I’ve thought about this for a while, and it seems to me that the “consensus” position seen in U.S. politics in the middle part of the twentieth century was the anomaly, and overheated rhetoric generally more then norm. Look at the level of venom the American right directed towards (pre-WWII) FDR, or indeed, the energy of the populist movement of the turn of the twentieth century (two say nothing of the early and mid-nineteenth century).

Brief moments of consensus are just that, brief moments.

But since you’re a scholar rather than a journalist, you don’t necessarily need to be a part of take-no-prisoners political rhetoric. So basically, what Carl and Bill said.

Are left and right equally to blame for the circle jerk? I’m guessing that you don’t think so, why not say so?

Nixonland is very good indeed, and one way to read it is as a warning to the Obama campaign. Perlstein’s been working on the book for years, but its publication this spring is really a nice coincidence. (Or design by a publisher who’s cleverer than most.) Because I think that if Obama wins in November, then we will have left a great deal of Nixonland behind. Not all of it, of course, some of the debates are as old as the republic. But the perception that full rights for blacks — and now, by extension, to all minorities — were by definition a limitation of the legitimate rights of whites will be decisively struck down.

Still, I read the book thinking “This is how McCain could win.” Nixonland wants us to stay there, but as Obama said last night, we are a better country than that.

Oh, and I expect you to like me now. 😉

For the politician the ethic is to get things done now, based on and existential gamble and a sense of commitment to ultimate values or to responsibility in the present. Politicians can’t wait for science to grind through its process. “To take a practical political stand is one thing, and to analyze political structures and party positions is another…. The words one uses in [a political meeting] are not means of scientific analysis but means of canvassing votes and winning over others. They are not plowshares to loosen the soil of contemplative thought; they are swords against the enemies: such words are weapons. It would be an outrage, however, to use words in this fashion in a lecture or in the [classroom].”

Further, Weber says “I am ready to prove from the works of our historians that whenever the man of science introduces his personal value judgment, a full understanding of the facts ceases.

His point is that scholarship has an independent value of generating reliable, clear, non-partisan understanding that is instantly lost if it’s politicized. All of the sophisticated ideology critique of the last hundred years has complicated, but not changed this fact: from somewhere we need to be able to get clean data to make our decisions with.

I realize you’re not really wondering about whether to do politics, but how to do politics. I’m saying that once you decide to do politics, you’ve just gotta plant your feet and go. But the scholarly ethic is never going to let you sleep about it, especially if you try to mix politics in with activities, like blogging, that you feel teacherly about.

Cheers.

Why would you possibly think this? Usually, I have a lot of respect for the thought you put into the ideas on this blog, but this is just silly. There’s no empirical evidence whatsoever that people want either libertarianism or pragmatism on any particular issue.

I recognize that a politics that handles the profound disagreements people have in this country is ultimately going to be messy, but that’s life. The fact that you ‘just can’t deal with’ this is neither here nor there. We have to fight for our beliefs – that’s what politics is.