Posted on 05/19/2008 4:41:25 PM PDT by mojito
When it comes to near-term Republican prospects, the punditocracy is divided. On the Left, it is doom, gloom, and gloat, as E. J. Dionne illustrates in a piece arguing that the G.O.P. is a “brand on the run.” On the right, it is doom, gloom, and gripe, as Peggy Noonan illustrates in a piece lamenting that Republicans are “busy dying.” “The brightest of them,” she writes, “see no immediate light. They’re frozen, not like a deer in the headlights but a deer in the darkness, his ears stiff at the sound. Crunch. Twig. Hunting party.”
What should we think of all these distress calls? I confess I disapprove of them. In the first place, I do not think they’re at all justified. What Victor Davis Hanson called “the echo chamber” has taken over. One creditable–or at least listened to–pundit or politician opines in a way the media likes and, presto, a new bit of conventional “wisdom” is born–or at least reinforced. A mere opinion, often ill-informed, frequently at wide variance with the truth, is repeated often enough, and it suddenly acquires the carapace of general currency that, at a distance, can easily be mistaken for fact.
Hanson was writing about the conventional “wisdom” on the war in Iraq, but the echo chamber is at work on other issues as well. One conspicuous example, I believe, is the fate of conservatism. More than two decades ago, Daniel Patrick Moynihan ruefully noted that Republicans had become “the party of ideas.” He was right about that, as recent American political history amply attests on issues from welfare and taxes to free markets and national security. But in the last couple of years, conservatives, especially conservatives in America and Europe, have seen their prospects fed into the echo chamber. Everywhere one looks, it seems, the fortunes of conservatism are–or are said to be–on the ebb. You can hardly open a newspaper or tune into a television news show without being warned (or, more often, without hearing celebratory shouts) that now, finally, at last, the forces of enlightenment and progress are once again on the ascendant, that conservative ideas and the people promulgating them are in rout. One saw this, for example, in the the aura of supposed inevitability–now conspicuously dissipated–that attended the campaign of Hillary Clinton a few months ago. People from every political persuasion simply took it for granted that the Presidency was hers for the asking. Why?
I have recently begun keeping a folder marked “Conservative Gloominess.” It is full of articles and animadversions by various hands: dire prognostications about who the next occupant of the White House will be, harrowing descriptions of disarray among conservatives, despairing portraits of U.S. or European society. What’s odd, or at least uncharacteristic about these bulletins from the abyss is not their substance–to be candid, I have written plenty of items that could justly be filed there–but their tone and what we might call their existential orientation. From time immemorial conservatives have delighted in writing works with titles like Leviathan, The Decline of the West, The Waste Land. Nevertheless, by habit and disposition conservatives tend, as a species, to be less gloomy than–than what? What shall we call those who occupy a position opposite that of conservatives? Not liberals, surely, since they are so often conspicuously illiberal, i.e., opposed to freedom and all its works. Indeed, when it comes to the word “liberal,” Russell Kirk came close to the truth when he observed that he was conservative because he was a liberal. In any event, whatever the opposite of conservatives should be called–perhaps John Fonte’s marvellous coinage “transnational progressives” is best–they tend to be gloomy, partly, I suspect, because of disappointed utopian ambitions.
Conservatives also tend to enjoy a more active and enabling sense of humor. The English essayist Walter Bagehot once observed that “the essence of Toryism is enjoyment.” What he meant, I think, was summed up by the author of Genesis when that sage observed that “God made the world and saw that it was good.” Conservatives differ from progressives in many ways, but one important way is in the quota of cheerfulness and humor they deploy. Not that their assessment of their fellows is more sanguine. On the contrary. Conservatives tend to be cheerful because they do not regard imperfection as a personal moral affront. Being realistic about mankind’s susceptibility to improvement, they are as suspicious of utopian schemes as they are appreciative of present blessings. This is why the miasmic gloominess emanating from many conservative circles today is so dispiriting. It goes against the grain of what it means to be conservative. It is dampening, and I for one hope it will prove to be a quickly passing phenomenon. Among other things, this recent access of personal gloominess makes the practice of professional gloominess–the robust deployment of satire, ridicule, and so on–much more difficult and less satisfying.
This brings me to the issue of truth. Conservatives are realists. They like to call things by their proper names. Like Oscar Wilde’s Cecily Cardew, they call a spade a spade, unless it is explicitly outlawed, just as they prefer to call “affirmative action” “discrimination according to race or sex,” taxation “government-mandated income redistribution,” and “Islamophobia” a piece of Orwellian Newspeak foisted upon an unsuspecting public by irresponsible “multiculturalists” colluding more or less openly with Islamofascists.
Towards the end of his thoughtful new book Comeback: Conservatism that Can Win Again, David Frum gently takes issue with Russell Kirk’s invocation of “the permanent things.” “How few of those there really are!” Frum writes. “The fact of change is the great fact of human life,” he says, pleading with conservatives to “adapt” to change and retake the intellectual and political initiative. Some such rhetoric might be required on the hustings. But I confess to having mixed feelings about that exhortation, if for no other reason than that I believe change to be not the but a great fact of human life. An equally great fact is continuity, and it may well be that one “adapts” more successfully to certain realities by resisting them than by capitulating to them. “When it is not necessary to change,” Lord Falkland said some centuries ago, “it is necessary not to change.”
I recognize that “change,” like its conceptual cousin “innovation,” is one of the great watchwords of the modern age. But William F. Buckley Jr. was on to something important when he wrote, in the inaugural issue of National Reviewin November 1955, that a large part of the magazine’s mission was to “stand athwart history, yelling Stop.” It’s rare that you hear someone quote that famous line without a smile, the smile meaning “he wasn’t against change, innovation, etc., etc.” But I believe Mr. Buckley was in earnest. It was one of the things that made National Review unzeitgemasse, “untimely” in the highest sense of the word. The Review, Mr. Buckley wrote, “is out of place, in the sense that the United Nations and the League of Women Voters and The New York Times and Henry Steele Commager are in place.”
The Australian philosopher David Stove saw deeply into this aspect of the metabolism of conservatism. In “Why You Should Be a Conservative,” which deserves to be better known than it is, he rehearses the familiar scenario:
"A primitive society is being devastated by a disease, so you bring modern medicine to bear, and wipe out the disease, only to find that by doing so you have brought on a population explosion. You introduce contraception to control population, and find that you have dismantled a whole culture. At home you legislate to relieve the distress of unmarried mothers, and find you have given a cash incentive to the production of illegitimate children. You guarantee a minimum wage, and find that you have extinguished, not only specific industries, but industry itself as a personal trait. You enable everyone to travel, and one result is, that there is nowhere left worth travelling to. And so on."
This is the oldest and the best argument for conservatism: the argument from the fact that our actions almost always have unforeseen and unwelcome consequences. It is an argument from so great and so mournful a fund of experience, that nothing can rationally outweigh it. Yet somehow, at any rate in societies like ours, this argument never is given its due weight. When what is called a “reform” proves to be, yet again, a cure worse than the disease, the assumption is always that what is needed is still more, and still more drastic, “reform.”
Progressives cannot wrap their minds (or, more to the point, their hearts) around this irony: that “reform” so regularly exacerbates either the evil it was meant to cure or another evil it had hardly glimpsed. The great Victorian Matthew Arnold was no enemy of reform. But he understood that “the melancholy, long, withdrawing roar” of faith had left culture dangerously exposed and unprotected. In cultures of the past, Arnold thought, the invigorating “remnant” of those willing and able to energize culture was often too small to succeed. As societies grew, so did the forces of anarchy that threatened them–but so did that enabling remnant. Arnold believed modern societies possessed within themselves a “saving remnant” large and vital enough to become “an actual” power that could stem the tide of anarchy. I hope that he was right.
?Conservative Gloominess (Buck Up FReepers - It’s not as bad as you think)”
We have a “choice” between a Liberal with an R after his name or a Liberal with a D after his name. How exactly is it not as bad as I think?
until “none of the above” counts... PM can take a hike.
A good meal and a bottle of Scotch will make it all bearable. LOL!
Losing is never pleasent, perhaps this election cycle will teach us all a very very good lesson.
As for the dhimmis, they win be acting Republican, as soon as the zanniness begins, it will be interesting to see the newbie Dhimmis ‘splain to the folks back home what the heck is going on in DC on their watch...
Conservatives have nothing to fear but fear of incompetence itself.
Republicans are not losing Congressional elections because of the top of either ticket, it’s an R vs D contest and the R’s are drawing dead in 2008.
The best thing that Clinton did for Republicans was to elect a Republican congress for the first time in years, another Democrat will give Republicans that opportunity in 2010. Tell why they should be elected rather than why the other guy shouldn’t.
Cheer up 2010 is coming. Be ready.
My new party!! :)
Hey. Might as well push a re-birth of Reaganism and see where it goes. I can’t think of too many better ways to honor our forefathers and our posterity.
No, we have a moderate with an R after his name. One who'll nominate JUSTICES that will UPHOLD the CONSTITUTION and keep the TAX CUTS. Then we have a SOCIALIST MUSLIM with a D after his name who'll give us BIG GOVERNMENT!!
I have to vote for the WOT - and McCain - THOU NOT PERFECT is my choice.
I believe the FALCON PARTY is where REAGANISM is now!!
Indeed. We changed addresses.
You can't cut taxes unless you cut government. If you don't cut government all you do is pass the credit slips to our kids with interest.
If no one learned a lesson from our losing in 2006 when the rats took over congress then what makes you think losing in 2008 will be any different?
I will do all I can to see John McCain win in the general election and he will win.
I see the future for conservatism that has several paths.
Conservatives, almost by definition, are less inclined to enjoy change unless change has an advocate who promises a better tomorrow. And I mean positive, Reaganesque change, not the reactionary, socialist liberal change promoted by Obama and Clinton.
This means a clear picture of what change is needed, and how to change in that direction. This is why on the fringes of the Republican party, we are starting to see more radical ideas, be they reasonable, like from Duncan Hunter, or less so, like from Ron Paul.
But what we need most of all, is to step back and see what the real problems are, the long-term, enormous problems that underlie our nation and perhaps the entire world.
One of these is more obvious today than it has been for a while. In short, it is the abuse of credit, not just by people and business, but by entire nations. So what should conservatives do to turn this situation around?
Things that are really big ideas. To start with, everybody has to control their spending to match their means:
1) A balanced budget amendment to the constitution, and tight restrictions on government debt.
2) Not just limitations on government growth, but real reductions in the size of government.
3) Restrictions on credit that prevent its issuance without close to matching collateral.
4) Replacing much of the credit industry with debit. It goes back to the truism that money should only be lent to those that do not need it.
Right now, the assumption is that if the credit market is controlled, enough to prevent wild excess, that there will be a tremendous shortfall of investment. But this is not entirely true. Uncontrolled credit is just a very easy way to obtain money, but it is not the only way.
Uncontrolled credit creates economic bubbles, going all the way back to the first Dutch tulip speculation craze. If you take away easy credit, it makes foolish speculation much harder, bubbles much rarer, and markets far more stable.
So those that would “suffer” most, are irresponsible speculators. Not a whole lot of sympathy out there for them. But for typical people, it would be the end of many “get rich quick” schemes promising double-digit returns even in a dull market.
Enormous trade deficits would also wind down. A lack of easy credit also means that unless we paid cash on the barrel head, we would no longer import huge amounts of products like oil and goods from China. It turn, the makers of such goods would have to return to the US, if they hoped to sell their goods here.
Much of the credit abuse in the world only exists because the US is involved. So if we got our own house in order, it would force reform around the world.
And this is just one thing conservatives could do. If we have a future candidate who can bring about such changes, we could all face a much brighter future than a terrible worldwide economic collapse, that seems to be our destiny today. Sooner or later.
Not necessarily true. Tax cuts mean more income into the federal treasury, not less. That being said, we need to shitcan 50% federal expenditures as a matter of principle and as a return to constitutionalism.
District by district, Conservatives have gotten lazy IMO BARLF, part of that is the scandals, maybe part of it is uninspiring candidates, maybe some fatigue as well.
2 years of Dhimmicrat control with a co-operative McCain in the White House will see some of the fires restoked, and I think that is a good thing.
Probably a temporary happening or taxes would be cut to zero for Treasury enrichment.
Not temporary, but there is a law of diminishing returns. Ask Art Laffer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Laffer
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