Make-Beleive Conservatism. National Review isn't Right.

The roots of National Review’s pseudo-conservatism extend back no more than fifty years, to National Review’s own founding and the beginning of William F. Buckley’s career as a writer not long before that. The roots of LewRockwell.com's conservatism, on the other hand, can be found in H.L. Mencken and Albert Jay Nock, and beyond them all the way back to the Anti-Federalists and the Founding Fathers. George Washington's farewell address, with its appeal for free trade and admonitions against interventionism abroad, reads more like something off of this site than something that might be found in the pages of National Review.

Mencken and Nock certainly weren't typical conservatives for their day. Most conservatives of the 1920s or 1930s distrusted them. They had moral, religious, and cultural committments that Mencken didn't respect. There certainly is a place in American politics for Mencken's cynicism and antinomianism, but making it the centerpiece of our thinking would be a mistake.

Surely the Washington and the Framers of the Constitution strongly disagreed with the Anti-Federalists. Lumping them together as one tradition is at best misleading and at worst false. George Washington and the other Framers believed in limited government, but I can't imagine them having much sympathy for those who openly proclaim themselves to be "anti-state". Limited government is not anarchy or statelessness, nor is conservatism.

Washington's Farewell Address does recommend non-intervention, limited government and general freedom of trade, but Washington was nowhere near as dogmatic as today's Rockwellites. I supect that if we'd had Rockwellites in Washington's day they'd slam him the way they attack other political leaders, siding with the Whisky Rebellion, rather than with the elected government.

McCarthy is right that National Review Conservatism is a post-WWII creation. It was developed to confront the realities of the Cold War. Whether those realities apply today is open to debate, but the origins of NR conservatism don't in themselves make it illegitimate. In retrospect, we might also see contemporary libertarianism more as a creation of our day, than as a true descendant of earlier philosophies.

McCarthy is intriguing when he depicts National Review conservatism as a synthesis of negative aspects of British and American conservatism. That idea is definitely worth considering, though whether what's combined is really the worst aspects of both cultures is debatable.

McCarthy is on much shakier ground when he casts Rockwellism as true conservatism. Rockwellites are far more amenable to anarchy and far more dismissive of government than any conservative can be. Go back to Edmund Burke and you see a conservative, a lover of liberty, and a man who, in his mature years, was no friend to anarchy or disorder.

There is something contrived and flimsy about the Rockwellites' mixture of anarchism or anarcho-capitalism with the traditional conceptions of religion, tradition and patriotism. It makes some people feel good, but the conflicts between anarchic libertarianism and traditional morality may be too strong to bridge.

McCarthy's charge that neocons "have no patriotism themselves; their loyalty is to an ideology" is a cheap shot worthy of Frum's own smears. It is true that the neocons do seem to have more committment to the idea of America than to the actual people who live here. This comes out in their enthusiasm for immigration. But isn't this preference for the ideal ideological country over the real one a problem for all ideologies? Don't we all have a problem coming to terms with a country that gave FDR and LBJ big majorities and put Clinton in the White House twice?

Military intervention overseas does sharpen the contrast between the ideal and real nation, but one can make the same criticism of the Rockwellites. Rothbard's enthusiasm for leftists who could defeat moderate conservatives and Rockwell's passion for secession and insurrection look to be examples of the same passion for the ideal over the real. Learning to love one's country both as it is and as one thinks it ought to be is more complicated than McCarthy lets on. Charges over who is patriotic and who isn't heat the blood but contribute little to resolving the questions at issue.

The genealogy McCarthy celebrates isn't the only possible one for an American conservatism. I certainly wouldn't say that the Federalists or Whigs are the true models for contemporary conservatism, but they certainly aren't to be dismissed out of hand. Their realism about human nature, public spiritedness, and committment to the national interest are also to be commended. They did much to curb the excesses of Jeffersonian and Jacksonian radicalism, not that those Jeffersonians and Jacksonians hesitated to use government power themselves when it was in their own best interests. One shouldn't ignore their contribution or demonize them.

It's always possible to grab onto a radical political tradition, and claim a true line of descent. Facing the troubles of the day and doing the right thing for the country and its people is harder. It doesn't provide such stark contrasts and clear lines. But it's worth more in the long run. I don't think National Review does that, at least not lately, but if they did, I wouldn't hesitate to support them over the Rockwellites.

Finally, "Wilsonian" is a word that has to be used with caution. Maybe it shouldn't be used at all. What does it refer to? Wilson's reliance on international rules and desire to keep us out of war? His subsequent endorsement of a crusading "war to end wars" or "war to make the world safe for Democracy"? The olive branch he extended to Germany? Or his willingness to starve that country into submission? His faith in international institutions and agreements? His intervention in Russia? His idealistic plan for peace? His unwillingness to compromise on matters of principle? Or the compromises, and betrayals that he eventually endorsed? It's not clear just who is Wilsonian and who isn't and what the opposite of "Wilsonian" is.

I agree, but don't forget that David Frum feels the same way.

That is precisely the issue. While reading the NR/LRC debate over this Frum piece, a reoccurring situation is evident. Both sides are quite fond of name calling and personal attacks, both know the other side does this, and neither appears to be aware of their own participation. Of that third characteristic, it is my observation that the NR crowd is especially guilty (though both are to some degree). LRC writers criticize the name calling on the other side, but they are generally aware of their own bombastic nature in their writings. The NR people do not seem to be aware though that they are acting just as bad, if not worse, and they're among the first to whine about it when they become the targets.

Good point, though Lew Rockwell also describes as conservatives the southern Democrats who killed 400,000 U.S. troops in the 1860s.

If you read the historical documents of the time, you will find that the southerners were normally referred to as the ideological conservatives of the period. The newspapers identified them as the conservatives and they referred to themselves as conservatives. They also referred to the yankee factions as liberals and radicals.

As for those 400,000 troops, they were only shot because they were charging at the people who shot them with bayonets and arms intended for the exact same purpose in the reciprocal.

it would just help getting more people posting who are focused on the issues.

Most of the people on these kind of threads have their own "issues". They are called agendas. These people go from thread to thread and try to change the topic from whatever it is, to their own pet agenda. No matter how much of a stretch.

He's a post-Vatican II Catholic, not a Traddie. Your response itself sounds awful bitter.

Considering that Neoconservatism began in the 1960's by opponents to the New Deal, you are plain delusional in your idol list.

As far as "Former Trotskyites", the previous edition of TAC had an article calling for anti-War commies to join the anti-war right.

Actually, I part ways with the American Conservative when it comes to forming alliances with the Left. It is a futile endeavor that failed the first time when Murray Rothbard tried to unite the Old Right and the New Left.