You are currently browsing comments. If you would like to return to the full story, you can read the full entry here: “Authoritarian Fetish and the Death of Conservatism”.
You are currently browsing comments. If you would like to return to the full story, you can read the full entry here: “Authoritarian Fetish and the Death of Conservatism”.
Really enjoyed this post, CL, will share it on the tubes. I share your pessimism. The irony of Mark Levin saying he's "Anti-State" makes me twitch.
It's really amazing how much damage the neoconservatives have done to conservatism. You can quote Irving Kristol all day with his musings that have nothing to do with traditional conservatism.
"The traditional Republican party that was so alien to us was a party of the business community and of smaller-town America. It had, traditionally, little use for intellectuals, whom it regarded (with some justification) as more foolish than wise; its economic policy stopped short at the ideal of a balanced budget; it was still campaigning against the New Deal; and, in foreign policy, its inclination was almost always isolationist. It also tended to ally itself with the southern Democrats in opposition to civil rights for black Americans. This is why, in 1964, only a few neoconservatives supported Barry Goldwater while the rest of us went along with Hubert Humphrey. "
Irving on the Power Elite - "It has always been assumed that as the United States became a more highly organized national society, as its economy became more managerial, its power more imperial and its populace more sophisticated, the intellectuals would move inexorably closer to the seats of authority--would, perhaps, even be incorporated en masse into a kind of "power elite."...Well, it has happened here--only, as is so often the case, it is all very different from what one expected. It is true that a small section of the American intellectual class has become a kind of permanent brain trust to the political, the military, the economic authorities. These are the men who commute regularly to Washington, who help draw up programs for reorganizing the bureaucracy, who evaluate proposed weapons systems, who figure out ways to improve our cities and assist our poor.... "
Irving on getting us into WWII - "In retrospect, the spectacle of the United States entering World War II has an almost dreamlike, fatalistic quality. There was never, prior to Pearl Harbor, any literal threat to the national security of the United States. And there was no popular enthusiasm, except among a small if influential group of "internationalists," for the United States' accepting responsibility for the maintenance of "world order."
Thanks!
It's my suspicion, that deep down inside, the average conservative on the street is more like the traditional/libertarian Old Right than they are to modern neoconservatism. But they get hammered with "messaging" everyday, by the New Deal/Wilsonian apologists, until they're convinced utopian government schemes are more "realistic" than the genuine austerity of the original conservative movement.
If only it were a zero-sum game! Politics is a frenzy of "rent seeking" (an economics term for the expenditure of time and effort, not to create new wealth but to try to move existing wealth from the other guy's pile into your pile). And "rent seeking" is hugely negative-sum.
Readers new to this concept may be interested in David Friedman's book "Law's Order" (read it on the web for free here).
I used to tend to agree that "the average conservative on the street is more like the traditional/libertarian Old Right than they are to modern neoconservatism". I became disillusioned with this over time when I saw just how strong the person on the street does support the GOP. It didn't help when I moved to a rural community. Go to any small town in America, and you'll see. Contrary to what some insist, people don't just support the Republicans because they're perceived as the better of two bad options. They really do like them. They treat Limbaugh and Levin as sages. They really do think that crony capitalism is free enterprise. They're convinced that the GOP really is for smaller government.
Populism can't mesh with classical liberal/small government, IMHO. Even people who say they'd favor small government have a program, or 2 (or 3) that they simply would not do without. The result of all of this that no program/spending can be gotten rid of because some group of relatively small government inclined people somewhere wants it.
For years I dreamed of getting out of a well-populated area chock full of lefties. I thought I'd move to small town and be with people more or less on the same page as I was. It pains me to say it, but I eventually realized that I was almost as different from them as I was from the trendy progressives.
[...] I have to laugh at the theological handwringing that goes on about “purity of doctrine.” Really, who has time for this? Those kinds of maniacal, pointless discussions are [...]
The discussion here is maniacal? You might not care for it, but maniacal?
The rambling post found at the trackback claims that the real problem is a lack of education. Further, we are told that the founders believed in state sponsored eduction. Be that as it may, they did not believe in compulsory universal public schools.
We are also treated to a link to another post by the same author about the importance of "tradition", "classic beauty" and "permanent things". However, the Chartres Cathedral apparently can't make the cut without being coupled with a top-less photo (and one of a tattooed and pierced trollop, at that). Aside from the borderline blasphemy, our author could have at least had the taste to choose an actual classic beauty, e.g. Grace Kelly, rather than the tawdry sort of anything goes American denounced in a previous breath.
While abolishing the EPA would not be a universal salve, neither are discussions of Hamlet or Moby Dick. It's quite possible to enjoy the great books without perpetually having to wear the fact on one's sleeve as a badge of good taste (never mind the dopey-eyed strumpets) and conservative bona fides.
Nobody turns against me more than my conservative friends when I challenge popular "wisdom." It saddens me, but that's just the way life is.
CORRECTION:
"A third group of intellectual conservatives later arose in the sixties - the anti-Communists like Whittaker Chambers, Frank Meyer, and William F. Buckley."
Describing his defection from the Soviet underground in his autobiography, he did write "In 1937, I began, like Lazarus, the impossible return (_Witness_, 1952, p. 25). However, he was unable to repeat this feat (so to speak) in the 1960s: Whittaker Chambers died in July 1961.
Also, Chambers and Buckley become known nationally in the 1940s and 1950s, respectively.