Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Conservatism and Conor-ism

Conor Friedersdorf, after bragging about his "Ideas" blog at The Atlantic Monthly, decides I need more lecturing about True Conservatism:
Efforts to ground a conversation about a political philosophy by referencing philosophers is mocked… and then other philosophers are invoked as better litmus tests. Worldly, nonreligious conservo-libertarians like me are told that we only think religious, Benedict-option-loving folks like Rod Dreher are conservatives because we define the movement according to the strands we like personally. Huh?
This is the kind of incoherence that results when your impetus for branding someone a heretic is that they criticized Mark Levin, or that they think the GOP’s current electoral strategy is incoherent, or that they wrote an item at The Huffington Post, or because they raise chickens in their backyard and assert that maybe there’s something troubling about corporate farms pumping antibiotics into featherless foul stuffed into tiny cages.
OK, let's start with the chickens. Guess what's in my backyard, Conor? A chicken coop, belonging to my 16-year-old son, James. Why is James raising chickens? The same reason he breeds pythons: For money. Oh, and guess what I ate for supper last night? A soy burger (Morningstar Farm Zesty Tomato Basil) on whole wheat bread. It was delicious.

If you don't want to order Chicken McNuggets for lunch, that's fine with me. But don't confuse your critique of factory farming with a political philosophy, and don't tell me that contempt for commerce is "conservative."

Just before I saw Conor's blog post this morning, I had a long phone conversation with Dan Riehl, another guy who has better things to do with his life than to climb into an ivory tower and sneer at the lowbrow plebians toiling down there in the grimy streets.

Dan sees this elitism as the essence of Conorism. I would assert that it is also the essence of Dreherism and Brooksianism and all these other boutique "conservatisms" that have cropped up like ideological weeds in recent years.

The ambitious conservative intellectual's quest for status among those whom he regards as his peers requires that he distinguish himself from (a) mere partisan operatives, whose objective is to elect Republicans; (b) mere journalists, who observe and report; and above all (c) the stupid voters out in the sticks who make up the rank-and-file grassroots of the conservative movement.

It is ambition, not ideology or ability, that distinguishes the elitists from the rest of us. The elitists crave above all else to be acknowledged as worthy of inclusion in the ranks of society's Platonic archons, to be influential, to be introduced at seminars with a listing of all the prestigious publications they've written for, et cetera. "The Distinguished Senior Fellow at . . ."

It's a scam, a racket, a hustle. And the dirty little secret of this particular game of three-card monte is the pretense that it is actually about ideas, as if his complex abstractions and elaborate verbal constructs -- "Worldly, nonreligious conservo-libertarians" -- were meaningful things worth fighting over. (Note how Conor modestly appropriates "worldly" to describe himself. Yeah, it's all that secular street cred, like he's rollin' with the Rothbardian Crips.)

To hustle the suckers with his intellectual scam, Conor Friedersdorf must maintain the illusion that he is a distinterested philosopher in pursuit of Truth with a capital T, as opposed to some grubby prole who writes for money.

"Don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining."

UPDATE: At the Hot Air Green Room:
By making "conservative" arguments for liberal policies, these treacherous elitists convey the message that conservatives are not really committed to opposing liberalism. So Democrats can ram through their agenda, and then the "conservative" intellectuals will join the Consensus Chorus telling us that this is a necessary "reform" which would be political suicide to attempt to repeal.
Read the rest.

14 comments:

  1. It was truly about ideas, then Conor would not essentially give up on the ideas in a (poorly thought out) effort to garner greater electoral viability for the GOP.

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  2. Paul,

    I've never given up on the ideas, or put much thought or effort into improving the electoral prospects of the GOP.

    RSM, it is impressive to pen a rebuttal that long without addressing any of the critiques I actually raise in my post -- but thanks for linking so that your readers can at least see that you're responding to the fantastical idea you have of me, rather than the arguments I've actually expressed.

    Finally, I am not an ambitious conservative intellectual so much as an ambitious writer who happens to be conservative.

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  3. Easy on the soy burgers, Stacy, they may lead to man boobs

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  4. So does your son use the chickens to feed the pythons?

    only asking..

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  5. As always, a superb deconstruction. For a horndog, you have a great way with words.

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  6. Let’s get this straight. According to Stacy McCain, the folks responsible for destroying the Republican brand and conservatism are a few eccentrics who actually read the classic conservative books by genuine conservatives like Kirk or Robert Nisbet or James Burnham, instead of the folks who control the current mislabeled “conservative” magazines, such as the Weakly Standard, National Review, American Spectator and those on talk radio who have carried the water for the Neocon and other fake conservatives at the aforementioned magazines.

    Here are just some of the creatures who have destroyed the Republican and Conservative brand names: David Frum of Axis of Evil and “Unpatriotic conservative” fame; David Brooks of the New York Times; William Kristol of the Weakly Standard/New York Times/Washington Post; William Bennett of Las Vegas; Rich Lowry of National Review; Rush Limbaugh water carrier of Neocon propaganda; Sean Hannity zombie; and on and on.

    What has damaged Republicans and Conservatives most was the Neocon policy of invading Iraq. Let us recall that before he died, even sell-out to the Neocon/Neoliberal William Buckley identified the Iraq misadventure as the result of Neocon hubris.

    But Stacy wants to keep things simple. OK, here is a list of policies that can help determine if someone is “conservative” or not. If anyone opposes these policy changes and instead advocates the opposite they are not conservative.

    No more open borders and an end to mass immigration, legal or illegal.

    No more “free trade” and an end to transfers of technology and jobs to hostile regimes (and that means China).

    No more “preemptive wars” (i.e., wars of aggression) to impose “democracy.” Leave that one to Woodrow Wilson.

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  7. Mr. OtherMcCain,

    As one of your Catholic fans I wanted to give you a head's up that manages to shoot off Conor's typing finger. St. Benedict is the one referenced in "Benedict-option-loving folks ". St. Benedict is a fine Catholic saint who has most unfortunately attracted the following of progressive Catholics and indeed progressive Christians in general. the kind that like abortion etc... Indeed, this following is indeed that even when someone says at a cocktail party you're hosting on the summer porch of your ancestral summer home in Maine "You're a convert to Catholicism! I just love love St. Benedict." you know then and there what to do - Smile politely, ask if they need another glass of Pinot Grigio and then move as quickly as possible to the other end of the porch where all the secret subscribers to The American Spectator are congregated, drinking brown liquor straight up, smoking cigarettes and dropping their ashes over the railing onto the pink cosmos down below.


    Mrs. P

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  8. @Anon:
    Let’s get this straight. According to Stacy McCain, the folks responsible for destroying the Republican brand and conservatism are a few eccentrics who actually read the classic conservative books by genuine conservatives like Kirk or Robert Nisbet or James Burnham
    I'm just the Porch Manqué, so RSM may speak otherwise, but the chief nemesis of the Republican brand is the RINO--the Socialist in wrinkly, tusky drag.

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  9. Wow, that last paragraph via Hot Air Green Room really said it well.

    These types are like a computer virus; insidious, clever and unfeeling. David Frum knee-capped Sarah Palin upon her announcement, parroting the calculated line of the Dems that she was "only a small town mayor", and "not the responsible choice". I’m sure himself thinking he was being "high-minded".

    And then there was Peggy Noonan, Kathleen Parker, Colin Powell and the like -- dying to go to a cocktail party and willing to knife their own party in the back to get there.

    And now these guys have the arrogance to presume to counsel us on election strategy and proper discourse. Priceless.

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  10. Mr. McCain,

    I don't understand why you have to attack motives as opposed to ideas. For example, you say the following:

    "If you don't want to order Chicken McNuggets for lunch, that's fine with me. But don't confuse your critique of factory farming with a political philosophy, and don't tell me that contempt for commerce is "conservative."

    Now you and I ultimately agree on this subject matter (I think Goldberg did an excellent job of critcizing Rod Dreher when he was blogging over at "National Review"), but why can't you accept that folks like Rod really do believe that a concern with how food is made and processed can and should be a conservative concern? Rod and Conor may be wrong, but why can't you leave it at that...instead you accuse them of holding their views for reasons of status or money. But what is your evidence for this? And why wouldn't anyone who writes for a living want to be influential -- after all, I'm assuming you'd love it if your ideas were adopted by Republican/conservative politicians. Otherwise, why write at all?

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  11. RSM writes:

    "Just before I saw Conor's blog post this morning, I had a long phone conversation with Dan Riehl, another guy who has better things to do with his life than to climb into an ivory tower and sneer at the lowbrow plebians toiling down there in the grimy streets."

    So let me get this straight: the 29 year old laid off journalist is the one sneering from an ivory tower, and the multimillionaire talk radio hosts are the lowbrow plebians toiling in the grimy streets?

    That's incoherent.

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  12. You're a Shark, Friedersdorf. We don't expect you to understand us Jets, and don't think you ever really did.

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  13. Forget, please, "conservatism." It has been, operationally, de facto, Godless and therefore irrelevant. Secular conservatism will not defeat secular liberalism because to God both are two atheistic peas-in-a-pod and thus predestined to failure. As Stonewall Jackson's Chief of Staff R.L. Dabney said of such a humanistic belief more than 100 years ago:

    "[Secular conservatism] is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today .one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution; to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt bath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth."

    Our country is collapsing because we have turned our back on God (Psalm 9:17) and refused to kiss His Son (Psalm 2).

    John Lofton, Editor, TheAmericanView.com
    Recovering Republican
    JLof@aol.com

    PS – And “Mr. Worldly Wiseman” Rush Limbaugh never made a bigger ass of himself than at CPAC where he told that blasphemous “joke” about himself and God.

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  14. Your equating attitude and ideology with income and career status is what's incoherent.

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