I Cogitate

Brad Delong
June 14, 2007
A Proposed Pecking Order for Honest Conservatives

As good Millian liberals, we want to promote authentic, articulate, and intelligent advocates of other points of view. Who should we liberals respect--and give a boost to, in terms of reading them, arguing with them rather than mocking them, debating them, and suggesting that others read them?

As far as honest conservatives are concerned, it's a difficult question. Those I usually suggest--economists like Bruce Bartlett and Andrew Samwick and Bill Niskanen, strategists like Richard Clarke and Tom Barnett and Brent Scowcroft, social policy types like Rod Dreher and John DiIulio, unclassifiables like Andrew Sullivan and Ross Douthat--I find dismissed as "not typical conservatives. We want a representative of the conservative point of view. Someone like Larry Kudlow or Ramesh Ponnuru."

It strikes me that those who reject my advice are (as is almost always true) making a mistake. They are going about it the wrong way. We want an "honest conservative"--a conservative intellectual adversary we can respect, who is also intelligent. But their first move is to define a "conservative" as a public supporter of the Bush regime and its deeds. That means, I think, that they are searching the empty set...

Slavoj Zizek applied this to the puppet regimes of Eastern Europe under the iron curtain:

The Trilemma: Of the three features—-personal honesty, sincere support of the regime, and intelligence—-it was possible to combine only two, never all three. If one was honest and supportive, one was not very bright; if one was bright and supportive, one was not honest; if one was honest and bright, one was not supportive...

But it applies just as well to the Bush regime. Sincere conservative supporters are not bright. Bright conservative supporters are not honest. Bright and honest conservatives are not supporters--and so are ruled out, and we are left with Larry Kudlow and Ramesh Ponnuru.

I think we should recognize that the intelligent, honest conservatives out there are not Bush supporters, and turn that to our advantage in selecting honorable intellectual adversaries...

'Honest Conservatives': Oxymoron?
Rick Perlstein
June 15, 2007

Brad DeLong, the remarkably erudite and morally penetrating blogger and economics professor, has been writing some very useful things about the question of "honest conservatism"­the understandable, if problematic, quest of liberals to find a conservative worthy of intellectual respect.

Here , he quotes the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek who speaks of "a witty formula of life under a hard Communist regime: Of the three features­personal honesty, sincere support of the regime and intelligence­it was possible to combine only two, never all three. If one was honest and supportive, one was not very bright; if one was bright and supportive, one was not honest; if one was honest and bright, one was not supportive. The problem with Dreyman is that he does combine all three features."

And here he reflects that the old Eastern Bloc jape " applies just as well to the Bush regime. Sincere conservative supporters are not bright. Bright conservative supporters are not honest. Bright and honest conservatives are not supporters...."

He proposes, thereby, a taxonomy. You might find it handy, too. I leave out the names. The names are not important.

Class of 2000: People who in 2000 said, "George W. Bush is not qualified to be president, and we should be really worried about this."

Class of 2001: People who in 2001 said, "I supported Bush in 2000, but George W. Bush is not listening to his honest conservative policy advisers, and we should be really worried about this."

Class of 2002: People who in 2002 said, "I supported Bush in 2000 and 2001, but 9/11 has unhinged the administration; its detention and other policies are counterproductive; it needs to be opposed."

Class of 2003: People who in 2003 said, "I supported Bush over 2000-2002, but enough is enough. That's it. I supported the invasion of Iraq because I was certain there was evidence of an advanced nuclear weapons program--otherwise invading Iraq was just stupid. Well, there was no advanced nuclear weapons program. Invading Iraq was just stupid. Plus there's the Medicare drug benefit. These people need to be evicted from power."

Class of 2004: People who in 2004 said, "I've been a Bush supporter. I'm a Republican and a conservative, but I've had enough: I'm voting for Kerry."

Class of 2005: People who in 2005 said, "I voted for Bush in 2004. But I made a mistake. A big mistake."

Class of 2006: People who in 2006 said, "I know I supported Bush up to last year, but that shows I'm not the brightest light on the clued-in tree."

FDL Book Salon ­ "Conservatives Without Conscience" by John Dean
Glenn Greenwald
August 27th, 2006

One of the many paradoxes of the Bush administration is that it is widely perceived as (and itself claims to be) politically "conservative," yet it has expanded the power of the Federal Government to act against U.S. citizens, on U.S. soil, in unprecedented and previously unthinkable ways. The self-proclaimed "conservatives" who cheer on these extremist policies spent the 1990s strenuously objecting to comparatively mild programs such as government eavesdropping with the approval and oversight of the FISA court and anti-encryption proposals designed to ensure federal law enforcement access to terrorists’ computer communications...

...There seems to be no limit, literally, on what Bush supporters are eager to defend when undertaken by the administration in the name of "protecting us." No power is too invasive or extreme, no action is too lawless, to provoke their objections. Even restrictions imposed by law are no impediment, as Bush supporters defend radical policies even when they are expressly prohibited by criminal statute. If anything, the principal criticisms ­ really, the only criticism ­ which they voice towards the administration is that it has been too restrained, too mild, that it has not gone far enough in exercising unchecked power, both abroad and domestically, in the name of fighting terrorism.

Explaining this fundamental reversal, along with the dynamic that causes so many Americans to support such blatantly un-American policies, is the core project undertaken by John Dean in his best-selling book, Conservatives Without Conscience. To do so, Dean advances two primary arguments:

First, what is currently described as the "conservative movement" bears virtually no resemblance to the conservatism pioneered by Dean’s close friend, Barry Goldwater. The current movement has nothing to do with restraining government power or preserving historical values. Instead, it has embraced radical and historically unprecedented theories of presidential power and has morphed into an authoritarian movement which largely attracts personality types characterized by a desire and need to submit to and follow authority.

Second, because those who submit to authority necessarily relinquish their own conscience (in favor of serving the conscience of their leader and/or their movement), those who are part of this movement are capable of acts which a healthy and normal conscience ought to preclude. They can use torture, break laws, wage unnecessary wars based on false pretenses, and attempt to destroy the reputation of plainly patriotic and honest Americans ­ provided that they are convinced that doing so advances the interests of the authority they serve and the movement of which they are a part...

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