Conservatism

Quote of the Day

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There is one aspect of the change in moral values brought about by the advance of collectivism which at the present time provides special food for thought. It is that the virtues which are held less and less in esteem and which consequently become rarer are precisely those on which the British people justly prided themselves and in which they were generally agreed to excel. The virtues possessed by Anglo-Saxons in a higher degree than most other people, excepting only a few of the smaller nations, like the Swiss and the Dutch, were independence and self-reliance, individual initiative and local responsibility, the successful reliance on voluntary activity, noninterference with one’s neighbor and tolerance of the different and queer, respect for custom and tradition, and a healthy suspicion of power and authority.

F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom

Conservative Overconfidence

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Anyone who is unclear on this point should compare the hopefulness of many online conservatives and libertarians with the sobering election odds displayed on Intrade. Republicans may score big gains in the coming election cycles, but they may not. And even if they win big there is no guarantee that they will behave better in office than they did during the Bush years. Meanwhile the Left, having rampaged through the universities and media, is now very deliberately restructuring the federal bureaucracies and writing legislation whose destructive effects won’t be fully apparent for years. You can bet that the inept Loony Left appointees who have garnered public attention are only the tip of the iceberg. Thousands of others, less flamboyant but equally committed, are doing their best behind the scenes to entrench themselves in power and make it difficult for their ideological opponents to reverse the changes.

Book Review: Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription by William F. Buckley Jr.

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A few years ago I read a couple of books containing letters and replies to and from Ronald Reagan. I was fascinated by these writings and was quite surprised that the leader of the free world would take the time to actually reply to some of the mail he got. It opened up another side of Reagan to me – a more personal side.

Last week I was strolling through DFW and happened upon Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription by William F. Buckley Jr. As I posted that last link to Amazon I notice that I paid $4 too much at the airport. Oh well, I had to have it for that flight.

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Irving Kristol, 1920-2009

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Irving Kristol

Irving Kristol was a CCNY Boy, not a Chicago Boy.

Kristol was a Neoconservative when the “neo” part meant something. It started out as an insult, by former liberal friends, who derided Kristol and others for going where the evidence took them, and turning against their former views and former colleagues. The Neoconservatives were the people associated with The Public Interest magazine in the 1960s, mostly Jews from New York. The leading figures were Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Nathan Glazer and their circle. These guys followed a half-century course from Left to Right. They started out as Trotskyists at City College in New York in the ’30s and ’40s. Kristol describes that period here. They were anti-communist Social Democrats associated with Irving Howe and Sidney Hook in the 1950s. As the Democrat party undertook to build the Great Society in the 1960s, they became social planners. As that program failed, and Vietnam failed, and the McGovernite New Left began to take over the party, they became Scoop Jackson liberal hawks who were increasingly dubious about government social programs as well as staying hawkish on defense issues. As Jimmy Carter attempted to go beyond detente to something like appeasement, some switched parties and became Republicans. They were hawkish on defense and unideological and undogmatic critics of social programs that did not work. Kristol was the main figure in this intellectual odyssey. He and his colleagues added a critical infusion of intelligence and policy expertise to the conservative coalition that elected Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Perhaps Kristol’s most important contribution was his editorship of The Public Interest, which he described here. Recently, the complete archives of the Public Interest became available online.

Rest in peace.

UPDATE: Helen weighs in, with many good links.

Lewis vs Haldane

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J B S Haldane was an eminent British scientist (population genetics) and a Marxist. C S Lewis was…well, you probably already know who C S Lewis was.

In 1946, Haldane published an article critiquing a series of novels by Lewis known as the Ransom Trilogy, and particularly the last book of the series, That Hideous Strength. Lewis responded in a letter which remained unpublished for many of years. All this may sound ancient and estoteric, but I believe the Lewis/Haldane controversy is very relevant to our current political and philosophical landscape.

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