For several weeks I’ve been watching Fox news commentators
slamming Muslim societies for not permitting, among other things, gay marriage
and special protection for the transgendered. It is strange indeed that our
media “conservatives” should be loudly championing culturally leftist causes,
an advocacy that is becoming integral to how they define themselves
politically. About ten years ago I also started noticing neoconservative
journalists defending gay marriage as a “family value.” In the Republican New York Post, editorials have been calling for turning
Stonewall Inn, the pub in NYC where gays in 1969 demanded a right to party and
to enjoy public moral acceptance, into a protected historical site. It appears
that just about any step toward self-expression that comes from (let us be
frank) the Cultural Marxist Left, morphs into a “conservative” position, if one
waits a few seconds until “conservatism” moves one step further into our LGBT
new world.
This continuing
transformation of respectable conservatism in the US and throughout the Western
world into variations of the simultaneously mutating Left has been quite
noticeable for decades. In my most recent work on
the “American conservative movement”, I list all the onetime leftist
positions that media and political conservatives are now celebrating. The
mounting influence on this establishment Right of neoconservative journalists
and neoconservative philanthropists accelerated this trend; and so did the
linkage that took place between what calls itself the “conservatives movement”
and the GOP. Both relations have pushed the acceptable Right leftward, mostly
on social questions, and resulted in the elevation of onetime leftist heroes
such as Martin Luther King and John Brown into “conservative.
Meanwhile, we have witnessed such post-World War Two conservative heroes
as Robert E. Lee, Robert A. Taft, and Joseph McCarthy turned into objects of
contempt for present-day conservatism.
These changes raise the
question of whether “conservative” and “liberal” still make sense as reference
points. For a very long time I’ve been undertaking to demonstrate why
these designations, which once referred to world views as well as political
positions, should be retired, perhaps in favor of less dishonest reference
points, such as position A and position B. Because soi-disant conservatives are
terrified to appear reactionary, racist, homophobic, or whatever the leftist
establishment decides to pin on the other side, they strain to appear sensitive
to certain leftist causes, while differentiating themselves in matters that
have little or nothing to do with traditional conservative thinking. Thus the
Right want to build up the military and deploy it against the enemies of
‘liberal democracy” or lower the standards for “clean air.” The partisans may
be right or wrong on these matters, or in their fervent support for the present
government of Israel, but I’m not sure that such positions are necessarily
conservative, as opposed to positions that Republicans are taking partly
because of their donor base or because of their effort to woo certain voting
blocs. But such positions are regarded as conservative because Republicans take
them while Democrats are less open to them.
Earlier in the week, a discussion took place on Fox news on why
George Will had left the GOP, after stressing his revulsion for Donald Trump.
From the exchange, it became clear to me once again why the term “conservative”
no longer describes our political reality. Newt Gingrich and Brit Hume
characterized Will as a “Tory conservative” whose “style” did not permit him to
stay in a party that had been taken over by its “base.” Contrary to this Tory
image, Will has risen to prominence as a slavish toady of the Washington
establishment. Since the 1980s he has gone from being
an Anglo-Catholic admirer of the Oxford Tractarians to an equally explicit
atheist, and from a defender of traditional marriage to someone who flaunts his
disdain for those who continue to resist gay marriage.
On legalizing the illegals and expanding
immigration, Will stands conspicuously with the “nice people.” In short, he’s a
guy who hardly ever misses an opportunity to “grow.” He has also been a pro at
fawning on those who could help his career. In the late 1980s, he carried water
for the Kristol family and even produced in 1986 an adulatory column
emphasizing how the cultural and social life of Washington had been transformed
because of the decision of Irving and Bea Kristol to rent an apartment there.
Neither Samuel Johnson nor Edmund Burke comes to mind when I meditate on Will’s
career.
But Will’s diction and “style” seem enough to identify him as a
true-blue man of the Right. That and his enthusiasm for something called “the
Establishment” have raised him among his fans to a Platonic representation of
an ideal “conservatism.” Of course one might designate as “conservative” anyone
who displays correct diction, sports bow ties, and supports just about any
“establishment.” But one could also recognize the obvious, namely, that
certain political and social designations have outlived their relevance.
Although I’ve been arguing strenuously for the second position
for the last thirty years, I doubt that I’ll prevail here. And there’s good
reason for that. Politicians, journalists, and even voters adore
antiquated labels, even if the users are committed to endless change and
further sensitivity training. Thus we listen to media drivel that some
politicians want to “go back to the New Deal,” as if FDR’s administrative
innovations lie somewhere in our future. But both major parties have
incorporated these one-time innovations and gone well beyond FDR, Truman, and
LBJ in building a towering administrative state. Labels and events are
dragged out of the past, in order to make the present look like a continuation
of yesterday, when it is actually radically different. We are told that setting
up rest room facilities for the transgendered is just the latest phase of a
process going back to the emancipation of American slaves. Meanwhile, President
Obama and half the Justices on the Supreme Court pretend that every blow
against the moral consensus of the last several millennia was inherent in the
work of America’s Founding Fathers.
But the preservation of
outdated political labeling serves a purpose other than establishing false
continuities. It provides decoration for what is an often tedious ritual.
Having “conservatives” pitted against “liberals” or “Reds” against “Blues”
enhances interest and voter turnout in contests between two groups of
professional politicians. And the semantic distinctions now in use have not
come under attack from our PC gatekeepers. No one who counts has gotten around
to condemning the word “conservative” as racist, homophobic, or sexist.
This search for innocuous political labeling recalls the
decision of later German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer to call the party that he
helped found after World War Two “Christian Democratic.” Since a defeated
Germany was then being occupied by countries that referred to themselves as
“democracies,” Adenauer was careful to include that god term in naming his new
party. He also decided to call it “Christian” but not for the reasons one might
suspect this devoutly Catholic Rhinelander would have given. He chose the word
“Christian” because it sounded “moderate and inoffensive.” Little did he
know that the term that he imagined being inoffensive would later become
profoundly repugnant to a new ruling class! Perhaps the same fate will
eventually befall the now increasingly empty term “conservative.” And it would
be no great loss if it did.
