Whatever else one wants to say about the "family values" wing of the right-wing movement, the absolute last thing that it is is a principled, apolitical movement. And -- as the starkly different treatment for Craig and Vitter conclusively demonstrates -- these vaunted "moral principles," for which we are all supposed to show such profound respect, are invoked only when there is no political cost to invoking them, and worse, typically only when there is political benefit in doing so.
Social conservative Ross Douthat, in a Bloggingheads TV session from yesterday, explained this important (though almost always overlooked) dynamic perfectly in the context of discussing Larry Craig:
The reason that gay rights became a political issue in a way that various other frankly more important issues having to do with marriage and family life did not -- particularly issues about divorce and heterosexual divorce rates and single parenthood -- is that, clearly, it is easier to demonize gay people. And it is much more of an electoral winner.
Obviously, I think the broader conservative concern about family values in American life is correct. I think the way it has manifested itself in our political life is that nobody wants to be the guy out there telling people -- hey, you know, your heterosexual marriage or your out-of-wedlock children are the problem. It's much easier to say -- here is this particular manifestation that you can easily set aside and say I'm not gay.
The only kind of "morality" that this movement knows or embraces is politically exploitative, cost-free morality. That is why the national Republican Party rails endlessly against homosexuality and is virtually mute about divorce and adultery: because anti-gay moralism costs virtually all of its supporters nothing (since that is a moral prohibition that does not constrain them), while heterosexual moral deviations -- from divorce to adultery to sex outside of marriage -- are rampant among the Values Voters faithful and thus removed from the realm of condemnation. Hence we have scads of people sitting around opposing same-sex marriage because of their professed belief in "Traditional Marriage" while their "third husbands" and multiple step-children and live-in girlfriends sit next to them on the couch.
It's fairly blistering, and I think he's right on the mark.
This does, of course, have bearing on the same-sex marriage issue, and perhaps provides a motivation for those religioius nuts who are out forging signatures on their petitions. Keep it in mind as that discussion goes on.
Dale Carpenter has a slightly different take at Volokh Conspiracy. It's a very humane post, but I think he's missing a point. He prefers not to call the Republican position "hypocrisy," but then winds up with this statement:
The only practical way out of this for the GOP is to come to the point where its homosexuals no longer feel the need to hide. And that won’t happen until the party’s public philosophy is more closely aligned with its private one. That will be the day when the GOP greets its gay supporters the way Larry Craig, with unintended irony, greeted reporters yesterday at his news conference: “Thank you all very much for coming out today.”
If you're practicing one thing and preaching another, that's hypocrisy, right?
Update:
It's not just sexual hypocrisy, either. Hypocrisy, from all appearances, is the foundation of the modern Republican party and the modern conservative movement. A number of commentators call it “projection,” which isn’t all that different -- I think it’s being done deliberately, and is an outgrowth of Reaganspeak: if you say it often enough, it’s true. It’s also a variation on what I’ve said for many years: if you want to know what a neo-theo-corpocon is doing, listen to what he’s saying while he’s pointing at someone else. Dave Neiwert, who keeps an eye on such things, has an excellent look at the depths to which the right will, and regularly does, sink in this country:
Conservatives are increasingly depicting those opposed to the Iraq war -- including, it must be noted, many hundreds of thousands of family members of the soldiers who are being sent over to sacrifice life and limb on the altar of George Bush's catastrophic incompetence -- as the "enemy," as traitors in a global struggle who must be defeated at home by political or any other necessary means. Those means include, evidently, being told by public figures that their leaders deserve to suck on a machine gun.
Nugent, perhaps unwittingly, has provided the conservative movement with its own "Go Cheney Yourself" moment -- the moment when it openly chooses to embrace the ugliest facet of the national discourse. It's the moment when all of its handwringing and finger-pointing about "civility" and the supposed ugliness of liberal rhetoric is exposed, finally, for the empty and cynical ploy that it is.
And when, inevitably, some right-wing nutcase decides to empty a gun in the direction of a liberal candidate because Ted Nugent thought it was a great idea and Sean Hannity did too ... well, expect them, somehow, to find a way to blame liberals for it. Because all that really matters to them is winning their war.
Conservatives and the word "enemy" is a key concept, I think -- gay men and lesbians are the enemies of marriage, people who object to the Bush administration stripping our Constitution of any meaning are the enemies of freedom, anyone who disagrees with them is the enemy of our nation. Nor is there ever a third answer -- it's either black or white, you either want to jail gays or put them in charge of the schools (which, given that over 98% of child molesters are straight, might be best, but that smacks too much of reality), you either want to bomb Muslims into oblivion or hand over the country to them. I don't think we're talking necessarily about ignorance (although I do think that the leaders of this movement are banking on ignorance to keep their supporters forking over bucks), but about the determination to create a reality -- and that's quite deliberate, as past comments by Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove readiliy attest. There's an element of denial implicit in this attitude that verges on the pathological, and the hypocrisy involved should be self-evident.
And, now that I think of it, it's the same sort of denial of reality -- the world as what I want it to be -- that underlies the repeated calls by Dan Blatt and others for plebiscites on fundamental rights (although Blatt lately is backing away from that one). Once again, class: the people have never in this country had unlimited sovereignty. To call the death by inaction of the Massachusetts constitutional amendment an "abrogation of voters' rights" is somewhat past the bounds of ludicrous -- it simply denies the realities of American jurisprudence and the American political process.
No comments:
Post a Comment