Happy Meal conservatism

Taking the conservative project as a whole—limited government, fiscal prudence, equality under law, personal liberty, patriotism, realism abroad—has talk radio helped or hurt? All those good things are plainly off the table for the next four years at least, a prospect that conservatives can only view with anguish. Did the Limbaughs, Hannitys, Savages, and Ingrahams lead us to this sorry state of affairs?

They surely did. At the very least, by yoking themselves to the clueless George W. Bush and his free-spending administration, they helped create the great debt bubble that has now burst so spectacularly. The big names, too, were all uncritical of the decade-long (at least) efforts to “build democracy” in no-account nations with politically primitive populations. Sean Hannity called the Iraq War a “massive success,” and in January 2008 deemed the U.S. economy “phenomenal.”

Much as their blind loyalty discredited the Right, perhaps the worst effect of Limbaugh et al. has been their draining away of political energy from what might have been a much more worthwhile project: the fostering of a middlebrow conservatism. There is nothing wrong with lowbrow conservatism. It’s energizing and fun. What’s wrong is the impression fixed in the minds of too many Americans that conservatism is always lowbrow, an impression our enemies gleefully reinforce when the opportunity arises. Thus a liberal like E.J. Dionne can write, “The cause of Edmund Burke, Leo Strauss, Robert Nisbet and William F. Buckley Jr. is now in the hands of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity. … Reason has been overwhelmed by propaganda, ideas by slogans.” Talk radio has contributed mightily to this development.

It does so by routinely descending into the ad hominem—Feminazis instead of feminism—and catering to reflex rather than thought. Where once conservatism had been about individualism, talk radio now rallies the mob. “Revolt against the masses?” asked Jeffrey Hart. “Limbaugh is the masses.”

In place of the permanent things, we get Happy Meal conservatism: cheap, childish, familiar. Gone are the internal tensions, the thought-provoking paradoxes, the ideological uneasiness that marked the early Right. But however much this dumbing down has damaged the conservative brand, it appeals to millions of Americans. McDonald’s profits rose 80 percent last year.

How radio wrecks the Right (John Derbyshire, The American Conservative, 23 Feb 2009)

Generous to a fault, with other people's money

Arthur Brooks, the author of a book on donors to charity, “Who Really Cares,” cites data that households headed by conservatives give 30 percent more to charity than households headed by liberals. A study by Google found an even greater disproportion: average annual contributions reported by conservatives were almost double those of liberals.

[...]

“When I started doing research on charity,” Mr. Brooks wrote, “I expected to find that political liberals — who, I believed, genuinely cared more about others than conservatives did — would turn out to be the most privately charitable people. So when my early findings led me to the opposite conclusion, I assumed I had made some sort of technical error. I re-ran analyses. I got new data. Nothing worked. In the end, I had no option but to change my views.”

Bleeding Heart Tightwads, Nicholas Kristof, New York Times - 21 Dec 2008

Huh.

This makes a lot more sense, a little further into the column, when the following information is disclosed:

• The percentage of philanthropy among regular churchgoers is about the same across both liberal and conservative groups, and significantly higher than average.
• And donations to one's own church were counted as private charity.

The determining factor here is membership in a community of faith and financial support of same, not "conservative" or "liberal" beliefs per se. That there are more belonging/donating believers among conservatives than liberals is not a terribly surprising thing.

Three kinds of Republicans

It seems to me there are three main factions within the Republican Party, and while we can see strengths and weaknesses in each of them, the future of the Right is far from clear.

1. Progressive Republicans (aka: Teddy Roosevelt Republicans) - These are the Republicans who may be solid allies on many issues, but who also seem to want a Great Leader who can do Big Things. They are Crusader Conservatives - generally reliable on limited government, but willing to go off on Big Government crusades.

   Illustrative Quote: "The object of government is the welfare of the people," (Teddy Roosevelt)

2. Goldwater Republicans - These Republicans vote for limited government, individual liberty and strong defense; they may have various opinions on social issues, but they subsume those views to the goal at hand: limiting government

   Illustrative Quote: "I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom." (Goldwater

3. Bush Republicans - these voters may or may not care about limited government, but they're willing to accept Big Government, so long as the government does socially conservative things. (See: Mike Huckabee, Christian Democracy)

   Illustrative Quote: "Prayers can help, and so can the government." - President Bush, February 6, 2008

The Next Right: The Future of The Right (31 May 2008)

The Economist on conservative American malaise

The Republican Party is only the most visible part of the American right. The right's hidden strength lies in its conservative base. America is almost unique in possessing a vibrant conservative movement. Every state boasts organisations fighting in favour of guns and against taxes and abortion. The Christian right can call upon megachurches and Evangelical colleges. Conservatives have also created a formidable counter-establishment of think-tanks and pressure groups.

[...]

Yet today this mighty movement is in deep trouble. Veteran activists are sunk in gloom (“I've never seen conservatives so downright fed up,” says Richard Viguerie, a conservative stalwart). And the other side is cock-a-hoop. Stanley Greenberg, a Democratic pollster, describes the shift from conservatism as “breathtaking”.

[...]

In 2002 the electorate was equally divided between Democrats and Democratic-leaners (43%) and Republicans and Republican-leaners (43%). Today only 35% align themselves with Republicans, and 50% with Democrats. The Republicans are doing particularly badly among independents (the fastest-growing group in the electorate) and younger voters. The proportion of 18-25-year-olds who identify with the Republican Party has declined from 55% in 1991 to 35% in 2006, according to Pew. Tony Fabrizio, a Republican pollster, notes that the share of Republican voters aged 55 and over has increased from 28% in 1997 to 41% today, whereas the share aged 18-34 has fallen from 25% to 17%. No wonder Ken Mehlman, a former Republican Party chairman who oversaw George Bush's 2004 victory, is now advising hedge funds on how to deal with a Democratic-leaning America.

The American Right: Under the Weather (The Economist, August 9, 2007)

First cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye

Andrew Klavan, writing in the Spring 2007 edition of City Journal:

The thing I like best about being a conservative is that I don’t have to lie. I don’t have to pretend that men and women are the same. I don’t have to declare that failed or oppressive cultures are as good as mine. I don’t have to say that everyone’s special or that the rich cause poverty or that all religions are a path to God. I don’t have to claim that a bad writer like Alice Walker is a good one or that a good writer like Toni Morrison is a great one. I don’t have to pretend that Islam means peace.

Of course, like everything, this candor has its price. A politics that depends on honesty will be, by nature, often impolite. Good manners and hypocrisy are intimately intertwined, and so conservatives, with their gimlet-eyed view of the world, are always susceptible to charges of incivility. It’s not really nice, you know, to describe things as they are.

This is leftism’s great strength: it’s all white lies. That’s its only advantage, as far as I can tell. None of its programs actually works, after all. From statism and income redistribution to liberalized criminal laws and multiculturalism, from its assault on religion to its redefinition of family, leftist policies have made the common life worse wherever they’re installed. But because it depends on—indeed is defined by—describing the human condition inaccurately, leftism is nothing if not polite. With its tortuous attempts to rename unpleasant facts out of existence—he’s not crippled, dear, he’s handicapped; it’s not a slum, it’s an inner city; it’s not surrender, it’s redeployment—leftism has outlived its own failure by hiding itself within the most labyrinthine construct of social delicacy since Victoria was queen.

I very much like the idea of a conservatism that tells it like it is and the hell with the consequences. Would that it were so.

But the very notion that in 2007, a putatively serious writer can link the American conservative movement with truthtelling, of all things, is so ridiculous that I think it must be some kind of twisted performance art.

It's lots of fun shooting fish in a barrel (yes, Alice Walker sucks and multiculturalism is feelgood crap) and setting up PC strawmen and then knocking them down, but it's not very good exercise; to get a real workout, you need to be punching the heavy bag.

The first conservative to step up to the plate and offer honest, no-holds-barred and damn-the-consequences talk about, e.g., one or more of the following will win my heart:

• How the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are going, and what "victory" will look like there.
• Science and the public sphere (stem cells, evolution, energy policy, global warming, etc.)
• Entitlement programs, most notably the ones created by the current "conservative" administration and how we're going to pay for them.