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© February 18, 2005, The New Republic
I think it was John Kenneth Galbraith, speaking in the early 1960s, the high point of post-New Deal liberalism, who pronounced conservatism dead. Conservatism, he said, was "bookless," a characteristic Galbraithian, which is to say Olympian, verdict. Without books, there are no ideas. And it is true: American conservatism was, at the time, a congeries of cranky prejudices, a closed church with an archaic doctrine proclaimed by spoiled swells. William F. Buckley Jr. comes to mind, and a few others whose names will now resonate with almost nobody. Take as just one instance Russell Kirk, an especially prominent conservative intellectual who, as Clinton Rossiter (himself a moderate conservative) wrote, has "begun to sound like a man born one hundred and fifty years too late and in the wrong country."
At this point in history, it is liberalism upon which such judgments are rendered. And understandably so. It is liberalism that is now bookless and dying. The most penetrating thinker of the old liberalism, the Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, is virtually unknown in the circles within which he once spoke and listened, perhaps because he held a gloomy view of human nature. However gripping his illuminations, however much they may have been validated by history, liberals have no patience for such pessimism. So who has replaced Niebuhr, the once-commanding tribune to both town and gown? It's as if no one even tries to fill the vacuum. Here and there, of course, a university personage appears to assert a small didactic point and proves it with a vast and intricate academic apparatus. In any case, it is the apparatus that is designed to persuade, not the idea.
Ask yourself: Who is a truly influential liberal mind in our culture? Whose ideas challenge and whose ideals inspire? Whose books and articles are read and passed around? There's no one, really. What's left is the laundry list: the catalogue of programs (some dubious, some not) that Republicans aren't funding, and the blogs, with their daily panic dose about how the Bush administration is ruining the country.
Europe is also making the disenchanting journey from social democracy, but via a different route. Its elites had not foreseen that a virtually unchecked Muslim immigration might hijack the welfare state and poison the postwar culture of relative tolerance that supported its politics. To the contrary, Europe's leftist elites lulled the electorates into a false feeling of security that the new arrivals were simply doing the work that unprecedented low European birth rates were leaving undone. No social or cultural costs were to be incurred. Transaction closed. Well, it was not quite so simple. And, while the workforce still needs more workers, the economies of Europe have been dragged down by social guarantees to large families who do not always have a wage-earner in the house. So, even in the morally self-satisfied Scandinavian and Low Countries, the assuring left-wing bromides are no longer believed.
The conflict between right and left in the United States is different. What animates American conservatism is the future of the regulatory state and the trajectory of federalism. The conservatives have not themselves agreed on how far they want to retract either regulation or the authority of the national government. These are not axiomatic questions for them, as can be seen by their determined and contravening success last week in empowering not the states against Washington but Washington against the states in the area of tort law. As Jeffrey Rosen has pointed out in these pages, many of these issues will be fought out in the courts. But not all. So a great national debate will not be avoided.
Liberals have reflexes on these matters, and these reflexes put them in a defensive posture. But they have not yet conducted an honest internal conversation that assumes from the start that the very nature of the country has changed since the great New Deal reckoning. Surely there are some matters on which the regulatory state can relax. Doubtless also there are others that can revert to the states. Still, liberals know that the right's ideologically framed--but class-motivated--retreat of the government from the economy must be resisted. There will simply be too many victims left on the side of the road.
Sir Evil said:
If that was the case you would be here all the time posting the news. Unfortunately it's just another liberal pipe dream, the only thing that is on the march is loudmouths of liberal views that are doing nothing more than hurting their own party!
I didn't. You are correct in that the GOP has become the more 'liberal' party, meaning willing to try new solutions, when faced with the fact that the old ways are not working anymore. ie., the idea of 'private accounts' for SS. The NCLB, while flawed, is one way of addressing troubled schools. The Patriot Act falls in this as well.menewa said:You seem to have missed the point of my post.
Kathianne said:I didn't. You are correct in that the GOP has become the more 'liberal' party, meaning willing to try new solutions, when faced with the fact that the old ways are not working anymore. ie., the idea of 'private accounts' for SS. The NCLB, while flawed, is one way of addressing troubled schools. The Patriot Act falls in this as well.
The Dems on the other hand, have offered nothing new, in fact the dearth of ideas is witnessed by the screeches that are becoming louder and more extreme by the day. Yep, 9/11 changed everything.
:
I just posted on that!Bonnie said:Certainly is a far cry from the day after 9/11 when all of Congress and the Senate were out on the Capitol steps holding hands singing "cumbaya"
It seems nowadays the only thing Democrats can come up with is to ask every member of Bush's cabinet and every Republican in office to resign hoping it will stick sooner or later. Just today Kennedy told Rummsfeld to resign and now Hillary has her teeth out again asking..... get this.... Karl Rove to resign over a comment made at a dinner party..<a href='http://www.smileycentral.com/?partner=ZSzeb008_ZSXXXXXX42US' target='_blank'><img src='http://smileys.smileycentral.com/cat/10/10_12_16.gif' alt='Wetting Pants' border=0></a>
The machinations on the left began very early, they were bright enough to know though, that the vast majority of democratic voters were going to rally to the President, which is why it appeared for a bit that 'we were together.' It had broken down by the beginning of December 2001.I just posted on that! The machinations on the left began very early, they were bright enough to know though, that the vast majority of democratic voters were going to rally to the President, which is why it appeared for a bit that 'we were together.' It had broken down by the beginning of December 2001.
Not the politicos, they waited. Move On however, was less than 48 hours.Bonnie said:Kathianne
Im thinking more like on 9/14 ....am LOL
