Conservatives, Yesterday and Today

August 31, 2009 Think back to the spring of 1968. The U.S. is mired in Vietnam. The country is in turmoil. The sitting Democratic president abruptly pulls out of his campaign for reelection, and the leading conservative columnist of the day neither gloats nor does a victory dance.

We could chalk this up to the deterioration of civic discourse and the rise in political polarization (or is it the other way around?). But it's really part of a much more significant shift that has fractured the right side of the political spectrum.

The columnist in 1968 was, of course, William F. Buckley Jr., and on President Lyndon B. Johnson's abrupt withdrawal from the presidential race, he was nothing if not circumspect. Why? Because as a classic conservative, Buckley understood the importance of stability and found the "burn, baby, burn" drumbeat from the left, which had forced Johnson's decision, deeply unsettling.

In his column that week, Buckley opined that "instant guidance by the people of the government means instability, and instability is subversive of freedom." In other words, Johnson's withdrawal was too responsive. For Buckley, maintaining social order was of paramount importance, even if it meant helping to preserve the welfare state he deplored.

Sam Tanenhaus, book review editor at the New York Times (and Buckley's biographer), has just published a book exploring the right's shift from old-school classic conservatism to the revolutionary "movement conservatism" of today.

The short answer, of course, is that conservatism has been betrayed, that what we today call conservatism -- a politics of "grievance and resentment" -- isn't.

Just listen to the ruckus over healthcare. Are there problems with the Democrats' proposals? Absolutely.

Just listen to the ruckus over healthcare. Are there problems with the Democrats' proposals? Absolutely. But the tenor of criticism from so many on the right suggests they're more interested in destruction than resolution.

He thinks it would be "classic conservative" if we'd put forth a counter-proposal for government health care.

While we're in the middle of trying to stop Obamacare.

He obviously doesn't get it. We don't want a government monopoly on health care.

They call themselves conservatives, but the "I hope Obama fails" rhetoric of Rush Limbaugh is more reminiscent of the tantrum-throwing far left of the late 1960s than of classic conservatism.

Obama wants to get control of things he has no business controlling. I hope he fails too, because for America to succeed he has to fail.

Does this writer even know what "classic conservativism" is? Evidently not. Its just something he's thrown out there to trash the conservatives that are trying to stop this runaway train. With no help, I might add, from the LA Times.

It's not a stretch to say that the election of the first black president, as well as the deep economic recession, have challenged Americans' sense of self.

Uh, no. As always, its the Democrats who are the race obsessives. And its Democrats who will accuse anyone and everyone who disagrees with them of racism. Its all they've got. Are you opposed to the two trillion dollars that was flushed into the ether? Racist. Did you object to the fact that the bill was passed before it was even written? You're peddling grievance and resentment. No kidding.

Did you object to the president of the United States taking over the car industry? Racist. Did it bother you that he not only fired the president of GM but any car dealers he wanted to? Did it bother you that the car dealers who were fired had no recourse? Racist.

Did it bother you that he spent your money to buy up and destroy used cars, that he thought he had the right to destroy wealth, and does it bother you that he thought destroying wealth was good for the economy? Does it bother you that a man who has never balanced a budget or made a payroll is making decisions for every business in America?

You're suffering from status anxiety.

Does it bother you that O wants to delegate to himself the right to decide what medical treatment you deserve? A guy who has never worked in the medical field has injected himself into something he knows nothing about. Do you feel "negatively" about that? He swears that he isn't going to have a death panel, and you'll still have all the choices you had before he took it over, and it won't fund abortion. Does it bother you to have a president that never tells the truth, ever, not even once?

You're just seeking out an enemy to help reaffirm your own standing.

Its very difficult to have an intelligent conversation with people like this. Its almost not worth the agravation. Thats why at a certain point you just have to defeat them.

This sort of thing is a throwback to the arguments of a half-century ago. It's hard to look back on the last decade and say that conservatism has been a "destructive" anti-government movement. In the Bush era, conservatives and Republicans did and said far too little about growing goverment.

And it's not true that Buckley's conservative movement was classically Burkean in comparison to what we have today. Rather, the similarities are greater than the differences, and what was said by liberals then about Buckley isn't so very different from what Tanenhaus is saying now about Obama's opponents. Behind that view is liberals' desire for a conservatism that would simply be a mellower, less antsy liberalism, rather than one that takes on liberal ideas and policies and actually opposes them.

In fact, what's going on now isn't so very different from what was going on back in the Sixties. You have liberals making a big play for a larger federal government. There are a lot of Americans who support or don't see the problems with such an expansion. Conservatives see the dangers for the future, but others won't see the problems until they are right in front of them. So this leads to a good deal of frustration in conservatives, which is taken as resentment or ressentiment or some deep life-frustration, rather than the awkwardness of an era when the consequences of liberal ideas haven't yet become apparent to a wider public.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.