Jun
18
How do you like dem apples?
June 18, 2009 | 5 Comments
I wasn’t really going to comment on the 3578734895723894569783th (give or take) debate on “real conservatism,” this time involving RS McCain, Dan Riehl, and Conor Friedersdorf, but after reading Friedersdorf’s take, I couldn’t help but think of that scene from Good Will Hunting.
WILL: Of course that’s your contention. You’re a first year grad student. You just finished some Marxian historian, Pete Garrison prob’ly, and so naturally that’s what you believe until next month when you get to James Lemon and get convinced that Virginia and Pennsylvania were strongly entrepreneurial and capitalist back in 1740. That’ll last until sometime in your second year, then you’ll be in here regurgitating Gordon Wood about the Pre-revolutionary utopia and the capital-forming effects of military mobilization.
CLARK: Well, as a matter of fact, I won’t, because Wood drastically underestimates the impact of –
WILL: “Wood drastically underestimates the impact of social distinctions predicated upon wealth, especially inherited wealth…” You got that from “Work in Essex County,” Page 421, right? Do you have any thoughts of your own on the subject or were you just gonna plagiarize the whole book for me? Look, don’t try to pass yourself off as some kind of an intellect at the expense of my friend just to impress these girls.
Look, I’m the last guy who is going to completely mock citing classical authors in an effort to bolster one’s argument, but simply bandying the names Kirk and Oakeshott around like it makes you some intellectual bigshot is a little off putting. Yeah, I’ve read those guys. And Burke. And Hayek. And Sowell. And Buckley. And on and on and on and on.
But you know what? Absent a critical analysis of what those guys said, all I’m doing is repeating a bunch of names. They get us no closer to a true definition of conservatism, if one really exists.
Also, this all misses the larger question: which voices are authoritative in the quest for arriving at a clear definition? Kirk laid down his six tenets, and while I am fundamentally in accord with them, does that mean that anyone calling themselves conservative ought to mindlessly ape Kirk as if he were the voice of God whose authority should not be questioned? Furthermore, these great (and they were great, all of them) voices of the right were hardly in agreement on all policy questions. I don’t think that Buckley was quite as isolationist as Kirk, for starters. Sure, they shared fundamental precepts, but we shouldn’t just gloss over their disagreements. Much as there is a danger in just speaking of the “Founders” as though they were a monolith, we have to clarify what elements of these thinkers we find so compelling.
There is a lot to admire in Russell Kirk, but he is not the be all end all of conservative thinking. I doubt Conor Friedersdorf thinks so either, but maybe he could offer up a little more substantive than name dropping a few guys who are going to make all the right people all tingly.
Update: Some linky love from R.S. McCain and Donald, err, Dr. Donald Douglas.
Comments
5 Comments so far
I think a fair reading of my post shows that I wasn’t bandying about those names to impress, or to suggest that any of them has the definitive take on conservatism — I was merely making the case, begun in previous posts and conversations with Dan Riehl, that conservatism encompasses a rich tradition of philosophers who are very different from one another — and that people like RSM are wrong when they say, for example, that it’s okay for Hayek devotees to call themselves conservatives, but it isn’t okay for Russel Kirk devotees to do the same.
I am not championing the vision of any of these philosophers, so much as saying that we’d do well to consider all of them — and there intellectual descendants — as legitimate members of conservatism broadly construed, rather than picking a faction that supposedly represents true conservatism and calling everyone else a heretic.
people like RSM are wrong when they say, for example, that it’s okay for Hayek devotees to call themselves conservatives, but it isn’t okay for Russel Kirk devotees to do the same.
Did he really say that? I think I’ve read the exchanges fairly closely, and that seems like a pretty major distortion. This is what McCain said:
Sully is a student of Oakeshott, therefore Conor name-checks Oakeshott. Dreher constantly invokes Russell Kirk, therefore Conor name-checks Kirk. It’s as if Conor has been studying his pledge book in preparation for initiation into a fraternity.
Why is it that none of these “dissident” conservatives can be bothered to read Hayek or Mises? Why do they never seem to take any interest in the basic questions of political economy and limited government? Why must they seek out this conservatism that, they assert, transcends mere politics — a conservatism of “temperament,” as Conor calls it?
I don’t think that’s a denial of Kirkian (for lack of a better term) conservatism but an effort to expand the philosophic base of conservatism.
You’re right, my shorthand is an inaccurate summation of RSM’s point — I should have chosen my words more carefully, and written that RSM is wrong to presume that the invocation of philosophers other than Hayek and Mises is due to the fact that I mimic Dreher and Sullivan — and that other people arguing on RSM’s side of this debate against me (I am thinking of Dan Riehl) are wrong to say that only Hayekian or Reaganite economic conservatives can lay claim to the name.
I do thank you for alerting me to the error, and apologize for my imprecision. However, I think the rest of my comment stands, and refutes the argument in your post. I wish you’d correct your mistake as readily as I’ve fessed up to mine.
You fess up to a blatant misreading of McCain, and that means I am supposed to “correct” a mistake that I did not make? In the very body of the post I said that I did not think you were stating that Kirk is the sole authoritative voice of conservatism. As for the remainder of the post, I stand by the analysis. You haven’t offered up anything more meaningful than name dropping.
I’ve offered the argument that the range of philosophers you’ll find under the conservative umbrella dating back centuries demonstrates the proposition that no narrow definition of conservatism is exclusively accurate.
That argument is more than name dropping.