The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

And the Rick Played On

Posted on | January 14, 2010 | 27 Comments

by Smitty

An inadvertantly funny title from Rick Moran: “WHY CONSERVATISM IS DISCONNECTED FROM REALITY”. Emphasis mine throughout.

I debated whether or not to make this a piece about “some conservatives” eschewing reality for an alternate universe or if I should make it about much of modern conservatism’s disconnect from the reality of 21st century America.

In the end, I think it is more important to look at how conservatism as a philosophy has closed itself off so thoroughly from uncomfortable and inconvenient truths about America. The fringe players in the movement with their litmus tests and dreams of going bear hunting with Sarah Palin are not really the problem as I see it.

At this point, there are a couple of directions the post could go without collapsing into self-parody.

Their worldview, shaped as it is by wallowing in the echo chamber of conservative media, and warped by a naive and ultimately uninformed ideological prism through which they spout nonsensical, paranoid conspiracies, may be relevant to the political health of the right but has little to do with the breakdown of conservatism as a governing philosophy itself.

I’ll sip the beverage and simply refuse to let my hackles be raised by another act of condescension from Moran.

In this case, it is conservatism losing its ability to question itself in a rigorous and punishing manner, preferring to maintain a comfort zone in which certain shibboleths of the past rest easily on the mind and prevent the kind of examination of underlying assumptions that any set of philosophical principles needs to maintain touch with the real world.

Now, there is some irony. Did Rick mean to refer to Judges 12, a reference which only (a) the people Rick denigrates, and (b) over-educated boobs grasp (the author of this post likely falls into both categories.)

One might argue that the problem is really with people who hold to those philosophical principles and their refusal to challenge their beliefs. I don’t think this is necessarily true. You can’t sneeze these days without tripping over someone on the right indulging in the kind of “Woe is us” pontificating. I should know. I do it often enough. One would think with all this angst, some truths about why conservatism is where it is today and how it got there would emerge. So far, I have been unimpressed.

There have been some valiant attempts, most notably after Sam Tannenhaus’s Death of Conservatism was published. Rejecting much of Tannenhaus’s critique (as most conservatives should), the author nevertheless wallops a couple of extra base hits while socking at least one, long home run in his analysis; that modern movement conservatism isn’t very conservative at all in that it seeks to overthrow the social order rather than conserve what is best about America while channeling change into productive venues consistent with tradition and the Constitution.

What do you mean?

Tannenhaus refers to these right wingers as “revanchists.” Indeed, there is a strong impulse even among so called “reasonable conservatives” that FDR’s New Deal and Johnson’s Great Society need to be repealed or drastically curtailed. In it’s[sic] place? There things get kind of fuzzy but what emerges from many conservatives is some kind of “super federalism” where a souped up 10th Amendment would give us 50 different EPA’s or worse, where “market forces” would solve the problems of clean air and clean water.

There may be some that fit your description, Rick. Many, however would argue in favor of a systematic analysis to ensure that governmental functions are assigned to an appropriate level. Sure, an EPA makes sense. As does an FDA. Conflating Constitutionally reasonable applications of the Commerce Clause with the individual interference of FDR and LBJ’s diabolical and financially unsustainable 10th Amendment violations is the hallmark of foppish Progressive analysis. What will Progressivism do once it has succeeded in turning the Promised Land into Egypt? Commence pyramid construction for all of the losers who ‘saved’ us from capitalism, one suspects. “Shovel ready”, as they say. As in: “The captain of this lugger / He was a dirty bugger / He wasn’t fit to shovel s**t / From one place to another.” [NSFW] Friggin’ in the Riggin’–yet another jobs program for those who know how to “give it some bollocks.” Look at me playing to your stereotypes, Rick! Oh, and here you walk it back:

That’s just one example, of course. And I should hasten to add that any good conservative supports a reasonable brand of federalism, not to mention a prudent regard for liberty and the taxpayer’s money that would force us to question the efficacy of hundreds if not thousands of federal programs. But, what many of the revanchists seek is not a “return” to first principles in the Constitution but rather a form of government more akin to an Articles of Confederation on steroids.

Libertarians, perhaps. But I wouldn’t equate wanting to accidentally-on-purpose de-fund the Department of Education as AoC on steroids. What is your take on the Federalism Amendment, one wonders. Too conservative?

Another Tannenhaus point scored deals with the notion that movement conservatives positively hate government – government of any kind. It goes far beyond the healthy suspicion that all conservatives should possess of the positive impact government programs can have on society, and devolves into paranoia about any government program or effort to address stubborn national problems.

Here is where conservatism itself goes off the rails and feeds this paranoia, preventing conservative ideas from being brought to bear on national issues like health care, immigration, loss of industry, globalization, and adequate, sensible regulation of everything from financial institutions to the environment.

Conservatives aren’t anarchists! Conservatives are pro-military, which is a rather clear, Constitutional government function. Where is your argument, pray tell?

For it is not necessarily people who have become hostile to government but rather conservatism as a governing philosophy that has walled itself into a corner, refusing to confront a modern America that is less white, less agrarian, more urbanized, more technical, and developing a growing tolerance for government solutions to prickly, systemic problems experienced by ordinary Americans.

The race card, Moran? Really? “Government solutions?” Really?

  1. Americans bleed red. That is really all you need to know. Americans will continue to oppose the efforts of all nitwits to affix a racist attitude to them.
  2. $12+T debt. Government solves no problems whatsoever. Occasionally, government maintains problems. Disabusing yourself of this chimeric notion of “government solutions” will go far towards rebuilding your credibility, Rick.

Rick goes on:

That last is the killer. Since the end of World War II and the rise of modern conservatism, it is been de rigueur for the right to promote the idea that government can be cut down to size, shrunk to an ill-defined outline that bears more of a resemblance to 19th century America than a modern society with all the miseries and challenges that reality entails.

The thrust of conservative critiques of the welfare state from Hayek to Kirk to Reagan has been that government is bigger than it should be as a result of it trying to do more than is necessary for the functioning of a constitutional republic. Indeed, a strict constructionist reading of the Constitution would cause anyone to question the manufactured justifications for everything from overly zealous government interference in commerce to the legislating of cultural issues from the bench. Conservatives rightly believe that “original intent” are not dirty words and that First Principles are in many ways as valid today as they were 220 years ago.

There is nothing ill-defined about the notion of a chain of command stretching from individual, to state, to federal levels of government. It’s about retaining 50 meaningful states in lieu of the single federal beast and the tryannny we see even now in prototype with this atrocious 111th Congress. Yet you seem to feel that tyranny both inevitable and…just, Rick.

But over the decades, conservatism lost its flexibility in delineating a coarse ideology from this philosophy. By this I mean that conservatism has eschewed thoughtfulness for conformity. I’m not sure if you can actually pinpoint a moment where ideology trumped reason, although my personal line in the sand was the 1992 Republican convention and the rise of the culture warriors.

<sarcasm>Should we also feel bad about conforming to the idea that 2+2=4, Rick? Isn’t it really un-thoughtful of us not to attach a standard deviation to the answer? All those real number idealogues on the Right must be feeling total chumps right about now, after your devastating critique. The fact that I had to marry a human female instead of a bitch really goes to show the dogged anti-dog bias of those culture warriors. To think what Progress might have been achieved, had those rabid Christianists not precluded marrying ducks.</sarcasm>

But that may have been the denouement to a decade or more of slow rot eating away at the foundations of a carefully nurtured worldview that fought for principle while recognizing that America was changing and that conservatism as a governing philosophy must change with it. The idea of reforming government – Reagan’s grand notion of a New Federalism, lower taxes, fewer regulations, and freer people – died in the fires of a cultural backlash that has come to define modern conservatism.

No. Your inability to differentiate between the static and dynamic elements of the sitation may be at the hart of your wrong-headedness, Rick. The invariant priciples of the Declaration of Independence and the Constiution remain. The dynamic elements are chiefly technological. But the application of technology to societal problems by no means calls for the abdication of core principles, with which you seem strangely comfortable. Just because FDR could leveage radio to bamboozle a nation into Socialist experiments does not constitute justification for continued policy idiocy, despite the ‘best’ efforts of the 111th Congress.

This is where conservatism lost touch with reality. The moment that the war itself became more important than the principles espoused, all semblance of rationality was tossed out the window and in its stead arose a mindless, knee jerk opposition to government and, of course, the left. As the living embodiment of Big Government, liberals became an enemy and not the political opposition. Rather than fighting to apply conservative principles to the art and artifice of government, the right chose to immolate reason, and turn its back on the reality of modern American in order to destroy their enemies.

You’re so correct, Rick. We should just punt on the whole Winston Churchill impression, get all docile, and await assimilation with the liberal fascist Borg. You go first, buddy.

As practiced by the most influential conservatives today, this is what passes for conservative thought. Tannenhaus correctly surmised that movement conservatism has won the battle against the pragmatists and now dominates the conservative discussion. I don’t agree with what he believes this fact necessarily portends for the future – a continued decline in influence and relevance of the right. In fact, as I will show tomorrow, there is cause for some hope that younger, more intellectually muscular conservatives who are questioning everything while searching for a new conservative paradigm that would re-integrate movement conservatives into a re-energized whole, may be the beginning of a conservative revival.

Tomorrow: Reports of the death of Culture 11 have been greatly exaggerated.

Rick, I hope to see you at CPAC next month, where I can call you ‘daft’ to your face, sir.

Aside: Stacy is on the road again. If not for his leadership, I would not have ever found myself writing extended diatribes like this one at odd hours.

Category: Rick Moran

Comments

27 Responses to “And the Rick Played On”

  1. anonymous lurker
    January 14th, 2010 @ 6:35 pm

    Moran writes like Conor Freedork.

  2. anonymous lurker
    January 14th, 2010 @ 1:35 pm

    Moran writes like Conor Freedork.

  3. TomD
    January 14th, 2010 @ 7:37 pm

    Your repetition of the same old ideological cliches along with unclever sarcasm just proves Rick’s point.

  4. TomD
    January 14th, 2010 @ 2:37 pm

    Your repetition of the same old ideological cliches along with unclever sarcasm just proves Rick’s point.

  5. Pat
    January 14th, 2010 @ 7:52 pm

    Does anyone ever know what the hell Rick Moran is talking about? There’s no capacity for self-editing, just long, redundant posts about how conservatism is dying and the only way it can possibly survive is to become this ideologically-interchangeable Democrat-lite philosophy. He calls that nebulously-principled courtier-aspirant Conor Friedersdorf one of our finest young conservative thinkers. Moran sounds like David Frum if Frum was a college sophomore reading Plato for the first time and thinking “Ah, it all makes sense now.”

  6. Pat
    January 14th, 2010 @ 2:52 pm

    Does anyone ever know what the hell Rick Moran is talking about? There’s no capacity for self-editing, just long, redundant posts about how conservatism is dying and the only way it can possibly survive is to become this ideologically-interchangeable Democrat-lite philosophy. He calls that nebulously-principled courtier-aspirant Conor Friedersdorf one of our finest young conservative thinkers. Moran sounds like David Frum if Frum was a college sophomore reading Plato for the first time and thinking “Ah, it all makes sense now.”

  7. Pat
    January 14th, 2010 @ 7:56 pm

    Excellent fisking of Moran’s aggressive pseudo-intellectualism, little old though http://stopgloballaming.wordpress.com/2008/10/31/rick-morans-gop-a-party-doomed-by-triangulation/

  8. Pat
    January 14th, 2010 @ 2:56 pm

    Excellent fisking of Moran’s aggressive pseudo-intellectualism, little old though http://stopgloballaming.wordpress.com/2008/10/31/rick-morans-gop-a-party-doomed-by-triangulation/

  9. RickS
    January 14th, 2010 @ 10:15 pm

    When did Moran right this thing? Last January? It sounds like one of those stupid “Death of Conservatism” or “Republicans are Doomed” books that came out late last year after the election.

  10. RickS
    January 14th, 2010 @ 5:15 pm

    When did Moran right this thing? Last January? It sounds like one of those stupid “Death of Conservatism” or “Republicans are Doomed” books that came out late last year after the election.

  11. Dave C
    January 14th, 2010 @ 11:01 pm

    All the criticisms that Rick Moran has for Sarah Palin.. I found in reading that.

    Unfocused.
    Convoluted.
    Someone else wrote it for him.

  12. Dave C
    January 14th, 2010 @ 6:01 pm

    All the criticisms that Rick Moran has for Sarah Palin.. I found in reading that.

    Unfocused.
    Convoluted.
    Someone else wrote it for him.

  13. Adobe Walls
    January 15th, 2010 @ 1:35 am

    “The moment that the war itself became more important than the principles espoused”, “As the living embodiment of Big Government, liberals became an enemy and not the political opposition.” I assume the aforementioned war is WW1 as that is approximately when “liberals” became the enemy, a fact that still goes unrecognized by many on the right. Shall we be expecting MR. Moran to next lament the rejection of the policy’s of the educated class?

  14. Adobe Walls
    January 14th, 2010 @ 8:35 pm

    “The moment that the war itself became more important than the principles espoused”, “As the living embodiment of Big Government, liberals became an enemy and not the political opposition.” I assume the aforementioned war is WW1 as that is approximately when “liberals” became the enemy, a fact that still goes unrecognized by many on the right. Shall we be expecting MR. Moran to next lament the rejection of the policy’s of the educated class?

  15. Deuce Geary
    January 15th, 2010 @ 1:58 am

    Looks like Moran has been listening to his own echo chamber of Frum, Douthat, Freidersdorf and Brooks, and decided that the best way for conservatism to save itself is to stop being conservative.

  16. Deuce Geary
    January 14th, 2010 @ 8:58 pm

    Looks like Moran has been listening to his own echo chamber of Frum, Douthat, Freidersdorf and Brooks, and decided that the best way for conservatism to save itself is to stop being conservative.

  17. Dandapani
    January 15th, 2010 @ 2:04 am

    “Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem.”

  18. Dandapani
    January 14th, 2010 @ 9:04 pm

    “Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem.”

  19. theCL
    January 15th, 2010 @ 5:18 am

    The problem for Moran, Frum, and others like them, is that they have no understanding of economics. Unfortunately this is true of way too many opinion makers on the right.

    These guys believe they’re some kind of philosophical kings, but their philosophy fails for a lack of economic understanding. Lacking this, they fail to understand natural law, property rights, liberty, freedom, and basic finance (to name a few).

    They also insist on reading what they want out of conservative philosophy, picking only what they think supports their very non-conservative points of view. They twist and turn the philosophy until it meets their needs, because they’re afraid to admit they aren’t conservative.

    Moran just continues to embarrass himself. It’s sad. I recommend he gets his head out of books like Tannenhaus’ and into books by Mises. Until he does, he’ll never understand economics, liberty, philosophy, or anything relevant to real life!

    Hey Moran, go to mises.org, you can download the books for free! If you need help choosing a book that’s easy to start with, send me an email and I’ll be happy to help!

    For that matter, I’d be happy to help anyone learn more about economics. It’s the key to understanding the reality of the situation we’re in, and how to turn it around.

  20. theCL
    January 15th, 2010 @ 12:18 am

    The problem for Moran, Frum, and others like them, is that they have no understanding of economics. Unfortunately this is true of way too many opinion makers on the right.

    These guys believe they’re some kind of philosophical kings, but their philosophy fails for a lack of economic understanding. Lacking this, they fail to understand natural law, property rights, liberty, freedom, and basic finance (to name a few).

    They also insist on reading what they want out of conservative philosophy, picking only what they think supports their very non-conservative points of view. They twist and turn the philosophy until it meets their needs, because they’re afraid to admit they aren’t conservative.

    Moran just continues to embarrass himself. It’s sad. I recommend he gets his head out of books like Tannenhaus’ and into books by Mises. Until he does, he’ll never understand economics, liberty, philosophy, or anything relevant to real life!

    Hey Moran, go to mises.org, you can download the books for free! If you need help choosing a book that’s easy to start with, send me an email and I’ll be happy to help!

    For that matter, I’d be happy to help anyone learn more about economics. It’s the key to understanding the reality of the situation we’re in, and how to turn it around.

  21. alarm1201
    January 15th, 2010 @ 10:53 am

    Moran is a windbag. Glad to see somebody take him to task. I read his blog but get about half way through before I loose interest. When I started reading this one I stopped after he claimed conservatives want a “government more akin to an Articles of Confederation on steroids” What in the world does that mean? I’ve read a lot about the AoC but have no idea how he thinks conservatives want such a govt.

    Also, he allows stupid-kool-aid-drinking-cliche-throwing-liberals like Reynolds and Richard Bottom to totally dominate all discussion.

  22. alarm1201
    January 15th, 2010 @ 3:53 pm

    Moran is a windbag. Glad to see somebody take him to task. I read his blog but get about half way through before I loose interest. When I started reading this one I stopped after he claimed conservatives want a “government more akin to an Articles of Confederation on steroids” What in the world does that mean? I’ve read a lot about the AoC but have no idea how he thinks conservatives want such a govt.

    Also, he allows stupid-kool-aid-drinking-cliche-throwing-liberals like Reynolds and Richard Bottom to totally dominate all discussion.

  23. left coast rebel
    January 15th, 2010 @ 4:11 pm

    God bless you Smitty for having the patience and fortitude to dissect this garbage – a daunting task. Beyond Moran’s arguments I am more boggled by the fact that he feels the need to do this. Is it a classic ‘look at me NYTs’ or more of an epic psychological breakdown like Charles Johnson. I opt for both. I am not aware, however if Moran spoke like this before…….

  24. left coast rebel
    January 15th, 2010 @ 11:11 am

    God bless you Smitty for having the patience and fortitude to dissect this garbage – a daunting task. Beyond Moran’s arguments I am more boggled by the fact that he feels the need to do this. Is it a classic ‘look at me NYTs’ or more of an epic psychological breakdown like Charles Johnson. I opt for both. I am not aware, however if Moran spoke like this before…….

  25. Lionheart
    January 15th, 2010 @ 7:39 pm

    Good job, Smittie. I like Rick, but how he can continue to talk about the “death of conservatism” and how “out of touch” conservatives are is beyond me, considering the fact that there is a strong possibility of Republicans taking at least 1, and possibly both houses of congress next November.

    Furthermore, I get the feeling that his use of non-vernacular english is intended to impress as opposed to enlighten. All of you bloggers have a big ego (God bless you for it), but his ego is surpassed only by Obama’s.

    And Rick, if you’re reading this, I still love you, but you need to understand that only the liberal commenters are agreeing with you, you are probably on the wrong side of the issue.

  26. Lionheart
    January 15th, 2010 @ 2:39 pm

    Good job, Smittie. I like Rick, but how he can continue to talk about the “death of conservatism” and how “out of touch” conservatives are is beyond me, considering the fact that there is a strong possibility of Republicans taking at least 1, and possibly both houses of congress next November.

    Furthermore, I get the feeling that his use of non-vernacular english is intended to impress as opposed to enlighten. All of you bloggers have a big ego (God bless you for it), but his ego is surpassed only by Obama’s.

    And Rick, if you’re reading this, I still love you, but you need to understand that only the liberal commenters are agreeing with you, you are probably on the wrong side of the issue.

  27. Bad News for David Frum and Rick Moran
    January 19th, 2010 @ 3:09 pm

    […] Rick goes on: That last is the killer. Since the end of World War II and the rise of modern conservatism, it is been de rigueur for the right to promote the idea that government can be cut down to size, shrunk to an ill-defined outline that bears more of a resemblance to 19th century America than a modern society with all the miseries and challenges that reality entails. […]