Here is a picture that speaks to this effect: http://www.outragedmoderates.org/2008/10/working-for-obama-in-nc-mountains.html
This guy was working the Obama office out of Asheville. I think that the man in the picture would probably say that neither his confederate flag NOR his Obama sign are racially motivated.

-kc

The point of standards is to provide hostages to fortune; you declare the ideal, and then squirm uncomfortably when other people say you don’t uphold it as well as you should. I rather hope I’m holding Tim to the same standard I try to live up to myself; and that I judge all politicians by the same standard. Of course I fail! — as does Tim, you, and all of us–and, strangely, our partisan affections seem to correlate with our failures. I remain unconvinced that my colleagues on the right-blogosphere are uniquely, or even especially, guilty of such sins. It’s still a good idea to put out those standards, and our failures don’t per se invalidate them.

Listening isn’t the same thing as agreeing, or even being polite; condemnation can follow from listening attentively, and politeness to evil witness a failure to listen properly. But it is the fundamental activity of social man, and the prerequisite for politically effective man. Again, it’s one thing to recognize our finitude–and even to make priority choices–another to relish not listening, to decide on principle not to listen to certain groups of people.

You are, I think, applying this too purely on the level of current partisan politics. I am also, perhaps primarily, speaking on the level of political theory and ethics–a level in which I hope Tim can consider my advice without immediate reference to partisan politics, and thus put aside for a moment the partisan reflex of rejection.

As for my attitude to Tim, you may recollect that I began by saying that this attitude was unworthy of him. Presumably, therefore, I have a generous estimate of his intrinsic worth.

There aren’t many people whom I would hold up as practicing “universal listening” — and really, why should they? The very act of holding an opinion, having an agenda, having a set of moral values means that there are some people whom you can have a dialogue with and some people whose worldview is so alien (“Blacks and Jews are subhumans who should be exterminated!”) all you can do is shut them up and tune them out — and you and your buddies in the right-wing blogosphere are, if anything, the *least* credible exponents of that philosophy.

If anything I would say Tim has played the “Give ’em the benefit of the doubt and let’s hear what they have to say” card to a fault in this blog, and has incurred the ire of other liberals quite a lot while doing so. The fact that he’s come to recognize how often that attitude has been unproductive and pointless and has decided that the worst of the Right has finally earned the callous dismissal from his side of the aisle that they’ve been practicing on our side of the aisle since 1994 hardly makes him the blinkered ideologue you’re trying to paint him as.

Obviously a simple tit-for-tat you-ignored-us-let’s-ignore-you attitude is unbecoming. But, frankly, the sector of the Right Tim is talking about is a sector we’ve *all* heard from incessantly for the past eight years, a sector that’s been blaring 24/7 from its bully pulpit in the White House, and it’s disingenuous for the allies and mouthpieces of that bully pulpit who once felt righteously vindicated in shouting down anyone “soft on terror” or “clinging to discredited socialist policies” and then all of a sudden claim that absolute universality in discourse is a fundament of our democracy at the one point when we’re no longer going to be forced to listen to them anymore.

The main reason we shouldn’t listen to the William Kristols of the world is that we’ve already heard what they’ve had to say, ad nauseam, and the past eight years serve as a ringing debunking of their guiding principles and philosophies. If they should have something new and interesting to say that doesn’t seem like the experience of the past eight years has already sweepingly refuted, great. But I’m not holding my breath, and we shouldn’t let these schmucks steal the spotlight of American discourse just because we’re used to them being in charge, pushing the line that “America is a center-right country” as a just-so story because they’re still not used to the fact that the electorate has changed its mind.

“Universal listening” sounds like a noble thing, but it’s not humanly possible to listen to everything–even before the internet it wasn’t, but now the clamor is exponentially larger. One way or another we’re all selective, and I don’t think a lot is gained from a lot of exposure to things that strike me as ignorant and repugnant. The Appalachian newspaper column that I quoted in an earlier comment, for instance–a little of that goes a long way.

As to the Corner discussion, I’ve stopped reading McCarthy, Derbyshire, Krikorian, Levin, and usually Kirsanow. You can’t avoid Lopez. I like Manzi a lot, Ponnuru of course rocks. Lowry can play both sides, that why he is the editor. Nordlinger used to be interesting but is stuck in 1989. I like Goldberg but that’s just me.

Tim: Do look again at Lowry. Note how he critiqued Palin’s interview performances and McCain’s debate performances, and never tried to pretend Obama’s advantages in the polls should be discounted. He doesn’t dispense false hopes. And, as I’ve mentioned on my blog, he has a rare talent to articulate consensus conservatism–and it is a rare talent, which is evidence of good character. Frankly, I used to find him dull, but I’ve grown to appreciate how difficult soft-edged consensus is to do.

As for everyone else–I expect conservatives, liberals, and all humans to be equally mixed in their ability to deal well with fortune. If we must compare, I’m not particularly impressed with the left’s behavior between 2000 and 2006. But ultimately it doesn’t matter what people say: your imperative is to listen. You can choose what to say, and with whom to converse, but universal listening is in order. Not that any of us are perfect at this; but at least it’s an ideal toward which one should aspire. One I take to be essential to democratic leadership and practice.

I’m skeptical about this business of cohabiting the merry-go-round. Sounds good in principle, but…

The other red areas are places where there just aren’t many people of any color, and certainly not many people of color. I think the urban areas are more liberal because they have more people of color, and people of many other cultures, which lets white christianists see that they aren’t all monsters.

As for the military favoring McCain, I think people tend to vote the way they spend their money, and the active duty military contributed money to Obama at 6 times the rate they contributed to McCain. McCain has been discredited as a military hero because of his long record of voting against veterans’ benefits and pay increases for the active military.