Rue So
Julian Sanchez hoists contemporary conservatism on its own petard. It’s a good piece. It’s stuff I used to say around here three and four years ago, but Julian says it more systematically.
During the vain (in every sense) process, of trying to argue Repubs and neolibertarians into applying their own theories about Sowell’s “constrained vision” and Hayek’s decentralism to foreign policy, I stopped identifying with the Right. Regardless of my own political inclinations, I agree with Kung Fu Monkey’s classic lament, “I Miss Republicans,” and here and there some few have begun to return.
But I can’t help but think that the Republicans we miss are the ones out of power. The Republican Party has always been a great Jiminy Cricket - it ain’t much of a Pinocchio. And the American conservative movement’s fatal flaw as a party of limited government always has been and always will be nationalism. Pick an expansion of government power - a war; a highway system; a surveillance program - and if you can somehow associate it with killing foreigners you can peel away enough “limited-government conservatives” to get your way. Organs and people from National Review to Robert Heinlein to Barry Goldwater have tried to be nationalists AND at least operationally libertarian; in every case, the nationalism has won out. That’s why Republican criticism of Clinton’s Kosovo adventure ultimately didn’t amount to much. Heinlein’s famous adage, “You can have peace, or you can have freedom,” is exactly backwards. You can only have freedom - individual liberty - if you also have peace. War is the great conscriptor of bodies, minds and souls.
I love France so much I can’t bear to part with an inch of it, Shakespeare has Henry V say. And I love the Republican Party so much I can’t wait to see it in opposition again.
Comment by Barry —
February 28, 2006 @ 9:03 am
testing
Jim, I’m frequently getting a request to fill in the name and e-mail fields. I’m running IE, behind a corp firewall. I’ve also had problem in Firefox, at home.
Comment by Barry —
February 28, 2006 @ 9:32 am
Posting while things appear to be working:
One of my pet nits about things that people seem to misperceive is ’conservative’ vs ’right-wing’.
IMHO, right-wingers have been hiding behind the term ’conservative’ for the past few decades. If, whenever somebody says ’conservative’, you substitute ’right-winger’, most of the oddities in their behavior disappears. *Of course* right-wingers will oppose a center/center-left president’s powers, while supporting unprecedented powers in a right-wing president.
Of course right-wingers will have little problem opposing a war run by their political opponent (sorry, enemy), while supporting a war run by their president, no matter how badly run or dishonestly sold. Of course right-wingers will support corporations tearing apart communities, in the name of the free market, while suporting government cronyism, which is against the free market. Of course right-wingers support a right-wing president lying through his teeth and suppressing information, while going batsh*t about anything a center/center-left president did.
Comment by Jim Henley —
February 28, 2006 @ 9:50 am
Barry, I don’t disagree, in principle. But the upshot is that, in practical terms, there just aren’t that many actual *conservatives* in American political life.
At some point a neocon associated with either NRO or the Weekly Standard was writing a couple of years ago that the reason there was no such thing as neoconservatism was that ”conservatism” evolves and neo-C had *become* contemporary conservatism, and I decided, You know, I suppose he’s right.
Comment by Derek Copold —
February 28, 2006 @ 11:45 am
Jim’s last comment hits the nail on the head. Most of those known today as conservatives, are really Wilsonian liberals. Conservatives, like Taft and Coolidge, who preferred to mind their own business, have about no influence. I say this as i include myself among their number.
Comment by Barry —
February 28, 2006 @ 2:14 pm
Derek, the point is that they’re *not* Wilsonian liberals, they’re right-wingers:
conquest + fraudulent talk of liberation NE ’Wilsonian liberal’.
This was the point of my post - people look at somebody wanting to conquer chunks of the world (which happen to contain valuable assets) while ’reforming’ them into a more acceptable (obedient) shape, and think ’liberal’, just because the conquerors use the language of liberation and freedom. If it were most other countries, very few of us would casually accept propaganda of liberation as true, but many people in the US absorb it without thinking.
The second theme of my post was that there is a tendency to equate ’right-wing’ and ’conservative’, ’free marketer’, etc, which certainly isn’t true now, and probably never was - even in the ’classical liberal’ 1800’s, many right-wingers had no problem with government money, using troops/cops/private mercs on troublesome people. Torturing/killing blacks, hispanics, indians and chinese people was the norm, and frequently viewed as virtuous.
IMHO, the only reason that right-wingers are conservative at all is that there’ve been a number of situations where they felt that change was left-wards, so they resisted it.
Comment by Barry —
February 28, 2006 @ 2:16 pm
A correction that might better explain my point: *American* people look at somebody wanting to conquer chunks of the world (which happen to contain valuable assets) while ’reforming’ them into a more acceptable (obedient) shape, and think ’liberal’.
How many Europeans think of neo-cons as ’liberal’, ’Wilsonian liberal’ or ’conservative’? I’d bet that this is a purely American viewpoint.
Comment by Barry —
February 28, 2006 @ 2:26 pm
Comment by Jim Henley —
”Barry, I don’t disagree, in principle. But the upshot is that, in practical terms, there just aren’t that many actual *conservatives* in American political life.”
Well, remember that ’conservative’ means somebody opposed to change. It doesn’t mean a supporter of the free market, or human rights, or peace, or using US military force only in self-defense.
”At some point a neocon associated with either NRO or the Weekly Standard was writing a couple of years ago that the reason there was no such thing as neoconservatism was that ”conservatism” evolves and neo-C had *become* contemporary conservatism, and I decided, You know, I suppose he’s right. ”
I’d disagree, for the above reasons - those right-wingers who might have been with the conservatives before are now in favor of radical change, because the forces of change seem to favor the right-wingers. Especially those right-wingers who assume that large gobs of chaos, death, destruction and continual war favors them.