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After the Future

What It “Means” to Be Conservative

In Balloon Juice: Scarborough had an endless stream of guests and snide comments claiming that Romney was the “real conservative choice” and the “true conservative.” The last guest was Mary…

In Balloon Juice:

Scarborough had an endless stream of guests and snide comments claiming that Romney was the “real conservative choice” and the “true conservative.”

The last guest was Mary Matalin, a Bush/Cheney advisor, and I am now completely convinced that there is no such thing as “conservative” principles. It is a joke, an empty suit- it means whatever you want it to mean, and right now it means double Gitmo, permanent war, hating on liberals, and tax cuts forever. I guess, in that light, Mitt is the true “conservative,” as he has shown himself willing to do whatever and pay whatever it takes to win the nomination. I simply can not believe that the folks who cheerleaded the Bush administration and who are not even flinching about the new 700 billion dollar military budget have the balls to pretend to be conservative, but, hey, it is their party. I hope they keep wrecking it.

But when folks say “conservative,” and they will say it seriously as if it means something, no doubt also invoking the “mantle of Reagan,” just laugh at them. They might as well be talking about flogiston. Whatever conservative used to mean, if anything, it no longer does.

Movement Conservatism has no principles. It is simply a cloak for primitivistic groupthink about greed and power. The reason they don’t like McCain is precisely because he is, in Matthew Continenti’s words, a "deviationist":

One possible explanation for the animosity is that, while Senator McCain and President Bush are both deviationists [Bush signed McCain-Feingold into law, after all], the senator is more often at odds with conservatives, and has therefore earned their distrust. Another is that his (wrongheaded, in my view) opposition to the Bush tax cuts is something the right can neither forget nor forgive. A third possibility is that there are still bad memories from the 2000 primary campaign, when in conservative eyes Senator McCain behaved dishonorably by calling Revs. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell “agents of intolerance” and comparing then-governor Bush to Bill Clinton in an attack ad.

McCain, in others words is only half conservative.  He gets  the power part, but not the greed part. And, oh, he refused at one point to genuflect to the crazed Falwell and Robertson.  Perhaps that’s the real reason the crazies have excommunicated him. That is the one unforgivable deviation, even if one repents.

P.S. For further thoughts on the matter see my earlier post "Conservative Doesn’t Mean What You Think."

Comments

13 responses

  1. forestwalker Avatar
    forestwalker

    Sure, for those pulling the levers it’s all about greed and power. For the man-on-the-street “conservative”, though, it’s about shibboleth and nothing else.

    Reply
  2. Jack Whelan Avatar
    Jack Whelan

    FW–
    Not sure I understand. Is your point that the man-on-the-street conservative, since he is relatively poor and powerless, has no interest in wealth and power and is conservative mostly for traditional values reasons? I would agree and disagree. I think the traditional values package is very amenable to the greed and power narrative of movement conservatism.
    I am Weberian enough to think that the Puritan mythos providing the substructure of the American traditional narrative provides a very powerful affirmation to the greed part of the groupthink. The power part is subsumed under what most traditionalists think of as healthy my-country-right-or wrong patriotism.
    To me the most pernicious thing about the conservative American Calvinist narrative is the way it supports this idea [or doesn’t really challenge it] that to be a true American you need to get rich. It’s the largest obstacle to tackling the most significant social problems we have faced and will continue to face for decades to come. Because it feeds into the idea that even if I am poor and powerless, some day I or my children won’t be. That’s the great American conservative dream/myth: With a little grit and some luck we can all be Donald Trumps. And “conservative” as the shibboleth for such Americans means either you’re on such a Dream Team or you’re a socialist.
    And so any sensible challenge to the current economic arrangements is seen as un-American apostasy. The Main Street conservative is actively collaborating with the power and greed narrative that underlies movement conservatism because he is a power and greed wannabe.
    I’m open to be persuaded otherwise, but I fear Jim Wallis types will always be fighting a losing battle within the precincts of white Calvinist evangelicalism. His project is built on sand. I know he thinks his a more authentic interpretation of scripture, and I agree, but he’s working withing a Main Street social mythos that has been resistant to his interpretation since the founding. That’s why I suspect that the real grassroots way forward is going to come from blacks and Latinos and other Catholic types who haven’t been completely coopted yet by the conservative American dream.

    Reply
  3. Matt Zemek Avatar
    Matt Zemek

    Jack,
    When you say Wallis has been working with a Main Street social mythos, are you referring to his befriending of the powerful (Hillary and Barack are people he considers friends)?
    Say more about this if/when you can.

    Reply
  4. Jack Whelan Avatar
    Jack Whelan

    By mainstreet social mythos I mean non-elite, man-on-the-street American Calvinist “unthought” narrative and the way it shapes the conservative social imaginary. Go to your typical rotary club or get into a conversation with the typical person in a coffee shop or after-church coffee hour in Middle America. Bring up the subject of welfare, for instance, and you’ll most likely trigger a torrent of resentment about welfare queens. It’s just part of their unexamined “unthought”, and it’s pointless to try to argue with them about the facts. You have to change the underlying mythos.
    Jim Wallis’s gospel message regarding the poor is one these folks are mostly unreceptive to because the Donald Trump narrative means more to them, resonates more with their hopes and dreams, than whatever the gospel really means. The Donald Trump narrative seems more Christian to these folks than anything Jim Wallis has to say, who is some kind of socialist, anyway. And so my point is that Wallis, insofar as he operates within the white American Calvinist narrative, is fighting more of an uphill battle than someone trying to take the same message to the Black Protestant and and Latino Catholic community.
    Obama’s rhetoric owes a lot to Black Liberation theology, which in turn owes a lot to Latin American liberation theology, which comes out of a completely different social mythos than the one that dominates Mainstreet America. What is interesting about Obama is the way he translates that message into something Mainstreet can hear. That they can hear it is an interesting topic for a future post. That’s why a black man has a greater potential to take us forward than any of the white men or women currently available. He’s the one that has the best chance of changing the mythos on Mainstreet. Richard Cizek or Rick Warren Evangelicals can hear what Obama says, but Cizek, Warren, or Wallis don’t have the capablility to articulate that message in the way Obama does. They have no mythopoesis. No place for that in traditional white Calvinism.

    Reply
  5. anon Avatar
    anon

    If Obama is taking us toward more government programs and more government welfare, then by all means keep the current mythos in tact.
    You seem to assume that changing the mythos involves gaining a consensus toward more government welfare and more redistribution of wealth. What conservatives want is less government welfare. Conservatives want to change the mythos as well, but it’s just that they want a consensus favorable to their political views. The dominant ideology is still welfare liberalism. The evidence for this is that SS, Medicare, and so forth are considered orthodox and constitutional, when in past decades that certainly wasn’t the case.

    Reply
  6. Matt Zemek Avatar
    Matt Zemek

    Anon –
    No, changing the mythos is not about policy. (That would be a Hillary argument, because she’s the wonk/technician in the race.) It’s about the underlying animus that shapes the way we talk about and act on issues. Changing the mythos is much more about reshaping the calculus of our energies and emphases, the ways in which we morally and conceptually frame various problems and challenges within our society and culture.

    Reply
  7. anon Avatar
    anon

    “Changing the mythos is much more about reshaping the calculus of our energies and emphases, the ways in which we morally and conceptually frame various problems and challenges within our society and culture.”
    Please describe.

    Reply
  8. Jack Whelan Avatar
    Jack Whelan

    Anon–
    I always find it humorous when conservatives or libertarina types think of themselves as embattled minorities fighting for their lives against the menace from the left.
    Get real. For 28 of the last 40 years and the two most conservative Democrats–Carter and Clinton–of the 20th century.
    If you really believe that American power is organized around a left mythos these past forty years, I honestly don’t know what to say. The most visible people on the left–Hollywood and university liberals–have no real power;the people who have real power laugh at their impotence. If you bring up George Soros, I may feel compelled to ban you from the site.

    Reply
  9. Matt Zemek Avatar
    Matt Zemek

    Anon –
    That means the following, more or less, in enfleshed terms:
    It doesn’t mean converting the Calvinist middle-class guy with pure moral suasion the way we’re used to seeing it. You could say that old-fashioned moral suasion is an attempt to go through the “front door.”
    Changing the mythos and these energies/emphases means getting that middle-class white Calvinist guy to see issues in ways they’ve never seen before, “through the back door.”
    Any given mythos is rooted not so much in the answers as the questions; not so much in the arguments, but in the premises on which they rest.
    A change in mythos is founded on a change in premises, not a differentiation of arguments.
    To give you an issue, one could change the mythos on the subject of mental health coverage by reshaping the premises on which a “cost-benefit analysis” rests. Changing the C/B analysis from a strictly material one to a moral/holistic one could redefine the way Wall Street types see the issue itself.

    Reply
  10. Matt Zemek Avatar
    Matt Zemek

    Anon (and Jack):
    I misspoke: MAIN Street, not Wall Street, in my recent posts.
    I apologize.

    Reply
  11. forestwalker Avatar
    forestwalker

    “Is your point that the man-on-the-street conservative, since he is relatively poor and powerless, has no interest in wealth and power and is conservative mostly for traditional values reasons? I would agree and disagree. I think the traditional values package is very amenable to the greed and power narrative of movement conservatism.”
    To clarify, I’m talking about actual conservatives/traditionalists, not suburban quasi-libertarians and GOP Liberals. These folks are suspicious of–even antagonistic toward–Liberalism, have no real representation, and their interests haven’t been part of the national dialog since the powers-that-be were successful in consigning WJ Bryan to the loony bin.
    Your last sentence above is spot-on. They’re in thrall to that narrative, but it’s not their narrative. At their core, they’re subsidiarists and their narrative basically centers around “I wish they would just leave us the hell alone.” The GOP has been very successful in convincing them both of who the “they” is and what shibboleths identify those who are “not-they”. But they really don’t share the same philosophy or goals.

    Reply
  12. Jack Whelan Avatar
    Jack Whelan

    FW–
    Thanks for engaging the post on the level I presented it. Could you identify for me more specifically who you have in mind. Are you talking about your typical Baptist or are you talking about a less mainstream sector within the Calvinist stream?
    Also not sure which “last statement” you were referrring to, the one about “mythopoesis”?

    Reply
  13. forestwalker Avatar
    forestwalker

    Jack,
    “last statement” is the last sentence about the family values narrative in the bit I quoted above.
    I’m talking about the same folks Tom Frank wrote about.

    Reply

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