Politics

Michael Grunwald and the Ideology That Dare Not Speak its Name

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Over at The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf goes spelunking through the hair-raising archives of Time correspondent Michael Grunwald, and concludes that Grunwald's now-retracted Tweet of "I can't wait to write a defense of the drone strike that takes out Julian Assange" fits perfectly with an ideology that is as consistent as it is under-acknowledged:

Grunwald seems to stand for whatever it is that he and the authorities think is best in a given instance, to hell with any procedural constants or absolute checks on power, like the Bill of Rights, getting in the way. Let's just be clear: that worldview has a lot of ideological assumptions baked into it, and is totally contrary to the system laid out in our written constitution, as well as the real world approach that we've followed successfully for decade after decade, with departures in times of war that we almost always came to regret. […]

[L]ike any radical ideologue, there are times when his ideology blinds him to reality. He is blind to the many instances in American history when government perpetrated terrible abuses, or else bizarrely thinks that powerful people abusing power is something that only happened in the past. It takes a profound disregard for the subjects of civil liberties, executive power, and their importance to write a 2013 article unironically titled, "Man of His Word: Obama Likely to Deliver on His Inaugural Promises (Again)." Little surprise that Grunwald thinks that New York's Michael Bloomberg, who shares his radical ideology, has been "an amazing mayor," even as he closes out his term trying to fingerprint poor people. […]

I…presume that Grunwald…would be somewhat less of a radical ideologue if the excesses of his particular ideology were identified, examined and challenged half as much as conservatism or progressivism or libertarianism. But Grunwald's ideology has no established name, and isn't fleshed out nearly as well as its cousins—its adherents are often unaware that they are people with ideological streaks.

Some supporting materials from the Reason archive:

* "No Labels, and the Ideology of Post Ideology: Why you should reach for your wallet whenever people near power claim to be post-political problem solvers"

* "The Post-Ideological Pragmatism of Blowing People Up"

* "Bloomberg's Super PAC Supports Sensible Centrism—i.e., Whatever Bloomberg Happens to Believe"

* "The Cost of Doing Something: Declaiming the price of 'inaction' is a perennial argument for big government and bad law"

* "The Simpletons: David Brooks, Thomas L. Friedman, and the banal authoritarianism of do-something punditry"

* "The Lethal Center: The dangers of quick-fix consensus"