Posted on 08/16/2012 6:34:56 AM PDT by IbJensen
Orrin Judd links to a quote from Slate contributor Beverly Gage, a Yale history professor, who asks, “American conservatives have a canon. Why don’t American liberals?”
Ask Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan how he became a conservative and he’ll probably answer by citing a book. It might be Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Or perhaps he’ll come up with Friedrich Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, or even Barry Goldwater’s Conscience of a Conservative. All of these books are staples of the modern conservative canon, works with the reputed power to radicalize even the most tepid Republican. Over the last half-century, they have been vital to the conservative movement’s success–and to liberalism’s demise.
We tend to think of the conservative influence in purely political terms: electing Ronald Reagan in 1980, picking away at Social Security, reducing taxes for the wealthy. But one of the movement’s most lasting successes has been in developing a common intellectual heritage. Any self-respecting young conservative knows the names you’re supposed to spout: Hayek, Rand, Ludwig von Mises, Albert Jay Nock. There are some older thinkers too–Edmund Burke, for instance–but for the most part the favored thinkers come out of the movement’s mid-20th century origins in opposition to Soviet communism and the New Deal.
Liberals, by contrast, have been moving in the other direction over the last half-century, abandoning the idea that ideas can be powerful political tools.
Yes, I know. Jonah Goldberg explored that topic in-depth four years ago in Liberal Fascism, and earlier, in a preview of his then-book-in-progress, eight years ago at the Corner, where he first wrote on “the generalized ignorance or silence of mainstream liberals about their own intellectual history:”
Obviously this is a sweeping — and therefore unfair — generalization. But I read a lot of liberal stuff and have attended more than a few college confabs with liberal speakers speaking on the subject of liberalism itself. And it seems to me that liberals are intellectually deracinated. Read conservative publications or attend conservative conferences and there will almost always be at least some mention of our intellectual forefathers and often a spirited debate about them. The same goes for Libertarians, at least that branch which can be called a part or partner of the conservative movement.
Just look at the conservative blogosphere. There’s all sorts of stuff about Burke, Hayek, von Mises, Oakeshott, Kirk, Buckley, Strauss, Meyer, the Southern Agrarians, et al. I can’t think of a single editor or contributing editor of National Review who can’t speak intelligently about the intellectual titans of conservatism going back generations. I’m not saying everybody’s an expert, but I think everybody’s made at least the minimal effort to understand their intellectual lineage and I think that’s reflected in conservative writing, for good and for ill. I would guess that the same hold true about the gang over at Reason.
I just don’t get the sense that’s true of most liberal journalists. When was the last time you saw more than a passing reference to Herbert Croly? When was the last time you read an article or blog posting where a liberal asked “What would Charles Beard think of this?”
At Power Line today, Steve Heyward adds:
This is not a new question from liberals who look up long enough from their primal quest for power to ask whether their intellectual shelf is bare. A few years ago Martin Peretz wrote in The New Republic that “It is liberalism that is now bookless and dying. . . Ask yourself: Who is a truly influential liberal mind [on par with Niebuhr] in our culture? Whose ideas challenge and whose ideals inspire? Whose books and articles are read and passed around? There’s no one, really.” Michael Tomasky echoed this point in The American Prospect: “I’ve long had the sense, and it’s only grown since I’ve moved to Washington, that conservatives talk more about philosophy, while liberals talk more about strategy; also, that liberals generally, and young liberals in particular, are somewhat less conversant in their creed’s history and urtexts than their conservative counterparts are.”
Of course, Peretz was practically run out of TNR on a rail for being too center-right via numerous JournoList contributors — despite Peretz’s magazine serving as the farm team for numerous MSM publications. And an earlier generation of leftists destroyed the Middlebrow concept that attempted to make pop culture one to grown on. Similarly, today’s academy has denuded the study of history, seeing it as nothing but war and racism. All of which has led inexorably to our 44th president, David Gelernter (like Slate’s Gage, a Yale professor himself) writes in his new book America-Lite:
Everyone agrees that President Obama is not only a man but a symbol. He is a symbol of America’s decisive victory over bigotry. But he is also a symbol, a living embodiment, of the failure of American education and its ongoing replacement by political indoctrination. He is a symbol of the new American elite, the new establishment, where left-liberal politics is no longer a conviction, no longer a way of thinking: it is built-in mind-furniture you take for granted without needing to think.
As Gelernter adds, “How could thirty-plus years of educational malpractice not matter? It has already dyed the country a subtle shade of left, and the color will deepen every year.” Even if many on the left don’t know the wellspring of their ideas and are trapped in present-tense culture.
Update: I almost forgot that I employed a certain Mr. H. Roark (or “Coop,” as his friends call him) last month in response to Obama’s “You didn’t build that” Lakoffian sophistry; this seems the perfect post to bring him back again.
PIERS MORGAN, HOST: I suppose the fundamental debate that’s going to be had, though, will come down to whether the Republicans can sell to the American people that they are really concerned about jobs, about people’s livelihoods, and all the rest of it. If they’re also scratching the backs of their rich and wealthy members, which is clearly I think the flaw in the Ryan plan is that it just does. I mean, if you’re very wealthy, you’re going to be doing a lot better out of Paul Ryan than you would out of Barack Obama who believes fundamentally the rich should pay more tax.
NEWT GINGRICH: You know, I don’t want to sound disrespectful, but I do wonder sometimes if you guys all get off in a little club and learn a brand new mantra and then all repeat it mindlessly. The fact is, these kinds of things were said about Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan’s tax cut – which was developed by Jack Kemp who Paul Ryan worked for – Ronald Reagan’s tax cut raised more people to middle class status, took more people out of poverty, created more jobs.
Because “liberals” aren’t.
They are Marxists and Fascists that have labeled themselves as “liberals”.
Oh libs have their own cannon: Das Kapital, Rules for Radicals, Anything by Keynes, etc. etc.
“Over the last half-century, they have been vital to the conservative movement’s success–and to liberalism’s demise.”
Demise? THAT issue is still in doubt. We are in an ideological Stalingrad right now. There are many things I am willing to call the left, but finished is not one of them just yet.
“Over the last half-century, they have been vital to the conservative movement’s success–and to liberalism’s demise.”
Demise? THAT issue is still in doubt. We are in an ideological Stalingrad right now. There are many things I am willing to call the left, but finished is not one of them just yet.
Das Kapital
The Communist Manifesto
Rules for Radicals
et al...
Das Kapital
The Communist Manifesto
Rules for Radicals
et al...
People, including leftists, simply know that all those writings lead to tyranny, misery, and poverty.
The Left has Marx and Engels and Alinsky, but they are too chicken to cite these as their guiding lights. Then you have the current crop of knuckle-draggers at our universities who are too intellectually vapid to compete with Rand or Hayek.
It should be embarrassing to have Michael Moore, Spike Lee and Barak Obama heading one’s grandiose movement to save the world from capitalism.
For perspective on your thought, one need only remember that not one republican, or conservative for that matter won a state wide race in California. They continue to vote for the destruction of Detroit and we see others where the parasites have taken control of areas for good. Finished? Hardly.
“WHY IS THERE NO LIBERAL AYN RAND: ALWAYS THE LAST TO KNOW “
*******************************
But wasn’t it named inside the cover of Alinsky’s book ?????
We’ll not see the end of “liberalism” until the Lord comes back.
Liberalism is the political expression of the religion of Humanism, which began with the lie “you will be as gods”, and will end only when its author is consigned to the pit forever.
The reason why there cannot be a Rand or a Von Mies at the center of the fascist philosophy is that the core tenet of this philosophy is a lie. They believe (or act as if they believe) that human beings can be molded into anything and made to believe anything. Some perhaps can but the bulk of humanity is resistant, on some level, to such social engineering. One’s own children will always take precedent, in one’s mind, over the good of the collective. That is no doubt true for everyone or at least almost everyone.
Good people and bad have this in common; they have an inherent self-interest which no amount of leftist fascist social engineering can erase. The left tells itself the lie that humans are malleable and can be made to believe anything. This is a lie and no serious intellectualizing based on this lie will stand the test of time. Reading Marx 150 years after he wrote is just intellectually embarrassing.
The reason right wing literature survives is because it's based on natures laws. Leftist can't declare war on natures laws and win. They may win a few small battles, but they always lose the war in the end.
Even the morons that vote for them would stop if they knew the truth about the Marxists they elect and their plans for them.
Liberal canon: “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law”.
The operative word being “Do”. If you know what I mean.
Leftists base their worldview on humanism, the belief that starting from the reason of man, all the answers of the particulars and absolutes can be obtained. They might find a few particulars, but you can never obtain the absolute.
You referenced “natural law”, which really is a reference to how God created creation, and the rules and laws inherent in that creation. That’s an absolute outside of the reason of man, so the left rejects it in favor of their own “intellect”.
There’s another most important aspect of socialism and marxim (the two go hand-in-hand and mean the same thing as ‘progressive’ means today as spouted by that famous fat-head, Hillary Rodham Clinton: “I’m proud to be a progressive.”) those who claim that ‘philosophy’ are imbeciles.
Their writings, their speeches, every damned thing about them rings as moronic, beyond sophomoric and displays them as candidates for strait-jackets in a booby hatch.
Instead, they are honored, practically worshipped by a dangerously large portion of this faltering nation. Faltering? Practically destroyed by large segments of both of our political parties.
If America doesn’t wake up we’ll be embracing someone under the order of Benito Mussolini, or more luckily a benevolent despot like Francisco Franco, who I personally admire for what he did the the communists who were destroying his nation.
Bravo!
There are no influential liberal thinkers because liberal 'ideas' have been discredited by the reality of history. They don't work. There are no ideas on the left worth debating.
The left has hunger, greed and grievance. And some old warmed-up Marxism - with enough totalitarian bells and whistles to feed hunger, greed and grievance... In short, in spite of all the academics, in spite of control of almost every college and newspaper in the cournty, liberals are intellectually bankrupt. Sorry Ed Driscoll ...
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