It turns out that we fall into groups according to how we prefer society to be organized and operate. This is vitally important to social animals like us, since we depend on our tribes for our own well-being and even survival. We feel safest when society operates by the rules that our group, our tribe, prefers.

Cultural Cognition identifies us in four groups along two continua.

Individualist ←←← →→→ Communitarian

Hierarchist ←←← →→→ Egalitarian.

• An Individualist prefers a society that mostly leaves the individual alone, where individual rights and choices have the greatest say, in which there is generally less government, not more. Politically, Individualists tend to be Libertarians and conservative Republicans. They support tax and spending cuts because less government results in a more Individualist society.
• A Communitarian prefers a “we’re all in this together” society where the collective is more involved in determining how things go, and government involvement is generally a good thing. Communitarians tend to be more left wing Democrats for whom more spending and government produces the sort of communal society they prefer.
• A Hierarchist prefers a society that operates within fixed divisions of class and race, a caste system status quo constrained by the familiar old way of doing things. Hierarchists tend to be Republicans and conservatives and prefer smaller government and fewer regulations (i.e. less government spending) that are intended to level the playing field.
• Egalitarians bristle at what they see as the injustice of restrictive economic and social class and hierarchy. They prefer a more flexible and fair society, free of the limitations and inequalities of hierarchical class that limit social and economic mobility. Egalitarians tend to be liberal Democrats who prefer active government intervention (e.g,. higher taxes on those at the top of the ladder) to produce a more fair Egalitarian society.

All models are lies to some extent. The basic flaw with this one is the assumption that power is equivalent to government, and those who aim to diminish its power are seeking to increase the power of the individual. Many, possibly even most political “liberals” or “progressives” are strongly motivated by a desire to protect individual liberty against an increasingly oligopolistic corporate sector. In every industry in America, fewer and fewer firms have amassed greater and greater market share, creating an anti-competitive environment where large firms trample on suppliers, employees, customers, and citizens of the communities where they operate. This change is particularly stark over the last thirty years in Agriculture.

The average American is more affected by the arbitrary policies of the companies he works for, buys from, sells to, or lives next to than any laws, regulations or taxes. Much of this infringement has been the result of policies. Changes in tax code to the benefit of corporations and the rich; deregulation by defunding agencies and deflating fines; increased power of money creation and fee proliferation for the benefit of banks; the fact that 2/3 of American corporations do not pay taxes but are awash in trillions in taxpayer largesse; the bizarre doctrine that paper corporations have the same rights as real humans; all of these have impacted the economic, social, cultural and political freedom of 98 percent of the American people. Changing those policies to ones that foster a more sustainable balance of power does not make me Communitarian. Defending their liberties does NOT make me Egalitarian.

Try criticizing your boss to your coworkers. Try to find alternatives to your energy provider, your water company, or your phone service. Try negotiating with the checkout clerk for those bananas. Try finding out what your credit card “agreement” means. Try opening a grocery store next to a WalMart. Try watching a program your cable or satellite provider doesn’t carry. Now tell me how pro-corporate “free market” policies have made you more free.

As a former Libertarian, all that was necessary to my conversion to Progressive politics was the recognition of corporate power and its influence over the lives of Americans. My values did not change. I will continue to watch Government like a hawk and to encourage others to help hold it accountable, but handing absolute power to a handful of corporations is not Libertarian.

Two Conceptions of Reverence

The human emotion of reverence is vital to social cohesion and influences the people that experience it. There are two basic ways to experience reverence. One is to revere an external source of love, power, sustenance and authority. This experience forms the core of the orthodox identity, whose adherents tend to defend the socio-political status quo. The other is to revere a living system or society of which we are a part. This is typical of heterodoxists, who tend to advocate the decentralization of political, economic, and cultural power.

Despite more than three centuries of upheaval and breakneck change, America remains one of the most rigid and religious societies in the developed world. There have been powerful religious influences in American history, both in favor of stasis and of comprehensive reform. Strong religious ideas were on both sides of the New England Schism, the English Civil War, the Revolution, slavery, the American Civil War, the struggle over corporate power in the Gilded Age, the Progressive reforms and Prohibition, the turmoil surrounding the Depression, American involvement in The War, the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam, Watergate, Abortion, and finally the endless series of skirmishes over domestic policy known as the “Culture War” over the last 35 years. Again and again, Orthodox and Heterodox versions of human purpose clash over policy.

The two sides in these disputes often seem like they are speaking two languages that use the same words. Freedom, Democracy, Respect, and Authority seem to beckon from both sides of the disputes over slavery, civil rights, or the environment. Like Shaw said of Britain and America, we seem to be “two countries separated by a common language.” The most important factor in the insolubility of these fights seems to be the impression, on both sides, that their opponents  lack respect for the most basic values. The orthodox factions are accused of lacking reverence for the undeniable fact, to heterodoxists, that we are all part of an indivisible system of living systems. There can be no separation of my interests and yours or of us and them.

I: The Orthodoxy

The Role of Authority in American Political Thought
To the Orthodox, this is a dangerous illusion. There is a range of sources of Orthodox ideas from the frankly irreligious to fundamentalist scriptural literalism. The common thread is the recognition of the necessity of power and authority. To the Orthodox, rigid authority is necessary for the most basic social functions. Orthodox thinkers are influenced by Thomas Hobbes’ vision of the state of nature. Hobbes famously wrote that in the absence of tyrannical power people would engage in a “war of all against all” where life would be “nasty, brutish and short.” Human societies are prone to the most violent upheavals and bloody atrocities. Humans are disloyal, untrustworthy, and riven with uncontrolled drives that render them functionally insane. Only the constant threat of force keeps ordinary people in line.

The more tightly bound a community is by commonalities in ethnicity, religion, class, and profession, the more likely it is to survive these upheavals. From this view, the civil rights revolution was at best missing the point and at worst represented nothing less than a deliberate assault on the cohesion of American society. By threatening that sense of reverence other ethnic groups were supposed to feel for the WASP core of American society, the Civil Rights Movement fragmented society and destroyed the cohesion necessary to survive in a hostile and unforgiving world. This is why the Right has consistently refused to believe that the leaders of the Movement were not witting or unwitting agents of Moscow.

Reverence, awe and fear are the cohesive forces in society. By maintaining fear of the State, wealth, men, or Whites, the continual strife of human life can be contained. Maintaining this state of fear sometimes requires force, but the alternative is the state of nature where meaningful human life is impossible, so virtually any sacrifice is justified.

External Reverence
In more settled times, reverence for external authority figures becomes an indispensable tool for social cohesion. Ultimately, God, Jehovah, or Allah would be the object of reverence for religiously-committed orthodoxists. For their more secular counterparts, the object of external reverence might be a (conservative) President, the Constitution, American power in the world, or in extreme forms, force itself. Regardless of the specifics, the source of authority must be external to the rest of society. It cannot be embodied within the people, collectively or singly. In the Orthodox view, all people are orthodoxists at heart and share their view that only the overwhelming power of an external force can capture the allegiance of the community. All other claims to legitimacy are invalid on their face.

In this paradigm, the use of power is a virtue regardless of its end. Limits upon power threaten the vitality of civilization. Private or public power may be revered depending on the interests of the individual apologist, but concentrated power is a common value of the Right, even if it comes wrapped in libertarian language.

Movements that usurp centralized spiritual, political, or economic power in favor of decentralized power are seen as dangerous and beside the point. By placing power out of reach of the vast majority of Americans, Orthodoxists can preserve social order in a number of ways. By minimizing the footprint of power, the pace of social change can be limited. By moving power out of sight, it can be a nebulous ideal that promotes obedience and deference rather than functioning as an engine of conflict. By removing power from the community, its imperfections can be masked. By hiding the petty disputes and insecurities at the heart of conflicts over power, external authority can be portrayed as impersonal and godlike, thus preserving its legitimacy. Decentralizing movements are therefore a threat to social cohesion and are tantamount to treason. This helps explain why civil rights and labor movements have been attacked as Communistic or anti-American regardless of the political orientation of their leadership.

External Reverence and Power
In contemporary America, the most common objects of external reverence are an imperial President, God, or a powerful and wealthy CEO. God is an archetype of power who may serve as a template for other holders of unlimited puissance. Churches are protected from external interference in any number of ways, and the most entrepreneurial and evangelical among them are the most likely to preach submission to god-like power as a socio-cultural ideal. In recent decades, churches that promote this view have been far more successful than those that focus on the ethical obligation of the believer to the physical and emotional well-being of other humans. This helps to explain the consistent policy successes of orthodoxists, regardless of changes in party power.

In this mindset, practical ethical concerns about human well-being diminished in importance. The perceptible consequences of human action are ignored in favor of the overwhelming importance of submission to external authority. In modern American history, the focus has been on sexual morality. Flouting of God’s plan to marry and reproduce in favor of fleeting pleasure is seen as ultimate insult to ultimate authority. The preference for the trivial over the monumental is a threat to the cohesion of society and to the Kingdom. The most egregious form of offense, of course, is homosexuality, but orthodoxists have defended the remnants of laws that prohibit non-reproductive sexual acts regardless of sexual orientation.

In political matters, the ultimate value is submission to the practically unlimited power of an Imperial President. The political Right, consistent allies of orthodoxy, has its own mythology about the meaning of the Constitution that persists in its appeal despite the paucity of support in the text. Regardless of copious evidence that the document was intended to limit concentrations of power in favor of competing centers, conservatives who champion the doctrine of the “unitary executive” insist that the phrase “commander in chief” embodies limitless executive power in all matters except domestic social programs, which are mostly opposed. The fact that limits on executive power are not considered dangerous during Democratic administrations is not evidence of inconsistency. Democrats are seen as outside the cult of power, filled with naive and dangerous ideas of interdependence and the solubility of conflict that, in conservative minds, threaten the foundation of social order and render them unfit for political office.

The appeal of the Imperial Presidency is inextricably linked to the attachment to force as the ultimate political value. The role of the State is the preparation for and prosecution of war. The promulgation of threats is either a reason or excuse for the rush to war, but in either case, war is seen as having a value of its own. By promoting the values of the cult of power and the danger of external threats, continual war increases the cohesion of society and negates the appeal of heterodoxic values. Adversity in war serves this function, but defeat is unthinkable as it would threaten to discredit the values that motivate it. Therefore, the actual threat and power of the enemy places the function of war at jeopardy. This impetus draws the State into war with a series of weak states and non-state actors. These wars with tribal forces generate their own cycles of vengeance and counter-vengeance which explain much of the violence and disorder that characterize much of the last decade. Orthodoxists value these wars precisely for their tribal nature, knowing that despite their use of ideological and historicist language to promote these conflicts, the effect they have on American society is to tribalize those classes that comprise or sympathise with the warriors. By removing any stance between support for Us and for Them, these meaningless tribal conflicts promote the power totemism of orthodoxy and prevent the reemergence of heterodox values in mainstream thought.

The remaining form of revered power is the power of the modern Corporation. Large corporations employ many Americans, particularly in the politically vital suburbs. They dominate the American economy and culture. They supply most of the money for research and development and they make and sell the products and services which form the texture of modern life.

Most important for our purposes, however, is the role that corporations play as the primary contemporary practitioners of the art of Propaganda. American business has been using Psychology to convince Americans to buy things they don’t need since soon after the First World War. Freud’s American nephew, Edward Bernays, pioneered the use of subconscious appeals to tie specific products to primal drives. In doing so, he was applying techniques he helped to develop while serving in the Office of Public Information during the First World War.

Before these developments, advertising was focused on the promotion of necessities by their functional virtues. This placed sharp limits on sales and on growth. Besides being a threat to the profits of corporations and the wealth of their shareholders, this was touted as a threat to the social order. By limiting economic growth, this focus on necessities tended to decentralize power and posed the danger of individual and community independence at a time that America was becoming a world power. By helping to nationalize the economy and channel economic and cultural energies toward consumption, an economy based on the manufacture of desire would enforce political conformity and permit the gradual identification of political and economic power.

Commercial propaganda increased in power as the means used to disseminate it became more evocative and less social. Newspaper chains began the process, followed by movies, radio, television, and the Internet. Each technological innovation has produced a leap in immediacy and versatility, giving the practitioners of propaganda more tools to manipulate the emotions of consumers, convincing them that this or that consumer product will fulfill some primal drive, be it sex or belonging or even love. Without these tools, and the economic growth they make possible, the corporate-state order would collapse. Our currency, financial markets, and socio-economic hierarchy are structured to rely on year-on-year growth and large profits that a necessity-based economy can not provide.

Of course, the content that media companies have created to sell these advertisements to consumers have become important components of economic growth in their own right. Movies and television in particular create a vivid cultural space where the primacy of desire and pleasure are promulgated and celebrated. While some products may seem to corrode social cohesion and order, the overall effect is to reinforce the habit of passively accepting the judgements of others and standardizing aesthetics and ethics. By distracting Americans with fictional worlds and manufactured values, mass media serve an important function in diverting individual energy to the ends of economic and political interests allied with the orthodoxy.

Conflicts and Contradictions Within Orthodoxy
Modern American orthodoxy and its institutional allies form a vast complex of interconnected systems that defies easy explanation. There are many mechanisms, however, that tend to support common purpose. By sharing values of power and order, the Orthodoxy ensures that conflicts about legitimacy do not threaten the prevailing order.

The most obvious contradiction within the Orthodox ranks is the alliance of the movement with Libertarian political thinkers. Modern American Libertarianism is, however, a bizarrely specific creed. Only public power is seen as a threat to political liberties, and prominent Libertarians and Quasi-Libertarians seem chiefly concerned with those measures which threaten corporate control over the economy, wasting little time examining such trivial phenomena as the enormous National Security state. In this way, Libertarianism has been effectively harnessed to the broader objectives of the Orthodox bloc even if individual Libertarians may object more to the characterization than the reality.

The hedonistic message of corporate mass media would seem to conflict with Orthodox political and spiritual values, but again this is deceptive. By channeling individualistic impulses into conformist channels, a repeat of the upheavals of the late Sixties can be averted. Identity is diverted from action to culture, from how we exercise our sacred duty as citizens to how we exercise our sacred duty as consumers. Dissent is thus defanged, proceeding no further than the Billboard charts. The permissive message of media provides a handy fundraising tool for Orthodox political and religious organizations while the pro-corporate values embedded in the heart of the movement ensure that media power is never effectively challenged. The result is a neat symbiosis that provides a steady flow of power to elites.

In all, the cohesion of the Orthodox bloc is the most remarkable achievement in modern politics. It can be difficult to escape the conclusion that this cohesion is largely engineered by the corporate elites who have funded the various arms of the orthodoxist movement and who have benefited so remarkably from its ascent to power over the last 40 years.

Next, we will examine the opposition.

II: The Heterodoxy

Opposition to orthodox values in modern America has often been a tenuous affair. Dissidents have been murdered, imprisoned, tortured, blacklisted, declared insane, sterilized, marginalized, and ignored. Heterodox values have often been expressed in emotional terms in difficult circumstances. At times this has given acts and words of defiance a monumental character, but in other times has left us with incoherent rants mimeographed cheaply. Either way, Heterodox values have served as the conscience and engine of American history.

Integral Reverence
The emotional core of heterodoxy is the experience of reverence, awe, or agape (brotherly love) when faced with the realization that one is inextricably intertwined with, not only the ecosystems of the planet, but the entire universe. Not only are we dependent on things as small as bacteria or as large as supernovae for our existence and survival, but everything we do affects everyone and everything around us. We are bound in an interdependent web whose boundaries have not been discovered. In particular, other living beings are vital to both our survival and our search for meaning. The experience and implications of integral reverence thus form the root of heterodox values, placing ethical obligation to others and to the world over moral command from an external source of authority. These ethical principles were codified during the Axial Age of the first millennium BC, when most of the faiths and major cultural traditions of the Classical and Modern ages were formed. The religious traditions founded in that era have been powerful forces in the dissemination of heterodox values.

Integral Reverence and American Religion
The experience of integral reverence is associated with liberal religious movements; the Religious Left, mainline Protestantism, Reform Judaism, and mainstream American Catholicism. These faiths place an emphasis on service to others as opposed to doctrinal purity. This focus is more consistent with the Axial Age prophets than is the modern focus on scriptural literalism and its obsession with eschatology (end-times prophecy).

The focus of heterodox religion is thus on works and on the world as we find it. The search for rewards in the afterlife is either discouraged or ignored, as such a quest would tend to devalue the meaning and purpose of ethical conduct, which should depend on service for its own sake. This recognizes the interdependence and moral identity of human life: service to others is service to self by definition.

Heterodox religious movements have been at the center of the collisions over values that have served as the engine of American history: The Patriots, Abolitionists, Civil Rights Movement, and the opposition to Vietnam were heavily dependent on those who saw service to God as, first and foremost, service to Man, particularly the downtrodden and powerless. These movements were placed into fundamental conflict with established power in America that limited the growth in their congregations even as it maximised their contributions to history. Religious communities that validate the interests of economic and political power have always enjoyed a share in that power, while those that challenge power often struggle to pay their bills.

The result has been that, while these faiths have stagnated over the last thirty years of rightward backlash, fundamentalist and evangelical churches stressing obedience to an angry God have exploded in numbers and power, often dictating policy on education and sexual morality. For reasons already discussed, such religious movements enjoy a natural alliance with the political Right.

Integral Reverence and Secularism
Secularism, the pursuit of values and meaning separate from religious observance, has a long and colorful history in America. Since the nation was established in the secular Enlightenment, its political values have been profoundly secular, pioneering the absence of an established church and of religious tests for office. This secularism allowed the new nation to attract the best and brightest of a Europe still wracked by Inquisitions and religious rule.

Because the core of integral ethics is about tangible action rather than belief, heterodoxy has always been more tolerant of secularism and secular values of function over form and ethics over morality. Heterodox religious movements, with their emphasis on works over faith, are more tolerant of socially-minded secularists and free-thinkers than are conservative faiths that see conventional religious doctrine as a moral shibboleth.

This allows liberal and heterodox practitioners to be more tolerant of the natural and social sciences. This is key to making the heterodoxy more compatible with modernity than orthodox cultural and religious movements.  Scientific popularizations, like Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos” series, have often played a valuable role in spreading Heterodox values and encouraging the public to see itself as interdependent and as an integral part of a larger Universe.

Integral Reverence and Politics in America
From the earliest days of English settlement in the New World, Heterodox values and their adherents have played major roles in American life. From the proto-Universalism and religious tolerance of Roger Williams to the Abolition and Progressive movements, those who saw their duty to God as serving others seen by the Orthodox as beyond God’s grace have been revolutionary forces in a nation tolerant of abuses in the name of order.

The core of heterodox political ambitions has been to empower the powerless, whether directly or by giving voice to the voiceless. The tone of these movements has varied from the embarrassingly paternalistic to outright libertarian, but the unifying theme has been one of social revolution, bring the high down and raising up the low. From the women’s movement, to abolition, and continuing in the struggles for gay rights and against poverty, those who believe that humanity rises or falls together have always chafed at the prevailing social order.

There have, however, been missteps on the road to social and economic progress. Progressives have committed two great errors in their fight to transform American life, characterized by an arrogant paternalism toward those they professed to protect. The first was the Eugenics movement. By accepting the skewed, primitive, doctrine of Social Darwinism, early Progressives advocated sterilizing, imprisoning or even killing those they deemed defective, believing they could eliminate poverty and crime. Thousands were forcibly sterilized in states like Virginia where Eugenicists and their Progressive allies held sway. Even more embarrassing were the personal and doctrinal connections between American eugenicists and the German eugenics movement which became part of the Nazi Party.

The second error stemmed from a combination of paternalism and the hubris of ideological certainty. By imposing Prohibition on American society, Progressives hoped to mitigate poverty and the abuse of women. But by helping to create new criminal empires and fostering the most authoritarian government agencies, Prohibition worsened the plight of the powerless and diverted attention from more serious injustices like the violent suppression of labor movements. The failure of Prohibition marked the end of the attempt to ameliorate the root causes of poverty and injustice. Progressivism moved beyond Utopian ideals, to an attempt to reform the margins of American society.

Losing power after the Second World War to a coalition of evangelical, nationalist, and conservative forces, Heterodox movements peaked in importance in American politics between 1958 and 1966. These years saw some of the great triumphs of heterodox thought but gutted heterodox power until the present day. Movements for racial and economic justice which drew heavily on heterodox traditions were at the center of American life in these years.

The struggle for equal rights for America’s “Negroes” had existed in organized form since before the Civil War, of course, but its interracial support base was limited. Built locally through black churches and historically black colleges, as well as small legal and activism groups like NAACP and CORE, the Civil Rights movement struggled on the back burner of the American agenda until a charismatic leader attracted public attention to the cause, drawing many of the institutional organs of the heterodox community into its orbit. The mainline Protestant churches joined the struggle, enhancing its stature in the Northern middle class and giving the Civil Rights movement more national political power as well as identifying it with the northern wing of the Democratic party.

The alliance between heterodox social and religious movements and the political left enjoyed a brief moment of supreme political triumph in 1964-65 as the most liberal President in American history was re-elected and, flush with political capital, twisted Congressional arms to enact the Great Society, the most sweeping legislative agenda in any two-year period in American history. Medicare, Medicaid, anti-poverty programs, and two major civil rights bills decisively swung political and economic power into the hands of those who have been traditionally disenfranchised in America while provoking a backlash in corporate America and the white working and middle classes. Johnson’s war in Vietnam degenerated into a deeply unpopular quagmire. As Dr. King tried to drag the Civil Rights movement into broader issues of poverty and peace, he faced increasing opposition from Northern whites and the mainstream press. The coalition that enacted much of the liberal agenda was demoralized and fragmented.

Cold War politics and white backlash rapidly destroyed the New Deal coalition that facilitated these victories and ushered in the contemporary era of conservative rule. The Republican party took 47 seats in the House in 1966 and rehabilitated the political standing of Richard Nixon. Nixon ran successfully for President in 1968 using the same coded appeals to racial and class resentment that characterize the wildly successful conservative movement today. Evangelical churches and political movements associated with them began a period of cultural emergence that continues to this day. A large and powerful evangelical subculture has emerged, with its own schools, colleges, and media. Ordinary small businesses advertise in local publications with the fish symbol of authoritarian evangelical Christianity. The Orthodoxy owns as much political, economic and cultural power as it has in our history.

Heterodox people and institutions continue to press for social and policy changes today, but in smaller groups with less visibility and substantially less economic power. The labor movement, whose political power was built on a thoroughly heterodox philosophy of “all for one and one for all,” has been decisively weakened by economic and policy changes that have shifted economic strength from manufacturing to financial services. Labor is now fighting to defend the remnants of the protections it secured during its heyday in the mid-20th Century. The result has been a concentration of wealth in the hands of the few almost unprecedented in American history. This has destabilised our economy and society in ways that threaten America’s power and vitality.

While technological and cultural changes permit peace activists to turn out more demonstrators earlier in a conflict’s course than ever before, their influence on centers of power is greatly diminished. American governments resort more often to force than ever before in the nation’s history. Contemporary America is a deeply militaristic society. International diplomatic and security bodies at the core of the liberal policy agenda are distrusted by the public while the military is seen as the most professional and competent tool to solve America’s foreign policy problems.

Science is deeply distrusted, with large minorities or majorities deeply distrustful of scientific ideas about evolution, anthropogenic climate change, and the value of comprehensive sex education. In a polarised ideological environment, data is seen as propaganda and cultural change as a threat to traditional authority and order. Heterodox cultural movements, focused on worldly results rather than codified moral doctrine, lack the vocabulary to sway literalist religious movements on issues of life, death, and sexual morality. The result has been a slow degeneration of American education and innovation. Universities have had to look overseas to find graduate students in Engineering and the natural sciences as more and more students flock to Business, Law, or schools in the Evangelical subculture.

Heterodox movements continue to fight for gay rights and have moved the agenda forward. This seems, however, to be more closely connected to demographic change than to any surge in the values associated with integrative reverence or the Heterodoxy. Younger people are less disgusted by deviance from sexual and gender norms as “coming out” has become more common. They are less willing than their elders to use the power of the State to penalise those who choose to openly express their sexual and gender identity.

The Future of Heterodoxy
Heterodox movements and individuals will not disappear. The experience of reverence for the world of which we are a part has been an eternal part of human life and, if anything, will become more common as we take instant global communication for granted.

The crucial threat to Heterodox values will be that holders of economic power are convinced that their interests lie in strengthening the Orthodox hand. This alliance between corporations and the cultural Right, examined in the previous chapter, cannot be permanent but can last long enough for the imbalance in cultural, political, and economic power to threaten social cohesion and economic well-being.

The arts have always been a source of heterodox values, and new information technologies are spreading the ideas inherent to integrative reverence farther and wider than ever before. Never have the content of our ideas been more separable from our time and place. More powerful than ideas in earnest, however, is a new golden age of satire. By slaughtering sacred cultural cows, satire is an inherently heterodox force. The more sincere the Orthodoxy’s prophecies of doom if the heterodox agenda is enacted, the more spoofable the dire predictions, and the overblown media figures who sell them, become. Young mainstream Americans are exposed to continual ridicule of traditional cultural values, fueling the cultural segregation of the evangelical subculture.

Heterodoxy’s willingness to heed evidence may be key to its reemergence as a cultural force. As American society enters a period of interlocking crises, the secular awareness of the world and its problems that is the hallmark of heterodox thought will become more compelling. There may, in addition, be something necessary in the cyclical nature of cultural trends. The power of one movement may invite its leaders to overreach, discrediting the movement as a whole.

I’ll demonstrate:

1) Phase out all agricultural subsidies, starting with agri-business and their vendors and cutting benefits to family farms over time.

2) Change the Grand Strategy of the United States from global power projection to core defense. End deployments in the global gap. Phase out deployments in Central Europe and East Asia. Cut weapons programs sharply to meet the new strategic doctrine. Give Japan the choice to pay for naval and air forces in northern Japan. Work out a bilateral deal with the Republic of Korea. Both deals will require Status Of Forces Agreements that put American forces under local law. Get over it. The Koreans and Japanese are not the Taliban. Apply half the DoD savings to a crash program to get America off oil, say building a network of low-cost electric vehicle charging stations and a hydrogen distribution network. Make bilateral and multi-lateral deals to phase out nuclear weapons and get tougher on proliferation.

3) Replace the Health Care Bill with a single-payer bill, say 2009’s HR 676, which would cover all procedures for everyone and fund itself with a 7% income tax surcharge and a 2% employer surcharge.

4) Let the cap on Social Security contributions float up by CPI + 1% for twenty years.

5) Fix the Consumer Price Index and Unemployment calculations to restore accuracy.

Run that by any working economist and have her crunch the numbers. The 60-year fiscal tsunami we face will turn into a tame little breaker that laps around our ankles. Medicare would no longer face a wave of sick seniors who have been saving their diseases until they qualify. Phasing out agricultural subsidies would end artificially cheap corn sugars and soy oils that are linked to obesity, heart disease and diabetes. Long-term budget crisis solved.

Who would scream?

Corporate interests and their employees! Not to mention the “grassroots” opposition stirred up by their TV ads.

Who would benefit? The other 98 percent of the American people.

Watch and see which one gets their way.

Time to come off as an iconoclast.

This may be shocking to some people, and in fact I know it will be shocking to some people, but Martin Luther King Jr. was evil, and that is not hyperbole.

Just to get this out of the way, his fight against government segregation was a totally legitimate and morally praiseworthy fight. However, almost everything else he stood for, both concretely and philosophically, was totally corrupt.

First of all, let us be clear on what kind of “morality” MLK is talking about here. Do not delude yourself into making him a blank page on which to draw your own personal values. King was a socialist, avowedly, and certainly an anti-capitalist. He was pro-slavery at the most basic level, as evidenced by his attacking property rights as immoral.

“We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

That quote is disgusting, but consider what he is actually saying, and what he actually marched for. King is not simply proselytizing leftist and religious anti-capitalist falderal in an attempt to convert you; he wants the government to threaten you with a gun and throw you in jail, something he endured, if you do not agree with him. If you are morally repugnant enough to want to discriminate based on race, King does not just want to change your mind; he wants to steal your property and dictate how you use it. He places needs above rights, which is the primary moral principle underlying Christianity, Socialism, and Communism. What exactly does he mean when he says “people” should take priority over “property rights”? He means slavery. He means that if some people are unhappy, your right to your property must go; you must toil while others reap the benefit of your work, the very definition of slavery.

After all, consider that the event in which King delivered the famous “I Have a Dream” speech was the also-famous “March on Washington for Freedom.” Oh, wait a minute, no it was not. It was actually called the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.”

Notice the corruption of the word freedom. Freedom means you have individual rights, which consist of freedom from force. What King wanted was self-contradictory. He wanted the government to force the provision of jobs through either outright threats or the expropriation of wealth, and “freedom.” Of course, what King really wanted was Orwellian freedom. Freedom is Slavery in the most literal sense for King. You are not free unless you have enslaved another man to provide your needs.

There is of course far more to his horrid beliefs, such as his sickening view of the Vietnam War and his absurd conviction and out-of-context negative appraisal of the idea that the U.S. was the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world” in 1967.

School children have been inculcated for generations with the Trojan Horse idea that he was a great man, and so when they get older they must concede a little bit more and a little bit more to the left and the nihilist egalitarians whenever they bring up MLK. Martin Luther King Jr. was revoltingly anti-American, and it is shameful that a federal holiday was made of him, and even more shameful that he is used, as is Mahatma Gandhi, as a tool by which people get the government to force universal adoration of a freedom-hating icon in order to weaken the position of the freedom-defenders and make them break down in contradiction when they find themselves caught between what they implicitly recognize as the truth and the positive psychological associations for a monster forced on them from childhood.

The only “gap” between our technological progress and morality is the one he served in large part to widen, though, to be fair, he also shortened that gap by legitimizing socialist policies and thereby greatly slowing the technological growth of the United States and the world. Congratulations Dr. King, in the race to catch up to technology, your morality is running the course backwards, but at least it can never get too far behind, because it is dragging the goal post right along with it.

So, I replied:

This idea that only Government can coerce is a hugely popular, and spectacularly wrong, illusion.

I congratulate you for the quality of your writing and the orthodoxy of your opinions. Like many intelligent Americans, you have bought into a simple theory that seems to explain everything.

Of course, in the real world, there’s no such thing.

“Negroes” in the United States lived lives of virtual slavery when Dr. King began his ministry. Despite the Right’s mythmaking, the majority of the impetus to sustain this subordinate status came from private power. Slave wages and terrorized labor make for large profits. Businessmen who made their fortunes on the backs of Blacks funded and led the movements that opposed meaningful citizenship for all Americans.

As Dr. King continued to lead the struggle, it became more and more clear that issues of class and race were inextricably linked.

Just as one’s race could prevent one from developing and exploiting their talents, so could class and income. A society where people serve the economy, rather than the other way around, is a society with few good choices for those of low birth. Those of high birth, on the other hand, can rarely fail completely. Their wealth buys them privileges not available to the merely talented or intelligent. The result is the opposite of meritocracy, it is an aristocracy of wealth, and it leads to a decaying society. That is what Dr. King saw by the middle of the 1960’s, and it was prophetic.

Markets and capitalism are efficient producers of wealth and are necessary to the function of a free society, but not sufficient. Without Democratic institutions to limit the fungibility of economic and political power, no society can resist the pull to Oligarchy.

The weakness of Rand was that she had no understanding of Capitalism. The word means that all the power in the enterprise and the broader economy flows to those that supply one factor of production: money. Under the pure capitalism espoused by Objectivists, the suppliers of labor were systematically and deliberately excluded from the management of the enterprise and their remuneration reduced as much as power could accomplish.

But Rand thought this was practical and just because she thought the suppliers of money were the ones who knew how to do things, and that hasn’t been true for hundreds of years. The reality is that the owners of money are capital specialists whose expertise involves making bets on the abilities of others who know how to turn nature into wealth. Educated middle-class specialists are the source of a modern society’s wealth. If those middle-class experts cannot develop and exploit their skills, capital cannot produce returns and the system fails. That is precisely the crisis that America faces today, largely through the reification of Rand’s theology.

Of course, the central flaw in this Randroid’s argument is the idea that the power of wealth has been diminished in the intervening years. This is absurd. The reality is that the Hobbesian Right has gotten its way and the result has been catastrophe for the kinds of people who actually know how to do things.

Dr. King saw much of this, and recognized the intersection of morality and practicality. Such genius is rare and deserves recognition.

After a little back and forth with this gentlemen’s defender, the new gentleman chimed in with:

“Where is non-governmental coercion in his argument?”
I never said it was there. You’re saying it should be there. I’m saying there’s no reason for it to be there because it is irrelevant to the points he was making.

Your entire middle paragraph demonstrates only that you either do not understand Rand or you are deliberately misconstruing her, as evidenced by your demonstrably false claims:

Had she believed private coercion impossible, she’d have been an anarchist. Unfortunately for your pitiful excuse for an argument, she knew full-well of the existence of criminals and coercive people. The entire purpose of government, said she, was to ban coercion from social relations. So much for your first claim.

She went to great lengths to put forth a clear, comprehensive system of ethics. So much for her lack of concern for “moral hazard.”

There is an information asymmetry between everyone, since everyone is their own person and cannot read minds. I fail to see the issue here. It sounds more like a buzzword than an actual point.

Rand knew full-well that economic and political power become ever-more interchangeable in the current governmental system. She understood that when businessmen are allowed to influence lawmakers, mutual corruption ensues. She called for a separation of state and economy. She called for taking away the ability of legislators to grant favors to businesses.

You’ve made it clear that the only training you have, as far as the Objectivist faction goes, is that of misrepresenting the views while attempting to otherwise sound intelligent and knowledgeable, but that fails instantly and miserably once you encounter anyone who actually knows the material you’re smearing.

“If you want to get in a furball with me, boy, do your homework.”
Oh, look at the big tough guy. He’s older than me. He must be more wise and credible than me, due only to his age, since simply existing for a longer period of time automatically bestows more knowledge and a greater understanding of things, but this only applies to people who agree with him, since this greater understanding is only bestowed upon people who agree with him, making this kind of attack utterly meaningless when addressing anyone his age or older, and nevermind the fact that credibility plays no part in whose words make logical sense and whose do not, whose argument is demonstrably true and whose false.

If you wish to address Rand’s views, do your homework and try to actually address Rand’s views. Putting forth the strawman-of-the-day only succeeds in making you look ignorant and stupid.

My reply:

You’re right. I cut a corner when I said that Rand thought that non-governmental coercion was impossible. I meant that she didn’t understand that the cumulative effect of market power on individuals was, in modern Capitalist societies, a greater obstacle to individual development than any burden of tax and regulation.

She also didn’t understand that the accumulation of concentrated wealth in a very small number of hands threatened freedom in important ways and represented a more salient threat than phantom images of concentration camps.

So instead of saying all that, I just negated your argument, giving you the benefit of the doubt that you would fill in the gaps. Oops.

As for age not having importance to the validity of argument, it only applies because it’s given me time to study the phenomena we discuss in a deeper way than reading a bunch of adolescent fantasy novels that make you feel like a hero.

As far as reading Rand, I read Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead, and Peikoff’s intro to Objectivism. (I appreciate in advance your condolences for my pain and wasted time) Don’t think I don’t know her stuff just `cause I don’t put it in her words. Unlike you, I actually have my own.

One of the ways you have revealed your ignorance of Economics is that you do not recognize the technical terms I used to list various forms of market imperfections. Each one represents a set of empirical phenomena that suggests that market power and competitive merit are not the same. Understanding these phenomena and their role in the economy undercuts her claim of wealth as the indicator of merit, thus invalidating the core of her moral and practical arguments for non-interference in the economy.

Perhaps the greatest critique of her ideas is that they have succeeded beyond her wildest imaginings in the last 35 years, and the results have been a sound refutation of her ideas. As taxes and regulations have been thoroughly declawed, social mobility (chance of an individual born in the bottom quintile of earners dying in the upper quintile) has collapsed to less than 1 percent, one of the lowest rates in the world. The UK, where her ideas have also had lasting impact, is right behind us at 2 percent. No other advanced industrial economy has seen its social mobility collapse to the same degree. The positive correlation between deregulation and social mobility is the minimum empirical test of her claims that government regulation and tax distort the competitive process. The actual negative correlation undermines her claim that merit will shine through when government is removed from the economy.

There are almost unlimited ways in which the data from the last 35 years undermine her arguments. A full accounting would be a good project for me to tackle, but are beyond my available time and energy right now. Suffice it to say that as her ideas have been carried into power by the utter victory of right-wing politics in the Anglo-Saxon world, those economies have become less competitive internationally and domestically. We have watched the development of an aristocracy of wealth just when her theory would predict the emergence of meritocratic societies.

Real separation of state and economy is possibly the most fantastic of her claims, because it’s utterly absurd. Since the economy is the only thing of importance in any society, a society without government regulation of the economy is anarchy. Also, nature abhors a vacuum. Holders of market power would seize political power to erect barriers to entry to new competitors. So, instead, her overwhelming influence produces the shitty situation we see today. That’s what happens when oversimplified ideas get raped by reality. Learn that lesson well.

It’s OK to be young and stupid. That’s what youth is for. The question is, are you capable of learning from your mistake, or do you collapse in a puddle of cognitive dissonance? Time will tell.

The woman sued the company years later, after she discovered the DVD’s existence. Even with the delay, it should be an open and shut case. The woman did not consent to the illegal act of public nudity or the assault of being touched non-consensually.

But in Bizarro-world, the justice system works a bit differently.

A St. Louis jury ruled 11-1 in favor of “Girls Gone Wild,” the foreman saying: “Through her actions, she gave implied consent. She was really playing to the camera. She knew what she was doing.” WTF?

Let’s be clear: This was sexual assault. Worse, this was sexual assault for profit.

If I lift your skirt or pull down your shirt without your consent, it’s sexual assault. If I do it in front of a camera, and the cameraman does anything but turn the footage over to the authorities, he’s a scumbag and criminal, too. If the cameraman turns it over to a production company who releases the footage for profit, then all involved are accessories to felony assault.

It doesn’t matter that the woman didn’t leave when the camera got there, and it doesn’t matter that she didn’t press charges at the time. It doesn’t matter that she only sued year later, when she found out about the DVD. She has a moral and legal right to object to any or all of what happened to her.

Let me see if I can explain it to the slow ones: My body does not belong to you. You have no right to view it or profit from it without my permission. You have no right to touch my body or clothing without my permission. I don’t surrender those rights when a camera enters the room. I don’t surrender those rights when I drink a beer, and I don’t surrender them when I dance. I own myself.

If you violate these rights, I have rights of legal redress. If I fail to report this violation as a crime, I still retain the right to seek civil redress. And if a troglodyte jury dredges up some “asking for it” bullshit, it doesn’t mean shit. You should hope Jane Doe takes this all the way to the Supreme Court, for all of our sakes. Unless you want to be exploited next.

Despite more than three centuries of upheaval and breakneck change, America remains one of the most rigid and religious societies in the developed world. There have been powerful religious influences in American history, both in favor of stasis and of comprehensive reform. Strong religious ideas were on both sides of the New England Schism, the English Civil War, the Revolution, slavery, the American Civil War, the struggle over corporate power in the Gilded Age, the Progressive reforms and Prohibition, the turmoil surrounding the Depression, American involvement in The War, the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam, Watergate, Abortion, and finally the endless series of skirmishes over domestic policy known as the “Culture War” over the last 35 years. Again and again, Orthodox and Heterodox versions of human purpose clash over policy.

The two sides in these disputes often seem like they are speaking two languages that use the same words. Freedom, Democracy, Respect, and Authority seem to beckon from both sides of the disputes over slavery, civil rights, or the environment. Like Shaw said of Britain and America, we seem to be “two countries separated by a common language.” The most important factor in the insolubility of these fights seems to be the impression, on both sides, that the other side lack respect for the most basic values. The orthodox factions are accused of lacking reverence for the undeniable fact, to Heterodoxists, that we are all part of an indivisible system of living systems. There can be no separation of my interests and yours or of us and them. Zero Sum games are impossible.

The Role of Authority in American Political Thought

To the Orthodox, this is a dangerous illusion. There is a range of sources of Orthodox ideas from the frankly irreligious to the most committed fundamentalist scriptural literalists. The common thread is the recognition of the necessity of power and authority. To the Orthodox, rigid authority is necessary for the most basic social functions. Orthodox thinkers are influenced by Hobbes’ vision of the state of nature as the war of all against all. Human societies are prone to the most violent upheavals and bloody atrocities. Humans are disloyal, untrustworthy, and riven with uncontrolled drives that render them functionally insane. Only the constant threat of force keeps ordinary people in line.

The more tightly bound a community is by commonalities in ethnicity, religion, class, and profession, the more likely it is to survive these upheavals. From this view, the civil rights revolution was at best missing the point and at worst represented nothing less than a deliberate assault on the cohesion of American society. By threatening that sense of reverence other ethnic groups were supposed to feel for the WASP core of American society, the Movement fragmented society and destroyed the cohesion necessary to survive in a hostile and unforgiving world. This is why the Right has consistently refused to believe that the leaders of the Movement were not witting or unwitting agents of Moscow.

Reverence, awe and fear are the cohesive forces in society. By maintaining fear of the State, wealth, men, or Whites, the continual strife of human life can be contained. Maintaining this state of fear sometimes requires force, but the alternative is the Hobbesian state of nature where meaningful human life is impossible, so virtually any sacrifice is justified.

External Reverence

In more settled times, reverence for external authority figures becomes an indispensable tool for social cohesion. Ultimately, God, Jehovah, or Allah would be the object of reverence for religiously-committed orthodoxists. For their more secular counterparts, the object of external reverence might be a (conservative) President, the Constitution, American power in the world, or in extreme forms, force itself. Regardless of the specifics, the source of authority must be external to the rest of society. It cannot be embodied within the people, collectively or singly. In the Orthodox view, all people are orthodoxists at heart and share their view that only the overwhelming power of an external force can capture the allegiance of the community. All other claims to legitimacy are invalid on their face.

In this paradigm, the use of power is a virtue regardless of its end. Limits upon power threaten the vitality of civilization. Private or public power may be revered depending on the interests of the individual apologist, but concentrated power is a common value of the Right, even if it comes wrapped in Libertarian language.

Movements that usurp centralized spiritual, political, or economic power in favor of decentralized power are seen as dangerous and beside the point. By placing power out of reach of the vast majority of Americans, Orthodoxists can preserve social order in a number of ways. By minimizing the footprint of power, the pace of social change can be limited. By moving power out of sight, it can be a nebulous ideal that promotes obedience and deference rather than functioning as an engine of conflict. By removing power from the community, its imperfections can be masked. By hiding the petty disputes and insecurities at the heart of conflicts over power, external authority can be portrayed as impersonal and godlike, thus preserving its legitimacy. Decentralizing movements are therefore a threat to social cohesion and are tantamount to treason. This helps explain why civil rights and labor movements have been attacked as Communist regardless of the political orientation of their leadership.

External Reverence and Power

In contemporary America, the most common objects of external reverence are an imperial President, God, or a powerful and wealthy CEO. God is an archetype of power who may serve as a template for other holders of unlimited puissance. Churches are protected from external interference in any number of ways, and the most entrepreneurial and evangelical among them are the most likely to preach submission to god-like power as a socio-cultural ideal. In recent decades, churches that promote this view have been far more successful than those that focus on the ethical obligation of the believer to the physical and emotional well-being of other humans. This helps to explain the consistent policy successes of orthodoxists, regardless of changes in party power.

In this mindset, ethics diminished in importance. The perceptible consequences of human action are ignored in favor of the overwhelming importance of submission to external authority. In modern American history, the focus has been on sexual morality. Flouting of God’s plan to marry and reproduce in favor of fleeting pleasure is seen as ultimate insult to ultimate authority. The preference for the trivial over the monumental is a threat to the cohesion of society and to the Kingdom. The most egregious form of offense, of course, is homosexuality, but orthodoxists have defended the remnants of laws that prohibit non-reproductive sexual acts regardless of sexual orientation.

In political matters, the ultimate value is submission to the practically unlimited power of an Imperial President. The political Right, consistent allies of orthodoxy, has its own mythology about the meaning of the Constitution that persists in its appeal despite the paucity of support in the text. Regardless of copious evidence that the document was intended to limit concentrations of power in favor of competing centers, conservatives insist that the phrase “commander in chief” embodies limitless executive power in all matters except domestic social programs, which are mostly opposed. The fact that limits on executive power are not considered dangerous during Democratic administrations is not evidence of inconsistency. Democrats are seen as outside the cult of power, filled with naive and dangerous ideas of interdependence and the solubility of conflict that, in conservative minds, threaten the foundation of social order and render them unfit for political office.

The appeal of the Imperial Presidency is inextricably linked to the attachment to force as the ultimate political value. The role of the State is the preparation for and prosecution of war. The promulgation of threats is either a reason or excuse for the rush to war, but in either case, war is seen as having a value of its own. By promoting the values of the cult of power and the danger of external threats, continual war increases the cohesion of society and negates the appeal of heterodoxic values. Adversity in war serves this function, but defeat is unthinkable as it would threaten to discredit the values that motivate it. Therefore, the actual threat and power of the enemy places the function of war at jeopardy. This impetus draws the State into war with a series of weak states and non-state actors. These wars with tribal forces generate their own cycles of vengeance and counter-vengeance which explain much of the violence and disorder that characterize much of the last decade. Orthodoxists value these wars precisely for their tribal nature, knowing that despite their use of ideological and historicist language to promote these conflicts, the effect they have on American society is to tribalize those classes that comprise or sympathise with the warriors. By removing any stance between support for Us and for Them, these meaningless tribal conflicts promote the power totemism of orthodoxy and prevent the reemergence of heterodox values in mainstream thought.

The remaining form of revered power is the power of the modern Corporation. Large corporations employ many Americans, particularly in the politically vital suburbs. They dominate the American economy and culture. They supply most of the money for research and development and they make and sell the products and services which form the texture of modern life.

Most important for our purposes, however, is the role that corporations play as the primary contemporary practitioners of the art of Propaganda. American business has been using Psychology to convince Americans to buy things they don’t need since soon after the First World War. Freud’s American nephew, Edward Bernays, pioneered the use of subconscious appeals to tie specific products to primal drives. In doing so, he was applying techniques he helped to develop while serving in the Office of Public Information during the First World War.

Before these developments, advertising was focused on the promotion of necessities by their functional virtues. This placed sharp limits on sales and on growth. Besides being a threat to the profits of corporations and the wealth of their shareholders, this was touted as a threat to the social order. By limiting economic growth, this focus on necessities tended to decentralize power and posed the danger of individual and community independence at a time that America was becoming a world power. By helping to nationalize the economy and channel economic and cultural energies toward consumption, an economy based on the manufacture of desire would enforce political conformity and permit the gradual identification of political and economic power.

Commercial propaganda increased in power as the means used to disseminate it became more evocative and less social. Newspaper chains began the process, followed by movies, radio, television, and the Internet. Each technological innovation has produced a leap in immediacy and versatility, giving the practitioners of propaganda more tools to manipulate the emotions of consumers, convincing them that this or that consumer product will fulfill some primal drive, be it sex or belonging or even love. Without these tools, and the economic growth they make possible, the corporate-state order would collapse. Our currency, financial markets, and socio-economic hierarchy are structured to rely on year-on-year growth and large profits that a necessity-based economy can not provide.

Of course, the content that media companies have created to sell these advertisements to consumers have become important components of economic growth in their own right. Movies and television in particular create a vivid cultural space where the primacy of desire and pleasure are promulgated and celebrated. While some products may seem to corrode social cohesion and order, the overall effect is to reinforce the habit of passively accepting the judgements of others and standardizing aesthetics and ethics. By distracting Americans with fictional worlds and manufactured values, mass media serve an important function in diverting individual energy to the ends of economic and political interests allied with the orthodoxy.

Conflicts and Contradictions Within Orthodoxy

Modern American orthodoxy and its institutional allies form a vast complex of interconnected systems that defies easy explanation. There are many mechanisms, however, that tend to support common purpose. By sharing values of power and order, the Orthodoxy ensures that conflicts about legitimacy do not threaten the prevailing order.

The most obvious contradiction within the Orthodox ranks is the alliance of the movement with Libertarian political thinkers. Modern American Libertarianism is, however, a bizarrely specific creed. Only public power is seen as a threat to political liberties, and prominent Libertarians and Quasi-Libertarians seem chiefly concerned with those measures which threaten corporate control over the economy, wasting little time examining such trivial phenomena as the enormous National Security state. In this way, Libertarianism has been effectively harnessed to the broader objectives of the Orthodox bloc even if individual Libertarians may object more to the characterization than the reality.

The hedonistic message of corporate mass media would seem to conflict with Orthodox political and spiritual values, but again this is deceptive. By channeling individualistic impulses into conformist channels, a repeat of the upheavals of the late sixties can be averted. Identity is diverted from action to belongings and appearance. Dissent is thus defanged, proceeding no further than the Billboard charts. The permissive message of media provides a handy fundraising tool for Orthodox political and religious organizations while the pro-corporate values embedded in the heart of the movement ensure that media power is never effectively challenged. The result is a neat symbiosis that provides a steady flow of power to elites.

In all, the cohesion of the Orthodox bloc is the most remarkable achievement in modern politics. There can be little doubt that this cohesion is largely engineered by the corporate elites who have funded the various arms of the movement and who have benefitted so remarkably from its ascent to power over the last 40 years.

Next, we will examine the opposition.

If you’re running in, say, the New Hampshire Primary, and a story leaks about something you said seventeen years ago in jest at a party, and the media and opposition whip it up into a referendum on your character, the functional human response is to tell the voters: “If you’re that stupid, you can go screw yourselves. I’m going fishing in Montana.” Anybody who puts up with that is a masochist or a megalomaniac. And that’s the pool from which we pick our presidents.

Politics is an incredibly complex profession with its own lore, nomenclature, and rules, but unlike other such professions, like law, engineering, or medicine, every angry stockbroker or machinist thinks she knows how to do the job. Try complaining about your cancer treatment being dominated by “career oncologists” and see how silly you sound. We suffer severe cognitive dissonance about our political life, dismissing all candidates for office as crooks and deviants, but expecting them to make us opulent and immortal. We can call Congressman Jones an alcoholic reprobate pedophile in one breath while in the next cursing him for not getting our cat out of a tree. Despite that, we think we’re insiders if we choose a screaming heads show with our meatloaf instead of professional wrestling, as if there were any salient difference.

A career in politics tends to alienate one from the concerns of the public because there is NOTHING more distracting than the political process. The endless rush of compromises and deal making on the Hill, and the relentless drive to raise more money and get more press to stay in the job, combine to make one forget the effects that power has on every living thing on this planet. The labyrinthine process of legislation and the public dance of pundits and polls couldn’t have less to do with one another.

Despite these conditions and against all odds, there are people in office who belong there. They can come through the sewer of modern politics clean enough to eat off, always remembering why they are there and who they are there to serve. They can’t always be honest about that because the people they serve just don’t vote in large numbers, but those of us who watch the process know who they are. They are more precious than gold, because the system really would collapse without them and because the system is specifically designed to shuck them off.

I (sorta) know Kendrick Meek, and everything I’ve seen has convinced me he is one of those people. One of the few safe-seat members to show real statewide savvy, he is a skilled and personable retail politician of the old school. Not only does he vote in ways that make sense given the knowledge he has at the time, he has run his campaign in a way specifically designed to obligate himself to rank-and-file Democrats while still courting the big donors he needs to win in a state with 10 Designated Media Markets. His campaign has kept its cool under chaotic conditions, with three major shifts in the race’s outlook. I really don’t know how he could have run a smarter race. I will never agree with everything any politician does or says, but Congressman Meek is as sure a bet as I can find.

So, just when events shift to permit an African-American Progressive Populist to win a Senate seat in a state frightened by all three things, a wrinkle conveniently appears.

A few years ago, a merely very rich man became impressively wealthy by betting big against American homeowners at just the right time. He likes celebrities, fancy parties, and luxury travel. He married an actress and enjoys his privacy. He made a vanity run for Congress as a Republican in California in 1982, in the wake of the millionaire-pleasing Reagan Revolution. He’s pretty much another innocuous, vanilla billionaire in a country where they’re not that rare.

But, for some reason this man woke up one morning and said to himself, “You know what? Not only am I suddenly a public intellectual, I’m also a committed Progressive Democrat! I’m going to run for the open Senate seat. You know, the one in the state I have lived in for three years.”

Now, I don’t know when this internal monologue took place, but giving him the benefit of the doubt, I have to assume this was more than a year ago. So, instead of forming an official exploratory committee and building a base within the party, he waits a year or more and ambushes Meek in a Primary just when the race changes shape with Crist’s jump, a tactic that cost him several million dollars to plug a name-recognition hole that would not have existed had he taken a more conventional approach. There’s a reason many Democratic activists think he’s a spoiler.

So, this man indelibly associated with Credit Default Swaps in the wake of an economic catastrophe indelibly linked in the public’s mind with the proliferation of exactly those instruments knows he has a political problem. How to solve it? Like an only child who has just broken the cookie jar, he runs the other way and blames the dog. (apologies to Kendrick) Jeff Greene is now an anti-poverty crusader whose base is in Liberty City! Now, that’s political dexterity. I mean, I’ve changed parties a couple of times, but Holy Crap! That’s like Pat Buchanan turning into Noam Chomsky! Arianna Huffington, take notes.

So, he spends enough to start a community redevelopment fund, launches into Kendrick Meek, blames him for the economic crisis, pulls some anti-Fannie Mae rants out of his Republican “past,” criticizes him for not creating enough jobs, drags his mother into the race to swear what a good boy Jeff is, and in general sounds like he’s running against Kendrick Meek for the job of chief economic planner rather than freshman Senator. Now, I’ve been racking my brain trying to think of a class of Democratic Primary voter who is not supposed to be insulted by this reasoning and I can’t come up with one.

Greene is using the old line about rich businessmen knowing more about how to create jobs than “career politicians.” This is a strange argument given that he made his money by exploiting exactly the informational asymmetries that have distorted the economy so badly in the first place. His language comes right out of the Rick Scott playbook, and Democrats can be forgiven for expecting him to be just as Progressive as Mr. Scott. He launches into an economic plan as if he doesn’t know the difference between freshman Senator and President.

Most insulting of all, it seems to be working. The polls have pulled even. It remains to be seen what the actual turnout will be in the Primary (always unpredictable), but if Greene can spend his way into the General, the Republicans keep the seat (a child could do their ads), Meek does something more rewarding than human punching bag, and we are all worse off for it. If money alone can turn Jeff Greene into Cesar Chavez, then I might as well go make some money in some other business where we rip people off retail instead of wholesale.

Ending the practice of working families putting off treatment for serious disease until they reach the point of crisis will save families, employers and government untold billions. Getting and keeping Americans insured will help rein in costs. We will now begin to turn the corner on the epidemics of diabetes, heart disease, and obesity.

There is much to regret in the compromises that went into this bill, but its defeat would have spelled the death of reform hopes. Now we need to line up behind Rep. Alan Grayson’s Medicare You Can Buy Into Act. This is not the end, but it is the end of the age when serious reform could be seen as unrealistic. It is for this reason that I am filled with hope.

Yet ROB FIELDS ululates as only a wannabee apparatchik can, like a hog caught under a gate.

Why do the heathen rage?

Because Faye Armitage is “the real deal” and HEATHER BEAVEN is a fake, just like CLYDE MALLOY before her. Like CLYDE MALLOY, BEAVEN seems like a “Stealth” candidate, with no detectable pre-existing positions that would make one believe she is a Democrat.

Is HEATHER BEAVEN a shameless opportunist?

With some of the same staff (and funders), FIELDS is mistaken to dubBEAVEN “the frontrunner” when no one has ever voted for BEAVEN, and 2008 Democratic nominee Faye Armitage earned nearly 150,000 votes last year against reprobate Representative JOHN LUIGI MICA for the Seventh Congressional District race.

Beaven has no staff in common with Malloy. There’s also not more than a thousand bucks worth of donor overlap.

Beaven and Malloy are both lifelong Democrats.

What Mr. Slavin fails to mention is that elections are not tests of character or fairy-tale struggles against evil, they are numbers games, technical exercises in the mobilization and utilization of resources.

It’s rather bizarre that Slavin repeatedly refers to Malloy and Beaven as “stealth” candidates, because it is Ms. Armitage who is running a stealth campaign. Filing in April, she has missed two FEC reporting deadlines. She illegally refuses to report her fund-raising totals and sources. What is Armitage afraid for us to know?

Ms. Armitage has failed to put together the team necessary to beat Mica. This General Election will be more difficult than last cycle, because turnout will be lower. Armitage is serving as a spoiler. She will not campaign, will not raise money, but she refuses to drop out, making it more difficult for Beaven to attract support from people waiting to see what the previous nominee will do. Since the Primary is only two months before the General, this could potentially swing an otherwise contestable election in Mica’s favor.

Ms. Armitage is the stealth candidate, pretending to be a Democrat while helping keep John Mica in office.

By the way, my name is “Field,” not “Fields.” It’s written right in the comment field and everything. I already knew you can’t write, but I thought even a disbarred attorney could read.