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Does the Right Have a Brains Crisis?
With his LA Times op-ed “From Neocons to Crazy-Cons,” Former National Review literary editor David Klinghoffer becomes the latest conservative silverback to join the ranks of today’s critics of populism on the right. “Once,” reads his subhead, “the conservative movement was about finding meaning in private life and public service. But it has undergone a shift toward demagoguery and hucksterism.” Bye bye Bill Buckleys of the world, hello Glenn Becks. It’s a popular narrative nowadays. Suitably enough, Jonah pushes back in the LA Times. “These men,” he writes of Buckley, Kristol, Nisbet, Neuhaus, and company, “are my heroes, too, and their influence was staggering.”
But those who pine for the good old days fail to grasp that the good old days were, in the ways that matter, often quite bad. The heyday of the “institution builders” was a low-water mark for conservatism’s political success. (That’s why they built institutions!) Conservatism hardly lacks for top-flight intellectuals these days, but the intellectuals aren’t the avant-garde anymore. Thanks to their success at building institutions and spreading ideas, the battle has been joined. And now is not the time to wax nostalgic for the planning sessions.
Jonah’s reminder that the right’s intellectual lions actually deigned to have a practical political project is more than helpful: it’s needful. Yet there’s a danger that he and Klinghoffer — and, more broadly, the loose camps they each represent — will wind up talking past each other. To be sure, yesterday’s deep thought and institution-building created the preconditions for today’s popular political activity. And we all know that popular political activity, even (or especially) in America, makes plenty of room for demagogues, hucksters, opportunists, and careerists. The question is whether a fresh crop of erudite heroes, very unlike the technocratic eggheads who set the agenda for the left, would be of any help in pressing what Jonah calls “the battle” that’s been joined.
Few on the right would respond in the negative. But for a number of those like Klinghoffer who answer yes, a suspicion is growing that new intellectual heavyweights are not only helpful to partisan conservatism today but essential. The trouble is simple: these mental mandarins are nowhere to be found on the right. Or the left. Or somewhere in the middle, or off in some unclassifiable corner of our political map. No wonder their influence is nil. Jonah would likely insist that this is nothing, necessarily, for anyone to be ashamed of. True; it’s entirely possible that one or two or two dozen will burst or creep onto the scene over the next, say, ten years. Really, there are too many names to watch to name. The issue, now, isn’t nostalgia versus populism. The kind of public theorists who dominated the American right in its contemporary infancy aren’t available to lead conservative politics. Why waste any time crying out for them, or crying over their absence? Ask, rather, what kinds of smart people are most needful today. Some of them, I imagine, will be better suited to calling and running plays on the ground. Others will remain pretty high up in pretty narrow towers. And a third kind of genius will do the most good explaining precisely what kind of intellectual leadership conservatives require most today.
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To me, this is simply a display of arrogance by David Klinghoffer. I’m not sure that intellectual is a compliment, anyway. As far as I can tell, most folks who consider themselves intellectual also think their ideas trump actual experience with those ideas (case in point: “blood in the streets” believers about concealed carry laws, where crime has actually gone down). Many “Intellectuals” continue to think minimum wage is a good idea, notwithstanding all the economic evidence and analysis to the contrary. Intellectualism is not so good if it is not tempered with reality.
Glenn Beck is clearly intelligent and well-read. Yes, his style may be “populist” and he may not be correct on all issues, but he is always thoughtful. Anyone who does not think so has not watched his program much (and I can understand that those who dislike his style can’t bring themselves to watch much).
In this conservative movement, we need doers, not just ponderers. Glenn Beck is a doer. Sarah Palin is a doer. They are not merely members of the chattering classes.
Q: Does the Right have a brains crisis?
A: Richard Epstein!
I’m sorry to see some on the Right lend ammunition to the Left’s long-time argument: their “intellectual superiority” makes them ideally suited to lead, unlike the dunces on the Right. Adlai Stevenson’s supporters couldn’t understand how voters could opt for an intellectually-shallow military man (not once, but twice); Clark Clifford referred to Ronald Reagan as an “amiable dunce”; and John Kerry was heard screaming about George Bush, “I can’t believe I’m losing to this idiot.”
The term “Populist” seems to have become a pejorative one only when the populism emanates from the Right. It feeds into the perceptions created by the national media that some of these people are, indeed, idiots. By extension, of course, their supporters are idiots, too.
David Klinghoffer’s concerns remind me of Conservatives who keep pining for “another Reagan.” Sorry, but there was just one, as there was just one WFB. Thanks be to God for the foundations they built, but it’s time to move along.
That “third” kind of genius, I hope, won’t be “explaining” anything — they’ll be doing. They’ll be governors or Paul Ryans or otherwise people in the position of making change.
I agree with Jonah — I’m not sure there ever was any golden age. And there were demagogues back then, too, in the era of Buckley and (Irving) Kristol. Buckley did his best to run the crazies out of the right wing movement, but the tenor of conservative thought from, say, 1945 to 1968 could get pretty dicey.
On the other hand, the most popular conservative today is probably Rush Limbaugh, who has done more to introduce to the wide American public the ideas of WFB, Thomas Sowell, Milton Friedman, and a host of other brilliant eggheads than anyone, ever. What’s wrong with that?
How about this list of American conservatives, all alive and writing thoughtful, intellectually-rigorous conservative works: Thomas Sowell, George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Victor Davis Hanson, James Bowman, Daniel J. Mahoney, Mark Helprin, Charles Murray, William Voegeli, Heather Mac Donald, Jonah Goldberg, Mark Steyn, Brian Anderson, Richard Epstein, John Yoo, and on and on.
Or from Britain: David Pryce-Jones, Roger Scruton, Theodore Dalrymple, Melanie Phillips.
Then think of the work produced by think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, AEI, the Hoover Insitution, the Manhattan Institute, the Hudson Institute.
In light of all that, it’s pretty hard to conclude that the intellectual conservative movement is over, just because we have a group of people who appeal to a more populist sentiment like Rush, Palin, Beck, and others.
From my perspective, this adds up to a pretty large tent full of people who appeal to all segments of the population endowed with some conservative sentiment.
Bill Buckley was a great loss, but so were C. S. Lewis, Russell Kirk, Frank Meyer, James Burnham, Friedrich Hayek.
Point: Conservatism is not just a group of people–it’s an approach to life and series of ideas based on some key self-limiting principles.
Literary editors at NR tend to get a bit self-righteous about their own religious fervor while denouncing those with a different perceived revelation as being shallow (Klinghoffer is a convert to Orthodox Judaism and writes extensively on why his new world is superior to his Christian upbringing). Mike Potemra drifts into that trap occasionally as well.
The telling statement revealing the messianic vision (only The Elect get such visions) is this downright silly statement about 1950’s conservatism: “The goal wasn’t to defeat Democratic officeholders or humiliate left-wing activists. It was, and still is, with those who remember, to save civilization.”
How could conservatives have saved civilization without defeating a few Democrats in contests for public office? Barry Goldwater was OK, but he really didn’t do a whole lot to advance his ideas in a meaningful sense. He would have done more good buying a TV network than spending decades in the Senate.
Mr. Klinghoffer, as is the case with many other young wannabe pundits, resembles the nerdy “intellectual” who turns out reams of plans and analysis at National Defense University and knows he’s superior to the grubby guy in uniform in an Afghan foxhole.
Well, today you get Dr. Dobson, 50 years ago it was Billy James Hargis….
David Carroll: Glenn Beck is clearly intelligent and well-read.
More importantly, he encourages his audience to read — and it shows, if spikes in book sales are anything to go by. It must be hard to argue that persuading people to read the likes of our founding documents, “The Road to Serfdom”, and “The Coming Insurrection” is making America stupider, though I’m sure there are folks who’ll argue it does.
Beck is not to my preference — I’m the geeky type who gravitates towards fiddly definitions, lab experiments, and interesting functions… that’s just how I roll. But if I just wrote off people who didn’t share my style as stupid, I’d be the stupid one.
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Great list, Tabula Rasa! Richard Epstein is my new intellectual crush, but I sorta felt like a heel listing only his name when there are so many others.
To extend on this, Pat, from my experience, this narrative of the “golden age” age of American conservatism has even been widely adopted by the left.
I am one of the many participating at Ricochet stuck in a leftist milieu. When the topic of conservatism comes up (rarely), almost without fail David Brooks or someone similar will be mentioned to bemoan about how conservatives used to be “intellectuals,” “funny,” “serious writers”, or otherwise, but have supposedly chosen to abandon this track. This construction seems to be their way of trying to appear intellectually “open” without actually being so. “Conservatives were worth reading back when Bill Buckley was around…”
My response to supposed conservatives peddling this argument is this:
Do something about it! If Rush and Glen Beck are such dunderheads, it shouldn’t be that difficult to outdo them. I fail to see how whining and making yourself into a token conservative for the left does anything to help your claimed cause.
Dude! What am I, chopped liver? I am very, very intellectual, I’ll have you know. I am not just about cute kittens in adorable little sweaters.
Although I do like them, I must say.
Let’s see…
Tuesday Missouri had a vote. And (similar to the Washington initiative 676) people turned out to vote on only one issue ignoing eveything else going on in the balloting.
The result, Obamacare REJECTED 3 to 1.
So what are the so called leaders on the Right discussing to rally the base?
The 14th Ammendment.
What are the leaders on the right saying about Obamacare?
“Well, we will have to look into adjusting it, because surely we cannot repeal it.”
Can you say, “EPIC FAIL”?
P.J. O’Rourke was spot on when he said, “We have a two party system in America. There is the Evil Party, and the Stupid Party.”
Dude! What am I, chopped liver? I am very, very intellectual, I’ll have you know.
No, no. Never chopped liver! (Except maybe for people who truly and passionately love chopped liver…)
Dude! What am I, chopped liver? I am very, very intellectual, I’ll have you know. I am not just about cute kittens in adorable little sweaters.
Although I do like them, I must say. ·Aug 5 at 1:04pm
Claire: You are a true intellectual–I’ve even heard you have a Phd. But I’m a dog man (though one cat has managed to infiltrate my home). When I compiled my little list of current American intellectual conservatives, the only filters I used were self-identified cat lovers and those currently residing in Turkey. Thus, you weren’t on the list. But for those screening criteria, you would have been the first name (right ahead of Sowell, Will and Krauthammer).
Based on my posts here at Ricochet, most of you no doubt have immediately recognized me as one of conservative’s mental mandarins. Thus you will be mightily surprised that I disagree with comtemptuously with whoever it is that wrote the article of subject. I believe WFB would be in my corner. Approximately speaking, wouldn’t he have rather been ruled by the first 1000 names in the Boston phone book than the faculty of Harvard? Enough said. Thanks for all the entertaining posts.
James, what are you thinking? Re-read Jonah’s piece. The times pick the men. Buckly, Kristol et al were who they were because they had to build a movement.
We are not building that movement today. Our challenge now is to reinvigorate it, to adapt it for new challenges. And there are lots of very intelligent and capable folks laboring at that task. Newt Gingrich, Paul Ryan, Arthur Brooks, etc. The men of talent will adapt their energy to the need of the era.
I fear that at some level this is another maifestation of urban/academic v. country/practical snobbery. It is another veiled anti-Palin rant. A shame, because I genrally really like David Klinghoffer’s stuff.
Let us not forget that it took not only Adams, Madison and Jefferson to found a new nation. It also took a citizen-army of “populist” plowboys and artisans whose devotion to liberty was every bit as animating a force as the eloquence of the Founding Fathers.
I’m not convinced that the Right needs a new generation of intellectuals. Rather, we need leadership that can communicate conservative values in a way that resonates with the American people. Did Ronald Reagan consider himself an intellectual? Certainly not. Could he communicate with the American people – even those who, for the most part, had little interest in politics? Yes, like no one since.
Actually, you could better describe that group as The Religious Right and The Gun Nuts.