Has TAC gone liberal?
Some of my readers are distressed by the addition of Noah Millman to our blog stable here at TAC, because Millman isn’t a conservative. On his new TAC blog, Noah writes, of his hiring:
Their other point was that they were not aiming for a magazine that spoke with one voice; they preferred, frankly, a cacophony if that is what a lively a spirited debate produced. And while I suspect I will often – perhaps usually – disagree with my interlocutors here, I have tried to make a habit of engaging with those with whom I disagree, even with those whose premises or conclusions I find strongly abhorrent. Indeed, I feel like an enormous amount is gained merely by coming to agreement on what those premises and conclusions really are. In my politics these days, I am functionally a liberal, and I may wind up as TAC’s house liberal, but I hope if that turns out to be the case that it turns out to be a good thing to have a liberal in the house.
Finally, I should say something about how my own history relates to my presence here. I spent the bulk of my adult life as a functional neoconservative. I also spent the bulk of my adult life working in the more rarefied regions of the financial sector. In the wake of the Iraq War and the financial crisis and subsequent recession, I have come to have serious qualms about both associations. I am now extremely critical both of the foreign policy views I used to hold and of the industry in which I used to work. I’m fairly aware of the critical arguments from the left. This magazine is the natural home of critical arguments from the right on these two issues. If those arguments are good, I want to lend my support to them. If those arguments are lousy, I want to make them better. Either way, that’s a reason for me to be involved in this magazine’s project.
A few things. First, I wasn’t involved in Noah’s hiring, but I’m glad he’s aboard. I’ve read him for years, and he’s a marvelous writer. Secondly, it should be news to TAC readers that the magazine will publicize the arguments of liberals when we think liberals have a good argument. Glenn Greenwald’s stuff has appeared here, even though he’s a hardcore liberal. But if he’s making sense on civil liberties, from a conservative point of view, then why shouldn’t we give him a platform? One of the most frustrating things about the dead end contemporary conservatism finds itself in is that it has become more about tribalism and identity politics than re-examining first principles in light of changing circumstances. In other words, it has too often become about militant assertion, not deliberation. That Noah is more or less a liberal who feels comfortable around conservatives, and who can articulate his arguments in terms conservatives can relate to, makes him not only a useful sparring partner — I expect to spar with him on issues related to social and religious conservatism — but also a writer through which some open-minded liberals can approach conservative ideas.
Noah has said that he’s for gay marriage and “not an immigration restrictionist.” Those are two points of contention he has with me, and with many of our readers. So what? I’m far more pro-Israel than most TAC writers, but you wouldn’t know it because I don’t often write about foreign policy. The point is, nobody at TAC has set any restrictions on what I can or can’t write about, or the line I’m supposed to take. I think that makes us stronger. As a matter of editorial sensibility, TAC resists the idea of a party line. It might appear to some as an absence of principle, but I think rather it reflects a real interest in debate and discussion, and a frustration with the quality of that discussion in so many quarters on the right. Noah says that he worked in high finance on Wall Street and was a fervent Iraq War supporter, but the Iraq disaster and the economic crash made him a strong opponent of Wall Street and the foreign policy views he used to hold. I too was a big Iraq war supporter, and the main reason I didn’t take antiwar arguments — even those made by this magazine — seriously was because I was in thrall to the epistemic closure common to conservatives. One lesson I’ve learned from having seen my error on Iraq was the folly of not listening to arguments that my side doesn’t want to take seriously. Though he is a social liberal, those are two very serious points of agreement between TAC’s general conservatism and Millman’s liberalism, and suggest avenues of productive exchange between right and left.
Why is this bad? When I wrote “Crunchy Cons,” a number of its harshest critics objected that I gave aid and comfort to liberals by saying good things about environmentalism and criticizing some aspects of capitalism. Of all the reasons to object to the content of that book, those were the stupidest ones, reflecting a mindless attitude in which the only principle worth defending was pissing off liberals. That kind of conservatism is pretty common today, and, in my view, it’s a big problem for conservatives. To the extent that in Noah, we have a thoughtful critic of conservatism, one who understands and respects conservatism, even though he doesn’t share all our values, it can only make us more thoughtful and, ultimately, more persuasive.
Besides which, as much as it distresses a traditionalist like me, the younger generation is heavily on Noah’s side on the gay marriage issue. I look forward to friendly arguments with Noah about religious liberty, gay marriage, and related topics, because we social conservatives are going to have to get used to defending ourselves and our views in a culture growing increasingly intolerant of our stance. It’s hard to have this discussion with many liberals, who think we’re a bunch of bigots who don’t deserve anything but defeat. I doubt very much Noah is that kind of social liberal; we social conservatives should be grateful to have him as an interlocutor.
Anyway, when it comes to blog-reading, I’m more interested in a thoughtful, challenging discussion than I am with marching in lockstep with the tribe. So, welcome, Noah!
Thrice welcome to Noah. To be honest — and disclosing that I am not as widely read as I would like to be — it is refreshing to see a nominally conservative source like TAC pick up an author who is going to be oppositional from the start. I’ve found few who speak with a voice that is at all close to my own inner dialogue (what I sometimes refer to as my inner curmudgeon). I shall be following Noah’s posts, but even more eagerly awaiting his commentary on posts by Rod.
I describe myself as a social liberal and fiscal conservative. Noah may not agree that those terms apply to himself, but I shall be looking for those “hooks” in his writing. We shall see.
I discovered TAC when you started blogging here, and I’ve changed my thinking (from liberal to conservative) over the years, but never identified as conservative because I despise the kind of closed-mind, angry screeds that pass for “conservative” writing these days. If I wanted another Fox News echo chamber, I would not have shelled out $30 to subscribe to TAC. I wholeheartedly support thinking conservatives. You can’t formulate an intelligent, thoughtful conservative argument without genuinely listening to and considering the other point of view.
Props to the editors for bringing in Millman–I look forward to reading his stuff.
Anyway, when it comes to blog-reading, I’m more interested in a thoughtful, challenging discussion than I am with marching in lockstep with the tribe.
Bravo! I wish more people thought similarly.
Anything that will destabilize the current tribalist nature of conservatism, and give all of us access to good writing and interesting and well-expressed points of view, is welcome.
Well said, Rod. A great example of why I love your writing. Your ilk is likely the only hope for conservatives in this country long term. There simply MUST be the hope of an intelligent conversation for all of us to get on the same page…or at least in the same book…some day and move this country forward.
I’m glad I cancelled my subscription last year. If I want to read what liberals have to say, I will read a liberal journal.
And this is why I read your blog. I’m as liberal as they come but I appreciate hearing a well-thought out opposing view point on something I feel strongly about. I’m trying to educate myself to be more well-rounded. I look forward to reading Noah too. Thanks Rod.
Hear, hear, Rod!
It’s this attitude–for lack of a better word–or mood, or temperament, that I greatly resonate with in your blog.
As someone who back in the ’60s was way out on the left, in the ’70s went apolitical, in the ’80s was a die-hard Reaganaut, and by the ’90s was pretty disillusioned with that whole game, too, and hasn’t found–or even wanted–a partisan home since then, I greatly appreciate what I find at TAC.
To the true partisan, of course, the honest-doubter of their orthodoxies is as dangerous to their agenda as is a die-hard opponent, and each is treated the same. So expect blow-back from them.
And then there’s the question of attitude, or temperament. On the right and the left, there are those who are simply very uncomfortable with ambiguity, uncertainty, questions, reservations, what have you. They need to have detailed and fixed opinions that serve as a map of the world and clearly dictate what to think, say, and do.
I really think that’s more a question of temperament than anything else (though I believe there are solid theological reasons for suspecting the fallibility and self-serving character of all human projects–political ideologies very much not excepted).
Anyway, bravo, and keep up the good work. This place is one of the rare oases of sanity around these days . . .
Hear, hear. While a social progressive, I really enjoy this site because there is clearly an orientation towards truth rather than ideology. With the exception of times where personal mockery over social issues is involved, this blog is a great read from a number of viewpoints, and seamlessly follows reading Ta-Nahesi Coates or Charles P. Pierce, ideologically different but equally rigorous and integrity-filled. Daniel Larison writes brilliantly about foreign policy and holds the necons’ feet to the fire, indeed the furnace, with sound reasoning and realistic patriotism. And while when Pat Buchanan writes about social issues I strongly feel he needs medication, when he writes about foreign policy, I strongly feel he would make a great Secretary of State.
This is in marked contrast to, just as two examples, Fox News and the National Review, where tribalism and kneejerk ideology, often in thrall to a foreign government that is not even legally our ally because it does not have recognized international borders, overcome all in an orgy of tribalism with no sound plans for domestic or foreign governments.
In short, keep up the good work. And realize, it says here, that basically no progressives are really in favor of abortion. What we are against is recriminalizing it, because that means poor women dying and rich women doing whatever they want. Many policy decisions involve a choice between evils, and require acknowledging that whatever we do, there are people who will beat, excuse, or exploit the system. In reality, all agree that there should be the minimum necessary amount of government. And what is necessary, is something to be worked out, and that requires open minds and free discussion. Of which there is a lot here. Which is a good thing.
The indispensable Steve Sailer takes note of Noah Millman’s move to TAC:
This magazine and website calls itself “The American Conservative”, but it sure has a lot of leftist articles in it. Maybe they should change the name to “The American Fusionist”.
I agree. He is welcome.
@Don Walker
Jim Wheeler, is that you?
So you hired somebody who agrees with your conclusions, not your premises?
A sounder foundation for a magazine would have it the other way around.
Noah has said that he’s for gay marriage and “not an immigration restrictionist.” Those are two points of contention he has with me, and with many of our readers. So what?
Those are both rather big issues. It’s not like saying he prefers chicken to hamburger. Immigration is particularly nettlesome, as I have to deal with the effects of Noah’s cheap gardeners and busboys on a daily basis. The magazine started out as a paleocon publication, and it’s now deteriorated to something of a fey version of NR. I’ll keep visiting the site, but I’m not renewing my charter subscription. Let Unz find his money elsewhere.
…the younger generation is heavily on Noah’s side on the gay marriage issue.
Standing athwart history, yelling “Wait for me!”
The resources and space given Millman by TAC could be given to an up and coming conservative writer instead. There are plenty of liberal publications that can give Millman something do between hawking scripts, and you can engage them all you want. You already do this with Wacky Andy and others.
I’ll send my money to VDARE instead. Now there’s a site that challenges conventional wisdom, something TAC used to do in fact instead of pretense.
Sorry for quoting this at length, but I think it’s applicable:
“… It will be a group blog, featuring many different voices. Not all of them identify as conservatives or Republicans. But they – and people like them – are the people conservatives and Republicans need.
I hope we will debate policy as well as politics. I hope above all that we can create an online community that will be exciting and appealing to younger readers, a generation often repelled by today’s mainstream conservatism….
…Over the past three years, I have been engaged in some intense rethinking of my own conservatism. My fundamental political principles remain the same as ever: free markets, American leadership in the world, and intense attachment to inherited moral and cultural traditions. Yet I cannot be blind to the evidence that we have seen free markets produce some damaging and dangerous results in recent years. Or that the foreign policy I supported has not yielded the success I would have wished to see. Or that traditions must evolve if they are to endure. There are new principes too that must be included in a majority conservatism: environmental protection as a core value and an unwavering insistence upon competence and integrity in government.”
David Frum said that, when he left NRO to found Newmajority.com, later Frumforum. Now he’s part of the Daily Beast, and it’s arguable he is even a conservative as opposed to center-left. And none of what he said in this has happened: instead, he’s tacked similar to Andrew Sullivan in wearing the conservative label, but espousing something different. and no one looks to Frum for anything to do with revitalizing conservatism, any more than Kathleen Parker.
I don’t think this magazine’s founder would have offered if he didn’t notice a trend in readership changing along those lines, but I think it’s fair to worry what the long term effects might be. Take it with a grain of salt as you may, since the boss is the one who knows what pays the bills and draws eyes.
I, for one, welcome differing views; and will decide for myself what holds the best argument. It’s called THINKING. For those that choose not to; and need to be told what to believe on every subject; there are other sources. Unfortunately, too many nowadays see anyone that thinks differently as the “enemy”. Getting past this will prove our country’s biggest challenge. Thank you for another voice to agree or not with; but to THINK about in any case.
Hope there will be a space available to paleoconservatives and also substantive writers who don’t fit political categories or really take a partisan stand. Those are the two groups who don’t get the voice the merit.
I read some of Noah’s writing over at the American scene. I always respected it, even though I didn’t always understand it. I thought he used words well, and handled his arguments well. He respected the reader.
I enjoyed his writing about cooking, especially as it related to religious traditions.
Look. At least Crunchy Conservatism has some roots in conservative thought and policy (Kirk, conservation was very much a conservative project in the early 1900s). In fact, Dreher-style conservatism is more conservative than Goldberg/NRO style ‘conservatism’. But homosexual ‘marriage’ simply has no support in *any* conservative tradition. And supporting the mass immigration which means,given Americans’ desire to limit their own families, rather rapid and total demographic transformation is not conservative either. (Not to mention destructive of other conservative goals).
In this country you can legally call bulk fermented from Lodi, CA, “champagne” — but it ain’t.
I don’t post very often, but I read this site every day and subscribe to the print edition. I grew up a left-liberal, went libertarian for a good deal of the last decade, but now find myself floating around somewhere in the political ether. I generally don’t care what “side” somebody’s on (although I confess that mainstream Fox-news Repub warmongers and loudmouths make me nauseous these days, and the establishment Democrats only a little less so) … I want intelligent, civilized discussion, and so many other political sites and blogs are so full of hateful partisan comments by windbags and trolls that I tire of trying to navigate through all that garbage to find the stuff worth reading. This site is one of the few where intelligent and civilized folks from all sides of the debate are in the majority. The change in content since Unz took over is noticeable, and I suppose I understand why some might be disturbed by it. But this reader ain’t goin’ nowhere. Keep up good work.
TAC at it’s core is a magazine that doesn’t want to be read. It it weren’t for Daniel Larison I would just stick to Chronicles.
I guess I am a little frustrated by the move. This is nothing personal. Nor could anyone argue that he does not write well – or interestingly. My frustration is that disciples of John Maynard Keynes control the entire financial press, 90% of neo-con and conservative Inc media outlets, and so forth? When some of the most important energy on the non-neocon right is coming from the Ron Paul movement, when there is a chance to begin to realize some version of Rothbard’s vision of a paleocon-libertarian-non establishment leftist front against the welfare warfare state, why is a magazine that could be of some help in that endeavor giving column space to someone who supports Keynesian economics? It is, if nothing else, terrible timing. And then, one of his first columns is tweaking Ron Paul supporters. Great! Because you can’t get that anywhere else! Come on….
Liberals have their points, but why hire a moderate? That’s what Millman is, and it isn’t like his views are under-represented in the current climate. I’ve read some of his stuff and liked it, but if I buy TAC at the newsstand, it’s to read something totally new or different. Hire all the real leftists and real conservatives you want, but spare me these moderates whose views are “evolving,” but carefully staying within the limits of respectable discourse. They bore me to tears.
You wrote, “One of the most frustrating things about the dead end contemporary conservatism finds itself in is that it has become more about tribalism and identity politics than re-examining first principles in light of changing circumstances.”
I can only say that if you’re first principles are subject to changing circumstances, you have no first principles.
A man who flees from the city in order to be surrounded by kin while condemning tribalism does not know what tribalism is. Bringing in a neo-con from New York as a corrective to tribalism is frankly laughable.
Finally, just examining the responses of you commenters/fans above exposes the emptiness of the American Conservatives status as a conservative journal. If were, it would not appeal to so many people on the left. Journals like the London Spectator are capable of being generally right wing while entertaining left perspectives. That, despite what you say, is not the situation with TAC. The rot emanates from the head where TAC is concerned and it will only get worse. I suspect that some other outlet for actual conservative thought will emerge in due course. When that happens, I hope they invite you but not your confreres aboard.
I agree with Hope! If I had to choose a label right now it would probably be classical liberal or epicurean (enjoy companionship, and food and drink in moderation).
I think that in order to replace the establishment there will need to be a group that can take each respective wing of it. I don’t want to live in what the greeks call a tyranno. The problem is that the left prefers John McCain to Pat Buchanan. Negative rights are being thrown under the bus as people try to get positive rights out of Washington. They belong on a more local level. Marriage is a church issue. Abortion probably can only be combated with preventive contraception.
Tribalism is the greatest wound and threat this nation has been facing it’s whole life. Why can’t what is happening in Libya right now happen right here? A group has gained power and is destroying everything that they don’t agree with. Groups like that are in our society on both the left, right and may enter our society. People need to understand our society isn’t immune to this type of extremism. There is not a rug in the universe large enough to hide it. Anyway, I’m hoping with Noah here you guys can throughly explore this festering wound.
Perhaps looking at and analyzing the foundations of western civilization is in order (and no I don’t agree with the gentleman’s children):
http://oyc.yale.edu/classics/introduction-to-ancient-greek-history/
To put a finer point on it, I’m a working-class dude in a country that’s headed you-know-where in a handbasket and I’m squeezed from every side. Are you honestly telling me that I should take the money that I tear the skin off of my knuckles to obtain and spend it just so that I can see the opinions of a moderate in print? So that he can tell me how much better off we’d be if things were slightly different?
Institutions fade when they no longer have any compelling reason to exist. If that happens to the best political magazine on the planet right now, it will be the moderates who have done it.
I think both you and Larison write good stuff, and I have no objection to Millman coming aboard, but it does seem to me that TAC was starting to avoid social issues because it was thought that these topics would disrupt an attempted conservative/leftist/libertarian alliance on foreign policy. Although, to be fair, I guess your (Dreher’s) blog is largely focused on social and cultural issues. Anyway, I haven’t read Millman before, but I’ll certainly give him a chance.
Oh, why not.
We can be broad-minded.
Even Christ chose that rascal Iscariot to be part of His inner dozen. That doesn’t necessarily mean that one has to accept that Gospel of Judas foofram, though.
I was agreeing with Rod, by the way.
I’m a political moderate. So long as the writer expressing his opinions is civil and intelligent, I am happy to read even if I disagree.
I strongly support the right of TAC to be whatever it wants to be, but especially if it wants to be something that defies that conventional red/blue boundaries of American politics.
That being said, I’m already something of a man without a country as someone socially conservative, fiscally populist, and opposed to military interventions. If TAC evolves into something with a mostly left-wing readership and disconnects entirely from the culturally traditionalist critiques of the Buchanan wing of the Republican party – which already seems like an ominous possibility given the comment sections here on any random day – I guess I’ll need to go on feeling lonely. I really wish I could find a community of like-minded people, as much as I value constructive interaction with oppositional views.
I do wish you (and Noah and TAC) the best of luck with migrating toward wherever you’re headed on the political spectrum.
Let me say that while I appreciate Millman’s work, adding a self-professed liberal to be one of the four blogs on a site called “The American Conservative” is counter-productive. Here are a few reasons why I think it is a sign that the magazine is setting itself up for failure:
1. TAC already lost a lot of credibility a few years ago with its “we are so conservative we support leftists” schtick. Remember when they tried to spin Ralph Nader as some sort of “Old Right” hero (http://www.amconmag.com/article/2004/nov/08/00010/) and claimed that Howard Dean would have “crossover appeal” for conservatives (http://www.amconmag.com/article/2004/jan/19/00008/)? I can appreciate contrarianism, but that stuff is just silly. No one takes it seriously, and if the editors believed it then they should have lost all sense of reality. What America needs is a true “alternative” to mainstream conservative publications, not one that is, at its core, not really conservative at all. We thought we were getting that when the magazine launched in 2002. Didn’t happen. We thought we might get it yet when the new owner recently bought the magazine. Doesn’t look like it’s going to happen now either.
2. With the exception of Rod, it is often easy for readers to know what TAC stands against but not what it stands for. It’s become apparent that TAC would prefer a gay-marriage supporting, Obama-voting liberal over a conservative who supports foreign intervention. Is TAC merely just an anti-neocon publication or will it eventually attempt to speak for real conservatives?
3. There is no shortage of outlets for liberals. Conservatives, however, have few prominent outlets. For the management to hire a liberal over a qualified conservative (surely there must be one they could find) shows that for all the pose of being “alternative”, TAC is just another DC publication with a inside-the-beltway mentality.
4. Mr. Hamilton, in his comment above, speaks for a lot of us: “If TAC evolves into something with a mostly left-wing readership and disconnects entirely from the culturally traditionalist critiques of the Buchanan wing of the Republican party – which already seems like an ominous possibility given the comment sections here on any random day – I guess I’ll need to go on feeling lonely. I really wish I could find a community of like-minded people, as much as I value constructive interaction with oppositional views.”
The sad fact is that I think many of TACs staff (excluding Rod, of course) have no real interest in appealing to culturally traditional conservatives. Sure, they’ll throw us a bone now and then (e.g., an article by MBD) but you can tell that what they really want to do is go back to pointing out how bad the neocons are.
TAC failed once with just that formula. Remember when the staff had three people and one of them was—you guessed it—a self-professed liberal (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2007/0705.konetzki.html)? What happened to the magazine then? They had to cease publication because liberals had no use for it and conservatives weren’t interested.
Why exactly does TAC want to return to the formula that crippled them once before? If the magazine wants to succeed why doesn’t it try a radical new approach: appeal to actual American conservatives.
The amount of bitterness I’m sensing from the ‘conservative or nothing else’ commenters here astounds me. I read very few left-leaning blogs myself for the simple reason I tend to agree with them on various (though not entire) general principles. Ergo, I have no need to be persuaded towards a certain approach that I’m already comfortable with. Right-leaning blogs, in contrast, provide that necessary contrast and challenge. Are the arguments based on sound reasoning, citations and relevant explanations? Then there is room to engage these arguments and consider them — not even room, rather, there is a necessity, a requirement. If one does not do this, one sits in front of a mirror all day wondering how things could be otherwise. Such an limited approach is nonsensical. Those posting here who are saying that such an approach is the only way for them are looking for comfort in sameness instead of the possibilities of dialogue and exchange. It’s like saying you stop learning when you leave high school or college because you’ve found what your beliefs are and need never step beyond them again — and I trust most posters here are old and experienced enough to realize how foolish that must sound.
Seems like time for a vote of confidence, so I have just subscribed for the first time.
Here’s an idea, why doesnt TAC keep Millman but bring another paleo on board? How about we give Kelly Vlahos or Bill Kaufman a daily gig? Heck. I’ll volunteer, I’ll even do it for free.
I have read Noah for years. May I suggest that at some point you two engage in a Southern conservative vs Northern liberal cook-off or comparison of recipes? Should be fun coming from two people who appreciate good food.
Steve
Moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue. Extremism in defense of liberty is an oxymoron. The speech-writer who came up with the original version for Barry G. was writing for Ramparts Magazine five years later.
“homosexual ‘marriage’ simply has no support in *any* conservative tradition” — oh, I think a fair percentage of British Tories prove otherwise, even without taking into consideration their little experiments at boarding school.
In short, I join the majority of comments supporting what Mr. Dreher originally wrote.
“I’m glad I cancelled my subscription last year. If I want to read what liberals have to say, I will read a liberal journal.”
“So you hired somebody who agrees with your conclusions, not your premises?
A sounder foundation for a magazine would have it the other way around.”
“The magazine started out as a paleocon publication, and it’s now deteriorated to something of a fey version of NR. I’ll keep visiting the site, but I’m not renewing my charter subscription. Let Unz find his money elsewhere.”
“The resources and space given Millman by TAC could be given to an up and coming conservative writer instead. There are plenty of liberal publications that can give Millman something do between hawking scripts, and you can engage them all you want. You already do this with Wacky Andy and others.”
“Liberals have their points, but why hire a moderate? That’s what Millman is, and it isn’t like his views are under-represented in the current climate. I’ve read some of his stuff and liked it, but if I buy TAC at the newsstand, it’s to read something totally new or different. Hire all the real leftists and real conservatives you want, but spare me these moderates whose views are “evolving,” but carefully staying within the limits of respectable discourse. They bore me to tears.”
“To put a finer point on it, I’m a working-class dude in a country that’s headed you-know-where in a handbasket and I’m squeezed from every side. Are you honestly telling me that I should take the money that I tear the skin off of my knuckles to obtain and spend it just so that I can see the opinions of a moderate in print? So that he can tell me how much better off we’d be if things were slightly different?”
My apologies to any dissenter above whom I failed to quote. It’s one thing to post occasional pieces by liberals, but it’s quite another for a magazine that was formed back in 2002 in opposition to the impending war against Iraq to reward with a blog someone who was an ardent supporter of that very war and who holds views that are far from “conversative.” I guess this is in line with the NY Times rewarding with a column the youngest columnist in its history, at age 28, Ross Douthat, who was also an ardent backer of the Iraq War at age 22 and didn’t confess error until June 2011. I guess to be given
a column as a “conservative” at the NY Times, you either have to be Jewish or a neoconservative, preferably both.
Long before I started reading and subscribing to TAC in 2007 or 2008, I was strongly against the Iraq war based solely on my reading of the NY Times and Wall Street Journal, to which I applied my knowledge and my brain. I so stated the day the war started. http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/Stocks_(A_to_Z)/Stocks_S/threadview?bn=7199&tid=31666&mid=31699 I based my opposition to the war on the simple premise that Iraq had not attacked us. (I was heartened to read the last interview Milton Friedman (for whom I had a great respect) gave the Wall Street Journal a few months before his death in 2006, in which he stated he was opposed to the war against Iraq (even though his wife favored it) because he didn’t believe wars should be fought against countries that hadn’t attacked us.) Even though I am a nonbeliever, I expressed concern about the as many as 5,000 American lives that would be lost in the war as well as the untold Iraqi lives (I didn’t distinguish between Christian and Muslim) that would be lost. I concluded that “This whole policy is insane in my opinion.” It seems that I was spot on.
I’m sure Mr. Millman read the same publications I did and somehow arrived at the opposite conclusion. Somehow I’m not sure I should be subsidizing Mr. Millman’s views with my money. I also read Mr. Millman’s piece about the responsibility for the housing bubble, twice, and I’m still not sure where he lays the finger of blame, although he appears to absolve Alan Greenspan of responsibility for the bubble. Unfortunately, I didn’t save all my posts on Yahoo from 2003, but at the same time I was expressing my lonely opposition to the Iraq war, I was expressing strong opposition to the Greenspan Fed’s insanely low interest rates. Being an economics major in college, I understood that lower interest rates are intended to spur activity in interest-sensitive economic areas such as housing. Why would anyone be surprised that a housing bubble resulted from insanely low interest rates? I also predicted on one financial message board in June 2006 (not saved and no longer retrievable) that a recession was impending because of the housing market slowdown, something Wall Street and even the Fed failed to comprehend.
With the addition of Mr. Millman, I see the day not too distant when TAC is renamed The New TAC and strongly endorses the impending war with Iran, with Mr. Millman writing passionate pieces arguing why war with Iran is absolutely necessary.
Debating liberal ideas is a good idea, and engaging liberals in a serious discussion is absolutely essential to revitalizing conservatism. But having liberal writers on board what is supposed to be a conservative magazine is a mistake. Change the name from American Consercative to something else if the idea is to ideologically diversify the content.
“But homosexual ‘marriage’ simply has no support in *any* conservative tradition. And supporting the mass immigration which means…”
Wait. The editorial board at the WSJ has been pretty pro-immgration for a long time. I think we can call them broadly conservative. As for gay marriage having no support in any conservative tradition, this strikes me as pretty false. Free-marketeers and other forms of libertarians have supported it in various terms.
This is par for the course. I’d call Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey a liberal by conventional standards. But he’s pro-life.
I don’t know that I am aware of any full-proof, litmus-test issue for liberalism or conservatism. Although I am pretty sure almost everyone thinks that the issue they care most about SHOULD be considered the litmus test.
Edward Hamilton, have you looked at other alt right websites?
I wonder if I should apply for a spot in the “blog stable”. Heaven knows I’ve ticked off enough of the posters here, and my particular take on what is conservative and what is not might tick off a few more.
Like the lady said in the movie: Might be fun. (grin)
Your servant,
Lord Karth
I think it would be a good idea to just be polite and respectful to the new writer, check out his post, say hello, read through once and consider, and then if you’re still pissed, don’t go back.
Sam M: I think there’s good reason to question whether libertarianism is, properly speaking, conservative.
You can however make a case for gay marriage on conservative priciples: Jonathan Rauch and Andrew Sullivan have done so.
PA15017,
First off, I think you should assume that the antipathy being expressed about the Millman hire is based on familiarity with his work. People of goodwill rarely form strong opinions about authors whose work they have not read.
Furthermore, I don’t think that any of the criticism here has risen to the level of “disrespect” or “impoliteness,” even, and I’m quite sure that you’re misreading the context here if you think it’s “pissed-ness” at Millman himself. He, like the female impersonator in Rod’s hometown, is just doing what he feels makes sense, and while I don’t like it, I wish him the best as he walks the path of life.
The way I feel, if I can take the analogy further, is the way a taxpaying parent from St. Francisville might feel upon hearing that the person in question was hired as the school’s health teacher or wrestling coach.
I, for one, don’t come here to read liberals. There are more than enough of them elsewhere. I come here as a refuge from the storm of liberalism. Tribalism? I don’t think so, but call it that if you like.
“One of the most frustrating things about the dead end contemporary conservatism finds itself in is that it has become more about tribalism and identity politics than re-examining first principles in light of changing circumstances. In other words, it has too often become about militant assertion, not deliberation.”
Thank you, Rod. I don’t know where the interesting experiment of hiring Noah Millman will lead, but at least it led you to lay down the thesis statement of what happened to the thing once called “conservatism”.
Someone could write a book.
I recall Noah’s recent sympathetic article on fatherhood
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/01/true-fictions-of-fatherhood-39
“…critics objected that I gave aid and comfort to liberals by saying good things about environmentalism…
and question his premise for valuation – what price ‘environment’ for the family? His baseline seems to be God’s gifts come to those who deserve them, with the bar set by the deserving (ie a dictatorship of relativism)… a common enough American heresy. What risk premium does his social order of “change” incur to involuntary non-participants (children of same-sex ‘marriage’)? Who plays God in such a Théâtre de l’Absurde? Indeed it will be interesting to see how coherent he can be on his quest to promote appreciation of culture (primum mobile, God as first mover, no mere roleplayer He). How will his fidelity to an orthodox Jewish faith inform his appreciation of “author” of culture, the writer of ALL human drama?
Indeed what would world literature look like if civilization had NOT preserved the patrimony of matrimony by cultivating its celebration so assiduously? Whither the drama of folly in time preferences warped – if anything goes, who cares were it went? The misbegotten offspring left in the lurch as characters of a neogothic decline and fall in the 21st century…? As power abhors a vacuum, possession will go to the victor – navel-gazing decadence has annihilated many a culture before us… and “toleration” will certainly be demanded of the vanquished. Perhaps that’s why such a virtue of necessity is so highly valued by social utilitarians? Indifference to the sacred, that which is everlasting, renders profane power easily satisfied merely by what is reflected in us, according to the crude metrics of man’s own making.
No glory or honor in resisting obscurantism,
instead lazy aquiescence to the soporific thrall of the mental onanism of “I think therefore I am”?
Human progress as enlightenment “development” is only as good as it is integral human development – ie any “light” is external to the human mind and is thus in need of integration by the soul…. via the senses of the body, as the scholastics prior to the “progressive enlightenment” taught. Alternatively, latter day phenomenology is only as valid as far as it concedes that experience attains meaning by external reference, in the encountered experience with “other” acting persons: there is no such thing as a disembodied acting mind, even God took on an incarnation to redeem us!
I was going to comment on this but you beat me to it. With all due respect to Noah Millman, the fact that his addition here makes people ask “Has TAC gone liberal?” is why his addition is a problem. TAC already has an identity problem among people who are it’s potential audience. This will only add to that.
All the calls for toleration and intellectual diversity of opinion here miss the mark in my opinion. The need for diversity of perspective is already served by our ability to post comments. This is no small thing. Many sites severely censor or have no comments at all. TAC does have a liberal comments process and that is to applauded. Try posting rational repost comments at National Review. The more telling, the less they appear.
The point I see is that my giving Millman a job here, TAC deprives a genuine conservative of all too scarce “bandwidth.” Millman’s mentality is all around us. It’s insulting to have it here.
There is another unraised question. If the Right is at least in large measure, the voice of people who play the game of life with their own money, why don’t the more successful of those people create and support venues such as this? It’s as though the communication of traditional culture and free enterprise is an ignoble enterprise. It’s time that people of Romney’s class understand that when we lose the culture they lose their fortunes. In stead they support the business roundtable, the chamber etc. They seem oblivious to the fact that without a traditional, disciplined middle class, they cannot survive.
@ Sam M: “As for gay marriage having no support in any conservative tradition, this strikes me as pretty false. Free-marketeers and other forms of libertarians have supported it in various terms.”
“Free-marketeers” and libertarians are not necessarily conservatives.
There really is no “conservative” case for SSM. Only a radical, a statist, or a positivist (or some combination thereof) can take the fundamental social relationship–preexisting all states, ideologies, and cults–and use the force of law to “redefine” it so as to drain it of all meaning.
SSM is the final F.U. to culture, tradition, and natural society. It is the denial of natural law. It is Lucifer’s “Non serviam.” It is the denial of God–because without God all things, including sodomistic pseudogamy, are permitted.
Thomas O. Meehan: If the Right is at least in large measure, the voice of people who play the game of life with their own money, why don’t the more successful of those people create and support venues such as this? It’s as though the communication of traditional culture and free enterprise is an ignoble enterprise.
Ah, now you’re getting Marx’s central insight (and I say this not as a Marxist, because I’m not; but he had some valid ideas): That is, capital–money–doesn’t care. As the prophet P. Diddy said, it’s all about the Benjamins. The wealthy don’t care as long as the bucks come in. They’re not oblivious–they really think their money will save them no matter what, and that the culture can go down the drains and they’ll still be OK. Thus, capitalism ultimately destroys the very values and traditions it purportedly honors.
In fairness to Lenin, it was he not Marx that really developed that idea. Perhaps surprisingly, Irving Kristol made that point a lot better than either those two did. It is a shame that the neo-conservative movement became epitomizes by Kristol fils not pere. It could have been a very valuable movement.
Getting Marx’s “Central insight?” Are you kidding? I read Marx on the midnight shift as a Sheriff’s Officer. I had the hippy instructors at Rutgers convinced that I was a budding revolutionary, just coming to grips with my false consciousness.
What you say is perfectly true, but there is this also. Marxist societies also erode public morale and culture, and to an even greater degree. Indeed Socialism leads to feudalism of a sort as we see with the regency of Raul Castro, or the succession of North Korea’s ruling family, etc.
My thesis, which is too long to go into in any detail is this. All systems accrete formal and informal relationships and law and regulation, which grows more and more dense and inflexible with time. Eventually this sclerotic over-burden impedes freedom of action. This leads to the death of the system. We are in such a state now.
In this view Socialism is more offensive because it is inherently more bureaucratic and more driven by base motives such as envy. But yes Capitalism, if driven by acquisitiveness alone, is amoral.
We have been gliding along on the belief that the Protestant work ethic that helped created British and American prosperity was somehow integral to Capitalism itself. We have also been living off the moral cultural capital of Western, Christian tradition, which is now less and less a factor in how we govern or live. We are now seeing that the Wall Street as you imply operates on the level of Mr. Diddy.
Re: There really is no “conservative” case for SSM.
The conservative case is simply that the same principles that apply to heterosexual relationships ought apply to homosexual relationships; that marriage ought be the ideal, an institution that constrains sexuality into socially stabilizing patterns. I don’t know why this is so hard to understand. If there are objections that override these principles by all means state them, but please do not pretend that the conservative case for SSM does not exist.
To meaningfully discuss whether there is a conservative case to be made for same sex marriage, all participants in the discussion must first agree on a definition of conservative.
Obviously, no such consensus exists here, therefore, there can be no meaningful discussion of whether a conservative case can be made for same sex marriage. All that is possible, and all that has appeared here, is various people opining that “in my understanding of what I mean when I say that I am a conservative, it (is / is not) possible to make an argument for same sex marriage.
Accordingly, perhaps we should let same sex marriage rise or fall on its own merits, if any, rather than on whether it can be supported on conservative principles.
This is, incidentally, the same dillemma featured in the Massachusetts Supreme Court decision on same sex marriage: they never bothered to agree on a definition of marriage, therefore, they rendered a decision that changed the definition. If they had defined marriage as, e.g., the union of a man and a woman living together as man and wife, then the fact that some men do not wish to enter into the status, and some women don’t either, and some men who don’t want to enter into something else with another man, etc., would not have given rise to specious “equal protection of the law” arguments.
“The conservative case is simply that the same principles that apply to heterosexual relationships ought apply to homosexual relationships; that marriage ought be the ideal, an institution that constrains sexuality into socially stabilizing patterns.”
Among the principles of marriage are:
(1) the sexual complementarity of the partners such that the marriage can be consummated with natural coition; and
(2) the ordering toward the procreation of children.
Sodomitistic pseudogamy fails both principles. So, even according to your terms, there is no conservative case for SSM.
…and now we have Leo Ladenson’s application of what HE considers to be conservative principles, and what he, by his understanding of “conservative,” believes to be among the principles of marriage. Add that to the long list of possibilities.
“…and now we have Leo Ladenson’s application of what HE considers to be conservative principles, and what he, by his understanding of “conservative,” believes to be among the principles of marriage.”
Wrong. I was simply applying JonF’s “conservative case” that “the same principles that apply to heterosexual relationships ought apply to homosexual relationships.” Among the principles of marriage are sexual complementarity and procreative orientation. SSM fails both.
My “conservative” case is that no one–no judge, no legislature, no generation–has the right to redefine the fundamental social relationship that preexists every other such relationship and law. If one were to deny the sacrosanctity, the unassailability, and inalterability of that primary and fundamental relationship, then what is safe? And surely no one would does deny such can rightfully be called a conservative.
“And surely no one would does deny such can rightfully be called a conservative.”
Perhaps not by you — but many who call themselves conservatives have, at least in your eyes, done exactly that.
In a more pragmatic way, I agree with you. Its not that much of anything is unassailable or inalterable, as far as civil law is concerned. But, marriage has been about a specific relation between man and woman (sometimes polygamous, but never homosexual) since long before the ratification of the Constitution of the United States. One cannot engage in legal reasoning with integrity unless we define our terms. The starting point for definition of marriage is, what has it always been?
On that basis, a legislature might amend the definition (for civil purposes only, having no jurisdiction over the free exercise of religion), but the redefinition is not a matter of right.
However, there are self-described conservatives who disagree with me on that point, and of course with you.
[...] one distressed by his addition. Millman’s fellow blogger Rod Dreher has already felt the need to address the issue. In fact, I “borrowed” the title of Dreher’s post for this article because it helps make my [...]