To Live Is to Maneuver

"Would Buckley really be so shocked by the growth of populism and illiberal nationalism and a creeping authoritarianism on the right? Surely, those afflictions in the late Obama years were hardly new, or any more daunting than they had been in Buckley's time. The true crisis on the right, I believed, lay in the fact that it no longer had anyone of Buckley's stature to keep the tablets. It still doesn't."

Brian Stewart at The Bulwark reviews Sam Tanenhaus's Buckley: The Live and the Revolution That Changed America.

"The Earliest Neoconservative"

"Banfield did not abandon altogether the possibility of policy interventions, although it’s true he thought policymakers' room to maneuver was severely constrained. Likewise, Kristol remarked in his 1985 retrospective that 'the failure (or at least non-success) of so much of social policy in the past twenty years can be exaggerated. Not every program failed and there are a few important ones that represent positive achievements.' Indeed, 'The Public Interest has always emphasized the modestly positive along with the skeptical.' Yet on the right writ large there has been a clear decline from skepticism toward nihilism—toward a belief that policy interventions fail so often and character is so intractable that it is almost never worth it to attempt to solve social problems through policy."

Joshua Tait at The Bulwark recalls political scientist Edward C. Banfield.

And David Klion at The Nation looks at varying definitions of "neoconservatism."

"Criticizing Democracy at a Philosophical Level to Actively Justifying Unconstitutional—and Racist—Repression"

"The norms most important to sustaining democracy are the acceptance of opposing political parties as legitimate rivals and an institutional forbearance—that is, not wielding the powers of state for partisan gain, a version of Kloppenberg's reciprocity. The Republican party is openly undermining these norms. And the GOP's enablers within the conservative movement have decades of arguments to draw on to justify its anti-democratic turn."

Joshua Tait at The Bulwark writes that "[c]onservatives' theoretical arguments against democracy have long provided ammunition for opponents of reform."

What's the Matter With Republicans?

"'It's a spirit of rebellion against what people see as liberals who are overly sensitive, or are capable of being triggered, or hypocritical,' says Marshall Kosloff, co-host of the podcast 'The Realignment,' which analyzes the shifting allegiances of and rise of populist politics. 'It basically offers the party a way of resolving the contradictions within a realigning party, that increasingly is appealing to down-market white voters and certain working-class Black and Hispanic voters, but that also has a pretty plutocratic agenda at the policy level.' In other words: Owning the libs offers bread and circuses for the pro-Trump right while Republicans quietly pursue a traditional program of deregulation and tax cuts at the policy level."

Derek Robertson at Politico describes the "weird journey of a tongue-in-cheek catchphrase from conservative-mocking putdown to the defining tenet of the Republican Party's way of life."

And Doyle McManus at the Los Angeles Times notes the health threat during the pandemic because "[h]alf of Republican men say they don't want the vaccine."

"A Synecdoche of the Decline of the Conservative Movement"

"In our film's dramatic climax, L. Brent Bozell IV ('Zeeker' to his friends) is shown in a red baseball cap and blue sweatshirt lettered 'Hershey Christian Academy' (with which, that institution assures us, Zeeker is not affiliated) amid an angry crowd chanting 'treason!' inside an abandoned Senate chamber. The National Review brand of movement conservatism, launched 66 years earlier under the joint stewardship of Zeeker's namesake grandad and his great-uncle William F. Buckley, Jr. with the admonition to stand 'athwart history, yelling Stop,' now dissolves into violent insurrection as an FBI agent charges Zeeker with disorderly conduct. Fade to black, roll credits"

Timothy Noah at The New Republic depicts "[t]he Rise and Fall of the L. Brent Bozells."

"The Future of the Republican Party Depends on When and How Trump Leaves Office"

 "Painting with very broad brush strokes, modern American conservatism began as a coalition of three forces who didn't much care for one another and even had contradictory values. There were the libertarians, mostly associated with Hayek and Friedman and the Mont Pelerin Society; the traditionalists, often associated with the likes of Russell Kirk, author of The Conservative Mind; and the anti-Communist hawks, some of whom, like Whittaker Chambers, the author of Witness, were themselves former Communists and radicals. These separate groups never reconciled their contradictory principles over the importance of traditional values vs. minimalistic government involvement in the economy vs. military spending and foreign policy activism. But they teamed up, joined together by one single cause they all shared: fighting Soviet communism. The libertarians didn't like the Soviet Union because it didn't respect market economy and individual liberty. The traditionalists hated its godlessness. The hawks feared the existential threat it posed to the United States.                                                         "Each of the three groups evolved over time as old generations faded and new generations came on the scene. There were some institutions, publications, and politicians who managed to speak to all three. As Bill Kristol recently wrote, the 1980s were the heyday of American conservatism, with President Reagan in the White House and circumstances in domestic politics and world affairs suited to the ideas of each of the three strands.                                                                                                                                                                                                 "Then, though, the movement began to decline."

Shay Khatiri at The Bulwark wonders what can be conserved from American conservatism. 

"Bill's a Bully"

"Buccola is less interested in who won the debate (according to the audience, Baldwin trounced Buckley by a three-to-one margin) than in what the event signified politically and culturally. Each man had 'reached the height of their prominence at nearly the same moment,' Buccola says, and both had a major impact shaping popular attitudes about the civil rights movement. By studying how the two men got to share a stage, we can learn something more profound about the struggle for black equality and the origins of the modern conservative movement—two legacies that remain with us today."

Robert L. Tsai at Boston Review reviews Nicholas Buccola's The Fire Is Upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley, Jr., and the Debate Over Race in America.

"Faced With a Choice Between Democracy and Power, the Party Chose the Latter"

"Republicans have chosen contraction and authoritarianism because, unlike the Democrats, their party isn't a coalition of interests in search of a majority. Its character is ideological. The Republican Party we know is a product of the modern conservative movement, and that movement is a series of insurgencies against the established order. Several of its intellectual founders—Whittaker Chambers and James Burnham, among others—were shaped early on by Communist ideology and practice, and their Manichean thinking, their conviction that the salvation of Western civilization depended on the devoted work of a small group of illuminati, marked the movement at its birth."

George Packer at The Atlantic traces the intellectual decline of the Republican Party.

"A Freakishly Dangerous Figure Walked Through the Door Conservatism Had Opened"

"But revisiting that past, he discovers something very familiar. Conservatism trafficked all along in anti-intellectualism, bigotry, ideological radicalism, and loopy conspiracy theories. The conservative movement was a revolt against the moderation of mainstream Republicans like Dwight Eisenhower while fiercely defending the vicious lies of Joe McCarthy. Buckley renounced the president of the John Birch Society while continuing to endorse the organization itself, which was a large and powerful constituency. While most mainstream Republicans at the time supported civil rights, conservatives opposed those mainstream leaders for that very reason. Conservatives understood very clearly at the time that their project of turning the Republican Party into a vehicle for conservatism required prying millions of white segregationists from the Democratic Party."

Jonathan Chait at New York reviews Max Boot's The Corrosion of Conservatism.

"Beyond the Language of the Living"

"Kirk's gallery of heroes was as idiosyncratic as his personality, grouping Brits with Americans, reactionaries with reformers, Confederates with Yankees. His chapters on John Randolph and John Calhoun, defenders of the slave power, discomfit contemporary readers, yet he also greatly admired Abraham Lincoln. Kirk was as critical of capitalism—he reminded audiences that it was a Marxist term—as he was of socialism. As he put it later: 'The intellectual heirs of Burke, and the conservative interest generally, did battle on two fronts: against the successors of the Jacobins, with their "armed doctrine"; and against the economists of Manchester, with their reliance upon the nexus of cash payment.'"

Matthew Continetti at The Atlantic "remember[s] Russell Kirk on his centennial."

"All the More Urgent in the Era Where Donald Trump Has Made Obvert Racism a Cornerstone of Republican Politics"

"Rather than suggesting that we need to have more conservatives write on the history of conservatism, Kabaservice should ask why the existing literature of conservatives writing about their own movement is so poor. He closes by suggesting 'liberal historians' subscribe to conservative magazines, that their anger might be 'better informed.' Yet it's not so clear that liberals would be surprised by what they find in the pages of conservative publications. Conservatives, if one is to take their amnesia at face value, might be."

Jeet Heer at The New Republic reacts to Geoffrey Kabaservice's criticism of liberal historians of conservatism.

"This Long-Standing Tendency on the Right"

"The idea that the left is depraved, corrupt, and ruthless has been an important strain of American conservatism since the movement began. But in the Trump era, it has metastasized. Right-wing policy ideas have been so thoroughly discredited—does anyone even argue anymore that trickle-down economics will ensure mass prosperity?—that the only apparent reason for conservatism's existence is to fight back against evil liberals. This is, of course, not the sign of a healthy political movement. The right's support for McCarthy has been a long-standing embarrassment for American conservatism. Its embrace of Trump may be history repeating itself."

David A. Walsh at The Washington Monthly explains that "[s]ince the 1950s, the conservative movement has justified bad behavior—including supporting Donald Trump—by persuading itself that the left is worse."

"How a Textile Magnate Turned the Party of Lincoln Into the Party of Trump

"If you've ever wondered how the GOP can be both the party of Lincoln and defenders of the Confederate flag, a refuge for protectionists and the disaffected working class and protector of the most powerful multinational corporations, a party of Pauls and Bushes, Kochs and Tea Partiers, and, yes, Donald Trump—it helps to take a closer look at a man who helped start it all."

In a 2015 Politico article, Jonathan M. Katz profiles conservative capo Roger Milliken.

"Trump's Base within the Party Lies on Its Right, Not Its Left"

"But the conservative movement's willingness to embrace Trump is not an accident. The traits that endeared him to the movement have clear historical antecedents. He follows in the path of other right-wing heroes in American history: Charles Coughlin, Joseph McCarthy, Rush Limbaugh. The founding texts of the conservative movement, None Dare Call It Treason and A Choice, Not an Echo, are conspiracy theories."

Jonathan Chait at New York argues that "Trump's racism, paranoia, and authoritarianism are all deeply rooted in the American conservative tradition."

"I Don’t Think Trump Is a Conservative"

"I could attempt an answer, but I suspect it would stretch my actual knowledge beyond acceptable limits. Yes, other conservative parties are more flexible, but as you acknowledged in your piece, I can't imagine even a moderate conservative movement in this country that would embrace single payer.  But, yes, there is a unique radicalism of the GOP.  And Trump is just one indication of that."

Jonathan Chait at New York interviews Charlie Sykes, author of How the Right Lost Its Mind.

As does Isaac Chotiner at Slate.

"The Death-Struggle Atmosphere They Brought to Politics"

"This is the tone of fanaticism—or, perhaps, 'the fanatical style,' a variation on what Richard Hofstadter called 'the paranoid style.' Hofstadter was careful to say he was describing not a clinical condition, but a constructed outlook. Its conspiratorial themes grew out of a particular 'way of seeing the world and of expressing oneself.' So, too, with the current style of conservative discourse. It assumes the presence of concealed enemies, but also stresses, even more than the 'paranoiacs' did, the bad faith of liberals who are unwilling and possibly unable to acknowledge how dire things really are—or to call evil by its true name."

Sam Tanenhaus in The Atlantic reviews Daniel Oppenheimer's Exit Right: The People Who Left and Left and Reshaped the American Century.

Warum gibt es in den Vereinigten Staaten keinen heute "Conservative Economics Tradition"?

"Elsewhere in the world, conservatives are perfectly willing to regulate or sometimes socialize industries or rig markets in the pursuit of social objectives.  Conservative social objectives, however, are different from those of the center-left.  What distinguishes most conservative parties and movements in the advanced capitalist world is their greater degree of nationalism and familism, compared to center-left supra-nationalism and individualism.  Nationalism has often led conservatives in Britain, France and Germany to support protectionism or the nationalization of strategic industries.  And conservative familism leads, in countries like Germany, to a preference for stay-at-home mothers, as opposed to the working mothers in Sweden and France whose careers are enabled by state-provided day-care.
"Thus the puzzle:"


Michael Lind in Salon asks the question.

"We Were Born with a Divided Political Heart"

"For much of our history, Americans—even in our most quarrelsome moments—have avoided the kind of polarized politics we have now. We did so because we understood that it is when we balance our individualism with a sense of communal obligation that we are most ourselves as Americans. The 20th century was built on this balance, and we will once again prove the prophets of U.S. decline wrong if we can refresh and build upon that tradition. But doing so will require conservatives to abandon untempered individualism, which betrays what conservatism has been and should be."

E. J. Dionne, Jr., in The Washington Post wonders why conservative no longer seem to value community.

"The Modern Conservative Movement Began 60 Years Ago"

"The crusading sentiment made more sense during the Cold War, when America faced a truly collectivist, atheistic and nuclear-armed adversary. It is becoming increasingly discordant with the times, and that is why some Republican candidates with considerable support strike non-conservatives as weird."

In the Los Angeles Times, Carl T. Bogus looks to the sixtieth anniversary of William F. Buckley's God and Man at Yale.

In This Time of Moral and Political Crises

"The Mount Vernon Statement reads like a document stuck in the Sixties: 'America’s principles have been undermined and redefined in our culture, our universities and our politics.' There is not the slightest hint or acknowledgement that conservatives had any part in this undermining or redefining. Nothing about people posing as conservatives being responsible for a brutal empire that straddles the world, the bankrupting of the nation to pay for this empire, the justification of torture at home and abroad, an imperial presidency, the evisceration of the Tenth Amendment, you name it."

David Franke of The American Conservative compares the Young Americans for Freedom Sharon Statement of 1960 with the recently issued Mount Vernon Statement.