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Jessica Margolin, who blogs at Solvation on topics that I would broadly call “political economy” and emergent trends within the moderately liberal, techno-VC–silicon valley – futurist-“social capital”, business culture, writes in to me:

“Hi. As an educated and articulate libertarian person, could you PLEASE point me to conservative points of view that aren’t espoused by retarded ranting weirdos? I know there must be some. Help”

This cri de coeur caused me to ponder. 

Compared to my more leftwing blogfriends at ProgressiveHistorians or NewsHoggers, Margolin does not seem to me to be more than mildly liberal liberal/progressive but, she lives, if I recall, in an area not noted for a high proportion of conservative residents. If all I saw of conservatism were the bombthrowing personalities in 30 second MSM clips, I’d think the Right was composed of wingnuts too.

It isn’t, of course, any more than the Left is exclusively populated by Hugo Chavez worshipping, Cindy Sheehan clones. I think the problem in the mutual perception of respective Left-Right wingnuttery comes down to three factors:

1. Partisanship

2. Ideology

3. The Infotainment Media Business Model

Number three is the most significant factor. Bombastic clowns draw an audience. Reasoned discourse puts viewers to sleep. The media is a business, not a charity organization or even a totally one-sided political machine. Basically liberal broadcast networks will air a few conservatives who bring in ad revenue. Period. This model is a driver to propagating corrosive, demonizing, political rhetoric in the public discourse and it garners attention far beyond the actual numbers of people who genuinely support such positions

The most aggravating figures in political life are really more partisan than ideological. Something about the intrinsic one-sidedness of partisan rhetoric, I suspect.  Richard Nixon and George W. Bush were not very conservative in their policies but they were aggressive partisans. Bill and Hillary Clinton are partisan Democrats as was Jimmy Carter (the much maligned Carter enraged stalwart liberals among the House Democrats). By contrast, LBJ, Obama and Reagan are/were more ideological than partisan presidents. Eisenhower, JFK and Ford were neither sharply partisan nor ideological but epitomized pragmatic consensus politics.

Ideology is the bedrock of political conviction. Certain people though prefer purism to policy “wins” and are willing to go down with flags flying rather than compromise their principles. We can even find this praiseworthy, in retrospect; men like Barry Goldwater and Hubert Humphrey appear far more admirable in the eyes of history than the opponents who beat them for the presidency. By contrast, others appear to be a little cracked, impractical and unreasonable tilters at windmills and political ass-clowns who only injure their own party with buffoonish antics.

Returning to Jessica’s question, conservatism is a coalition and not a movement, like liberalism. There are real and important philosophical differences between factions on the Right – neocons, paleocons, libertarians, moderates and the religious right – that do not have counterparts on the Left. The Right tends to stick together based more upon what they are against than what they are for.

Here are some voices in the different conservative factions that I find to be “reasonable”, most of the time. It is an imperfect and admittedly arbitrary list composed of pundits, media personalities, philosophers, bloggers and historical figures. I do not claim to have read every word each person has ever written or that I endorse all of their views. I am using these labels very broadly ( Ayn Rand rejected the term “libertarian”, John Adams was also a radical because he was a republican revolutionary, etc.) and my familiarity with religious right figures is very weak. I did not include a category for “moderate conservatives” – something that probably describes most GOP general election voters who often do not bother to vote in the primaries.

All I am saying is that these individuals are among the better representatives of different kinds of conservatism in the Anglo-American sense of the term, the a couple of figures are probably borderline, depending where you stand.

Paleoconservatives:

Arnaud de Borchgrave, W. Pat Lang, Bernard Finel, George Will, Fabius Maximus, Milt Rosenberg, Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley, George Kennan, Robert Taft, Whittaker Chambers, Edmund Burke, John Adams

Libertarians:

Amity Shlaes, Virginia Postrel, Charles Murray, Thomas Sowell, Stephen Chapman,  Ayn Rand,  Milton Friedman, Friedrich von Hayek,  Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises, Barry Goldwater,  Thomas Jefferson, Tom Paine

Neoconservatives:

Max Boot, Fred Kagan, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Richard Pipes, Donald Kagan, David Horowitz, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Irving Kristol, Constantine Menges, William J. Bennett, William Kristol

The Religious Right:

Cal Thomas,  Richard John Neuhaus, Dinesh D’Souza, Reinhold Niebuhr

Comments, criticism, complaints, suggestions. Open fire in the comments…..

ADDENDUM:

By acclamation from the learned gents in the comments section, 20th century American political theorist James Burnham and 19th century French philosopher Frederic Bastiat, are officially added to the list.

I have not read either, though I’ve seen Bastiat frequently quoted by libertarian writers. Joseph Fouche of The Committe of Public Safety blog did an excellent series on Burnham which you can access here.

schmedlap – “Schmedlap” is often seen commenting at SWJ Blog, the SWC, Abu Muqawama and other defense blogs

Phronesisiacal Cheryl “CKR” Rofer’s new blog home (she split from Whilrledview).

Novelist Steven Pressfield invited me to do a guest-post at his new blog giving my take on the polarized debate regarding his high profile, vblogging, presentation on tribalism. Here is a small snippet:

The Learning Curve

….There was enthusiastic praise for ‘Tribes”, naturally, but the criticism was equally as strong because Pressfield’s theme of tribalism as a general explanatory model is a powerfully attractive one. Too attractive, in the view of subject matter experts (SME) who drill down to a very granular level of detail and see all of the particularistic caveats or limitations of tribalism that exist in a given society. Tribalism among the ancient Gauls was not a carbon copy of 21^st century Afghanistan, the artificial kinship network of the Yakuza or Shaka Zulu’s Impi formations. Yet, some similarities or congruencies remain even among such historically diverse examples because a tribe is a durable social network. In terms of resilience, a tribe may be the most adaptive and secure social structure of all.

Read the rest here.

RESPONSE to NATHAN of REGISTAN:

Nathan Hamm, the founder of Registan.net asked some critical questions of me at It’s the Tribes Stupid! and for whatever reason, I have tried multiple times to post a reply and my comment does not appear. Therefore, I emailed it to Nathan and I am replying here so those interested in following the discussion can see it. My apologies for the inconvenience. Here’s the reply, Nathan’s questions are in bold text:

Hi Nathan,

Alexander’s armies had quite a few Persians…..but they were probably shiny, moreso than the Macedonians toward the end.

Good to have you here. For Steve’s readers who may not be familiar with Mr. Hamm or Registan, Nathan has been an important voice on Central Asian affairs in the blogosphere for years on a number of respected regional sites and has extensive experience living in the region.
Let me try to address your concerns in reverse order:

“Mark, so what? This is a huge pet peeve of mine. I know I fall into that category, but from where I sit, I see neither interest nor inclination to engage or respond to these criticisms”.

The latter statement has to be addressed by Steven Pressfield rather than me. On the other part, as a learning aspect, when SME are writing to the uninitiated, there’s often a too large assumption about what the laymen know and a tendency to bring an overloading amount of complexity to the discussion. I am guilty of this myself at times when teaching or writing about my research interests. Pressfield is probably not writing for a typical reader at Registan but his readers may become interested enough in Afghanistan or tribalism that they may start reading articles, books and sites like yours as a result. Where you see a static end-state, I see a gateway or a hook.

“Coincidentally, some colleagues and I were recently trying to turn up academics who specialize in Afghanistan who say that tribe is the critical or even very useful factor for understanding how Afghan society organizes and behaves”

Richard Tapper has written on the negotiation of identity, with one of the major components being “qaum”, which if I recall has (or can have) a loose “tribal” meaning. I’m not qualified to rate experts in your field Nathan, but Nojumi describes the Parcham-Khalq Communists in Kabul thinking the tribes were important enough to warrant sending out the meddling Marxist officials to their villages ( incidentally, the Soviet advisers had cautioned the Taraki regime against it). Flipping through Ewans’ Afghanistan: A Short history, the tribes are present as at least a background political factor from Ahmed Shah Durrani to the fall of the Taliban. Here’s an analysis of warlordism and tribes in Afghanistan by Antonio Giustozzi and Noor Ullah (2006):

http://66.102.1.104/scholar?q=cache:_-hFB7AFp5gJ:scholar.google.com/&hl=en

I suppose point in the argument hinges on what you mean by “critical” or “useful”. That Afghanistan (or any society) is far more complex than one variable, is something I’ll agree with but for an “unimportant” factor, tribal structures in Afghanistan seem to enjoy considerable longevity.

“If we say in COIN theory that we should know the population, we shouldn’t stop halfway with a nice theory that doesn’t have sufficient predictive or explanatory power because of an aversion to academic particularism”

First I am not suggesting we stop halfway. I think that you and Josh fear that will happen with some readers. It will happen with some of them, you’re right. I’m more interested in those readers who are inspired to go further and keep learning.

I think also, on a methodological point regarding Social Science. “Predictive” is a high bar more suitable for hard science that can have appropriate experimental controls. For SS, I’d use “descriptive”, “speculative” and perhaps at best “probabilistic” analysis.

“At best, I understand this to be a descriptive model, and one that is hopelessly broad…and that “tribe” probably describes informal networks all humans create to deal with insecurity and uncertainty and that there is probably an inverse relationship between security in society outside the netowrk and the strength of bonds in these networks”

Tribes are a type of network structure and they can be artificial (social, legal, political) as well as being based on lineage. Most historical lineage tribes had provisions for adopting new members who were unrelated by means other than marriage ( though that was the most convenient device). Within sufficiently large tribes you can have both weak and strong ties or even other kinds of network structures present ( modular, hierarchy, scale-free etc). Network analysis is a useful tool for examining how people seek security and advantage within a group.

Being a long time advocate of horizontal thinking, I like broad comparisons and recognition of patterns and congruencies. They give us data that compartmentalizing, isolating and drilling down often does not ( those are useful tools as well. Granularity is a good thing -it is just not the only thing).

RESPONSE to JOSH FOUST of REGISTAN:

Hi Josh,

Regarding Tapper, in my view, he seems to be very interested in the construction and negotiation of identity and critical of how previous generations of scholars categorized peoples in ethnographic studies. I believe you that he wrote tribes were not important in understanding Afghanistan because his analysis of identity in Afghanistan used three categories including sect and “qaum” sort of a familial/traditional designation which are understood in a fluid sense. Well, ok but for a guy who dismisses tribalism as a variable, the existence of tribes seems to run through Tapper’s academic work on Afghanistan and Iran. Which makes me wonder if Tapper’s framing of identity and downgrading of the tribe is not in part an intellectual reaction to what is and is not acceptable in the modern academic culture of his field? If they are unimportant, why have the tribes of Afghanistan not faded into historical memory? Endurance as a social structure is incompatible with arguing that they do not matter in terms of identity – they seem to matter to some Afghans or they would have all gladly joined the Communist Party or become urban bourgeoisie or cab drivers or emigres or whatever.

Regarding tribal identity being only one part of a whole identity though, I agree with you on that. The level of nuances are often complex with people who move between traditional and modern roles as many Afghans do. However, jumping into that sort of high level complexity and minute detail right off of the bat is a sure-fire guarantee to go over the heads of most people approaching the subject for the first time and makes it probable that they may never come back to the subject a second time. A basic category, be it ethnicity, tribe, language or religion is a good starting point for a novice. Not a stopping point but a place to begin

Steven Pressfield responds at It’s the Tribes, Stupid to Fabius Maximus, Michael Yon and….me!

What I Would Say Differently If I Were Saying It Again

“Good” Tribalism and “Bad” Tribalism

I would define “bad” tribalism as that practiced by the Taliban and al-Qaeda. I know, I know . . . critics will say that both those groups are pan-Islamic, ideology-driven, supra-national, propelled more by Salafism and Deobandism than pure tribalism. I would not argue with that.

But if we probe beneath the surface, we recognize virulent tribalism at the heart of the belief systems of both the Taliban and al-Qaeda. I would cite the following “bad” tribal characteristics: hostility to all outsiders; perpetual warfare; codes of silence; duplicity and bad faith in all negotiations with non-insiders; suppression of women; intolerance of dissent; a fierce, patriarchal code of warrior honor; a ready and even eager willingness to give up one’s life for the group; super-conservatism, politically and culturally; reverence for the past and, in fact, a desire to return to the past.

Defined in relation to its opposites, “bad” tribalism takes its stand against everything open, inclusive, modern, progressive, secular, individualistic, Western, female-empowering.

What about “good” tribalism? “Good” tribalism is the ancient, proud, communal system of family- and clan-based local governance that has been practiced in Afghanistan and many parts of Central Asia for millennia. Tribal jirgas resolve disputes and give a voice to all members; tribal militias protect the land and the people. “Good” tribalism wants to be left alone to live its own life. In a way it’s democracy in its purest and most natural “town hall” form. It has worked for thousands of years and it’s working today….

Read the rest here.

Both good but entirely unrelated.

Tom Barnett belts on out of the park at Esquire magazine:

What the Hell Is Really Going Down in Honduras?

….The primary charge was treason relating to Zelaya’s stubborn effort to mobilize popular support, through a non-binding poll, for a constitutional assembly. But the underlying suspicion was that the lame-duck and deeply unpopular (as in, sub-30-percent approval ratings) president was plotting to extend his personal rule with the strong encouragement of his new “oil daddy,” Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez, whose well-established blueprint has worked with political protégés elsewhere (e.g., Bolivia’s Evo Morales, Ecuador’s Rafael Correa).

Essentially, this Chavez scenario was a Pandora’s box that Honduras’s political elite refused to open. Why? Because after too many decades of nasty military dictatorship, Honduras, while still quite poor, had managed seven straight civilian transitions thanks to its 1982 constitution. So the Honduran legislature, which had previously ordered Zelaya’s arrest (but not his deportation), promptly voted him out of office and – following the constitution – selected its ranking member, Speaker Roberto Micheletti, as the interim president. Two key points to remember here: Martial law was never instituted, and the national elections, slated for November, are still a go. In effect, Zelaya’s removal from power was an impeachment without trial – a classic rush job that denied him his day in court even as he had already lost his battle with the country’s supreme court and displayed overt contempt for its rulings on his proposed poll.

From the Honduran military’s point of view, their actions broke no law, and since the military never assumed power, calling these events a “military coup” is completely misleading. From America’s point of view, it seems clear enough that Chavez-style politics has its limits, so overreactions are to be avoided. But from a national-security perspective, when your own Drug Enforcement Agency is telling you (as a Bush official did a year ago) that Chavez has become a “major facilitator” of the flow of Colombian cocaine to America, and when there are credible reports that Honduras, under Zelaya, has joined that network as a trans-shipment waypoint, there definitely needs to be some limits to your diplomatic efforts to reinstate this suddenly revered “pillar of democracy.”

I am in full agreement with Tom here about Mel Zelaya, who is the Rod Blagojevich of Latin America as well as a supplicating client of Hugo Chavez. The Obama administration, with the thrust coming from the State Department, has been too supportive of Zelaya’s outrageous behavior in an effort to avoid giving the Latin American left room to blame America for Zelaya’s removal. Now that moment has passed, it is time to distance the US from Zelaya and let him twist in the wind as OAS encouraged negotiations with the legitimate interim government in Honduras drag out for weeks or months

Chris Albon at War & Health has an excellent book review of Before My Helpless Sight (The History of Medicine in Context) by Leo van Bergen:

Leo van Bergen’s book, Before My Helpless Sight, is a history of suffering in World War I, a description the author readily admits: “At the roots of the book lies the question of what can happen to a soldier between the moment he steps onto a train or ship bound for the theatre of battle an the point at which he is evacuated wounded, or whether dead or alive, buried in the ground” (pg. 1). Needless to say, the book is not a light read.

….Van Bergen cannot be criticized on methodology. The book is impressively well researched (and cited), including qualitative and quantitative sources in numerous languages. Apart from the organization of the book itself, you see very little of the author in the pages. Readers are bounced from anecdotal accounts to descriptive statistics with little commentary or fanfare. This is not necessarily a negative, the sources speak for themselves. Their sheer, horrifying weight is ample to progress the book forward.

….However, in the light of the book’s contribution these issues are quickly forgotten. Before My Helpless Sight is a powerful counter to the innumerable discourses on WWI tactics and strategy. Van Bergen pulls back the curtains of glorious offensives and magnanimous generals, revealing the grim, muddy reality of life on the Western Front. It is a story of pus, rats, hunger, dirt, disease and madness. You do not know World War I before reading this book.

More and more, as passing time gives historians greater perspective, the Great War appears as a civilizational turning point for the West on the broad spectrum of human activity. WWI produced, really for the first time, a significant number of horrifyingly disfigured and maimed survivors, who would have perished from their wounds in, say, the Civil War or the Napleonic Wars. John Keegan writes, in his The First World War how postwar European governments resorted to segregating these most unfortunate of war invalids away from the eye of their publics and being at a loss how to deal with those soldiers  mentally shattered by “shell shock”, what we now recognize as PTSD.

Modern war as an industrial, mass-synchronized, 2GW meat grinder was so awful that the West turned to all kinds of stratagems to avoid a repeat of the Western Front – from political pacifism, isolationism and maginot lines to political revolution, blitzkrieg  tactics and technological innovations like the tank or airplane. None of them were a complete answer to the horrors born in 1914.