Comments on: The Trouble With Disraeli

By: Otto Deschambault

Otto Deschambault — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 18:43:29 +0000

Hello, I found your blog in a new directory of blogs. I dont know how your blog came up, must have

By: Daniel McCarthy

Daniel McCarthy — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:43:00 +0000

That’s a very good point — the fragmentation or “sectarianism” of the Right is usually seen, not least by conservatives themselves, as a defect. But the differentiation of the Right into a plethora of micro-conservatisms might be the most appropriate thing for an age of narrative fragmentation. On the other hand, the thrust of philosophical conservatism at least since Coleridge has been against the fissiparous tendencies of modern culture and politics. In practice, though, I’d like to see American conservatism become less monolithic (or for that matter bipolar) and more realistically complex.

I’m skeptical about getting back to older virtues, simply because I don’t think human beings are ever very virtuous. But it does look to me as if the welfare state encourages bad habits. It’s not just the welfare state, though — the right-wing “investment” state, the mentality that home prices will always go up and stocks will always turn a profit, is also deranged, to the extent (which in fact is a very great extent) that it encourages unrealistic expectations and then invokes government (which itself is insolvent) to rescue or correct the markets.

By: Ed

Ed — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:35:46 +0000

Thanks for the response. To put it another way, are the “thick” variants of conservatism developed in an age of big ideas and universal narratives (socialism, Marxism, Freudianism, Darwinism) really appropriate for an age that’s come to question such comprehensive ideologies? Or is 21st century conservatism bound to be more modest?

I can see that diminishing resources and increased competition may make the welfare states 20th century liberals dreamed about a thing of the past. People may become more self-reliant and work harder out of necessity, but I still wonder if the idea of getting back to older virtues through greater reliance on market discipline may not be too much to expect from this generation of Westerners.

After I posted I remembered David Frum’s great u-turn from a very “dry” market-based conservatism to the wettest welfare-state conservatism. Whatever one thinks of Frum, is the idea of reforming character through government austerity perhaps too much of an unrealizable dream?

By: Daniel McCarthy

Daniel McCarthy — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 20:18:05 +0000

Those are still fairly limited policy objectives, whether they’re right or wrong. The sweeping cultural vision of a T.S. Eliot or a Christopher Dawson is what O’Sullivan has in mind, and the propensity of that kind of vision to shade into politics that resemble those of Charles Maurras. O’Sullivan points to “liberal-conservatism,” which he associates with Hayek and Roepke, and Japanese-style corporatism as alternatives to a radical traditionalism that requires a complete reconstruction of culture. He has some paragraphs looking at why, from a hard cultural-conservative perspective overt totalitarian systems such as Communism might actually be preferable (at least in the abstract) to covertly totalitarian liberalism — he cites some lines from Dawson about how we’re not really free in a democracy or free market, because advertising is shaping our minds. O’Sullivan argues that Dawson and Eliot actually do wind up choosing reformist paths, however, rather than pursuing to the most radical implications of their thought.

To put it another way: is it enough to limit the effects of liberalism (however one understands that term) or to make liberalism “conservative”? Or is liberalism so terrible that it must be extirpated?

By: Ed

Ed — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 16:41:13 +0000

“… The real challenge to the imagination of the conservative statesman is to spot those parts of a rickety structure which, when strengthened by modest reforms, will give greater stability to the whole. To attempt more than that — by reforming religion, culture, or men’s beliefs about society and the universe at large, for example — may of course be possible; but the price of success is likely to be the destruction of liberty and legality.”

Does that apply to the idea that cutting back the welfare state will make people more responsible? I’m not trying to score an ideological point against paleos or other conservatives, just wondering if there wasn’t something unrealistic about that project as well. Perhaps that wasn’t a modest goal either, or if it was, what about the idea that freeing up financial markets would make money men more prudent?