[I]t was a huge intellectual thrill to find out all the things about the world that my somewhat politically-correct education wouldn't tell me. That welfare programs weren't working, say, and not just because Ronald Reagan wouldn't fund them. That there really were Communist spies in the 1940s and '50s. That decolonization hadn't been the magical process of Third World self-actualization that my eighties-era social studies textbooks suggested. I can still remember doing research for a project on population growth for my AP Biology class, around 1997 or so, and being astonished to discover that all the dire predictions of looming disaster that I'd heard throughout my childhood were just recyclings of Paul Ehrlich's dated alarmism - and that the greater threat might be something else entirely.
This is true of any intellectual conversion, Ross says. While I did not have the p.c. childhood that Ross did, I spent my first two years in college consumed by liberal thought and polemics. I joined the Progressive Student Network straightaway, and handed out anti-contra literature on campus. I quit hanging out with them on the morning that Leon Klinghoffer was murdered by Palestinian terrorists on the Achille Lauro. Arriving at the literature table to work that morning, I was really upset over what had been done to Klinghoffer. One of my co-progressives responded that you always hear about Jewish deaths, but never about Palestinian deaths. Another said that if Klinghoffer was rich enough to take a cruise, perhaps he deserved to die.
That was the end of me and the progressives, but I remained stalwartly liberal, in my way. It was only when a friend in Washington bought me a subscription to The American Spectator, which was very, very good in the 1980s, that my facade began to crack. Not only did the conservatives make more sense, they had a sense of humor and humanity about them that our side just ... didn't. True, I was not temperamentally inclined to hang with the Young Republicans on our campus, but more and more, I was beginning to agree with them, though it would take a few years before I was able to admit to myself that I was, in fact, a conservative. That I didn't believe the liberal dogma anymore -- that there was a difference between the real world and the world I believed in as a liberal. Truth to tell, I believe the break came consciously with me when I graduated and suddenly became a taxpayer and moved off-campus, and suddenly had to be concerned about crime. I wasn't mugged by reality, exactly, but I was roughed up by it.
Anyway, in that light, Ross articulates here something that's been bothering me for a while, but that I hadn't really grasped until he said it:
So it's been depressing, in the Bush years, to watch various conservatives take on the role that liberals played in my childhood and adolescence, by swaddling themselves in delusions about how the world actually is - whether it's the weird and persistent Bush-worship, the constant "good news from Iraq" drumbeat, the desperate "we found the WMDs" meme, or basically every word that comes out of Donald Rumsfeld's mouth.
The thing is, unlike my intellectual conversion to conservatism, my having gone sour on the contemporary conservative scene (and the GOP in power) does not involve any serious threat to my fundamental principles -- well, most of them, anyway; it's true that I've become more sympathetic with paleocons and traditionalists since 9/11. It's about losing faith in the ability of my tribe's leaders to deal with changing conditions non-ideologically. It's about coming to see that many of us in the conservative camp have become more concerned about holding on to power than in being true to what we profess -- and admitting it when our principles or dogmas don't account for what we're observing in the real world. And changing course. Instead, we've become in many instances ossified in our thinking and quick to demonize critics, both inside and outside the conservative movement, as heretics.
I hasten to say that I'm not tempted by liberalism. I fundamentally disagree with liberalism in most respects, and it's kind of amazing to be 20 years away from my freshman year in college, and still listening to the same stuff from many liberals that I used to hear two decades ago (except back then, I was saying them too). I'm not sure where conservatism is going, but I hope that after this election season -- whether or not the GOP takes a drubbing -- there will be some serious introspection on the Right. We cannot count on the Left being in disarray forever. We're deep in John Major territory now, and there's no Tony Blair on the scene. Yet.
I'll leave you with this melancholy thought from Andrew Ferguson, writing in the 10th anniversary issue of The Weekly Standard. You should read his entire short essay. Here's an excerpt:
Under the circumstances, it's not much of a surprise that the threshold Buckley tried to maintain has collapsed. I suppose any philosophical tendency, as it acquires power and popularity, will simplify itself, define itself downward. That's democratic politics for you. But something more corrosive is also at work. Marshall McLuhan was righter than anyone ever would have guessed. The medium really is the message. Conservatism nowadays is increasingly a creature of its technology. It is shaped--if I were a Marxist I might even say determined--by cable television and talk radio, with their absurd promotion of caricature and conflict, and by blogs, where the content ranges from Jesuitical disputes among hollow-cheeked obsessives to feats of self-advertisement and professional narcissism (Everyone's been asking what I think about . . . You won't want to miss my appearance tonight on . . . Be sure to click here for my latest . . . ) that would have been unthinkable in polite company as recently as a decade ago. Most conservative books are pseudo-books: ghostwritten pastiches whose primary purpose seems to be the photo of the "author" on the cover. What a tumble! From The Conservative Mind to Savage Nation; from Clifton White to Dick Morris; from Willmoore Kendall and Harry Jaffa to Sean Hannity and Mark Fuhrman--all in little more than a generation's time. Whatever this is, it isn't progress.
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
Add to Facebook
Add to StumbleUpon
Subscribe
Well, there you have it. The desert fathers as a paradigm for the development of cooperative living arrangements for the laity. But the latter usually have to be forced by circumstances into this.
Personally, I've been pondering St. Paul's "the love of money is the root of all evil" and to what degree it functions as a foundational principle for the restoration of moral order in this fallen world; that is, according to Christ's way of the cross.
But unfortunately, being just a beginner in Him, I must leave the development of such things to those who by sustained obedience to God and denial of self have learned the true order of these things by practice.>
Enough with the "Conservatives used to be so much more sophisticated back in the day" routine.
For you pointy-headed academic conservatives, there's plenty of material for you to sink your nose into--just get the Claremont Review of Books and let the snooze fest begin.
But the fact that many many many more people today call themselves conservatives than during Buckley's time is a damn good thing in my book.
And we have Rush and O'Reilly and Hannity and the like to thank.
Why is it a bad thing that the hoi polloi understand and embrace conservatism?
The elites liked it better when it was a smaller clique?>
How, exactly, does one man relating his positive experience at a Bush speech equate to "weird and persistent Bush-worship"? Or how a report that states that weapons of mass destruction actually were present in Iraq before its liberation become "the desperate 'we found the WMDs' meme"? What leads otherwise reasonable minded folks down this absurd ad hominem road? Are the Main Scream Media cocktail parties that enticing that you can only get you Liberal "street cred" and keep the invites coming is by attacking other conservatives? I find it really quite pathetic.>
"But the fact that many many many more people today call themselves conservatives than during Buckley's time is a damn good thing in my book."
"And we have Rush and O'Reilly and Hannity and the like to thank."
Yet another cultural sleight-of-hand prompting suicidal triumphalism.
"Rush and O'Reilly and Hannity", et al, retain part of their respective audience under the pretense that they are "conservatives" just like them, People's Tribunes in defense of Truth, Justice and The American Way of Death [RAISES HAND IN BENNY HILL SALUTE].
Others watch or listen, if they do, seeing in them a variant flavor served up by the great corporate entertainment-industry ice-cream parlor, no more of their "team" values than their moral equivalents at CBS/NBC/ABC "news" - they're all in showbiz, selling soap, dog food, and best-selling (often unintentional) humor "books", while gulling some into the belief that they are noble servants of a public trust and/or a respectable political tendency - yeah, tell that to the GE Generalissimos, Murdoch Moloch, and Viacom vampires...
Take the left-wing comic actress Ann Coulter, prized recruiting poster for the DNC and objective agent of the VLWC - not since Jack Nicholson in THE SHINING has a beloved gift for tragicomic derangment found such canonic popcorn incarnation. Someday she'll diversify the acting chops she picked up at New Canaan High big-time when Mel Gibson offers her the chance to stretch in mounting the casting couch in pursuit of an uncredited cameo in his next vehicle, where her portrayal of a human being will have jaded jaws hitting sticky floors in every multiplex from Tokyo to Times Square...
Q. Where is the most formidable enemy facing conservatives today, blocking their progress in finding greater traction in the culture?
A. You'll find it within the prime constituency toward which Rush/O'Reilly/Hannity pledge their lives, fortunes and *scared* honor - just wipe the steam and cream off the morning mirror for a better look.
Like the rest of us, conservatives largely get what they deserve, whether well-earned success or instructive frustration. Someday they'll get over themselves, too: wake me in about 2306 when, say, NATIONAL REVIEW follows up its anti-Clooney cover piece ("Get Over Yourself, George") with a like takedown of Hannity & Co.
Now if you'll 'scuse me, I must go - can't wait to see what Hugh and the Powerline boys have to say about the latest from Jonah and the gang over at The Corner - whoops, mustn't forget Tarantulo over at the WSJ, Little Seen Footfalls, and the Best of the Rest from the very cream of the self-fellating glob-ooze-fear:
Arianna Huffanpuff wonders whether GOP wolves will blow her house down (1) (tip: Insteadipunnedit).
The Smith Brothers wonder (2) if long Victorian beards will make a comeback.(3) (tip: Ricola Alpenhorn)(4)
Two Stark Raving Loonies debate whether cancelled smirking neo-neocon hipsters have a future on the news channels (5) (tip: Denni Smiller's Sense of Snow)
Jonah Goldbrick, grown weary of his lead in off-Beltway's The Little Shoptalk Around "The Corner", is quitting Simpsons punditry to blog from the vantage of his true calling - furniture sales - launching Couchfiles.com.(6)
Retro on the Metro: female Beltway interns respond to the tight job market with time-tested tactic no less so: wearing tight sweaters braless (tit: Petite Perky Pundette).(7)
Andrew Sullivan argues that same-sex weddings performed by gay Army chaplains will both reduce prisoner abuse (8) in the military and strangle recruiting efforts by Islamist militants, while encouraging Catholic ecumenical outreach (9) in softening the heart of Pope Benedict.
Christopher Hitchens says: you lost me after the Islamist-recruiting part.(10)
1.http://whoseafraidofthebigbadwolfblog.net/
2.http://ibetyouwerexpectingreallinks.heh/
3.http://tradeandmarkbeardedcoughdroppundits.box/
4.http://swissarmylozenges.ch/
5.http://atleastwithoneviewerheoutdidmcenroe.dude/
6.http://whatsunderthecushionstaysunderthecushion.org/
7.http://www.lsmft.bra/
8.http://hellosailor.net/
9.http://kumbayamlud.rcc/
10.http://ecrasezlinfame.encyclopedie.fr/>
This is all well and good, but the target is a wee bit off.
The right isn't especially bad off. True, in the GOP nowadays, there are more "true republicans" these days than real conservatives. But the decline in conservative thought is nothing compared to the total collapse of thinking on the Left.
In reality, the problem isn't a decline in conservative thought...it's a decline in political thought and understanding at every level of American society. Politics isn't something you're able to talk about in polite company any more. A politician is only one step ahead of a used car salesman or a lawyer (and given that many politicos are lawyers, well, we're in deep dung...).
We need a new breed of politico to bring back political discourse. The rise of Ann Coulter is not the answer.>
Post a Comment
By submitting these comments, I agree to the beliefnet.com terms of service, rules of conduct and privacy policy (the "agreements"). I understand and agree that any content I post is licensed to beliefnet.com and may be used by beliefnet.com in accordance with the agreements.