REPORTS ON THE DEATH OF CULTURE 11 HAVE BEEN GREATLY EXAGGERATED
This is the second and final part of my effort to explain why much of conservatism has lost touch with reality. Part I is here.
When I was a younger man, living and working in the early years of Reagan’s Washington, I fell in with a group of guys who mixed penny ante poker nights with discussions of politics and political philosophy.
We were not the Algonquin Round Table, that’s for sure. But in between the sounds of ice clinking in glasses filled with good scotch, and chips being tossed into the pot, a colloquy of sorts would develop about the issues of the day.
I should mention that I was definitely on the low end of the scale when it came to brain power in this bunch. In our group were a couple of congressional aides, some crack lobbyists, an AEI fellow, and two guys who were studying for advanced degrees at George Washington University in Public Administration. I think the rest of them allowed me to hang around to provide comic relief. Otherwise, I was (at the time) royally outclassed.
No matter. My job, as I saw it, was to challenge the assumptions held by these bright young men by playing devil’s advocate in fleshing out the underlying rationale for their positions. More often than not, my attempts were met with groans of “here he goes again,” and not a few guffaws. But at the time, I was not very well read and couldn’t contribute to the scintillating arguments being advanced by my more learned colleagues.
These were exciting times in Washington. The intellectual ferment on the right was incredible with ideas and proposals bubbling and frothing at think tanks, policy hubs, and even bull sessions like the one with which I was involved. There was a lot of cross pollination of ideas as a proposal from one source would be captured by another, improved upon, and perhaps even fiddled with by a third before ending up in Congress or the White House as a serious policy alternative.
The bottom line is that there were no litmus tests, no question of being forced to conform to a certain worldview. The open, free exchange of ideas was done without fear that someone else would step forward and accuse you of not being “conservative enough.” The arguments back then were no less passionate, but there was an underlying respect for those with which you disagreed.
I may be romanticizing this period a bit but I think that essentially, this captures the spirit in conservative salons and other centers of thought at the time. With no internet, and only a few media outlets (NRO and Human Events being most prominent), the dynamic of discussion allowed for a free wheeling exploration of issues and principles from all angles. The idea that anything proposed or said might brand one an “apostate” never entered our thought processes.
Is the state of conservatism today even remotely similar? I would challenge anyone who thought so. The dead hand of conformity has settled over conservatism with consequences that have yet to fully play out. There is no room in modern conservatism for anything except rote ideology. This catechism brooks no deviation lest any introspection reveal how weak and wildly contradictory what passes for conservative thought has become.
Case in point; my inclusion of some criticisms by liberal Sam Tannenhaus in my piece from yesterday. Apparently, my belief that Tannenhaus has anything useful to say with regard to conservatism makes me some kind of closet liberal. The feeling among some conservatives appears to be that anything written about conservatism by any liberal is useless, and believing otherwise makes one a dupe, or worse.
I don’t know how widespread that belief is on the right but judging by comments I have received in the past, it is not uncommon at all. Rejecting criticism based solely on the ideology of an author is anti-intellectual and anti-reason. Despite making the point that Tannehaus - someone who I believe to have made an honest attempt to track the decline of conservatism in a systematic, logical manner - gives us a critique that overall, is seriously flawed. But does this mean that every single criticism he made was invalid simply because he’s a liberal?
I reject that notion and point to this response of some conservatives as evidence that the excessively ideological prism by which many on the right look at the world causes them to abandon reason and logic, substituting a comforting credo that cannot be amended.
Liberals have their own problems along this line. Rigidity of thought is not confined to those on the right. But this attitude still begs the question; can anything be done by anybody to lift conservatism out of this moribund state and set it on a path to where it can claim the high ground based on honesty, prudence, and a clear eyed view of the world as it truly is?
I believe there is hope to be found in a small group of very smart, very talented younger conservatives who may be able to bridge the divide in conservatism’s factions while re-establishing a reality-based paradigm that sees America as the rest of the non-conservative country sees her.
As an example, I would point to the deceased website Culture 11 as a place were young writers were nurtured and given a chance to flex their intellects to delve into subjects you rarely see discussed on blogs or other conservative media. The site was provocative, unconventional, and scandalously unorthodox. They even had the occasional liberal write for them, which raised the hackles of true conservatives everywhere.
I realize I am heading into dangerous territory by bringing up Culture 11. Some of the writers at the site regularly challenged conservative dogma - a mortal sin to many on the right who hate having their assumptions questioned by anyone, even a conservative. And Culture 11 writers like Conor Friedersdorf and James Poulos are are in bad odor with most who consider themselves “real” conservatives, largely because they sometimes speak well of liberals and take a decidedly less ideological approach to their writings.
But Culture 11 had huge problems that it could never overcome; first and foremost, they could never quite figure out what kind of publication they wanted to be. Failure flowed from that one premise, as this autopsy by Washington Monthly’s Charles Homans points out:
This had a lot to do with the fact that Culture11’s editorial brain trust was made up of people who had little concern for—or at least needed a breather from—the self-immolating Hindenburg of movement conservatism. Kuo had proclaimed his own disenchantment in Tempting Faith. Friedersdorf was concerned with improving journalism, not creating a permanent Republican majority. Political editor James Poulos, a PhD candidate in government at Georgetown who describes his dissertation subject as “the alluring puzzle of the Napoleonic soul,” was far too idiosyncratic in his own politics. Arts editor Peter Suderman was a libertarian who in the last frenzied days of the election spent a whole column arguing that voting was stupid. Having no claim to any particular ideological niche, Culture11 tried to corral them all in the same room and get them talking to each other. “People talk about the conservative circular firing squad—I think we see ourselves as a demilitarized zone,” Friedersdorf told me. “There is nothing like an agreement on our staff that would allow us to claim a slice of anything.” The result, perhaps inevitably, lacked a real sense of identity, but it also offered the closest thing political journalism had to a controlled experiment.
In such a free wheeling atmosphere, quality was bound to be uneven. But what excited me about Culture 11 was that a real attempt was being made to break out of the echo chamber conservative media had largely become. The writing was fresh, and the ideas presented challenged conventional wisdom.
Admittedly, my own taste in cultural critiques tends more toward The New Criterion and its mix of policy and cultural criticism. But what kept me coming back to Culture 11 was that the writers were willing to take chances. In a conservative culture so addicted to conformity, it took some courage to place yourself outside the box and approach subject matter from an entirely new perspective.
Of course, this meant that many of those writers were given short shrift by mainstream conservatives. RedState eventually banned any links to the site which is inexplicable unless you realize that this kind of anti-intellectualism is rampant on the right today. Refusing to be exposed to alternative viewpoints is the essence of ignorance and only proves my point again about a large portion of conservatism being out of touch with reality.
Ross Douthat believes that younger conservative writers tend to me more heterodox, less wedded to the ideology of movement conservatives:
Moreover, part of what creates the air of heterodoxy among the young turks is the fact that many of the young conservative writers I’m thinking of (again, myself included) are still experimenting with a wide range of topics, and haven’t settled into the kind of groove (or rut) that most successful pundits and public intellectuals eventually find themselves slipping into. In this sense, at least some of the ideological conformity that you see among old older right-wingers on, say, foreign policy is really just ideological conformity among those older right-wingers who dilate regularly about foreign policy.
What makes some of these younger conservatives different than their elders isn’t their position on issues, which is decidedly conservative, but rather their willingness to examine and criticize assumptions upon which those issues rest. This imparts a breath of fresh air much needed if conservatives are to return to their roots, embrace freedom of thought, and move beyond the narrow confines that conservatism has boxed itself into by rejecting reason and logic in favor of emotionalism and ideology.
The Culture 11 writers have scattered to the 4 winds with some moving on to smaller publications like Reason Magazine or The American Conservative. Friedersdorf and a couple of other Culture 11 alumni are now blogging at American Scene, among other places. But their impact will continue to be felt. It may take a decade or more, but eventually these and other writers will take their place in the forefront of conservative thought.
Will they be any more welcome then than they are today? A couple of more electoral smash ups like 2008 may be the catalyst that shakes conservatism out of its conformist stupor and forces the right to begin listening to those with a more realistic outlook on America and conservatism itself.
Got a taste of Culture 11 just before they closed up shop; thought it was an interesting place not really because of their Conservative/Libertarian viewpoints, but because they always had interesting articles that I never saw anywhere else. On that measure alone, it was disheartening that they couldn’t continue on, because I treasure differences in (rational and well thought-out) opinions.
I felt that a major purpose of Culture 11 was an attempt to get away from the personality-based political writing that makes up a majority of day-to-day babel, and to focus on some of the root issues to where a Conservative/Libertarian angle might be useful. It was different in other words, and we’re all poorer for its demise. A well thought out memorial piece, thanks Rick.
Comment by Surabaya Stew — 1/14/2010 @ 12:34 pm
Rick said:
The excessive ideological prism is faith based.
Without reason and logic, that’s all you’re left with.
Comment by Chuck Tucson — 1/14/2010 @ 12:50 pm
By all means challenge ideas. A comparative religion course, for example, is a great way to ensure comprehension of one’s own affirmations.
Your argument, in that context seems to be that real conservatives should spend a lot of time discussing Marxism for the sake of discussing Marxism.
We can to that dispassionately, but if Marxism is fundamentally flawed (as I would argue), then no amount of conservative analysis is going to improve the erroneous worldview contained in Marxism.
Are you saying my conservative bona fides are somehow diminished because I neither waste time on nor have success in breathing life into this dead Marxist horse?
Comment by smitty — 1/14/2010 @ 12:57 pm
My collaborator Joel Mathis and I interviewed Conor Friedersdorf last weekend for our weekly podcast (posted here, if you’re interested: http://blog.infinitemonkeysblog.com/?q=node/7024). I knew Conor a little bit when he was still a reporter in Southern California. We talked about his work and asked for his assessment of the rise and fall of Culture 11. What was most interesting to me was his explanation of his intellectual journey. He was a right-leaning student at a very left-wing liberal arts college (Pomona, part of the Claremont colleges) and had a natural revulsion to the orthodoxy of the place. That revulsion has stayed with him — to his great credit, I think. I don’t agree with everything he writes, but I enjoy reading him and disagreeing with him.
That said, Rick, there has never been much room for heterodoxy in any mass-movement or organization. Independence of mind is a rare and valuable commodity that does not often mesh well with mainstream anything. It was ever thus.
You’re right about that. But aren’t there degrees to which dissenters and unorthodox thinkers are tolerated? I think the differences in this regard in conservative circles between the early 80’s and today are stark and revealing. The deliberate effort to squelch alternative views, going so far as to refuse to listen, smacks of ignorance to me.
ed.
Comment by Ben Boychuk — 1/14/2010 @ 2:14 pm
It appears that the conservative tenet you are looking for is simply to explore the universe of ideas and try them on to see if they fit, or should be made to fit, the conservative game plan. If this is the case, it is so obvious that at least I missed your point, because what else do rational and reasoning people do? Testing and modifying the tenets of your belief system to “fit” is an on-going process, or should be. So is simply accepting a rational idea on its merits if it does no harm to conservatism. But…
If what you are saying is that conservatives must research, analyze, and then accept some specific set of ideas as tenets that they long since have rejected because they do not fit, and will never fit the conservative mold, then I think you are reaching for a Utopian ideal that is attempting to blend a dash of progressive liberalism with libertarianism and hide-bound, fiscal and social conservatism, which tends to be an explosive mix.
Perhaps the core of your discontent with many conservatives lies with your atheism and secularism, since I suggest that it would be very hard for an atheist to accept the full scale of Natural Law, with its decidedly spiritual content. Thus you are at odds with perhaps 90% of all conservatives to begin with, so you want them to explore the tenets of…atheism, among other systems of thought, which would necessarity include some of the “litmus test” subjects such as abortion, same sex marriage, etc.? Most of us fought that battle, or those battles, before we were 21 or so, and rejected them then.
Are you saying that conservatives should reject some of their religious beliefs in order to sort of blend in with those who support such irreligious ideas; in other words, to catch up with the “modern” (hedonistic) crowd that has tossed their religious beliefs out of the window? This is not on!
Comment by mannning — 1/14/2010 @ 2:14 pm
Mannning said:
What does this even mean?
Comment by Chuck Tucson — 1/14/2010 @ 2:59 pm
Hi. I’m the librul that can’t wait for conservatism to get back on its feet, but I fear that things are so parlous that it will take more than a couple more 2008-like smash-ups for that to happen.
Anyhow, a terrific bookend to yesterday’s post.
Thank you.
Comment by shaun — 1/14/2010 @ 3:10 pm
mannning Said: 2:14 pm Perhaps the core of your discontent with many conservatives lies with your atheism and secularism
sweet
Comment by CZ — 1/14/2010 @ 4:15 pm
Everybody knows none of those people are really citizens or have any rights you need to respect. This is a Christian nation, when will you you other folks with your “funny” religions stop making trouble?
Comment by Richard bottoms — 1/14/2010 @ 4:38 pm
Rick
Politics is a rough blood sport. It is evolutionary through brutal competition.
I sense you are a gentle man, who is having trouble with harsh people who have an agenda. This is the world we live in. People will fight for what they truly believe in. It is easy to be gentle when you are unchallenged and safe.
Most conservatives have seen the tacticts and methods of the left and in the past were caught with the losing hand because they were to gentlemenly and polite. The left counts on talk and discussion to paralyse opposition.
Lets just say the organized opposition to the left have learned thier lessons well.
Comment by steve — 1/14/2010 @ 7:57 pm
Yeah, polite piranha like Lee Atwater.
What a crock.
Comment by Richard bottoms — 1/14/2010 @ 8:37 pm
I see that CT is totally unfamiliar with the full concept of Natural Law. That must mean that he is also either atheistic or agnostic. Read up!
That someone is one or the other—agnostic or atheist— does not mean a thing with regard to their citizenship ot rights, RB. What it does do is take away one of the underpinnings of conventional conservatism, and thus provides for an edgy membership in a heavily Christian-based group such as conservatives. You positioned yourself very far from this group in the first place, which tells all that anyone needs to know.
Comment by mannning — 1/14/2010 @ 9:00 pm
Must make Jewish Conservatives fell welcome.
All three of them.
Comment by Richard bottoms — 1/14/2010 @ 9:38 pm
Well, without beating a dead horse, my comment stands. Conservatism IS largely a Christian belief system. Last time I looked, the Jewish population was about 2% of the total, while Christians are at about 85%, which is, again, not to knock Jewish participation in the group.
The general category of non-religious citizens is at about 10%, of which about 2% are recorded atheists. So, one just might ask where the real power of the vote lies? It isn’t in fringe groups.
Comment by mannning — 1/14/2010 @ 10:16 pm
Certainly not.
I am sure they’re quite comfortable living in a Christian America (as opposed to America) seeing how that’s worked out so well in the past.
Comment by Richard bottoms — 1/14/2010 @ 10:30 pm
Manning,
just want to add this as a little caveat: you say 85% are Christians but more than half of the American public believes in aliens and UFOs. How does that make sense?
Comment by funny man — 1/14/2010 @ 11:24 pm
mannning said,
Natural law seems to simply be a set of stated “laws” concerning morality. I’m assuming you subscribe to some sort of Christian version of Natural Law, though Hobbes sums things up rather nicely in a secularish way.
Morality arises specifically through evolution as a way to ensure survival of groups. Without morality, humans couldn’t form protective groups that would reliably work together to ensure the survival of the group, and thus themselves. Morality is the evolutionary glue that holds humans together. Call it Natural Law, or whatever, but it’s just a way of describing what’s built into our DNA through the process of natural selection. There’s nothing decidedly spiritual about any of that.
Comment by Chuck Tucson — 1/15/2010 @ 1:38 am
It is kind of ironically fitting that this comments thread has diverged into a discussion of Christianity.
It should come as no surprise that of the several hundred comments on a post by Allapundit at Hot Air regarding Pat Robertson’s beyond execrable remarks that Haiti is in earthquaked ruins because slaves “swore a pact with the devil,” the vast majority are pretzel-logical attempts to defend him. A paltry few commenters were outraged.
Allapundit himself, as befits a blog where Michelle Malkin is the alpha dog, doesn’t push back, merely remarking that Robertson is just being his cranky old self. In fact Allapundit and fellow blogger Ed Morrissey, whom I am deeply fond but also has become a reliable echo chamber for what Malkin’s base expects to hear, are mere shadows of their once readable selves.
Hot Air, of course, is about as conservative as mainstream blogs get. So like I said, no surprise. But I urge you to read the comments because they are truly a window into the soullessness of many conservatives — and by extension the Republican Party — in America today.
Comment by Shaun Mullen — 1/15/2010 @ 6:16 am
To Richard Bottoms:
Lee Atwater was a pussy cat compared to some. Besides the left has gloried in the violent opposition of seemingly unorganized fake grass roots proletariat protest. Nancy Pelosi never met a protest (violent or not) she didn’t like until groups other than left started to use it.
Lee Atwater for the most part kept his brutality limited to the political sphere. Like a gentlemanly duel, extreme violence in a controlled atmosphere.
Also we have the left using Union intimidation as a means to win an argument.
One of the many logical falacies used in an argument is an appeal to fear.
Many on the left use this routinely.
“Nice little business you have here, wouldn’t want to have to shut it down. How about you hire my favorite people and make sure they can’t be fired.”
Or we can observe the naked shake down methods from black activists that has only the most fig leaf cover of race to hide a naked shake down attempt. Jesse Jackson is almost a legend in these regards.
Or lets get closer toi home and take Acorn.
The protests from the left are actually tears for losing the Ace in the hole to cheat the game.
Compared to these Lee Atawter was a kindergarten teacher reading stories to children and helping with nap time.
Tell me the number of buisnesses Lee Atwater destroyed. Tell me the number of savings accounts he drained by force or intimidation. Tell me where he arranged boycotts to destroy working peoples dreams and ambitions.
If you wan’t to call in the bully boot heel of the government to smash private behaviour, confiscate private property, force people to go bankrupt by not letting them sell land that has enforced goverment mandated regulations, like declaring a puddle a wetlands making the land unusable.
I am glad you can be so proud of the movement you belong to.
Comment by Steve — 1/15/2010 @ 6:25 am
Natural Law.
Cicero, in his Republic, defined Natural Law as “true law”.
True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application unchanging and everlasting; it summons to duty by its commands, and averts from wrongdoing by its prohibitions…
He goes on to state that right reason comes from God, and then produces the First great two of the Ten Commandments as essential to understanding our obligations to God:
1) Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
2) Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
Recognizing and loving the Creator, God, as the giver of right reason seems to me to be quite spiritual, and it is the foundation for the prescription of morality that follows.
To get the full impact of this one should read both Republic and the proper sections of the Bible, but it is clear that the foundation for Natural Law is spiritual.
Comment by mannning — 1/15/2010 @ 8:44 am
mannning,
Morality is a product of evolution. This is a fact. Design whatever feel-good framework you want around it, but your framing changes nothing. No deity is required for human beings to behave morally.
Comment by Chuck Tucson — 1/15/2010 @ 10:38 am
Hot Air, of course, is about as conservative as mainstream blogs get. So like I said, no surprise. But I urge you to read the comments because they are truly a window into the soullessness of many conservatives — and by extension the Republican Party — in America today.
Now there’s the “leap”. Would never suggest that a blog, regardless of size of followers is a “window” into a movement, let alone a party. And I would say that for Hot Air and for Daily Kos.
Clearly a distinct minority of the public visits, let alone comments on the blogs. Additionally, the tenor of “discussion” on blogs is exaggerated to the extreme. I visit several conservative blogs and I have friends who regularly visit liberal blogs. I could never imagine us having such a loud, obscenity-laced “discussion” that is so common on so many blogs.
People are different on the blogs.
And Shaun if you met me and discussed a hot topic (i.e. healthcare reform) I bet you wouldn’t call me “soulless”.
Comment by c3 — 1/15/2010 @ 3:21 pm
I guess the definition for ‘true’ conservatism came on some prior date and I have no idea where I fit in. As a true, in my own eyes and heart, conservative I think we (christian conservatives included) just defy accessible definitions. But most likely these interpretations are also correct to some degree despite the echo chamber tag applied to divide and diminish why our convictions emanate from the almighty, as we see Him and believe.
There are basic conservative tenets and then there are the highbrow, sophisticated, divergences for those who are able to live above the real world and postulate.
Comment by John T — 1/15/2010 @ 7:10 pm
CT:
Of course one can adopt a morality one has learned to be beneficial to life. It is a product of human inheritance, history, education and experience. The origin of morality, however, is a very murky “fact” since no one has recorded its beginnings and its evolution adequately. It is merely a theory.
There is a First Cause for everything, including Natural Law, and morality, and its evolution or progression too, which is a decidedly spiritual and faith-based point of view.
I suppose that the First Cause idea is the cut, or at least a major cut, between belief and non-belief in God.
Comment by mannning — 1/15/2010 @ 10:38 pm
@manning:
“The origin of morality, however, is a very murky ‘fact’ since no one has recorded its beginnings and its evolution adequately. It is merely a theory.”
. . . jumping in to be a pedantic jerk . . .
If its a theory, then its more than a “guess” which is how you seem to be using it here. Personally, I don’t think you can use “theory” with matters of faith, since a theory requires verifiable testing and faith-based arguments by definition can’t be tested (I’m not saying they aren’t valid or correct . . . just that you can’t test them).
Also, how do the writings of Cicero (a non-Christian who died before the birth of Jesus) lead to Christianity? Are you saying that Cicero actually declares two of the Christian Commandments?
Respectfully, I think you may be reading his work with an interpretative eye. If you are looking for an affirmation and exhultation of Christian dogma, you can imply it . . . but if you read it as the work of a polytheist philosopher the first thought you come up with isn’t “wow — Cicero truly believes in the saving grace of Jesus of Nazareth!”
There are many aspects of Christianity that are similar to pretty much ALL theologies and moral structures. What theology doesn’t have some version of “respect your fellow man”? That such an idea is present in Christianity doesn’t make it a Christian concept, but a moral/ethical concept. The Christ is what makes Christianity unique (without him, you’re Jewish), and there isn’t anything in Cicero that I can think of that supports/endorses the concept of kristos. Been a while since I read him, but I’m fairly sure about that.
Comment by busboy33 — 1/16/2010 @ 6:32 am
busboy:
Well, the idea that morality evolved over eons has been expressed by some as fact. Call it a supposition or a theory, it cannot be proven. That was my point.
Cicero was indeed a polytheist that seems to have settled in the end on a Supreme Creator (perhaps the God of Gods, I don’t know!). He did serve as a definer of Natural Law, which was the opening argument. He also arrived at the two great commandments of (the eventual)Christianity more or less independently once he had settled on the SC, and his ideas were used by our Fathers in framing our Constitution, using very similar phrases. I do not believe I ever claimed Cicero to be Christian: he did live way long before Christ(106-43BC)after all.
What he also believed in was a Supreme Creator that set forth the rules of right conduct in society. He believed that the Creator’s order of things was Natural Law. (Ref: Ebenstein, Great Political Thinkers, p.132-134)
Hence, my claim is that Natural Law by Cicero’s definition, and the use of the NL by our Founders, contains a spiritual element, i.e. ‘given by the Creator’, and I interpret the Creator to be the same as ‘The First Cause’, ‘The Supreme Architect of the Universe’, or the ‘God’ of our Bible in the OT.
So that is how I see it. We are now approaching a “which came first argument, the chicken or the egg?” I vote for the Creator!
Comment by mannning — 1/16/2010 @ 12:09 pm
funny man:
Well, maybe I should confess to believing in the tooth fairy, Santa, Intelligent Design, UFO’s, the Loch Ness Monster, and the predictions of Nostradamus, among my other beliefs, such as Christianity.
How in hell should I know what anyone else really, really believes in?
Comment by mannning — 1/16/2010 @ 12:17 pm
Fair enough. I quibble over the equality between the “Supreme Creator” of Cicero and the “Supreme Creator” of Christianity . . . but its a quibble and essentially irrevelant.
And the recorded history of ideas is factual — that one specifically developed from another precedent may not be provable unless explicitly cited, so again fair enough.
Comment by busboy33 — 1/16/2010 @ 5:28 pm
It’s a good quibble, busboy. Maybe I should throw in Allah as well, to further confuse things. Each of these views of God is rather unique at the core, but it would test my mind and soul to define all of the similarities and differences. So I will lump them together under the working title–”God”, for now!
Comment by mannning — 1/19/2010 @ 11:39 am