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Extremism is no defense, moderation, no vice. The GOP is whistling past its own graveyard... [1]

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Date: 2023-10-16  

...a choice not an echo...

This week's headlines bring into sharp focus the incessant strain of extremism in our lives. Extremists live among us like viruses that appear at random to create their havoc. Seemingly unrelated events suddenly begin to connect. The murderous attack on Israel by Hamas, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the futility of the hollowed-out Republican Party are movements energized by the idea that there is some hidden value attached to futile acts. Extremists love a chaos that disrupts the calm, but even more, they revel in the suffering it causes others. They confuse being committed to a cause with the righteousness of it.

Political extremism has infected our politics since our founding. Our most recent iteration has been the long evolution of the Republican Party from one that abided by a woozy set of ideological principles that grew out of the Cold War to one with a death wish— and a Putin wing. Their hatred of communists once rivaled in importance their devotion to their own nation and its principles. In his acceptance speech for his party’s nominee for president in 1964, Barry Goldwater defined his concept of extremism in a two-sentence jumble that defied explanation:

“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue...” — Barry Goldwater, July 16, 1964

Goldwater's primary campaign slogan hinted at the candidate’s fate. “A Choice, Not An Echo” was his campaign's answer to the candidacies of party insiders William Scranton and Nelson Rockefeller. “Reminding” his party that extremism was not only acceptable but grounded in their guiding principles, Goldwater was forecasting Republican governance for the next 60 years. The text he read from that night was insipid— filled with sound and fury, but never to be taken seriously:

“...The beauty of the very system we Republicans are pledged to restore and revitalize, the beauty of this Federal system of ours is in its reconciliation of diversity with unity.” — Goldwater, July 16, 1964

“the death of politics”

While he may have spoken the words, they were written by someone else. Karl Hess was Goldwater’s speech writer that day and perhaps more so than Goldwater, was the interpreter of the modern GOP ethic. While Hess’s script brought down the house in 1964, the sentiment in it is both disingenuous and reckless. His words suggest that somehow extremism is a virtue and by extension, moderation a vice. The strains of that illogic can be seen in what has transpired in Israel this past week. It is also at the core of the Republican turmoil we are witnessing as the party cannot even agree among themselves on the choice of a leader. The term “extremism” has no positive connotations. Its synonyms read like the glossary in the devil’s book of prayer— ”fanaticism, radicalism, fundamentalism, bigotry among others. Or as the Cambridge Dictionary defines an extremist:

… “someone having beliefs that most people think are unreasonable , unacceptable, as in political extremism... “

Extremists share an apocalyptic worldview that causes them to be more guarded, and less empathetic. They confront the world with an abundance of caution. A University of Cambridge study found that those with extremist attitudes see the world differently than the rest of us. They view the world more in terms of black and white:

“It’s fascinating, because conservatism is almost a synonym for caution. We’re seeing that – at the very basic neuropsychological level – individuals who are politically conservative simply treat every stimuli that they encounter with caution.” The “psychological signature” for extremism across the board was a blend of conservative and dogmatic psychologies, the researchers said. The study, which looked at 16 different ideological orientations, could have profound implications for identifying and supporting people most vulnerable to radicalisation across the political and religious spectrum. “What we found is that demographics don’t explain a whole lot; they only explain roughly 8% of the variance. Whereas, actually, when we incorporate these cognitive and personality assessments as well, suddenly, our capacity to explain the variance of these ideological world-views jumps to 30% or 40%.” — The Royal Society Study, “The cognitive and perceptual correlates of ideological attitudes: a data-driven approach,” by Leor Zmigrod, Ian W. Eisenberg, Patrick Bissett. Trevor Robbins, and Russell A, Poldrack

Perhaps the study gives us better insight into why extremists are willing to inflict pain on their own people. Hamas, for example, invites the pain and suffering its actions will have on Palestinians living in Gaza, and will use the helpless and innocent as shields and hostages to promote chaos. Or perhaps it may help us understand better why the extremist wing of the MAGA Republicans is at war with its own members. Governance is expendable. Governance is difficult. Scapegoating and chaos are easier and less demanding of our energies.

In an article penned for Playboy Magazine in 1969, Hess pronounced himself a libertarian and walked away from the conservative movement and the party he once preached for. He became an advocate for and follower of the pseudo-philosopher Ayn Rand, a Russian emigre whose novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, brought her fame and fortune. Rand, born Alisa Rosenbaum, founded a philosophy she named objectivism whose main tenets found avid followers among young Republicans like Paul Ryan and Ted Cruz who still hold her laissez-faire capitalism confection as their political inspiration.

Rand called her philosophy "Objectivism", describing its essence as "the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute" — Playboy, “The Death of Politics,” by Karl Hess

Hess goes on to explain in political terms the views he shared with Rand this way:

Radicals and revolutionaries have had their sights trained on politics for some time. As governments fail around the world, as more millions become aware that government never has and never can humanely and effectively manage men's affairs, government's own inadequacy will emerge, at last, as the basis for a truly radical and revolutionary movement. In the meantime, the radical-revolutionary position is a lonely one. It is feared and hated, by both Right and Left — although both Right and Left must borrow from it to survive. The radical-revolutionary position is libertarianism, and its socioeconomic form is laissez-faire capitalism. Libertarianism is the view that each man is the absolute owner of his life, to use and dispose of as he sees fit: that all man's social actions should be voluntary: and that respect for every other man's similar and equal ownership of life and, by extension, the property and fruits of that life is the ethical basis of a humane and open society. In this view, the only — repeat, only — function of law or government is to provide the sort of self-defense against violence that an individual, if he were powerful enough, would provide for himself. (emphasis mine) — Playboy, “The Death of Politics,” by Karl Hess

The extremism that we are witnessing today is fraught with logical inconsistencies that appeal to those whose value systems are riddled with anti-government, anti-democratic ideas. Whether Jim Jordan or some other extremist Republican wins the speakership of the House is less important than the “Bannonesque” fervor for burning the house down. Their hatred of government, because it has rules and regulations that can moderate partisanship for the sake of governing, is what matters most.

Just as surely as Barack Obama’s insight into the importance of participatory democracy— “we are the ones who we have been waiting for”— the GOP corollary is to create the dystopia they have warned us to look out for. Rand has been quoted to have uttered many inanities *check some out here), but her core beliefs that sacrifice and sharing are bad violate the basic rules of the sandbox. Never to have read her solipsisms would have saved me the time spent on passages like this one:

(Each man) “must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.”

Spoken like a true extremist...

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