Curiosity in opinion journalism

Peter Suderman shares Ross Douthat's view that the revival of our currently moribund conservatism may well come out of the diverse, heterodox scribblings of the rising young conservative writers. He adds:

I’d also very much like to see a revival in right of center conservative journalism. That’s not to say there isn’t quality material being produced right now, but I get the sense that it’s fallen a step or two as of late, as too much of it has become devoted to little more than ideological bullying. And while I don’t think that’s always unreasonable (it is, after all, opinion journalism), I’d also love to see, along with greater collegiality, more curiosity, more creativity, more observation, and less fist-pounding. Writers of the conservative persuasion, or anything somewhat resembling it, ought to spend more time wondering about how the world is and less demanding that it change to suit their whims.

Well said! My personal interest, or bias if you like, runs toward cultural issues, especially religion. I find that conservative opinion journalism tends to treat cultural subjects and themes as subservient to politics. This is oversimplifying, but one gets the feeling that culture and philosophy matters to many conservative journalists only insofar as they affect the Republican Party's political prospects. As I've gotten older, I've learned how important it is to try to understand the world as it is -- which is to say, to resist ideological blinders. Conservatism is, I do believe, the most reasonable orientation from which to interpret the world, but it is far more modest an interpretive tool, if that's the phrase, than I once thought. (Russell Kirk understood this, which is why he called conservatism the "negation of ideology," a phrase I've only recently come to understand).

I don't read liberal opinion journalism as much, so I'm not sure to what extent the problem of incuriosity afflicts it, but given the state of our political culture, I'm guessing it has some parity with the right on this point. Still, I can only speak with knowledge about conservatives. I don't think it's too harsh a judgment to say that as a general matter, we've been more concerned with enforcing ideology than with exploring intellectual themes and questions. The best example I can come up with involves, well, me, and my fight with Jonah Goldberg over "Crunchy Cons" (a dispute that ended up with us not being friends, and I have to take some of the blame for that). He was so motivated to quash out heretical thinking that could be threatening to the conservative coalition -- and said this openly, if memory serves -- that he took it as his mission to mash that sucker flat. I don't want to re-open that argument here -- really, I don't, so let's not -- but at the risk of being self-serving, it was a sign of a disinclination on the right to engage questions and issues that challenge, even from the right, the accepted view of things among our tribe.

My larger point is this: what makes the Young Conservatives (Deneen, Douthat, Larison, Poulos and all the rest) so refreshing to read is that you don't know what they're going to say about any particular thing. You know it's going to give evidence of actual thought, not just ideological twitching. You -- OK, I -- come away from my daily encounter with their material feeling challenged to think about issues and problems from the right in a new way. I don't want to overstate this, because Suderman is correct that there's still a lot of good conservative journalism going on in the conventional outlets. But it doesn't feel to me as necessary to the conversation we ought to be having (or at least the most interesting conversation we are having) as reading these bloggers.

Let me pose a question to you readers -- conservatives, independents and liberals. Be self-critical for a minute. Think of your favorite journals of opinion, and opinion journalists. Now, can you come up with an issue, or issues, that your team is not writing or thinking enough about? That it ought to show more curiosity about, but doesn't -- perhaps because it challenges in some way their core political identity?

I've written before about how conservative opinion journalism doesn't spend nearly enough time rethinking how free-market capitalism undermines conservative customs, habits and institutions. Liberals would say, "That's because conservatives are greedy." Which may be true in individual cases, but it's as silly as conservatives who say liberals don't think hard enough through the consequences of their liberalized sexual ethic because liberals just want to get laid. As I see, it, exploring the way the undisciplined market or undisciplined sexual relations harm human flourishing, both individually and communally, violates for the respective sides a fundamental dogma about the Way the World Works.

But you knew I would say that, because I always do. Anyway, I would like to see more curiosity and creativity from opinion journalists on both sides about how the structures of modernity, things we've taken for granted for so long in our liberal democracy, may not be sustainable -- and how they should either be reformed or replaced. And I would like to see a greater willingness to take creative chances, and to publish heterodox ideas and analyses that emerge from within each respective tradition. We're not in a time in which either conservative or liberals have a good handle on the world as it is and what's required of us to prosper in it. We're in a time when what's needed is lots of vigorous thinking and debate about something more than what a bunch of sorry sumbitches the other side is.

Anyway, to refocus: what neglected subject or theme do thinkers and opinion makers on your political team need to show more curiosity and creativity in exploring?