Musings On A Monday In Mid-October

What's great about blogging is that you don't have to be home to do it. I'm writing today from my Institute's student computer room, on an older computer with a keyboard where I feel as though I have to convince each key to go down... so let's just say this will be a short one. I had class this morning at 10 and woke up early to do the reading over bagels and coffeee with a classmate - because although we had 4 days without classes - neither of us had done much but print out the articles from the library. Went to class, discussed with my colleagues and our professor about the liberal tradition in American political history - not debating whether or not that's true - but whether or not a conservative political history exists in America and essentially why not.

The easiest answer seems to be that most people writing about American political history in the United States are liberals themselves. The history of American conservatism is written often in contrast to the liberal tradition, and often in a critical way. So there is a sense that we are missing a widespread understanding of conservatism in America as a result. Of course in academia when you have one argument presented someone else writes an article or review to dispute it; that argument being that it's not just that the scholarly research isn't there - it's ignored in academia circles and therefore kept out of the mainstream and overall consciousness of those that study it.

Both of these opinions made me ask first - is there a liberal tradition in America? Is it liberal in an Enlightment Lockean way of thinking about liberalism - or is liberal in terms of the reflecting the values and belief of the left of center part of the political spectrum in the US? I do think that there is a widespread misunderstanding - or maybe just lack of understanding - in America about the history, influences and thereby consequences of conservatism in American politics. This lack of understanding I think is what makes so many on the Left and East Coasts blow-off the Mid-West and Southern parts of the country, those infamous red states. It also is part of what is plaguing the Democratic Party - is there a thorough and comprehensive guide to understand the conservative traditions in America? How can we de-bunk some of the myths and then on the other hand embrace what could help adavance our own causes?

A lot of the questions that are framed in this academic debate on both sides of the Atlantic seem to come from a bit of jealousy of the sucess of the Republicans and the way that the GOP has captured the debate on moral values: they market patriotism like they get commision on every flag that is sold - and have embraced religion as their own.

It seems to me that it's almost gone so far that everytime a Democrat adorns themselves in red, white and blue they are seen as Republican-lite. I myself feel my own torn feelings - how far to to the center do we feel like we have to go to embrace Americana? And even in that question - is embracing those aspects of Americana moving center - or is that just because of the sheer success of them taking ownership of things that have been part of the American tradition (liberal or conservative) since our founding?

It's amazing that you can feel like you can better theorize about your own country when you are not in it - or I do. There are so many internal debates and discussions to be had... but at the end ofthe day the question always come back to - where do we go from here?