Re: There's A Surprise

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What about Hayek?


Posted by: PerfectlyGoddamnDelightful | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 8:51 AM
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Hayek has the problem that socialist Western Europe has stubbornly failed to become a totalitarian charnelhouse, no?


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 8:53 AM
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Give it time.


Posted by: Flippanter | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 8:53 AM
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But in reference to Levy, he was actually looking for American books, so Hayek's out on those grounds.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 8:54 AM
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2, 3: Once the Islamic hordes take over Europe (probably next October), you'll see it.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 8:55 AM
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This is such a no-brainer. Obviously Jonah Goldberg has written the definitive classic of modern American conservatism.


Posted by: Mary Catherine | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 8:57 AM
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Mary Catherine, what about Michelle Malkin's book?


Posted by: TJ | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 9:08 AM
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Milton Friedman, "Free to Choose"


Posted by: PerfectlyGoddamnDelightful | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 9:09 AM
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"Losing Ground", Charles Murray


Posted by: PerfectlyGoddamnDelightful | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 9:11 AM
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8: Levy was looking for political philosophy, not econ, and for conservative thought, not libertarianism.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 9:13 AM
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The guiding principles of many of today's Republican leaders are easier to find than ever, with Google so intuitive to use, and this essential book now in public domain and on a handy website.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 9:19 AM
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10: Which is the major problem. Whereas a decent amount of Friedman's stuff has at least held up fairly well, I can't imagine any philosophy aging well when its attitude toward social or political change is to be dragged into the future kicking and screaming. Things always change, and the same status quo bias that causes many to fear and disdain the changes then causes them to take the new status quo for granted, and see the old ways and any philosophy defending them as fairly daft.


Posted by: Po-Mo Polymath | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 9:19 AM
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9: I'd call that social "science", not philosophy, no? It's the difference between an argument saying "I share all of the goals of liberal policy makers; I merely argue with them about the best methods for achieving those goals," and "these principles define why I, as a conservative, am philosophically distinct from liberals/leftists/progressives -- even if the best practices for achieving policy goals were perfectly knowable and known, we would still differ in the ways I describe herein."


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 9:20 AM
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Only if conservatives were to accept the liberal notion of a plastic and educable human nature, were IOW to agree with the Rosseau and the Enlightenment, would conservatism need new works to meet new conditions and environments. Otherwise, as was the understanding for 1500 years, the Classics are sufficient not only in their arguments but in themselves. When we recognize Iraq-in-Syracuse not much more needs be said.

So the Bible and Thucydides, and honest observation, suffice for us as they did for Hobbes.


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 9:22 AM
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Be careful, bob. Write like that and Scaife's going to forcibly give you a grant or something.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 9:26 AM
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"Losing Ground", Charles Murray

Or Of Happiness and Good Government which, if nothing else, has a better title.


Posted by: NickS | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 9:27 AM
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There's also the issue that most of the people who like to read the conservative philosophers are pasty, prematurely balding dorks, while some of the people who like to read the Eurotrash scribblers are girls in the Literature department who may be inclined to have sex with you.

Uh, I hear.


Posted by: Flippanter | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 9:28 AM
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The Closing of the American Mind was quite the bestseller, but is probably too weird to make any of the lists. Besides, its author was Teh Gay.


Posted by: Anderson | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 9:29 AM
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However, if you want more, I recommend Against the Masses by Joseph Femia, which summarizes and attempts to refute anti-democratic thought from Burke to T S Eliot and beyond. I thought he tied Nietzsche too closely to the fascists, but for the most part Femia was fair to the various enemies of democracy and their arguments.


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 9:32 AM
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13: I'd argue that Murray's quarrel with the welfare state is pretty basic. He would argue that increasing dependency on government can never have positive effects, although you're right that he would potentially be open to empirical refutation. If that is your criteria for social science, then OK. But lots of political philosophers have had an empirical dimension.

In terms of libertarianism vs. "traditionalist" conservatism -- I'm not sure if that distinction can be made in the U.S. so easily, especially post Civil Rights movement (Southern "lost cause" types were a big stronghold of traditionalism). Hasn't post-WWII U.S. conservatism always been pretty libertarian at core? The traditionalists have been a rump who went along because they considered the government more of a threat to traditional values than capitalism.

Anti-communist foreign policy was of course big too...what about reading Whittaker Chambers?

I thought traditional conservatism in Europe was tied to feudalism and institutionalized Catholicism, neither of which were American institutions. It's just a different politics.


Posted by: PerfectlyGoddamnDelightful | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 9:32 AM
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What about Whitaker Chambers? It's been a while since I've descended into that particular morass, but he's listed as required reading by modern conservatives, and I don't remember any major racial biases there.


Posted by: tw | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 9:34 AM
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link in 17 is hilarious.


Posted by: PGD | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 9:35 AM
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In terms of libertarianism vs. "traditionalist" conservatism -- I'm not sure if that distinction can be made in the U.S. so easily, especially post Civil Rights movement (Southern "lost cause" types were a big stronghold of traditionalism). Hasn't post-WWII U.S. conservatism always been pretty libertarian at core? The traditionalists have been a rump who went along because they considered the government more of a threat to traditional values than capitalism.

Isn't that kind of the point? The political appeal/voting power of the Republican coalition is largely traditionalist conservatives rather than libertarians, but there's not a whole lot of intellectual underpinning to the movement.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 9:38 AM
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What about Hayek?

Yeah, Jacob could assign Hayek's Why I Am Not A Conservative.


Posted by: Gonerill | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 9:39 AM
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Maybe MacIntyre. He's complicated, too, because of the influence of Marx on his thinking.


Posted by: Gonerill | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 9:43 AM
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Robert Fulghum wrote the definitive book for conservative political thought.


Posted by: Will | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 9:44 AM
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Professors and students, it can be purchased here:

http://www.amazon.com/Really-Need-Know-Learned-Kindergarten/dp/034546639X


Posted by: Will | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 9:45 AM
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I don't think Fulghum himself was conservative, was he?


Posted by: Flippanter | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 9:45 AM
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I hate airport delays, btw. Conservatives and liberals alike can find common ground in the fact that getting delayed, missing your connection, and so on, are a pain in the behind. Also a pain: the fact -- explicable only in terms of accidental historical lock-in -- that there are still major U.S. universities on the North Eastern seaboard, where the weather is crap this time of year.


Posted by: Gonerill | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 9:47 AM
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25: If Macintyre counts, then what about Christopher Lasch? It's not clear to me that these guys are conservatives in an American 20th-century conservative movement sense.


Posted by: Mary Catherine | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 9:50 AM
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an American 20th-century conservative movement sense.

Sure, you're right. I'm not sure what Jacob is looking for exactly -- if it's just 20c American Political Reactionaries, then he's going to be stuck for quality.


Posted by: Gonerill | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 9:53 AM
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I'm sort of a traditionalist conservative in a lot of ways, though I've changed over the years. What little I understand of Burke I find intuitively attractive. I don't much like revolutions, and I like to keep and work with the institutions from the past that are good. The wisdom of past experience going back more than a couple of generations shouldn't be discounted, in my view.

Like PGD, that means that I find the Radical Republicans utterly distasteful and profoundly unconservative, but that's a point about practical politics, not political philosophy. Sadly, I'm too ignorant of the latter (I haven't even read Rawls) to make any statements about 20th century philosophical texts.

Is it possible that there's more conservative thought in jurisprudence? Ronald Dworkin is considered a crazy liberal by right-wingers, but a lot of his thinking seems fairly conservative compared to the activist liberal judges of an earlier era. (That's a coded word, but I do think that there was a time when judges were much more likely to try to do policy stuff and spend a lot of time reviewing administrative details.)


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 9:53 AM
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the North Eastern seaboard, where the weather is crap this time of year.

Unlike the Midwest and Great Lakes region! *glares out window*


Posted by: redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 9:54 AM
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Here is the Femia Amazon page. Pareto, Machiavelli, Gramsci

Femia homepage.

I found Pareto & the Italian Classical Elitists/Futilists with their "Iron Law of Oligarchies" the most convincing, tho I have to study Weber.


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 9:54 AM
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The Closing of the American Mind was quite the bestseller, but is probably too weird to make any of the lists.

Ah, yes. Who could forget this classic example of the conservative worldview?

The culmination of our vast technology is a pubescent child whose body throbs with orgasmic rhythms, whose feelings are made articulate in hymns to the joys of onanism or the killing of parents; whose ambition is to win fame and wealth by imitating the drag-queen who makes the music.


Posted by: Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 9:55 AM
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Almost all of the country has crap weather for some big chunk(s) of the year, seems to me.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 9:58 AM
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I had to read a chapter of The Closing of the American Mind about teh depravity of rock music for my Freshman Expository writing class. We were supposed to write papers on the rhetoric of the debates over arts funding. It was kind of interesting, because Quincy Jones' daughter was in the class.

I think taht my teacher was a neocon, because he really liked the New Criterion a lot, but I don't think that this ever infected his foreign policy opinions. Who knows what Hilton Kramer thinks about the war in Iraq?


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 10:00 AM
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It's silly to exclude Milton Friedman if you're looking for an example of conservative political philosophy from the last half century. Principles of neo-classical economics have been indisputably central to conservative political thought. He's clearly the most influential guy in that genre, and he's accessible to non-economists.


Posted by: Dan | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 10:02 AM
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Who knows cares what Hilton Kramer thinks about the war in Iraq?

The kind of person who really, really likes the Pre-Raphaelites?


Posted by: Flippanter | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 10:03 AM
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baa, oh baa, why have you forsaken us?


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 10:04 AM
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link in 17 is hilarious.

"Kristol was known as "Dan Quayle's brain" when he served as that vice president's chief of staff."

So that's his problem.

Levy writes: "there's no modern work to teach alongside Theory of Justice and Anarchy, State, and Utopia that really gets at what's interesting about Burkean or social conservatism."

My impression is that 20 gets it right, mostly. There never have been that many "traditionalist" American conservatives; anarchic, capitalist, or God-bothering are three flavors of American conservatism. The Agrarians come to mind, Henry Adams, maybe, if you stretch the definition, and various Antebellum southern writers who will be unpalatable for obvious reasons.


Posted by: Populuxe | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 10:09 AM
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39: That was a rhetorical question. Indeed, who cares?


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 10:11 AM
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#35. I still have a soft spot for The Closing of the American Mind and paragraphs like that one are the reason why.


Posted by: Populuxe | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 10:13 AM
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And then there's Santayana. Have we forgotten Santayana?


Posted by: Populuxe | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 10:15 AM
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33, 36: there are, however, few occasions in the North-East when the environment will actually try hard to kill you and destroy everything you have built. Compare the South-East (hurricanes), the Mid-West (tornadoes), the mountain states (blizzards), the North-West (volcanoes) and California (earthquakes). The worst that New England will do to you is make you cold and/or wet. This means that philosophers in the older universities need to devote less time to the brute demands of survival and more time to Dip Tinking.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 10:24 AM
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ajay, what's Dip Tinking?


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 10:26 AM
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Have we forgotten Santayana?

The guy who did the rock version of Oye como va?

BG, it's what central European philosophers indulge in.


Posted by: OneFatEnglishman | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 10:32 AM
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Say it out loud: Um a Dip Tinker Un Um Prood.


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 10:36 AM
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I started a comment, but then it got very long. So I posted it, here.

Short version: why shouldn't conservatives believe that the South gets to stay the South? And what about Samuel Huntington?


Posted by: Eric | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 10:38 AM
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I'm on vacation Tim!

It's a good topic. And levy is right that's there's basically no "conservative" equivalent of anarchy state and utopia or theory of justice. That said there's ambiguity over what is being asked for. If it's a book that serves as philoosphical grounding for the current republican party platform, then this is a hopeless task. Our domestic parties are compromises, not philosophivally monoliths -- so you'd have to go about explaining individual strands. Only a complete ignoramus would think the constellation of values his political party represents has unique philosophic justification. Can pro-market policies be philosophically justified? Can they be justified within the structure of a nation state which is more than a night watchman? The suspense is killing me.

On "conservatism," however, Oakeshott is really the man. The books are far too hard for an intro class, but his essay "On Being Conservative" is great. One thing it teaches is that *orientation towards change* is not, in most cases, a theoretical fundamental. That's why a *theory* of "standing athwart history yelling stop" is a non-starter (not to say that it couldn't be a sound political position at a given time, especially if History comes with a Marxist capital H).. Likewise, a theory which always embraces change for chnage's sake will be a bad theory, but may often make good politics. Progressives don't want us to "progress past" human equality.


Posted by: baa | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 10:57 AM
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Is there a particular book you'd recommend? I haven't read any Oakeshott. Whatever collection of essays includes "On Being Conservative", or something else?


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 11:02 AM
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Milton Friedman seems an eminently suitable choice to me - there's not much to modern American conservatism but economics, and some theology.


Posted by: Bruce Baugh | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 11:03 AM
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LB, see here.


Posted by: Eric | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 11:04 AM
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And as to Oakeshott:

To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss.

... which means that if you go in search of c20 American conservative thought, you really should find a principled defense of segregation. So why Levy rules that out, is beyond me.


Posted by: Eric | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 11:06 AM
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you really should find a principled defense of segregation.

Well, not now you shouldn't. Right now you should be looking for conservative defenses of limited uses of affirmative action in university education, shouldn't you? Because it's what we've got now, and the sky hasn't fallen as a result, and who knows what will happen if we change it?


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 11:15 AM
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Seriously, on glancing over the Oakeshott: while it's probably very sensible, it's not setting forth principles. It's conservativism as caution and restraint. And while there's nothing wrong with caution, there's no connection I can see between a general principle of caution and the actual politics of people who describe themselves as conservatives: Grover Norquist's 'drowning government in the bathtub' is hardly cautious.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 11:18 AM
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If you are trying to present a big picture of the American conservative movement, it would be irresponsible *not* to include defenses of segregation. Racial politics has always been a big part of the movement, and remains a part of it today. The failure of the Republicans to reach out to Hispanics, and the rise of the hysterical anti-immigration wing of the party is just further proof of that.

I suggest teaching the W.F. Buckley essay that everyone was quoting a few days back where he defends segregation, and include with it the 1989 interview with Terry Gross where he stands by what he said in that passage.


Posted by: rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 11:27 AM
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1989 interview with Terry Gross where he stands by what he said in that passage.

Oh, geez, I just listened to this -- they reran it when he died. "The existence of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People establishes that blacks weren't the advanced race" (paraphrased)? I was expecting Teri to break in with a "WTF"?


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 11:30 AM
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Conservativism is like Communism now -- they've put their worst representatives in power. They might as well do what the anti-Stalinist Left did after about 1932, and dedicate themselves to Kultur. Conservatives will be the Adornos and Rahvs of the future.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 11:30 AM
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If I remember my blogosphere history correctly, wasn't Holbo working on a similar project (finding coherent conservative non-libertarian philosophy) when he wrote his Dead Right review?


Posted by: washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 11:31 AM
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To be conservative is simply to fight for maintaining the status of the privileged. For the US today, it works out that in urban areas, the privileged are the monied, and in the rural areas, the privileged are those connected to a tight Christian religious network. In both areas, the privileged tend to be white, hetero, and male. When green alien unisex creatures take over and become the privileged class, fighting for anal probing freedom will be conservative.


Posted by: Peppi Orgon | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 11:31 AM
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44: Yes, and we're doomed to repeat him.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 11:33 AM
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But seriously, shouldn't Oakeshott-style conservativism be absolutely fickle on any policy matter? You name it, they're against it; if it gets enacted over their resistance, though, as soon as it turns out to have been even tolerably sustainable, they're opposed to changing it. That doesn't seem to actually describe anyone, but it seems to be where that type of 'conservative' should come out.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 11:35 AM
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63: Conservativism = The precautionary principle?


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 11:38 AM
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Levy has an update:

Update: Brad deLong says "cut the Gordian knot. THERE ARE NO ATTRACTIVE MODERN CONSERVATIVES BECAUSE CONSERVATISM SIMPLY IS NOT ATTRACTIVE. DEAL WITH IT!!" Lizardbreath at Unfogged calls this the "natural conclusion."

To this I say: feh. Scoring points is fun and all, but the point being scored here is entirely beside the, well, point. Brad has no difficulty finding classic teaching texts for views he considers unattarctive-- say, Marxism.

Take something like the standard syllabus of a post-1971 Justice course. theory of Justice; Anarchy, State, and Utopia; Liberalism and the Limits of Justice; Spheres of Justice; After Virtue; Justice, Gender, and the Family; Justice and the Politics of Difference; Liberalism, Community, and Culture; Political Liberalism. Does anyone find the political visions of all of those books attractive? Me, neither. I'm not sure how one could do so. But they're all teachable versions of major, intellectually serious arguments.

John Finnis' Natural Law and Natural Rights and Robert George's Making Men Moral are major, intellectually serious statements of a social conservatism I find deeply unattractive. But for current purposes my problem is not that they're unattractive, it's that they're unteachable-- pitched at too high a level, too drenched in literatures undergraduates in political theory courses won't have read, too Raz-ishly dense (and Raz is hardly teachable to undergraduatess in the first place).

Schmitt's Concept of the Political and Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy provide teachable, cogent, serious statements for a position I trust Brad finds "unattractive." So does Maistre. Why is it easier to find enduring reactionary texts than enduring texts that state the basic position of conservatives in liberal democracies? That's the puzzle.


Posted by: lemmy caution | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 11:39 AM
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58:

That interview was really astonishing. He also misquotes J.S. Mill, I think deliberately. Mill famously said that if only one person in the whole world holds a viewpoint, we are not justified in suppressing that view. Buckley has him saying that if one person on earth disagrees, you can't say you have knowledge.

There's also a great part where he talks about the fallacy of ignoratio elenchi as a technique for dodging questions, and then turns around and uses that very technique to dodge Terri's question about people who impersonate him.


Posted by: rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 11:40 AM
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But seriously, shouldn't Oakeshott-style conservativism be absolutely fickle on any policy matter?

I'm not sure it's any more fickle on policy over the short term than anything else; if anything, it seem much less fickle. Over the long term, sure, but every political orientation adopts to changing times. Conservativism's sin there seems to be cutting out the middle man theoretician.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 11:41 AM
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64: Ah, you've discovered the not so secret conservatism of the environmental movement!

The problem is that all attempts to formulate the precautionary principle in a way that is both rigorous and somehow more cautious than ordinary cost benefit analysis fail.

Amongst analytic philosophical environmentalists, the precautionary principle is really dead in the water.


Posted by: rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 11:43 AM
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67: What I meant is that it should be incapable of regretting past changes; it's not a philosophy that values the past because it was preferable, it's one that values the present because it's tolerable. An Oakeshottian conservative shouldn't ever want to change anything back after losing a political battle.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 11:46 AM
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Is the caution supposed to operate at the level of individual policies or at a more abstract level of principles supporting those policies?


Posted by: washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 11:54 AM
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Amongst analytic philosophical environmentalists, the precautionary principle is really dead in the water.

Well, duh. Isn't that what analytic philosophy is for?


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 11:59 AM
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69: But that seems, primarily, to set the terms of the debate. You don't want to change anything back if something is working, so you say it's not working. Or that it's working now, but will lead to doom--DOOM--in the future.

The same thing, it seems to me, happens on our side. We realize that we never really understood equality until, for example, we understood that neutral application of rules was either insufficient or impossible, so we would have to look elsewhere for it.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 12:02 PM
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Well, duh. Isn't that what analytic philosophy is for?

To kill caution or to kill ideas in general. (I might agree with the latter.)


Posted by: rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 12:07 PM
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You don't want to change anything back if something is working, so you say it's not working. Or that it's working now, but will lead to doom--DOOM--in the future.

But neither of those are Oakeshottian-conservative things to say. That doesn't mean that an O-con couldn't say them; there has to be an out for literally intolerable conditions. But to argue for change, on any basis, don't you have to (and I'd like an O-con to straighten me out here, although given that baa appears to be someplace with palm trees I'm not expecting heavy participation from him) say "Things are bad enough that I'm walking away from my conservative principles on this issue, and making a policy decision on some other basis." The argument for change can't be a conservative argument.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 12:07 PM
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74: I don't know about that. All I know about Oakshott is either from the bits of the previously linked work that I've skimmed, or inferred knowledge from other discussions. But this seems to allow for rollback:

If the present is arid, offering little or nothing to be used or enjoyed, then this inclination will be weak or absent; if the present is remarkably unsettled, it will display itself in a search for a firmer foothold and consequently in a recourse to and an exploration of the past; but it asserts itself characteristically when there is much to be enjoyed, and it will be strongest when this is combined with evident risk of loss.
That said, I'm working from the linked text, and that explicitly says it isn't intending to set out general principles while denying that such is impossible. So maybe not the most fruitful place for me to look for a response.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 12:28 PM
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75: Fair enough, but 'remarkably unsettled' has to do a lot of work there.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 12:32 PM
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76: Unlike liberals, conservatives don't hold hard work in low regard.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 12:34 PM
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Oooh, snap. But still, e.g., the Bush tax cuts should have, in an Oakshottian world, been justified with "In this remarkably unsettled and unsustainable economic climate we find ourselves in, in this year 2000, we need to change tax policy back to what it was in a stabler, happier time." And that kind of argument couldn't really be made with a straight face.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 12:38 PM
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73: The latter. How long did it take them to conclude that other minds exist AND that we know that other minds exist? The serious analytic treatment of any sybstantial political idea would take centuries. Probably after ten years the preliminary results and goals for the future could be published.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 12:40 PM
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the Bush tax cuts should have, in an Oakshottian world, been justified with "In this remarkably unsettled and unsustainable economic climate we find ourselves in, in this year 2000, we need to change tax policy back to what it was in a stabler, happier time." And that kind of argument couldn't really be made with a straight face

Could most of what Bush did be argued as "Conservative" with a straight face?


Posted by: CJB | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 12:44 PM
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And that kind of argument couldn't really be made with a straight face.

I think that you're radically underestimating what sorts of arguments can be made with a straight face, especially in light of the last seven years.

That said, what I know of Oakshott describes a disposition, not a set of ideas that undergird any argument advanced by an Oakshottian. To my knowledge, conservatives generally import those undergirding ideas from elsewhere. In particular, I tend to smell a fondness for Burke's (I think) "little platoons" everywhere.

I also should note that I do think the "Stop, History!" conservatives to find themselves in a bit of a quandry when, from cradle to near grave for most people still alive, the dominant political tradition has been a Democratic one.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 12:47 PM
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I think 61 wins the thread.


Posted by: PerfectlyGoddamnDelightful | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 12:48 PM
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Well, of course not if we're talking this sort of cautious conservativism, but I can't think of anyone 'conservative' in the American politics sense whose actions can be explained at all by this sort of conservativism.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 12:49 PM
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Here's something I've idly wondered: does it really make sense to classify Burke as a conservative? I don't know much about Burke (which is why it's idle wondering), but what little I do know doesn't seem terribly conservative. What is the case that he's a conservative? That he opposed the French Revolution? That he specifically disdained universal principles in favor of the particular? They seem weak evidence, when compared to the fact (IIRC) that he opposed British colonial depredations in India, and took up the case of the American colonists.

I suppose if you think of the progressivism/conservativism contrast as purely one of temperment, then maybe it makes sense to classify Burke that way.


Posted by: Walt Someguy | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 12:59 PM
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83: I think you're dismissing the conservative description of the world out of hand. Consider that:

* There is a many million man army of radical Islamofascists that wants to and has the capability to impose sharia law in the US.

* Millions of illegal aliens are streaming across the border and subverting our culture from within, while the government does nothing about it.

* The radical gay agenda has proceeded so far that eighth grade girls in OK cannot be trusted to go to the bathroom together lest they take up lesbianism.

Remarkably unsettled times indeed.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 1:01 PM
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Substanceless sniping is the quintessential aesthetic pleasure of the internet, and requires no apology.

The culmination of our vast technology is a pubescent child whose body throbs with orgasmic rhythms, whose feelings are made articulate in hymns to the joys of onanism or the killing of parents; whose ambition is to win fame and wealth by imitating the drag-queen who makes the music.

See, Allan Bloom says that like it's a *bad* thing.


Posted by: Anderson | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 1:13 PM
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I can't think of anyone 'conservative' in the American politics sense whose actions can be explained at all by this sort of conservativism

I think the problem is that there really aren't many conservatives in American politics. We call the Republican part conservatives, but I don't see how that is an accurate description of the party.


Posted by: CJB | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 1:14 PM
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Insofar as there are American conservative ideas, expecting politics out of them seems a bit like looking for virginal prostitutes. It's not a sustainable act.


Posted by: Bruce Baugh | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 1:17 PM
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61
When green alien unisex creatures take over and become the privileged class, fighting for anal probing freedom will be conservative.

I think Larry Craig would like to have a word with you.
/low-hanging fruit


Posted by: Cyrus | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 2:10 PM
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Threadjack! Help me!

I need an outside opinion as to whether one of my professors is unusually bad or just usually bad, and whether I have any cause to complain or not.

The class is on political institutions and whatnot, and while I've been known on occasion to refer to him as a douchebag, he does at least seem to know the material. My problem is that he's politically conservative, and doesn't seem to be able to keep that out of the class.

I know, I know: how ironic for a liberal like me on one of the most liberal Ivy League campuses to be complaining about conservative bias. I really have no problem with learning from someone with different political views, and I don't even mind that he makes them clear. I just think there's an appropriate degree to which a professor's political views should be manifest, and I'm not sure this guy is on the right side of appropriate.

For example, in today's class, on interest groups, he kept using abortion as his example, and describing the two sides as believing that abortion represents either "reproductive choice" or "murdering babies." I don't think it was too hard to tell which side he comes down on. (When he wasn't talking about abortion, he was going on and on about "big labor.")

It's not a big deal, but whenever he gives an example of a political scandal, or at least questionably ethical political behavior, he always gives an example of Democratic malfeasance.

Next week's class is on "the media," and the required reading list consists of:

1) a book written by the chair of our department (fine)
2) two (2) Wall Street Journal editorials about how blogs are bad, including one entitled "The Blog Mob: Written by Fools to be Read by Imbeciles"
3) this book, by a WorldNetDaily columnist

Am I wrong to think this is a little over the top? If he wants to do a class on media bias, couldn't he find a somewhat more academically respectable text? Say, one our university library actually has? Or if he wants to do dueling biases, assign this thing and something from the other side, at least.

Am I whining over nothing?


Posted by: mrh | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 3:22 PM
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No suggestions for readings, but I am fascinated by the overall problem as Levy poses it: how do you teach an idea that (pace baa) does seem fixed in assumptions that may have made sense at the time (if we give women the vote, society is DOOMED!) but seem hopeless out of touch now? It's not just that it has distasteful conclusions (I hope), but that it's hard to see where the problem was coming from in a way that still makes it relevant.

I know what I'd do in a history of philosophy class (Why is everyone so hung up on whether God exists? Whaddya mean reality comes in degrees? Well, class...), but it involves a lot of background and storytelling.


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 3:27 PM
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90.2: Send him here. That will set him straight.

You are not whining over nothing. It seems to me that the right thing to do is to come to class prepared to demolish the material without raising your voice. Although I also hear that this can be bad for careers in academia.


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 3:38 PM
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His comments in class are not over the line. I've certainly seen liberal professors who do more explicit advocacy in class.

I would be more concerned about the intellectual rigor of the readings he is giving. I don't know those works in particular, but gosh, WorldNetDaily is full of genuine kooks.

In general, it is hard to criticize professors for having viewpoints and advocating them. You can always criticize them for not reasoning well, though.


Posted by: rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 3:46 PM
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the intellectual rigor of the readings he is giving

This is, indeed, the thing that's bugging me most as I set out to buy this stupid book.


Posted by: mrh | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 3:51 PM
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54

"which means that if you go in search of c20 American conservative thought, you really should find a principled defense of segregation. So why Levy rules that out, is beyond me."

Perhaps for practical reasons. Can you present a defense of segregation on a typical US college campus without risking trouble with the PC police?


Posted by: James B. Shearer | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 4:03 PM
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Well, the PC police just aren't the same since they've had to buy their own body armor. Not nearly as scary, you know.


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 4:08 PM
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Speaking of bias in the classroom, I'm giving my kids a test on the use of emotive language in argument. Their task: take a passage of patriarchy blaming I've selected from Twisty Faster and state the argument in emotionally neutral terms.

Biased? Entertaining? The passage in question contains the term "horndoggitude"


Posted by: rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 03- 4-08 4:16 PM
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Wouldn't the existence of contemporary conservative classics constitute the self-cancellation of conservation? If conservatism is based on the idea that we don't need any new ideas, the old ideas and arrangements are fine, then the absence of contemporary books that aren't just rehashings is what one would expect. Conservatives are under no obligation to come up with lots of sophisticated new ideas. That's why conservatives tend to concentrate in traditional scholarship.


Posted by: bjk | Link to this comment | 03- 5-08 10:31 AM
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