THE FORMERLY CONSERVATIVE BLOG KNOWN AS REDSTATE
Winston Churchill is quoted as saying, ““There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction.” Indeed, many have the wrong idea about conservatism in that they assume we don’t believe in “change” as it is generally understood.
Nothing could be further from the truth, as those of us who have read and understand Russell Kirk know:
The conservative is not opposed to social improvement, although he doubts whether there is any such force as a mystical Progress, with a Roman P, at work in the world. When a society is progressing in some respects, usually it is declining in other respects. The conservative knows that any healthy society is influenced by two forces, which Samuel Taylor Coleridge called its Permanence and its Progression. The Permanence of a society is formed by those enduring interests and convictions that gives us stability and continuity; without that Permanence, the fountains of the great deep are broken up, society slipping into anarchy. The Progression in a society is that spirit and that body of talents which urge us on to prudent reform and improvement; without that Progression, a people stagnate.
Therefore the intelligent conservative endeavors to reconcile the claims of Permanence and the claims of Progression.
Careful, prudent change, solidly based on tradition and “permanence”, is a positive good, says Kirk.
I might add that Edmund Burke had a lot to say about “change” as well. His critique of the French Revolution (and his support for the institution of the British Monarchy) made it easy for his critics to denounce him as a reactionary. But one of Burke’s most famous quotations - “A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation” - makes the valid point that change is necessary when the institutions and traditions of the state are at risk. Preserving them at the cost of change is necessary and good.
Why all this blathering about “change?” First, it gives me a chance to quote Kirk and Burke and aren’t you mightily impressed at that, dear reader?
Secondly, it serves as prologue to my sad experience from yesterday after I posted my piece “Angry Ideologues vs. The Statists” on my diary page at RedState. The reaction to the piece from Moe Lane, who is a regular poster and one of the site’s moderators, as well as other commenters flummoxed me.
A brief background: I used to cross-post my RWNH pieces quite regularly at RedState, having joined the community there almost as soon as I began blogging nearly 5 years ago. It was a good way to promote me and my blog and it was good exposure for my writing.
A about a year ago, I virtually stopped cross posting basically because I got lazy about the promotion thing and rarely visited after that unless directed by a link on Memeorandum or some other blog.
Recently, it occurred to me that my laziness about promoting myself and my writing was costing me potential readers (as well as potential revenue) so I decided to make an effort to learn the Twitter thing, and rededicate myself to get out of the rut I’ve been in since the election.
Hence, my triumphant re-appearance at RedState - or not. Many of my diary posts had been heavily criticized in the past so I was not unused to the notion that I was not a popular poster there. And the diary in question was heavily critical of some conservatives - “angry ideologues” - so I expected the usual mindless name calling from, who else, angry ideologues.
Enter Mr. Lane into our little drama. Here is a comment exchange between the two of us that made me realize that RedState was not a very conservative site anymore - at least not so far as I understand the meaning of conservatism:
Lane: That’s nice, Rick. What did your local GOP chair say…
Moe Lane Monday, August 31st at 3:22PM EDT (link)
…when you explained this to him or her?
Me: “Conservative” not “Republican”
Rick Moran Monday, August 31st at 4:28PM EDT (link)
If I mention the party at all in the piece - and I don’t reference it specifically - it is as a vessel to carry conservative principles.
I am not a party man. I am concerned with conservatism. As far as Republicans are concerned, I feel if I can help reform conservatism, that helps the party.
Lane: In other words, you didn’t.
Moe Lane Monday, August 31st at 4:50PM EDT (link)
Now, did you have anything useful to contribute, or are you just going to waste my site’s bandwidth some more with complaints that do nothing but annoy actual activists and drive down their diaries?
If Mr. Lane’s intent was to give me a pep talk about getting with the program and cheerleading for our side, I’m afraid it fell rather flat.
But I don’t think that was his intent, do you? Trotting out the old “chickenhawk” argument used by the left against Iraq War supporters was surprising enough (if I haven’t told my local GOP chair that he’s a raving, right wing ideologue, then my critique is worthless). But then, to actually set a standard for acceptable speech about whether something is “useful” or not was the real kicker. And I told him so:
Me: I believe my views are indeed useful
Rick Moran Monday, August 31st at 5:18PM EDT (link)
And I’m afraid annoying people is the price paid for revealing unpleasant truths that many conservative ideologues resist believing.
And if the price of admission for presenting one’s views on this site is to be an “activist” in a political party, or to adhere to some nebulous, ill defined criteria that what one has to say is “useful,” that might be something I’d expect to see on a liberal site, not a conservative one.
So I’m sure you welcome all viewpoints that are reasonably argued, and can be responded to in a reasonable way. Thank you for that.
Mr. Lane chose not to answer - as he also failed to address any single point made in my diary that he considered “useless” or that “annoy[ed] actual activists” - and proceeded to remind me of blog policy about cross posting:
Lane: That would be another “No,” then.
Monday, August 31st at 5:24PM EDT (link)
So noted.
Moe Lane
PS: I note that this is a reprint of something that was originally from your site. While RedState permits full reproductions of posts and articles by the author, we expect the post to link back to the original source. Please do so in the future.
Obviously, a man of few words - and little else. Of course, he needn’t worry about the future since after this post hits the tubes, my name will be mud at RedState and even if I were allowed to, the prospect of posting on a site with such anti-conservative moderators and commenters (read the rest of what passes for criticism) has lost its allure.
What drives a person to close off their mind so completely, so determinedly, to where challenging orthodoxy is a transgression worthy of such contempt? No, I possess no thunderbolts of truth and wisdom to hurl at my detractors and open their eyes to new vistas, new ways of thinking. All I have are opinions that differ from theirs.
I suppose I should be used to it by now, but it never fails to amaze me how truly remarkable is our capacity as humans to subsume our natural ability to think, and slavishly, doltishly, mindlessly allow our critical thinking skills to fall into slothful disuse. I am not immune from committing this sin as my regular readers know. It takes real effort to break through the clutter of your own lazy thought processes, and thankfully, the few readers I have left at this site never let me go for long without letting me know of my backsliding.
Not challenging your own beliefs by constantly re-energizing and reinvigorating the underlying assumptions that form the bedrock of your thinking by exposing yourself to alternative viewpoints leads to the kind of knee-jerk nonsense espoused by Mr. Lane and most of his fellow RedState commenters who never engaged me on the substance of what I wrote, choosing instead to simply try and outdo each other with their invective.
It is a decidedly unconservative attitude to hold and proves to me that, although there are many fine conservative writers still at the site - Eric Erickson, Warner Todd Huston, and Pejman Yousefzadeh to name just a few - the community that is RedState has degenerated into a barbarous brew of angry yawpers.
A pity, that. What was once a vibrant, stimulating place has become a gray ghost of its former self - a place where orthodoxy trumps almost all and where new ideas go to to die.