Welcome friends!
I was reading an article in the newspaper the other day about the collapse of the American conservative movement as a serious or ostensibly serious intellectual enterprise and the paucity of writers who have thus far attempted to address that phenomenon. The article mentioned famous conservative gas bag George Will as one of the few who have. He’s apparently put out a book on the topic entitled “The Conservative Sensibility.” Based on the few points the article I was reading provided on Mr. Will’s book I think I’ll give it a pass. Sounds rather like more of the same self-serving claptrap I’ve come to expect from conservative authors. What makes me think so is that according to the article I was reading Mr. Will argues in his book that American conservatism has “almost nothing to do” with European conservatism, which he said is “descended from, and often is still tainted by, throne-and-altar, blood-and-soil nostalgia, irrationality, and tribalism.” Mr. Will apparently paraphrases the Iron Lady (former UK Prime Minister Thatcher) in observing that “European nations were made by history, the United States was made by philosophy.” According to Mr. Will, American conservatism is a project that seeks to defend the original philosophy of the Founding Fathers, “classical liberalism,” which ostensibly promotes limited government and the veneration of individual liberty. Yeah, sure. In the words of the great stereotype of the plain talking American pragmatist: what a load of crap.
It seems to be quite a thing with conservatives these days to make stuff up and discuss the world not as it really is but as they would like it to be or maybe as they would like others to think it is. Surely at least we can agree that the current incoherent state of conservative ideology as expressed by the Republican Party and their current champion Mr. Trump, certified as bona fide conservatives by basically every conservative group in the nation, the conservative infotainment and media industry, and pretty much every man or woman in the street who describes himself or herself as a conservative, runs exactly counter to Mr. Will’s contention that American conservatism is based on philosophy rather than more pragmatic and variable bases. Indeed, I would suggest the vast majority of conservatives tend toward disinterest or sometimes downright antipathy to philosophy of any sort, which is part of the famous anti-intellectualism the conservative Republican Party touts at every opportunity. Mr. Trump in particular has made quite a point of saying how much he loves uneducated people, and while anyone can do philosophy or at least appreciate philosophy a bit of education certainly makes it a bit more likely.
What I think Mr. Will fails to comprehend is that the “classical liberalism” philosophy he apparently takes so seriously himself and imagines other American conservatives to have taken seriously was never really a very serious philosophy to begin with. It was always a pragmatic rhetorical exercise designed to buttress and expand the economic and political power of the wealthy elite. And that, of course, is also the eternal objective of European conservatism. American conservatism and European conservatism are simply two faces or aspects of the same movement with strategies and tactics that have sometimes varied due to local national conditions. For a long while American conservatives like Mr. Will for example were able to use their misleading, baby-level hash up of economic reasoning and their rather dubious and incoherent political philosophy to keep people in line using hot air alone. However, that approach hasn’t been working as well of late, perhaps because most average social media and internet obsessed Americans have just stopped paying much attention to even baby level philosophy or perhaps because Americans on average have become incrementally better educated and have come to appreciate the particular philosophy American conservatives have been peddling these past several decades is just not very good philosophy. As a result American conservatism has gradually drifted into areas that are as traditionally American as apple pie but portrayed by Mr. Will as more typical of foreign European conservatism, that is to say, nationalism, nativism, racism, authoritarianism, and so on. As a result the leaders of the American and European conservative movements get along famously today. They’re very much on the same page. Their former apparent antipathy was likely simply an impression caused by the American elite correctly forecasting that the European elite’s attempt to concentrate their economic and political power and do away with political democracy was doomed to fail and it was not in their best interests to get on board at that time. A difference in strategy or timing more than objectives or values.
Anyway, it’s hard to interpret Mr. Will’s insistence there’s some fundamental difference between American and European conservatism as anything more than the wishful thinking of an aging agent or hired gun for the American elite who wants now to portray himself as something rather more serious and substantial. One can sympathize of course. No one cares to be shown up by events as a tool, a useful idiot, someone who was so myopic or easily manipulated that he fell hook, line, and sinker for a body of work that was always meant to be a rhetorical device to manipulate the unwary and uneducated. Perhaps the man is a true believer and perhaps not, but one thing is clear, he will apparently claim to be so until his dying day.
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