No Dead Parrots Here

IT MUST have all looked so appealing back in the winter. Why not publish The Death of Conservatism by New York Times Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus on September 1? The book is, the Economist reviewer says, “an appeal for unilateral disarmament by the right.” It would appear just in time to celebrate the passage of health care reform, cap and trade, a robustly stimulated economy and the utter rout of the evil Republicans.

It all began when Tanenhaus published “Conservatism is Dead” in The New Republic in mid February. He wrote that President Bush’s presidency had failed because it was carrying on a useless culture war against the mainstream consensus.

[Bush’s presidency] failed, in large part, because of its fervent commitment to movement ideology: the aggressively unilateralist foreign policy; the blind faith in a deregulated, Wall Street-centric market; the harshly punitive "culture war" waged against liberal "elites."

Conservatives are still trying to reverse the tide of the New Deal, writes Tanenhaus. They could learn from conservative Whittaker Chambers, who observed 50 years ago how enthusiastically his conservative farmer neighbors cashed their price-support checks. And really, how far can you get railing against the “new class” of

scientists, teachers and educational administrators, journalists and others in the communication industries, psychologists, social workers, those lawyers and doctors who make their careers in the expanding public sector, city planners, the staffs of the larger foundations, the upper levels of the government bureaucracy[?]

Back in the winter liberals owed themselves a modest triumph and a taunt or two at the defeated Republicans. So it made sense for The New Republic to run Tanenhaus’s article to tell conservatives that they were so over. Conservative commenters were reduced to insisting hat the conservative parrot was not dead but just resting.

But now, just as the book comes out, nobody is talking about dead parrots any more.

Now the liberal “new class” looks like a great big juicy target, as the author of a stimulus that doesn’t stimulate, a cap-and-tax bill that’s a special interest feeding trough, and a health reform bill that nobody has read. The conservative movement is looking very much alive, what with Tea Parties and Town Halls and Recess-rallies and activists busy organizing and demonstrating.

I’d never understood this business of political meetings and organizing. Whenever I’m in a meeting I get irritated listening to other people and start to think about ways in which their opinions are wrong. I guess I’m just a loner. Then I read an excerpt of Cass Sunstein’s new book Going to Extremes in the London Spectator.

When people are isolated, he writes, and feel they have limited information, they tend to be cautious in their actions. But when they belong to a network of like-minded people their opinions get confirmed and the group as a whole becomes more confident and more inclined towards action.

In short, as the title has it: “To become an extremist, hang around with people you agree with.”

You mean, like the lefty netroots?

Harvard Professor Sunstein illustrates his “group polarization” theory with references to fascists and Islamic terrorists.

But here’s a nickel to say that within a couple of months most liberals will be talking about the real danger of extremism in the Tea Party/Town Hall movement. They will get it from NPR and The New York Times, and NPR and the Times will get it from Sunstein.

And there is a danger. The danger is that ordinary Americans will get together and find that there are lots of other people out there that think the way they do. The danger is that they won’t listen to President Obama and the state-run media telling them to get with the program. They’ll ratchet up their movement another notch and start inquiring into the voting record of their local Democratic congressman.

There’s no doubt that many elite liberals are shocked and offended by the rotten tomatoes conservatives keep throwing at them. How dare the unwashed blame “scientists, teachers... journalists... foundations... government bureaucracy” for all their troubles when liberals have done so much for them!

No doubt every governing class has felt this way as the peasants marched up the royal driveway brandishing their pitchforks.

But really, how deluded can you get? The “new class” liberal elite is a power elite and it uses its power to build vast administrative structures through which it fashions and doles out pensions, education, health care, and welfare. The average American finds himself bumping up against that power all the time.

The average American isn’t stupid. When the government spends one third of the Gross Domestic Product and dominates far more through its detailed economic and social regulation, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out who’s to blame when things go wrong.

And suppose the conservative movement should die, just as Sam Tanenhaus and his pals at The New York Times so dearly hope. The next day another loyal opposition would appear to challenge the power of the liberals.

And chances are that the liberals of that era, flinching from the brickbats of a vigorous insurgency, would long for the kindly Republicans of the Bush-Gingrich-DeLay era, just as today they long for the nice tractable Eisenhower Republicans of the 1950s.

Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches� they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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