As I was driving up to New York yesterday afternoon, Rush was gloating over “Operation Chaos”—McCain having sewn up the GOP nomination, you see, PA conservatives would register Democrat, vote for Hillary, and send the DNC into a protracted grudge-match death spiral. 

I was beginning to warm to Rush when he was attacking McCain on all the right issue (save the war, which would be to much to expect), but after he lost that battle, “conservative” radio has returned to its GOP shilling default mode. The unwashed base’s efforts also all-to-easily play into the hands of the Weekly Standard crowd who don’t want to simply sow chaos but genuinely view Clinton as preferable to Obama because she’s far more likely to continue supporting the war and far less likely enact a change in our relationship with Israel. 

Then, of course, there’s the question of whether the Chaos tactic will actually work. Although election fatigue is real, I find cogent the argument that the prolonged battle is inspiring more and more people to register Democrat (even if some are Chaos voters) and generally diminishing McCain’s profile in the news cycle. It’s also allowed the Rev. Wright and Sniper Fire scandals to come out early and then fade and/or be neutralized, losing the shock value they’d have in late October.

I couple of days ago, I got a message on facebook from a group called “Bureaucrash”, a “libertarian youth” organization, inviting me to take part in a Thomas Jefferson birthday celebration that would involve taking your ipod to the Jefferson memorial, cranking it up just before midnight, and then dancing around like it was 1776. The whole thing struck me as the kind of harmless, brainy fun I witnessed among many of my honor-role colleagues while I was an undergrad at UVA—hey, let’s go read ghost stories on The Lawn to celebrate Edgar Allen Poe’s birthday, perhaps someone will bring beer, and maybe Will will get up the nerve to ask his TA on a date! Crazy! 

Things like a Jefferson dance-a-thon probably won’t shock anyone, or convince many of the One True Way of libertarianism; however, it’s a good excuse for blogging geeks to get out of the house and have some fun! 

I never expected a full government crackdown! Don’t tase me bro!

That the government would rough up a bunch of brainy geeks dancing in celebration of a Founding Father while DC is experiencing one of its perennial crime waves, while the mayor fights to keep handguns away from law-abiding citizens, and while our southern borders go unprotected seems an almost perfect encapsulation of “Anarcho-Tyranny.” 

…is apparently taking place within the foreign-policy establishment, according to the New York Times. The article begins with this rather curious statement: 

[N]ow one component of the fractious Republican Party foreign policy establishment — the so-called pragmatists, some of whom have come to view the Iraq war or its execution as a mistake — is expressing concern that Mr. McCain might be coming under increased influence from a competing camp, the neoconservatives, whose thinking dominated President Bush’s first term and played a pivotal role in building the case for war.

I wonder if neocons have ever really had to battle it out with the realists for McCain’s ear? Kristol, Kagan, & Co. did after all back the senator in 2000, and, as the article reports, are now writing his speeches and having the senator call himself a “realistic idealist” and dream of one day leading a “league of democracies.”

The real problem, as I see it, is that the Washington “pragmatists” have been a little too pragmatic over the years and—with the notable exception of Brent Scowcroft who penned this—were generally unwilling to put their careers on the line during the moment of decision just before the Iraq war. Colin Powell has earned many merit points from antiwar liberals due to their impression (accurate or not) that he opposed the war in his heart—even though he did little to stop it and everything to facilitate it. Kissinger, the realist par excellence and former bête noire of the neocons, supported the Iraq war, even if his subsequent comments regarding diplomacy and relations with Russia, China, and Europe have been more in the realist mode.

The question emerges: even if the realists win this little inside-the-Beltway spat, will anything really change? 

As early as June 2004, Lawrence Kaplan was announcing the “Springtime for Realism” in The New Republic (not online), and the return of many of his non-neocon rivals to favor as the insurgency wore on. Kaplan never worried about the troops coming home, only that the old spirit of democratism might soon wane. 
 
The problem has thus never been an unsatisfactory ratio between realism and idealism but the fact that realists and neocons alike have nothing even resembling an innovative EXIT STRATEGY. (And the administration doesn’t seem at all interested in crafting one.) 

Perhaps there’s hope in the fact that McCain might actually be more of an empty vessel than we thought—as evidenced by his clueless comments about “those Shia, or Sunnis, or anybody else…” and the fact that, as Justin pointed out not too long ago, during the ‘90s McCain actually opposed a great deal of the “humanitarian interventions” in Haiti, Somalia, and elsewhere.

Then again, neocons have done quite with empty vessels in the White House in the past…   

UPDATE: My friend Leon Hadar has offered his take here

As I’m one of those “conservative intellectuals” who was safely ensconced in grad school but then succumbed to the lures of DC, I guess I should respond to Larison’s last Snipe. While reading Dan’s thoughtful blog, what I found most interesting was not the “should I stay or should I go” dilemma of grad school and Washington but the fact that those who’ve left academia to join the conservative movement are so mediocre. Whatever criticism we might have for Kirk, Meyer, Burnham et al., I think we’d all agree that they tower above any movement figure writing today. As Dan and I have discussed in the past, the triumph of the Conservative Movement has resulted in many a $60,000 salaried position in the Beltway, but then not much in the way of serious thought. Real statesmen are even harder to come by. 

I disagree, however, with Daniel in stating that there’s any dilemma with regard to staying home or becoming a deracinated cosmopolitan and going off to the capital or some grad school far away. Remaining within a 50-mile radius of the Volksgemeinschaft qualifies an intellectual for nothing. I prefer the rootless wander to the ... wait was there ever any great artist or thinker who actually stayed put? 

What I truly hope happens is that more conservatives with brains forego the Movement and do some great work that has little to do with DC politics. We already have way too many young people giving us their instopinions on Hillary’s latest gaffe. We need more serious, untimely cultural observations. We need intellectuals, rootless or rooted, writing the next great conservative novel or a deeply reactionary film. And here, I’m of course not referring to some “support the troops” propaganda flick, but something that expresses the tragic view of life. When I watch a great John Ford film like “The Man Who Shot LIberty Valance” or “The Searchers,” Ford’s deeply conservative, disturbing worldview comes through—I don’t need to ask where he stood on the the issues of school vouchers or defense spending. “Valance” itself forecloses the possibility of any easy, technocratic answers to the big questions of justice and social order anyway.

We need more more conservatives to do work like this, and less of those defining intellectual success as being designated as pundit #3 in the No Spin Zone.     

For all you Takimag readers in the DC area: Come one, come all to a meeting of that rambunctious band of dissident right-wing and libertarian intellectuals known as the Robert Taft Club! 

Here are the details:

Russia: Friend or Foe?

Monday, April 7, 2008; 7:00pm - 10:00pm

The Boulevard Woodgrill
2901 Wilson Blvd
Arlington, VA

There’s more at the Taft web site—http://www.roberttaft.org/—and If you’re part of the privacy shredding, time-wasting community known as facebook, you can sign up for the meeting
here. 

The latest Taft assemblage should be quite a show, as guests will include Srdja Trifkovic, Igor Zevelev, and Takimag contributor Nicolas Gvosdev. I think some of these guys might argue that Putin and Russia aren’t the big bad Cold War monsters that everyone on the mainstream Left and Right says they are. (what? could that be true?)

There will be drinking, too. 

Here is the video (via CNN) of Bob Barr’s official announcement that he’s forming a presidential exploratory committee. It now looks very likely that he’ll get the Libertarian Party nod. (Jim Antle’s analysis of the situation, pre-announcement, is here.) 

A political rumors blog is also reporting that Barr will receive the endorsement of Ron Paul. Barr is a good man, and I would be proud to vote for him in November; however, a Paul endorsement of Barr would be simply more evidence that the Paul campaign and movement are adrift without much in the way of grand strategy.

As we’ve discussed here, the Paul movement can become a powerful force in basically two ways. First there’s the Antle strategy: Paul supporters should remain in the GOP and become a principled, rambunctious contingent that would raise hell at the convention, try to take over local party structures, and steer the GOP back onto a traditional conservative course. 

Then there’s the Raimondo strategy: the GOP is too far gone, and the Paul movement is better served by using the momentum of the campaign to launch a third party. 

Both of these would be scuttled by Paul’s backing of Barr. On the one hand, the Paul people would have no power whatsoever in a GOP convention if their leader had already defected to the Libertarians. On the other, it seems bizarre for Paul to have built up all this online support, to have actually beaten a number of the GOP big names in early primaries, and then to endorse a party that earned .34% in the 2004 election. Sure, “it’s all about the ideas,” but it was Paul, the avuncular strait-shootin’ Texan, who was attractive to a wide variety of people in a way that the academic LP candidates simply haven’t been. At the very least, it was the Paul campaign, and those surrounding it, who developed the online fundraising “bombs” and laid the foundations for a movement. Why should Paul drop all this and endorse a former congressman who’s starting from scratch? It makes no sense.     

I’m all for voting for Barr; however, this or that principled third-party candidate is irrelevant if we’re not building up institutions for the long term. 

I’m very happy that Tom is seriously critiquing free trade at TM; this is necessary, particularly since as we enter a stage of economic crisis, there’s going to be a deluge of not-very-serious free-trade bashing, for a variety of motives.

I, myself, have always been skeptical of “protecting” American industries, but not because I have any problem with tariffs. Too often, Washington has given Detroit a helping hand through a series of bailouts and sustained corporate welfare checks. The results have been much like those in the welfare-addicted inner cities: dependency and lethargy.

Say out loud names like “Ford,” “Pontiac,” “GM,” “Chrysler.” What are the first associations that come to mind? It’s different for everyone, but I’m positive that “innovation,” “cool,” “ahead of the curve,” “dynamic” aren’t amongst them. 

So here’s my ultimate fantasy of a solution, one which would both avoid all the downfalls of corporate welfare, but then still reflect that fact that we want to keep industries in America and understand that there are structural differences between countries in terms of wages and standards of living.   

5% tariff on all imported goods + 0% income tax. 

This magical plan (which, I doubt, I’ll see in my lifetime) would generate plenty of money to run a limited government, would protect American industries, and allow families to keep the fruits of their labors, as opposed to taxing the middle class in order to bail out corporations, or, worse, establishing “fair trade” bureaucratic institutions. Also, the tariff would be universal, the same for everyone, thus, no more stupid trade deals with “North America” and South Korea, no more lobbyist doing their dirty work for a particular industry. We’d instead have, well, actual free trade, along with a renewal of our sense of a national interest.

Over at Dealbreaker, John Carney is doing good work revealing that, in fact, Ben Bernake is the universal historical subject, willing late Capitalism into a higher stage of state socialism (in other words, the last big government bail out was only the beginning):   

Wall Street Socialism: How JP Morgan Gained Control Of The Means Of Financial Production

“In short, this is the mother of all government subsidies — a non-legislative appropriation that doubles the size of all this year’s congressional pork projects combined. Without so much as a vote of Congress, taxpayers are to buy securities of undetermined value for $29 billion — roughly Panama’s GDP, or the Federal Reserve Bank’s entire annual profit. They take this enormous risk so that JPM, a company worth $146 billion, has enough liquidity to make a major and profitable acquisition for next to nothing. JPM is more than happy to take on Bear’s book of client and counterparty accounts — these were probably never in danger of being lost, and it’s great business for JPM. The ones being rescued are Bear’s bond-holders. They keep their shirts. The stockholders at least keep their socks. The profits from the good times are retained, and the losses are socialized.”

And now for your viewing pleasure, the musical version of everything he just said:

As we remember how great music used to be, I’m reminded of a quote from Adorno’s general theory of why music once was great and now sucks: “Advice on how best to compose a Rondo is useless as soon as there are reasons—of which artisanl instruction is ignorant—why rondos can no longer be written.” It’s a very important question, even if Adorno came up with many, many wrong answers thereto.

Certainly, government subsidy is part of the problem—the many national endowments back either the totally clichéd crucifix in a jaw of piss and Mapplethorp wannabes or else totally dull “respectable” art. But then we shouldn’t forget that Mozart and Haydn were happy to live on the lam of many a central European prince. There’s also no evidence that our age is any more “commercial” than the putatively golden one—Die Zäuberflöte was a beer-hall musical; Verdi was always questing for the latest “blockbuster”; and even Wagner, the ultimate anti-social composer, brought out mechanical floating Rheinmädchen for the premiere of his Ring sage. It’s also very likely that the graduates of Eastman and Julliard are much more professional and better prepared to perform the masterworks than were their 19th-century equivalents. (They are, to paraphrase a quip I once heard, the well-schooled Asians who perform the works of dead Germans for audiences that are mostly Jewish.)

Even if serious music audiences are usually on the “mature” side (it’s often difficult to find someone under 50 in a concert hall!), the fact is they are large—more people enjoy “Classical” music now than at any point in Western history. And yet, the actual new stuff produced is almost universally dreadful—it’s either Stcokhausen’s “Helitcoper Sting Quartet (listen here if you dare) or else the vapid, quaint stylings of Jake Heggie (here’s the most embarrassing sample I could find.)

Obviously, the problem is deep, cultural, and thus it’s almost impossible to articulate why exactly contemporary serious composers are so bad.   

With 25 regular contributors, The Corner over at NRO is usually an excellent source for instopinion on the political minutia of the day—a perpetually spinning no-spin zone. It’s thus rather interesting that as news broke of the Shia-on-Shia violence in Basra throughout the day, The Corner was … silent. (Or at least as of this writing in the wee hours of Friday morning.) The only thing the NRO staff managed was a rather limp critique at around 8:11 AM of the current location of the liberal media; the reader was then directed to the patriotic reportage of Michael Yon, a house favorite.

I’m not sure exactly where Yon was stationed, but he was able to pick up a feed of the White House talking points and attempted to interpret the fighting in Basra as an example of the strength and independence of Baghdad and the Iraqi army in their confrontation with “civil disobedience.” 

What’s really happening is that “the Surge is working” mantra is collapsing before our eyes. The drop in violence was purchased not simply with greater troop presence but with a convenient cease-fire by the Shia militia leader Moktada al-Sadr in the South and our bribing and arming of Sunnis in the West. “The Surge is working” worked in the sense that it allowed Americans to sweep their dissatisfaction with the war under the rug for a few months and attain the peace of mind of “at least it’s not getting any worse.” While NR stuck to their ideological insanity and sang of “Reliberating Iraq”, most America just didn’t want to think about the whole mess. Petraeus was a great hero in that he allowed Iraq to fall off the front page and 24-hour ticker. With a new fracturing of Iraq—this time the southern Shia militia going up against the Shia Iraqi state—the respite is over. Our war aims are still incompatible with reality—whether NR wants to talk about it or not.

UPDATE: I take it all back, Lopez has offered us this probing analysis:

“Of Course, Another Reason Europeans May Have a Low Opinion of Us ... may have something to do with a pro-Sadr rally on the front-page, above the fold. Basra’s a big story. But so has the surge been, in a big way.”  The Europeans hate us; give us “equal time”; is there any other trope of conservative victimization she’s missed in avoiding talking about Iraq?