The New Authoritarianism Take the time to read the whole article

[JG55]

The New Authoritarianism

A firm hand for a “nation of dodos”

6 January 2012

“I refuse to take ‘No’ for an answer,” said President Obama this week as he claimed new powers for himself in making recess appointments while Congress wasn’t legally in recess. The chief executive’s power grab in naming appointees to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the National Labor Relations Board has been depicted by administration supporters as one forced upon a reluctant Obama by Republican intransigence. But this isn’t the first example of the president’s increasing tendency to govern with executive-branch powers. He has already explained that “where Congress is not willing to act, we’re going to go ahead and do it ourselves.” On a variety of issues, from immigration to the environment to labor law, that’s just what he’s been doing—and he may try it even more boldly should he win reelection. This “go it alone” philosophy reflects an authoritarian trend emerging on the political left since the conservative triumph in the 2010 elections.

The president and his coterie could have responded to the 2010 elections by conceding the widespread public hostility to excessive government spending and regulation. That’s what the more clued-in Clintonites did after their 1994 midterm defeats. But unlike Clinton, who came from the party’s moderate wing and hailed from the rural South, the highly urban progressive rump that is Obama’s true base of support has little appreciation for suburban or rural Democrats. In fact, some liberals even celebrated the 2010 demise of the Blue Dog and Plains States Democrats, concluding that the purged party could embrace a purer version of the liberal agenda. So instead of appealing to the middle, the White House has pressed ahead with Keynesian spending and a progressive regulatory agenda.

Much of the administration’s approach has to do with a change in the nature of liberal politics. Today’s progressives cannot be viewed primarily as pragmatic Truman- or Clinton-style majoritarians. Rather, they resemble the medieval clerical class. Their goal is governmental control over everything from what sort of climate science is permissible to how we choose to live our lives. Many of today’s progressives can be as dogmatic in their beliefs as the most strident evangelical minister or mullah. Like Al Gore declaring the debate over climate change closed, despite the Climategate e-mails and widespread skepticism, the clerisy takes its beliefs as based on absolute truth. Critics lie beyond the pale.

The problem for the clerisy lies in political reality. The country’s largely suburban and increasingly Southern electorate does not see big government as its friend or wise liberal mandarins as the source of its salvation. This sets up a potential political crisis between those who know what’s good and a presumptively ignorant majority. Obama is burdened, says Joe Klein of Time, by governing a “nation of dodos” that is “too dumb to thrive,” as the title of his story puts it, without the guidance of our president. But if the people are too deluded to cooperate, elements in the progressive tradition have a solution: European-style governance by a largely unelected bureaucratic class.

The tension between self-government and “good” government has existed since the origins of modern liberalism. Thinkers such as Herbert Croly and Randolph Bourne staked a claim to a priestly wisdom far greater than that possessed by the ordinary mortal. As Croly explained, “any increase in centralized power and responsibility . . . is injurious to certain aspects of traditional American democracy. But the fault in that case lies with the democratic tradition” and the fact that “the average American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to a serious and consistent conception of his responsibilities as a democrat.”

During the first two years of the Obama administration, the progressives persuaded themselves that favorable demographics and the consequences of the George W. Bush years would assure the consent of the electorate. They drew parallels with how growing urbanization and Herbert Hoover’s legacy worked for FDR in the 1930s. But FDR enhanced his majority in his first midterm election in 1934; the current progressive agenda, by contrast, was roundly thrashed in 2010. Obama may compare himself to Roosevelt and even to Lincoln, but the electorate does not appear to share this assessment.

After the 2010 thrashing, progressives seemed uninterested in moderating their agenda. Left-wing standard bearers Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation and Robert Borosage of the Institute for Policy Studies went so far as to argue that Obama should bypass Congress whenever necessary and govern using his executive authority over the government’s regulatory agencies. This autocratic agenda of enhanced executive authority has strong support with people close to White House, such as John Podesta of the Center for American Progress, a left-liberal think tank. “The U.S. Constitution and the laws of our nation grant the president significant authority to make and implement policy,” Podesta has written. “These authorities can be used to ensure positive progress on many of the key issues facing the country.”

Podesta has proposed what amounts to a national, more ideological variant of what in Obama’s home state is known as “The Chicago Way.” Under that system, John Kass of the Chicago Tribune explains, “citizens, even Republicans, are expected to take what big government gives them. If the political boss suggests that you purchase some expensive wrought-iron fence to decorate your corporate headquarters, and the guy selling insurance to the wrought-iron boys is the boss’ little brother, you write the check.” But the American clerisy isn’t merely a bunch of corrupt politicians and bureaucratic lifers, and the United States isn’t one-party Chicago. The clerisy are more like an ideological vanguard, one based largely in academe and the media as well as part of the high-tech community.

Their authoritarian progressivism—at odds with the democratic, pluralistic traditions within liberalism—tends to evoke science, however contested, to justify its authority. The progressives themselves are, in Daniel Bell’s telling phrase, “the priests of the machine.” Their views are fairly uniform and can be seen in “progressive legal theory,” which displaces the seeming plain meaning of the Constitution with constructions derived from the perceived needs of a changing political environment. Belief in affirmative action, environmental justice, health-care reform, and redistribution from the middle class to the poor all find foundation there. More important still is a radical environmental agenda fervently committed to the idea that climate change has a human origin—a kind of secular notion of original sin. But these ideas are not widely shared by most people. The clerisy may see in Obama “reason incarnate,” as George Packer of The New Yorker put it, but the majority of the population remains more concerned about long-term unemployment and a struggling economy than about rising sea levels or the need to maintain racial quotas.

Despite the president’s clear political weaknesses—his job-approval ratings remain below 50 percent—he retains a reasonable shot at reelection. In the coming months, he will likely avoid pushing too hard on such things as overregulating business, particularly on the environmental front, which would undermine the nascent recovery and stir too much opposition from corporate donors. American voters may also be less than enthusiastic about the Republican alternatives topping the ticket. And one should never underestimate the power of even a less-than-popular president. Obama can count on a strong chorus of support from the media and many of the top high-tech firms, which have enjoyed lavish subsidies and government loans for “green” projects.

If Obama does win, 2013 could possibly bring something approaching a constitutional crisis. With the House and perhaps the Senate in Republican hands, Obama’s clerisy may be tempted to use the full range of executive power. The logic for running the country from the executive has been laid out already. Republican control of just the House, argues Chicago congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., has made America ungovernable. Obama, he said during the fight over the debt limit, needed to bypass the Constitution because, as in 1861, the South (in this case, the Southern Republicans) was “in a state of rebellion” against lawful authority. Beverley Perdue, the Democratic governor of North Carolina, concurred: she wanted to have elections suspended for a stretch. (Perdue’s office later insisted this was a joke, but most jokes aren’t told deadpan or punctuated with “I really hope someone can agree with me on that.” Also: Nobody laughed.)

The Left’s growing support for a soft authoritarianism is reminiscent of the 1930s, when many on both right and left looked favorably at either Stalin’s Soviet experiment or its fascist and National Socialist rivals. Tom Friedman of the New York Times recently praised Chinese-style authoritarianism for advancing the green agenda. The “reasonably enlightened group” running China, he asserted, was superior to our messy democracy in such things as subsidizing green industry. Steven Rattner, the investment banker and former Obama car czar, dismisses the problems posed by China’s economic and environmental foibles and declares himself “staunchly optimistic” about the future of that country’s Communist Party dictatorship. And it’s not just the gentry liberals identifying China as their model: labor leader Andy Stern, formerly the president of the Service Employees International Union and a close ally of the White House, celebrates Chinese authoritarianism and says that our capitalistic pluralism is headed for “the trash heap of history.” The Chinese, Stern argues, get things done.

A victorious Obama administration could embrace a soft version of the Chinese model. The mechanisms of control already exist. The bureaucratic apparatus, the array of policy czars and regulatory enforcers commissioned by the executive branch, has grown dramatically under Obama. Their ability to control and prosecute people for violations relating to issues like labor and the environment—once largely the province of states and localities—can be further enhanced. In the post-election environment, the president, using agencies like the EPA, could successfully strangle whole industries—notably the burgeoning oil and natural gas sector—and drag whole regions into recession. The newly announced EPA rules on extremely small levels of mercury and other toxins, for example, will sharply raise electricity rates in much of the country, particularly in the industrial heartland; greenhouse-gas policy, including, perhaps, an administratively imposed “cap and trade,” would greatly impact entrepreneurs and new investors forced to purchase credits from existing polluters. On a host of social issues, the new progressive regime could employ the Justice Department to impose national rulings well out of sync with local sentiments. Expansions of affirmative action, gay rights, and abortion rights could become mandated from Washington even in areas, such as the South, where such views are anathema.

This future can already been seen in fiscally challenged California. The state should be leading a recovery, not lagging behind the rest of the country. But in a place where Obama-style progressives rule without effective opposition, the clerisy has already enacted a score of regulatory mandates that are chasing businesses, particularly in manufacturing, out of the state. It has also passed land-use policies designed to enforce density, in effect eliminating the dream of single-family homes for all but the very rich in much of the state.

A nightmare scenario would be a constitutional crisis pitting a relentless executive power against a disgruntled, alienated opposition lacking strong, intelligent leadership. Over time, the new authoritarians would elicit even more opposition from the “dodos” who make up the majority of Americans residing in the great landmass outside the coastal strips and Chicago. The legacy of the Obama years—once so breathlessly associated with hope and reconciliation—may instead be growing pessimism and polarization.

Fred Siegel, a contributing editor of City Journal, is scholar in residence at St. Francis College in Brooklyn. Joel Kotkin is a contributing editor of City Journal and the Distinguished Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University.

Edited January 10, 2012 by JG55

[Defender]

Well put. I keep getting reminded that when he was running for the first time, he made speeches saying he would fundamentally change America. He's done that in some ways and fully intends to in many other ways, legally or not, whether we like it or not. I also agree with the above author that if he is reelected, then it may be all over for America.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Both sides are eat up with authoritarianism and it isn't a new thang.

Most of the "mainstream" in gov and media occupy the lower quadrant on the nolan chart.

[mav]

Both sides are eat up with authoritarianism and it isn't a new thang.

Most of the "mainstream" in gov and media occupy the lower quadrant on the nolan chart.

I just took a similar test Lester. Here is how I did.

Political Compass Printable Graph

I am right-leaning libertarian, which is true.

[mav]

Hey JG55, can you break up the third segment of the article? It is a little difficult to read.

[mcurrier]

“I refuse to take ‘No’ for an answer,” said President Obama this week as he claimed new powers for himself in making recess appointments while Congress wasn’t legally in recess.

I've got a box of NO's for you, punk. They now come in suppositories.

[Guest 6.8 AR]

I don't know how, but I was at the very top of that chart. I thought my answers were very

reasonable:D

That article makes a lot of sense when you recap all the things Obama said during his

campaign.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

I just took a similar test Lester. Here is how I did.

Political Compass Printable Graph

I am right-leaning libertarian, which is true.

Hi Mav

I measure a little to the left of center, near the libertarian bottom of the chart. Was surprised to score a little to the left.

Some folks have done multiple nolan test surveys attempting to calibrate the test against populations. Which causes puzzlement because a fairly large percent of the USA population scores libertarian but only a small percentage vote libertarian in elections.

Most likely there is no fixed percentage across populations where X percent are libertarian versus Y percent who are authoritarian or whatever. It may vary according to each geographical area's culture, religious distribution, income, local economic mix, amount of urbanization, etc.

Have wondered if, though culture can influence the incidence of authoritarianism, perhaps there is a relatively fixed percentage of humans genetically predisposed toward authoritarianism? Maybe that is not true, but some people just seem "naturally authoritarian" and unlikely to have turned out any other way. That might explain why one seems to find about equal numbers of right-wing authoritarians vs left-wing authoritarians, religious authoritarians vs atheist authoritarians, scientific authoritarians vs mystical authoritarians, etc?

One might even wonder if civilization has existed for a long enough time that natural selection could have affected the incidence of authoritarianism? The history of some regions has been authoritarian for many generations. Perhaps in such regions the authoritarians were more likely to survive and breed, wheras the ornery freedom-loving people would have been more likely exterminated before getting a chance to breed?

Some regions would historically wipe out the entire family of any person who didn't get along with the emperor, so in that case there could be natural selection even AFTER a freedom-loving feller had the chance to breed?

Anyway, we's all god's chillun and it seems doubtful that authoritarians can help being thataway. It would be most charitable to be tolerant even toward authoritarians. However, it is annoying that so many authoritarians find their way into government.

edit-- In psychology, an authoritarian personality doesn't exist only among the rulers. An authoritarian personality will subserviently worship authority and follow orders if he is on the bottom of the pecking order, but the same feller will arrogantly order everybody around and expect the peons to step'n'fetchit if he later becomes the boss.

Edited January 10, 2012 by Lester Weevils

[Guest Lester Weevils]

I don't know how, but I was at the very top of that chart. I thought my answers were very

reasonable:D

That article makes a lot of sense when you recap all the things Obama said during his

campaign.

Mav's test chart is a variant which is "upside down and 45 degrees rotated" compared to the diamond-shape nolan chart. Somebody who scores near the top of the diamond-shaped chart, would score somewhere below the center line of the rectangular chart.

[kieefer]

The New Authoritarianism

A firm hand for a “nation of dodos”

6 January 2012

“I refuse to take ‘No’ for an answer,” said President Obama this week as he claimed new powers for himself in making recess appointments while Congress wasn’t legally in recess.

Well written and spot on.

I pains me to think that more and more people think like him and others blow off elections when they can make such a huge difference.

Might be some hope yet,

Poll: Americans, 2-1, Fear Obama's Reelection

January 9, 2012

When it comes to how Americans view President Obama going into the new year, there appears to be very little spirit of Auld Lang Syne. Instead, according to the new Washington Whispers poll, many voters aren't forgetting what they dislike about Obama and want him out of office.

In our New Year's poll, when asked what news event they fear most about 2012, Americans by a margin of two-to-one said Obama's reelection. Only 16 percent said they fear the Democrat won't win a second term, while 33 percent said they fear four more years. [Check out the top political events of 2011]

Next to Obama's reelection, 31 percent of Americans said they feared higher taxes, which may be proof that the president's focus on the payroll tax cut has hit paydirt.

The poll, however, held out some hope for Obama. Some 38 percent of younger Americans, 18-24, said their biggest fear was higher taxes. Just 28 percent of those same voters said they feared Obama winning in November. [see pictures of Obama behind the scenes.]

But in results backed up by other polls, older Americans and those earning $75,000 or more are especially worried about the president getting a second term, according to the poll done by Synovate eNation.

Nearly half of Americans 65 and older said Obama's reelection was their top fear, 39 percent of those making $75,000 or more agreed.

As we enter the presidential election year of 2012, what potential news event do you fear the most?

President Obama wins reelection 33%

Taxes will increase 31%

Iran will get a nuclear weapon 16%

Obama will lose reelection 16%

North Korea will attack South Korea 4%

Source: The Synovate eNation Internet poll was conducted December 29-January 2 among a national sample of 1,000 households by global market research firm Synovate.

Edited January 10, 2012 by kieefer

[Guest 6.8 AR]

Rush was just talking about what you posted, kieffer. Thanks for letting me digest it better.

Lester, I haven't seen that variation before. Are there other tests like that?

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Lester, I haven't seen that variation before. Are there other tests like that?

Hi 6.8

There is a thread about it here--

http://www.tngunowners.com/forums/national-politics-legislation/11800-political-compass-test.html#post844563

I thought I understood the rectangular version, because some of the nolan charts are rectangular. I'm confused about the markings on political compass chart and maybe it is measuring different stuff than a nolan chart. I read that site a long time ago but should re-read it again to figure it out.

Here is the old original rectangular configuration of Nolan's chart (before somebody decided it was easier to understand as a diamond shape)--

Which is exactly the same as the diamond-shaped nolan chart. But that political compass chart seems to need different interpretation than a Nolan chart.

Edited January 10, 2012 by Lester Weevils

[kieefer]

Another ray of hope....

Several conservative members of the Supreme Court criticized the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Monday for heavy-handed enforcement of rules affecting homeowners after the government told an Idaho couple they can’t challenge an order declaring their future home site a “protected wetlands.â€Justice Antonin Scalia assailed the “high-handedness†of the environmental agency when dealing with private property, and Justice Samuel Alito described some of the EPA’s actions as “outrageous,“ arguing that most people would say â€this kind of thing can’t happen in the United States.â€

Supreme Court Justices ‘Blast’ EPA for Telling Idaho Couple They Can

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Are there other tests like that?

Hi 6.8

At the bottom of the wikipedia article on the nolan chart are links to some alternates

Nolan Chart - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In addition this article discusses many multi-dimensional alternatives to Nolan, both before and after Nolan's work.

Political spectrum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

====

For reference, I think this version is close or the same as the original quiz--

Advocates for Self Government

====

Here is the page for the nolanchart.com modified test:

Nolan Chart Survey

And here is the page explaining the modifications:

Q8. What is the Nolan Chart?

The site also hosts soapbox blogs by libertarians, leftists, rightists, and even statists. Surprising that USA citizens would not only admit to being statists, but proud of it. We have plenty of statists, but hardly any will admit to the label. Ferinstance Nancy Pelosi or Bill O'Reilly would never admit that they are hard-core statists.

====

This page has a many links to nolan variations and discussion (including several dead links)--

NOLAN CHART VARIATIONS

This one is pretty interesting--

Positive & Negative Liberties in Three Dimensions

====

Perhaps the one most interesting of the set is here--

The Enhanced Precision Political Quiz...IN 2D

His modification of the test questions are pretty good.

Mr Milsted is a dissilusioned libertarian who still believes in the objective but has become convinced that the current libertarian party will never gain critical mass because, though many voters have libertarian beliefs, the libertarian party platform is too extreme and pure for most libertarian-leaning people and chases them off.

He expresses the opinion that freedoms will continue to erode at the hands of the two major parties, and the "purity" of the libertarian party facilitates that by making it impossible to elect libertarians. That it would be better to win elections and save SOME freedoms, rather than remain pure and eventually lose them all.

That line of criticism is perhaps equally applicable to "pure" conservatives and "pure" leftwing progressives.

Mr Milsted has many interesting pages on this.

The beginning entry to one series-- Start a new Political Party?

I'm not at the moment comfortable with the fellow's idea of a "winning party platform" but he has interesting ideas.

An amusing quote from this page-- The Real Sweet Spot for a New Political Party

The year was 2002 (thereabouts). The day and the city were beautiful. City-County plaza was a small collection of artistic small skyscrapers built in the 1920s. In front was a lawn, suitable for civic events. Assorted hippies lay placidly smoking their favorite herb. Before them assorted mediocre bands sang the praises of said herb. Between songs, legalization advocates took to the microphone. Such was Hempstock, Asheville, North Carolina.

Into this environ I went, voter registration forms in hand, attempting to find new Libertarians. Keep in mind that this was North Carolina, a very difficult ballot access state. The Libertarian Party was the only third party on the ballot. We were the Party of Pot. This was a pot legalization rally.

No takers.

I got plenty of people to register to vote, but none would check the “Libertarian†box. Many wanted to register as Green. When told this was not an option, they chose Unaffiliated. When asked why, they voiced concern over corporate power, concentration of wealth, and the environment.

They agreed with the LP on social issues, and on peace issues, but that was not enough. Such positioning won few hearts.

Why take the heat for being in favor of drug legalization when the druggies won’t support you? And is it politically viable to focus on the social issues in order to win the Left? Perhaps the LP slogan could be, “Yes, we favor drugs and prostitution, but at least we’re unpatriotic.â€