Tough is fine. Even some of Ann’s over-the-top jokes can be written off as just that– jokes. But you can’t write off every hateful, politically damaging crack as a-O.K. simply because that Ann’s a jokester. I, for one, am proud that there are Middle Easterners, gay men and women, and other minorities for whom conservatism is an ideology that empowers. Don’t they get enough crap from our lefty colleagues for “leaving the plantation?” Why should they be subjected to more from one of their supposed allies?

Ours is not the ideology of identity politics and knee-jerk, manufactured outrage that serve political ends, not people [bold mine-DL].  But it is an ideology that should seek to serve everyone, regardless of color or sexual orientation. ~Mary Katharine Ham

There are Middle Easterners “for whom conservatism is an ideology that empowers”?  Perhaps she means that there are Arab Christians and Muslims in this country who subscribe to certain conservative ideas?  I don’t know, because the statement is horribly unclear.  But that isn’t the main thing that’s wrong with this statement.  You already know what I’m going to object to: this dreary, careless use of the word ideology. 

Conservatism is not an ideology, or rather it should be said that the conservative mind rebels and casts out every ideology.  There is undoubtedly some sort of ideology masquerading as conservative thought in this country, and Townhall’s bloggers routinely give it expression.  Anyone who wants to know why the rising new generation is fleeing the right as if they were fleeing the plague needs only peruse the ramblings of Hewitt and Co. to understand why so many Americans are running away from the proponents of the cult of the Presidency and reflexive endorsement of military action.  More than that, any sane person would be right to flee from any group of people that speaks quite openly about their “ideology,” since there is no surer sign of dangerously mindless politics than a politics governed by an inflexible ideology.  Nothing could be more alien to the conservative tradition, yet such is the low state of conservatism that many of the prominent outlets for supposedly conservative opinion will have no difficulty speaking of “conservative ideology” as if it were the most natural thing.  In the end, it is that habit of mind, which Coulter shares, that is far, far more damaging to conservatism and to the reputation of the political right in this country than any crude joke that Coulter could tell.  Predictably, in spite of the movement’s far more egregious problems of groupthink and often shocking automatic deference to President, the blog right has bestirred itself to declare that it is horrified by Coulter’s latest bomb. 

The people who wanted to go to the wall for Danish free speech, because it poked a finger in the eye of Muslims who presumed to dictate to other people what they could and couldn’t say and draw about Muhammad, are the same people who now feign or, worse, genuinely feel ashamed by Coulter’s joke.  This is pathetic.  I would be absolutely in favour of nothing but polite political discourse in which no one ever used ad hominem attacks and slurs (which would mean that many  columnists would suffer drastic reductions in output), but since we have nothing like that discourse this precious cherry-picking of this particular use of a slur is simply ridiculous.    

In rushing about denouncing Coulter these Republican bloggers legitimise every attempt to control and regulate speech through stigma and ostracism, even when the entire edifice of modern speech taboos exists solely to declare certain quite traditionally conservative convictions automatically unacceptable.  You don’t get to talk about states’ rights except in highly qualified ways, because otherwise you might be a racist.  Don’t say anything favourable about Germans in any context ever, and don’t question the absolute necessity of entering WWII, because if you did you might be an anti-Semite.  Whatever you do, don’t suggest that the successes of European civilisation had anything to do with the Europeans themselves, or you will have really gone where no one is supposed to go.      

Every conservative is compelled by the force of social stigma to speak about things he regards as morally repugnant, such as homosexuality, while using only the most vague euphemisms.  He feels obligated to qualify every statement of opposition to, say, same-sex “marriage” by declaring his lack of “homophobia” (which, literally, means “fear of the same,” which is a nonsense), when it is obvious to everyone in the debate that one of the first reasons why same-sex “marriage” seems so objectionable is that it is an endorsement of a kind of sexual relationship that most conservatives regard as fundamentally disordered and immoral.  That most conservatives can only rarely or meekly say this in public is a sign of how cowed by these speech controls many of them have become, and the more prominent they are the more submissive they become, lest they jeopardise their growing audience with anything so offensive as giving their true opinion of something.  In this respect Coulter is slightly unusual among the national pundits, since much of her appeal is in being deliberately provocative by saying things that she and everyone else knows are now “off limits.”  Who agreed that they should be off limits?  Primarily, people on the left decided that they should be and the right went along with all of them to remain “respectable,” because so many on the right had already bought into the self-loathing view that they really had held disreputable opinions in the past that needed to be excised from the discourse–along with any of their colleagues who made the mistake of making the wrong kind of statement.  Such are the repressions of an “open society” that is open to one, bland, generic consenus view from which you dissent only at your social, political and professional peril.  The conservative feels compelled by these same stigmas to refrain from calling homosexuality an abomination, which is what any honest Christian conservative has to call it, and to never on any account lend any substance to the impression that conservatives object to anything related to homosexuality because it is related to homosexuality, but always for some other reason.  Mitt Romney objects to same-sex “marriage” “for the children,” where a much more honest statement would make an objection because of the nature of the relationship itself.     

So now there is great moaning and lamenting about Ann Coulter’s joke on the “respectable” right.  Somehow the blog right cannot summon up similar anguish for all the other things about so much modern conservative commentary that are even more off-putting to reasonable people who are just coming to the world of political ideas.  They will continue to write off, shun or exclude any number of their colleagues, whether or not these colleagues are particularly valuable contributors, and wonder how it is that they lost the culture wars in the process.  Of course, the people who define and control language control the debate and thereby control the outcome of the debate.  Each delimiting of what is acceptable and unacceptable is an exercise in power, and each time the right cedes control of that delimiting and definition to its foes the more likely it is that the right will lose more and more of the debates that have already been rigged by all of the things that they will no longer be allowed to say.      

Turning to another questionable claim, let us look again at what Ms. Ham wrote:

Ours is not the ideology of identity politics and knee-jerk, manufactured outrage that serve political ends, not people.

I know it is one of the standard talking points on the right to say that we are against “identity politics.”  Identity politics is what other, bad people do.  Yeah.  Of course, all political mobilisation against this or that statement or event is “manufactured” to some extent and the outrage that this mobilisation produces is always to some degree “artificial,” because any effort to organise politically is something artificial.  It doesn’t just spring out of the ground or come together through some organic process of congealing.  People align themselves with one another, identify with one another and rally around cherished symbols and institutions when they are attacked because they see these things as being part of their identity.  People are political animals, but that does not mean that all political action is a purely spontaneous expression of our nature.  People will form political associations and create political cultures that are more or less in accordance with human nature, and those that are most in harmony with our nature will tend to flourish by encouraging human flourishing, but the work of making a political culture is very much one of artifice and construction.  For at least one good reason and at least one less coherent reason, conservatives have tended to reflexively react very negatively against anything that smacks of postmodernity and deconstruction.  The good reason is that deconstruction and most pomo efforts are aimed at subverting and overthrowing the norms of Western society that conservatives wish to preserve, starting with the meaning of words and moving on from there to criticism and dismantling of entire institutions and habits of thought.  The less coherent reason for objecting to this is the idea that if this or that identity is constructed it is therefore not real or not important and can therefore be dismantled and chucked onto the scrapheap.  It is as if we were to embrace the pomo view that no one before the pomos ever knew that identity and meaning were constructed, as if people for thousands of years could have missed their own constructions of identity, and insist that we must defend full-on essentialism or embrace total critique.  But this is silly.  Once something is constructed, it exists and has significance, and to believe that identity is constructed is to believe that collapsing cultures can be reconstructed and reinvested with meaning.  To engage in identity politics is to attempt to make use of the identity to which you have adhered yourself as part of the ongoing process of construction.    

Everyone practices identity politics.  When Christians, including myself, went after Marcotte for her bigotry (which was bigotry), they were engaged in identity politics.  When Southerners defend the battle flag as a symbol of their heritage and identity as Southerners, they are engaged in identity politics just as surely as black politicians are engaged in identity politics when they demand slavery reparations.  This myth of people who are not engaged in such politics or who are not motivated by their attachments and loyalties simply has nothing to do with real human beings and how they interact with each other.  Some kinds of identity politics are obviously worse and more destructive than others.  Eliminationist nationalisms are clearly evil and premised on finding meaning for themselves only through the annihilation of other peoples, while there can be cultural and constitutive nationalisms that generally provide meaning and solidarity for people who may desperately need it.  However, to “object” to someone’s position because it is a form of identity politics is like objecting to a writer’s book because he uses words.