Tuesday, September 25, 2012

IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHO THE PATSY IS, DAVID ...

David Brooks argues today that conservatism is out of balance. Once upon a time, he tells us, economic conservatives who favored small government coexisted with an equally influential set of Burkean traditionalists, who sought to "preserve a society that functioned as a harmonious ecosystem, in which the different layers were nestled upon each other: individual, family, company, neighborhood, religion, city government and national government."

There's a lot wrong with this thesis: as Ed Kilgore says, Brooks thinks Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush balanced the two tendencies, which may have been true as far as their rhetoric went, but wasn't exactly evident in their approaches to governance. Also, much social conservatism is of the punitive, scolding variety practiced by the religious right (which gets along quite nicely with economic conservatism even now, as Kilgore notes).

But, yes, there are some Burkean conservatives out there, at least among the pundits and thinkers. Brooks writes, regretfully:
The two conservative tendencies lived in tension. But together they embodied a truth that was put into words by the child psychologist John Bowlby, that life is best organized as a series of daring ventures from a secure base.

The economic conservatives were in charge of the daring ventures that produced economic growth. The traditionalists were in charge of establishing the secure base -- a society in which families are intact, self-discipline is the rule, children are secure and government provides a subtle hand.

... It's not so much that today's Republican politicians reject traditional, one-nation conservatism. They don't even know it exists.
If there's doesn't seem to be much of this sort of conservatism these days, I'd say it's for a simple reason: the big-money bankrollers of conservatism don't really give a crap whether American society has a "secure base."

I think rich right-wingers are like drug dealers or Al Qaeda -- drug dealers aren't upset if the neighborhoods from which they operate have high crime rates, and Al Qaeda has never minded operating from failed states like the Sudan. There's no civic or national pride involved -- in fact, these organizations prefer a cowed population that just lets them operate. That's how many of our plutocrats seem to feel right now about America.

I'm not sure the financiers of the right ever cared about strengthening American society. In the past, when a Jack Kemp would rise to prominence preaching economic opportunity for the downtrodden, or a George W. Bush was preaching "compassionate conservatism," it happened because the right and its financiers saw traditionalist conservatism as an effective smokescreen for their main agenda: lower taxes and less regulation. Traditionalism was also a useful cudgel the right could use to beat the allegedly hedonistic libertines of the Democratic Party.

But traditionalism isn't working very well as a cudgel these days (people in all parts of the country, and across nearly all of the political spectrum, have now decided they're cool with sex in a large percentage of its variations). Pure Fox-style rage seems to get out the right-wing vote more reliably than suggestions that traditional conservatism will make America a harmonious Norman Rockwell nation. (Real right-wingers these days don't want a harmonious nation -- they want to destroy their enemies.)

So now we're getting conservatism's true agenda in undiluted form. And patsies like David Brooks, who thought the right wanted a rising tide to lift all of America's boats, still don't realize they were played for chumps. The big-money types never cared about their agenda. The Burkeans were just being used.

4 comments:

Victor said...

Being an unwitting stooge for grifters, means you can never admit that that you are one.

"Compassionate Conservatism" is as much a work of fiction as "Leave It To Beaver."

White Hat said...

"Pure Fox-style rage seems to get out the right-wing vote..."

Outrage always sells - on the right and left. It just tends to be more lucrative on the right.

The real problem with Brooks' thesis is that he thinks of social conservatism as essentially benevolent, providing some gentle fuddy-duddy solidity to society. He consistently seems to miss the fact that in American politics social conservatism is expressed as aggressive social intolerance. That has always been true, since before Brooks' lifetime, and is even more true now. Loud and violent sells better than calm and thoughtful.

Brooks' perception of conservatism is an idealized fantasy. He's mourning the loss of pixies and unicorns. Idiotic tripe.

Philo Vaihinger said...

You write,

"If there's doesn't seem to be much of this sort of conservatism these days, I'd say it's for a simple reason: the big-money bankrollers of conservatism don't really give a crap whether American society has a 'secure base.'

"I think rich right-wingers are like drug dealers or Al Qaeda -- drug dealers aren't upset if the neighborhoods from which they operate have high crime rates, and Al Qaeda has never minded operating from failed states like the Sudan. There's no civic or national pride involved[.]"

I think you are dead on.

As for Burke, two things.

What they specifically admire in his work is now as it has been since they started babbling about him in the early cold war years, his Reflections on the Revolution in France - a book in which out of the most enraged rejection of democracy he bitterly denounces republicanism at every turn and rigidly defends monarchy and national rule by lords both temporal and spiritual.

I am not kidding.

And he furiously rejects the claimed right of the French people, or any people, to overthrown such an ancien regime.

Second, it was just bullshit, anyway.

Movement conservatism was always just about the most furious and untrammeled capitalism, complete rejection of progressivism since the start of the 20th Century, coupled with a cold war global military and diplomatic agenda of making the whole world safe for capitalism - advertised, of course, as a crusade for liberty.

But the plutes were less enthused by them while they needed domestic peace for that global war on communism.

Communism is now gone and they don't think they will need large, draftee armies again for anything.

So they really don't give a shit what happens to us or the country.

Their only real goal is to make themselves richer and more powerful.

On the other hand, do nations actually matter any more to liberals?

Do progressives actually prioritize the good of America and Americans over their own global aims?

Nope.

Here just as in Europe, the ordinary people of the country still think country matters, nations matter, and the aims of policy should reflect that.

That is not the opinion of the dominant elites of either left or right, however.

Not on your life.

Knight of Nothing said...

The second-to-last paragraph of your essay is pure gold. I'll probably find myself quoting it at some point.