Before I sign off for the weekend, just a couple other thoughts on Austin Bramwell’s “Goodbye To All That” in the new American Conservative.  First, I have not yet remarked on the title, which is a very good one and which, in its evocation of Robert Graves’ autobiography, might be said to liken the effects of the Bush administration on the conservative movement to those of WWI on European and more particularly British civilisation.  In both cases, the two technically survive their calamitous disasters and, in the case of Europe, briefly undergo a brief respite from more calmities and while surrendering themselves to introspection and exhaustion before the next disaster strikes.  That’s worth considering.

My other thoughts were these: Bramwell’s article is very much like some of Viereck’s late 1950s and early 1960s-era commentary when he engaged in a kind of “pox on all your houses” approach to critiques of other conservatives: NR was too nationalist and capitalist (he was almost certainly right) and Kirk was both a no-good sell-out to Barry Goldwater and the latter’s “Manchester liberalism” (here he would be not very right at all) and a sort of traditionalist poseur (“the traditionless worship of tradition”!).  (Separately, and related only tangentially to these Viereck remarks, where is Dan McCarthy’s promised response on Viereck that we have all been anticipating?)  Of course, Viereck’s own criticisms of Kirk et al. leave one puzzling over Bramwell’s claim that Kirk had “almost no political opinions whatsoever.”  Perhaps he expressed few of them in print, in which case I think I understand what Mr. Bramwell means, but that he had almost none?  That is harder to believe.

But what got to me thinking about Viereck and Bramwell together was the problem of calling down a pox on all houses.  This might seem tremendously fun to do (and it is fun), until you discover that, if you have been successful with your cursing, all of the dwellings are henceforth pox-ridden and you are obliged to take up in the nearby caves.  If inclined to an ascetic frame of mind, you might find this to be an excellent solution, and perhaps the houses were overrated in any case.  But it does give one the distinct impression that you really do intend to leave “all of that” behind (which I suppose the title already told us).  That would be fine as far as it goes, if all of the “houses” were really all just as bad as the other and if all of the different kinds of conservatism were actually lacking in analytical power and understanding, but as I have already tried to show and as I hope to discuss at greater length in the coming weeks I don’t think these claims necessarily hold up all that well.