Britney's fanny and the Guardian

Britney Spears' fanny. That's what I've been reminded of by these recent efforts at the Groan.
None of them, surely, can be serious. They're just the desperate attempts of a failing project to grab attention - in the same way that Britney flashes her snatch to make up for the fact that she's losing her looks and her records no longer sell.
What puzzles me is: why has it come to this? Why is the mouthpiece of the liberal left so disgracefully feeble, and, it seems, getting worse?
It's certainly not because the left lacks intellectual resources: see here, here and here (among other places) for links. Instead, the problem is that the left just cannot marshall its resources properly; the typical Cif piece looks like the screech of a five-year-old: "waaah, it's soooo unfair.".
I'm not sure why this is. Is it because the left is dominated by people who think that being middle-class and having a conscience suffice to make them better than the rest of us? Is it because of the misplaced faith in opinion rather than tradition? Is it because much of the non-Marxist left has never really gotten the hang of thinking analytically? Or is it a manifestion of the problem diagnosed by Alasdair MacIntyre - that we've all lost the skill of moral reasoning? Or something else?
Whatever, could it be that the disease that's struck the left is deeper and wider than even Nick Cohen or Andrew Anthony acknowledge?

Comments

[pommygranate]

what is a left libertarian by the way? an oxymoron?

[Phil]

Me, I'm a left libertarian. Once you think in terms of maximising freedom of action for people - rather than for pieces of green paper - I'm not sure how you can be a *right* libertarian.

[Phil]

PS Thanks for keeping it SFW (Konnie Huq was bad enough).

[David Duff]

In your final two paragraphs you pose a series of questions which I would tentatively answer as follows whilst simultaneously cursing you for nudging me to buy yet another book (MacIntyre's):

"Is it because the left is dominated by people who think that being middle-class and having a conscience suffice to make them better than the rest of us?" YES.

"Is it because of the misplaced faith in opinion rather than tradition?" YES.

"Is it because much of the non-Marxist left has never really gotten the hang of thinking analytically?" POSSIBLY, BUT I REMAIN UNCONVINCED THAT MARXISTS ARE CAPABLE OF IT, EITHER, DESPITE THEIR CLAIMS.

"Or is it a manifestion of the problem diagnosed by Alasdair MacIntyre - that we've all lost the skill of moral reasoning?" PROBABLY BUT I WILL HAVE TO BUY HIS BOOK - DAMMIT!

"Or something else?" CAN I RING A FRIEND?

"Whatever, could it be that the disease that's struck the left is deeper and wider than even Nick Cohen or Andrew Anthony acknowledge?" I HOPE SO!

[Dipper]

1. The collapse of the Soviet Union was more problematic for the left than it has cared to admit. Before, there was a choice of political systems, and now there isn't.

2. All politics is about self interest, but many have seemed to lose sight of that. At some point (roughly late 1979) the left ceased to be about the self-advancement of the working class, and became some enormous middle-class charity.

[Maynard Handley]

Problems on the left
(1) Refusal to accept the reality of certain problems:
- some cultures are pathological and deserve condemnation
- you can't hang onto your old-fashioned ways and your language spoken by 500 other people in the world and simultaneously be part of world society
- you can't save the planet by thinking happy thoughts, switching off unused lights, and buying a Prius
- there are too many damn people and more being born every day

(2) Refusal to accept the reality of cheating. Rather than admit that cheating exists, that humans hate it, and that if your favorite social program allows for cheating, at some point people are going to get mad about it and perhaps shut it down. You can either face this head-on --- admit cheating will exist, publish the numbers, and tell people it sucks but we have to live with it; or you can install (possibly expensive) safeguards to prevent and discover cheating. The standard left response, in contrast, is either to stick one's head in the sand, or to make up excuses for why the cheating is OK.

I'd chalk both of these down too a broad form of inability to think clearly, by which I mean not just analysis but making sure, before the analysis starts, that you're armed with facts and dat that actually correspond to reality.

[john b]

"The standard left response, in contrast, is either to stick one's head in the sand, or to make up excuses for why the cheating is OK."

see also: the right-wing response to tax avoidance.

[Matt Munro]

"Is it because the left is dominated by people who think that being middle-class and having a conscience suffice to make them better than the rest of us?"

IN A WORD: YES.

Personally I don't understand how anyone thinks it's possible to be left wing and middle class; the middle class established, grew and prospers to this day by cashing in on capitalism without taking any of the risk, the left hate capitalism, therefore left and middle class are incompatible.
As to having a "conscience" - isn't that just shorthand for ostentaious shows of right on opinion in a range of tediously predictable subjects from immigration to the crisis in darfur, to organic food. Having opinions costs nothing and needs no effort - why is it seen as such a big deal, why do the middle class imagine that everything they say is hugely singnificant and of enormous interest to everyone else ?

[donpaskini]

Chris, how would you explain the popularity of the Guardian online (which gets a lot more visitors than the websites of all of the newspapers which outsell it in paper copies) ? Doesn't sound like a failing project to me.

Comment is free, in the best liberal traditions, gives a platform to a wide range of people. So, for example, it offers Andrew Anthony a chance to tell the liberal lefties of his imagination why they are bad and wrong, and people like Conor Foley to show what an actual liberal leftie is like.

[Neil]

"see also: the right-wing response to tax avoidance."

...and the right wing response to any contract that happens to inconvenience them: Ticket touting, grey imports, etc, etc...

[Cleanthes]

"...and the right wing response to any contract that happens to inconvenience them: Ticket touting, grey imports, etc, etc..."

Ummm.... whereas no Labour voter has EVER engaged in any of these practices at all. Perish the thought.

Tax avoidance is legal. It's called arranging your affairs to take account of the current legal regime. In other words "INCENTIVES MATTER". The difference is that - shock horror - the standard lefty trope is that people are not supposed to respond to state-created incentives such as the tax system in exactly the same way that lefties generally deny that incentives matter. It's why socialism always fails.