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Writing in the Los Angeles Times, David Klinghoffer laments the decline of the discourse on the American right:
Once, the iconic figures on the political right were urbane visionaries and builders of institutions — like William F. Buckley Jr., Irving Kristol and Father Richard John Neuhaus, all dead now. Today, far more representative is potty-mouthed Internet entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart, whose news and opinion website, Breitbart.com, is read by millions. In his most recent triumph, Breitbart got a U.S. Department of Agriculture official pushed out of her job after he released a deceptively edited video clip of her supposedly endorsing racism against white people.
What has become of conservatism? We have reached a point at which nothing could be more important than to stop and recall what brought us here, to the right, in the first place.
Buckley’s National Review, where I was the literary editor through the 1990s, remains as vital and interesting as ever. But more characteristic of conservative leadership are figures on TV, radio and the Internet who make their money by stirring fears and resentments. With its descent to baiting blacks, Mexicans and Muslims, its accommodation of conspiracy theories and an increasing nastiness and vulgarity, the conservative movement has undergone a shift toward demagoguery and hucksterism. Once the talk was of “neocons” versus “paleocons.” Now we observe the rule of the crazy-cons.
When I was a college student in the late 1980s interviewing for an internship at National Review, Managing Editor Richard Brookhiser fixed me with a look and posed a question that might seem more natural in a religious than in a political context. “How did you become a conservative?” he asked.
Evangelical Christians, curious about their fellow believers, will sometimes ask something similar: “How did you become a Christian?” Among conservatives, most of us too had “born again” stories, but they were political rather than religious. (Though sometimes our philosophical paths led to new religious paths as well: The first step on my own journey to Orthodox Judaism was to become a conservative.)
Conservatism wasn’t just a policy agenda, a set of partisan gripes or a football team seeking victory on the electoral field. Above all, it was a satisfying, sophisticated critique of modern, materialist culture, pointing a way out and up from liberalism.
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LFC // Aug 3, 2010 at 1:33 pm
Andrew Sullivan just made a post about Paul Ryan. Although I disagreed strongly with his ideas for entitlement reform, he sounds like he’s at least willing to debate ideas rather than shout, scream, spin, and lie.
cporet // Aug 3, 2010 at 1:49 pm
Buckley’s National Review, where I was the literary editor through the 1990s, remains as vital and interesting as ever.
Really? Have you read the Corner lately?
Conservatism wasn’t just a policy agenda, a set of partisan gripes or a football team seeking victory on the electoral field. Above all, it was a satisfying, sophisticated critique of modern, materialist culture, pointing a way out and up from liberalism.
I assume you mean materialist in the philosophical sense and not in the economic sense. Economic materialism is at the heart of Republican conservatism. Unbridled capitalism is the mantra: little or no regulation, lower taxes, if taxes at all. I got mine, now you get yours. Even in the best of times 3 out of every 4 small businesses fail. Sorry, it’s the market.
Defining conservatism is notoriously difficult. But no one did it better than philosopher Richard M. Weaver. Weaver describes the course of the revolution in thought that led from a seemingly obscure philosophical debate in the Middle Ages through Darwinian evolutionary theory to class-based determinist theories in economics and onward to contemporary liberal relativism.
The obscure philosophical debate that Mr Weaver talks about was nothing less than the Enlightenment. The end of the caste system and the Divine rights of kings and nobles. Progress as I like to think of it.
In the process of disintegration was an ancient, shared picture of the world and our place in it. Once, Western culture was blessed by a “metaphysical dream” that meaningfully explained man to himself as, in the phrase from Psalms, “a little lower than the angels.” Now humans were reduced to mere animals.
Here, I think, we arrive at the crux of your argument. There once was a time when all men believed in God and the church was the state. We call them the Dark Ages. Those were happier times when all one had to do was live according to the laws set down to Moses and one could get on with ones life. No worries about what lay beyond the sky. God’s hand moved the skies and the affairs of men. Before the Enlightenment people were little more than animals, living in squalor and toiling everyday just to survive. Thinking of one’s self as a “little lower than angels” and a child of God meant that there was a reward for a Godly life, sadly it came with death.
The idea of purpose in the cosmos was central to the conservative vision. Another icon on the right, Whittaker Chambers, described in his 1952 memoir, “Witness,” the moment he awoke from his earlier communism: It was upon looking closely one day at his young daughter’s ear. Noting the exquisite beauty, the evidence of “immense design” shook him. He could never again subscribe to the secular, materialist dream.
Here again conservatism looks to God for purpose and meaning. How can something so complex as a human ear be left to chance. It may have been communism that Chambers renounced but I think it was his atheism that he gave up that morning. It had very little to do with his thinking about economic policy
When I became a conservative, that is what I signed up for: a profound vision granting transcendent significance to public life and hope in private life. The goal wasn’t to defeat Democratic officeholders or humiliate left-wing activists. It was, and still is, with those who remember, to save civilization.
I am glad for you. That you found significance in your life and a purpose to move forward toward is a very lucky thing, but to say that the “crazy-cons” don’t share your view is, I think, a little naive. The hucksters all believe themselves to be doing God’s work and the destruction of liberalism is little more than hunting, trying, and burning witches. Seems we haven’t come so far from Salem, nor the Dark Ages.
busboy33 // Aug 3, 2010 at 2:18 pm
“The hucksters all believe themselves to be doing God’s work and the destruction of liberalism is little more than hunting, trying, and burning witches.”
I respectfully disagree. That’s the difference between a huckster and a zealot — a huckster doesn’t believe what they are saying, they’re just making sure to feed the audience what will manipulate them.
I don’t think the hucksters give a damn about liberals, except as a convenient target. I don’t think they care about conservatism either, except as a source of suckers (plenty of hucksters on the Left too, so its not a partisan thing).
cporet // Aug 3, 2010 at 3:00 pm
busboy33, I agree. I was quoting the author. The right and left are both filled with hucksters and zealots ( a religious term, by the way). It’s just that the right has larger megaphones and push fear, and believe me, there is plenty to be fearful of.
ppnl // Aug 3, 2010 at 3:00 pm
Oh great. Sounds like intelligent design. And I guess if I don’t buy into it I’m not a “real conservative”. Good luck with that. It worked so well last time.
Fredrated // Sep 14, 2010 at 1:34 pm
What passes for “conservatism” today bears little resemblance to what I consider real conservatism. Real conservatism is mature, reserved, wise, informed and steady. Real conservatism knows history. It is not enthusiastic. It seeks to conserve. Eisenhower was a conservative. Eisenhower would NEVER have gone into Iraq, neither would Reagan.
Today’s conservatives are like children and yes, they are hucksters on a roll, cashing in. Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck … It’s all very immature and personal, like Limbaugh calling the first lady “Moochelle”. Barry Goldwater was right in the 1990’s to slap Gingrich for talking way too much and to rebuke right-wingers being gung-ho to impeach Clinton over Lewinski.
And Hannity and Beck’s pitiful understanding of history is embarrassing. They’re dabblers.
And the hucksterism isn’t limited to the media personalities. Listen to the commercials on “conservative” talk radio these days. It’s a parade of bogus quack products like “liver-rite liver-aids” and huckster pseudo-religious crooks like Pat Kiley’s (nationally broadcast, Sunday morning) “Follow The Money” radio show which was a christianese pitch for credulous investors to invest in his ponzi scheme (which has since been shut down and is under federal investigation).
This paltry, phony conservatism makes cynical, paranoid leftys look correct.
Conservatives need to look in the mirror and ask themselves what kind of cheap product they’ve bought into.