Unstoppable (26 page)

The third rupture of conservative principles, according to Buchanan, is the takeover or hijacking of the Republican Party of Taft, Goldwater, and Reagan by both the neocons and the corporatists, who, for similar and dissimilar reasons, have combined to destroy our sovereignty, our constitutional restraints, and our reasonable economic self-determination. Their national security strategy has ushered in, he states, “an era of what historian Harry Elmer Barnes called ‘Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace.'” A continual state of belligerence confirms President Eisenhower's final warning to his country about the insatiable, profitable “military-industrial complex.”
¹⁶

The Possibility of Convergence Keeps Raising Its Head

The possibility for convergence of populist conservatives like Buchanan with liberals and progressives is strongly based on writings, such as those to which I have just referred, and on the polls that continually show, in spite of the domination of belligerent official propaganda, at least half and sometimes up to 70 percent of the American people are not buying these endless wars and hostilities for no clearly perceived objectives. Pursue attackers and bring them to justice? Yes, they say. But year after year of widening quagmires and their blowback make Americans think more about what Ron Paul called “minding our own business,” and our tending to neglected domestic conditions and needs.

Retired general Anthony Zinni, a Pentagon Middle East expert and former Centcom commander, worked with neoconservatives in the Department of Defense and found that they, with the
decisive collaborators at the Bush-Cheney White House, prompted the web of deception that poured half a million US soldiers into a devastated Iraq for years. He writes: “The more I saw the more I thought this
was
the product of the neocons, who didn't understand the region and were going to create havoc there. These were dilettantes from Washington think tanks who never had an idea that worked on the ground.”
¹⁷

His strictures do not apply to the Cato Institute libertarian think tank, however, which consistently opposed the war on Iraq in detailed policy papers before and during the invasion and occupation.

But to Move to Convergence, It Is Necessary to Separate Corporatists from the Principled

In sum, it is clear that when it comes to the world of these professional conservatives, little is clear. It is all jumbled up with factions, dissenters, and claimants to the true mantle of conservatism, each providing energetic rationales for their positions and proclaiming their fealty to their intellectual forebears. The unspoken divergence of some of these factions often hinges on how lucrative their commercially connected activities are, ones that include such considerations as consulting and lecture fees, future career moves, and links to overlapping boards of directors. If it is remarkable—and it is—how hard-line and inflexible are today's Republican leaders and their flock in Congress, compared with the more independent-minded Smiths, Hayeks, von Mises, Tafts, Kirks, even Jack Kemps and Goldwaters, it is due in part to the fragility of the conservatism they tout, which cannot withstand temptations offered by corporate contributions and the rewards awaiting after retirements or electoral defeats. Infamous corporate lobbyist Jack Abramoff said, “When a public servant has a debt to someone seeking a favor from the government, the foundation of our government is at risk.”
¹⁸

Today, the traditional cloak of conservatism has been transformed into a fig leaf for the likes of Boehner, Cantor, and McConnell. Boehner is so corporate-indentured that we crafted a poster of him with his suit emblazoned with many corporate logos of those sponsoring him, from Sallie Mae to ExxonMobil. They covered every available space on his garment (see
http://suitsforsale.org
). He delivered for them to the utmost of his power. After all, corporatism requires that both conservatives and liberals compromise their dedicated principles in return for that proverbial “mess of pottage.”

To work at all, convergence must derive from general principles, which interpret realities in ways that produce a broad agreement, with similar or different reasons being given different weights by either side. Such convergences will be welcomed by the public. On the other hand, no alliance driven by Mammon or self-enrichment can earn the allegiance of the public it is being constructed to serve. To be influential on policymakers at the top and with the citizenry behind it at the bedrock of our society, convergence must be the joining of two historic streams of cultural or societal values to change harmful realities on the ground—with no corrosive, conflicting hidden agendas.

Corporate lobbies have an effective way of putting their agendas first. They know how distracting this can be to the forces of good. Who has the time or inclination for convergence if your forces on the right are arrayed against the forces on the left over such hot-button, time-sensitive matters as major government contracts; subsidies; construction permits; licenses; tax breaks; unions; deregulation drives; earmarks; judgeships; reproductive rights; loan guarantees; revisions of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security; war policies; and the national security state? Both sides have chosen to spend their energies and appeal to their funders on such matters, not to mention that they inevitably are deeply engaged in primaries, elections, and struggles over campaign contributions.

Companies and their ever-hyping trade associations, backed by large law firms and public relations organizations, are forever
enlisting and rewarding their allies in these struggles at the national, state, and local levels of government. Given these intense ongoing battles with no end, and their aggregation into Left-Right antagonisms, convergence efforts take a back seat. Although the contentious issues will differ, the same low priority is accorded to local convergent proposals.

And what happens to the hapless citizens who are committed to one side or another and look for cues from their accepted leaders? Are they to be relegated to await their leaders, or can they get something started on their own and up the pressure? Obviously, it does happen when there are common material interests of the improving Main Street or the neighborhood variety. For purposes of this volume, I am referring to local convergence all the way up to those national projects, such as the law putting air bags in cars (described in
chapter 3
).

10

Dear Billionaire

T
o effectuate the top-down and bottom-up dynamic of effective convergence that moves from thought to action, from being to doing, will take more than polemics. It will take a climbing of the steps, moving ever closer to culmination. This means labor-intensive work, media of different kinds, full-time organizers, and most importantly new institutions just devoted to convergences. All this in turn requires direct resources of a magnitude and consistency that will allow convergers to weather not just the inevitable problems of start-ups but also the storm of the certain opposition.

Perhaps the best way to present the case for resources is to write a hypothetical letter to a relatively enlightened, nonreclusive mega-billionaire in an era in which such super-rich are increasing their numbers and their social consciousness. Warren Buffett and Bill Gates Jr. are first among the 114 billionaires and mega-billionaires who signed a pledge to give away at least half their wealth to “good causes.” When you look at their website (
http://givingpledge.org
), you'll see that just on this list are possibilities that would take us beyond tilting at windmills. So here we go.

Dear Super-Rich Friend:

We are sending you this book on the subject of the likelihood and benefits of a Left-Right convergence that would act to bring to existence important but neglected redirections or reforms in our country. You will note that when unlikely forces, historically and continually at odds over other political, economic, and social issues, decide to band together, their combined power can be decisive in unjamming long-prevailing logjams that block needed change and could be instituted locally, nationally, and internationally. There is something purifying and serious about ideological opposites applying their guiding principles to come together and get something done for a change.

Working together, they give cover to their legislative allies, who need that cover to persuasively explain to their constituents back home why they have allied themselves with and given credibility to their traditional, often demonized adversaries.

The convergers also bring together different arguments and invoke different traditions to make their cases much stronger. As unlikely partners willing to take political capital away from their usual contentious pursuits, they are likely to secure more media for their combined causes. This was the case with the Left-Right convergence to end the Breeder Reactor boondoggle described in the opening chapter and the repeal of “cartel regulation” of the transportation industry by Democrats and Republicans in the 1970s.

Indirectly, but importantly, they are broadening the public discourse so as to address reality rather than allow their ideology to deny what is actually going on. As Aldous Huxley said: “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” Those words are truer today than when he said them back in the 1930s, given the continuing, intensifying rigidity of positions over grave matters of state, democracy, and economy, often taken to favor partisan party domination or to boost other kinds of self-serving hierarchical supremacies.

In the previous pages I have tried to make a case that convergences can become realities, and that there is much to converge over, which will break our paralysis as a country. We have, as a society, many solutions—procedural, substantive, and technical—that are not being applied to problems that we have and do not deserve. I refer you to
Chapter 4
for a short menu.

In late 2012, I had two meetings with certified conservatives, one with investigative author and advocate Brink Lindsey of the Cato Institute and one with Stephen Erickson, president of the nonprofit Clean Government Alliance. Mr. Erickson, who exudes energy, sent me a seventeen-page white paper designed to put forth priority convergences and noted the strategic, organizational, and marketing steps to get the missions moving. We discussed three choices to get underway: (1) a clean elections system, requiring a constitutional amendment, given contrary Supreme Court decisions equaling money with freedom of speech; (2) an end to gerrymandering that cynically entrenches one-party district domination; and (3) reasonable congressional term limits to allow fresh energies reflecting public sentiments.

By contrast, my meeting with Brink Lindsey of the Cato Institute, a large center of disparate conservatives, included Jeff Faux, a progressive economist who started and for years ran the Economic Policy Institute, and Andy Shallal, a successful entrepreneurial restaurateur in Washington, DC, operating five innovative eateries, with public events and bookstores, called Busboys and Poets. Talking to Mr. Lindsey, I learned that he was not that interested in Mr. Erickson's choices. He cited as his priorities revising the PATRIOT Act to protect civil liberties; confronting the bloated military budget and the empire it funds, starting with a mandatory annual audit of the Pentagon budget that the Congress never gets around to assuring; and ending corporate welfare that conservatives call “crony capitalism.” All of us around the table had no objection to these candidates for convergence.

Earlier I observed that convergence needs its own organizations, because it will remain third fiddle if it relies on people in the opposing organizations to take time, connections, and reputation away from their programmatic identities to work with longtime adversaries—even though it is exactly through them joining these unlikely combinations that worthy but long-inert proposals can be raised to dynamic visibility. What is required, in my experience of working and observing convergent efforts, are convergence-only organizations in which there are no other overriding priorities and images interfering with the determined mission at hand. Even single-issue groups that substantively should and could converge are reluctant to do so because of the suspicions about such convergence raised by their constituents and contributors, small and large.

So here is where my request to you becomes more specific. Substantial financial resources are necessary to make convergence a national movement that means what it says and that is capable of covering increasing numbers of subjects and withstanding the anticipated opposition.

Step 1
would be to commission writings and videos on past and current convergences. These would show the potential for greatly increasing the number and the gravity of the issues over which groups could converge so as to produce a historic realignment of civic and political forces, thereby allowing them to escape from their present toxic or static conditions.