Yes, I'm Alive

Allow me to indulge in a blogger cliche: sorry for the lack of posts recently.

I'm beginning something of a career transition and it's taking a toll on my blogging time; what time I've had lately has mostly been spent over at The Right's Field, where I've been writing about the Republican presidential field.

Despite a few notable incoming links, A&S remains a low-traffic blog, which is fine, but it also means it's harder to write when I'm less energetic. I expect to continue to use this site to post in-depth analysis of the conservative movement, but the pace around here will be slow for a while. I'm not going away -- I just want to make sure that what I do post is high-quality. In the longer-term future, I might look at ways to expand this project beyond the limited efforts I'm able to make here.

At any rate, have you read this article by TNR's Peter Keating? He explains his skepticism of claims that either Rudy Giuliani or Barack Obama can really change the American electoral math. Given that one bias in political analysis is to overestimate so-called "re-alignments," I'd say his arguments are worth taking seriously.

Labels: Barack Obama, meta, Peter Keating, Rudy Giuliani, The New Republic

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 3:17 PM 3 comments

  Imperial Folly

Speaking of the New Republic, this is a must-read. (I know it's considered declasse in the liberal blogosphere to link to TNR these days, but as aggravating as that publication can be, it does often feature worthwhile reporting.)

You may recall President Bush's luncheon (and subsequent private sitdown) with historian Andrew Roberts - a exercise in advanced decadence for certain of the neo-imperialist crowd, who indulged their foreign policy fantasies in a rousing philosophical debate at the White House. Roberts was the guest of honor.

British journalist Jonathan Hari has taken to TNR's website to give us a little more background on Roberts, author of A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900, and - apparently - one of the last true imperialists. Roberts, says Hari, is a man who speaks to white supremacists in Africa, praises British massacres in India, justifies internment in Ireland, and calls on Americans to take up the white man's burden now that the Raj is finished - only he doesn't call it the white man's burden; rather he cites the "Anglosphere." As Hari observes, "The decision to laud Roberts provides a bleak insight into the thinking of the Bush White House as his presidential clock nears midnight."

Roberts's raw imperialism informs the advice he offers Bush today. For one, he urges Bush to adopt a supreme imperial indifference to public opinion. He counsels that "there can be no greater test of statesmanship than sticking to unpopular but correct policies." The real threat isn't abroad, but at home, among domestic critics. Roberts writes, "The greatest danger to [the British and, by extension, the American] continued imperium came not from declared enemies without, but rather from vociferous enemies within their own society."

In this Bushian history, democratic debate--especially in wartime--is a sign of weakness to be suppressed. "Contrary to the received view of the Vietnam War, the United States was never defeated in the field of battle," he writes. It was Walter Cronkite, not Ho Chi Minh, who was the true menace: "Some of the media was indeed a prime enemy of the conflict." Self-criticism is only ever interpreted in these histories as "self-hatred," which he says is "an abiding defect in the English-speaking peoples, and for some reason especially strong in Americans." It can only sap the "willpower" of any empire.

It doesn't appear to occur to Roberts that the British or U.S. empires could simply hit up against a limit to their power. Could there be a worse adviser for George W. Bush right now? Roberts's advice is a vicious imperial anachronism: Target civilians, introduce mass internment, don't worry about whether people hate you, bear down on dissent because it will sap the empire's willpower, ignore your critics because they're just jealous, and--above all--keep on fighting and you'll prevail.

Don't miss the bare-knuckle follow-up exchange between Roberts and Hari, in which the former claims that were the article published in a British journal, it would result in a libel suit. Hari, for his part, gives no ground. At any rate, the dispute focuses on details, leaving unchallenged the issue that the President has embraced the advice of a self-described "extremely right-wing" imperialist, who calls for harsh and unapologetic repression abroad, no matter how much opposition it engenders here at home.

Labels: Andrew Roberts, Foreign Policy, George Bush, The New Republic

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 11:49 AM 0 comments

  Tom DeLay Is Smoking Grass(roots)

America's favorite criminally-indicted exterminator has been keeping busy lately. His blog has come a long way since the days when he had to shut off comments because, well, nobody likes him. Now it's slick, conversational, and steeping in the aura of netroots authenticity. Most of its posts, naturally, seem to involve a fixation with Nancy Pelosi.

Next to a banner ad for the Bugman's new book (No Retreat, No Surrender - to which, one might add, Just Disgrace), the "About the Blog" blurb makes an earnest pitch:

The importance of the blogosphere in shaping and motivating the current conservative movement is unquestionable- not only has it served as an important tool in breaking through the liberal MSM clutter but it has helped to keep our elected officials true to principle.

This blog is meant to further the online discussion in the marketplace of ideas.

The peculiarly Republican interpretation of "keeping true to principle" has a lot to do with DeLay's own early retirement - not to mention his party's current Congressional exile. DeLay himself was a leader in finding new and often wholly inverted ways to define "principle." He also figured out how to look fabulous in a mugshot - give the man some credit.

So, like I said, he's been keeping busy. Eve Fairbanks of the New Republic caught up with the Hammer and found a man determined, apparently, to become the right's version of Kos, Howard Dean, and Eli Pariser - all rolled into one. Besides the blog, his new projects include:

• "Tom DeLay's Grassroots Action/Information Network" (not to be confused with Democratic GAIN) - a "a staunch opponent of secular progressive pressure groups and radical leftist agendas wherever they may be found in the United States."

TDGAIN promises to be organized in every congressional district in America, to "advocate for conservative first principles." Its members are promised the chance to both "Communicate with Tom DeLay" (by reading his newsletter) and "Help Tom DeLay" (by, well, it's unclear - but petitioning will probably be involved). As a special bonus:

You will also receive insider updates on Mr. DeLay’s schedule including appearances, events, and book signings both in your area and nationally.

Lucky you!

• The Coalition for a Conservative Majority, whose website is currently inoperative (link is to a cached version).

Like TDGAIN, the CCM "will organize in all 50 states" and do grassrootsy-things. The CCM site also reveals the true story of the progressive grassroots:

For six years now, former leaders of the Clinton Administration have studied and surpassed the conservative grassroots network, creating a liberal coalition unprecedented in its size, scope, and funding. This is the network that beat conservatives in 2006 and handed Congress back to the Democrat Party – and that was just the warm-up. The liberal Shadow Party has been built for one reason: to elect Hillary Clinton President of the United States in 2008. They have the money, the organization, and the coordination to do it, and there is no conservative network capable of standing in its path. Until now.

That's right folks: the entire progressive movement was built by and for the Clintons. It's fascinating, actually - this is the same mindset that reacts to 9/11 by fixating on Saddam Hussein. Complex phenomena are simplified and personalized - and very often attached to people who in fact have nothing to do with them. Meanwhile, you can almost hear the rumbling low-register voice of the movie trailer: And only one man could stand in their way....

Tom DeLay doesn't just want to grow the conservative grassroots. He wants to rip up the soil, plant his own seeds across the nation, and control every inch of the turf. He wants to be the sun toward which every blade turns. Having been expelled from the corridors of power, DeLay intends to marshal his forces out on the lawn. Fairbanks quotes Paul Weyrich on the Bugman: "He wants to run the outside."

None of it sounds much like real grassroots organizing as you or I know it. It's more like astroturf, on a grand scale. And there's a certain unsettling mania to DeLay's effort. As Fairbanks describes it, the man who once put the fear of God into the Republican Congressional caucus now "sees a need for such harsh discipline in the grassroots." But while he swings around rolling out the plastic turf, his real motives emerge:

DeLay's mission to save the conservative grassroots isn't driven only by an ideological calling, the fulfillment of the American Passion's prophecy. There's also revenge. The activist troops he's now so eager to captain are the very ones that failed to come to his aid enthusiastically enough when he was under siege a year ago. "He was extremely frustrated at the end" of his time in Congress, notes Weyrich, because he "thought that he did not get the kind of support from the outside that he felt he was entitled to." Now DeLay has the chance to take over the grassroots and mold them into an obedient force. Says Weyrich, "He's thinking to himself, If I construct an organization. ...'"

Fairbanks interviews a few conservative activists who say that DeLay's efforts are bound to come up against resistance:

Several conservative activists told me they find the idea that they need DeLay's training distasteful, as if he were on a mission to civilize savages. "I don't think it'll work, because conservatives are very individualistic, and they don't take well to people dictating to them what they need to do," says one.

I'll let you make your own judgments as to whether that's an accurate portrayal of the conservative psyche. The real problem for DeLay may be that he's not the only disgraced conservative trying to build Conservative Grassroots Machine 2.0. As Fairbanks points out, Dick Armey's got a gang of his own. And we've already mentioned Newt's new network.

Three former conservative leaders of Congress. Three under-employed ideologues. Their machines failed to save them from their own corruption and incompetence. So, with nothing else to do, they've set themselves to building better machines. It's easy to mock - really, delightfully easy - but take this new flurry of activity in the conservative movement as a warning. Armey, Gingrich and DeLay may be politically dead, but they're building armies of zombies to carry on anyway.

Labels: conservatives, movement building, Newt Gingrich, The New Republic, Tom DeLay

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 10:47 AM 0 comments

  Buckley: Thwarted by History?

It's worth reading the article by Sam Tanenhaus at the New Republic, on the twilight of William F. Buckley. The angle is about how Buckley has turned against the current of the movement he did so much to create, denouncing the war in Iraq and expressing shock and dismay over Gitmo and Abu Ghraib. The larger portrait is of Buckley as a particularly old-fashioned sort of conservative: pragmatic, aristocratic, aloof - and increasingly unsure of exactly what defines a conservative anymore.

What's fascinating - and this is further illustrated in Isaac Chotiner's follow-up interview with Tanenhaus - is how Buckley serves as a marker of just how much the modern conservative movement has changed since he helped found it in the 1950s. Growing beyond the movement's distant origins in anti-Wilsonian isolationsim, Buckley was the prototypical modern conservative. For his time, he was ideological, engaged, impatient with moderation, and committed to an understanding of conservatism as a defined and self-conscious movement. The conservative movement of 2007 is all of those things - only vastly more so. It has not changed in kind, but it has been transformed by degree.

The question of power has always been a central problem for modern American conservatives. As this blog has sought to document, governmental power is a dilemma for a movement predicated on denying the positive power of government. The movement seeks power with desperate abandon, yet, having power, it is forced either to confront itself with greater honesty, or - more often - to rely on rhetorical constructions having little to do with reality. This exchange from the Cotiner-Tanenhaus interview is instructive:

But do you think it's possible to have, given the size of the American government now and a country of 300 million people, the preeminent economic power in the world, and an ageing population with needs in terms of health care and so on. Do you think it's possible for an individualist, or libertarian as you say, party to attain electoral success? Or do you think you need to sign prescription drug bills and so forth if you want to obtain political power in 2007 Washington?

Yes, I think you're right, and I think every serious conservative knows this. The important thing to keep in mind about American conservatism is much of it--and this is not said in a denegrative way, as it goes to the essence of modern conservatism--is as much about rhetoric as it is about policy. There's a fascinating piece--I just glancingly refer to it in my little story for you all for TNR--in which Buckley defended the new governor of California in 1967, Ronald Reagan, because he had submitted his first budget and shocked many on the right and on the left by increasing taxes and actually just growing entitlements which is of course was what Reagan also did when he was elected president. So the essence there is a kind of maneuverability. And what Buckley says in the piece is that rhetoric precedes policy; so to be a kind of card-carrying, acceptable, ideological conservatism is often just about certain things you say, certain cultural values, religious values, political values. This is why Reagan was able to oppose a lot of what we now think of as the ideological agenda of the right, and hardly ever be criticized for it, even from the activists, or what Garry Wills calls the hard workers, the ones who actually get win primaries and get people elected and drive the agenda of the party. So as long as someone talks the talk they really don't have to walk the walk so much, and they can constantly make the sorts of real-world adjustments that any real-world political figure does. And there's another component to this, too. When Buckley and company started out in the 1950s and began to attain some real visability partly through Buckley's own fascinating campaign for mayor in New York in 1965, they were very much on the margins. They'd never governed, so it was very easy for them to criticize on these purist ideological grounds what was happening in government. Well now they've been in power for, what, a quarter of a century? Not exclusively, but for much of that period starting with Reagan's election. So someone like Buckley, a movement elder, understands very well that once you control the reins of power, that policy gets enacted in a very different way, so of course you have to win votes, and of course you have to present entitlements and all the rest. Nixon saw this too in his presidency, so slack will be cut, adjustments will be made, as long as the so-called core values remain in place. And there will always be a struggle about the sort of balance between the two; of the values on one hand and the practical politics on the other.

Buckley understood this, but as the movement he founded has grown larger and more aggressive, it has refused to admit the limitations imposed by political - or even physical - reality. The revelation of the Bush administration, for a large part of the conservative movement, has been that talking the talk is no longer enough. Thus conservatives seem to have become largely split between a faction that insists upon sticking to its principles - no matter how untenable - and one that abandons all principle and operates purely as a political machine.

There seem to be very few left who, like Buckley, have any skill for striking a balance between the two. In part this is because conservative philosophy makes it difficult to achieve such a balance. But in part - and this is a warning for the nascent progressive movement, as well - it is because the more powerful a political movement becomes, the less likely it is to feel restrained by trivial matters like reality.

Labels: conservatives, The New Republic, William F. Buckley

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 2:27 PM 0 comments

  Giuliani: "Moderate" Like Mussolini

Pardon my brush up against Godwin's Law in the post title, but it's wearying to read so much about how "moderate" Rudy Giuliani is supposed to be and so little about how authoritarian he actually is. I'm telling you now: there is one serious 2008 candidate who would be worse than George W. Bush on issues of executive power and personal freedom. That candidate is Rudolph Giuliani.

So anyway, it was refreshing to read this post by David Greenberg at the New Republic.

His record could hardly have been more conservative. The action that perhaps best captured his deepest, most sincerely held beliefs was his attempt to close an art exhibit because it offended his religious sensibilities. [...]

On other social issues, Giuliani likewise proved himself a dogmatic conservative. He wanted to seize property of suspected drunk drivers, dispensing with due process. He tried to support Catholic schools with public tax dollars, in a move that would have de facto legalized school prayer. He reflexively defended police--not just in the hard cases of tragic mistakes but in egregious instances of gross brutality--against innocents who were harassed, arrested, shot, or killed. He showed indifference or hostility to black New Yorkers. And for all the praise he earned after 9/11, what I remember about those weeks was a power grab so nakedly dictatorial that not even Richard Nixon ever tried it: seeking to postpone the upcoming mayoral election so he might stay in office despite term limits forcing him to retire.

If Giuliani ever becomes president, I have little doubt he'll show his true colors as a social conservative--abortion and gay rights notwithstanding. I have little doubt that in the upcoming campaign, his authoritarianism will shine through and will appeal to those who think America's major problems today are permissiveness, toleration, cultural decadence, and secular humanism. And I won't be surprised in the least if he wins the GOP nomination, becomes president and--exactly like George W. Bush before him--stuns the pundits who kidded themselves that he was a social "moderate."

Part of me is happy enough to let this "moderate" bamboozlement continue if it's enough to stop him from winning the Republican nomination. But it's bamboozlement nonetheless.

Labels: 2008, David Greenberg, Presidential election, Rudy Giuliani, The New Republic

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 12:42 PM 0 comments

  The Embarassing Question of Inequality

Judging by a number of remarks I heard throughout the weekend at the Conservative Summit, Jim Webb's response to the State of the Union really grinded a lot of conservative gears. One reason for this is that Webb went hard after an issue that conservatives very much don't want to talk about: economic inequality.

When forced to talk about inequality, conservatives will respond with two broad claims:

1. Inequality is not really increasing


2. Even if it is increasing, it doesn't matter.

In a piece at the New Republic a couple of weeks ago, Jonathan Chait examined one of the major promulgators of the first claim: Alan Reynolds, senior fellow at the Cato institute. Reynolds, Chait points out, is essentially an unqualified hack, a wingnut-welfare pundit posing as an economist, despite lacking even a master's degree in the subject. And he uses hacky "skeptic" tactics in precisely the same way as global warming deniers and anti-evolution flat earthers, seeking not to make a defensible claim, but to muddy the waters and convince folks that something clear is in fact something complicated.

There's no serious dispute over whether inequality is increasing in America. Chait cites the work of Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, which uses tax return data to show that, as Chait describes it, "Since 1980, the share of income accruing to the highest-earning 1 percent of U.S. tax returns doubled, the share of the top one-tenth of 1 percent tripled, and the share of the top one-hundredth of 1 percent quadrupled." Meanwhile, as Paul Krugman recently pointed out, "Median real income was only about 23 percent higher in 2005 than in 1976."

Thus conservatives retreat to their fallback position: Yeah, but so what? Tyler Cowen - drawing on claims by Alan Reynolds - made this argument in a recent New York Times op-ed:

The broader philosophical question is why we should worry about inequality — of any kind — much at all. Life is not a race against fellow human beings, and we should discourage people from treating it as such. Many of the rich have made the mistake of viewing their lives as a game of relative status. So why should economists promote this same zero-sum worldview? Yes, there are corporate scandals, but it remains the case that most American wealth today is produced rather than taken from other people.

What matters most is how well people are doing in absolute terms. We should continue to improve opportunities for lower-income people, but inequality as a major and chronic American problem has been overstated.

Ramesh Ponnuru makes the same argument in the February 12 edition of the National Review, which was published to accompany the Summit:

Conservatives generally think that an unequal distribution of wealth and income is not, per se, a bad thing [...]

We should care about reducing the number of people living in poverty ... But inequality should matter only if it reaches the point where it threatens popular support for a market economy. It is nowhere near that point. [Print only: p. 22]

In other words, inequality is not unjust, so it should only be a concern when it has the practical effect of threatening the system itself.

But, as Bradford Plumer explains in another article at the New Republic, it already is threatening the system: it's undermining American democracy:

Over the last few years, political scientists have been converging on the view that massive disparities in wealth and income really do distort the democratic process--by allowing a tiny segment of the population to wield outsized influence in the political realm.

The wealthy, Plumer points out, vote more (perhaps because they feel the system responds to them), make more political donations (which dramatically increases access to policymakers), and are almost exclusively represented in the ranks of elected officials. The result is a situation in which an activist government actually works for the elites, distributing wealth upwards. This broad imbalance in democratic representation means that some citizens end up being more equal than others. If inequality is left unchecked, "the very idea of 'equal citizenship' will continue its long erosion."

But economic inequality is also unjust in and of itself, independent of its effects on other institutions. Cowen tries to dance around this conclusion, arguing that, inasmuch as inequality has increased, it has been for innocuous reasons:

Much of the measured growth in income inequality has resulted from natural demographic trends. In general, there is more income inequality among older populations than among younger populations, if only because older people have had more time to experience rising or falling fortunes.

Furthermore, more-educated groups show greater income inequality than less-educated groups. Uneducated people are more likely to be clustered in a tight range of relatively low incomes. But the educated will include a greater range of highly motivated breadwinners and relaxed bohemians, and a greater range of winning and losing investors. A result is a greater variety of incomes. Since the United States is growing older and also more educated, income inequality will naturally rise.

Thus, inequality comes about mostly thanks to "relaxed bohemians" in their yurts, and old folks unable to stop buying all that crap on HSN.

The problem for Cowen's argument is that, again, the explosive growth in income has occurred in the top 1 percent of tax filers. Inequality happens most dramatically across the divide between the wealthiest one percent and everyone else. This has nothing to do with the broad segments of the American population that are elderly or educated. Cowen's attempt at bamboozlement is laughable. This is about how a very small number of elites have a massively disproportionate amount of the national wealth compared to the other 99% of us.

For context, let's look at the graph Jerome a Paris posted at Daily Kos:



Now, this graph expands the upper income bracket to the top 10% of the population, but it still makes a striking point, one that can't be dismissed with excuses about the educated or the elderly - and anyway, don't Europeans have educated and elderly folks too?

A very small number of elites in America have wealth in massive disproportion to the rest of America. Even so: Fine, the conservatives say. That's still not inherently unjust, because it's not a zero-sum game. As long as everyone's boats are being lifted, it doesn't matter if some people's boats go a lot higher than everyone else's.

But it is unjust. As productivity has grown, so has inequality. American workers are making the pie larger, but American elites are getting most of the benefit. The Economic Policy Institute recently reported on this phenomenon:

Data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis through the third quarter of 2006 show that a historically high share of corporate income is going into profits and interest (i.e., capital income) rather than employee compensation. And a newly released Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis of household incomes shows that a greater share of this capital income goes to the richest households than at any time since the CBO began tracking such trends. In other words, our economy is producing more capital income and that type of income is more likely to go to those at the very top of the income scale.

This, despite what conservatives would like us to believe, is unjust. It is unjust when American workers, the most productive in the world, create additional wealth only for that wealth to be sucked away into corporate profits. If my hard work is rewarded by a situation where my boat rises only a little bit, so that your boat can rise a lot, then an injustice has been done. It is a zero-sum equation.

Conservatives don't want to talk about this, and in recent years liberals have far too often politely obliged. Jim Webb took the gloves off, and it's about time. We have to stop coddling these people.

Labels: Bradford Plumer, conservatives, economics, inequality, Jonathan Chait, The New Republic, Tyler Cowen

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 10:48 AM 2 comments

  Conservative Rock and Roll: Here to Stay?

I expect that pretty much any liberal who has taken a moment to look at the style or the rhetoric of the conservative movement has been somewhat bewildered at how such a powerful force - one that has dominated all the branches of government in recent years and claims to represent majority opinion - is constantly acting so oppressed. It seems perverse to the point of monstrousness that the man with his boot on your neck can pretend to be your victim.

In other words, there's nothing worse than a bully with a persecution complex.

Rick Perlstein, whose magnificent history of the Goldwater Movement, Before the Storm, I'll be discussing in future posts, has a good article about this phenomenon at the New Republic. As familiar as Perlstein is with the history of conservative ideas in America, he argues that it's a distinct conservative culture that has really transformed American politics. And the defining feature of that culture is its sense of persecution:

Conservative culture was shaped in another era, one in which conservatives felt marginal and beleaguered. It enunciated a heady sense of defiance. In a world in which patriotic Americans were hemmed in on every side by an all-encroaching liberal hegemony, raw sex in the classrooms, and totalitarian enemies of the United States beating down our very borders, finally conservatives could get together and (as track twelve of the Goldwaters' Folk Songs to Bug the Liberals avowed) "Row Our Own Boat."

This sense of marginality has persisted even as conservatives have conquered American politics. "Conservatives are always beleagured, always under seige," Perstein observes.

Again, this is a cultural phenomenon, much more than a political or ideological one. Perlstein mentions bizarre cultural exercises like the National Review's John Miller listing the "top 50 conservative rock songs of all time."

Whiskey Fire delves deeper into the perverse psychology this involves, the simultaneous conservative urges to define themselves against mainstream American culture and to look for validation from it.

Modern American "movement conservatives" are obviously perplexed by American culture, in its high as well as pop flavors. On the one hand, they hate it -- we're all going to Hollyweird Hell; lie-berals run the colleges, oh my. On the other hand, they can be pathetically clap-hands excited about any sort of cultural production that they can somehow pretend is authentically "conservative." [...]

What really matters is the very palpable wingnut fear that you can't be a member of a distinct American social group if you don't have a distinctive set of cultural practices which gives your tribe its unique identity -- and it bugs the hell out of them that they lack the ability to dominate the mechanisms by which such identities are for better or worse nowadays commonly produced and recognized, namely, TV shows, movies, shit on the Internets, popular music, and so on. [...]

What do you do when someone else runs the game? You yell that it's fixed and you don't care about it really and that it's Evil and Corrupting. But that hardly means that you don't scream out in delight when you get any sort of momentary advantage. Never mind that denouncing the game and playing it to win are contradictory strategies. As Freud pointed out, when it's our identity and desires on the line, we're far more often convinced and comforted by the sheer number of arguments we can marshall to our cause than we are bothered by the fact that these arguments may be completely inconsistent.

Hence such absurdities as the wingnutty obsession with classifying movies according to whether or not they're "conservative" to the exclusion of all other criteria [...]

It's funny, but for all the whining about "identity politics," nobody is more tied to it than "movement conservatives."

Indeed, it illuminates why conservatives have had such a flair for fighting the culture wars - because they have approached those wars, not seeking to end them out of a liberal concern for universalism, but as one of any number of groups seeking "recognition" as Charles Taylor would have defined it.

For Perlstein, this is what holds them together as a movement against all the forces that might tear them apart. He cautions us not to be too optimistic about the prospect that the many contradictions within the conservative movement will lead to its destruction. On the contrary, he says:

What is remarkable about conservatism is how easily it hangs together. Conservative culture itself is radically diverse, infinitely resourceful in uniting opposites: highbrow and lowbrow; sacred and profane; sublime and, of course, ridiculous. It is the core cultural dynamic--the constant staging and re-staging of acts of "courage" in the face of liberal "marginalization"--that manages to unite all the opposites. It keeps conservatives from one another's throats--and keeps them more or less always pulling in the same political direction.

And, far from harming the movement, conservatism's current political troubles will only strengthen that unity:

That is how conservative culture works so well: the joy of feeling as one in their beleaguered conservatism. I've found, paradoxically, that, for this determined remnant, conservative identity becomes stronger the more discredited conservative governance becomes. They seem to take their lumps in stride and emerge all the more confident in their ideology from the challenge.

I have no reason to dispute Perlstein's analysis. But I would note one thing: while it explains why the conservatives may always be with us, it somewhat begs the question - or at leasts ignores the question - as to why conservatives succeed politically in some eras, and in some eras do not. If the sense of marginalization functions as a powerful internal organizing principle, and all the more so when the movement is out of political power, then what explains its political fortunes?

Some of this is no doubt contingent: conservatives can stumble into power when liberals and moderates screw up. Beyond that, though, how much of it has to do with the expansion and contraction of that conservative culture among Americans - and why does it expand and contract - and how much has to do with the success of conservative ideas and political tactics among Americans who aren't part of that culture? One gets the sense that this culture is immutable. But it can't be: if it were, it would either be permanently in power or permanently out of it. Moreover, sometimes it seems to articulate a politics that appeals to Americans more broadly, and sometimes it doesn't. That may be where the history of conservative ideas and political strategy does matter, and that's an area I'll be looking at a lot more as time goes on.

Labels: conservatism, conservatives, National review, Rick Perlstein, The New Republic, Whiskey Fire

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 11:07 AM 2 comments