Cory Robin on how conservatism conquered America
Has American conservatism suddenly gotten uglier? In the last few weeks, it’s certainly seemed like it. During a recent GOP debate, Ron Paul was asked what should happen to a sick young man without health insurance. Members of the crowd answered for him, yelling that he should be left to die. At the Florida debate, a chorus of boos greeted a gay soldier serving in the Middle East. Both incidents prompted outrage and shock among the media — and speculation about the loosening moral fabric of the Republican Party.
But according to Corey Robin, the author of the new book “The Reactionary Mind,” these ugly outbursts shouldn’t surprise anybody. Robin is a journalist and professor of political science at Brooklyn College who has written extensively about the conservative movement; his book is an overview of the past 200 years in conservative thought. And the Tea Party’s ugly remaking of the political landscape, he argues, isn’t as novel and transformative as many people think it is. What it says about the state of the American left, however, might surprise you.
Salon spoke to Robin over the phone from Brooklyn, N.Y., about the triumph of the American conservative movement, the meaning of Sarah Palin and Obama’s real political slant.
You end the book with a statement that the modern conservative movement has successfully defeated the left. Why do you say that?
Social conservatism mainly came about in response to, broadly speaking, the labor question. Beginning in the 1880s, the working classes started making democratic claims about the reform of the workplace, and many of the distinctive things we associate with conservatism come out of that experience. It was a roughly 100-year battle, and to all intents and purposes, they have won that battle.
When you have a president who celebrates the market; who thinks of the State as maybe necessary, but certainly not the first order of business; who believes that the businessman is the driving engine of the economy, there’s just really no question. And if you want to break it down on policy grounds, look at the level of unionization. Look at the level of wealth inequality. All of those indices that we are always talking about, conservatism has won.
On civil rights, they weren’t able to beat back the fundamental challenge of the civil rights movement, but they certainly were able to beat the movement’s second wave and really bring it to a standstill. Likewise with the women’s movement. Wage inequality is still quite large, and if you do a survey on all abortion rights and reproductive rights state-by-state, they are clearly winning that battle. They haven’t been able to overturn Roe v. Wade, but, effectively in many states, you just don’t have access to an abortion. Though I think, on a whole wide array, the one area where they probably have lost is on gay rights....