The Schizophrenia Of Modern Conservativism
In which Goldberg channels haystack-sorta
By haystack Posted in Conservatives | Republicans — Comments (30) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
I JUST opined the other day that the "word" Conservatism has been mis-used and abused by all these political opportunists running for President, and along comes a person the world DOES seem to listen to who suggests nearly the same thing. Now, this Goldberg piece smells awfully pro-Huckabee...but, I've been rightly accused of late of being overly sensitive to these matters:
Today the American public seems deeply schizophrenic: It hates the government -- Washington, Congress and public institutions are more unpopular than at any time since Watergate -- but it wants more of it. Conservative arguments about limited government have little purchase among independents and swing voters.
I swear I'm being channeled...
Among the GOP POTUS wannabes, I honestly believe each (less one in my opinion... who I shall not name because this would then be considered a "pimping" essay) espouse one or more policy positions that completely contradict the Reagan Conservatism some of us still pine for 20 years on. And, for those who are absolutely convinced that our political heroes are the root of all our collective evils (read Congress REALLY sucks), be reminded of THIS speech (Reagan's first inaugural) and what he said then and whether the same might be said today:
In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem.
From time to time, we have been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. But if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price.
We hear much of special interest groups. Our concern must be for a special interest group that has been too long neglected. It knows no sectional boundaries or ethnic and racial divisions, and it crosses political party lines. It is made up of men and women who raise our food, patrol our streets, man our mines and our factories, teach our children, keep our homes, and heal us when we are sick—professionals, industrialists, shopkeepers, clerks, cabbies, and truckdrivers. They are, in short, "We the people," this breed called Americans.
More below the fold...
Sigh...good times...good times.
If you believe in limited (or focused, at least) Government and you think like the Founders, you'd ascribe to the unattributed quote (rumor has it either Jefferson or Paine originated this):
That government is best which governs least
Now, some might argue this is not necessarily copyrighted by the abstract "Conservatism" we all seem to be bandying about, but surely we can identify the candidates running for President (from EITHER side of the chasm) who do and who do NOT hold to this ideal.
Goldberg continues:
Many of the younger conservative policy mavens and intellectuals have also become steadily less enamored of free markets and limited government. Post columnist Michael Gerson, formerly Bush's chief speechwriter, has crafted a whole doctrine of "heroic conservatism" intended to beat back the right's supposed death-embrace with small government and laissez-faire economics. He relentlessly calls for moral crusade to become the animating spirit of the right. But he's hardly alone. "Crunchy conservatism," the brainchild of Dallas Morning News columnist Rod Dreher, is also a cri de coeur against mainstream conservatism. And both of these derive from the kind of thinking that led George W. Bush to insist in 2000 that he was a "different kind of Republican" because he was a "compassionate conservative" -- a political program that apparently measures compassion by how much money the government spends on education, marriage counseling and the like.
Jonah's right, of course...and he brings to light this notion that some "new" Conservatism has arrived (or has been percolating under 7 years of a Bush White House) that seems hell-bent on re-writing that old time religion of Reagan/Goldwater Conservatism. Some weird mutation seems to have occurred over the past 25 years, and it has happened so slowly as to "feel" somehow like a logical progression of some alternate reality world of continuous improvement. But it's increasingly antithetical to what we old-schoolers STILL believe reflects intelligent Democracy and self-governance. Sadly, we old-schoolers are being shut down and cast aside for the "new" Conservatism.
Sorry folks...it if it looks like liberalism, smells like liberalism, and "feels" like libneralism, it MUST be liberalism.
Goldberg ends his piece thusly:
There are important differences -- on national security, the role of government, religion -- among the different brands of conservatism bubbling up. But none of them necessarily reflects the views of the pro-government and social conservative rank and file. The center of the right does not hold, and so we see an army with many flags and many generals and nobody knows who goes with which.
In other words, there's a huge crowd of self-described conservatives standing around the Republican elephant shouting "Do something!" But what they want the poor beast to do is very unclear. And it doesn't take an expert in pachyderm psychology to know that if a big enough mob shouts at an elephant long enough, the most likely result will be a mindless stampede -- in this case, either to general election defeat or to disastrously unconservative policies, or both.
The traditional conservative believes that if you don't have a good idea for what an elephant should be doing, the best course is to encourage it to do nothing at all. Alas, the chorus shouting, "Don't just do something, stand there!" shrinks by the day.
Yes, Jonah - "do no harm" would be a fair translation. Yet, all around us we see clamoring throngs of Republicans...and Independents...and so-called "swing" voters screaming and rallying for their "magazine cover" candidate...who looks good, who can "win" and who stabs us (ideologically) in the back the least. It's beginning to feel like the only thing motivating what little GOP activism we DO enjoy is this innate desire to have been RIGHT on speculating which guy will get the nod to run against the Liberals.
Pathetic, really...but it's what has become of the Conservative ideals of a day and time having long since outlived its usefulness...apparently.
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Iustum et tenacem propositi virum non civium ardor prava iubentium, non vultus instantis tyranni mente quatit solida.
-Quintus Horatius Flaccus
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
Politicians pander and bribe their supporters and potential supporters with government handouts. When the majority of the citizens are in some way on the gravy train, most everyone, at a point, will want their fair share. What a job ... confiscate wealth and distribute it to others for support votes and take the applause for 'their' largess.
Unfortunately, this confiscation of wealth is promoted and too often seen as noble and worthy because of its intentions. Until the majority understands that taxation is inherently BAD and should be strictly limited and only be done to the benefit of the country and ALL its citizens, it will worsen.
The odds are against us. Even the WWII generation that gave so much, cannot now get enough in social security benefits or Medicare. There are few senior citizens willing to discuss their benefits relative to their contributions and the negative impact it has on future generations. The baby boomers will expect the same or more.
I don't believe there is ANY chance that a significant majority of politicians will ever change their ways. The status quo is too easy and it's not in their self interest to change.
I believe there will need to be SEVERE economic hardships before the majority of citizens will be moved from their indoctrination into the federal welfare state.
Just wait until we have socialized health care. That's the next giant step of more confiscation and the loss of freedoms that go with it. Just visit a VA hospital to look into the future.
--------------------
Vista really sucks!
A country that traces its founding to a revolution (a republican revolution to be sure) is going to have a hard time coming to grips with something that can be called conservatism. The country was founded in a liberal moment, and liberalism has characterized our politics since then.
The idea that the constitution enshrined a limited government is not as straightforward as many around here seem to think. If the founders wanted a truly limited federal government, they could have stuck with mild modifications of the Articles of Confederation. That isn't what they did though, they wrote the Constitution. If you look at the Federalist Papers, you see over and over again an argument for an expansive government.
All of this is anachronistic anyway--our nation bears little resemblance to that of 1787. To translate Hamilton's big government anti-free trade ideas to today, or Jefferson's small farm pro-trade arguments today makes little sense. Would Washington be an isolationist today? That seem highly doubtful.
So where are we today? Elites think about politics differently than non-elites, and I think among non-elites there are very few conservatives (or liberals) in the way the elites think about them. There are right-wing populists, evangelicals (who need to be distinguished from the evangelical elite, and probably there needs to be a distinction from your typical exurban mega-church member from your old time religion country Baptist), Ron Paul type libertarian isolationists, a bunch of identity politics types, old fashioned New Deal liberals, aging Reagan youth types, even more aging hippies, old guard civil rights members, country club conservatives, and on and on. What is on now is that there is something of a reshuffling of allegiances going on.
It seems likely that advanced marketing techniques and the flourishing of various subcultures on the internet are going to lead to an increase of this fragmentation.
What does conservative mean? Is it merely a constellation of issues--pro-life, anti- gun control, small government and strong national defense (and how do you square a strong national defense with a small government? Or is it a philosophy that can trace its roots to the Scottish Enlightenment of Burke, Hume, and Smith? Or does it instead trace its roots to Thomism? Or is it free market Schumpeterian creative destruction?
Or as someone once tried to explain, is it a method, akin to pragmatism? But of course most pragmatists were progressives or worse.
Liberalism, by definition, is small, decentralized government. Modern liberalism is simply an evolved species of Marxism. Jeffersonian democracy did not fail, it has worked flawlessly for 200 plus years. Jefferson has simply been bashed and beaten so long by Marx without figthing back that the people have lost all respect for him.
The US Constitution has little to do with Jeffersonian Democracy. You are correct, however, that Jefferson favored free trade and little federal involvement in the economy, but he also hoped that the US would be dominated politically and economically by "small yeoman farmers". That didn't happen.
Jefferson's Lockeanism is to my mind obvious. But like any 18th c. Republican, he saw a danger to democracy in the concentration of a nation's wealth in too few hands.
Rush touched on this last week and I agree. A lot of people are one-issue voters. If a candidate isn't pro-life and/or anti-gay marriage, they get tossed out of consideration, even if it means picking a less conservative candidate.
Rush correctly states that the President can do little about the abortion issue besides pick conservative judges (which all Republican candidates have pledged to do). The gay marriage issue should be a state issue.
So instead we have candidates like Rudy being not considered at all by those voters, without even looking at their voting records and platforms.
It's a bit worrisome to me. I fear it curses us to another marginal conservative (Yes, I have little love for Bush's past spending record.)
is that for being one issue votes, those are pretty huge issues. We're still a predominantly Christian society.
"I'm just beginning...The pen's in my hand...Ending unplanned"
That need to be dealt with. Pushing HLA and FMA won't change anything except to energize the left. Leave gays to the states and abortion to the SCOTUS through conservatives on the bench.
Judges are the president's only tool on these two issues.
"I'm just beginning...The pen's in my hand...Ending unplanned"
The rest come for free. If you create a culture of dependents who feel their personal well being is a group thing you lose on those issues.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
inclined to feel personally responsible.
"I'm just beginning...The pen's in my hand...Ending unplanned"
To some extent I think it's a matter of education or even "sales": working to convince so-cons that the coalition takes their ISSUES seriously even while opposing a big govt solution to those issues. Giving govt the power to enforce a specific outcome backfires as soon as the opposition is in office.
The stats have been posted on RedState several times before the corellation between socons and fiscons. I don't think it's as much a matter of convincing them to be fiscons as much as it's a matter of convincing them whoever your candidate is is a strong socon. I think it's just a matter of priorities. I think if someone with Huck's socon mind carrying Mitt's or Fred's fiscon mind and Rudy's defcon mind would clean up... or lose horribly for being wildly schizo.
Sure, there's a large overlap -- but also gaps in every leg of the stool.
I don't think it's easy to understand the free market: Let companies mindlessly pursue profit (subject to the rule of law) ... and the competition for consumer dollars will cause those "greedy corporations" to make products that people want, continually improve them, reduce costs over time, and make completely new things.
Nor is it easy to understand why big gov't doesn't work: much slower to react, no experimentation, and subject to capture by entrenched interests.
When people see problems, they want to do something. The small gov't answer isn't a heartless "let them suffer", it's "leave that to civil society" (or at least to local gov't). Americans do have very high per capita giving to charity. That's where compassion should be directed.
sorry. Hope I didn't jack up anything else by forgetting to close my link. I think I'll lay off the caffeine for a bit...
pro-life judges.
"I'm just beginning...The pen's in my hand...Ending unplanned"
I just reposted some stuff by Matt Bowman at The American Spectator. You can read what I wrote (let's see if I do it right now) here (yeah! I did it!). Basically it points out that a "strict constructionist" isn't enough if they aren't willing to rule against stare decisis. And then it goes on to list some of the people that Giuliani consults for Judicial stuff. Not a very socially conservative bunch.
It would do us well not to repeat the errors of our enemies. The politicization of the court has been a blight. It has produced the problems we are seeking to rectify. Roe will be killed by eliminating ideologues from the court. Not by replacing them with different ideologues.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
If they are totally neutral-non-idealogues and decide that there is no good reason to rule against stare decisis, then it would stay. What you need is someone who isn't necessarily an idealogue but also doesn't treat stare decisis as more important than law or lack thereof. To quote E Pluribu Unum's tag, stare decisis is fo' suckas.
that he has been making for 20 years, i.e. The American people, as to government, are philosophically conservative and operationally liberal.
Cognitive dissonance, assuming a ladder and economic hypochondria
We are witnessing in Washington today, I’m afraid, a demonstration of O’Sullivan’s Law. I don’t know how many of you are aware of it. O’Sullivan’s Law is named after John O’Sullivan, who for a while was editor of National Review. His law states that any political party, any foundation or any institution that is not ideological and philosophically conservative will over time become liberal. Now we are seeing on Capitol Hill today the Republican Party going native in a big way and confirming O’Sullivan’s Law. The only sheet anchor against that is the politics of ideas that The Heritage Foundation pioneered in this town, and that The Heritage Foundation preeminently practices in this town.
I want to talk to you very briefly—I’ve only got 20 minutes, he’s been very stern with me—about some kinds of politics that bother me. And one is the politics of cognitive dissonance, the politics of assuming a ladder—I’ll explain all these—the politics of economic hypochondria, and the politics of learned dependency.
The American people talk like Jeffersonians, speaking the language of small government, but they insist upon being governed by Hamiltonians, by a large, omnipresent, omniprovident welfare state. The American people are often rhetorically conservative but operationally liberal.
First of all, the politics of cognitive dissonance: Part of our problem and part of the problem with being a politician today is that the American people don’t seem to mean what they say. The American people talk like Jeffersonians, speaking the language of small government, but they insist upon being governed by Hamiltonians, by a large, omnipresent, omniprovident welfare state. The American people are often rhetorically conservative but operationally liberal. And it is our task, everyone in this room, to try and bring them back to the premises of their rhetoric because we are drifting fast toward simple capitulation to the statist and collectivist tendencies in this country.
Mike Gamecock DeVine @ The Charlotte Observer
http://thehinzsightreport.com
www.theminorityreportblog.com
www.race42008.com
www.fred08.com
Great post 'stack. If I might add some thoughts on the subject...
The philosophy of deconstructionism has, since the late '80's, become the guiding light of the left and has unfortunately made co-opting the meaning of *conservative* possible. In short, it has spawned all manner of relativistic thinking and political correctness we are seeing today by.
To a politcian, Democrat, Republican or otherwise, interested only in acheiving political power and prestige, deconstructionist thinking liberates them from such arcane concepts like truth, morality and reason. Its' appeal is therefore extremely seductive. It is ultimate expediency.
Some definitions of deconstructionism and postmodernism from an article by Bill Crouse illuminate this concept:
"Deconstructionism (D) is a powerful postmodern movement currently in vogue on major college campuses and among the intellectual elite. Its influence permeates every area of our culture. This movement has given rise to tribalism, political correctness, re-imaging, multiculturalsim, and culture wars. It has become a hammer for smashing traditional values."
"Postmodernism in many ways is a reaction against modernism that has been brewing since the late 19th Century. In postmodernism the intellect is replaced by will, reason by emotion, and morality by relativism. Reality is nothing more than a social construct; truth equals power. Your identity comes from a group. Postmodernism is characterized by fragmentation, indeterminacy, and a distrust of all universalizing (worldviews) and power structures (the establishment). It is a worldview that denies all worldviews (“stories”). In a nutshell, postmodernism says there are no universal truths valid for all people. Instead, individuals are locked into the limited perspective of their own race, gender or ethnic group. It is Nietzsche in full bloom."
http://www.christianinformation.org/article.asp?artID=73
Any of this setting off alarms?!
I would humbly recommend reading the entire article to gain a better understanding of the forces arrayed against us in an attempt to destroy this country and our way of life.
"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."
Sun Tzu
Machiavelli came up with most of this long before Derrida did.
And Post-Modernism most visible American has a lot of friends among the conservative intelligentsia.
Course, there's no button but I recommend it anyway. Spoken as a full fledged Total-Con (as opposed to social-fiscal-whatever else kind of cotton picking cherry picking con).
I meant what I said and I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful 100 percent.
find a needle in a haystack.
Mike Gamecock DeVine @ The Charlotte Observer
http://thehinzsightreport.com
www.theminorityreportblog.com
www.race42008.com
www.fred08.com
Ann Coulter and Pamela Meister (American Thinker) have both brought this up. (A man wouldn't dare). It's simple and intriguing: How has American politics changed since we gave women the right to vote? To quote Rush, who opined on this very subject on Friday,
Nobody is saying take it away from them, it's not going to happen, nobody's talking about that. The growth in the welfare system, the growth in the Nanny State, the growth in government in the soccer mom business, the growth of government taking the place of a worthless, no good husband or no husband whatsoever .... what would have happened if women had never had the vote in this country, would we have the Nanny State, welfare state that we have today?
www.scottbomb.com
Click here to donate to the Fred Thompson campaign.
how about answering how this country has changed since allowing anyone who doesn't own property to vote....or blacks...I hardly think the woman vote has created the welfare state...that was created in response to the depression...and has been ongoing ever since. It would be easy to explain the leftward tilt of our country to one thing...but lets not.
Freedom of Religion not Freedom from Religion
I'll let the ladies hash it out.
And to quote Ann,
If we took away women's right to vote, we'd never have to worry about another Democrat president. It's kind of a pipe dream, it's a personal fantasy of mine, but I don't think it's going to happen. And it is a good way of making the point that women are voting so stupidly, at least single women.
It also makes the point, it is kind of embarrassing, the Democratic Party ought to be hanging its head in shame, that it has so much difficulty getting men to vote for it. I mean, you do see it's the party of women and "We'll pay for health care and tuition and day care - and here, what else can we give you, soccer moms?
There IS one guy who put's his neck on the line here.
www.scottbomb.com
Click here to donate to the Fred Thompson campaign.
"It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." ~Professor Dumbledore