American Conservatism's Original Sin is Confessed
At The New Republic, Leon Wieseltier's Halfway House for Recovering Neo-conservatives has Sam Tanenhaus' third long elegy for conservatism as a movement and an ideology.
There is a conservative sensibility or wisdom that many liberals are the poorer for missing. But I've often asked Tanenhaus -- most tellingly here and in the Guardian, and Yale Daily News - to admit that conservatives can't reconcile their keening for an ordered, sacred liberty with their obeisance to every riptide of a capitalism that's dissolving the republic, values, and customs they claim to cherish.
At last, he admits it, and he resists his old temptation to blame liberals. Conservatives who dine out too often on liberals' follies forget how to cook for themselves, and Tanenhaus has been a bad chef at the Times, as I showed in The Nation. Let's hope his bio of William F. Buckley, Jr. matches his delicious one of Whittaker Chambers. But if you see a blogger call his New Republic elegy the "must read" of the moment, send him this account of Tanenhaus in 2007.
"Conservatives who dine out too often on liberals' follies forget how to cook for themselves.."
Nice one.
February 8, 2009 6:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
Jim, I think conservatism was killed by neoconservatism.
It is ironic that an ideological movement loaded with anti-semites was hijacked by a movement concerned only with its perception of Israel's security.
There is nothing in conservatism that would have led it to the second Iraq war. That was the Likud branch.
Then they stocked the worst administration in US history with Likud ideologues (and thugs like Cheney for whom they were useful idiots) and the murder of traditional conservatism was accomplished.
American conservatism cannot be saved so long as it is dominated by its neocon wing.
I honestly believe that neither Kristol nor Krauthammer nor Lucianne's boy or Safire or Lipsky or any of that gang care about taxes, big or small government, limited foreign involvement or any of the other hallmark issues of conservatism. They simply pretend to care to maintain their creds in order to help preserve the occupation.
The only way to save conservatism is for it to divest itself of the two religio/ethnic wings that have nabbed and then destroyed it: the neocons and the right-to-lifers.
February 8, 2009 10:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
M. J., you make a lot of sense. But to me, a bigger flaw in conservatism than even the Likudnik approach to the middle east and the defense of Israel is giving the Evangelical Xtian Republicans any control over government policies and administration. I have often wondered how the Free Market Wall Street Republicans can even stomach remaining allied to the religious right. So reading your comment, I got to wondering.
Is it reasonable to think that the Neocons might be the bridge between the Wall Street Republicans and the religious right? If so, they would be a bridge holding the entire modern Republican Party together. The followers don't need to buy the basis for party unity, as long as the leaders of the various factions do. Then the Republican leaders maintain the unity of the party by sharing the policy-level rewards to all three groups, by maintaining a unified party machinery and leadership training and by heavily propagandizing the two large groups, the Free Market Republicans and the Social Conservatives.
Such a role would give the Neocons a key role in keeping the entire Republican coalition together. Which would mean that they cannot be dispensed with, and the degree to which their policy prescriptions are discredited would be unimportant.
It's just a random thought on an early Sunday morning, and its probably just an effort to dream up a pattern to explain something that has long puzzled me - the strange unity between the various factions of the Republican Party. I've suddenly got a lot more time on my hands.
It looks like I am pretty much out of watching TV unless I waste the money on cable. I bought a HD TV converter box to go with my rabbit ears a few weeks ago and immediately totally lost ABC, and all the other channels drift in and out now. Only in HD they don't do a neat drift-out and fade. Instead they get strange squares all over the screen and suddenly just blank out as the signal is lost. Essentially the move to HD is nothing more than the TV networks pulling the plug on free TV broadcasting for the masses. Not enough profit in it anymore.
The result is that I now have more time to get things done. Like speculate on the unity of the Republican coalition and the repeated failures of the Neocons.
February 8, 2009 12:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
... a movement concerned only with its perception of Israel's security ...
This seem to be pretty much the case with the second degeneration of neoconnery, the current crop of insolent whippersnappers -- Pipes Minor, Podhóretz Minor, Kramer Minor, Kristol Minor, . . . .
But a big part of what makes a señorito a señorito is that Daddy really is, or used to be, of some consequence.
Whether the Urnneokonservatismus of The Public Interest should be called ‘conservative’ in English is another question. At no point in its history did the neocomradely factionette ever much resemble the Friends of Eddie Burke. Or even the acquaintances of Mr. Michael Oakeshott.
Mr. Tanenhaus seems to be surprisingly sensible. Unlike a lot of other wannabe writers of the same obituary, he doesn't say anything ignorant and silly about how neo-racketeerin’ all came out from under the overcoat of Herr Prof. Dr. Leo Strauss. He nevertheless overemphasies neo-racketeerin’ as ‘ideology’ when he would do better to look at it as a functional component of the Party of Big Management. Tananhaus says, for example,
In 1975 ... Irving Kristol ...identified a "new class" of liberal enemies. They were "not much interested in money but are keenly interested in power," Kristol wrote. "Power for what? Well, the power to shape our civilization--a power, which, in a capitalist system, is supposed to reside in the free market. The 'new class' wants to see much of this power redistributed to government, where they will then have a major say in how it is exercised." And who, exactly, populated this new class? "[S]cientists, teachers and educational administrators, journalists and others in the communication industries, psychologists, social workers, those lawyers and doctors who make their careers in the expanding public sector, city planners, the staffs of the larger foundations, the upper levels of the government bureaucracy."
That is to say, Neocomrade I. Kristol was, by self-positionin’ in 1975, to intellectuals what Neocomrade Sh. Steele and Mr. Justice Thomas are in 2009 to African-Americans, and Neocomrade F. ‘Ajamí to Arabs and Muslims, and Neocomradess L. Chávez to Latinos: the exception that proves the rule, the one individual in ten thousand prepared to drop a dime on the other 9,999.
"America, you are right to fear and hate us blacks/Muslims/wetbacks/newclassers! Except for me and a couple of my friends , that is, because we am not like the others."
That is how the gimmick works, is it not? The exact views of Kristol Major strike me as vastly less important than the way he meshed into the Big Party machinery.
Happy days.
February 8, 2009 12:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
MJ, I only partly agree with you here, although I hate to take second place to anyone, even you, when it comes to disdaining neo-conservatives!
Look, to misguide us into Iraq and the rest, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and their allies in Congress needed no encouragement or guidance from Wolfowitz, Perle, and Feith -- and none of the shameless cheerleading they got from Kristol and Brooks. Maybe I should amend this slightly to say that the neo-cons were valuable to them as public communicators, rabble rousers, etc. But what makes the neo-cons so loathsome to me is precisely that they were more superfluous than they were powerful, like court Jews for the Prussian nobility -- that is, they were certainly useful, and at moments tactically invaluable, but I think that our national tragedy would have unfolded without them. Again, that makes the neo-cons even more contemptible in my eyes, even if not as causal as they seem in your view.
Needless to say, I'm more than open to hear the counter-argument elaborated!
February 8, 2009 11:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
Mr. Sleeper, I've read this post twice, several of the references and still have no idea what it is you're trying to say. What exactly is Conservatism's original sin?
Let me remind you that this is an internet comment site, not a book club. If you actually want discussion of an idea, present the idea as if the readers are seeing it for the first time. Otherwise you are just pleasuring yourself and wasting our time.
February 8, 2009 11:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Shooter242: Conservatism's original sin -- the central flaw that goes to its heart, historically and conceptually -- is, as I put it in the post,that "conservatives can't reconcile their keening for an ordered, sacred liberty with their obeisance to every riptide of a capitalism that's dissolving the republic, values, and customs they claim to cherish."
If you need more, look elsewhere. This is a blog post, not a book club. Neither format is right for everyone who just happens to look in on it.
There's come more www.jimsleeper.com, in the sections called "A Civic Republican Primer" and "Conservative Conundrums"
February 8, 2009 12:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Mr. Sleeper, repeating what I've already described as incomprehensible, is like Garret Morris on SNL and "news for the deaf". Shouting to a deaf person doesn't help. Worse, repeating my assertion that is is a blog post not a book club, as your own observation seems inane.
My guess is that you are trying to contrast ordered liberty, with the disorder of capitalism, yes? While denigrating both? Tsk.
Since I presume the opportunity for merriment in your suggested readings, I'll pursue them. Meanwhile let me suggest that writing in obscure terms tells me that you either don't feel secure in your criticisms or confident in their presentation. Or in other words, you're trying to baffle us with BS. Tsk. Tsk.
February 8, 2009 1:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Shooter-- I suggest looking at the piece he linked to: http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2007/dec/06/american_conservatisms_original_sin
...and also listening to Tanenhaus's speech at AEI (linked to in Sleeper's piece).
I've listened to the Tanenhaus speech about 6 times over the past several months, and I've gotten something new out of it each time. It's probably impossible sum up all that the two of them are trying to sum up without giving you a lot of things to unpack. And it *is* all hard to unpack, or everyone would have already done it already.
A lot of it, it seems to me, has to do with what came out of Nixon's politics in the 60's (before I was born). Following, that period, the Neoconservatives intellectually distilled Nixon's backlash populism and used it as a manifesto to build the conservative infrastructure (the AEI and other think tanks, the media outlets, coordinated messaging, etc.). AEI was the most "intellectually respectable" part of the whole thing. The machine engages in a kind of permanent disruptive political warfare that, strangely, owes significant debts to the Marxism of its ex-liberal architects. But of course, the ex-liberals completely jettisoned their earlier economic liberalism (they forgot "conservatism's original sin" perhaps because they were primarily interested in having a economic powerhouse America that could defeat communism and defend Israel).
And again, the founder of the whole political style is Richard Nixon:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2008/0805.kilgore.html
In Tanenhaus's earlier talk (at AEI) he seems to want to rescue Nixon, but now, in his TNR piece, he seems to have given that up.
February 8, 2009 2:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
And ordered liberty is just like what it sounds like. Conservatives don't want people to "level" everything and throw it into disorder. This is what they see liberals doing with utopian social engineering (as they have traditionally seen it). But the need for order needs to apply in the other political direction--for instance when Margaret Chase Smith went up against McCarthy (worth reading--I think some parts of this speech sound like Howard Dean):
http://www.mcslibrary.org/program/library/declaration.htm
Nowadays, movement conservatism has become mostly about the *appearance* of ordered liberty (e.g., endless culture wars on cable news), and McCarthy's right-wing-type populism has won out over Margaret Chase Smith's appeals for ordered liberty. Reasonable appeals for reasonable laws that would bring market forces under control for benefit of citizens have met with right wing populist demagoguery that Smith would have disapproved of. Anti-communists like the neoconservatives are in many ways the descendents of McCarthy.
February 8, 2009 3:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks to jjwrfomme to reminding Shooter and others that my post links several earlier articles that explain Tanenhaus' and others' political evolution in terms I chose not to repeat in this three-paragraph update. I commend especially my own Guardian account of what Tanenhaus was saying a year ago.
In TNR now he writes in a sober, truth-telling mode, but what he delivers are truisms, not new insights. This is a tired rendering of what those of us who've followed the conservative debacle have known and been saying for some time. Tanenhaus seems to be trying to exit the room now without being jumped by conservatives angry at him for having interloped in the first place along with other neo-cons who used the conservative movement to vent their own disdain for liberals and to pursue their ends in Iraq. He's trying to restore his own intellectual respectability. We'll see if others greet this as a revelation or soulful confession, or whether they see it as opportunistic re-positioning.
February 8, 2009 5:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Over at his new blog (unlike at NRO, he's got an open comments section) David Frum is sort of playing bullfighter with Tanenhaus's piece. He's saying it goes too far, but but he seems to agree enough with Tanenhaus's piece to attack the Palin supporters with it.
Tanenhaus, it seems to me, predicted the rise of Sarah Palin (I'd say her supporters are the revanchists). Sarah Palin is the ultimate "Country and Western Marxist" candidate. It wasn't long ago that her supporters were mad because the decadent New Class reporters at Newsweek didn't adequately airbrush their Leader's picture. And over at the AEI, she's a "blank page" upon which they can cast their designs.
BTW, Frum seems to have been onto these sorts of problems for a while.
But his fellow conservatives aren't having any of it (Tanenhaus is "incoherent," "elitist," etc.):
http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerkimball/2009/02/03/good-news-for-conservatives/
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Yjk5ZjU2N2JhMzAxMWVlNmMxZWM0NTFkNjhhNDI4OTA=
February 8, 2009 8:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Anyone who has been interested enough actually to read Sam Tanenhaus' piece in The New Republic should also read the following account of what he said two years ago. It's instructive, and not a little surprising, to see the two side by side. He's not just repeating himself now in TNR; he's also absorbing and recycling my assessment of him and of American conservatism from 2007.
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/02/07/american_conservatisms_original_sin_is_confessed/index.php
February 9, 2009 5:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
OOPS, this is the link I meant to provide in the msg just above:
http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2007/dec/06/american_conservatisms_original_sin
February 9, 2009 5:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
I noticed Tanenhaus mentioned Michael Lind in his AEI speech. Seems like he's an influence. This Josh Marshall post from last year got me picking up Lind's work:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/062703.php
I guess they like Sarah Palin better than Mike Huckabee, because if the inmates are going to run the asylum, they want it to be *their* inmate. Apparently, Palin can be guided and controlled. Whereas, you need to send Coulterbot 3000 after Huckabee:
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2008/Coulter_Huckabee_clash_over_support_for_0112.html
David Frum probably knows that the whole thing has descended into self parody at this point...
February 9, 2009 10:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Now you guys are aware that the 242 in Shooter's name refers to UN Resolution 242? You really should ask him about it and why he choose it.
February 9, 2009 11:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
Just a quick not to Jim Sleeper
It seems to me that any definition of "conservatism" be based on "a family of resemblances -- I think that how the term is used -- and the same is true with liberalism. Generally speaking, it seems to me that conservatives, like Russell Kirk for example, tend not be as concerned with "social justice" so much as "social order". Also, the term "conservative" is often used in a relative way: for example, Minnesota liberal Republican governors of the 1950's 60's are often viewed as "conservative" in relationship to the Hubert Humphrey liberals. My own view is that the problem of much that is now called conservatism here in the U.S. is that it is "movement" conservatism" -- an ideology where in belief trumps "truth" -- in other words, were belief is not susceptible empiricism. Or to put this another way, where there is such certainty in a belief or point of view that the believer is not susceptible to disconfirmation. Burke was not viewed as an ideologue because is views were informed by molded by experience. I may be going off your topic, but my impression of Tanenhaus is that he has been able to free himself from the shackles of his preconceived beliefs and has been humbled in the process. These thought are off the top of my head.
February 9, 2009 2:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Stephen, I think you are partly right but partly not. What you say about what the conservative "movement" has become strikes me as right on: It has put "belief" (in the sense of religious faith or natural law) ahead of rational, liberal thought, which make empiricism (some would say pragmatism) a necessary if not sufficient part of ts way of understanding the world.
Where I think you're not right is in suggesting that Tanenhaus -- I assume that you've read his recent New Republic essay or watched his lecture at AEI, linked in my earlier TPM piece -- has "freed himself" from conservative thinking. I think that he always was free of it and was attracted to conservatism for Burkean reasons, and that he is only now breaking with the American movement, as David Brooks, David Frum and others are, because he can see that it has run aground.
This makes Tanenhaus (and them) seem opportunistic to many orthodox conservatives, for obvious reasons and also to many on the left: Tanenhaus et al were happy enough to ride the conservative tide when it seemed a great way to "cleanse" liberalism of its own failures, but they are leaving now that the going is getting tough.
February 9, 2009 6:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Its all seems to be a game, like just another mental exercise. If they are leaving conservatism, What are they replacing it with? I'm sorry I have not read all the suggested material but I have seen David Brooks talk through a conservative horn. Not sure that really counts. I had other things to say but I think I'll just shut up before I make myself look any worse.
February 10, 2009 2:09 AM | Reply | Permalink