Limbaugh's idea that to be an American conservative means to be able to consume whatever you want, whenever you want it, is by no means an eccentric opinion. As Larison recalls, one of the initial knocks against crunchy cons and other traditionalist-style conservatives is that our insistence that American habits of consumption was disordered and unconservative. For example, they saw our belief that what you eat and how you eat is morally significant as mere food snobbery, and us as, in Larison's apt phrase, "pro-life Michael Bloombergs on a quest to eliminate transfats by edict."
They were wrong ... and interestingly in this light, this morning Larison is starting to reconsider Huckabee's weight-loss and fitness preoccupation. I'd mentioned this point the other day when talking to the reporter who'd phoned to inquire about Huck's crunchy-con bona fides. One of the things I told the reporter was that Huckabee's turn from gluttony is at least symbolically important to crunchy conservatives. Larison expands on that point here:
It has been easy to make light of Huckabee’s talk about preventive care and a national ”health crisis,” since he is usually heavy on quips and light on details, but I may be starting to see some value in what he’s talking about here. Not as a matter of policy, but as a matter of pushing for changes in habits and making arguments that the good life entails moderation and that this must affect how we consume food. This is not to move away from joie de vivre and festivity, which I believe are complements to a certain asceticism that a conservatism of virtue has to try to instill, but to encourage a return to proportion and limits and, above all, restraint. The return of restraint would be a boon to conservatives in virtually all areas, whether we are talking about spending, foreign policy or conservation, but it can be applied more immediately in daily life.As Americans, our cultural responses to indulgence and restraint tend to veer towards extremes, and you find a generally humourless, puritanical lot crusading for various public health causes on one side and those who insist on their God-given right to kill themselves with smoke and fat if they so choose. One area where cultural conservatives might make a valuable contribution is trying to bring these two views more into balance.
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
Add to Facebook
Add to StumbleUpon
Subscribe
"Limbaugh's idea [is] that to be an American conservative means to be able to consume whatever you want, whenever you want it." Rod
Rod, you know that's a gross distortion of his idea of Conservatism (which is the same as Bill Buckley's and Ron Reagan's), but you keep saying it.
Why does it matter to Crunchy cons, anyway? It reminds me of John Hagee defining himself as anti-Catholic by distorting the Catholic faith.
Millions of your readers want to know why you do it.
"To speak to an American of restraint is to throw water into the sea."
Lord Karth
Tisk, tisk, my Lord, your jealously slip is showing.
"Some day it may cease to amaze me when I show up and Rod is talking about how 'real conservatives' should do what liberals have been screaming we need to do for decades."
That's because you, like many self-styled conservatives, are ignorant of the history of conservatism in the U.S., as Rod was until a few years ago, and as I was until a few years before then. I remember in the 80s being a subscriber to both 'National Review' and 'Chronicles,' and thinking that I liked NR better because it seemed more conservative. I couldn't have had it more bass-ackwards. The older Kirk/Weaver conservatism had been saying a lot of this stuff for years, but we neo-con raised GOP stooges either never heard it or didn't listen when we did.
Mind you, while there is some minor overlap between 'real conservativism' and what liberals argue for (this is what freaks the neo-cons out), we conservatives still eschew statist solutions: we may strongly recommend recycling, for instance, but would have huge problems with the idea of mandating it. For another example, I despise factory farms, but would be against the idea of the government shutting them down.
Rob G
That's because you, like many self-styled conservatives, are ignorant of the history of conservatism in the U.S., as Rod was until a few years ago, and as I was until a few years before then. I remember in the 80s being a subscriber to both 'National Review' and 'Chronicles,' and thinking that I liked NR better because it seemed more conservative.
I am not a self-styled conservative. I am not a conservative at all.
I couldn't have had it more bass-ackwards. The older Kirk/Weaver conservatism had been saying a lot of this stuff for years, but we neo-con raised GOP stooges either never heard it or didn't listen when we did.
Frankly, you're still confused. Conservativism as you define it, as Kirk and Weaver did back in the 50s, has never actually been elected or in power. It's all been 'fake conservatives'. As I've said about before, this is somewhat pathetic and reminds me of communists insisting that real communism has never been tried, and it would work if it was.
Just like planned economies always fall into totalitarianism, conservatives turn out to be fake conservatives when elected. Your populars ones were fakes, your unpopular ones were fakes, all of them have been fakes. There doesn't seem to be any logical reason this is true, but there you have it.
Stop overthrowing governments and replacing them with your communist regime in the name of freedom, it clearly doesn't work. Stop electing 'small government conservatives', it clearly doesn't work.
Mind you, while there is some minor overlap between 'real conservativism' and what liberals argue for (this is what freaks the neo-cons out), we conservatives still eschew statist solutions: we may strongly recommend recycling, for instance, but would have huge problems with the idea of mandating it. For another example, I despise factory farms, but would be against the idea of the government shutting them down.
I dislike the idea of state-run recycling also, as most recycling is pointless and somewhat wasteful of oil to save renewable stuff like paper and glass(1), but I do think we should require proper disposal of toxic things like batteries, by companies that make them, which would usually result in them being recycled. At the Federal level.
The left has a lot of dumb ideas about environmentalism, and because the right has never even slightly engaged the left on this issue, the dumb ideas are still floating around and getting pushed, like recycling paper and the idea that we're running out of landfills.
Conservatism is a required counterbalance on progressivism, but its discussion with environmentalism has turned from, to paraphrase Monty Python, being an argument into being simple contradiction of anything the left says:
'Hey, this stream seems to have a lot of lead in it, let's see if we can stop some companies from dumping quite so much so it doesn't seep into the water table.' 'No!'
'Let's not chop off the tops of mountains and dump them into streams to mine coal, that seems somewhat environmentally unfriendly.' 'No!'
'All this CO2 in the air seems like it's leading to...' 'No!' 'I'm just saying that maybe we could cut ba...' 'No!' 'The arctic ice cap is mel...' 'No!'
There are plenty of things that need 'No!' said to them in environmentalism. Things that the left is wrong about, and that wrongness need to be demonstrated, with actual facts and whatnot. Not just muttering 'granola-eating hippy freaks' and dismissing everything.
The right has to stop making up bogus science. They need to use real science that shows the left they are wrong about specific individual things. Or economic arguments that admit they're right about the environmental impact of something, but show that attempting to fix it would be worse. Not just 'No!'.
1) And to 'save landfills', of which we can actually dig more and the problem in them isn't glass and paper. Maybe we should sort out our paper and glass and put them in their own landfill, which people wouldn't mind next to them. Or maybe we could just stop dumping toxic chemicals in our existing landfills and then trying to contain them with liners.
I'm all for restraint. But I think all of us on this blog are ignoring what popular culture has done to the concept. Try listening for uses of words like
"virtue," "vice," and "sin" in any context OTHER THAN diet and fitness. You'll be holding your breath a long time. Polls have indicated that most young women would rather lose ten pounds than achieve world peace. Let's face it, a large part of Huck's popularity comes from his ability to lose 100 pounds, regardless of the moral connections he draws in talking about it. The thinness mania, whatever it may or may not have accomplished for the physical health of Americans, has been a tremendous waste of moral energy which would have been far better spent on getting rid of war, hatred, greed, and envy. And, while we're waiting for a cure for obesity, fat (no matter what moral failing it may originate in) has given us one more excuse for discriminating against the poor and ill-educated.
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.