Confronting the Culture of Contempt

This evening I'll be giving a talk at my church entitled, "Beyond Partisanship: How to Talk Politics With People You Disagree With, and Why It Matters."

The structure of the presentation is actually the reverse: I deal first with "why it matters," drawing heavily on my presentation "The Democracy That Broke, a link to which is in the comments); and then the "how to" part, which follows a recent book by Arthur C. Brooks, entitled Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from a Culture of Contempt.

Brooks is an evangelical Christian and political conservative who until recently was president of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. Recently he gained an unwelcome moment in the spotlight when he gave the keynote address at the recent National Prayer Breakfast, which called upon the audience to push back against the toxic political climate--only to have President Trump follow him to the dais, tell Brooks he disagreed with him, and proceed to savagely attack a number of political enemies.

It is contempt--a combination of anger and disgust--that Brooks regards as the essence of today's toxic political culture of hyper partisanship.

At the end of the book he offers “Five Rules to Subvert the Culture of Contempt.”

Rule 1. Stand Up to the Man. Refuse to be used by the powerful.

Brooks writes, “Many people don’t believe they are being used by others. Why not? Think for a second about a manipulative leader—someone you know of who really uses people’s hatred for his or her own goals of money, power, or fame. Got the image in your head?

“Well, guess what. You have the wrong image, because that’s someone you dislike….. The right image of a powerful manipulator is someone on your side of the bubble.”

As an example appropriate to this evening's very liberal audience the PowerPoint slide for Rule 1 features MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, who earns $7 million annually as a news anchor at MSNBC and has an estimated net worth of $20 million. She’s very good at her job, The Rachel Maddow Show has a viewership of 3 million, about the same as The Sean Hannity Show on Fox.

Those viewers don’t tune in to have their political opinions challenged. Instead Maddow, in her cheery way, assures them that they are right and that Republicans are corrupt and hypocritical and her attitude is basically one of contempt. It’s not as brazen as that of, say, Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh, or Laura Ingraham, but it’s there. You don’t notice it because you’re experiencing that same sense of contempt, which feels like righteous indignation.

Rule 2. Escape the bubble. Go where you’re not invited, and say things people don’t expect.

For this one I discuss my encounters with my fellow members at the local Moose Lodge, most of whom are Republicans and many of whom I would characterize as Trump supporters who constitute his base. Although I was certainly invited, as a liberal professor I wasn't really expected to accept, and I don't so much say things people don't expect as model respect for them as people. I listen to their views, with the objective of understanding them rather than persuading them, while at the same time maintaining my own political opinions.

Rule 3. Say no to contempt. Treat others with love and respect, even when it’s difficult.

I illustrate this rule with a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi.

My notes for the slide read: This approach depends upon principled self-discipline--a relentless recognition of the humanity of the other person and respect for their story, without retreating from your own convictions but without condemnation of the other person’s convictions—even when they cannot themselves refrain from a belligerent, judgmental, rejecting response.

Richard Attenborough’s 1982 biopic about Mahatma Gandhi includes a scene that neatly encapsulates his basic philosophy about how to handle conflict with others. He and a clergyman named Charlie are walking down a street and find themselves heading straight toward a group of young toughs who begin to sneer and appear willing to get violent.

Charlie suggests it may be best to retreat from the looming confrontation and begins to turn away.

Gandhi restrains him and shakes his head.

GANDHI: Doesn't the New Testament say, "If your enemy strikes you on the right cheek, offer him the left?"

He starts to move forward. Charlie hesitates, then follows nervously, more nervous for Gandhi than himself.

CHARLIE: I think perhaps the phrase was used metaphorically . . . I don't think our Lord meant –

They are getting closer. The youths laughing, whispering.

GANDHI: I'm not so certain. I have thought about it a great deal. I suspect he meant you must show courage – be willing to take a blow – several blows – to show you will not strike back – nor will you be turned aside . . . And when –

One youth has flicked his cigarette – hard. It lands at Gandhi's feet. He pauses, looking at the youth.

GANDHI: . . . and when you do that it calls upon something in human nature – something that makes his hate for you diminish and his respect increase. I think Christ grasped that and I – I have seen it work.

At that point the mother of one of the toughs appears. There's no note of apology in her cold stare at Gandhi, but she clearly believes her son should not be doing what he is doing, and her presence de-escalates the situation. Gandhi walks past the chastened tough and says courteously, “You’ll find there’s room for us both.”

Rule 4. Disagree better. Be part of a healthy competition of ideas.

I illustrate this rule with the cover of a children's book entitled "The Living JFK," which I read at age. The example I use is the technique of sharing political autobiographies, which I've written about elsewhere, and a link to this essay is also in the comments.

Rule 5. Tune out. Disconnect more from the unproductive debates.

For this one I just use one of my favorite memes: "Tired of angry political posts clogging your [Facebook] feed? Here is a trunk full of puppies."

I'll be curious to see how this goes over. But in any event, it's just the first in a series of events I'll organize and execute in the weeks ahead.

How to Really Make America Great Again

On September 16, 2017, Hawk Newsome and a group of protesters from Black Lives Matter of Greater New York arrived on the National Mall to confront a group of Trump supporters gathered for what was billed as “The Mother of All Rallies.” A predictable flurry of yelling and catcalls ensued. Then Tommy Hodges, organizer of the Trump rally, invited Newsome to take the stage for two minutes. “Whether they disagree or agree with your message is irrelevant,” Hodges told Newsome. “It’s the fact that you have the right to have the message.”

What happened next was remarkable. Watch.

Wide Eyed

As I have begun to reflect long and hard on our political culture, it has become increasingly obvious that its central characteristic is the annihilation, metaphorically speaking, of human beings.

We are daily urged to deny that people who disagree with us are still people. Instead we are urged to see them—and I don’t think I am putting this too strongly—as demons. And we do. Look at Mitch McConnell, if you're a Democrat; or Nancy Pelosi if you're a Republican, and tell me I'm wrong.

My faith tells me that we are created in the image of God. That’s a remarkable way to conceptualize our relationship with the Divine. Yet even those of us who should know better and who, if we paused for a moment’s reflection, *would* know better--employ and even delight in a rhetoric that inveigles us to invert that conceptualization, so that far from seeing in a political opponent the image of God, we see instead the image of Beelzebub.

Listen, then, to evangelical Christian artist Nichole Nordeman's song, “Wide Eyed," which eloquently conveys the stakes involved when we selectively forget that others are also created in the image of God.

Struggle for Peace

I had supposed I’d discuss William F. Buckley, Jr., today, but although the OSU library has sent me the standard bio of Buckley and a volume of his interviews, I still don’t have his first book, God and Man at Yale, which vaulted him immediately into the front rank of movement conservatism in the 1950s. I want to read that for myself before I continue.

So I find myself temporarily on hold. Which gives me a chance to discuss the proposed main title for this evolving book: “Struggle for Peace.”

When I first decided to fashion these blog posts into a book, its title came to me spontaneously. It took me a couple of days to puzzle out what it actually meant. “Struggle” is obvious: it will take a tremendous effort to end this epidemic of divisiveness, much of it quite deliberately created and maintained. But the goal—“Peace”—what did that actually mean?

I decided that it was like the peace that prevails in a healthy family. Conflict arises, sometimes quite serious and hard to solve, but it occurs in the context of love and fundamental respect for each family member, as well as the necessary skill set to resolve conflict constructively and a commitment to adhere to that goal— constructive engagement with the conflict and a determination to resolve it in a mutually respectful way, one that does not rend the fabric of the family. Such a family may be said to be at peace, no matter the challenges it must inevitably face.

Transferring this model to political culture, it involves a turning away from the demonization of political opponents and a determination not to resolve problems; that ideological purity is instead the overriding concern. In this toxic culture, mutual respect is absent, consciously replaced with mockery, scorn, habitual imputation of the worst motives to the other side, dismissal of basic comity in legislative relationships. Efforts at bipartisanship are interpreted as betrayal.

A family whose internal dynamic followed a pattern even remotely like this would yield nothing but hurt, rage, and alienation. And it would frame the basic world view of family members, extending it to life in general: that no one can be trusted, that cries for help will be met with scorn and rejection, that even basic questions will be dismissed as invalid, as inappropriate even to dare to ask them, that rage is the only response to the inevitable conflicts that arise in in life. It is, quite simply, a world view that Is a self-imposed hell.

And it is a dynamic that tumbles down from generation to generation, like a pursuing wraith—until someone finds the wisdom and strength to turn and face this dynamic, see it for what it is, take a stand against it, refuse to replicate it in one’s own family. Such a person will save the generations that follow. These persons may themselves be forgotten, but their legacy will endure. They will have, by whatever unlikely chance or perhaps with the aid of a loving, divine power that reaches out to help, discovered peace, creating families that are also at peace, in the sense that I have described.

And occasionally, albeit very occasionally, I have seen such heroes, so I know that such outcomes are possible. They struggle for peace, and they achieve it.

There are people—more people than one might suppose—already engaged in such activity in the public sphere, who reject the toxic political culture and are devising practical ways to combat it. If they succeed, they will save the republic. If they fail, we are truly lost, for this toxic culture will also tumble down from generation to generation, chasing us down the years, driving us to the same fate as so many republics, so many democracies.

Uncovering the First Wave of Conservative Media - Part 4

It is July 1988. A 37-year old radio talk show host, rising fast but still known only regionally, leaves KBFK in Sacramento and moves to Manhattan, where he makes his inaugural broadcast on WABC. He does so under a deal that has him do a daily local program, essentially for free. In exchange, the ABC Radio Network has agreed to air a second, national program each day on its affiliates. Within a month, fifty-six stations are broadcasting the national show to an audience estimated at 250,000.

After two decades in the radio business, Rush Limbaugh has hit the big time.

By 1990 the national audience numbers 20 million. “New York Times Magazine” runs a profile on him. So does “Vanity Fair.” So, for that matter, does “Cigar Aficionado,” with a piece written by a reporter for the New York Times. Ted Koppel, the well-known host of ABC’s “Nightline,” brings him on the show, telling viewers, “There is absolutely no one and nothing else out there like him, anywhere on the political spectrum.”

There’s just one problem: among the media elite Limbaugh is a pariah. “You have no earthly idea how detested and hated I am,” he tells New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who knows exactly how detested and hated Limbaugh is. “I’m not even a good circus act for the liberals in this town,” he continues, seemingly oblivious to the fact that just possibly the liberals in town are not enthusiastic about his ceaseless attacks upon liberals.

In my lifetime I’ve seen my share of mavericks who thumb their nose at convention, and then are genuinely puzzled to reap the consequences a maverick ought properly to expect.

But his situation is by no means all bad. Barely a month after he begins his national show, Limbaugh receives an invitation to a reception hosted by Wall Street investor and conservative benefactor Lewis Lehrman. Lehrman’s splendid salon contains a harpsichord, seated at which is a figure Limbaugh recognizes at once: 62-year old William F. Buckley, Jr., a Renaissance man who is a gifted musician, world-class sailor, expert skier, and, once upon a time, formidable amateur boxer. Not to mention a novelist who writes spy fiction inspired by his days as a CIA operative in Latin America, as well as a one-time candidate for mayor of New York (a quixotic effort he recounts in one of the 55 books he will write over the span of his 82 years).

Buckley also happens to be the most famous conservative in the country, mainly because he is the host of “Firing Line,” aired on PBS and well on its way to becoming the longest running public affairs show in television history, boasting 1,504 shows over 33 years.

Limbaugh is thrilled to discover that Buckley is one of his listeners, flattered when Buckley pours him a drink, and utterly bewildered when Buckley holds forth with a group of editors about whether James Joyce’s “Ulysses” could still find a publisher in the present cultural climate. But overall, Buckley lavishes attention upon Limbaugh. What are his thoughts on politics, the secrets to his broadcasting success, his aspirations for the future? It is heady stuff, and years later Limbaugh will still shake his head in wonder. “It was one of the most memorable nights of my life . . . that night I was made to feel welcome in the conservative movement as started by its leader.”

Buckley is everything Limbaugh is not: poised, patrician, and able to articulate the conservative world view in a way that is compelling rather than off-putting. And yet Buckley becomes Limbaugh’s patron, introducing him to such luminaries as Henry Kissinger, Norman Podhoretz, and Richard Brookhiser. In the mid-1990s Limbaugh will host Buckley at his own home. They will smoke cigars and sip brandy and presently Limbaugh will raise his snifter in a heart-felt, almost worshipful gesture, saying, “You know, my father passed away in 1990, but you make me think my dad’s still alive here with me.”

But what is Buckley’s story? That will be the focus of my next post.

Uncovering the First Wave of Conservative Media - Part 3

The other main players in the modern conservative movement emerged at about the same time, embodied the same alienation from mainstream politics, and had the same mission: to restore genuine conservatism to the Republican Party.

At this distance it may be hard to recall how similar the Republican and Democratic parties once were. Both were in broad agreement on numerous issues: anti-Communism (though not nearly enough for the taste of purists), acceptance of the “guarantor state” created by the New Deal, and a foreign policy built around military containment. Each included conservative, moderate, and liberal politicians, and their differences focused on how best to operationalize a common centrist agenda rather than to stake out distinctive ideological positions. Their relations in Congress were marked by what now seems a golden age of comity.

This so-called Establishment was overwhelmingly white and male, and it excluded a huge number of Americans, particularly women and African Americans, who spent the 1960’s in a determined bid to breach the edifice. But to conservatives like Clarence Manion the exclusion of women and Blacks was more or less as it should be. What drove them up a wall was their own exclusion from the halls of real political power—indeed, their status as near pariahs.

Aside from Manion, two figures stand out as founders of the first wave of conservative media: Henry Regnery and William F. Buckley, Jr. We’ll take Regnery first.

The life of Henry Regnery (1912-1996) followed a trajectory similar to that of Manion. Like Manion, he was well educated—Manion had a law degree from Notre Dame, Regnery had a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Harvard—and like Manion he was initially a Democrat and a fan of the New Deal. But he too became disillusioned with the New Deal, broke with the FDR Administration over its interventionist foreign policy, and joined the America First Committee. The US entry into World War II destroyed America First but failed to alter Regnery’s evolving conservatism and his growing suspicion that liberal elites molded public opinion and that an alternative voice was urgently needed. In 1944, therefore, Regnery co-founded “Human Events,” a newspaper—which still survives online and is staunchly pro-Trump—that took its name from the first clause of the Declaration of Independence: “When in the course of human events…” It was a way of reclaiming, as Manion would do, the mantle of “true Americanism.”

Then in 1947 Regnery founded Regnery Publishing (which also still survives), as a means of combating “the reigning intellectual orthodoxy.” It put out a steady stream of conservative works, the first of which critiqued Allied treatment of Germany and the emerging postwar order. They didn’t sell well but Regnery didn’t care. His goal was not to reach a mass market but rather to influence opinion makers. He nonetheless published a surprise hit by a brilliant young intellectual, William F. Buckley, Jr. (1925-2008). Entitled “God and Man at Yale” (1951), it was not exactly a best seller, but it did achieve exactly the kind of impact that Regnery had in mind when he created Regnery Publishing—and if movement conservatism has a founding text, it is “God and Man at Yale.”

I’ll deal with Buckley next time.

Uncovering the First Wave of Conservative Media - Part 2

Hemmer’s book, “Messengers of the Right” (2016) casts a much wider net than her dissertation, focusing on a number of other major figures who shaped the first wave of conservative media. These are interwoven in the book. But let’s stick for the moment with Clarence Manion.

Manion (1896-1979) came from a Democratic family and remained comfortably within that allegiance until midway through the New Deal, when he found his ambitions for political office thwarted. He shifted from a proponent of the New Deal to critic. But his real departure from the Roosevelt camp came with his opposition to FDR’s policy of intervention in the looming Second World War. Manion joined the America First Committee—and incidentally became Dean of the University of Notre Dame Law School, a post he held from 1941 to 1952 and attempted to transform into something of an enclave for conservative thought.

Although the attack on Pearl Harbor crushed the America First movement, in the immediate postwar era Manion became a vocal critic of the United Nations and the numerous collective security agreements (NATO, for instance) that operationalized the Truman Administration’s Containment policy. Manion objected to the expansion of government that characterized the emerging national security state, disdained the effort to make the United States a world policeman, and advocated for a return to what he regarded as America’s traditions of godly morality, individual liberty, and limited government—a constellation of values he identified as “Americanism.”

Manion set forth these views in “The Key to Peace: A Formulation for the Perpetuation of Real Americanism” (1950), the first of his several books and one that struck a chord with many Americans—enough to make it a best-seller and give him the fame and influence he had so long craved. Manion embarked on an extended speaking tour, which proved so successful he resigned his post as law school dean to devote himself full-time to political activism. Nominally still a Democrat, he backed Ohio’s Senator Robert Taft—“Mr. Republican”—for the 1952 GOP presidential nomination. Eisenhower got the nod instead, and won the election, upon which he appointed Manion head of the “Commission on Intergovernmental Relations,” which was essentially Ike’s way of placating his political right flank. But Manion alienated Eisenhower with his support for another Ohio Senator, John Bricker, a prominent critic of Ike’s foreign policy. In 1954 Eisenhower forced Manion to resign.

By this time Manion was disillusioned with both political parties and consequently the political mainstream. As a way to champion his creed of “Americanism” he created the Manion Forum of Opinion, which went live on 29 radio stations in October 1954. Too controversial to attract business advertisers, Manion’s weekly show—each consisting of 15-minute speeches—depended instead on some 400 fellow true believers to sponsor it. The technique worked. Hemmer notes that the show remained on the air for 25 years, racking up nearly 1,300 broadcasts in all. The show provided a platform for a number of conservative activists, of whom the best known today was William F. Buckley, Jr.

Almost 60 when he launched the Forum, Manion lived to age 83, becoming in effect the elder statesman of movement conservatism. But he was far from the only such figure. My next post will consider some of the others.

Uncovering the First Wave of Conservative Media - Part 1

About a month ago I began a series on the early rise of conservative media with a post entitled “A Father, A Daughter, and Politics.” I’m afraid I didn’t get beyond that initial post, and although you can find a link to it here, for the sake of convenience I’m going to reprint much of it below.

***

It is a warm June day in 2004 and a youthful Nicole Hemmer—Niki to her friends—is on a pleasant car trip—pleasant because seated at the wheel of the car is her father, with whom she shares an affectionate relationship. Niki is old enough to have left the nest, and so the moment is made even more pleasant because it is taking place during her annual visit home.

Seemingly out of nowhere, Niki’s father announces: “My project this summer is to get you to vote for George Bush.”

Well, scarcely out of nowhere to Niki, because a prominent feature of the relationship with her father are frequent, earnest, but loving exchanges about politics. Her father is staunchly conservative. Once upon a time Niki had shared his conservatism, but over the years she had slowly shifted to the left, while her father had done just the opposite.

“The divergence of [political] opinion ended up drawing us closer together,” Niki would later observe. “Political debate became the secret language of our relationship, the way we conveyed love, respect, disagreement, and admiration. So there was nothing extraordinary about an afternoon spent debating politics.”

Nothing extraordinary, that is, except that on this particular afternoon, as the bland Indiana countryside rolled by, her father did something that would embark Nicole upon a years-long intellectual journey:

He turned on the radio.

***
That flip of the knob carried Niki and her father to one of the local AM conservative talk radio stations. For the rest of the summer, whenever they traveled together, they listened regularly to “The Rush Limbaugh Show” and “The Sean Hannity Show.”

“I found it both grating and captivating,” Niki recalls, “a heady mix of personality and passion and politics. During ad breaks we feasted on each segment’s arguments and insights, dissecting the surprisingly wide variety of philosophies and logics (and illogics) at play. In addition to engaging from my own adversarial perspective, I observed my dad’s response as a sympathetic listener. He absorbed some arguments, rejected others, and refashioned still others to fit with his life experiences. This dynamic interplay confounded the common stereotype of talk-radio listeners as sponges soaking up the host’s message. It was compelling stuff. And while it didn’t change my vote, it did change my life—and led to the book you are reading now.”

That book is “Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics,” published in 2016. It’s a refinement of Niki’s PhD dissertation, done at Columbia University. From the dissertation’s acknowledgments section I can discern that Niki first grappled with the topic as a seminar paper in 2005, hard on the heels of the 2004 election, which underscores the weight of those sessions listening to El Rushbo and Sean Hannity with her father. As with all dissertation acknowledgments, it credits not just the institutions and faculty that gave her support, but also an array of family and friends. The final paragraph is poignant:

“This dissertation began with my dad and our spirited political debates. In an effort to better understand his outlook, I delved into the world of conservative media. He taught me it is possible to listen, understand, and disagree all at the same time, and convinced me that political debate is of little use absent respect for the other side’s humanity. He died before I finished this dissertation, but he never stopped shaping it. To him this work is lovingly dedicated.”

I’d like you to read that paragraph again, carefully. Yes, it’s sad that her father never saw the finished dissertation (much less the distinguished book into which it evolved), and it’s touching that she would dedicate it to him. But what stands out are the lessons he taught her:

“It is possible to listen, understand, and disagree all at the same time.”

“Political debate is of little use absent respect for the other side’s humanity.”

Those lessons are really principles to undergird the skill set required for constructive dialogue with people who disagree with us about politics, and I’m tempted to veer directly to that subject, which is close to my heart and one of my core concerns as a citizen. But I’ll discipline myself to stick with the main subject: the rise of conservative mass media, the topic with which I commenced this blog back in late October.

Nicole Hemmer—with the opening vignette out of the way, let’s refer to her professionally—began her research with the then-conventional interpretation of the rise of the modern American conservative movement. “The long accepted narrative,” she writes, “said that the modern conservative movement started with intellectuals in the 1950s, took root in organizations in the 1960s and 1970s, and won political influence in the 1980s. Only then did a powerful and influential conservative apparatus emerge, first in talk radio and then in cable news.” In other words, she assumed that when her father introduced her to Rush Limbaugh he was introducing her to the first wave of conservative mass media.

As often happens, however, the evidence soon declared otherwise. Her early research soon had her flipping through back issues of the Nation, where she encountered an article, published on May 25, 1964—early in the presidential campaign season that year—entitled “Radio Right: Hate Clubs of the Air.”

I pulled the article. Here’s the opening paragraph. It took no prisoners:

“Right wing fanatics, casting doubt on the loyalty of every President of the United States since Herbert Hoover, are pounding the American people, this election year, with an unprecedented flood of radio and television propaganda. The hate clubs of the air are spewing out a minimum of 6,600 broadcasts a week, carried by more than 1,300 radio and television stations—nearly one out of every five in the nation—in a blitz that saturates every one of the fifty states with the exception of Maine.”

The article included a map of the United States, with a dot representing each radio or television station from which a “right wing” broadcast emanated. Unsurprisingly, many of these are clustered in the South, but as a reminder that California was once upon a time not part of the Democratic blue wall, that state includes more than two dozen. Also surprising are the dozen or so stations in the Seattle area.

The article raised an obvious question: where on earth did this immense network of media activism originate? It was that question that carried Hemmer to the archives, which, in turn, soon led her to the central figure of her eventual dissertation: Clarence Manion, a college dean turned conservative activist who found himself shut out of the Republican Party of the 1950s—a party that had largely made peace with the New Deal order—and in 1954 launched the Manion Forum of Opinion.

The Forum began with 29 radio stations and over the next 25 years, as Hemmer puts it, Manion “built it into a national weekly radio and television show. From heads of state to housewife activists, from pundits to politicians, the Manion Forum emerged as the crossroads of conservatism from the 1950s to the 1970s.” Manion was a whirlwind of energy and his activities ranged well beyond the Forum, but the Forum was key. I’ll turn to it in my next post.