In the course of talking about “Cash for Clunkers,” blogger Conor Friedersdorf makes an important, broader point:
Here’s the thing: “the right” is an utter disaster at the moment. You’ve got frightening numbers of people who think President Obama is an illegal alien who faked his Hawaiian birth certificate; adherents who get much of their information from a cable news network where many of the so-called journalists are shameless propagandists; a talk radio lineup of bombastic, juvenile opportunists whose hyperbole, intellectual dishonesty and general approach to public discourse does a disservice to their listeners and their country; a contingent of voters that cares most about national security, yet bizarrely thinks that an erratic former Alaska governor without any foreign policy experience is their preferred candidate; a conservative movement whose institutions are too often designed to cynically exploit the rank-and-file; and regional leaders too many of whom are unable to grasp that it’s unacceptable to send around e-mail forwards that traffic in pernicious racial stereotypes. Among other things.
So yeah, of course there are some nut jobs on the right offering poor arguments against Cash for Clunkers. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t sound arguments against Cash for Clunkers, or that the program is helpful, or practical, or targeted at anyone except financially interested parties in the automobile industry, or that any opposition to the program is merely ideological. [He then links, cites and quotes several “serious arguments” against the program.] …
As regular readers know, I think it is important to rebut absurd rhetoric and expose intellectually dishonest blowhards for what they are, but I also think that any assessment of a policy’s merits should be formed in response to the best arguments for and against it, not the noisiest or even the most prevalent critique on offer. Just because the right includes a lot of people making very bad arguments right now doesn’t make the people they’re arguing against right. It’s a lesson I learned when I saw the behavior of bombastic, juvenile folks on the left translate into support for President Bush’s bid to invade Iraq.
Let us recall Jane’s law: “The devotees of the party in power are smug and arrogant. The devotees of the party out of power are insane.” A corollary is that those insane people end up inadvertently helping the smug and arrogant to advance their agenda, however foolish. We should resist that outcome as best we can — and one way to do so is to grapple with the right’s more sane writers rather than its most hackish cable news talking heads.
I am prone to make this mistake, in 2009 with the Know-Nothing Right as I was in 2003 with the Angry Left, and I encourage readers to call me on it when they see me doing so. Because Friedersdorf is absolutely correct — and, in spite of itself, the Right probably has some important things to tell us right now, just as the Left did in the early part of this decade. That many of the messengers have de-evolved into temporary (?) ideological insanity is no excuse to ignore their underlying message when it has some validity.
(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan.)
“That many of the messengers have de-evolved into temporary (?) ideological insanity is no excuse to ignore their underlying message when it has some validity.”
Agreed. / Of course what would be Nice would be, for more of them to make the Acquaintance of their underlying, & thus-far-undiscovered, Validities. ;>
Friedersdorf a liberal? You’ve been listening to too many right wingers. I love Friedersdorf, and he’s not a liberal. He’s just not waaay over on the right. He’s fiscally conservative in a sane (read: not markets uber alles) way, and is socially liberal (but again, not in the way that just recites Democratic talking points). He’s one of those trying to put together a sane conservatism (like Ross Douthat and Reiham Salam).
I stand corrected. I don’t read Friedersdorf often (usually I just read the excerpts that Sully occasionally quotes), so I did a quick Google search to try to ascertain his ideological stance, and gathered from his various clashes with known conservatives that he must be a “liberal.” Obviously I guessed wrong. I’ve changed the post so it just says “blogger” instead of “liberal blogger.” 🙂
Well, yes, but that’s because conservatives are determined that anyone who ever says “you know, the government may not be that bad in situation ‘X'” gets read out of the movement. Plus, Friedersdorf has called out talk radio hosts as bad for conservatives as it works right now. Talk radio hosts aren’t too happy with that. And he studied at an Ivy League university and then took a job in Washington DC! He’s gotten jobs writing in the MAINSTREAM MEDIA!!! HE MUST BE A LIBERAL!!!!!!
*Sigh* Too much crazy for me. I used to like these guys. Now, not so much.
Heh. Yeah. In retrospect, my logic was clearly flawed. (I blame sleep deprivation. Note the timestamp on this post — 8:19 AM GMT. That’s 1:19 AM Mountain Time. Yeah… it was kind of a rough night with the wee one.) If the fact that someone has a history of warring with movement conservatives means they’re a liberal, then Ronald Reagan had a flaming liberal (Peggy Noonan) writing speeches for him all those years; the GOP nominated a left-wing radical (John McCain) for president last year; etc. etc. I forgot about the Angry Right’s expansion of the Bush Doctrine to domestic politics: “you’re either with us, or you’re with the
terroristsliberals!”I think it’s a fair point. I also think there are serious issues with the cash for clunkers program. Perhaps that’s why I think it is a fair point. Cash for clunkers is basically just a 3 billion (now) dollar blank check to the auto industry from the government. The money for which was raided from the budget for numerous transport projects, including things like bike, pedestrian, and mass transit infrastructure. All of which would do more to reduce carbon emissions that the very small impact the clunker program will have. The clunker program also is destroying perfectly functional automobiles. Which seems waist full. And does nothing for people that might be willing to get rid of a car and, god forbid, not buy a new one at all. It just seems like a foolish program that wont really do much good. I could be wrong about that, we shall see. But it really does seem like a waist full endeavor to just get people to spend money and go into debt. I think we weren’t supposed to notice that…