The death of smart conservatism
Reading Christopher Buckley’s endorsement of Barak Obama reminded me that there was a certain kind of conservatism that used to appeal to me, before the culture wars made it possible for conservatives, formerly the most francophilic of all, to even hate France.
It seems as if the prevailing image of conservatism in America at the moment is the loud and brash Fox News/Little Green Footballs/Rush Limbaugh hate mongering. It is a fear based conservatism, appealing to masses of terrified voters who are convinced that their way of life is threatened by Muslims and Mexicans. They are embodied in the screaming anti-ethos of Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, and they have come to roost in the person of Sarah Palin, chosen to do the bidding of “the base:” a large demographic of middle class, middle American Christian fundamentalists with a taste for blood and war and a short leash on their tempers.
The rise of this populist mob mentality had it’s basis in the attack dog years of the Clinton Presidency when only sleeze would dethrone the adminstration that had balanced the budget and provided a great business climate, thereby out Republicaning the Republicans themselves. It has come of age in the twin contexts of popular media (blogging and YouTube and Facebook) and fear based war mongering. And what it has done is to have displaced the intelligent, thoughtful and witty conservatives of another time.
When the loud mouths rail against the arugula eating elites of the east coast, it seems to be wholly without the irony of the fact that until recently those arugula eating elites were almost entirely conservatives. You would be hard pressed in the old days to find upstanding working class families that made arugula a part of their regular salad mix. But class is a funny thing in America: Democrats and Republicans court the elites for their money and power but the working classes for their authenticity and sheer numbers.
I grew up in a pretty conservative part of Toronto, the son of a big city elite business family on my dad’s side and a working class farm to suburb family on my mother’s side. Both families held conservative beliefs, and both were largely supporters of the Progressive Conservative Party in Canada, seeing populism as a tad unseemly, and providing rational arguments in their defense of things like free markets, apartheid and traditional family values. As I was never in their camp, we had heated arguments about these things, but they never descended to name calling, and we always seemed to remain civil in our political differences.
Moreover we enjoyed the same culture, being fond of classical music, theatre and poetry. I watched more independant cinema and listened to more jazz, but we substantially shared the urban middle class cultural landscape without grief. We disagreed on society, economics and politics, but we saw eye to eye on plenty of other things.
And so I come to Buckley’s column and note with some alarm that things have shifted for the worse in the United States. When Christoper Buckley (and David Frum and Christopher Hitchens) have endorsed a Democrat, it means that the Republicans have gone so far right that they are verging on popular fascism. Hearing some of the comments from the mobs of supporters at McCain/Palin rallies certainly bears that out. Voters are angry, not at the economy or the loss of their manufacturing sector or the nine trillion dollar debt their government has racked up, but for the way “the scialists are taking over.” The moral compass is broken.
The level of rhetorical screed in the United States coming from the Republicans is alarming, beacuse it is tapping a mob mentality and verging on violent difference making. It posits the election of Barack Obama as the end of America and provides a narrative in the culture that makes it frighteningly possible that outright violence will erupt. McCain and Palin have taken to lowering this emotional tone in their campaign just to provide some plausibility for a denial of responsibility if anything should happen. How did it come to this?
Republicans have abandonned the intellectual centre of their party, and have set loose the rabid margins. In doing so, they have lost the capacity they need to reinvent the intellectual backbone of their party. It seems clear at this point that they will be out of power for a while, and they face a choice to reinvent American conservatism from a considered and reasonable bassis or to let the attack dogs run loose and fire negative volleys at the Democrats in power for the next four years or more.
Republicans need to overcome the anger, and get back to the real business of providing an alternative political vision for America because so far only one guy is doing that, and he’s about to make history as America’s first black President.
Chris – this is such an insightful post – I grieve for America and for us
Chris, thank you for this post. I saw the article in The Nation on the Christophers (i.e. Buckley and Hitchens) for Obama and thought of my own father, who died just after Reagan’s election, but who embodied, I think, some of the best impulses of conservatism, namely, a deep love, even reverence, for wisdom, which he thought (and here I might disagree with him, though I cannot disrespect him) was located in the past. His hero, of course, was Winston Churchill, not Ronald Reagan. He was the sort of conservative who thought we should all be learning Latin and Greek! I guess I’ve inherited some of my my father’s conservatism, because it’s not just Sarah Paliln’s politics that bother me, it’s her ignorance, her lack of manners, and her utter disregard for the dignity of the office she seeks. I didn’t think much of Margaret Thatcher, but I can’t imagine her using “doggone” in a political speech, or winking so snidely in a public debate. Kudos.
And a quick follow up: Buckley’s just resigned from the National Review. According to the New York Times today, he’s been “effectively fatwahed” by conservatives ever since his endorsement. I do hope you are right that Obama is about to make history, because otherwise this election will be a victory for forces of hate.
Thanks for the updates Elizabeth.
Nice post, Chris. I’ve wondered many times about the same question regarding what happened to a more reasoned conservatism. Bill Buckley fascinated me with the power of his wit and his constant challenge to think rigorously — even if at times he seemed disagreeably smug. The current rhetorical extremes and the anger surfacing in the presidential campaign to me represent something very different: a certain primitive shadow of my country, and ultimately a fearful and therefore potentially violent one. I’m looking for something better. See this post for my two cents.
Chris–
Fear-based you say, and you say rightly. Fear is the opposite of love, so it is also correct that you see hate-mongering here.
I too grew up in a conservative household and have come late to liberality. I remember grieving the way Robert does above when in the 60s and 70s and later I saw liberals campaigning on fear platforms. Fear generates donations and votes and maybe it will work again this year. I hope not.
There is a saying attributed to the ancient Greeks: democracy ended when the voting began. Perhaps love, too. At least when we have Madison Avenue politics: the politics of differentiating oneself from the other candidate. It is too easy a step from the other candidate to The Other. The Other, of course, we must hate. But others, we know someplace deep within us, we must love.
So we are called by all that is decent within us to love McCain and Palin…but not to follow where their rhetoric and that of their most rabid supporters leads.
McCain twice Friday had to set his supporters straight on their hate for Obama. That is class. It is also the hard work of love.
Let us work for love. Vote, but work.
:- Doug.
Dead-on. It’s frightening down here. And the notion that Buckley has resigned (had to?) since his endorsement points to a disturbing trend indeed. I pray this mob fury does not spill north of the border.
I think it’s always a little tamer here, but we have the odd outburst. Canadians are generally more reserved about our rage and hate, which doesn’t mean it isn’t present, just that it lurks below the surface more. It rarely defines the public discourse though, except by it’s quiet and looming absence. THe problem with public conversations in this country is sometimes that the emotional heart of things lies TOO deep. It’s an art to work with it, that’s for sure…
But mob fury…not a common occurence.
don’t you mean Black Muslim President? lol…
over the last few days, in my quiet moments of contemplation (few and far between when you’re single parenting!), a theme has been recurring. I keep thinking about extremism. Sometimes its enduced by witnessing the extremism of my 4-year-old daughter, but generally it will be by the news or a moment in public when our cultural climate reveals its underpinnings. The anger you mention, the all-pervasive spinning of the doctors, the greed of our “leaders in business”…it all seems to have approached obsessive, incapable-of-stopping, kind of proportions. Sadly, the only extremism with which we concern ourselves is that of a handful of Islamic radicals. Our own society is so heavily peppered with extremism that for those who can see it there becomes a road revealed of such magnitiude and length that many spontaneously abandon it. The work of the many must be done by the few. Certainly nowhere amidst our esteemed leaders do I see anyone heralding the arrival of a bigger picture. But at least Obama has proposed Conversation again be included in our definition of diplomacy…
Months ago, Arianna Huffington was on a panel at a conference hosted by the New Yorker (the video was on their site.) The moderator asked everyone for a prediction about US politics in 2012, and she predicted that there would be two major parties, the Democrats and the Bloomberg party, and that Republicans would be a minor right-wing party.
Everyone I know is alternately holding our breath and breathing deeply until November 5 and then January 20, that we have an election and it’s relatively clean and Obama wins and is inaugurated. Assuming all that, Arianna seems right on.
Have you spent any time watching Fox/Spin Zone?
Yes I have. I’ve watched a fair amount of Fox. It’s totally unproblematic for me except that they declare themselves to be Fair and Balanced and Spin Free. If they could stop telling that lie, everything else they do could be easily justified as opinion.
Please let me express my embarrassment for being the 8oo pound gorilla, nextdoor. I can only imagine how it must feel to be sharing a continent with what seems to be 150,000,000 humanoids ( thats half the population of the US, give or take) who really could care less about their neighbors, north or south. I too grew up in a world dominated by persons who accepted and attempted to inculcate in its children the concept that it is ok to hate, based on difference. My worldform was tempered however, by one parent that, thru example, showed that it was not only not ok to hate but that it was a waste of the brief time we have on earth. I thank her each time I see a particularly beautiful rainbow.
Your comments concering the developments political here in the US, remind me why I listen to Canadian talk radio rather than what passes for infotainment down here.
As to Bowen Island-I was flying over this morning in Google earth- it is a beautiful spot and I promise not to mention its existance to any of my fellow citizens.
I am coming up in a few weeks with my tiny camp trailer and look forward to engaging in celebration of a new (old?) direction in our common home, North America.
Pat Clark, Sequim WA. USA
Ah Pat…don’t be embarrassed on my account. One of the great things about having such a huge gorilla next door is that there is so much to love about it. I have dear and close friends around the United States, in all parts, and I have worked in many communities and with many organizations across the country and I always come away with more than I gave.
I guess my lament in this post was for a conservatism that was attuned to the gifts of American society and culture, that based its worldview on the idea that what makes the United States great could be developed and shared with the world.
Instead I find the Republican party at the moment doing the opposite: closing down, attacking others, adrift of any intellectual foundation or tradition of pursuing a political philosophy for the benefit of all. That’s what it used to be like, and may well be like again, but it isn’t that way now.