Here's a random thought for the weekend. Over the last decade or two there have been a lot of prominent opinion-havers moving from right to left. Here's a tiny sampling:
- Max Boot
- Bruce Bartlett
- John Cole
- Bill Kristol
- David Frum
- Jennifer Rubin
- Michael Steele
- Stuart Stevens
- George Conway
- Charlie Sykes
- etc.
Some of this was a reaction to George Bush. Some to Donald Trump. Some have become generally more liberal, others are just opposed to the current state of conservatism under Donald Trump. I'm not trying here to characterize them in any detail.
But what about the other direction?
- Dave Rubin
- Dennis Miller (remember him?)
- Glenn Greenwald (not conservative, but certainly anti-liberal these days)
- Elon Musk (never really liberal, but definitely hard conservative now)
- Russell Brand
Even this list is obviously a stretch, but it's the best I can do. Is my memory just completely failing me? Are there other, more serious folks in the pundit space that have moved recently from liberal to conservative?
POSTSCRIPT: And what do we call the people in the first group? In the '60s, liberals who became conservatives were eventually called neocons. Unfortunately, neoliberal is already taken so we can't use that. Maybe anti-cons? Non-cons?
conservatarians
Emphasis on the "con"....well, for the second group.
NonCon
NonComPoop
Senator Sinema is regarded as a betrayer and backstabber by those who protested the impending invasion of Iraq with her and those who supported her congressional campaigns.
All of them moving to the right have sex scandals or bribery in common...
It's not bribery, it's a "gratuity"...perfectly legal. And Trump wants to make that non-taxable--so it's all in the clear.
greenwald, also, was never that liberal. he supported the second iraq war, & before that was a fan of free speech rights for neonazis, rooted more in the nazi part than the free speech part.
Yeah, the free speech of people to intimidate and lie about others seems... dubious as speech.
If there were such a thing as 'absolute' free speech blackmail would be legal.
Right?
Sadly: RFK Jr, Tulsi Gabbard
Alan Dershowitz? And how about Candidate Vance?
did vance ever actually believe anything? his movement right smacks more of opportunism, a chance to advance his political career, rather than a change in outlook/philosophy.
no, he was always right-wing. in his book, he wrote about people who would rather get food stamps than get a job, he mentioned writers who influenced him, such as the author of The Bell Curve.
Are you saying there aren’t people who would rather get food stamps than get a job? Just recognizing those people exist doesn’t make you right wing.
if you knew how much people get on food stamps you would know that it's not an alternative to a job. Comments like that show lack of knowledge and reliance on bias, clichés about welfare queens etc
A quick google search says $766 per month for a family of three. That, combined with welfare sounds like a decent enough incentive for some people to not work.
You don't know what you're talking about.
"Combined with welfare" is doing a lot of work for you plus I'm not sure where you got your food stamp numbers from because here's what I found :
" The average benefit for a family of four is $713 per month" . In your home state of Florida the average family of 4 spends $287/week or almost $1,250 per month on groceries which would seem to show that $713 is not exactly living it up.
I think the number of people :gaming" the system for food stamps and welfare because they WON"T get a job is much smaller than you or JD Vance thinks but if you can prove otherwise please show your work.
Of course someone on food stamps is not “living it up” and certainly spend less than the average family on groceries. But, for some people, that is preferable to working. I’m not saying this is true for all (even most) of food stamp recipients. Just that there are some people that are lazy and prefer living on the hand outs, meager as they are, to putting in the effort of work. It’s absurd to say they are not some people like this.
And it's far more absurd to pretend that the number of these people are meaningful enough to talk about.
Unless you have other motives other than a realistic look at what matters.
Well, of course, in a country of 330 million people, there are all kinds of strange folk. The only question that should concern the rest of us, is, should we set up elaborate qualification processes to eliminate a small number of ‘undeserving’, or should we streamline the processes, knowing that a small number will game the system? Which alternative burdens society less is actually an empirical question, not an ideological one.
I recommend that you volunteer at a soup kitchen, or a homeless shelter. I have, so I am pretty sure that you will see that most of the clientele are either working poor (thanks to an economic system which has allowed most of the return on higher productivity to go to the wealthy), or are unable to hold a job due to mental health or substance abuse issues, factors partially or entirely out of their control (there are not enough spaces in treatment programs).
certainly there are people with some strange ideas in this country. a goodly chunk of them are trump voters.
It's absurd that the poor people are lazy stereotype is still alive and well. Not to mention being disheartening and disappointing.
Angry old guy screams about the lazy welfare queens.
Insists it is ABSURD not to scream about 'those people'.
Angry old dudes, wasting their life away in a constant rage.
"But, for some people, that is preferable to working."
And you know this . . . how?
It's absurd to say there are people like this without providing evidence.
A quick google tells me mr supports murders is not a good source for how much it costs to feed three people.
There are a number (what that number is I do not know, doubt anyone does) who work off the books and collect public assistance.
There are some unknown number that work for pay so low that they qualify for public assistance. I find that far more concerning.
RFK Jr. was the first that popped into my head. There was a time he was clearly a mainline Dem. He endorsed Hillary in 2008, and now Trump in 2024. That's quite a move.
Gabbard has always been suspect, in my eyes. Many on the fringe left found it a short hop to the fringe right (even MAGA) side of politics. The key may be ambition. Those with crazy ideas have better opportunity in the crazy party. (Ambition also accounts for the rightward shift of many current Republicans, who may have been more normal in the past but now do Trump's bidding.)
My semi-provocative suggestion for the list: A.G. Sulzberger. You could argue he was never a standard Dem anyway. His and his paper's reputation as a liberal bastion is mostly undeserved. NYT has be tough and often unfair in its coverage of Dems for many years. But since the rise of Trump, the paper has constantly put its thumb on the scale in the interest of normalizing the highly abnormal Trump while enforcing a ridiculous double standard for Dems, who can never be "perfect" enough to satisfy the paper's many snoots.
I don't think RFK Jr and Tulsi Gabbard were ever really liberal - just weird.
And Rudy. Bless his oil-smeared face.
ExCon?
Rom-con?
Off the top of my head…
Tucker Carlson
Lou Dobbs
Glenn Reynolds
Brit Hume
Mickey Kaus
Bill Maher
Nate Silver
That's a nonsensical list?
tucker carlson was always a rightcoded goof. i think his 1998 or '99 profile of then gov. george w. bush, where he expressed opprobrium of w's mockery of the woman texas executed, does a lot of the lifting to show tuck was in the center or left. but tucker was largely upset that bush's mockery seemed to reject the inmate's conversion to christianity as insincere.
lou dobbs was always a money guy, so he of course was right coded even in the 90s. he may have lurched (further) right on social issues as he aged, but it's not like he went from actup activist throwing fake blood on antigay politicians to marching with westboro baptist church. he was likely always skeptical of (others's) libertine tendencies.
britt hume left abc, where he was lead correspondent & fillin anchor for the nitely news, for foxnews whe the latter launched expressly because abc was the bleeding edge of liberal bias in the newsmedia. britt was also a favorite if el rushbo while at abc.
& glenn "instaundit" reynolds was explicitly the rightwing counter to eric alterman on msnbc-dot-com's early 00s/first term w bloggers page. he was always going to end up maga.
likewise, mickey kaus was a frequent object of the very same alterman's taunts. mickey has therefore not been a friend of the left in over two decades -- if he ever even really was.
this leaves maher & silver.
maher, pre-politically incorrect, got his national break as the guillermo to jay leno's kimmel on early 90s tonite show. (i believe jay first used bill as a red carpet guy when Jay was stil just johnny's tuesday fillin, even, & continued to use him after the 1993 handover.) so, maher's switch is at best from apolitical hack to falangist stooge.
& to end, silver always carried the aspect of glibertarian free expression guy, if only because he wanted his preferred coitus type to be street legal, & was, like dobbs, a moneycon. nate going maga, then, also not a surprise. in fact, hokingup with thiel almost seems inevitable, in hindsight. (should have trusted my bayesian priors.)
Kaus glows goats, if I recall properly.
Very confused why you included Nate Silver here. He constantly writes on his Substack, on Twitter and says in his podcast that he is voting for Harris and voted for Biden 2020 and voted for Obama 2008 (big skipped voting Obama 2012 because he caught NYT I must be impartial journalist disease). If someone hasn’t voted GOP for POTUS for 16 years how can you call them a conservative?
I think the jury is out regarding Nate Silver now that he is working for Peter Thiel.
If you take away the labels of D and R and liberal and conservative it may be that these people are just becoming normal people. People throw around terms like Marxist, Socialist and Communist but we really don’t see people like that. No one serious is trying to nationalize the banks or major industries.
We have had publicly funded police departments, fire departments, libraries, parks, and military for a long time. Social security and Medicare are well accepted. Expanding public financing of healthcare to everyone is not a big stretch. The hard right doesn’t like the government doing anything useful, but investing in infrastructure, public health are not radical ideas.
This is how Silver described himseld albeit back in 2012:
“I am somewhere between a libertarian and a liberal,” caught in a “kind of Gary Johnson versus Mitt Romney decision.”
https://newrepublic.com/article/155761/fall-nate-silver
Thaf doesn't sound very liberal to me. And I have no idea why he saw Romney as a liberal.
Anyway, given how awful the GOP has been for the past 15+ years, I don't think we can read much into his voting habits.
When Mitt was the socialist governor of Mass???
Considering that Mitt invented Obamacare as a MA state program, your "socialist" tag may not be that far off.
Except for Maher and Silver, who haven't really drifted right, the rest were hard core conservatives going back decades. But good try, you get a participation trophy.
Don’t think Mickey Kaus has always been a hardcore conservative
He has been since the mid-90's. The goatf@cker meme is at least that old.
We're saying they moved right if they went from "mainstream conservative" to "full-on fascist", but to be fair that's the party as a whole.
carlson went right because that's where he could make money. hume always was a righty. i was at a journalism awards banquet in the early '90s where Dobbs was the speaker and actually i was impressed by him. somewhere along the line he went way off the rails.
Dobbs was always racist, anti-immigrant.
the 2006 firing line episode with bernie sanders piece.
Mickey Kaus was never remotely liberal, but he did pretend to be one for a while. He was the original "I'm a liberal, but".
mickey kaus might be the only one you could argue was liberal.
silver & maher were glibertarians. embarrassed republicans who wanted to engage in sodomy & potsmoking, respectively, in other words.
Maybe the Right (the ideology) has moved further to the right? Maybe it's become so ideologically pure that money can't even coax rationality from them? It's like the zen of fascism – everything extraneous is shaved away and nothing remains but the hot core of hatred.
Maybe this is an excellent observation, too.
Most in the first group were "liberals who became conservatives" and "eventually called neocons".
Well, now they're moving back. Liberals, but not progressives, that's for sure.
As a liberal*, I find that refreshing. I've got a lot of problems with progressives. Probably the biggest is their failure to "read the room" as they say nowadays. They're oblivious to the interests of the center and are so sure they're right that they make foolish choices that lead to failure at the ballot box. e.g. censuring a Nebraska Dem for abortion stance this year (!) so he left the party and, *fortunately* still had the integrity to stop the WTA Electoral Votes.
* not one of those19th Century Classical Liberals that conservatives often call themselves. Classical Liberals are okay in the sense that they honor the rule of law and the basic framework of the Constitution, but their economic and safety net stances are somewhat callous.
The bigotry you espouse is kinda not a problem with progressives so much as yourself.
The people on the first list: Frum, Rubin, Boot et al, can be loosely defined as "pro-American." While I doubt they share many specific policy positions with liberal/progressives, they do believe in the American experiment, and think it's worth preserving
Frum... the man who high-tailed it back to Canada when Covid hit, like he was a 60s-era draftee.
Hardly. He was born and raised in Toronto and has dual citizenship. Most of his family is in Canada.
That's why I said "back" to Canada. For someone who is purported to believe in the American experiment as something worth preserving, high-tailing it out of the country when things got a bit dicey seems... surprising.
Give him a break. David Frum is a journalist, writer, and talking head on TV. He could do all that remotely from anywhere. His daughter was very sick and lived at home during this time (she passed now). There are many other examples, Marcy Wheeler (https://www.emptywheel.net) lives in Ireland, I believe Glen Greenwald lives in Brazil.
I think Pro Small country on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean.
I think that's a good point about Frum, Rubin, etc. Don't think for a moment that people like David Frum have suddenly repented of their previous selves. They just have come to conclude that they can't support a monster/clown who hates the American system. Maybe some of the things they say sound sort-of-liberal now because we are more inclined to listen to them.
And one more thing: Russell Brand is an "opinion-haver"? I thought he was just an obnoxious publicity hound.
I don't know how left these folks have moved. Seems to me most of them would be considered middle of the road Republicans circa 1992, just like most Democrats today (absent the social issues around LGBTQ+ which are just a continuation of civil rights) are pretty middle of the road for 1980.
Isn’t this just the “Never Trump” crowd? If Reagan returned to life, pretty sure these folks would be back to voting conservative (considering Max Boot only talks about his Reagan book these days).
Most of them, yeah. As recently as 2012 Jennifer Rubin wanted to have Mitt Romney's baby. Other than Stuart Stevens, I don't see any of them facing up to the fact that Trump is not a break from Republican's past but an evolution of it. I have serious doubts that, once Trump finally shuffles off the stage, many of them won't return to their roots.
I think Rubin has not actually shifted her policy positions that much. It feels more like she just realized that the Republican party she supported was actually a figment of her imagination. It involved cherry picking a lot and just ignoring everything else (Romneycare!).
"the Republican party she supported was actually a figment of her imagination"
That's true for all of them. But it was a willful blindness. Only Stevens has publicly acknowledged this. Time will tell, but people don't change their core values that easily. I'll be surprised if most of them don't shift back once Trump is gone.
FrankM, glad you mentioned Stuart Stevens. With his book "It Was All A Lie," it seemed to me he was the only one who rejected the GOP scripture in its entirety, admitting that the whole trickle-down economic vision was part of the scam. The rest of the anti-Trumpers, even though I admire their courage and commitment to sanity, are still enthralled with the Reaganite doctrine.
1st group: Conservatives who aren't willing to compromise with fascists.
2nd group: Conservatives who are willing to compromise with fascists.
Next question.
+1
Suscinct.
I don't know who Dave Rubin is. Dennis Miller? The 80s SNL reruns called -- they want their second-tier talent back. (You could add Rob Schneider to that list as well.) Greenwald has always hated Democrats, so I don't know if he's really moved to the right in any meaningful way. Musk and Brand are pissed at the left because they hate anything to do with "woke". Brand, esp., since he's been accused of sexual assault by multiple women over the years. You can see why he'd empathize with Trump. Same with Alan Dershowitz.
Which is to say, none of these people has really left the Democratic party or the left over any real ideological differences or principles, but mostly in fits of pique because they were called out over something awful they did and MAGA welcomes and showers attention on shitheads. One exception might be Dennis Miller who moved to the right after 9/11 because he thought the left was too soft on Islamic radicalism, but again, hard to see where he matters much these days. Call me when the former head of the DNC and a dozen leading liberal pundits and high-level political strategists tell us Democrats are nuts and they're voting Republican.
+1
A dozen!?! Hundreds of Republicans and former TFG-administration officeholders are voting Democratic for the presidency.
I was talking specifically about Kevin's list here, but, yeah, a surprising number of former Republicans, led by the Cheneys, have come out for Harris. I don't know how many of them would say they've actually repudiated their former conservative worldview, however, like, say, John Cole, Max Boot or Stuart Stevens, as opposed to choosing to vote Dem this once because the alternative is watching Trump burn everything to the ground.
Dennis Miller and Russell Brand were always, I thought transparently, wingnuts, if not closet Nazis. Impossible to imagine them not utterly on board with the worst of anything.
And are the rest of them really that reformed? Maybe a little, but only by contrast with their past of blindly supporting the party line in any situation.
Brand concealed his weird brand of conservatism in a word salad that made lots of people think he was an intellectual and possibly a libertarian. He hasn't shifted; people just see through his word salads.
Matt Taibbi who admitted to sexual harassment in a book he coauthored and then got pissed off because the Liberals didn't find it amusing. He blamed it all on his coauthor and issued the standard non-apology apology, Since then he isn't a economic conservative but he sure isn't a fan of the progressive left.
Taibbi is the first name I thought of after reading Kevin's list.
Definitely Taibbi.
Me too. And I think he falls in the same bag as Glenn Greenwald: people who were darlings of the left until they couldn't take the slightest critique, and since then hate all libs who might criticize them - that is, most.
Bob Somerby
Bari Weiss
Matt Yglesias
Norm McDonald
The NY Times is trying to repackage Bret Stephens as more left-leaning. Jonathan Chait is confusing but I think more conservative than not. I also find it confusing that various people who have labeled themself left-wing don't appear to be lefties, whereas even people who are not particularly right-wing seem reluctant to stop calling themselves Republicans, hence the need for a term like RINO. Considering party affiliation as an aspect of identity, people seem to find it hard to change their identity even when their ideas have changed a lot.
I think Bill Maher has drifted right compared to when he funded Obama. I judge that from my own reaction to him -- he went from annoying to unwatchable, especially after covid. I see some similarity between RFK Jr. and Bill Maher.
"I see some similarity between RFK Jr. and Bill Maher"
Agree-- both suffer the almost unbearable burden of always being self-evidently and axiomatically correct on every question, no matter how inconsequential and no matter what they said on the same subject five minutes before.
Come to think of it, though, this is a fairly common affliction in right-wing pundit-land, and may be a prerequisite for drifting from left(ish) to right.
when was bari weiss or norm mac donald a lefty?
hell, matty yglesias, for that matter. are you trying to tell me joe liebermann was a lefty, too?
“Are there other, more serious folks in the pundit space that have moved recently from liberal to conservative?”
Great question, but it all comes down to current estimations of what “liberal” and “conservative” means.
I am not a pundit, but I’ll use myself as an example anyway. I am (in my own estimation) a lifelong Liberal democrat who believes in equal opportunity, merit, and free speech. I have not changed my position much on any of these topics, but the culture has shifted dramatically. When I was a kid, these values landed me squarely in the Liberal camp. I was and am all-in on funding/expanding greater equality of opportunity. These days, however, many on the Left would consider these exact same positions to be not just conservative but, in fact, evil. It may seem like a cliche, but it’s true: I didn’t leave the Left; rather, the Left ran away from me as fast as it possibly could. I don’t perceive myself as having moved from Left to Right, but many others (including several in these comments who have often called me a bigot or worse) perceive me as having done so.
Getting back to the topic of pundits, a few examples do come to mind, and I think they’re in a similar situation as I am. Jon Chait @ NY mag, John McWhorter @ the NYT, and Bill Maher @ Real Time are all Liberals who many perceive as having moved from Left to right. They haven’t. The Lefty culture that they once helped represent has lurched so head-spinningly far left that they simply appear to now be conservatives.
And, in each case, these three pundits espouse views similar to mine. They all believe, in so many words, that discrimination is as likely to end discrimination as fire is likely to put out a fire. And that puts them (and me) in opposition to DEI, the administrative apparatus of “antiracism,” which mandates proportional and illegal (and perhaps unconstitutional) racial outcomes in all spheres of life.
DEI and antiracism could not possibly be more explicit in the way they actively promote racial discrimination. Kendi’s book, “How to be an antiracist,” states unequivocally that past discrimination must be met with current and future discrimination. Thus, in an astonishingly Orwellian manner, Kendi defines racism as antiracism.
And in what is likely the most inexplicable cultural coup of my lifetime, newsrooms (including the NYT and the WP), academic institutions, publishing houses, and entertainment studios all rushed to signal their virtue by embracing Kendi style racism (mainly directed against whites, Jews, Asians, or any other demographic group perceived as insufficiently oppressed). Hence we wind up with diversity statements as ideological (Leftist) litmus tests for aspiring academics, racial hiring quotas for all studio productions, and countless cancellations for anyone who dares question this new form of secular fundamentalism.
Chait, McWhorter, and Maher earn my deepest respect for the way they continue to speak out against this illiberal Leftism while still managing to hold onto their jobs (though my understanding is that they’ve all faced some measure of controversy). But have they or I moved from Liberal to Conservative? No. It’s impossible to engage in this convo without at least nodding our head towards reality: the Left has galloped so far Leftward that it abandoned liberals and liberalism years ago.
"DEI and antiracism could not possibly be more explicit in the way they actively promote racial discrimination. Kendi’s book, “How to be an antiracist,” states unequivocally that past discrimination must be met with current and future discrimination. Thus, in an astonishingly Orwellian manner, Kendi defines racism as antiracism."
* sigh *
OK, I'm going to try to explain this like you're a 3-year-old. The US started out as an explicitly white-supremacist nation. The Constitution actually says that Native Americans cannot be US citizens, that black people count as 3/5 citizens, and that escaped slaves who make their way to free states must be returned to their owners.
So it's hardly surprising that white people today are far wealthier than minorities, and enjoy far greater positions of influence in society. This is reflected in the percentages of white CEO's, white members of Congress, or for that matter white owners of NFL or NBA teams. And these racial imbalances are remarkably persistent: Slavery ended in the 1860's and overt discrimination in the 1960's, yet progress toward racial equality has been glacial.
So it is reasonable for Kendi to suggest that we need to put a pro-minority finger on the social and economic scales for a while to bring things into better racial balance. Yes, this is reasonable, and the fact that you blow a gasket when you hear about it raises grave questions about your commitment to justice.
Your response is a perfect example of Leo1008’s point. Seriously? You’re justifying putting a finger on the scale of Justice? This is the kind of nonsense that reasonable liberals decry as they realize it makes modern liberalism seem ridiculous to most people.
" You’re justifying putting a finger on the scale of Justice? "
That didn't appear in Five Parrots' text that you reply to. You just invented it.
He wrote about putting finger on "social and economic scales".
You normally do better than that.
Ok, it wasn’t an exact quote. But you can pretend my comment is edited to say “social and economic scales” and I would still stand by my comment.
Why is it "nonsense" to put a pro-minority finger on the social and economic scales for a while to bring things into better racial balance?
I don't know know if this is what Kendi suggests, but this is what Five Parrots wrote in the message you replied to.
Because you are putting a finger on the scale against another group because of their race.
And why that doesn't make sense, even when it is specfically done to bring a better racial balance?
Because there should be equal opportunity, not equal outcomes. Minorities do not currently suffer from unequal opportunities.
"Minorities do not currently suffer from unequal opportunities."
That is just bulshit.
OMG What planet are you visiting from?
What trash.
Because you are giving others opportunity to participate.
As a woman, I know all about being denied the same entrance to the ballgame.
"But you can pretend my comment is edited to say “social and economic scales” and I would still stand by my comment."
In what sense are the current American social and economic systems "just?" The fact that you equate "justice" with the social and economic status quo alone tells me just how out of touch you are.
White privilege may totally invisible to you, but that doesn’t mean it is not real and something that we would be a better society if we dealt with.
The invisibility is the key. When someone has played his whole life downhill with the wind at his back, it seems normal. A level playing field feels unfair. Pointing it out to him just get him to entrench deeper.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” - Upton Sinclair
@ Five Parrots in a Shoe
This where you lose me:
“So it is reasonable for Kendi to suggest that we need to put a pro-minority finger on the social and economic scales for a while to bring things into better racial balance.”
First of all, Kendi isn’t advocating anything “for a while.” He has called for a constitutional amendment that would, in his own words:
“Establish and permanently fund the Department of Anti-racism (DOA) comprised of formally trained experts on racism and no political appointees. The DOA would be responsible for preclearing all local, state and federal public policies to ensure they won’t yield racial inequity, monitor those policies, investigate private racist policies when racial inequity surfaces, and monitor public officials for expressions of racist ideas.”
Yes, he really did write that. He’s explicitly calling for an overthrow of our constitution and an authoritarianism so severe that we would be Monitored. For. Expressions. Of. Racist. Ideas. I’m sorry, but there is no possible way to support Kendi without embracing illiberalism. And if you don’t understand that, then you do not understand Kendi.
But, as stated above, I am all for funding and expanding greater equality of opportunity. That’s how we can best address the problems that you reference. NOT by overthrowing our constitutional order.
"He’s explicitly calling for an overthrow of our constitution . . . "
WTF? In what sense is a constitutional amendment the overthrow of our constitution? You do know that the Constitution has been amended many times and that the amendment process (actually two processes) is explicitly provided in the Constitution?
I am so sick of this "liberalism left me" bullshit. I'm old enough to remember when thinking "black people shouldn't be lynched, but they should also stay in their place" marked you as a liberal. It wasn't just racist Southerners who opposed the Civil Rights Act. Many middle-of-the-road Northern whites, who considered themselves liberal, also opposed it. Oh, they were all for black people to have equal rights - just as long as they didn't try to move in next door.
Time marches on and views change with it. Even Obama opposed same-sex marriage originally. He changed with the times. If you are so cemented in your views that you can't change with the times, that's pretty much an operational definition of a conservative.
+1
Well said. Better than my response.
I'm old enough to have witnessed many a man, when called out for inappropriate behavior toward women, turn from a 'liberal' to a hard-core 'conservative.' Just ask that dude who tried to hit on Amanda Marcotte in the elevator.
Liberalism built on the inability to grow the tent is not liberal.
+1
Oh come on, you Progressives are TRYING to leave Normie Liberals behind, basically trying to redefine liberalism. You all have not succeeded yet. But in your numerous excesses, you have severely harmed the electoral changes of the Dem party and given MAGA fuel.
BTW your analogy comparing us to Northern Liberals who opposed the Civil Rights Act (I don't recall that there were very many of them) is borderline offensive.
And if it were plausible I'd not pay more taxes and suffer more hurdles due to my same sex domestic partnership, I really couldn't care less what the words were.
But in just the time between our domestic partnership being legalized and marriage being legalized, we paid more than the price of our home in Santa Cruz in extra taxes - not to mention extra insurance, medical care, legal fees, etc.
😂😂 So many words, so little logic. It seems that you would be much more comfortable commenting at Fox or NewsMax. Calling yourself a liberal is dramatic self-delusion.
Are you intentionally trying to prove his point? It’s almost like you’re a paid plant for Leo1008.
Noted, you failed to show where Leo's position was ever liberal. Bigotry is antithetical to liberalism.
@weolmstead
You provide such a good example of my point that I have to wonder if you intend your response in an ironic manner.
As already stated above, I believe firmly in Liberalism: individual rights, free speech, equality before the law, consent of the governed, and all that good stuff. I also, as already made clear, believe in Liberal initiatives to provide all citizens with greater opportunity to reach their own highest potential.
But I do not believe in abandoning means for the sake of preferred ends like social justice. Hence, I do not support the DEI and Antiracist approach of embracing racism (against whites, Asians, and Jews) in order to mandate equitable racial outcomes.
All of this should, and once did, land me firmly in the Liberal camp. But now you state:
“It seems that you would be much more comfortable commenting at Fox or NewsMax. Calling yourself a liberal is dramatic self-delusion.”
This is exactly what I’m talking about when I say that the Left has abandoned Liberalism. Leftists clearly believe that anyone not adopting every plank of their deeply illiberal agenda is a Conservative, and I thank you for providing evidence of this trend.
So to paraphrase, you're in favor of equality, but opposed to any measures to achieve it.
I’m in favor of equality of opportunity, not of outcomes.
Weird that you keep showing up to make sure neither happen.
@FrankM
Your paraphrase presents the exact opposite position from this statement that I posted above:
“I also, as already made clear, believe in Liberal initiatives to provide all citizens with greater opportunity to reach their own highest potential.”
So, for example, I am opposed to Reaganesque/Conservative attempts to defund our social safety net. I support Obama era initiatives like the Affordable Care Act that expand Medicaid programs and subsidize medical insurance for those with middle or lower incomes.
None of that means that I am “in favor of equality, but opposed to any measures to achieve it.”
Your estimation of my position is so inaccurate that I have to assume you are speaking in bad faith. It’s also possible that you’re just not very well informed, and as a result you may genuinely not know what a Liberal actually is.
But in point of fact there is an enormous range on our sociopolitical spectrum that lies between Conservatives (generally rural, religious, and traditional) and Leftists (promoting immediate and radical restructuring of established orders to create what they believe will be an ideal, or socially just, society).
Call it the silent majority, the missing middle, or whatever other term comes to mind, but that’s generally where Liberals reside. And they tend to believe in both means (presumption of innocence, freedom of expression, diversity of viewpoints) as well as ends (a more perfect union).
But they do not believe in sacrificing those means for the sake of idealized ends (an entirely perfected union). That doesn’t mean that I or other Liberals oppose “any measures to achieve” justice. But we certainly do oppose the illiberal measures currently promoted by Leftists (such as mandating proportional racial outcomes throughout society).
Leftists will generally respond to such an assertion by calling it conservative if not reactionary. They’re wrong. Everything I promote is liberal. But the disagreement, or misunderstanding, about these terms does need to be acknowledged in order to accurately address Kevin’s question.
The whole "equality of outcomes" bugaboo is getting tiresome. Nobody is trying to dictate equality of outcomes. Show me anyone who is "mandating proportional racial outcomes throughout society". It's a strawman argument.
You can pine all day for equality of opportunity, but without concrete measures to achieve it, it's meaningless.
+1
@FrankM
Here is what I wrote above:
“But we certainly do oppose the illiberal measures currently promoted by Leftists (such as mandating proportional racial outcomes throughout society).”
I referenced proportional racial outcomes (not equal outcomes): an idiotic and illiberal idea that should have been laughed out of decent society rather than embraced by once-Liberal institutions.
If there is a core of Liberalism, I would say it’s this: we are individuals, and we are free to live as such.
We sure as hell cannot and should not be reduced to our race. We are far more complex than that. And the Leftist antiracists who insist on engineering a specific racial (or economic) outcome are the enemies of a free society.
But who, as you ask, is actually saying all this stuff? Here’s Ibram Kendi:
“One either allows racial inequities to
persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an antiracist. There is not in between safe space of ‘not racist.’ The claim of ‘not racist’ neutrality is a mask for racism.”
So what is the equity and inequity he’s talking about? Here’s the Framework for antiracism from the NADOHE (look it up):
“Equity: the proportional distribution of desirable outcomes across groups”
It couldn’t be much plainer. These Leftists want their idealized society, not an open society.
But you simply cannot mandate proportional group outcomes of any kind to any significant extent without infringing on the liberty of the individual. I would add that everything I’m saying is pretty basic stuff. Or at least it was once. Now there are significant factions of the activist Left who consider my observations conservative rather than Liberal. And that was my original point.
You're confusing two things:
1. a goal with a mandate
2. goals for groups with goals for individuals.
In a just society every group will have equal opportunity, and unless you posit that some groups are inferior, this will result in a proportional distribution of desirable outcomes across groups. (Note that this refers to groups. Within groups, outcomes will vary by individual, but that's not what we're talking about.) If outcomes across groups are unequal, then unless you have some other explanation, it's an indication of unequal opportunity.
Because of the above, it is a goal that desirable outcomes should be proportional across groups. A goal. Nobody is talking about mandating it.
"If outcomes across groups are unequal, then unless you have some other explanation, it's an indication of unequal opportunity"
I really don't want to defend Leo at all, but it's worth noting that culture is a complicating factor in all of this. For example, one wouldn't expect Jewish people to be proportionally represented among, say, Catholic clergy, and one wouldn't think that necessarily anything is amiss if, say, the staff of the NAACP skews heavily Black.
These are trivial and extreme examples, of course, and the effect of culture is undoubtedly completely swamped if not outright irrelevant in something like, say, the representation of young people going into STEM careers, or levels of familial wealth. But the point is that culture plays some role in outcomes, and unlike racial discrimination--which is plainly and inarguably morally and societally wrong--we are rightfully a bit more sensitive about adjudicating culture.
Put another way: the makeup of the hiphop artist community looks different than, say, the makeup of the acoustic guitar folk music community. Is that any reason why any person of any color/background should be discouraged from pursuing a career in either genre? Of course not. But it might also be that a big chunk of the reason for the disparity is that, statistically speaking, people identifying with different cultures like different sorts of stuff, and gravitate accordingly. And we might not, as a society, necessarily think that that is wrong, in anything approaching the way we agree that racial discrimination is wrong.
But a culture which stomps on the STEM dreams of young women is not a positive cultural aspect.
I think of myself as a progressive, but I wouldn’t know Kendi from the Easter Bunny; I’ve never read any of his stuff or encountered anyone who has. I think you mistake a tiny, but vocal, faction for a much larger group that recognizes that centuries of disadvantage, of damage to family and community structure are not easily undone; that positive efforts are needed to bring about true equality of opportunity.
Do you seriously think ‘studio productions’ are representative of all hiring by US employers? Or that a handful of well-publicized incidents at elite universities are representative of all post-secondary institutions in the US? You need to get out more.
@KenSchulz
“I think of myself as a progressive”
Mazel tov.
But that gets us back into the discussion of what these terms actually mean. And even if you consider yourself a progressive, there’s no guarantee that other progressives would in fact consider you to be a member of their tribe.
Also, quite frankly, this doesn’t sound very progressive to me:
“positive efforts are needed to bring about true equality of opportunity.”
I could not possibly agree more with that very Liberal notion. In fact, I say the same thing a half dozen times above. But progressives/Leftists would castigate us for rejecting equity (proportional outcomes) in favor of equality (of opportunity).
Another million word rant by Leo about race.....
For many decades (centuries), the Leo's of America have been rambling endlessly about their commitment to certain ideals as long as it doesnt include any actual steps that might benefit THOSE people. These pure ideals are polluted if you attempt to consider whether they are actually being extended to everyone.
Freedom, voting, marriage, basic justice, banking, etc, etc....
Nothing new here. 'I'm a liberal for certain people, it is you who have betrayed the liberal mission by thinking about the people I dont want to think about!' has always been an eye-rolling crusade of self-righteous idiots.
Lots of people blocking black kids from public schools and the voting booth insisted that their motives were pure and they supported equality both in spirit and in other, unspoken, mysterious actual methods.....it was the damn leftists who were harming everyone (minorities included!) by forcing these things on society.
Trump is using the same stupid rhetorical method.
What a tiresome blob of stupid.
"What we have heah is a bunch uv outside agitatuhs."
Is that what leo's saying? Yes, that's exactly what leo's saying.
This. A lot of people hysterically seize on some of Kendi's sillier ideas (such as his half-baked proposal for an ur-legislative star chamber that reviews and adjudicates all laws everywhere to ensure that they pass his antiracist criteria) and pretend that this is the secret revolutionary program of apparently liberty-hating progressives, when most people who identify as progressives have never read a damn thing by Kendi, may at best be dimly aware of who he is, and certainly aren't pushing for the scary examples that the right/Leos of this world are panicking about.
In the main, progressives are a pretty normal bunch, and if there are distinctions at the margins between what they want and what the Leo1008s of this world want, there's more than enough overlap that everybody should just focus on that and try to get it accomplished.
Illiberal, says the guy promoting violence, supporting murderers, and repeating bigoted slander.
...and that's just things Leo has done in the comments of this blog.
Bill Ackman used to be a reliable Democrat but now he's been redpilled and endorsed Trump. He's a nutty conspiracy theorist anti-vaxxer now.
Apparently he has gone all in on a conspiracy story fomented by an alleged whistleblower, claiming that VP Harris was given an advance look at the questions to be asked in the debate. The dumbest thing about this claim is that Harris scored the most points by provoking TFG with asides that had nothing to do with the questions. The little taunts sent him off into tirades that did nothing but confirm that he is all about himself, as she said. It was brilliant, and it was entirely based on TFG’s personal pathologies as they are on display every day.
It’s difficult to take anyone seriously today. Transactional. That’s what they are.
Dude, mirror.
My impression is that most of those moving right are either grifters or narcissists seeking opportunities. Most of those moving left are those with a modicum of integrity being driven left by the rampant intellectual bankruptcy of today’s right.
Nate Silver
Kevin Drum
the math guys piece.
Umm, which math guy(s) are you referring to? (Serious question.)
silver & drum.
the first is a baseball hipster who made his break with statistical modelling of expected next season player performance to try to win at rotisserie, then ventured into poll aggregation to produce winning cards for election bets. the second is the biggest chart fetishist since 1992 ross perot noted for his inflation adjustments since at least 2005 (when his blog really took off).
John Stewart
seconded.
It's not apparent that they've shifted leftward; it's more like they've stopped being reflexively dogmatic and have become more open-minded about respecting pluralism.
Others wjho have embraced the far right: Matt Taibbi, Nate Silver, Naomi Wolf, Jonathan Chait and (in this case, quite literally) Olivia Nuzzi. There are plenty of them. The right pays much better than the left, espcially to those who reject their liberal, progressive pinciples.
chait & silver were always right of center, & taibbi being able to survive as a journalist in late 90s russia points to a general comity with rightwing regimes.
wolf is closer to a right lurch, but mostly because antivaxxx went from a truly nonpartiancoded hoodoo to majority republican. a few states still show vaxxx opposition across the horseshoe (oregon) or still mostly left (vermont), but the days of california (largest state in the union), plus decently populous michigan & vacation favorite montana, being multipolar antivaxxx lodestars & reflecting a country deeply skeptical of any vaxxx are over.
antivaxxx nationally today looks more like 1980s new hampshire, Idaho, & washington state (which was always at least a tilt right on antivaxxx) than california.
Do you have examples showing Chait moving to the right? He supported the invasion of Iraq in 2002. He currently doesn’t support Trump. Indeed, his pushback on the accusation that Democrats are engaging in “lawfare” against Donald Trump is quite good:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/donald-trump-is-not-the-victim-of-lawfare-he-s-a-crook/ar-BB1kCiOz
I have been reading Nate Silver since his Baseball Prospectus days. The man is slightly left of center. If you define him as the Far Right, you either really do not read him closely enough or your definition of the Far Right is anyone who is not pretty far left. You should know better, Senator!
Left of what center? In that he'll make any problem worse and choose false centrism over actual principles?
I thought there was a name for the first group: Never-Trumpers. Mostly people who saw that MAGA was the biggest radical threat.
As for the second group, I'd call them good-riddance progressives. People like Glenn Greenwald (and Matt Taibbi) couldn't take criticism, although they spent their time ladling it out themselves, so ran to far-right venues to own the insufficiently grateful libs. Not conservative, just spiteful.
As comment #124, I expect to be lost in the noise, but the left-right continuum distorts in lieu of enlightens the discussion. Better to think of the up-down continuum where the baseline is where we (hopefully) are as newborns, caring about everyone influenced by our behavior.
From there some people go up by expanding their circle of concern to keep pace with their expanding circle of influence, and some people go down by not expanding their circle of concern to keep pace with their expanding circle of influence.
And then there's people who, like Elon, have a continuously contracting circle of concern until it can't get any smaller than "me, myself, and I."
As for why there are more pundits moving to the left than to the right, I’d suggest it goes back to the Republican embrace of tax cuts for the wealthy. Reagan’s tax cuts didn’t pay for themselves, and didn’t trickle down to any noticeable degree, but Republicans weren’t willing to change policy. Romney tried to sell tax cuts for the wealthy by branding the wealthy as “job creators,” but a look at the record of Bain Capital is a reminder that the wealthy destroy jobs as well as create them. So Republicans can’t really run on policy positions, or at least not on their core policy of cutting taxes for the wealthy. So Republican campaigns are more like con jobs, which is how they ended up with a professional con man as their nominee for President.
The pundit class includes people like Tucker Carlson, who was willing to simply lie about Dominion voting machines. But I suspect that most pundits do have some commitment to the truth. And for them, a conservatism that is increasingly untethered to reality eventually becomes unsupportable.
A reasonable good description of the Republican party in the last few decades, but apart of from tax cuts they also always go for cutting regulations, and this is as important as tax cuts.
"Tax and regulations cuts" is the right description of the pre-Trump Republican party policies.