Category: Conservatism

The term is now officially meaningless.

I cannot pretend to have been much influenced by William F. Buckley Jr. Nonetheless, even for those of us who were not in America the 1960s and 1970s, when his most remarkable work was done, he still existed as an emblem of a thinking, rational, non-doctrinaire conservatism. He helped many understand more deeply that left-liberalism is a profoundly unsatisfying account of human nature and human history. He helped remind us that communism was as evil as socialism was mistaken. By legitimizing the concept of a conservative intellectual, he helped deepen and broaden conservative thought.

He lived long enough to see this precious inheritance grotesquely squandered by the conservative establishment he helped build. Like many of us, he came to see the administration of George W. Bush as in some ways the deepest, darkest betrayal of conservative values, and the hideous hateful movement that sustained it unthinkingly as part of the problem rather than the solution. But he was surely not surprised. A skeptical, thinking conservative knows that in time, great, abiding ideas can ossify into ideology and ideology can become propaganda and propaganda can degenerate into toxic factionalism. It is part of human nature and human history. There is no reason why conservatism as a political movement should be immune from its own critique of all such movements. He was polite about this, of course – much politer than many of us. But he had enough intellectual integrity not to disguise it either.

What did he know? That there will never be heaven on earth; that there will never be an end to poverty or bigotry or discontent. That there is more wisdom in tradition than we might first believe, and freedom is indispensable for tradition to shift and adapt and move responsively to changing human needs and wants. That ideology is always and everywhere a lie. That government is best when small and adept and aware of its own limits. That a society that seeks to extirpate transcendent religious truths is as doomed as one that regiments itself according to divine will.

These truths were once unspeakable heresies. That they have survived at all in mass democracy is a small miracle. But Buckley knew that all that conservatism needs to survive is the freedom to think and a willingness to rethink and an eagerness to debate. These virtues he exemplified. May we all try to recapture them in his vast, choppy wake.

The entire point of today’s "social conservatism" with respect to gay people is not to encourage responsibility, fidelity, marriage or love among gay people; it is to tell gay people to marry straight people and suppress or "cure" their sexual orientation. In fact, do yourself a favor and see if you know any social conservatives who actually favor social conservatism for the three percent or so of humanity that is gay. It’s a useful test, no?

And, of course, we know the actual consequence of such policies: they undermine and destroy family life. Here’s one story of a woman who realized she had married a gay man eleven years previously:

There are so many obvious questions for a wife like me: Didn’t I realize he was gay? Did I ignore red flags? And if I had suspicions, why didn’t I confront him earlier or divorce him?

I suppose I was always suspicious, but I was in denial. Early in our relationship, Chris told me he’d had homosexual experiences as a teenager but assured me it was youthful curiosity. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with being gay — I have an openly gay cousin. And I didn’t care what went on behind others’ closed doors. But I also didn’t believe that a gay man would ever be attracted to a straight woman, and I was naive — too naive to see why a homosexual man would marry and spend years lying to his wife, his friends, his family and himself.

It’s time to realize that social conservatives who oppose equality in marriage, who defend the closet, and whose main response to emerging gay identity is to block its integration into the family are actually fostering divorce, disease, distrust and social disintegration. If it’s not merely driven by bigotry and discomfort, why?

by Reihan

For John O’Sullivan, the central political conflict going forward will be that pitting transnational progressives, or Tranzis, against nationalist conservatives.

To sum up, Tranzi-ism is an ideology that extends regulation over the full range of human activity while exempting the regulators from democratic control by transferring governance from national democratic parliaments to unaccountable bureaucracies in independent agencies, the courts, and supra-national bodies.

This informs his subtle and smart view of Obama as a post-national figure, outlined in a recent National Review. As of yet, nationalist conservatives have failed to unite against Tranzi-ism, which, in O’Sullivan’s view, accounts for their weakness. I wonder if this gets it right, or if O’Sullivan is (mis)using a Euroskeptic lens to (mis)read the American political scene, and in particular the immigration question. To what extent can we disentangle anxiety over lawbreaking and disorder from a more systemic, ideological concern over American sovereignty? Because I share O’Sullivan’s hostility towards juristocracy, I find a lot to appreciate in his analysis. But I worry, perhaps more than he does, about the divorce between the political right and the transnational business class. O’Sullivan writes:

The first task for a serious conservatism is to de-mystify the unaccountable bureaucracies that are not only our enemies but also the enemies of the nation-state, religion, small independent businesses, aspiring entrepreneurs, families and married people, and patriotic and self-reliant citizens.

Earlier on, he explicitly identifies "senior managers in multinational corporations," glorified corporate bureaucrats, with the transnational progressives. This reminded me of Corey Robin’s "Endgame," in which he made a closely related observation. And it also reminded me of Shell’s fascinating Global Scenarios, which my friend Matt Frost sent to me a few days back. I’ve always loved scenario planning, from Russia 2010 to Peter Schwartz to Andy Marshall. The Scenarios offer a window into the multinational worldview.

The first of these “possible futures” is called Low Trust Globalisation. This is a legalistic world where the emphasis is on security and efficiency, even if at the expense of social cohesion.

The second, Open Doors, is a pragmatic world that emphasises social cohesion and efficiency, with the market providing “built-in” solutions to the crises of security and trust. The third, called Flags, is a dogmatic world where security and community values are emphasised at the expense of efficiency.

I think we can tell which scenario the good people at Shell like least. Nationalist conservatives can be dismissive of the "cosmocrats," and say good riddance to them. The trouble is that many of the "small independent businesses" and "aspiring entrepreneurs" share in at least some aspects of the Tranzi worldview. Assuming an antagonistic relationship between the transnational class and the patriotic and self-reliant risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. In The Only Sustainable Edge, a terrific book with a terrible title, the authors argue that the offshoring and outsourcing are small parts of a much larger phenomenon they call "dynamic specialization." And "dynamic specialization," in turn, is aided by "productive friction," the process (roughly) by which firms learn from customers and competitors. At the risk of twisting the authors’ terms beyond recognition, the most open economies will get smarter and richer faster because they will benefit from productive friction. This applies to the global market for talent.

So while I share many of O’Sullivan’s reservations about the European Union, labor mobility is facilitating the creation of agglomerations of skill that will drive a great deal of growth. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t any room for immigration reforms that are sensitive to cultural anxieties and wage pressures, but it does mean that the Tranzis aren’t always wrong. There is a way to reconcile these tendencies, but I’ll save that for later.

by Reihan

It goes without saying that I think Andrew Sullivan is America’s Greatest Political Blogger, but I consider myself his loyal sidekick and stooge, so perhaps that doesn’t count. Who would come in second? I think a strong case can be made for Daniel Larison, a polymathic paleocon young fogey with a scintillating intellect and a scabrous wit. Larison is a great enthusiast for things unmodern and antimodern, he is a Byzantinist, and he is an enthusiastic believer in the virtues of the Old Confederacy. He doesn’t just want the United States out of Iraq — he’d like to see the United States splinter into a half-dozen or more pacifist agrarian republics. How’s that for anti-war? Suffice to say, I’m pretty sure he finds most of my interests, enthusiams, and allegiances more than a little insane. On top of that, I’m pretty sure he’d want my immigrant family to hightail it back to rural South Asia, where we could live a more authentic life of spinning khadi and worshipping Khali.

All this is to say that Daniel and I don’t always see eye to eye. For example, as I blog I am wearing a mammoth stovepipe hat modeled on that worn by Abraham Lincoln. But yes, anyway, I like to think I recognize a true talent when I see it, and Daniel is it. Recently Daniel moved his blog, Eunomia, over to the website of The American Conservative. I urge you to check it out, particularly if you think his ideological commitments sound absolutely insane. Just think: this guy studies the Byzantine empire for a living and he knows politics better than just about any professional journo. Antimodernist though he may be, Daniel reminds me of the many virtues of the Internet age.

I’d also recommend, in an entirely different vein, that you read Will Wilkinson, the yin to Larison’s yang and a person I’m convinced will become one of our most important public intellectuals. This used to be a minority view, but it seems the cat is out of the bag. My sense is that these two guys can’t stand each other on a visceral level, in no small part because each sees the other as the embodiment of much that is wrong with the world. I love them both, which is a testament to my utter incoherence.

Let me also abuse my privileges here by urging Brad Plumer to blog more. I am willing to raise money for a significant bounty of some kind if that’s what it takes.

John Cole reminds us of some basic truths:

It sure would be nice to think that the base of the dwindling GOP is not as batshit insane as the nutters at the NRO, Red State, etc., but I have not seen much evidence of it. The thing that needs to be said, over and over, though, is that Rush Limbaugh and those guys simply aren’t conservatives. They just aren’t. Radically restructuring government to create an unaccountable executive is not conservative. Building a security apparatus that is designed to spy on citizens is not a conservative principle. Runaway spending and bloated budgets are not conservative ideas. Torture and permanent aggressive wars are not conservative principles. Fearmongering and keeping the electorate scared is not a conservative principle. And on and on.