Larison on the fall of conservatism

I think we also need to question the judgment of many conservative pundits when it comes to politics. We hear so many of them now telling us that Bush is not a "real' conservative. Clearly they could not see past his BS back when it counted, and now that we have had eight years of his "conservatism" they say he really wasn't one.

To be honest, if they can be duped by Bush, how can we trust their judgment in other instances? Rod, nothing personal here but I'll use you as an example. You were convinced by Bush with regards to the Iraq War (and I assume his overall policy) back in the early part of his administration. Now you seem to be rejecting much of what he has done. Is your judgment now better, sufficiently so that we should listen to you when you speak out regarding the future new conservatism?

Dear Rod -

As a regular reader of National Review Online since it's inception, and a regular reader of the dead-tree National Review for more than 20 years, I am horrified to what has happened to it.

National Review let go of many of it's core principles, and you were one of the enablers as it happened.

1. The Iraq War. Conservatives have always been for a strong National DEFENSE. Yet conservatives lined up to support President Bush's ill-fated war of aggression against a nation that had not attacked us.

2. Fiscal responsibility. Conservatives, as soon as they grabbed power, tossed away fiscal responsibility. President Bush inherited a budget surplus, and has, in eight years, undone all of the good work that a GOP congress did from 1994-2000.

3. Torture. How the heck does the party of Ronald Reagan become the party justifying and excusing torture of innocent individuals.

I could go on and on... but you get the point.

I'm still a conservative. But I'm no longer a Republican, not since 2003 when George Bush and the rest of the "conservatives" chose to put us into a war without seriously considering the ramifications of such an action.

The problem with that approach, Karen, is that only a tiny portion of the country is actually sympathetic to those values.

The one consolation for the true Traditionalist is this: sooner or later the whole rotten, vile edifice is going to come tumbling down, and said tumble is going to be a doozy. A real prize-winner; one that will make Rome of 476 AD or Constantinople in 1453 look like a light summer rain.

I'll let Mr. Kipling make my point for me:

"AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will bum,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return !"

When that happens, I'll just sit back, break out a cold one and smile a little smile....

Your servant,

Lord Karth

"As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return !"

Conservatism has a fatal flaw. It's self centered.

Bush and friends not only define conservatism, they gave it room to grow and it is imploding.

Self centered? Conservatism is the path to freedom for all. It is in the deluding power and corrupting morality of Liberalism's "anything goes" that the fall of great civilizations have met their demise. The inner-cities are a glimpse of the corrupting influence of Liberalism (called Progressive now). America is nothing special on the stage of history. Good people are once again being subjugated by the perverted and corrupt. The Sodom and Gomorrah allegorical truth. There is nothing more selfish, self-cnetered and truly narcissistic than what the Liberals and Progressives perpetuate and worship. Look at the Hollywood-ites for proof. Look at what and who is killing America: it is Hollywood morality and the inhospitable perversions of the Left. Our youth are not suffering because they are staying in school and investing their money. They have imbraced Liberalism and the death it truly is. We are just witnessing the fall of America by the same kinds of people that mocked Noah and wanted to get at Lot's vistors. Listen to Air America's radio shows for just a day or two. Noah's neighbors have risen from the dead. The only mistake Conservatives made was thinking that the corrupt and evil would stay in the darkness. Taking your eye off of history will always bring bad results.

I don't think the problem is that conservatism has tied itself too closely to the GOP. I think the problem is simply conservatism. With maybe the exception of spending, what the Bush administration has expressed over the past seven years is pure conservative values.

"Yeah, and you're not going to let conservatives who've been saying the opposite since Day 1 tell you otherwise, are you? Sheesh."

No, I won't, because such conservatives (if they were sincere and vocal in their criticism) are largely irrelevant to the conservative movement as it actually has wielded power in this country. Citing them as authority on what conservatism is in actual practice is kind of like citing the anti-abortion views of some pro-life liberal (they actually exist) as an example of what modern liberalism is all about in the Democratic Party today. You can always find people on the fringes of any movement who will be a little independent in their thinking. Such people are to be commended, but they aren't the ones you should look to or cite when discussing how things actually work.

Yes, there were many conservatives in 2000 who said Bush wasn't a conservative, and who hated his calling himself a "compassionate conservative," which implied that most conservatives are mean and nasty, but really just meant "Republican who loves government spending." We knew this. Unfortunately, conservatives and Republicans were so anxious for a win after the Clinton years that we jumped on the first guy who looked like he could win--based largely on name recognition and the fact that we'd realized by then how we did his dad wrong in 1992.

But to the central issue, conservatism is never going to be a major political power on its own, because it doesn't believe there should be major political power on the modern scale, and it considers other factors like family and close community to be equally or more important. A conservative will never be able to invest as much of his life into national politics as the liberal who says "the personal is political"; and if he does, he probably isn't very conservatives anymore. For the liberal, a lifetime spent in politics today can be a heroic accomplishment; for the conservative, it's a quixotic sacrifice at best.

So what we've seen is the people who rose to political or media power out of the conservative ranks were the ones who had an un-conservative streak of ideological drive, a belief that government is the place to concentrate your efforts if you want to make people's lives better. They weren't the hard-core traditional conservatives in the first place, and generally the corrupting influence of power makes them even less so.

Liberal and Conservative are to some extent just labels. Often they are used to tar someone whose views are not liked. Is W a conservative? Everyone seemed to think so. To say that he is not is silly. What about Doug Kmiec? He endorses Obama. What is he now? A Liberal? I'm sure that some people would call him a traitor. But in reality, he is someone who feels that Obama could lead this country to real change. He may be wrong, but with what brush will he be tarred?

Conservatives are the Republican party. Who is liberal in the party? There are no more Nelson Rockefellers. What about a Nixon? He supported affirmative action...they even established goals under his administration. As I remember, it was one of his appointees who wrote the majority opinion in Roe v. Wade. You can say W was a "bad" Conservative, but Conservative he was. And yes, there were Conservatives who spoke out against what he said...like Andrew Sullivan. Is Sullivan a "real" conservative since he supports gay marriage?

So, whether it's the Republican Party or Conservatives, I think they need to rethink how they've governed for the last 8 years. What about fiscal responsibility? Was charging a war to a credit card really the way to go? What about the needs of the people? There are many who are not covered by our healthcare system. What are the ways to fix that? There are many issues facing this country...abortion and gay marriage are just two.

I find the doom and gloom posts interesting. If you go back to the middle ages, there were laws forbidding commoners to wear certain types of clothes because they were reserved for royalty. It was going to be the end of society if the commoners wore those clothes. The conservative position seemed to be that only royalty could wear those fancy clothers. It was going to be the end of society if everyone was not Catholic or Protestant or whatever. What were our Founding Fathers? Were they conservatives? They were the most radical of liberals because they believed that a people could declare themselves free, because they believed that you did not have to bow to a king. The Torries were the Conservatives. Do we reject them as Liberals today? Just what version of conservatism are you embracing? Society has changed and some people wanted to "conserve" it as it was. Wasn't the establishment of Christianity a radically new idea? Didn't some people argue against it because it was against God's word? So, keep predicting doom and gloom and society will keep changing. Maybe it won't all be for the better, but change it will.

You know, as much as I disagree with Donny and think that he represents so much of what is wrong in both evangelical Christianity and GOP politics today, I have to hand it to him and his idealogical brethren. In the 1980s they decided they would own the GOP and move it to the right, and they got out and did it. They did not whine and complain about conservative pundits not really being conservative. They did not belly-ache about not being heard in the public media.

They got busy and did the hard work of political change. They took control of the county political operations. They took control of the state political organizations. They put their people into positions of power in the GOP.

In short, they didn't sit back and bitch, they got out and worked.

To all the real conservatives that are now whining about how Bush isn't a real conservative, or how the GOP no longer represents real conservative interests...maybe you should do what the Christian conservatives did.

Do you believe in your "real" conservative principles enough to do something other than whine and complain? If not, why should anyone listen to you?

"I agree. The limits and adverse consequences of the welfare state will become crystal clear to most people in the coming decades, and we will be forced to rely more on family and community to survive and flourish. Conservative values and the conservative worldview will suddenly make perfect sense to most people, and these values and this worldview will be expressed politically. But conservatism itself is not a political ideology."

That sounds much more like a Libertarian form of conservatism than a Republican form. Perhaps the "real" conservatives need to throw their support behind the Libertarians for once, maybe at the state or Congressional level.

"Exactly what is "conservative" about placing the entire focus of an administration, the U.S. military and the Federal Treasury on a utopian democracy-building exercise in a fourth rate Middle East country?"

And how many conservatives spoke out about it in 2002?

'That sounds much more like a Libertarian form of conservatism than a Republican form. Perhaps the "real" conservatives need to throw their support behind the Libertarians for once, maybe at the state or Congressional level.'

Well, sort of. What Mhoram describes has some affinities with the libertarians, but not with ideological libertarianism. In other words, conservatives can be small 'l' but not big 'L' libertarians. You won't find many conservatives backing the Libertarian party, for instance.

Larison in one sentence: Libertarianism has poisoned conservatism. Libertarian philosophy leads, inescapably, to the dangers he lists above which have swallowed up conservatism. Conservatism will only reemerge whole when it consciously repudiates libertarian thought and purges it from its Mind.

"I am tempted to counsel conservatives to redirect their efforts from politics and toward building cultural institutions."

I agree more and more. Seeing Liberalism's destruction of culture through political means, conservatives thought those same means could be used to rebuild culture. Ain't gonna happen. Top-down power can destroy and, at best, conserve. But it can't create. Culture grows, it's not built.

Rod,

The decline of the conservative intellectual movement may be an unavoidable outcome of our political system.

In the sixties and seventies, conservative thinkers naturally wanted to try to implement some of their ideas. So they became actively engaged in politics, usually within the Republican Party, which was less hostile to conservatism.

But we have a plurality-takes-all political system, which in turn means only two parties are ever viable at any one time. And winning elections in a two party system means building coalitions. Nothing wrong with that -- it's what the Left has been all about for decades. But coalition-building narrows debate. Just ask any "progressive" to think outside the box on social security or domestic oil drilling or the problems of inner city public schools -- you'll get talking points prepared by the unions or leftwing advocacy groups.

Same thing happens on the Right. For example, a person may have been drawn to movement conservatism because of the pro-life issue. That person will not last a week if he does not tow the NRA line on guns and the Club for Growth's line on taxes, even though philosophically there's no obvious relationship among these positions. Mix and match the issues and groups as you like. At the individual level, one must support all of the "movement" positions or at least maintain a discrete silence about those one disagrees with.

Then throw in the War in Iraq, which has no philosophical relationship to conservatism (had Clinton launched it, a great many more conservatives would have forcefully opposed it as the naive nation-building exercise it was). Conservatives now must do intellectual gymnastics to read out of the movement anyone who opposes this hair-brained utopian scheme.

The disturbing thought is that there may not be any appealing alternative to the partisan straightjacket. Paleocon debates are refreshingly vigorous and much more intellectually free than, say, the dull recitation of talking points over at The Corner. But there's always the sense that the paleos are writing 8,000 word screeds for each other's eyes only, with no prospect that any of it will ever impact the real world.

"Care to name a few? Maybe even a half-dozen?"

Practically everyone on the mastheads of both 'Chronicles' and 'Modern Age,' to start with -- Thomas Fleming, Clyde Wilson, et al. Lots of the folks associated with ISI, etc., as well. People that are basically the 'brain trust' of American conservatism, but who get no audience on the talk shows or on Fox, because they don't toe the GOP line.

I think that you could include, in some regards, Pat Buchanan, and in some, talk-show renegade Michael Savage. And don't forget Ron Paul.

"Paleocon debates are refreshingly vigorous and much more intellectually free than, say, the dull recitation of talking points over at The Corner. But there's always the sense that the paleos are writing 8,000 word screeds for each other's eyes only, with no prospect that any of it will ever impact the real world."

This is true, unfortunately, at least in part. The younger paleos need to get a bit of fire in their bellies and carry this stuff to the grassroots.

Simon: The disturbing thought is that there may not be any appealing alternative to the partisan straightjacket. Paleocon debates are refreshingly vigorous and much more intellectually free than, say, the dull recitation of talking points over at The Corner. But there's always the sense that the paleos are writing 8,000 word screeds for each other's eyes only, with no prospect that any of it will ever impact the real world.

Man, that is a depressing thought. And probably a true one.