This is a person who never had an original or interesting thought in her life. Reading Miers is like suffocating under a mountain of polystyrene packing blobbles. What on earth does it say about the President that, knowing, as he must have, how completely and irredeemably second-rate she is, he would put her name forward? The world, certainly in places like the Supreme Court, is a never-ending war of ideas. To ask which side of this war Ms. Miers would fight on is pointless. She doesn’t know the war is underway; and if she knew, she’d probably think it could easily be brought to an end if we’d all just be nicer to each other.[62]
Notwithstanding a number of less than subtle signals from the White House that Ms. Miers, a born-again evangelical Christian, would indeed vote the way conservatives wished on issues like abortion, school prayer, sex education, and other social issues, she was eventually forced to withdraw her nomination.
A close study of conservatives reveals an interesting trait: These people do not see themselves as they actually are, but rather as something very different. In short, they seem to have little facility for self-analysis. Consider, for example, Derbyshire’s mean-spirited remarks about Harriet Miers, and now listen to Derbyshire’s take on himself, when he says he “started reading [the National Review] in the late 1970s, and it has always kept that agreeable, tolerant, gentlemanly tone, and as long as it keeps it, I shall be an NR reader (and, I hope, contributor). The tone comes, of course, from the personality of the founder, Bill Buckley, who is one of the most good-natured men I have ever met—a true American gentleman.”[63] Could a man as intelligent as Derbyshire actually believe his comments about Ms. Miers were “gentlemanly”? Not surprisingly, the very conservatives who love to hurl invective against the ranks of their enemies prove to have the thinnest of skins when the same is done to them. Many of the examples are familiar: Ann Coulter, who can trash perceived liberals on national television but has been known to walk offstage when booed, or to start crying when she thinks she is being treated unfairly; Rush Limbaugh, who also makes his living saying unkind things about those with whom he disagrees, thought it unfair, as did his followers, when his addiction to OxyContin was reported, along with the dubious means he serviced his habit, despite his own attacks on others who use drugs. Similarly, Mr. Virtue, William Bennett, apparently found nothing ironic or contradictory in his preaching (and selling) virtue while being a compulsive gambler himself, and was angry when he was found out.
Many conservatives, particularly those who are clearly authoritarians, are not aware of their illogical, contradictory, and hypocritical thinking. If made cognizant of it, they either rationalize it away, neglect to care, or attack those who reveal their human weaknesses. Because such thinking seems to be a reality of contemporary conservatism, anyone who operates from a logical mind, or has an inclination for reasoned judgment, can have trouble with it. Social conservatives are especially susceptible to irrational beliefs, as a few examples will show.
Evangelical Christian conservatives speak of their belief in a “culture of life,” a concept drawn from the teaching of the Catholic Church that underlies the evangelicals’ opposition to abortion. But for the Catholic Church, the culture of life also means opposition to the death penalty, which evangelical Christian conservatives fully support and strongly encourage. They are untroubled by the inconsistency of their beliefs, and when this is pointed out they explain it away. The unborn are innocent while those being executed are not, yet the culture of life believes it is God’s wish to protect all life. As another example, social conservatives are deeply offended by atheists who want to remove the words “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance, yet with great solemnity and earnestness they recite—as often as possible—that pledge and its words: “liberty and justice for all.” For all but atheists, they mean. Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court prohibited prayer in public schools, Christian conservatives have been up in arms, with the most vocal being Christians who believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of God. Of course, those who truly know the Bible know that Jesus said, “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you (Matthew 6:5–7; emphasis added). So illogical is much of the biblically driven political thinking of evangelical Christian conservatives, for whom faith appears to trump reason, that theologians like Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong have written books with titles like Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism (1991).
Jonah Goldberg, writing for the National Review, has acknowledged the contradictions within modern conservatism. Rather than finding them a problem, though, he deems them a virtue. “The beauty of the conservative movement,” he said, “is that we all understand and accept the permanence of contradiction” in thinking. One can envision George Orwell spinning in his grave in frustration at a remark like that, for it is pure “doublethink.” Goldberg noted in passing that Jesus was not a conservative, which is certainly true, and is another fact ignored by the religious right. It does not take a particularly close reading of the New Testament, or the teachings of Jesus, to appreciate that the term “politically conservative Christian” has an oxymoronic quality. This is why conservatives have had to invent terms like “compassionate conservatism.” But for those who believe that contradiction is a thing of beauty, the concept of compassionate conservatism will not tax credulity whatsoever.
Public criticism by conservatives greeted the work of New York University professor John T. Jost and his collaborators when they published a report entitled “Political Conservatism as Motivated Cognition.”[*][64] This study examines the psychology of political conservatism, basing its findings on a mass of data: forty-four years of studies by social scientists investigating conservatism, using eighty-eight different techniques and involving over twenty-two thousand participants.[65] Because its results are founded on empirical information drawn from experiments and testing—and conservatism views itself as grounded in empirical thinking—the negative reaction seemed out of place. Indeed, conservative commentators devoted little serious attention to the study, rejecting its conclusions based on a press release.[66]
62.
John Derbyshire, “The Corner: Hallmark Harriet,”
63.
Bernard Chapman, “Highest Common Denominator: An Interview with John Derbyshire,” at http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0503/0503derbyshire.htm.
*
Motivated cognition refers to thinking, or beliefs, that are based on factors other than pure reason or logic. As Dr. John Jost explained it: “Basically, the idea is that there are [normal] psychological reasons for why someone believes what he does, above and beyond the purely rational or informational reasons for believing something. People are motivated to believe that they are better than average drivers, that most of their opinions are correct, that their children are especially wonderful, etc. It wouldn’t make too much sense to say that someone is “motivated” to believe that 2 + 2 = 4.” (Interview with author. Unless otherwise stated, the comments about the study are based on my interpretations of it, not Dr. Jost’s.)