From The Weekly Standard’s “Scrapbook” (Aug 29) comes this amusing bit:
“Theorists have posited,” the American Political Science Association mordantly observes, “that under the proper conditions democratic decision-making will produce fair and just social outcomes.” But, hey, theory is for nerds. Bottom line is, it’s “clearer today than it has been for decades that the struggle for democracy” is incomplete and fraught with risk, even—perhaps especially—in “established democracies” like you-know-where, whose “basic institutions” face “encroachment and decline.” And are America’s political scientists going to take this George W. Bush stuff lying down? They most definitely are not.
Instead, a brave and defiant APSA, marching under the theme of “Mobilizing Democracy,” will convene its 101st annual meeting here in Washington September 1, and will urge its 6,000 conventioneering professors—and the rest of us—to “connect with the discipline” by attending a series of extremely important roundtable discussions. Like, for example, Panel 3 of the Conference Group on Theory, Policy, and Society, which will investigate the question, “Is It Time to Call It Fascism?”
The issue is both “substantive” and “strategic/tactical,” panel chair Dvora Yanow of Cal State, Hayward, explains: “Is there a theoretical-definitional grounding to make a claim for the present U.S. administration as fascist, and is it useful, critically, to use that language at this point in time?” Answers from Ms. Yanow and her eight co-panelists will be forthcoming Saturday, September 3, at 10:15 a.m. in the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel. Unless, of course, the answer is “yes,” in which case the secret police will probably long since have rounded them all up.
If it weren’t so very sad and transparent, it might just be amusing how many scholars in today’s progressivist academy purport to be “investigating” questions they are quite clearly begging, only to act “intrigued” by the cumulative “findings” they’ve so clearly predetermined.
As someone who’s attended such academic conferences, I can say from experience that everyone’s time would be better served if the conference organizers would skip right to the closing round table, where everyone would agree that the Bushies are “structurally fascist—though their control over the propaganda organs has made it difficult for scholars to disseminate that message beyond the university” (which conclusion will precipitate another conference, this time on a “crisis of message: theory, praxis, and the role of the academy in a fascist society”)—and get to the wine, cheese, and networking / social liasons they all came for, anyway.
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update: If any of you out there will be attending the APSA conference, Demosophist has a suggestion (which he’s crossposted at Jawa) See also, Rusty.
So, what’s the appropriate attire to wear to a circle jerk?
If “social liasons” means what I think it means, maybe I will go. I guess I’m going to have to nod approvingly at the various slanders directed at Bush if I want to get lucky.
“Is It Time to Call It Fascism?â€Â
If any of these coneheads can accurately define fascism I’d be very surprised. I’d like to see:
<objective Sense so that We Can Finally Stop Being Such Fucknozzles Throwing this Word around All the Damn Time?â€Â</i>
preview. . .PREview
Don’t forget the strippers/hookers.
I suppose we represntitives of the ‘aligned with brownshirts’ can take solace in the fact that as these conventioneers are spending money on hotel rooms, food, booze and the occasional lewd act, that this is a clear sign the terrorists have not won. So really the last laugh is ours.
Plus the wait staff has promised to pee in the wine. For the dean comment.
You red state heathen, Chardonnay has 2 n’s.
None dare call this fascism…except for the 10,000 professors on state payrolls…
Jeff:
The trackbacks I sent didn’t seem to propagate, but I have a proposal for those of us attending, posted here and here. But, you know… I’m game for anything.
I have used the word “fascist” carelessly before. You see, when I apply the term “fascist” to a social democrat, it isn’t that it isn’t true, it’s the fact that I had intended to hurt feelings because of political orientation. But when any of these “liberals” calls me a fascist, its ok because they don’t know what the hell they are talking about (or so I am told).
I don’t claim to know everything but:
Corporatist Model:
Government Controls corporations
The “third way” (so many of my lefty friends want to find a “third way”)
Our Model as perceived by them:
Corporations control republican politicians
The only way is capitalism for the republicans (they just can’t seem to get that “third way” thing down)
Please correct me if I am wrong.
Don’t these folks know that “political science” is an oxymoron?
Hint: if you can’t put hard numbers to it, it’s an art, not a science.
SB: high
are they?
Well, to defend at least part of the discipline, there’s a small cadre of people to tend toward the Public Choice persuasion, who do quite a lot of methodologically valid number crunching. And there are also the “Americanists” like myself and Dr. Rusty.
Are you saying that Profs sometimes (most of the time) conduct research into straw man type questions so they can prove that they were right all along? OY! Mishegas! No it reeks of chutzpah.
Some of you think the rest of us are not very bright. I find it insluting.
Sorry, Demosophist – but I consider statistics “soft” numbers. And amazingly amenable to manipulation as well, I might add.
SB: point
Wear a hat and nobody will notice.
I think some high-ranking neocon should show up for cocktails and causually mention that the profs better tone-down this fascist talk or the 2006 election will be put on hold.
Jeff, are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the National Association of Scholars?
Loved this part, because you know this is what they’re saying:
No, the problem is that the rest of us are too busy laughing our nuts off at these nimrods and their “message.”
It does bring to mind this question, however: is “Propaganda Organs” the brother of Harry “Snapper” Organs?
Hmph. Reminds me of a conference one of the limited number of art students at my college put together this last spring–“Regarding Evil”, I believe it was called. It opened with the synchronized blowing of four trumpets (God how fatuous) at four universities across the country. The entire idea of the conference/art event was transparently to devalue the word “evil” (but, of course, only because people like Bush who use the word “evil” are, well, EVIL doncha know) and featured a number of speakers who, among other things, were correspondents of Charles Manson, pontificated on the ‘aesthetic’ of Naziism, made videos of themselves masturbating in public to frighten the evil(oops) bourgeoisie taking their children to the park, etc. etcetera. The conclusion the conference came to, according to the arts reporter from our town’s beloved alt-catbox rag, was apparently that ‘evil’ is, in fact, a sort of life force which impels the universe forwards. That is, you know, sometimes it’s good to be evil!
Of course, if you conclude from this that my beloved professors and colleagues are jaded beyond any capacity for shock and outrage, you would be wrong. If I, for instance, were to wander into the department one day wearing a Bush/Cheney pin, my poor friends would probably faint dead away like novice nuns confronted by a naked and fully erect Marquis de Sade.
Nice to know that everyone draws a line somewhere, I suppose.
If some pro-Bush street thugs burst in and beat the professors around like rented mules I’ll concede the point that it may be time to start calling it fascism. Of course that’s after I get tired of googling pictures and video of the mayhem and laughing my ass off.
Great. The self-proclaimed elite progressive intellectuals complain they cannot get their message out because the ‘current’ US adminstration is fascist, so what do they do, they fortify their narcissistic Ivory Tower against the threats of reasoned reality by holding a conference to further their collective unconscious consensus.
When will they ever learn, Americans abhor mindless serfdom.
Just give them a “Sod off, swampies.”
If any of you out there will be attending the APSA conference…
I’d rather have a root canal without anesthesia, thank you. Is there even a single person outside academia who cares what these twits say?
I’m one of those “self-proclaimed elite progressive intellectual” “coneheads” and I’m going to APSA. I’m a political centrist and that puts me way to the right of most of my colleagues.
Having said that, I hate to break it to people, but APSA just isn’t that bad. The JawaReport guys with their flag pins won’t really be noticed. Because people from The Claremont Institute, Claremont McKenna College, UVA, The Hoover Institute, Hillsdale College, and many others I can’t think of right now, will be wearing their flag pins as well.
In addition, in the interests of fairness and avoiding Dowdification, here is the entire theme of this year’s conference:
“Theorists have posited that people who live in democracies are freer to express their preferences and that officeholders are more likely to respond to these preferences; that in democracy there is more room for meaningful debate and deliberation; and that under the proper conditions democratic decision-making will produce fair and just social outcomes. Researchers have demonstrated that people who live in democracies, on average, earn higher wages, are freer to form organizations, enjoy a broader range of public services, are less likely to go to war and to suffer from famines, and enjoy more responsive governments than do people who live under non-democratic regimes. Yet it is clearer today than it has been for decades that the struggle for democracy is ongoing: the struggle to defend its basic institutions from encroachment and decline in established democracies, and the struggle to achieve it at all in still-numerous countries and regions around the world.”
I agree, parts of this can be interpreted as US-bashing, and I’m sure there are many poli sci types who will interpret it that way. While many panels will involve ridiculous levels of navel-gazing, most people attending those panels will be friends of the presenters.
There will be 730 panels and over 5,000 attendees. Ascribing the views of some of those people to the rest of us isn’t fair. I don’t have tenure, so I can’t speak my mind yet. No, I don’t want to lose my job but I do want to provide a balanced viewpoint for my students and that means not speaking out until I get tenure. Yes, this shows a lack of tolerance for different views, but how can I help to change this if I don’t stick out the hazing period?
BeckyJ
You cannot be an elite Ivory Tower intellectual progressive when you don’t have tenure.
Getting rid of tenure will at least open the Ivory Tower to the concept of free ideas.