Why Intellectual Conservatism Died
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Michael Lind WHY INTELLECTUAL CONSERVATISM DIED The collapse of intellectual conserva- of Martin Luther King, Jr.; in 1994, Charles tism in America has been as complete as it 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 George Will; 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 economics; 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, the Public Interest 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 the National Interest, commentary on the sexual practices of the published by Irving Kristol, as a research ancient Greeks and Chinese by a California assistant for William F. Buckley, Jr., and as a radio talk show host, Dennis Prager. 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 National Review. 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 Barry Goldwater 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 discrimination against gay Americans. In the eighties, Peter Berger and Richard John Neuhaus 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 war. 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- First Things, 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 "culture 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 Owen Harries's National ing the United States, 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 Arnaud de Borchgrave, edited the conserva- had less to do with geopolitics than with tive daily, the Washington Times (itself con- domestic politics. By far the most important trolled by Korean would-be messiah Reverend factor has been a process well under way Sun Myung Moon). 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 Rupert Murdoch (Australian) and Conrad Black 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 cult 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 intellectuals, 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 Society 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 Rush Limbaugh? 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 empire, and not journalists and policy analysts and other yet found a role. Some of them, like R. foreigners into the upper ranks of American Emmett Tyrrell, 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 journalism. A more typical Heritage Foundation; another, John O'Sulli- response—exemplified by William Bennett 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 Jews recommending Christianity 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 New York in the past decade has constantly run word for what George Wallace 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.