Privatize the Library of Congress!

Why not? How many people actually read all those books? Wouldn't they be better in the hands of collectors and people who really read and would appreciate them? This would be a way to cut the national deficit. Also, I think we should liquidate the holdings at the National Gallery while we're at it. Maybe I can get one of the Rothko's from the new exhibit for my house. Besides wasn't Rothko a pinko? A feeble April Fool's joke but given where the right is going you never know.

A personal note--Of all the people who have ever committed suicide, Mark Rothko is the one I wish had never done it. The cerebral and sublime pleasure his art has given me knows no bounds. We all owe his children an immense debt of gratitude for their tenancious fight to preserve his legacy against the vultures of art dealers over the years. Their prolonged legal case is almost as fascinating as their father's art. The National Gallery has an exhibit of his "black paintings", those intended for the Menil Chapel in Houston. And little did I know the post office has issued a series of stamps of abstract expressionist paintings including Jackson Pollack and Rothko.

For those interested in the resurgent militia movement and their links to the right, you can consult the Southern Poverty Law Center's frequent reports or read Leonard Zeskind's Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream ( Farrar Straus, 2009). Zeskind traces the history of the militia from its neo-nazi roots through its re-emergence through the Liberty Lobby, the Klan and the melding of the survivalist movement with the Christian identity crowd. After the militia movement was decimated after the Oklahoma City bombings, they re-emerged after 9/11 in the anti-immigration and people like the Minutemen and Partiot movement. And some of us get the thrill of them all converging on Washington and Virginia on April 19th, the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, for the celebration of the Second Amendment. What we just saw with the so-called Christian militia in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana is simply a continuation of this 35-year old history.

For years I thought the Southern Poverty Law Center and Morris Dees had simply run out of material. Created during the civil rights movement to monitor racist groups, particularly the KKK, they have re-emerged as a leading monitor of extreme right groups in this country and ,unfortunately, have had to diversify their analysis to cover a proliferation of these organizations. The other group that has refocused its attention of the rise of the extreme Right is the Anti-Defamation League, which has been alerting the public to the "infiltration" of the tea party "movement" by these white nationalists and neo-Nazis. Zeskind would probably add the neo-confederates to this pot.

The tolerance of these groups by people whom I always thought were "rational" conservatives is deeply disturbing. The militia defendents are called "activists" by the conservative media, not "terrorists" or "murderers". In the last week, a "white supremacist" was convicted of trying to assassinate President Obama. There have been several of these cases in the last year, but no denunciations from the conservatives.

The membrane between these extremists and so-called conservatives no longer exists in terms of their political vocabulary, although they differ in terms of actions. I have received e-mails describing the Oath-Keepers, an organization created by a Ron Paul follower and composed of serving police and military officers, as patriots. I would treat them as extremist cells within our law enforcement system and not reliable. The Oath Keepers will be here for the April rally along with the former head of the Alabama militia, who urged all citizens to vandalize Democratic party headquarters and offices of all congresspeople who voted for healthcare.

Sean Hannity today on his show called his audience "Timothy McVeigh" wannabes. The seamless line between the armed groups and the conservative echochamber raises real questions about the ultimate motives of both the conservative entertainment industry and their political practitioners. As a Washington Post columnist wrote this week,"the only threat of political violence these days comes from the Right, not the Left."

I was going to write today about what today's conservatives really believe. But I simply don't know. I knew they crossed a line when CPAC allowed the John Birch Society back as a sponsor after decades spent in the wilderness. Clearly, there are major national issues they need to be addressed in a serious manner.

I heard from one conservative about the David Frum affair. He severely criticized David Frum because he called out conservatives and this was unacceptable because it gave ammunition to the Left. He complained that this was the problem with some conservatives because they want acceptance from the Left. The other crime was Frum's chronic urge for celibrity status.

Another observation, which took me off guard, was "now we have a counter-culture" and the Left is getting the type of response from us that we used to get from them. From my perspective, the conservatives have cultural hegemony through the print and electronic media and their well-funded think tanks and front groups as well as their total domination of talk radio. But this comment revealed a psychological position, not a political one.

Throughout Obama's short presidency, I have been swamped with e-mails about his connection to this leftwing group and that personality. This stuff started in the beginning of last presidential campaign and I thought it was so off the wall considering he was a person who grew up after most of the Left had died down. Then I thought it was just the work of people like David Horowitz, who will spend all of his old age deeply resenting his days at Ramparts. But it goes to the heart of the conservative movement.

Now that the conservatives have been ousted from political power, except from our judicial system, there has re-emerged a deep inferiority complex that the older figures feel toward the Left. It comes out in odd places like Ross Douhat's column claiming that the sex abuse cases in the Catholic Church come from the permissive attitudes that existed in the 70s. or Johnny Yoo, "Torture" Lawyer, who said two days ago that when he teaches at Berkeley, he feels like West Berlin during the Cold War, surrounded by hippies. Neither one of them were even cognizant during those times. Others have raised with me the list of sleights they have experienced over the years from people whom they perceive as on the Left, people I just think are relatively liberal with no leftwing inclinations at all. This is a pervasive stance of young and older conservatives and apparently is accepted as a creed.

The older conservatives I can understand because they were underfunded when they began and existed as outsiders in the late 60s and early 70s. This period scarred them deeply and they feel they haven't gotten personal and professional recognition for what they have achieved. Many have written several books and hundreds of articles. At the same time, many I know have become rich and rich off conservative foundations, who personally pay them significant salaries. A university professor would kill for such a deal. The conservative movement has created a very stable welfare system for themselves. But none of them possess the self-reflection to realize this.

I get the distinct sense they are waiting to find their next vehicle to rise again to power like the California Kitchen cabinet did with Ronald Reagan. They are disgruntled with the Republican Party for failing the cause. They don't want to voice their disappointment with George W. Bush,even though privately they believe he was a disaster, and enjoy the Cheneys outbursts because they reflect an attack on the "politically correct". Now it seems it's political correctness to oppose torture, rendition and wiretapping. The more outrageous the proposition the better. That's why the Ronald Reagan they adopt now is not the President but the GE spokesman who attacked Medicare as socialized medicine. It's not the President who worked with Bill Bradley to save Social Security for a generation. Or the President who sought nuclear arms reduction agreements.

Conservatives also are turning rather abruptly against neo-conservatives for their embrace of Big Government Conservativism advocated by Bill Kristol. There is a splintering going on concerning foreign policy, many abandoning support for democracy programs abroad and reverting to the isolationism of the paleoconservatives. There seems to be a neutrality about the Iraq War issue and a disdain toward any talk of nation-building. They feel the later was just a sop to the Democrats.

Where they are today, I still don't know. Forget about the Left, I asked what they believed today. There was a general lament that the "intellectuals" like Irving Kristol and Bill Buckley were gone. This vacuum can become dangerous if they allow the extremes to fill the void. They would feel it is perposterous that the right posed any threat to the country.

President Obama meets the Press and the Challenges to Conservatives

President Whoopass cleaned the reporters' clocks last night in his second press conference. He called on an array of reporters from Ebony, Stars &Stripes, Politico and even the Washington Times at the expense of the more established media. His putdown of Ed Henry of CNN put that network into a tizzy, where they tried to spin the rest of the press conference as deteriorating after their reporter demoralized President Obama. President Obama stayed and went back to and stayed on his message that his budget was inseparable from the recovery. Earlier in the day Republicans--in this case Mitch McConnell--moaned about how the budget didn't cohere. It's obvious that they hadn't listened to any of the Administration's briefings. In fact, it is one of the only budgets in my memory that does hang together and is an integrated whole.

President Obama has been trying to comunicate beyond the media filter, a filter that is more and more obviously protective of the wealthy and corporate interests. His appearance on the Jay Leno Show netted the highest rating for that show in many a year and another appearance on 60 Minutes topped 17 million. I still revert to my primary campaign days of watching his public appearances on C-Span so I am spared the inanity of the chattering class. The Obama strategy is obviously working since he retains his high approval ratings, despite outliers like Zogby and the compromised Rasmussen polls.

Pro-lifers are protesting that President Obama will be receiving an honorary degree from Norte Dame--like almost all his predecessors. The Catholic Bishop in Indiana has announced he will boycott the proceedings. I'm sure he's be missed. Soon to be a Catholic convert, Newt Gingrich commented that Obama's policies were against Catholic doctrine. The twice-divorced Gingrich will be converting to Catholicism soon so he and his wife can worship together. A quick study--he's already mastered Catholic doctrine.

Newt has been in other news creating a new group that will bring together fiscal and social conservatives. Fiscal conservatives tend to blame evangelicals for the declining fortunes of the Republican party and this is Newt's effort to bridge the divide. In a lot of ways it reminds me of the Southern Agrarian Literary Movement, except no one can write. The new 'City on the Hill"--the post-Reagan utopia--will be the 21st century revival of the South with an emphasis on a rural culture isolated from science and modernity and steeped in the religiousity of Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood. The wealthy will be the plantation holders of old. That might explain conservatives' interest in South Carolina's Governor Mark Sanford, former Goldman Sachs manager, who refused the stimulus money, despite his state having one of the highest unemployment rates in the country and a school system that continues to deteriorate.

A leading conservative publisher and writer approached me the other night about the state of the conservative movement. A literary person schooled in the more philosophical underpinings of conservatism, he lamented the rise of people such as Ann Coulter and G.Gordan Liddy as spokespeople for conservatism. But in our conversation, it was clear that he had no knowledge of the detritus appearing on right-wing websites or the poseurs on cable news. He had not caught Glenn Beck's recent act on the 9/12 Project. Beck quite proudly has announced on his radio show he has never read Hayek and the other philosophical pillars of conservatism. He even rejoices in this, declaring them boring. Nor had my friend been aware of the re-emergence of racism on the right and some of the more inflammatory rhetoric against Barack Obama, whom he thinks is too inexperienced and tackling too many things at the same time.

Personally, I believe we are back at the moment in my youth when William F. Buckley,Jr in the National Review started banning certain types of political behavior from the conservative line-up--the John Birch Society, the KKK, the blatant segregationists and more fringe groups. In New Jersey at that time, Rev. Carl McIntyre had a pirate radio station beaming off Cape May,denouncing Communists, which included President Eisenhower. It was from this morass that modern conservatism had to emerge. But now it has sunk back into the swamp, now even courting secessionists. Like teenagers, more conservatives are reverting to Ayn Rand's writings to launch their "Gault" movement based on the hero of Atlas Shrugged. In the old days,one was encouraged to read Russell Kirk to counter these tendencies or Randian urges.

The conservatives first must do a lot of housekeeping and housecleaning before they can reconstitute a viable movement. First, they must recognize and assimilate the idea that the Bush-Cheney embrace of the unitary theory of the executive was an egregious violation of conservative principles. Secondly, they must formulate some idea of the public good, something that has been sadly lacking in recent years. Thirdly, they must debate with social conservatives how intrusive do they want government in people's personal lives. The domination of the Republican Party by social conservatives is frightening and a leading cause of intolerance in this country.I would also suggest it is the most off-putting aspect of the Republicans, preventing them from any real political reach in the Northeast and the Midwest.

Conservatives must finally deal with the whole idea of governance. In a time of almost Depression, how can one reconcile a philosophy of small government with the suffering of the population on a large scale? For a group that has joined with forces arguing against evolution in school systems, how can one advocate social darwinism as they are doing as a default argument? And why have the wealthy been seen as virtuous in light of the behavior of bankers and Wall Street operators?

The problem with the last Administration--as conservative as politicians can be--was the reliance on the rhetoric of ideology as a replacement for competence. In the final analysis, that was found profundly wanting.

It seems to me that the first requirement for any conservative recovery is to start telling the truth about the recent past and how conservatives fueled in their hubris by Karl Rove betrayed their own principles by seeking dominant control of all governing institutions and sought to bend established constitutional safeguards to their own ideological benefit.