I am having second thoughts about my last post in which I assert that the nomination of Paul Ryan, because he is a right-wing ideologist, assures the re-election of Barack Obama. I don’t wish to revise my observations or judgment, but think I need to explain a bit more. I realize that I should be clearer about what I mean by ideology and why I think, and hope, that it spells defeat for the Republicans. My thoughts in two parts: today, I will clarify what I mean by ideology and my general political prediction; in my next post, I will consider further implications of ideological developments in American politics, addressing some doubts and criticism raised by Deliberately Considered readers.

I also want to point out that my thoughts on Ryan and ideology are related to my search for conservative intellectuals worthy of respect. In that what I have to say is motivated bya conservative suspicion of the role of a certain kind of idea and reason in politics, I wonder what Paul Gottfried and Alvino-Mario Fantini (two conservative intellectuals who have contributed to Deliberately Considered) would think. As I understand it, my last post was a conservative critique of right-wing ideology, pointing to its progressive consequences. As a centrist who wants to move the center left, I am hopeful about this, but I imagine committed conservatives would be deeply concerned. I am still having trouble finding a deliberate dialogue with them.

A brief twenty-five year old encounter comes to mind as I think about ideology and its political toxicity, trying to explain my Ryan judgment.

We were in a taxi in Prague in 1987, Jonathan Fanton, the President of the New School for Social Research, Ira Katznelson, the Dean of The New School’s Graduate Faculty, Jan Urban, a leading dissident intellectual-journalist activist, and I: the preliminary meeting between The New School and the small but very vibrant, creative and ultimately successful Czechoslovak democratic opposition. In the end, we did some good in that part of the world, starting with a donation of a computer that enabled Urban and his colleagues to more easily publish their underground newspaper, Lidove Noviny. As we were exchanging pleasantries in the taxi, I became serious and asserted that I am against all “isms”: communism, socialism, fascism, but also liberalism and conservatism. Urban turned to me and happily declared that we were comrades in thoughts. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship, based on our deep concern about the ideological politics of the sort that is now to be found in the Tea Party on the American radical right, and also played a unfortunate role in the politics of post–Communist Czech Republic under the stewardship of Vaclav Klaus.

Urban and I agreed that true-believing politics was extremely dangerous, whether or not the beliefs were attractive. We were suspicious of systematic overall positions. We understood together that the too intimate connection between ideas and assertions of power was extremely dangerous. Ideas then blind. The difference between fact and fiction become difficult to discern. Newspeak prevails.

There was, of course, exaggeration in our agreement, the danger of ideology is not neatly summarized by suffix “ism,” but we shared a common sense, the same sense that informs my judgment of Ryan and the likely Republican fate. Ideology for Urban and for me is a term that is best understood not as the confluence of interest and political ideas, enabling political action (ideology in the sense of Mannheim and Geertz, beautifully interpreted by Ricoeur). Rather, implicit in my exchange with Urban is an understanding of ideology that draws on the position of Hannah Arendt (and more conservative thinkers such as Eric Voegelin), as she and we try to make sense of a particularly pernicious form of political ideas.

Thus in the present situation, following the ideology of the free market true-belief, constitutional fundamentalism and a theological reading of the American tradition, rich people become “job creators” by definition. A moderate Democrat becomes a “dangerous socialist” who doesn’t understand what America is. Changing the fundamental principles of Medicare and Social Security becomes “saving” them, while controlling the cost escalation of Medicare means destroying it. We also have the “failed stimulus package,” the “racist” Attorney General Eric Holder, not to mention the Muslim president born in Kenya. All of this passes for the conservatism of Tea Party Republicans, and Ryan is said to be its great intellectual leader. This is ideological politics pure and simple.

I disagree with the substance of Romney – Ryan’s positions on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, something that Michael Corey identified and criticized in his response to my post. He believes that the Republican and the Democratic plans for “entitlements” should be dispassionately evaluated and seems to be disappointed that I didn’t do this in my post. But this wasn’t my point. There are indeed different ways to address the problems of medical care of the old and the younger that have their strengths and weaknesses. A debate about such things is a normal part of politics. What concerns me is the Manichean way this debate is presented and understood by the new right-wing ideologues, as a grand battle between good and evil, with the very future of America in the balance. Ryan reduces all political conflict in this way, as he put it in 2005: “the fight we are in here, make no mistake about it, is a fight of individualism versus collectivism.“

I think that this is the sort of thing that a great majority of Americans reject. There may have been a drift to the right in recent years. Belief in the possibility that government can address social problems may be down, but the certainty of free market true-believers makes little sense to people as they try to get by in tough times. It’s a matter of form, not substance, and again to paraphrase Barry Goldwater in order to criticize his position: extremism in defense of freedom doesn’t win elections in America, not for Goldwater in the early sixties and not for Romney – Ryan now.

As a consequence, the Republican ticket will prevaricate. They will back down. This has defined Romney’s career, and Ryan himself, to get re-elected, has also compromised his stated principles to deliver the “collectivist” government goods to his constituents. Yet, in the glare of the national campaign this sort of thing is less likely to work. Romney – Ryan will reveal to the electorate the worst of both worlds, the repellent dogmatism of true-belief, combined with the apparent cynicism of hack politicians who will say anything to be elected.

Thus, I think that Obama will be re-elected. I also have a hunch. This may allow Obama to be Obama. Perhaps just as the decisive defeat of Goldwater established the political opportunity for the reforms of “The Great Society,” the Romney – Ryan defeat may open up the opportunity for “change we can believe in.”

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?

When I describe Barack Obama as a principled centrist working to move the center left, I confess, I am seeing in the President’s political orientation my own primary commitments. As a professor, as a participant observer of the opposition to previously existing socialism around the old Soviet bloc, and as an engaged American, this kind of center-left position makes the most sense to me.

I oppose true believers, of the left and the right, and am confused by those who see only their own position as intelligent and insightful, viewing their opposition as, at best, mistaken, and, more likely, as fundamentally mendacious. Working in the academic world, in my daily life, I mostly see this in my leftist colleagues who are certain about the superiority of their own political commitments. On the larger political stage, the fallacy of political certainty seems to be primarily a right-wing disorder, vividly epitomized in the Republican debates and on Fox News. The new direction of MSNBC, I should also note, has become a mirror image of Fox. I find it almost as hard to watch for more than a few minutes.

I look for alternatives to this, and I believe that this is not only a matter of personal taste or my specific political commitments. Hannah Arendt’s essay on truth and politics highlights the depth of the problem, as I have already reflected on here and here. Confusing political opinion with political truth and empowering that truth is a primary cultural characteristic of modern tyranny, and basing politics on factual lies, avoiding factual truth, is another definitive cultural characteristic of the tyranny of our times and of the recent past. For this reason, I am self critical about my own convictions and quite critical of many of my friends on the left, and also for this reason, I am on the look out for opponents on the right worthy of respect, from whom I can learn. Thus, my posts looking for conservatives (here, here and here), and about Corey Robin’s attempt to understand the reactionary mind, and the post by the distinguished and controversial paleo-conservative, Paul Gottfried.

The matter isn’t finished. I hope these posts will be only the opening of contributions about and from the right on the events of the day at Deliberately Considered. “Mario” has agreed to post an answer to the question I posed to him.

He compactly asserted in his comment to one of my recent pieces:

I think you will find that many American conservatives are fundamentally (a) concerned about being able to live in traditional ways — in the ways or manners that they have inherited from their parents and grandparents, and respectful of established societal codes of conduct shared with their neighbors and communities — and, perhaps more importantly, (b) suspicious of any attempt to improve or re-engineer society based on an ill-defined idea of progress or some ideological model of a future utopia. History has shown us repeatedly that such projects usually require the violation of a certain group’s rights — and often lead to bloodshed.

And I asked how these commitments could be applied to considering deliberately the events of the day in a way that might convince people who are not conservative? I actually agree with some of the implications of the two points, but not all of them. Perhaps a real discussion could be opened. Next, I will work on the opening in a response to Paul Gottfried’s post.