Austin Bramwell: Defining Conservatism Down
[Austin Bramwell is a lawyer in New York City.]
Had conservatism a Cassandra, she might, amidst the current mood of triumph, point out that whereas 50 years ago the American Right boasted several political theorists destined to exert a lasting influence, today it has not one to its credit. In the 1950s and ’60s, James Burnham, Richard Weaver, Leo Strauss, Harry Jaffa, Russell Kirk, Friedrich Hayek, and Willmoore Kendall (among others) were all at the apex of their powers. No figure of similar stature remains.
To be sure, this does not mean that conservatism has gone into intellectual decline. We may, on the contrary, be living through the high summer of conservative ideas in America. If in 1950 all the right-wing intellectuals in America could fit into a single living room, today they could fill Madison Square Garden; if in 1950 one could read their combined monthly output in a single sitting, today one could not possibly keep abreast of the voluminous popular and scholarly literature that they produce. From journalism, politics, and law to religion, economics, and international relations, self-identified right-wingers abound.
Nonetheless, while the American Right may not have been losing candlepower, it has been deploying it in different ways. A half century ago, Willmoore Kendall proclaimed that he would become the American Burke. He meant at least three things: first, that America had lacked a genius to trace for all time the lineaments of an American conservative tradition; second, that an American conservative tradition nonetheless existed; and, third, and that he alone could midwife it into self-consciousness.
Nor was Kendall alone. Several of his coevals were contending to become the Father of American Conservatism. Russell Kirk made the cover of Time after The Conservative Mind rediscovered—some would say imagined—a Burkean sensibility in American politics. Others, imbued with Cold War foreboding, sought to define all that European civilization stood for in the hope of averting what they called the “crisis of the West.” In their warnings against liberalism and socialism, Richard Weaver, Whittaker Chambers, Leo Strauss, and Eric Voegelin assumed the prophetic office. “Put away thine abominations,” they warned, “lest the Lord’s fury come forth like fire.”
No similar figure exists today. At the end of his life, Kendall was writing a book that he hoped would demolish his rivals’ claims to have understood American conservatism. He need not have bothered; there is no “American Burke” from whom all conservative ideas in this country derive. Rather, the achievement of Kendall and his brethren was collective: together, they left behind a set of doctrines assumed to constitute the essence of American conservatism—limited government, anti-utopianism, free-market economics, patriotism, traditional morality and religion, federalism, anticommunism, and belief in “absolutes.”
Few today wish to reinterpret these doctrines, much less re-evaluate them. Though every year the conservative movement raises thousands of aspiring intellectuals, they have no interest in creating a new intellectual synthesis. If they go into academia or the think-tank world, they contribute to research projects long under way; if they go into journalism, they defend an established editorial line. In blogosphere parlance, they become “instapundits,” not philosophers.
Meanwhile, young conservatives—in contrast to the anticommunists of the 1950s and the neoconservatives of the 1970s—rarely come to right-wing ideas through any kind of epiphany. Rather, they inherit their conservatism from parents or grandparents. Through generously funded seminars and think-tank internships, they study the canon of conservative thought: The Road to Serfdom, Ideas Have Consequences, Capitalism and Freedom, The Conservative Mind, Witness, Atlas Shrugged, In Defense of Freedom, The Closing of the American Mind, and others. These works, almost all written in the 1940s, '50s, and ‘60s, define the ideology they are charged with advancing.
Meanwhile, though the conservative counter-establishment still occasionally raises hackles, liberals have become increasingly accustomed to it. In the 1990s, Hillary Clinton posited the existence of a “Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy,” an epithet become so hackneyed because it is not altogether inaccurate. Today, by contrast, leftists write thoughtful histories of the conservative movement 30 years after William Rusher and George Nash wrote theirs. Even Ronald Reagan has been apotheosized.
In recognition of this trend, the New York Times recently established a conservative beat whereby one reporter, rather than dismiss conservatives as malevolent extremists, tries to discover what they are actually thinking. Like all journalists, to make sense of the blooming, buzzing confusion of the world, he settles on what seems to him the most interesting theory: every disagreement among conservatives augurs the opening of ideological fissures. Hence, the Times regularly treats its readers to stories on conservative debates and suggests that we will see more of them in the future.
Read entire article at American Conservative
Had conservatism a Cassandra, she might, amidst the current mood of triumph, point out that whereas 50 years ago the American Right boasted several political theorists destined to exert a lasting influence, today it has not one to its credit. In the 1950s and ’60s, James Burnham, Richard Weaver, Leo Strauss, Harry Jaffa, Russell Kirk, Friedrich Hayek, and Willmoore Kendall (among others) were all at the apex of their powers. No figure of similar stature remains.
To be sure, this does not mean that conservatism has gone into intellectual decline. We may, on the contrary, be living through the high summer of conservative ideas in America. If in 1950 all the right-wing intellectuals in America could fit into a single living room, today they could fill Madison Square Garden; if in 1950 one could read their combined monthly output in a single sitting, today one could not possibly keep abreast of the voluminous popular and scholarly literature that they produce. From journalism, politics, and law to religion, economics, and international relations, self-identified right-wingers abound.
Nonetheless, while the American Right may not have been losing candlepower, it has been deploying it in different ways. A half century ago, Willmoore Kendall proclaimed that he would become the American Burke. He meant at least three things: first, that America had lacked a genius to trace for all time the lineaments of an American conservative tradition; second, that an American conservative tradition nonetheless existed; and, third, and that he alone could midwife it into self-consciousness.
Nor was Kendall alone. Several of his coevals were contending to become the Father of American Conservatism. Russell Kirk made the cover of Time after The Conservative Mind rediscovered—some would say imagined—a Burkean sensibility in American politics. Others, imbued with Cold War foreboding, sought to define all that European civilization stood for in the hope of averting what they called the “crisis of the West.” In their warnings against liberalism and socialism, Richard Weaver, Whittaker Chambers, Leo Strauss, and Eric Voegelin assumed the prophetic office. “Put away thine abominations,” they warned, “lest the Lord’s fury come forth like fire.”
No similar figure exists today. At the end of his life, Kendall was writing a book that he hoped would demolish his rivals’ claims to have understood American conservatism. He need not have bothered; there is no “American Burke” from whom all conservative ideas in this country derive. Rather, the achievement of Kendall and his brethren was collective: together, they left behind a set of doctrines assumed to constitute the essence of American conservatism—limited government, anti-utopianism, free-market economics, patriotism, traditional morality and religion, federalism, anticommunism, and belief in “absolutes.”
Few today wish to reinterpret these doctrines, much less re-evaluate them. Though every year the conservative movement raises thousands of aspiring intellectuals, they have no interest in creating a new intellectual synthesis. If they go into academia or the think-tank world, they contribute to research projects long under way; if they go into journalism, they defend an established editorial line. In blogosphere parlance, they become “instapundits,” not philosophers.
Meanwhile, young conservatives—in contrast to the anticommunists of the 1950s and the neoconservatives of the 1970s—rarely come to right-wing ideas through any kind of epiphany. Rather, they inherit their conservatism from parents or grandparents. Through generously funded seminars and think-tank internships, they study the canon of conservative thought: The Road to Serfdom, Ideas Have Consequences, Capitalism and Freedom, The Conservative Mind, Witness, Atlas Shrugged, In Defense of Freedom, The Closing of the American Mind, and others. These works, almost all written in the 1940s, '50s, and ‘60s, define the ideology they are charged with advancing.
Meanwhile, though the conservative counter-establishment still occasionally raises hackles, liberals have become increasingly accustomed to it. In the 1990s, Hillary Clinton posited the existence of a “Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy,” an epithet become so hackneyed because it is not altogether inaccurate. Today, by contrast, leftists write thoughtful histories of the conservative movement 30 years after William Rusher and George Nash wrote theirs. Even Ronald Reagan has been apotheosized.
In recognition of this trend, the New York Times recently established a conservative beat whereby one reporter, rather than dismiss conservatives as malevolent extremists, tries to discover what they are actually thinking. Like all journalists, to make sense of the blooming, buzzing confusion of the world, he settles on what seems to him the most interesting theory: every disagreement among conservatives augurs the opening of ideological fissures. Hence, the Times regularly treats its readers to stories on conservative debates and suggests that we will see more of them in the future.