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Michael Lind WHY DIED

The collapse of intellectual conserva- of Martin Luther King, Jr.; in 1994, Charles tism in America has been as complete as has Murray has revived old theories about the been swift. Consider a few contrasts. In 1984, innate inferiority of average Latinos and blacks the leading conservative spokesman in the compared to whites in his new book (written media was ; by 1994, it was Rush with the late Richard Herrnstein), The Bell Limbaugh. The basic concerns of intellectual Curve: "Latino and black immigrants are, at conservatives in the eighties were foreign least in the short run, putting some downward policy and ; by the early nineties pressure on the distribution of intelligence. . . . they had become dirty pictures and deviant sex. The shifting ethnic makeup by itself would In the early 1980s, was lower the average American IQ by 0.8 per publishing scholarly analyses of public policy, generation." I was present at the destruction of intellectual from a moderate conservative point of view; by conservatism over the past several years, as the early nineties, it was publishing a potted executive editor of , commentary on the sexual practices of the published by , as a research ancient Greeks and Chinese by a California assistant for William F. Buckley, Jr., and as a radio host, . The contributor to such conservative intellectual American Spectator, which in the eighties had journals as Commentary, the Public Interest, striven for respectability by publishing neocon and . What I observed con- scholars, had by 1994 turned into a semiporno- vinces me that the conventional explanations graphic tabloid of a kind familiar in Britain. for the demise of American conservatism as a was a conservative hero in the serious intellectual force are wrong. early eighties; now he is a pariah, considered too far to the left because he supports an end to legal and social against gay Americans. In the eighties, Peter Berger and authored a thoughtful It is a mistake, for example, to attribute the monograph on the importance of intermediate death of intellectual conservatism to the end of institutions; by the nineties, Berger was ranting the cold . The loss of the Soviet enemy did in Commentary about the persecution of not cause the right to crack up; on the contrary, smokers, and Neuhaus (a convert to Catholi- the differences among "paleoconservatives," cism) was publishing articles in his magazine, National Review conservatives, and neoconser- , denouncing Darwin and defend- vatives have actually diminished in the years ing the theory that today's animals descend since 1989 (as the former center-right has from honeymoon couples aboard Noah's Ark. enthusiastically adopted the far right's " In the 1980s, conservatives claimed to be war"). What is more, it is only in foreign defending the color-blind civil rights idealism policy that there have been any interesting or

42 • DISSENT Intellectual Conservatism rigorous debates among conservatives (chiefly van, became editor of National Review (mak- in the pages of 's National ing the , to my knowledge, the Interest). The foreign-policy half of the conser- only democracy in which the editor of the vative brain remained alert long after the other leading conservative journal is not himself a hemisphere was clinically dead. citizen of the country). A Belgian immigrant, The decline of intellectual conservatism has , edited the conserva- had less to do with geopolitics than with tive daily, (itself con- domestic . By far the most important trolled by Korean would-be messiah Reverend factor has been a process well under way ). Increasingly, conservative before 1989: the growing power within the leaders like Bill Buckley and Irving Kristol Republican party of the Protestant right. socialized with foreign media tycoons like The two main varieties of mainstream (Australian) and conservatism, from the founding of National (Canadian) and Greco-British-American trophy Review in 1955 to the disastrous Houston wife Arianna Stassinopolous Huffington, a convention of 1992, were Buckley-type fusion- "Minister of Light" in California leader ism ("fusing" free-market economics and a John-Roger's Movement of Spiritual Inner sort of high-church traditionalism) and neocon- Awareness (MSIA). The complaint of "paleo- servatism. These corresponded more or less conservatives" that their movement was being with the Catholic right and the Jewish right. taken over by opportunistic (and in many cases Not all Buckleyites were Catholic (though the weird) foreigners was not completely without non-Catholics tended to convert, like Russell foundation. Kirk and Lew Lehrman) and not all neocons Sooner or later, it was inevitable that the were Jewish; even so, the difference between conservative masses would find leaders who fusionists and neocons was as much ethnocul- did not speak with funny upper class or foreign tural as ideological. accents. Indeed, this came to pass after 1988, For several decades, the chiefly Protestant when Pat Robertson succeeded in converting and heavily southern and western mass constit- his presidential campaign organization into the uency of conservatism had, as its spokesmen, Christian Coalition. Here, for the first time Catholic and Jewish , most of them since World War II, was the stable infrastruc- Ivy League-educated Northeasterners. This was ture of a Protestant right with real clout. The no accident, as the Marxists say; the success of institutions and the leaders of the older Catholic Buckley and his allies in discrediting the John and Jewish conservatives suddenly became Birch in the early 1960s effectively superfluous. Pat Robertson spoke the language wiped out the major rival for the leadership of of the conservative masses more authentically conservative white Protestant Americans. than Bill Buckley or Irving Kristol (to say Though the Birchers probably reflected the nothing of Her Majesty's loyal subject John views of the conservative base more faithfully O'Sullivan). Who needs the Philadelphia Soci- than people like Buckley or Kristol, the leaders ety when you can have the Christian Coalition? of the Catholic right and the Jewish right Who needs Firing Line when you can watch became the only respectable spokesmen for The 700 Club and ? conservatism. Now that the hitherto silent majority of white The disparity in social origins between the evangelical Protestant conservatives has found conservative base and the conservative elite its own leaders, the Catholic and Jewish (and became even more pronounced in the 1980s, mainline Protestant and secular) conservatives which saw a great influx of Thatcherite British are at a loss. They have lost an , and not journalists and policy analysts and other yet found a role. Some of them, like R. foreigners into the upper ranks of American , have more or less abandoned conservatism. One Englishman, Stuart Butler, serious politics altogether for sensational and became the chief social policy thinker of the lucrative tabloid . A more typical Heritage Foundation; another, John O'Sulli- response—exemplified by and

WINTER • 1995 • 43 Intellectual Conservatism

William Kristol —has been to seek out a new sions. (They are, perhaps, more hypocritical, role for Catholic and Jewish intellectuals as though: the conservative leadership is full of sec- middlemen between the uncouth fire-and- ular recommending for other brimstone Protestant evangelicals and the world people, closeted homosexuals condemning "al- of serious journalism, policy, and scholarship. ternative lifestyles," and divorcees and adulter- The task of the go-between is to formulate a ers praising marriage and family.) The corrup- compromise language, a set of ambiguous code tion of the conservatives has involved, rather, the words, which can win the fundamentalists over sacrifice of intellectual standards. to the GOP without alarming the moderate One reason is nepotism. Anyone spending any majority. Thus, "pro-family" as a euphemism time in conservative circles in Washington or for "antigay," and "cultural elite" as a code in the past decade has constantly run word for what more pungently across what Charlotte Allen dubbed the "mini- called "eggheads" and "pointyheads." But this cons," the children or nieces or nephews of em- is image-laundering, not thinking. Indeed, the inent conservatives—little Podhoretzes and Kris- careers of Bennett and the younger Kristol are tols, as well as junior Buckleys and Weyrichs. part of the history, not of American thought, An intellectual movement that hopes to endure but of American public relations. must constantly replenish itself by recruiting the best outside talent and relentlessly purging its ranks of mediocrities. Instead, the leaders of con- The eagerness with which most intellectual con- servatism turned the magazines and institutions servatives have embraced this degrading new role of the right, like the Moonie-controlled Wash- as image consultants for Protestant fundamental- ington Times and various think tanks, into pa- ists took me and many other former conserva- tronage dumps for their offspring and in-laws. tives by surprise. A few years ago, I rather na- The best jobs tended to go to direct lineal de- ively expected the National Review conservatives scendants, minicons proper; a second tier of po- and the neocons to close ranks, to prevent the sitions was occupied by friends of the minicons takeover of the Republican party by the funda- (usually, their roommates at Harvard or wher- mentalists, whose leaders (not their voters) would ever). The bottom tier tended to be reserved for be sent packing like the Birchers. Remember, at a mudsill class of wealthy and dense Young Re- the beginning of the decade there were signs of a publicans. It is no accident that the most impres- purge of the far right by the center-right. Midge sive of the younger conservative intellectuals, Decter accused of anti-Semitism, Dinesh D'Souza, was an outsider, an immigrant and Bill Buckley more subtly suggested that from India. Even he owed his rise in part to the Patrick Buchanan was guilty of the same of- fact that he was a friend, at Dartmouth, of Ben fense. The "paleoconservatives" of Chronicles Hart, son of long-time National Review editor broke off and formed their own far-right organi- Jeff Hart. Irving Kristol's son William, Dan zation, the John Randolph Society. Neocons railed Quayle's former chief of staff, has been trying to against the conservatism of "the fever swamps." position himself as heir to the leadership of the Only a few years later, however, the fusionists movement. and neocons had themselves adopted "fever Hereditary political aristocracies are not swamp" themes, like the so-called "" unknown to the left of center—think of the and the claim that homosexuals are trying to de- various Kennedys and Galbraiths. The neocon- stroy family, , and Western civilization. servative intellectual movement might have After Bush lost in 1992, the center-right quickly survived this sacrifice of meritocracy to family became indistinguishable from the far right. values. It could not, however, survive its In hindsight, I failed to realize just how cor- corruption by excessive partisanship in the rupt the conservative leadership had become. I service of the Republican party. don't mean personally corrupt; as , The conservatives, one can argue, tried to take the conservatives are no better or worse than in- over the wrong party after 1955. In many ways, tellectuals or activists of other political persua- the Democratic party would have made a more

44 • DISSENT Intellectual Conservatism natural home for conservatives than the Repub- ously —even scoffed at them. licans. This is not as crazy as it sounds. The Ominously, for the first time, a theory that most discrediting and political demise of the southern serious intellectuals on the right did not believe segregationists in the 1960s left a void on the became the official doctrine of the conservative right wing of the Democratic party that a nonra- movement, because it served the narrow short- cist conservative movement (anticipating the Dem- term interests of an important Republican con- ocratic Leadership Conference) might have filled. stituency, the rich. Conservatism would have had to make its peace Once critical thinking had been abandoned with the —but that should not have as a threat to the program of massive tax cuts been all that difficult for a Catholic-influenced for the super-rich, further sacrifices of rigor American version of European Christian Democ- and empiricism became easy. By the mid- racy, with a strong base in the unionized working eighties, conservatives were dismissing very classes of the Northeast (who tend to be more serious objections to the practicability of conservative in morals than the business and pro- space-based strategic defenses as "liberal" fessional classes). First-generation conservative (as though there were "liberal" thinkers like Russell Kirk, , physics and "conservative" physics). As stan- and had little use for laissez- dards of evidence sank, conservative journals faire and were comfortable with the opened their pages to previously marginal ideas idea of a conservative . Conserva- and thinkers. National Review debated the tism would have had far more influence as the question of whether Shakespeare's plays had theory of the dominant wing of the dominant been written by the Earl of Oxford. In the party, and defending congressional prerogatives once-moderate Public Interest, editor Irving against presidential Caesarism (a staple of con- Kristol published a rave review of a book by servative theory in the 1950s) would have been Richard Epstein, a legal theorist who argues more compatible with conservative constitution- that most federal laws against racial discrimina- alism than apologizing for the imperial preroga- tion are unconstitutional—a view formerly tives of a succession of Republican presidents. associated with the Society rather If conservatizing the Democrats was ever an than the neocons. Another Public Interest option, it was foreclosed by the " author argued that the solution to the crime Goldwater" movement, by Nixon's southern problem is for everyone to own a gun. strategy, and the defection, one by one, of the Then there is "creation ." The silence Democrats who remained conservative to the of serious conservative intellectuals in the face GOP. As the conservative movement and the of fundamentalist campaigns to force public Republican party became identified, conserva- schools to teach the book of Genesis in geology tive doctrine began to be cut and stretched to and biology classes has completely discredited accommodate the short-term needs of Republi- the claim of conservatives to be defenders of can coalition strategy. The debates over first objectivity and empirical scholarship against principles that made National Review-type politicization. How can intellectual conserva- conservatism lively in the 1950s and 1960s, tives credibly attack Afrocentrists for distorting and interesting in the 1970s, history while passing in silence over efforts to gave way to united-front solidarity on a teach American children that the dinosaurs growing number of issues important to this or lived with Adam and Eve in the Garden of that wing of the Republican party, from tax Eden and drowned in Noah's Flood? Even cuts to the outlawing of . worse, National Review, Commentary, and First Things have actually run essays attacking evolutionary theory and espousing "guided The point of no return, in my view, came with evolution," "creation science," and similar the adoption of support for supply-side econom- nonsense. Who would have thought that, at the ics as a litmus test for true-blue conservatism. No end of the twentieth century, the remnants of first-rate economist took the supply-siders seri- the would be refighting

WINTER • 1995 • 45 Intellectual Conservatism the Scopes Trial—from the point of view of was in desperate need of a revolutionary renova- William Jennings Bryan? tion from within the ranks, as well as an invig- Kookiness has been joined by complacency. orating transfusion of outside talent. At the very Instead of exploring plausible conservative least, there needed to be a searching reconsider- solutions to genuine problems, the right began ation of first principles, a questioning of dogmas to deny that problems existed at all. What like supply-side economics and hypocrisies like pollution problem? What overpopulation prob- the lip service paid to criminalizing abortion. lem? What secondhand smoke problem? What Such a free and frank debate within falling American wages? What health care conservatism, however, was made impossible crisis? Conservatism—which historically has by the dependence of the journals of the right tended to be pessimistic—in recent years has on foundation money. One by one, every become strangely Panglossian, adopting, as it leading neoconservative publication or think were, the motto of Mad magazine's Alfred E. tank over the past decade has come to depend Neumann—"What, me worry?" on money from a few foundations—Olin, One aspect of conservative complacency has Smith-Richardson, Bradley, Scaife. Many were been a growing toleration of the vicious lunatic started in the first place by seed money from fringe. The "no enemies to the right" policy has the foundations. Inevitably, this has promoted been symbolized in recent years by annual conser- groupthink. The foundations are the chief vative "summits" in Washington—small, private reason that Commentary sounds more and more dinners bringing together people like Bill Buckley, like , which sounds so much Irving Kristol, , Charles Krau- like the new Public Interest. thammer, and the far-right activist . It is not that there is some centralized At one of these meetings, Weyrich circulated a conspiracy imposing a party line. By and large, proposal (which I have held and read) that the the program officers of the foundations, though federal government secretly lace illegal drugs with partisan, sincerely believe in debate among substances like rat poison and release them into conservatives. They do not deliberately impose the black market. Drug addicts would be more an orthodoxy. They do not have to. The editors easily identified and punished, Weyrich reasoned, tend to censor themselves, for fear of appearing if, in public, they went into sudden convulsions. "liberal" and losing that critical annual grant. None of the other conservative leaders at the meet- There are a few honorable exceptions—the ing walked out in protest, or insisted that this man National Interest and the American Scholar be ostracized. On the contrary, at subsequent sum- continue to put the life of thought above the life mits Weyrich has been welcomed by the same of the party. For the most part, though, instead conservatives who criticize the NAACP for meet- of boldly attacking falsehoods wherever they ing with Farrakhan. are found, conservative editors tend to print Such latitudinarianism has become the norm. only what they believe will confirm the Bill Buckley recently appeared on television as prejudices of the program officers. an ally of Pat Robertson, who in print has The addiction to foundation dollars has accused the Council on Foreign Relations—an reinforced the disastrous "no enemies to the organization to which Buckley belongs, and to right" policy. The last thing the foundations which he successfully nominated me—of being want is for one set of grantees to criticize the a secret instrument of Satan's plot to destroy policy views or intellectual standards of other America and condemn most of humanity to grantees. The major conservative foundations eternal damnation. Call me sensitive, but I ended their support of Chronicles a few years resent that. back when its editors got into a spat with Richard John Neuhaus and the neocons — a lesson that has not been lost on other By the late 1980s, the conservative movement, conservative grantees. drifting into crankiness and complacency under In addition to reinforcing groupthink, the ad- the control of a small number of elderly men, diction to foundation money has also led to the

46 • DISSENT Intellectual Conservatism lowering of intellectual standards. After all, if you, In this way, bit by bit, a number of once- the editor, turn down a piece by a mediocrity or interesting intellectual journals on the right have crackpot who is a friend of a program officer, this degenerated into newsletters for Chamber of Com- could have consequences. Once too many Repub- merce Republicans, creationists, and elderly cur- lican hacks start moving into a journal or a think mudgeons denouncing the music that young peo- tank, serious thinkers and their audiences go else- ple listen to nowadays. where. A cycle of decline is set in motion. With Eventually there may be a revival of serious foundation money comes the implicit imperative to thought on the political right, but this seems avoid questioning partisan pieties—but this very unlikely for at least a generation. For the avoidance of controversy sends intellectuals away, foreseeable future, American conservatism will even as it attracts true believers (the truer they are, be defined by the fundamentalist/tabloid right, the crankier). As third-rate zealots gradually re- with its program of making centrist and liberal place first-rate thinkers and intelligent readers, the Christians, Jews, and secular Americans, beleaguered editor places the blame for the decline working women, nonwhite Americans, gay of his journal's prestige on the "liberals," the "me- dia elite," the "cultural elite" —anyone but himself men and lesbians, and intellectuals scapegoats and his sponsors. for the serious problems afflicting American society (problems for which the conservatives I have worked with for a decade have no plausible answers). The new Radical Right of Pat Robertson and , which sets the agenda for trimmers like William Bennett and William Kristol, has more in common with the pre-World War II right of Father Coughlin and than with the intellectual conservatism of the decades after the war. The Radical Right has no arguments, only hatreds. Today, as always, it is possible to be an American intellectual who is politically conser- vative. But conservatism as an intellectual movement in the United States is dead. ❑

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