John Cole's Take on Conservatism

22
Mar
Conservatism as Urine
by John Cole

It isn’t just DougJ. I simply can not take any more of this narcissistic self-referential babble about the nature of conservatism:

Conservatism is “formless” like water: it takes the shape of its conditions, but always remains the same. This is why Russell Kirk calls conservatism the “negation of ideology” in The Politics of Prudence. It is precisely the formlessness of conservatism which gives it its vitality. Left alone, the spirit of conservatism is essentially what T.S. Eliot calls the “stillness between two waves of the sea” in “Little Gidding” of his Four Quartets. Conservatism is both like water and the stillness between the waves—the waves are not the water acting, but being acted upon; stillness is the default state of conservatism:
I am so sick and tired of these “esoteric” discussions about the flawless, formless, and timeless beauty of conservatism. It is utter nonsense. We got unchecked “conservatism” the past eight years, and instead of water, it felt more like urine, as they pissed all over us. Conservatism brought us an expanded surveillance state, intervention into a man’s marriage, unchecked budgets, war of aggression, torture, a rejection and mockery of both science and the rule of law, the unchecked executive branch, and on and on and on. The conservative standard bearers are now Sarah Palin and Eric Cantor and Rush Limbaugh and Joe the Plumber.

After getting hammered in two national elections, the rehabilitation of conservatism takes the form of these flowery paeans about the timeless wisdom of an ideology that is the “negation of ideology.” What a load of gibberish. At what point will these clowns realize that they sound like the Soviet apologists in the late 80’s and 90’s who wanted to tell us that communism didn’t fail, it just wasn’t properly implemented?

And for extra comedy, this bit of dribble comes by way of Sullivan, who found it from Rod Dreher. Rod Dreher. You remember him, right:

For all my excitement over Sarah Palin, there is a part of me that can’t commit to voting McCain-Palin yet. Last week at this time I was almost certainly not going to vote for McCain. Now I’m likely to do it. But what holds me back is what Clark Stooksbury speaks to in this post:
Dreher is free to vote for McCain to spite the Kos Kretins; but he will also be voting for war with Iran and pointless brinksmanship with Russia, funded by another mountain range of debt. A McCain vote also gives a ringing endorsement to the last eight years of unnecessary war, torture and incompetence. In other words, it is a vote to cut off his nose in order to spite his face.

That’s very succinctly and accurately put. If I vote McCain in the end, it will have to be in clear sight of these things, and with the faith that the risks that Clark rightly points out I’ll be taking are worth the rewards of a Palin ascendancy. In truth, as much as I like Palin, especially for the enemies she’s made, I don’t know that I can affirm the reward justifies the risk of a McCain presidency.

Anyone who gets excited by the idea of rule by Palin isn’t fit to drive a motor vehicle, let alone be at the forefront of a political movement. Don’t be fooled by the reformation efforts by Frum and Dreher and Douthat and the rest of the crowd of snake oil salesmen, because when the chips were down in November 2008, they still all saddled up and went to battle for a know-nothing ignoramus from Alaska and her geriatric side-kick. The country was in a tailspin, brought on by their party and their ideology (and formerly mine), both of which had been proven by that point to be bereft of ideas and solutions, and yet they still went to the voting booth and chose more of the same.

They chose to go down with the ship. Can’t they stay drowned?

*** Update ***

From the comments:

The “conservatism” that Sullivan is always going on about is a philosophical construct, not necessarily a political one. A philosophical construct that he has carefully crafted after many years of introspection and study*, and one that has little to offer in purely political terms; at least, not nowadays. If anything, Sullivan’s now more of a “libertarian” in his specific policy recommendations, after having disavowed his deranged love affair with militaristic big-government imperialism**.
The philosophical ideal of “Burkean conservatism” [Reliance on monotheism and other traditional institutions for social stability while very, very gradually modifying the existing system is preferable to any “radical” popular change based on ideology, due to a prudent fear of societal collapse and the blood of innocent people running in the streets] is not the same thing as the political ideal of American “conservatism” [which seems to me to be a bizarre amalgamation of anti-tax sentiment, frontier individualism, nationalism, corporate interest, anachronistic cultural sentiments (e.g., racism, sexism), and biblical fundamentalism].

Note well that there may be policies that one would support based on one’s philosophical conservatism that align with one’s political “conservatism” (e.g., voting against “redistributive” progressive income taxation, maybe), but the two are uneasy partners at best. In fact, the past eight years have shown the more honest philosophical conservatives that the Republican party under W. Bush was tremendously radical (in the philosophical sense) and sacrificed most notions of Burkean prudence for the sake of their political ideology.

That would be great if they (Sullivan excluded) didn’t keep trying to find excuses to marry philosophical conservatism with movement conservatism and modern brain-dead Republicanism.



Posted in Burkean bells at 11:19 am | 80 Comments