Republicans took a beating on Election Day because they abandoned their conservative principles and in the end stood for nothing, Rush Limbaugh says. ~Newsmax (Via Doug Bandow)

If they stood for nothing, why would any “real conservative” (as Limbaugh holds himself out to be) actively promote them?  Oh, I know the spiel about how the other side would be worse and so on, but are we really supposed to believe that these sorts of people can say one week, “The Republicans understand how to protect this country!  They defend our moral values!  They want to reduce the size of government–no, really, they do!” and then turn around on a dime and say, “The Republicans are feckless opportunists!  I never even met these guys until a couple days ago!”?

I understand that politics involves compromises and a certain degree of pragmatism.  That is why, obviously, I am never going into politics, because I have a lousy temperament for it.  Well, that and the whole “I don’t have much respect for democracy” bit.  (After Tuesday, I have some small respect for it, but only a little.)  So it is possible for some principled people to have made the mistake of backing a party because they believed, wrongly, that it was fighting for their principles inside the government.  They backed, as the jingoes would say, the weak horse.  But we cannot assume such good-faith naivete with Limbaugh.  If these people stood for nothing in 2006, they stood for pretty much the same thing in 2004 when they won (and I don’t remember Limbaugh ever mentioning how it was the political party and not his idea of conservatism–which isn’t conservatism–that was implicated in that election).  Limbaugh’s “ideology” gets most of the credit when the GOP wins and none of the blame in defeat?  That seems peculiarly convenient.  Nothing about the GOP changed in those two years, and certainly nothing improved, yet Limbaugh’s attitude remained virtually unchanged from one cycle to the next.  Yes, he managed to say things against Bush’s amnesty (most Americans could manage this feat of derring-do, since an overwhelming majority opposes amnesty), but for the most part he did indeed carry water for them as dutifully as any of the talk show hosts out there.  (This is hardly in dispute, since he has admitted as much.)  So if they stood for nothing, what exactly does he stand for?  Conservatism?  What conservatism?  The conservatism of optimism and “people are basically good”?  Why on earth would any actual conservative want to support that? 

So what does Russell Kirk have to say about all of this ideology business?  (Obviously, I have been basing all of my anti-ideological remarks in what Kirk says about this, but let’s see what he wrote on this specific point.)  For starters, he wrote:

Being neither a religion nor an ideology, the body of opinion termed conservatism possesses no Holy Writ and no Das Kapital to provide dogmata. 

And, again, he wrote:

Perhaps it would be well, most of the time, to use this word ‘conservative’ as an adjective chiefly. For there exists no Model Conservative, and conservatism is the negation of ideology: it is a state of mind, a type of character, a way of looking at the civil social order. 

So what might that state of mind be?  What is involved in shaping the conservative phronima?  Prescription.  Prudence.  Deference to the customs handed down by your fathers, leavened with a desire for justice.  What justice?  To give each man what he is owed and to otherwise mind one’s own business.  What else might there be in this state of mind?  Respect for legitimate authority, and hatred of usurpers.  There is also a desire to defend the ancestral constitution and laws of your people against uncertain and potentially ruinous innovations and encroachments out of respect for prescription.  Respect for prescription entails devotion to ancestral customs, institutions and loyalties. 

I would add that a desire for a well-ordered and virtuous life, while not necessarily exclusive to this state of mind, is an essential part of it.  Likewise a desire for eunomia in society and the polity, understood in terms of maintaining right proportion and measure in all our social relationships and maintaing right relation with all of those to whom we have social and familial obligations.  I would suggest that these are an important part of the “way of looking at the civil social order” that Kirk mentioned.  As he said elsewhere:

This word order signifies harmony. There are two aspects or types of order: the inner order of the soul, and the outer order of the commonwealth.

If anyone can find this principle of eunomia in the modern “conservative ideology” of the Limbaughs, I would be very surprised.