Whither Conservatism?
Note: Grant Gallicho beat me to the punch in citing the Ross Douthat column below. I feel I need to give him credit for being first to the blog with it!
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In the wake of the election, I’ve been pondering the future of conservatism–both philosophical and political–in the United States. In the wake of the election, some conservatives took comfort in the idea that the United States was a “center-right” country and that there would be a backlash if Obama tacked to hard to the left.
Much depends, of course, on what one means by “center-right.” Over the last half century, the Republican coalition has been held together by a combination of anti-Communism (recently replaced by anti-Terrorism) in foreign policy, anti-tax populism, and social conservatism. That combination proved durable enough to win the majority of the last few presidential elections and to secure majorities in the House and Senate for a reasonable chunk of the last two decades.
It has been argued by better minds than mine that all three of these elements have come under severe strain. The debacle in Iraq has discredited the Republicans’ foreign policy credentials. Taxes will never be popular, but faced with events like Katrina and the current economic storm, a large number of voters seem to be of the opinion that government needs to have sufficient resources and authority to do its job. While some elements of the social conservative program do inspire strong passions among the electorate, the long term trend seems to be what Alan Wolfe once called-accurately or not-”moral freedom.”
People of faith who are political liberals may be inclined to rejoice at these developments, particularly those who suffered attacks from their conservative co-religionists during the most recent election cycle. I would suggest, though, that political liberals who take their religious convictions seriously need to understand that those convictions often stand in tension with key features of contemporary liberalism: a deep–at times almost idolatrous–faith in human reason (and science in particular), its tendency to value the claims of the individual over that of the community, and its suspicion of tradition. A state suffused with these values does not co-exist easily with religious communities who operate from a different set of premises, a point raised by thinkers as diverse as Charles Taylor and Cardinal Francis Stafford.
While my personal political leanings are generally more to the (moderate) left than to the right, I would suggest that American culture needs a strong conservative strain to keep the liberal state from becoming imperial and totalizing. The conservatism we have may not be the conservatism we need, however. A conservatism married too closely to a muscular foreign policy easily becomes an apology for social engineering on an international scale. A conservatism tied too closely to populism undermines one of its central claims, i.e. that certain values do not depend on the will of majorities. Even the defense of tradition–surely a central conservative task–can fail if it blinds us to legitimate claims of justice that can also claim deep historical roots.
It will be interesting to see what new voices emerge from the wreckage of contemporary conservatism to take up this challenge. One that I am keeping an eye on is a young man named Ross Douthat who is an editor at the Atlantic Monthly and, incidentally, a Catholic (Paul, make a note). The author of two books, he also writes a weblog that is worth adding to your daily reads. Douthat–whose pro-life convictions are certainly not in doubt–recently took George Weigel to task for a column in which Weigel blamed the GOP’s loss of Catholic voters on “settled patterns of mindlessness” and “tribal voting.” Here is Douthat’s assessment of that analysis:
In 1980, ’84 and ’88, Republican (and pro-life) Presidential candidates managed to capture nearly all of the Midwest and the Northeast, “settled patterns of mindlessness” notwithstanding. Now here we are twenty years later, with FDR and JFK even further in the rearview mirror – and yet Weigel wants to chalk up the Republican Party’s horrible showing in these regions to mindless “tribal voting” among Catholic Democrats? This is self-deception, and it ill-behooves pro-lifers to engage in it. John McCain did not lose this election because the Catholic clergy failed to anathematize Barack Obama loudly enough, or because Pennsylvanians and Michiganders thought they were voting for Roosevelt or Truman. He lost it because his party flat-out misgoverned the country, in foreign and domestic policy alike, and because of late the culture war has mattered less to most Americans than the Iraq War and the economic meltdown. And pro-lifers who see the GOP as the only plausible vehicle for their goals have an obligation to look the party’s failures squarely in the face and work to fix them, instead of just doubling down on the case for single-issue pro-life voting.
No, social conservatives aren’t the problem for the GOP. But they haven’t been the solution, either: Too often, on matters ranging from the Iraq War to domestic policy, they’ve served as enablers of Republican folly, rather than as constructive critics. And calling Catholics who voted for Obama “mindless” and “stupid” is a poor substitute for building the sort of Republican Party that can attract the votes of those millions of Americans, Catholic and otherwise, who voted for the Democrats because they thought, not without reason, that George W. Bush was a disastrous president whose party should not be rewarded with a third term in the White House.
Of course, Douthat’s judgment is not infallible. Several months ago, he urged John McCain to consider a relatively unknown Alaska governor as a possible vice-presidential pick…:-)
Douthat is a very perceptive commentator. See
Kmiec’s Abortion folly (http://www.slate.com/id/2203800/entry/2204031/ )
“I understand that the pro-life position on abortion does not command majority support in the United States and that people of good will can disagree on the subject. And I have no doubt that the Republican Party can profit from greater dialogue between its pro-life and pro-choice constituents—and do a better job, as well, of addressing itself to both pro-lifers and pro-choicers who aren’t already inside its tent. But I can’t begin to fathom why the GOP should consider taking any advice whatsoever from a “pro-lifer” who has spent the past year serving as an increasingly embarrassing shill for the opposition party’s objectively pro-abortion nominee.”
and
Thocracy, Theocracy, Theocracy ( http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=130 )
“Garry Wills is half-right: There is no single Christian politics, and no movement can claim to have arrived at the perfect marriage of religious faith and political action. Christianity is too otherworldly for that, and the world too fallen. But this doesn’t free believers from the obligation to strive in political affairs, as they strive in all things, to do what God would have them do. And the moments when God’s will is inscrutable, or glimpsed only through a glass, darkly, are the moments when good-faith arguments between believers ought to bear the greatest fruit.
“In today’s America, these arguments are constantly taking place—over issues ranging from abortion to foreign policy; over the potential, and potential limits, of interfaith cooperation; over the past and future of the Religious Right. But they are increasingly drowned out by cries of “theocracy, theocracy, theocracy” and by a zeal, among ostensibly religious intellectuals, to read their fellow believers out of public life and sell their birthright for the blessing of the New York Times.”
As for Douthat’s criticism of George Weigel’s article: Douthat is correct that “pro-lifers who see the GOP as the only plausible vehicle for their goals have an obligation to look the party’s failures squarely in the face and work to fix them, instead of just doubling down on the case for single-issue pro-life voting”, but that does not mean that George Weigel is mistaken in writing that “too many Catholics … are still voting the way their grandparents did, and because that’s what their grandparents did. This tribal voting has been described by some bishops as immoral; it is certainly stupid, and it must be challenged by adult education.” Here is why: Why Oveturning Roe is the Most Important Issue .
In the previous comment the URL for the article “Why Overturning Roe is the Most Important Issue” in the America blog “In All Things” was omitted by mistake:
http://www.americamagazine.org/blog/entry.cfm?blog_id=2&id=D6077204-1321-AEAA-D3D2F61351A49236
I maintain that the last two W Bush wins were hardly a vote for conservative politics as much as it was a preference for the W personality over Gore and Kerry who perhaps most people would not want to have a drink with. Even with that the Gore race was close (some say Gore won) and Kerry was not badly beaten either. The Reagan years are very different. Even there the fabulous Reagan personality was important. And Carter might have made Reagan necessary.
We are just too facile in putting everything into boxes. Not so.
“political liberals who take their religious convictions seriously need to understand that those convictions often stand in tension with key features of contemporary liberalism: a deep–at times almost idolatrous–faith in human reason (and science in particular), its tendency to value the claims of the individual over that of the community, and its suspicion of tradition. ”
So, is George Weigel a “political liberal”? His accusations of mindless, tribal voting suggests he has a deep faith in reason (as opposed to mindlessness) and is against valuing community (in his rejection of tribalism).
Our country is a liberal country, born in revolution and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Any claim of “conservatism” or being ‘center right” has to be read in that fundamentally liberal context. The tensions between liberalism and religious convictions need to be addressed by both parties and both political philosophies.
(a half formed afterthought: liberalism is the title attached to the ‘newcomers’ by the ‘natives’, who wish not to be changed by different inflowing cultures. It is only through liberalism that both groups can conserve their values and share them with each other. maybe)
liberalism: a deep–at times almost idolatrous–faith in human reason (and science in particular), its tendency to value the claims of the individual over that of the community, and its suspicion of tradition.
A couple of points:
1) Both liberals and conservatives seem to worship at the altar of reason — when it’s convenient. It’s only discounted when reason challenges the truth claims of either side.
2) It seems to me that contemporary liberalism (perhaps better characterized as ‘progressivism’) values solidarity above individualism.
Antonio:
One thing I should have made clear in my original post is that philosophical liberalism and conservatism overlap only imperfectly with political “liberalism” and “conservatism” as we encounter them in the United States. Both Democrats and Republicans in the United States are deeply committed to philosophical liberalism (see Louis Hartz “The Liberal Tradition in America). There are strains within each party that take a more explicitly conservative position on some of the underlying philosophical issues.
Best,
Peter
I thought this thread was fine follow up to the one below on the generally agreed on awful piece by George Weigel
Having said that, I’d like to offer my perspective for any and all to take some pot shots at.
In this country we’re raidly moving into a “post secular” age in which the voice of religion matters in the public sqaure, but it’s not the voice of traditional values that evagekicals and the Catholic right think are preeminent.
It’s driven more by common good goals includingcare for the community and the world we inhabit and all that entails.
(Living in a “high science ” community, it sees as false the dichotomy between faith and science and disdains the easy atheism of Hinchens, etc. or the simplistic creationism of what Jean refers to as ‘fundies.”)
Obviously it is more tolerant and accepting, and, I’d posit, empathic than the traditional religious right across denominations.
It is turned away from the traditional right by the excoriations they receive at times from there, as Peter notes. As he also notes, thereis a quite serious danger that the necessary traiditional values my be lost or underemphasized in that process.
Leadership in our Church seems to have gravely missed this, focusing on their own simplistic priorities or lesser matters like the translation of the liturgy or how the greeting of peace may be done.
If we are to move forward and capture all the necessary values, a broader based, lsitening and in dialogue on major questions, with views that are not to be imposed by legislation but by sweet reason and example are much in need.
The adversarial approach to dialogue or starting of with the claim that we have all settled truth will not help. Leadership will not come from those who value loyalty for loalty’s sake. In short, a new collaboration is in order, one that recognizes the world and the Church’s membership is (rapidly) changing and seeks to see the life of the Gospel displayed in its leadership, clerical and lay- a membership that also wants to be heard and not just preached to, or worse, infantilized.
Bob, I agree entirely. Tensions such as Peter described, between traditional religious values and liberalism, or progressivism, or conservatism, or any other ‘ism’, are inevitable. The core conflict right now imo is about the implications of religious freedom, specifically the contrast of ‘force’ with persuasion in sharing ideologies.
I think this is illuminated by the scariest thing I read this month. It is from Cardinal George at the USCCB meeting:
“We can also be truly grateful that our country’s social conscience has advanced to the point that Barack Obama was not asked to renounce his racial heritage in order to be president, as, effectively, John Kennedy was asked to promise that his Catholic faith would not influence his perspective and decisions as president a generation ago.”
Kennedy renounced his Catholicism? promised it would not influence his perspective and decisions? That is not my memory of his position. I recall it as that he would not be bound by the command of the Pope, but would fulfill the presidential duties. In effect, he said that he would not be forced, but would have to be persuaded.
And I contend that that position is more Catholic than the opposite conviction, that Catholics must do what their bishops tell them to do. Catholics will do what their bishops persuade them to do, as Kennedy would do what the pope persuaded him to do. But not because the Pope persuaded him, but because he was persuaded.
There are many who have not been persuaded by the bishops, which is why they have acted as if they were not persuaded. The bishops have to recognize this, rather than claim, or imply, that they are bad Catholics, or have renounced the Catholicism because the bishops could not persuade them. The fundamental trust still exists that would allow the bishops a chance to persuade them, but the bishops have to do the groundwork for persuasion, by respecting, listening ro and learning from those who do not agree with them.