Angry Right: Why Conservatives Keep Getting It Wrong - Hardcover

Joshi, S. T.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1591024633 ISBN 13: 9781591024637

Verlag: Prometheus, 2006

Inhaltsangabe

Since 1968, Republican presidents have occupied the White House far longer than Democratic presidents, and recently Republicans have controlled both houses of Congress as well. In spite of these electoral triumphs, leading spokespersons on the right continue to depict conservatives as an embattled minority. Lashing out at their liberal opponents, sharp-tongued partisan advocates like Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and Sean Hannity never tire of issuing jeremiads against what they perceive as the inexorable tide of liberal abuses that threatens to overwhelm the Republic.

But if Republicans have won the battle at the voting booths, why is the right so angry?

As S. T. Joshi reveals in this incisive profile of twelve leading conservatives, the rage at the heart of the right is fueled by a gnawing sense that conservatives long ago lost the hearts and minds of the American people. Since the F.D.R. administration, conservatives have unsuccessfully opposed legislative and judicial reforms that today are considered so mainstream as to be, well, "conservative." In effect, yesterday’s liberalism is today’s conservatism, and this has been the direction of social and political change since the age of the Model T.

Examining the writings of such conservative icons as Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley Jr, Phyllis Schlafly, and nine others, Joshi uncovers statements that most people today would consider not just radical but outrageous:

In the 1950s, Russell Kirk opposed Social Security because he said it was "un-Christian."

In the same decade, William F. Buckley Jr. argued against the desegregation of public schools on the grounds that it would be an infringement of states’ rights (an argument also used a century earlier to defend slavery).

In the 1970s, Phyllis Schlafly declared that women’s liberation is a "disease" and a "homewrecker."

Knowing that these positions are today indefensible, conservative spokespersons have little recourse but to engage in passionate invective that attempts to portray their opponents as extremists. Joshi characterizes the aggrieved lament of conservatives as the last gasp of those who know their ideas will be confined to the dustbin of history.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

S. T. Joshi is a freelance writer, scholar, and editor. His books includeThe Unbelievers: The Evolution of Modern Atheism; Documents of American Prejudice; In Her Place: A Documentary History of Prejudice against Women; God’s Defenders: What They Believe and Why They Are Wrong; Atheism: A Reader; H. L. Mencken on Religion; The Agnostic Reader; What Is Man? and Other Irreverent Essays by Mark Twain and The Angry Right: Why Conservatives Keep Getting It Wrong.

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The Angry Right

Why Conservatives Keep Getting It WrongBy S.T. Joshi

Prometheus Books

Copyright © 2006 S. T. Joshi
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-59102-463-7

Contents

Introduction................................................................................91. Tin-pot Jeremiah: Russell Kirk...........................................................252. Indiscretions of the Past: William F. Buckley Jr.........................................613. The Rise and Fall of Neoconservatism: Irving and William Kristol.........................1014. A Woman against Women: Phyllis Schlafly..................................................1395. Laments of the Moralists: William J. Bennett and Gertrude Himmelfarb.....................1676. Fear from the Pulpit: David Limbaugh.....................................................1977. Loud and Wrong: Rush Limbaugh............................................................2278. The Traitor Police: Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, and Sean Hannity........................253Conclusion..................................................................................293Index.......................................................................................299

Chapter One

TIN-POT JEREMIAH

Russell Kirk

Russell Kirk (1918-1994) is the patron saint of the American conservative movement. Adopting his principles in the 1940s and adhering to them fixedly to the end of his life, he expounded them in a multiplicity of venues. One critic notes "the sheer volume of his published works: 32 books; 800 essays, book reviews, and articles; and more than 3,000 newspaper and magazine columns." The curious thing about this output, however, is that nearly all his books were published by avowedly right-wing publishers (chiefly Henry Regnery) or small presses. Kirk first came to public notice with The Conservative Mind (1953), a purported history of conservative thought from Edmund Burke (who, for the whole of his life, became Kirk's intellectual mentor) to George Santayana. But as this historical survey did not allow sufficient room for the expression of Kirk's own views, he quickly remedied the matter with such works as A Program for Conservatives (1954) and The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Conservatism (1957). By the 1980s Kirk had become an icon to conservatives, and he was frequently invited to speak at the Heritage Foundation; his speeches were collected in such volumes as The Politics of Prudence (1993) and the posthumous Redeeming the Time (1996). Along the way Kirk also wrote a historical treatise, The Roots of American Order (1974), and, engagingly enough, a number of ghost stories.

I do not pretend to have read the entirety of Kirk's voluminous work; but there is no need to do so, for he is massively repetitious, using the same arguments, and on many occasions the same language, the same personal anecdotes, and the same quotations from his perceived mentors and predecessors (Alexis de Tocqueville, Edmund Burke, T. S. Eliot) to hammer home the same points over and over again, as if their mere repetition would serve in place of cogent argument. There is also surprisingly little development in Kirk's thought over the fifty-year course of his writing. No doubt he himself would take this as a compliment-a testament that he discovered correct moral, religious, social, and political opinions at an early age and adhered to them in the face of the "winds of doctrine." But the disturbing perception develops that Kirk had a relatively small stock of ideas in his intellectual arsenal and that, in spite of the turbulent period of American history through which he lived and wrote, his views quickly hardened into a rigid dogmatism impervious to new evidence or new arguments.

Kirk embodies many of the more unsavory facets of conservative "thought": inflexible devotion to "principle" (in reality a poorly conceived dogma); tendentious and disingenuous mischaracterizations of his opponents (usually "liberals"); the establishment of false dichotomies; exaggerated worries over the imminent collapse of civilization; and, worst of all, a desire to maintain conservative purity of thought without any regard for the misery and privation it might cause if implemented as public policy.

Kirk's conservatism was of early formation, as he admits in a curious document, "Reflections of a Gothic Mind." Here he states that from youth "I felt a strong suspicion of change, and a longing for continuity" (CT, 7); and, later, "the object of all my writings was the conservation of the moral and social heritage of the ages" (CT, 26). Elsewhere he writes that conservatives are those "whose view of life is reverential, and who tend to be guided by the wisdom of their ancestors, instead of abstract speculation" (PC, 38). "We have no right, in this brief existence of ours, to alter irrevocably the shape of things, in contempt of our ancestors and of the rights of posterity" (PC, 42). In this whole conception Kirk appeals to G. K. Chesterton's view of the "democracy of the dead," which Kirk interprets as "the considered judgment of the wise men who died before our time" (PC, 43). In fact, Chesterton's view was much wider than this, referring to the beliefs of the majority of peoples of the past, intelligent or otherwise; but that is a small point.

There are, of course, obvious difficulties with this kind of reliance upon the "wisdom" of one's "ancestors," for a quick glance at history shows that many of the beliefs of those ancestors were either false or repugnant, or at best imperfectly applicable to present-day society. One only has to read Bertrand Russell's "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish" or "Ideas Which Have Harmed Mankind" to gain an inkling of the benighted depths of ignorance in which past ages were plunged. Exactly what elements of the "moral and social heritage of the ages" does Kirk wish to preserve? Since he is oddly silent or imprecise on the matter, one can ask whether he wishes a society in which slavery, the divine right of kings, religious coercion and warfare, subjugation of women, and race prejudice are central or even peripheral elements. Each one of these things has had a very long history in human society and must certainly be considered part of the "moral and social heritage of the ages." Kirk, constantly referring to his adherence to the "Permanent Things" (the expression, frequently in capitals, is derived from Eliot), neglects to specify what these permanent things are. He may think they are self-evident, but they are anything but that.

The curious thing about Kirk is that his religious beliefs-a central component of his entire conservative thought-themselves appear to have been a result of this deference to ancient authority. He claims that he was brought up in a nonpracticing family, although he admits candidly that "the Bible, indeed, I had been taught by my mother from early years" (CT, 15). Nevertheless, as a teenager he "became a perfect mechanist and atheist" (CT, 14). What happened? Given his own admission that "I was groping for faith, honor, and prescriptive loyalties" (CT, 23), the result seems inevitable:

Something made me inquire within myself by what authority I presumed to doubt-though I had not yet read Newman's observation that it is better to believe all things than to doubt all things. Upon authority all revealed religion rests; and the authority which lies behind Christian doctrine is massive. By what alternative authority did I question it?...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Prometheus
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2006
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1591024633
• ISBN 13: 9781591024637
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 311
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV; info@simonandschuster.nl; ; Herculesplein 96; Utrecht; 3584 AA; Niederlande