What conservatives have yet to do is confront the large but inescapable truth that movement conservatism is exhausted and quite possibly dead. And yet they should, because the death of movement politics can only be a boon to the right, since it has been clear for some time the movement is profoundly and defiantly un-conservative—in its ideas, arguments, strategies, and above all its vision.
(Stan Tanenhaus writing in The New Republic)
Another in a series of conversations with myself about conservatism. Part I, Part II. See also this series of posts.
Tanenhaus decries the fact that ideology has dominated conservatism since the rise of Reagan which may be a satisfying position philosophically but I don’t know if it matters that much when it comes to the actual nuts and bolts of politics.
Indeed, Tanenhaus’s complaint is reminiscent of arguments I’ve had with conservatives online for years; philosophy and reason vs. ideology and passion.
Tanenhaus:
Chambers was not alone in seeing a divide between classic conservative thought and the polarizing politics of the movement. Indeed he seems to have been influenced by “The Politics of Nostalgia,” an essay by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. published in June 1955, five months before the first issue of National Review appeared. Schlesinger’s subject was the unexpected rise of “conservatism as a respectable social philosophy” in the postwar period. One book in particular, Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind, a sumptuously written survey of the classic Anglo-American tradition of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, had attracted much attention. But, Schlesinger noted, there was a strange disconnect. Kirk and others genuinely revered traditional conservatism. And yet, once “they leave the stately field of rhetoric and get down to actual issues of social policy, they tend quietly to forget about Burke and Disraeli and to adopt the views of the American business community.” Kirk, for example, denounced federally sponsored school lunch programs as a “vehicle for totalitarianism” and Social Security as a form of “remorseless collectivism.”
Where in this, Schlesinger asked, was even a hint of classic conservatism, with its concern for the social and moral costs of unchecked industrial capitalism?
Disraeli with his legislation on behalf of trade unions, his demand for government intervention to improve working conditions, his belief in due process and civil freedom, his support for the extension of suffrage, his insistence on the principle of compulsory education! If there is anything in contemporary America that might win the instant sympathy of men like Shaftesbury and Disraeli, it could well be the school lunch program. But for all his talk of mutual responsibility and the organic character of society, Professor Kirk, when he gets down to cases, tends to become a roaring Manchester liberal of the Herbert Hoover school.
Schelsinger the elder, an old school progressive and a believer in materialism as the main determinant of history, was perhaps the greatest social historian of America in the 20th century having basically invented the genre. Arthur Jr., by contrast, eschewed some of his father’s beliefs regarding the insignificance of the individual’s contributions to historical progress and embraced a “man of action” liberalism first with Stevenson and then, reluctantly, with Kennedy who he didn’t see as much of a liberal at all. (His painfully beautiful prose in A Thousand Days won him a second Pulitzer but is peppered with “might have beens” if only Kennedy had been more a man of the left.)
I’m not sure that quoting a young Arthur Shlesinger’s opinion of Professor Kirk’s seminal work tells us anything about modern conservatism but rather what classic liberals would like modern conservatives to believe. Kirk may have used a little hyperbole to get his point across but to dismiss him as a “Manchester liberal” is nonsense. One of Kirk’s six “Canons of Conservatism” is a “belief in transcendant order” which infers some government regulation of the economy as well as government assistance to the poor. Kirk was disgusted with libertarians (and later in life, neoconservatives) and it stands to reason he would have rejected the charge that he believed in some kind of souped up laissez-faire capitalism.
But Schlesinger - and Tanenhaus’s - points are well taken regarding how far movement conservatism strayed from is Burkean roots. And the first principle of classic conservatism - that conservatives should reject excessive ideology in favor of reason - can be seen as modern conservatism’s greatest failing.
Now, politics is a game not conducive to breeding cool heads. If we accept the classic definition of politics as “the art of governing” then we can see that the “art” inherent in politics is finding ways to move vast numbers of people to agree with you and vote accordingly. The best way to appeal to the masses - or perhaps the way that has proven to have the most success - is to manipulate the emotions of the voter. This would appear to be the very definition of ideology in that its birthplace - the French Revolution - was a boiling cauldron of emotions and resentments that were expertly exploited by Robespierre and his gang of cutthroats on the Committee of Public Safety and led directly to “The Terror.”
Although he apparently looked with favor on the beginnings of the French Revolution, even prior to the terror Burke was calling for restraint and a return to honoring the “contract with society” that rejected the overwhelming passions aroused across the channel in favor of enlightened “national tradition.” Conserving the notion that well ordered societies depended on preserving what was handed down from those who went before was paramount. Change, while necessary, should be ordered by tradition and not carried out as a response to passions aroused in the ideological battles that erupt in political societies.
Tanenhaus:
The story of postwar American conservatism is best understood as a continual replay of a single long-standing debate. On one side are those who have upheld the Burkean ideal of replenishing civil society by adjusting to changing conditions. On the other are those committed to a revanchist counterrevolution, the restoration of America’s pre-welfare state ancien regime. And, time and again, the counterrevolutionaries have won. The result is that modern American conservatism has dedicated itself not to fortifying and replenishing civil society but rather to weakening it through a politics of civil warfare.
One can see the basis for movement conservatism as well as where it went wrong in what Burke espoused. Modern conservatism went from being a coherent set of ideas set to compete with liberalsim in the marketplace of ideas to a counterrevolutionary riot of conceits with many internal contradictions.
It is those contradictions - the struggle for liberty with the need for order or capitalism versus stability - that have recently exposed conservatism’s weaknesses and, in my view, resulted in a paralysis of thought that has gripped many on the right and caused them to look inwards to a rigid, unyeilding, ideological framework that brooks no deviation from orthodoxy. Any breach in this wall of beliefs is resisted by purging those whose ideas might challenge them to think about these contradictions rather than paper them over with half baked ideological bromides and talking points.
Allan Lichtman wrote a book recently White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement that David Frum heavily criticized in his New York Times review as “self flattery.” (I see similar criticisms of Tanenhaus from conservatives on blogs.) But in something of an overwrought response to Frum, Lichtman nails some of modern conservatisms internal contradictions:
Ironically, George W. Bush’s former speechwriter fails to address the epilogue of White Protestant Nation which explains how conservatism has fallen victim to internal contradictions during the Bush years. (pp. 436-456) The analysis shows that today’s conservatives cannot reconcile their historic opposition to social engineering with their backing for one of the most expensive and ambitious social engineering ventures in US history: the reconstruction of Iraq. They cannot square their backing for states’ rights with their support for constitutional amendments on abortion and gay marriage and their opposition to vehicle emission standards set by California and other states. They cannot reconcile their advocacy of individual freedom with their support for warrantless wiretapping of U. S. citizens, stringent versions of the Patriot and Military Commissions Acts. They cannot reconcile their support for limited government, fiscal responsibility, and balanced budget with a president who has built the biggest, most expensive, and most intrusive government in U.S. history.
It is painfully obvious Mr. Lichtman doesn’t read much from the right these days. Or much for the past 8 years for that matter. Non-partisan conservatives have criticized most of those contradictions wafting up from Bushland at one time or another. But Lichtman’s point about the inability of many movement conservatives to reconcile their support of Bush era intrusions with classic conservatism’s reverence for tradition and limited government is a good one.
This is a major stumbling block to a conservative revival. A brutally honest appraisal of Bush and the right’s support for him must be at the top of any agenda that would deal with the question of conservatives returning to power. Without that, there will be no lessons learned, no adjustments to the reality of what kind of nation America has become in the 21st century and the proper role of government in that society. We cannot battle Obama and his cult like followers by spouting the same tired nostrums as if simply speaking them makes them true. There must be a period of introspection and self examination.
Beyond that, I like this quote from Whittaker Chambers in the Tanenhaus piece:
To Chambers, an avid student of history, this trend toward government reliance was a function of the unstoppable rise of industrial capitalism and the new technology it had brought forth. Chambers put the matter bluntly: “The machine has made the economy socialistic.” And the right had better adjust. “A conservatism that will not accept this situation, he wrote, “is not a political force, or even a twitch: it has become a literary whimsy.” It might well be “the duty of intellectuals … to preach reaction,” but only “from an absolute, an ideal standpoint. It is for books and posterity. It does not bear on tactics or daily life. … Those who remain in the world, if they will not surrender on its terms, must maneuver within its terms. That is what conservatives must decide: how much to give in order to survive at all; how much to give in order not to give up the basic principles.”
I return to the theme of what possible relevance “limited government” has in a world that is governed by a federal entity with a budget of more than $3 trillion? What does it mean? Theodore H. White believed that you couldn’t think of the federal budget the same way you looked at your household budget. The US government budget was an existential expression of the hopes, the dreams, the desires, the needs, and the requirements of the people and as such, was not a document as much as it was an expression of national will. Yes, we can all find programs to cut, agencies to deep six, perhaps even cabinet departments to throw under the bus. But will doing that really “shrink” government? Not in any meaningful way. Not in any way that would have a tangible effect on the scope and reach of the national government. That’s because the government is as big as it is because it needs to be. In order to shrink it, you would have to eliminate modern society itself - a tall order even for The Gipper I would think.
The question for the right then must be how to fit in? Where can conservatism make a difference? Right now, we are Chambers’ “literary whimsy” - an irrelvant cacophony of clashing contradictions where many, perhaps most adherents believe it possible to return to a pre-Great Society America where the government’s footprint was small and the social changes that have been wrought can be rolled back. An exaggeration? Not by much. The social history of America these last 50 years shows conservatism on the wrong side of history more often than not. We may recall that while the civil rights legislation of the 1960’s would not have passed without the support of some conservatives, the fact is that many others on the right opposed the legislation on the principled grounds that it vastly expanded the power of the national government at the expense of federalism and would lead to unintended consequences.
That argument may have been proved right. But those who supported these landmark bills judged the nature of the problem correctly and voted for the expansion of government because it was, at bottom, a Burkean (non-ideological) response to the knotty problem of making the idea of equality before the law a reality rather than rhetoric. The huge social changes that accompanied the Great Society and subsequent agitation for the rights of women, gays, and Hispanics have required a reordering of society that some found frightening while others resented the intrusiveness of federal measures to right past wrongs. Playing to those fears and resentments became a staple of Republican party electoral operations and has led the GOP to its current status where the majority of people have accepted the changes and wish to move on, leaving many in the GOP base behind.
So in the end, modern conservatism has turned inward rather than facing the reasons for its falling back. I don’t know if conservatism has been discredited but I know that what people believe conservatism to be is in very bad odor right now. And until we can show we are making a serious effort to examine where we went wrong and embrace the world as it is and not as we wish it to be in some alternate reality, then it won’t matter what people believe about conservatism because we will have rejoined the national political conversation and our ideas are successfully competing.
