenchment.

There have been three distinct phases of Barack Obama’s presidency, thus far. There was the period when the President worked with the Democratic Party dominated Congress, the period when he attempted to work with the Republican Party dominated Congress, and the present period, with Obama fighting against the Republican Party dominated Congress and starting his re-election campaign. He has engaged in different tactics in each of these phases, geared to the prevailing political environment, but he has also revealed himself as being a political leader with a long-term strategy meant to change the environment, not simply adapt to it.

While most political coverage over the last three years has been focused on the tactics and the day-to-day ups and downs, serious assessment of the first term of the Obama presidency requires evaluation of the strategy, and its successes, failures and continued promise.  President Obama is a principled politician with clear commitments, even if without a unifying simple ideology. He is a centrist, working to move the center to the left, trying to make the American Dream more inclusive and politics more civil, serious and participatory. He is working for a major political transformation, as I have explored carefully in my book, Reinventing Political Culture and have examined here at Deliberately Considered as well. In this post and in two future posts, I will review what we have learned about his attempt to move the political center to the left, specifically as it involves economic policies and social reform. I will review other dimensions of the Obama transformation in further posts as the Presidential election season develops.

Obama with Democrats:

Given the global crisis that greeted the new president, the economy was the initial focus of Obama and his administration. Even before he became president and then in the early days of his administration, Obama was involved in major actions to forestall a complete meltdown of the financial system and a global depression. The “Wall Street bailout” (the Troubled Asset Relief Program), the rescue of the auto industry, and the stimulus package ( The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) presented aggressive policies that undoubtedly made a difference, even though today it is convenient for Republicans to label all as wasteful. One of the first signs that Obama recognized the hard times was in his inaugural address. The public and commentators expected an upbeat “yes we can” speech. He gave instead a sober appraisal of a country in crisis, seekingto address serious problems. He included ambitious plans, concerning jobs, economic recovery, healthcare, education and energy and the environment. He recognized that realizing the plans would be difficult.

He, along with his allies in the Democratic Party, fought long and hard for healthcare reform. This battle overshadowed much else that was happening in first stage of his administration. The passage of what his opponents call “Obamacare” into law is a singular achievement. I am convinced that in the long run the label will be understood positively. But it certainly wasn’t at first. While much was being done to get the economy going again and to try to create jobs, the controversies around the healthcare reform focused a great deal of his opposition’s and the public’s attention. The Republicans attempted to use it to sink Obama’s presidency, while he worked to make pragmatic reform a reality. They linked healthcare reform with the necessary measures to address the economic crisis, TARP, the stimulus package, and the Auto Industry Rescue, and criticized what they took to be government overreach, politely put, or more aggressively put, the imposition of socialism and worse. The word fascism was casually introduced by Glenn Beck and many others.

There was a strange a-symmetry in public debate. Obama compromised and tried to work with Republicans to achieve a broad bi-partisan agreement on healthcare reform, while he was denounced as an alien-being imposing European socialism on a free society.

Between conservative Democrats (notable that Ben Nelson announced his retirement yesterday) and the united Republican bloc, normal politics proved to be impossible. His liberal critics wanted more, but Obama did everything possible to establish the principle of universal health coverage in the United States. Short of a constitutional challenge, this has been achieved. We observed this here.

Note: most of the media attention has been focused on the news of the passage of legislation and the developing tea party tempest in opposition. But also note that there is a major change in American life. Decent healthcare has been established as a citizen right.

Yet, the political fallout was significant. Obama worked to credit the Democratic House and Senate and his Presidency for this achievement and for the (limited) progress on the economic front. But he was working against the momentum of a major social movement, The Tea Party, and even when he made clear what principles were at stake in powerful partisan speeches, the media tended to not pay attention. It didn’t fit their narrative. They reported on the ups of the right and the downs of the left, Tea Party theatrics, and not Obama’s substantive arguments.

The media focus on short term tactics did anticipate the political contest of the past year, with the high stakes show downs on the debt ceiling and the deficit, taxing and spending. But the long term debate about defining the center of public discussion, which Obama has steadfastly worked on, is again gaining attention. Tactically, this can be and has been explained by Republican overreach and blunders, but it is positively connected to Obama’s leadership and developing social movements concerned with social justice, which I will address in future posts next week (year).