The Beltway Republicans (neocons/national greatness conservatives/moderates/whatever) are losing their grip on America. "You know, the 'Mama Wouldn't Let Me Play Football' type who resents real ability and real success, because he's never had any."
Read the entire series here: What is Conservatism?
Like (the(rest of) the Left, the neoconservatives have to keep changing their name, so I'm going to refer to them as "Beltway Republicans," which encompasses them all). And the latest Beltway Republican to attack conservatism is ... Peter Wehner in Commentary Magazine.
Glenn Beck: Harmful to the Conservative Movement
I say that because he seems to be more of a populist and libertarian than a conservative, more of a Perotista than a Reaganite. His interest in conspiracy theories is disquieting, as is his admiration for Ron Paul and his charges of American “imperialism.” (He is now talking about pulling troops out of Afghanistan, South Korea, Germany, and elsewhere.) Some of Beck’s statements—for example, that President Obama has a “deep-seated hatred for white people”–are quite unfair and not good for the country. His argument that there is very little difference between the two parties is silly, and his contempt for parties in general is anti-Burkean (Burke himself was a great champion of political parties).
I understand that a political movement is a mansion with many rooms; the people who occupy them are involved in intellectual and policy work, in politics, and in polemics. Different people take on different roles. And certainly some of the things Beck has done on his program are fine and appropriate. But the role Glenn Beck is playing is harmful in its totality. My hunch is that he is a comet blazing across the media sky right now—and will soon flame out.
Ahhh ... Exposing obvious government corruption is Very Scary. We can't have that now, can we? Yeah, it's probably best if we just let 'em get away with it. Moron.
A quick peek at Peter Wehmer's grassroots creds:
Prior to joining the Bush Administration, Wehner was executive director for policy for Empower America, a conservative public-policy organization. Mr. Wehner also served as a special assistant to the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy and, before that, as a speech writer for then-Secretary of Education Bill Bennett.
Beltway Republicans don't like your limited-government Constitutional ideas anymore than the Democrats do. They honestly believe they are the Ruling Class. Markets work, so just stop reading the garbage these people write.
The remarkable thing is the atavistic impulse: "Hey, you know what the conservative movement needs? A purge! And I say we start with a successful talk-radio host, the most popular new personality on cable TV, the guy whose book is now No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list!" - Robert Stacy McCain.
Up next ... another Beltway Republican attacks conservatism - Michael Lind!
Intellectual conservatism, RIP
I was once a young neoconservative (emphasis added)
[O]f the older, Democratic school, I broke with the right in the early 1990s and warned about where right-wing radicals were taking the country in my book "Up From Conservatism." The train wreck I predicted occurred during the Bush years, and the postmortems have begun. One is Sam Tanenhaus' indispensable and just-published study "The Death of Conservatism." Another is found in a May 10 blog post by Richard Posner: "My theme is the intellectual decline of conservatism, and it is notable that the policies of the new conservatism are powered largely by emotion and religion and have for the most part weak intellectual groundings. That the policies are weak in conception, have largely failed in execution, and are political flops is therefore unsurprising ... By the fall of 2008, the face of the Republican Party had become Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber. Conservative intellectuals had no party."
Historians of intellectual conservatism often claim that it consisted of three intellectual movements: the movement conservatism centered on Buckley's National Review, libertarianism and neoconservatism. I am not so sure that the first two qualify as intellectual movements. In the 1950s and 1960s National Review ... was simply a partisan opinion journal. As for the libertarian intellectual movement, isn't that a contradiction in terms? How intellectual can a movement be, if it reflexively answers "the market!" to every question of domestic and foreign policy, before the question is even asked?
In its origins, neoconservatism was a defense of New Deal/Great Society liberalism at home and abroad, both from the radical, countercultural left of the era and from its own design defects ... The '70s neoconservatives were so focused on the utopianism of the '60s campus left, however, that most paid too little attention to a far greater threat to their beloved New Deal tradition, the utopianism of the libertarian right. Ultimately Milton Friedman and other free-market ideologues did far more damage to America than the carnival freaks of the counterculture.
Like today's right, the '60s and '70s left was emotional, expressivist and anti-intellectual. (One of its bibles was Abbie Hoffman's "Steal This Book!") Like today's right, the '70s left favored theatrical protest over discussion and debate. The prophets of the Age of Aquarius and the "population explosion" were every bit as apocalyptic as Glenn Beck. And just as today's right-wing radicals play at Boston Tea Parties, so Abbie Hoffman dressed up as Uncle Sam. The teabaggers are the Yippies of the right.
The truth, as made obvious in the above article, is that just like the Left, Beltway Republicans believe government is the answer to everything too!
Note also, how Lind indirectly claims freedom to be "anti-intellectual."
The truth is, they fear too many people are realizing that freedom and liberty have a much deeper, more empirically argued intellectual history than does their "neoconservative" version of Progressivism-Lite ... And losing their power to fake-out the grassroots conservatives, is Very Scary to them indeed.
Examples? Well, you might want to give these a try ...
- The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America.
- The Federalist.
- Liberalism.
- A Foreign Policy for Americans.
- Economics versus Politics.
Need something modern? Try these!
- Banking and the Business Cycle.
- Religious Roots of Liberty.
- Truth & Charity.
- Keynesian Economics Is Nuts.
- A Tale of Two Conservatives.
The Beltway Republican Elites ignore us grassroots conservatives because their interests lie in prestige and power, which is the opposite of what most of us want. Freedom.
Maybe it's time conservatives start listening to new voices. You and I both it's time.
Besides ... Listening to the same old "intellectual voices" will only continue taking our journey down the wrong path. To paraphrase President Obama:
"Sorry neocons, you lost!"
This was great CL. You sum it up nicely, and let these elitist traitors (NOT too strong a word) indict themselves with their own words. I find their attitude elitist and, frankly, infuriating. If we are to indeed take control of the Republican Party, these Republicrats need to be among the first to go. Let them go the way of the Whigs.
Truly superb article. I didn’t find anything to disagree with, and it saddens me that very few Republicans refer to Friedman. The term anti-intellectual is synonymous with a perpetual state of obtuseness. Personal bias precludes logic and reason from diluting the sea of uncertainty. To those of you who prescribe to this lay down your Liberty torch, this site as well as the rest of us will surely pick it up and carry on.