Since things are quiet around here today, and I haven’t actually started my workation yet, and Steve M’s blogging account isn’t up and running yet, and because we’ve gone days without talking about Andrew Sullivan, I’m going to blog about Hendrik Hertzberg’s Sully piece that just appeared in the New Yorker. He begins with some torturous stuff about “Thatcherite exuberance leavened by Oakeshottian skepticism” (spare me) and then segues into comparing Sully’s mission to save the word “conservatism” with leftists’ (losing) fight to save the word “socialism”:
So I see certain parallels between the Harrington-Howe socialists and Andrew Sullivan’s valiant defense of what he regards as true conservatism. Of course, there are big differences. One is that while the democratic socialists usually offered critical (often highly critical) support to the Democratic Party at election time, today’s Republican Party has veered beyond the limits where Andrew can offer even critical support (his quirky affection for Ron Paul notwithstanding). By the same token, though, one of the two great political parties that alternate in power in the United States regards itself as conservative and will continue to do so, whereas the Democrats never remotely regarded themselves as socialist. One of these days or years, the Republican Party will be back in power. (With its House majority, it has veto power already.) For that reason, Andrew’s lonely fight for “The Conservative Soul” (the title of one of his books) is politically important and urgently worthwhile in a way that the Quixotic battle for “socialism” in America simply wasn’t.
I think this is stupid — Andrew Sullivan’s definition of “conservative” has nothing to do with Michele Bachmann’s. Why does it matter that they use the same word? Sully can “save conservatism” all he wants, it won’t prevent contemporary American conservatives from being batshit crazy.
Aimai
His lonely fight over nomenclature is the very definition of unimportant.
cervantes
Precisely. If Sully allowed comments I would have asked him a thousand times, in a thousand ways, why he is so committed to calling himself “conservative” at all. He probably has ideas rather similar to David Cameron’s, but British conservatives are socialists by U.S. standards. If he wants “conservative” to mean here what it does in Britain, then Barney Frank is a conservative.
Culture of Truth
What was the point behind that again? They’re the same, but not really, but I bet you think they are the same, but in fact they are really very different. So there.
david mizner
“Lonely fight”?
The President is largely a Sully-conservative — that’s why he likes him so much.
MacsenMifune
Hasn’t socialism always been a dirty word?
Culture of Truth
“Urgently worthwhile” inside the beltway, which judging by the Sunday talk shows, is terrified of Bachmann.
Well too damm bad – you created this monster.
Guster
Sully’s idiotic brand of ‘conservatism’ is thriving in the right wing of the Democratic Party. He just refuses to see it.
arguingwithsignposts
I had to get out of the boat to see if he actually wrote that, and yes, he actually wrote that. Does anybody outside the politerati know who the hell Oakeshott is?
ETA: That New Yorker blog format is the ugliest thing I’ve seen in a while.
lacp
“Thatcherite exuberance leavened by Oakeshottian skepticism?” Wouldn’t it be a lot easier just to say “bullshit?”
fasteddie9318
I understand this Sullivan’s plight, for I, too, am on a quest to save a word. My friends, the word “laryngopharyngeal” is much-maligned in these modern times; why, just typing it has tripped Firefox’s spell-checker, as thought it weren’t even a real word. I have made it my life’s mission to bring this word back from the abyss and salvage its deeper meaning for our own world.
“Laryngopharyngeal.” Won’y you please use it as often as you can, and correct others when they misuse it? Thank you.
daveNYC
Nope, Sully’s conservatism specifically involves not being a Democrat. He’s totally hung up on labels, which is why he’s all hot and bothered about trying to save The Conservative Soul.
seabe
It’s like Andrew Sullivan is confused. Andrew, your view of historical Britain is so false. Stfu and actually re-read history instead of jacking off to Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan did not “hate” war. He was a war-monger, just like any post-WWII president. 98% income tax my ass; that’s not what it was in reality.
The thrust of his message is fine — in that the Republicans are insane. But can he please define what “liberalism” is? These terms don’t mean anything anymore, so define shit before saying how great conservatism is. If you ask me, it hasn’t changed, it’s just gotten more reactionary at the sight of white people having less power.
KG
It’s important because if you want a sane opposition party (something that, last I checked, healthy democracies need), then the change has to start somewhere and the best place is somebody who is (or at least was) in the movement. You can bitch all you want about the other side being batshit crazy (and they are), it’s not going to matter because you’re not, and never have been, one of them. But if someone who is supposed to be on their side starts saying it, then that might get a few people to wake up. I doubt it’s going to help because the reasonable voices on the right (Sullivan, Bartlett, for example) have been cast out as impure.
Southern Beale
Rick Scott is just begging to be Freeped. I’m sure there’s a Mike Hunt in Florida somewhere….
Ghanima Atreides
meh.
Conservatism is a doomed ideology…doomed by globalization, Salam-Douthat stratification, the advent of social media, the interwebz, the lack of third culture intellectuals that will advocate for it, and the demographic timer. Like all dying religions, it is becoming increasingly fundamentalist. Fundamentalism has zero appeal for the young.
A tribe without reps cannot survive.
Anyways, conservatism is actually a genetic disease.
when we get control of the legacy code, we will be able to fix it.
;)
kdaug
You so funny.
misterbones
As long as we’re on the topic of Sullivan, friendly warning: it’s been a year since the Iran protests, so today’s Dish is chock-full of green-tinted self-congratulatory crap about how he “covered” the uprisings.
Yes, Andy, you control C and V like nobody’s business.
Violet
“True conservatism”? Just replace “conservatism” with “soshulism” and it might as well be the Soviets in the Kremlin deciding who was worthy enough to stay in The Party.
These people must spend all their time with their heads up their backsides pondering the inherent conservatism of their intestines.
jl
I think both major US parties are ‘conservative’ in the old fashioned sense of that word, compared to other countries in the world. Even compared to Switzerland, of all places. But it is, but as soon as some aspects of the (mostly private) Swiss model for health insurance were raised in the health care reform debate, they were rejected with a rapidity that made your head spin.
The Swiss communist socialist death panel dystopia was defeated.
For the foreseeable future, the battle in the US in terms of possible outcomes is between old fashioned sensible conservatism on one hand, and self destructive, fantasy based bat shit crazy (and thoroughly corrupt crony capitalism) on the other.
So why is Hertzberg even talking about socialism? Why not talk about anarcho syndicalism, or maybe the Golden Age of the Kiev Kingdom. They all have the same relevance.
And, has Hertzberg read Sullivan? Sullivan dips into Bachmann and Newt territory too often to be a real alternative to the GOP Crazy. At least, that was true when I stopped reading Sullivan months ago.
At least in terms of economics, responsible old fashioned RINO, Ike, Rockefeller conservatism, versus bat shit crazy and hog wild corporate corrupt are the choices we have over the next several election cycles.
daveNYC
I’d be quite happy if the Republicans decided to stop being batshit crazy, I’d also like to win the lottery and/or hook up with large numbers of supermodels.
At this point it’s more likely that the Republican will become ever more reactionary until they cease to hold meaningful power at the national level than it is that they will somehow come to their senses and dial things back to even 1980 levels of conservative BS.
kdaug
Good to see you back, m_c.
Culture 4.0? Brainstorm.
cyntax
If the financial crisis has taught me anything, it’s that capitalism is the only answer. All other economic systems aren’t serious and have nothing to offer us.
jl
Forgot to do a s * c * * l * s t check before I posted. Retry:
I think both major US parties are ‘conservative’ in the old fashioned sense of that word, compared to other countries in the world. Even compared to Switzerland, of all places. But it is. As soon as some aspects of the (mostly private) Swiss model for health insurance were raised in the health care reform debate, they were rejected with a rapidity that made your head spin.
The Swiss c* m m * n * s t, s * sh * l * s t, death panel dystopia was defeated.
For the foreseeable future, the battle in the US in terms of possible outcomes is between old fashioned sensible conservatism on one hand, and self destructive, fantasy based bat shit crazy (and thoroughly corrupt crony capitalism) on the other.
So why is Hertzberg even talking about s * c 8 * l * s m? Why not talk about anarcho syndicalism, or maybe the Golden Age of the Kiev Kingdom. They all have the same relevance.
And, has Hertzberg read Sullivan? Sullivan dips into Bachmann and Newt territory too often to be a real alternative to the GOP Crazy. At least, that was true when I stopped reading Sullivan months ago.
At least in terms of economics, responsible old fashioned RINO, Ike, Rockefeller conservatism, versus bat shit crazy and hog wild corporate corrupt are the choices we have over the next several election cycles.
daveNYC
Well if their intestines are that conservative, I suggest eating more fiber.
opal
We are all way too close to this.
lacp
daveNYC, are you suggesting they form a movement?
Chris
I thought he was launching into a “both-sides-do-it” column, but according to this line,
turns out he wasn’t.
IMO, to find something on the left that’s as unhinged as the current Tea Party Movement right, you’ve got to go to the unrepentant Marxists who still claimed to the bitter end that “true” communism hadn’t been tried and pretty please give us another shot at it. And those guys are practically an extinct breed in this day and age. Comparing these guys to “socialists” actually falls short of the mark.
Chris
@daveNYC –
Be nice to see them actually lose power at the national level – so far a large part of the country’s been perfectly happy to follow them in their marathon towards the right.
jrg
I hope they do at some point. It’s all a bunch of hot air right now.
Bulworth
Sounds like a new tag…
patroclus
I met Rick at NN in Austin 3 years ago and thought he was a really intelligent guy. But if he really wrote the phrase “Thatcherite exuberance leavened by Oakshottian skepticism,” I have to say that my respect for him has just gone WAY downhill.
General Stuck
“Conservatism” as an ideology with designs of a governing philosophy in this country, was doomed the minute some pie eyed movement cons started mobilizing to get its reps elected into public office.
At best the core of the so called “conservative’ notions of Buckley et al, back in the day, was suitable for individual citizens in their private lives, whatever they be, as a personal philosophy to conduct one’s daily life, or whatever private enterprise it could be applied to.
But for the purpose of governing this country with those notions, It is trying to fit the round peg into a square hole, as our founders gave us a liberal constitution to conduct our public life by, in the form of self governance. Meaning, broad concepts, all of which centered around the well being, equal protection, and nurture of the individual, above the group.
In our case, the ‘group” being white male patrician types barking out the orders for the day for everyone. With those orders either implicitly, or explicitly, running true to human nature of like kinds looking out first for those like them in whatever way.
And when the wingers tried to force the will of the “permanent ruling majority” down our throats, it ran smack into the bedrock principle of individual rights and power as represented in a one man one vote democracy.
So it all came crashing down around them as they went about consolidating power through favor of this group or that, all of which were lily white, whatever the rationalization was for tending to their needs first. And in the process, also went about disenfranchising other groups, mostly minorities, or the poor, and finally the middle class as the favoring squeezed ever upward toward the wealthy only.
So it was and is the pesky one man/one vote dilemma that that they are now busy at it, suppressing their foil to greatness (in their own heads), by monkey wrenching the voting process itself, this time with abandon, and offering mythical voter fraud as the lame excuse for this anti democratic effort. It won’t work, at least within any framework that is not blatantly seditious. At some point they will realize this, and what happens next, who knows?
There is no public “conservatism” today, as in a movement for governing the country. At best, there are stray metabolites of what it once was, at least in a cogent theory on paper, that frantic wingnuts latch onto in desperation for a talking point to keep the ruse going long enough to get elected next election.
But there is no rhyme nor reason to it, if there ever was one, and in fact, becomes quite dangerous these boogymen they flog like the austerity panic, etc, where they convince themselves, these failed policies must be force fed to the republic, one last time, all of it, or else.
Such as the debt limit, and the mythical radicalization of progressivism, or liberalism as being the great devils that must be crushed, and the method be damned along with the consequences. Crazy motherfuckers backed in a corner. Like once proud animals, in danger of becoming extinct and reduced to living in cages at the national zoo, for educational reasons on how not to do shit.
geg6
WTF is Hertzberg talking about? Sully, conservative savior? Seriously? Just because he’s not tearing around on a Medicare-bought Hoveround in a tri-corner hat screaming about soshulizm and carrying a sign with Obama on it in a witch doctor getup and a Hitler mustache does not mean he’s not crazy. I mean, the guy is a Birther, ferchrissakes, no matter that he’s a Trig Birther and not an Obama Birther. And why must we constantly be beaten over the head with this Oakeshottian bullshit. Thankfully, I was not a philosophy major and was never forced to read this idiot, but from what I’ve read about him, he sound like Sully bait in every way.
From his Wiki:
If I had read drivel like that, I’d kill myself. For reals.
Loneoak
What I hate most about Sully’s ‘save conservatism’ nonsense is that he is always claiming all basic, essentially generic, policy and epistemic virtues as ‘conservative’. Skepticism does not mark off the difference between left and right—was Oakeshott more skeptical than Marx? What the fuck does that even mean? Marx was pretty fucking skeptical of capitalism’s ability to provide basic requirements for a good human life for most people. What marks them off from each other is the vision of the proper relationships between individual, community, governance, and markets, not ‘skepticism.’
cleek
philosophy is the talk on a cereal box
religion is the smile on a dog
martha
Philosophy is useless
Theology is worse
Judas Escargot
Two words. One is ‘Conservatism’. The other, I can’t type on a liberal blog without being punished.
Tell me again which word needs saving?
BombIranForChrist
Sully is an ass.
Loneoak
@geg6:
I have a philosophy PhD, and don’t know anyone who does read him in philosophy, outside of political philosophy/political theory. In other words, folks who are more likely to be located in a Politics department.
Violet
I bet if you polled college graduates, even recent ones, only a minuscule percentage of them would even know who Oakeshott was. Even fewer would be able to name anything relevant about him.
Who cares about this stuff? It’s not relevant to the stuff of real life, like people dying because they can’t afford health care or us waging a whole bunch of wars that are sucking our national coffers dry or people not being able to find work. I don’t care if Oakeshott or Thatcher or Mickey Mouse is the one who focuses on and fixes those problems, but that is what these idiots who opine for a living should be talking about. Not navel gazing over the real meaning of a word.
Honestly.
Loneoak
@martha:
Yeah! Fuck philosophy and all those people who invented every form of human knowledge, like mathematics, physics, anthropology, political theory, psychology, economics, etc. Those people suck balls.
Amir_Khalid
@Southern Beale:
Any elected politician trying to game public opinion in a fashion as clumsy and transparent — and stupid — as this does indeed deserve to be swiftly exposed and mocked. I mean, come on man. No newspaper editor is going to believe that identically worded letters from two different people, let alone from dozens or hundreds or however many people Rick Scott’s PR operatives think they can rope in, are for reals.
I can’t imagine a newspaper that cares about its credibility doing anything with letters like that except ignoring them. In fact, I’d expect such a newspaper to run an editorial publicly deploring this stunt as an act of vandalism against honest public discourse.
(Okay. I get down from high horse now.)
FlipYrWhig
Was Margaret Thatcher known for being “exuberant”?
jrg
Loneoak, Relax. That’s a quote from a Dire Straits song.
13th Generation
@General Stuck
I don’t agree with you a lot of the time, but I applaud your last comment. Spot on.
Steve M.
Surely that ought to be part of the slogan rotation for the Balloon Juice title banner.
Citizen_X
Hmm. Not quite my taste. Do you have anything in a Shiraz?
eemom
@martha
Furthermore young man you’ve got industrial disease!
@Loneoak
teh google. u needz it.
opal
Bohemians. I hate these guys.
geg6
Loneoak @39:
Hmmmm. Well, I have a degree in political science and I never heard of the guy until I first read one of Sully’s many tongue baths of him. We covered Hayek and all the biggies of free-market economics and classical liberalism (which are, basically, the major building blocks of today’s GOP)in political theory, but not this guy. Must not be as big a hotshot as Sully makes him out to be.
jl
I don’t see much skepticism in Sullivan, Oakeshottian or otherwise, towards his own pants pissing fear and loathing of rich people paying a little bit more in taxes, up from the historic lows brought in by Bush Jr.
Perhaps I have not read enough wooly imprecise rambling philosophers like Oakeshott (OK, I have a little and you see my opinion), but I thought humility and a little self awareness was part of the traditional conservative package.
Maybe Sullivan could try reading a little John Marshall. Now, Marshall is an American parvenu, and you could figure out what he was trying to say, and felt that the rich who ruled had some obligations to the poor who did not, and was fair minded enough to encourage ideas he did not agree with to be fairly discussed. Therefore, probably too odd and vulgar a type to appeal the exquisite finely tuned sensibilities of gas bags like Sullivan (and Hertzberg), but hey, maybe they should get a little radical and quite worshiping at the shrines of Burke and Oakshott, obsessing over their holy relics and associated myths and legends.
b-psycho
Being the unique gay “conservative” keeps Andrew Sullivan’s bills paid. Never mind that most here who consider themselves “conservative” think he’s an abomination no matter how much credit he gives them, he can’t admit that’s an inherent part of their philosophy (belief that disagreement with the dominant culture is synonymous with societal collapse) and respond accordingly (i.e.: “if your culture requires initiation of force to keep alive, then it doesn’t deserve to live”) without pissing on his niche.
Alex S.
Of course, Oakeshott was important. After all, Andrew Sullivan wrote about him and Andrew Sullivan doesn’t deal with unimportant matters! That’s why he doesn’t leave the Catholic Church even though this institution hates people like him. All the other small denominations are unimportant. That’s why he doesn’t want to give up the word ‘conservative’. If he had to concede that his definition of conservatism is rejected by every other important conservative, he would have to accept that he is just a niche of his own. Oh and the left is just a collection of new rich anarchists without any systematic thought process or history to speak of.
Cris (without an H)
Ni?
Chris
Go to a website (like PJTV) where they feel comfortable and in the “right” company, and they’ll go even further than that and freely admit that they want to ban people from voting. I’ve read people in the comments sections fantasizing about banning from the vote anyone who doesn’t pay taxes (something like 47% of the country by their reckoning), or about banning anyone who lives overseas (with several of them openly admitting it’s because people who live overseas lean more liberal).
It’s an antidemocratic and anti-individual ideology to the core. Even if they don’t see it that way, it’s not hard to get them to basically say so in private.
jl
clarification: I wasn’t comparing some of the benefits of Marshall’s conservatism to Oakshott, which would be unfair to Oakshott even though I don’t think much of him.
I just wanted to provide some ideas for widening Sullivan’s horizons.
I’m just sure Sullivan reads BJ as obsessively as BJ follows Sullivan’s every bit of nonsense and overenthusiastic half baked outbursts.
IMHO, what irritates me about Oakshott is what irritates me about many of his generation of British philosophers: say not a whole lot in as much space as possible, with as much technical terminological apparatus (that doesn’t help understanding much) as possible. JL Austin comes to mind too, but he was not a political philosopher.
arguingwithsignposts
Per wiki:
Sounds like a real winner, there.
Cris (without an H)
Very true; this is why I occasionally slip into concern-trolling when my allies start referring to liberals as “reality-based.” I’m aware of internet traditions, I understand where that comes from, but some of us (like Amanda Marcotte) tend too easily to fall into a lazy “liberals are scientific and rational, conservatives are superstitious and impulsive” worldview.
Sly
@General Stuck
To say that conservatism is “doomed” underestimates the human mind’s capacity for irrational thinking.
Conservatism resorts to all kinds of ham-handed rationalizations to provide itself with logical coherence. Its adherents suffer under a string of delusions about the way the world works, disconnected from even the most basic pursuit of verifiable knowledge, and recondition reality to suit those delusions. For instance, because conservatives cling to the notion that the preservation of tradition is an end unto itself, they constantly reinvent their own history to give themselves the legitimacy as defenders of tradition.
This is clearly evident in conservative arguments against things like centralized government and marriage equality; they establish (wrongly) an institution as fixed and point to the fixed nature of that institution as indicative of perennially-important values. It doesn’t matter that the first generation of U.S. citizens began moving toward centralized government before the ink was even dry on the Articles of Confederation, or that no social institution has seen more changes or historical variations than marriage. What matters is the legitimacy conferred by the appearance of tradition onto contemporary political desires.
Intrusions of fact that might crack the bubble are explained away as an intentional effort to undermine its mission by opposing ideologies. And this, paradoxically, is why conservatism is not doomed. It is a kind of ideological paranoia, and few things are as persistent a politically-defining force than paranoia.
Sly
@Cris (without an H)
Not to mention a nauseating tendency of contemporary liberals to blame all of America’s ills on The Corporations™.
DFH no.6
Loneoak @41:
Well, most of what we know as “philosophy” is mostly useless.
But I get your point.
Theology (the study of made-up-shit concerning the nonexistent) is “angels on the head of a pin” ridiculous. The lot of it.
Don’t care if it’s a Dire Straits lyric, it’s perspicacious, it is.
fasteddie9318
@arguingwithsignposts: What it doesn’t sound like is anything having to do with modern American “conservatism.” Preferring the tried to the untried? Fact to mystery? Actual to the possible? Not in any political party that wants to eliminate taxes on capital gains and privatize Medicare.
arguingwithsignposts
@fasteddie9318 :
Ahh, but we did try things without Medicare, before 1965. And we didn’t have any capital gains tax before 1913. Easy peasy.
WereBear
Certainly as presently practiced, conservatism is a political form of mental illness. In any other field of human endeavor, this level of denial, ignorance, and spittle-flecked tantrums would lead to at least an acknowledgment of severe problems, if not a court ordered intervention.
When I was a younger person evaluating political stances, one could see conservatism’s role as an possible counterweight to manage societal change; personally, I thought Buckley was a raving idiot for wanting to stand athwart history yelling “stop!” as his famous quote goes, but I could understand why he did it. Tradition had been very good to him, and he was honest about his motives.
But this current form is simply an attempt to normalize criminal behavior for personal gain. They are actually destroying business, propping up tottering monopolies, and undermining such ancient and revered concepts as compassion and the rule of law.
If perpetrated on a personal level, this would be obvious personality disorders and sociopathy. But when done on a group level and approved of by punditry, it’s suddenly supposed to be okay.
Georgia Pig
@Sly
Yeah,to put it in a nutshell, Sully likes to have sex with men and get high after grooving on the incense at high mass and harshing on progressive taxation, so he has to redefine conservatism and refer to obscure figures like Oakeshott to make this oddball shtick hold together. Sully strikes me as guy whose attachments have an inordinately large emotional component, but feels that labeling something as “conservative” makes them seem more rational, coherent and timeless, instead of a bundle of disconnected and ephemeral passions. It is somewhat analogous to the way in which a lot of self-proclaimed “conservatives” act, i.e., they use the label “conservatism” to cloak what are primary emotional responses.
Maybe such definitions matter a lot to some folks because they are more in need of simple, fixed categories to constrain what are pretty strong, hard-to-handle emotions. For example, a conservative might be predisposed to need a definition of “marriage” because, otherwise, a bunch of icky stuff between two men, a man and two aardvarks, etc., gets mixed up with what he does and then he won’t be able to differentiate between himself and guys that fuck sheep and, ultimately, might end up dick deep in a ewe out of pure confusion.
kuvasz
“From the pharaohs of ancient Egypt to the self-regarding thugs of ancient Rome to the glorified warlords of medieval and absolutist Europe, in nearly every urbanized society throughout human history, there have been people who have tried to constitute themselves as an aristocracy. These people and their allies are the conservatives.
“The tactics of conservatism vary widely by place and time. But the most central feature of conservatism is deference: a psychologically internalized attitude on the part of the common people that the aristocracy are better people than they are. Modern-day liberals often theorize that conservatives use “social issues” as a way to mask economic objectives, but this is almost backward: the true goal of conservatism is to establish an aristocracy, which is a social and psychological condition of inequality.”
Philip E. Agre
http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/conservatism.html
alwhite
So we have moved one step away? We have stopped noting all the stupid shit Sully says & are now focusing on the stupid shit people say ABOUT Sully? Might have to rename the blog from BJ to Sully Juice,
DFH no.6
Modern movement conservatism is certainly not a “failed Ideology”, anymore than a quite recent major public policy implementation of that ideology (the Iraq War) was a “failure”.
For those few for whom the ideology provides great benefits (the real elite – the wealthy and powerful, or today’s aristocracy, as Philip Agre put it), it is, instead, a rousing success.
In similar fashion, the Iraq War was a success for that subset of the elite who benefited from the war.
That the vast majority of the rest of us (including the majority of conservatism’s – and the war’s – supporters) are demonstrably not benefitted thereby is of no concern to the elite, as long as no revolution is engendered (and none will be).
jl
For really deep questions of contemporary political philosophy, I always check out Devo. Devo covered it sometime or other.
Shrivel Up
Well, it’s a God given fact
That you can’t go back
You can’t go back
It’s a God given law
That you’re gonna lose your maw
Yes, you’re gonna lose your maw
It’s a God given fact
You gotta buy’em by the sack
Gotta buy’em by the sack
Well, it’s a God given law
That you’re gonna get small
Yes, you’re gonna get small
May be just another rap
But you’re runnin’ out of sap
Yes, you’re runnin’ out of sap
Well, you better take the rap
Dyin’ under daddy’s cap
Dyin’ under daddy’s cap
Shrivel up
Joel
@ fasteddie9318
A full-throated advocation.
General Stuck
Sly
I said “conservatism” as a blue print to govern in a country founded on preserving rights of the individual above all else, was doomed. More precisely as a pol movement concocted by cons of the 50’s and 60′, up until 2008 and the econ collapse, when the conservative movement collapsed as well, as a cogent movement.
Nor did I say that republicans and others will not faithfully continue to impose it on the country as a permanent governing philosophy, and as a purer and purer form as it continues to fail. And that it’s success is was and ever will be doomed as a matter of national governance in this particular country.
We are beginning the mutant form of conservatism, FSM hep us all.
Amir_Khalid
I confess i don’t read much Andrew Sullivan, although I find
somea few of his Face Of The Day pictures mildly amusing. I wonder if he’s really worth the attention he gets here. Or if the attention others give him is really worth examining here. Having said that, I now offer my own examination of Andrew Sullivan.As noted up-thread, his attachment to conservatism is emotional, not rational — just like his attachment to Catholicism. He came of age when Margaret Thatcher was PM; my wild-ass guess is that somewhere deep down he still thinks of her as “Mummy” and wants to please her, even though he knows she would disapprove of him personally. So, having come to America, he tries to promote conservatism as he understands the term.
But American conservatism is to him as the Nation of Islam would be to a mainstream Sunni Muslim like me: a derangement of his beautiful true faith, in this case into mere anti-Democratic partisanship. So he tries, as best he can, to proselytize for True Conservatism, philosophical underpinnings and all. hence the appeals to Burke and Oakeshott and whoever else.
Meanwhile, he tries to find common cause with American conservatism where he can stand to do so. This is not always possible. He can’t go with them on gay rights, for example, because they hate gays and he’s gay himself. But as any Englishman can tell you, once you support a football club you support it for life. So he’s supporting Paul Ryan’s crazy budget plan because hey, Ryan plays for Conservatives United FC!
tomvox1
The words “circle jerk” are thrown around a lot these days…
Chris
There’s a quote from Burke that I read on a conservative website once that seems to kind of capture the essence of the movement:
Don’t ask questions, because you’re probably too stupid to answer them. Instead, just trust that we should keep doing things the way we’ve always done. (Never mind that “the way we’ve always done” is itself a creation of those same men, who had just as small a “stock of reason” within them, and never mind that it’s an accumulation of a bunch of ideas that were all radical and utopian in their day).
d. john
Andrew Sullivan is a ridiculous assclown unfit for coverage by even moderately respectable outfits like B J…
He deserves the Sadly, No or W-O-C treatment. He hasn’t earned this. It’s beneath Balloon Juice to even give this confused little wingnut the time of day.
As far as I am concerned, the spittle flecked commentary from our most rabidly deranged trolls contain more insight on average than Sully’s entire body of “work”.
You might as well cover that “Gay Patriot” guy over at American Stinker…
Just sayin.
Chris
I wouldn’t even limit it to this country.
Even if you forget the threat of revolution or radical reform – which, in the long run, you can never do – there’s still the international dimension. A country that shuts its doors, refuses to evolve, gazes at its own navel and remains stuck in the old ways which are always right because shut up that’s why, will inevitably end up getting left behind by countries that don’t share their ideological blinders.
See the conservative Catholic Spanish Empire being left in the dust by the British and French (and really, the entire West) over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. See the Chinese empire becoming a colonial punching bag while its neighbor Japan, which did adopt modern ideas and practices, got to join in on the punching instead of sharing their fate.
The world is in constant evolution, in every sense of the word. Refuse to evolve with it and you’ll eventually get squashed. In that sense, conservatism’s doomed pretty much by definition.
Mnemosyne
It has, but the fascinating thing is the way conservatives have managed to define it down until even things that Hayek advocated (like Social Security and universal healthcare) are “soshulism.”
Pretty much any political stance short of “let giant multinational corporations run rampant with no limits” now counts as “soshulism.”
DFH no.6
General Stuck @71:
The fact that, as you wrote, “Republicans… continue to impose it on the country as a permanent governing philosophy”, means to me that modern conservatism in the U.S. of A. is not “failing” at all for today’s aristocrats, for whom the movement is solely intended to benefit.
These elite beneficiaries couldn’t give two shits that conservatism as a permanent governing philosophy fails the vast majority of the rest of us, as long as we don’t rise up against them and, say, put their heads on pikes.
Which we won’t (if only because at least half of the “rest of us” wholeheartedly support the elites as “one of them” and often think — foolishly, of course — that someday they, too, could be in the aristocracy).
Sly
@General Stuck
“Mutant” compared to what? The 1970s? Sure. But the conservatism of the 1970s only seems saner because it existed at the tail end of a process designed to shirk off its lunatic elements and gain mainstream respectability. During the ascent of the liberal consensus, to be conservative was to be an extremist.
Put another way, the conservatism of the last thirty years can be seen as a gradual coming home party for the John Birch Society. It may seem new now, but there’s very little material difference between people who think that Obama is a Kenyan Marxist radical and people who thought that Eisenhower was a Soviet agent.
General Stuck
DFH no.6
I think we are kind of on different wavelengths concerning “success and failure” of the conservative movement. Of course the wealthy are the ones, only ones it seems, that currently are benefiting from the past 30 years of cons governance, particular on economic matters. While the poor and ever more increasingly, the middle class, where most of the votes are, are not benefiting and are suffering varying degrees of deprivations, and a bleaker future compared to what they had.
Almost every thing I write on the topic of ideology on this blog, is related to success for the long or short term politically, for one side or the other. And specifically, due to living in a democracy, “success” as expressed by electoral viability. And there is a limit to the pure monetary success of the wealthy and their gooper minions, at which point, the deprivations of the other 95 percent of the country begins reaching something like a socioeconomic critical mass.
And the non rich classes start to ask serious questions, to find out what has happened to them. They don’t mind folks being wealthy, but not at the expense of them having at least the opportunity for a comfortable middle class experience.
They will recognize the general problem, of a stingy few causing their pain, and the pols that represent them will not get their vote. We are not there yet, and are still in the tribal preference zone, whereas republicans always get the benefit of the doubt.
That is the context I was speaking of in terms of “success” of the modern conservative movement. In pure monetary terms of wealth transfer, it has been successful, but politically, not so much. We haven’t reached that critical mass point yet, but heading there, I think. And also with increasing minority voting power.
DFH no.6
Chris @76:
You are correct that the discussion of modern conservatism shouldn’t just be limited to the United States.
And you are right that the sorts of national decline engendered by conservative concepts put into governing practice are real, with obvious historical analogs.
But here’s the thing – today’s American aristocrats are not American first, they are aristocrats first. And we live in the first time that such aristocrats could be, and are, “international”.
Meaning, it doesn’t really matter to them what happens to the majority of the people here (or anywhere else). They got theirs, and as long as the zombie cannibal apocalypse is avoided, they’re golden.
I believe that’s the most important political conundrum for liberals – how to effectively oppose an insanely wealthy and powerful aristocracy who don’t care a whit how much the policies that benefit them harm everyone else.
Particularly when most of media and half the populace here are in the bag for the aristocrats.
General Stuck
I am talking about true conservative theory that was organized into a movement by folks like Buckley. That was hijacked by the other factions of whackjob factions like the neo cons, tea baggers, and related miscreants welcomed into and absorbed by the natural flow of the Southern Strategy, after the 60’s civil rights laws were passed.
All of these things are mutant of basic conservatism, though rationalized and assigned seats according to the votes they brought. Now the guests have taken hostage the old GOP, that may have had similar end goals, but with methods much more sound and measured. And successful at achieving the primary ends of transfer of wealth to the rich, that see themselves as the rightful keepers of that wealth, not the middle class.
The John Birch Society are simply a few eggheads compared with the thuggery germinating in the old south and elsewhere. In numbers.
Ghanima Atreides
@misterbones
Sully is such a total ‘tard that he doesnt realize green is the color of Islam. Green is the color of Hizbullah and Hamas and the Taliban.
Even Beast Qaddafi draped the coffins of his allegedly NATO-slain citizens with green for the photo-op.
What Sully ABSOLUTELY doesn’t get (because he is an islamophobe) is that the Green Wave is fueled by al-Islam, not western secularism and missionary democracy.
Ghanima Atreides
@Stuck
Conservatism is the maintenance of the status quo as risk management.
General Stuck
Conservatism is the maintenance of the status quo as risk management.
Yes, to a large degree, as simplified. Or has been. There isn’t much risk management in defaulting our debt, or not funding the government. Or ever not filibustering a bill, and the list of manic refluxes as we bounce between various episodes of rebellion and nihilistic hostage taking, spouting out incoherent strands of right wing gospel as ultimatums to repent or we all gets it. Mutants.
driftglass
What none of the Exiles on Reagan Street — especially Sullivan — can bring themselves to acknowledge is that the freaks (like Palin) who now own their Movement do not represent the causes of the collapse of Conservatism, but instead as the completely-predictable emergent properties of that Conservatism. The inevitable end-product of generations of the Right relentlessly inbreeding Rage, Entitlement, Fear and Ignorance, willed into existence not by mere media conjuration like some zombie Maybelline Ad come to life and running wild in the streets, but by the deliberate effort of senior members of the Conservative leadership caste.
People like Sully were perfectly willing to make a fine living riding that beast until the beast turned on them and drove them out.
Now (after a quick pivot and a massive dose of doublethink) they make a fine living “discovering” and writing breathlessly about things Liberals were warning them about 25 years ago.
There’s a lesson in there somewhere.
DFH no.6
General Stuck
I get where you are coming from, and that how you look at modern conservatism either “failing” or “succeeding” depends on what you apply that failure or success to.
Obviously, conservatism fails on many fronts, not least the effect modern conservatism in actual political and economic practice has on the majority of people’s standard of living and opportunity for betterment.
From the standpoint of the very purpose of a democratically-ruled society, with an unassailably-prime directive of promoting the general welfare (as I heard someplace), conservatism has been a miserable failure.
Aristocracy should be anathema to such a society (I don’t mean meritocratic elites). But there they are, effectively ruling over us.
They don’t just have absurd (and growing) percentages of our society’s total wealth, they have the political power to keep it (and aggrandize ever more). That’s where modern conservatism has succeeded marvelously.
I’m no longer as sanguine as I used to be about reaching some electoral “critical mass point” (as you put it) that could change that anytime soon. Not in my lifetime, anyway.
General Stuck
Yup, and as I was saying upthread, the piddling around with voter suppression through the legislative process will not keep them in power. It will take more blatant sedition, or acts of sedition to accomplish that, and their money just makes that more possible. I really believe we will reach that fork in the road at some point, maybe in my lifetime, maybe not. But it’s coming, and I see no way around it.
Some days I think we will take the correct fork in the road, other days, not so much.
jl
I am probably so communist, and am so twisted that I can barely see, but the mainstream of ‘true conservatism’ that has some useful and constructive elements includes people like John Adams, Washington, Hamilton, John Marshall, John Sherman (the antitrust law Sherman), Herbert Hoover, Eisenhower.
I think those people have little to do with Buckley, Goldwater, Reagan, the Birchers and their numerous spiritual children, or the dangerous clown zoo we see now. Or the corporate hacks like Boehner. Or and Randians like Ryan.
When I say of olde timey conservatives, I think of people like Washington, Hamilton and Eisenhower. But they would be considered communists now. They are extinct. There are not many of them even in the mainstream of the Democratic party, since those are mostly corrupt corporate capitalists. Hamilton may have been wrong on many things, but he was not corrupt.
Modern conservatism in the US has gone off on a weird combination of bigotry, authoritarianism, crony corporate capitalism (as long as they get a cut) and very selective libertarian outrage at ordinary functions of government. The only way I can sum it up as corrupt and fantasy based nutism. And idiotology, not an ideology.
Chris
@ DFH –
Huh. Hadn’t considered that and when you put it that way, you’re right. I’d say that sounds a lot like European aristocracy at the height of its power, though – e.g. the French royal family conspiring with other European heads of state to fight the revolution, and the European monarchies coming together to fight it off.
How we in our day could “effectively oppose” their spiritual descendants, I don’t know. Would be nice if things like unions were as internationalized as businesses were, but they’re not and the ultra-nationalism that the elites feed here in the U.S. militates against making them more so.
Chris
@ DFH –
Huh. Hadn’t considered that and when you put it that way, you’re right. I’d say that sounds a lot like European aristocracy at the height of its power, though – e.g. the French royal family conspiring with other European heads of state to fight the revolution, and the European monarchies coming together to fight it off.
How we in our day could “effectively oppose” their spiritual descendants, I don’t know. Would be nice if things like unions were as internationalized as businesses were, but they’re not and the ultra-nationalism that the elites feed here in the U.S. militates against making them more so.
R-Jud
@jl:
Well, yes. The people in the quoted list are reactionaries or radicals, not conservatives. The conservatism you cite as belonging to people like John Adams (or as people like Adams belonging to it) is no longer mainstream at all. What we have had in this country for at least 30, possibly 40, years is radicalism masquerading as conservatism.
That’s our whole trouble. We have a two-party system. One party is wholly insane, for all intents and purposes, and the other is both semi-corrupt and barely competent.
d. john
driftglass,
you win the thread.
just sayin’
heh
Sly
So we’re talking about the same thing. But, like I said, it isn’t new.
The Southern Strategy was implemented to reclaim apolitical middle-class and poor whites that were lost to liberalism in the post-war period, as well as the truly insane reactionaries that conservatives had to kick out in the 60s and 70s to gain some modicum of mainstream respectability. But once the Civil Rights Movement started to become seen by a majority of white Americans as praiseworthy, race baiting as a means of electoral success started having a shelf life. So it is in constant search of a new strategy to keep the liberal consensus from reemerging. This is why we have to endure, as a nation, dumb stuff like the War on Christmas.
From a constituency standpoint, conservatism is facing a crisis similar to what liberalism faced in the 1960s. It had assimilated a political party, but found that political parties had their limitations. Being in a political party is not the same thing as being an activist. When you’re an activist, there is less of a chance you’re going to be compelled by necessity to work with people you’d much rather smack. The True Believers of conservatism, who view everything as a conspiracy against their way of life, cannot abide this. You’re either a real American or an enemy. There can be no gray areas when one considers the destruction of everything one holds dear as a possible outcome.
And I should probably note that the JBS reference isn’t meant to be taken literally. JBS simply represents the conspiratorial nature of conservatism, an aspect that has always been with it, in its purest form. That was what was kicked out of conservatism in the 60s and 70s, and it has been clawing its way back in ever since. We’re likely just at a critical mass stage of the process, where it just seems like something new.
But they’ve always been there. Hiding out in the woods in Montana or some other crazy shit.
Chris
See, that’s odd, because to me, William F. Buckley was the founding father of conservatism as it is today. The guy may’ve not been as obviously loony as the Birchers, but he was still a McCarthy supporter and a Goldwater supporter, as well as a white supremacist in his ascendant years. I’d say he’s one of the original people who fused old-fashioned economic royalism with racist and fundamentalist passions in the base, while maintaining a “respectable” facade throughout – which is pretty much what modern conservatism is.
General Stuck
Well yea, they have always been there, the US being roughly a country with large groups of people with two very different views of the world. It is based in the south, and that type of paranoid resentful rebellious strain of conservatism. It may not be new, but it’s not every day these folks apparently capture a major political party seemingly led by a troupe of circus clowns. Mean and crazy ones, with teeth. Threatening to destroy the country and world to save them.
General Stuck
You are likely right. I could never understand a word that fucker said anyway.
Midnight Marauder
Andrew Sullivan has never been a resonable voice. Period.
To be a reasonable voice requires intellectual honesty and consistency.
He possesses neither of those traits.
Ghanima Atreides
@driftglass
what they ARE realizing is that 50 years of dogwhistle racebaiting and IQbaiting has left them with a lily white base of two digit (in IQ) peckerheads that are entirely CHRISTIAN.
In essence, one of the two major parties in the US is a religious party, with medieval ensoulment as part of the party platform.
And the blacks and browns have good enough dogwhistle detection that they will never vote conservative.
The demographic timer is ticking away and Breibart can’t make the damned racist NAACP go along with his performance art.
I still can’t believe this….Breitbart told the head of the NAACP to go to hell.
why does that guy get any credibility?
Chris
I am certain that the country needs a sane opposition party. I am equally certain that Republicans are not that party and probably never will be.
When we talk about “sane” Republicans, we’re talking about the 1950s/1960s era in which they accepted the New Deal legacy we’d just created. IMO, when the only good thing a party’s done since Reconstruction is to temporarily adopt the platform of the other party, it’s fair to say that that party has nothing left to contribute to the national discourse. Yeah, we need a meaningful alternative viewpoint, but we’re not going to get it from them.