Sarah Bramwell shared her thoughts at the Philadelphia Society’s national meeting. She began by noting that the early goals of modern conservatism were to “defeat Communism and roll back creeping socialism.” Today neither remains relevant, she acknowledged. As for future foreign affairs, she explained that “articulating and defending some kind of international policy is not the major goal of conservatism in the next forty years.” Domestically, conservatives can continue to “nibble away” at the administrative state (read: “creeping socialism”), but she accepts the fact that the administrative state is “here to stay.” So what comes next? “Well, since the 1960s, the conservative movement took on a third goal, namely winning the culture wars,” by which she means, “everything from preserving traditional morality, to passing on the Western inheritance, to preserving a distinctly American common culture, to resisting the threat posed by biotechnology to human nature itself.” And what must conservatives do to win these wars? Sarah believes they must continue to “make the case against such things as gay marriage, stem-cell research, open borders, and our hideous suburban sprawl.” Because her time was limited, she focused on the terrible job conservatives were doing on “the cultural battle of our age”—gay marriage.[79] Sarah left no doubt where she sees the battles, and her husband is of like mind.
During a 1999 forum at Yale on free speech and homosexuality, as the chairman of the Yale Political Union’s Conservative Party chapter, Austin Bramwell claimed that “principled objections to homosexuality and to the gay movement can rarely be voiced on [the Yale] campus.”[80] In 2004, Austin wrote in the National Review on why those who oppose gay rights should not use the argument “If homosexuality is okay, what’s wrong with incest?” The better question is “If homosexuality is okay, what’s wrong with self-mutilation?” Austin again took the cudgel against gay marriage in the January 2005 issue of the American Conservative, advising gay marriage opponents not to despair, for the people were on their side, and all they needed was the right strategy.[*] He explained that the strategy was simple, for no constitutional amendment was needed. A simple act of Congress, based on the Fourteenth Amendment, would do the job, based on his rather tortured reading of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Loving v. Virginia, which struck down antimiscegenation laws.[81] It is unsettling that a young conservative would today rely on the same approach employed by an uglier version of conservatism in a past era: white supremacy.[82]
Austin does not hold out much hope for new thinking. He recently wrote about how today’s young conservatives “rarely come to right-wing ideas through any kind of epiphany. Rather they inherit their conservatism from parents or grandparents. Through generously funded seminars and think tank internships, they study the canon of conservative thought…almost all written in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s.”[83] (I would add that the earlier teachings are largely irrelevant in today’s conservative politics.) Austin appears to be speaking for himself, his wife, his friends, and his own associates in explaining how they came to conservatism.
Cut through all the smoke of conservatism and what is really left? David Horowitz—an intellectual who was once active with the radical left but had second thoughts and moved to the right—has described it as well as any amorphous thinking can be analyzed. Horowitz’s shift in outlook appears to have given him unique insight, and he has offered a concise definition of conservatism vis-à-vis liberalism. In 1992, as part of a lecture series at the Heritage Foundation, Horowitz said that “conservatism [is] an attitude about the lessons of the actual past. By contrast, the attention of progressives [is] directed toward an imagined future. Conservatism [is] an attitude of caution based on a sense of human limits and what politics [can] accomplish” (emphasis added). In his response to the question being addressed by this Heritage Foundation conference—whether contemporary conservatism was truly conservative—Horowitz candidly answered, “No,” acknowledging that today’s conservatives are “rebels against the dominant liberal culture.”[84] In later updating his Heritage lecture, Horowitz wrote that conservatism “begins as an attitude, and only later becomes a stance,” and noted “that conservative attitudes derive from pragmatic consideration.”[85] This, clearly, is a highly conceptual view of conservatism, but an accurate one.
To further clarify the elusive nature of conservatism, and the elemental attitudes it encompasses, let us turn to political science professors Kenneth Janda of Northwestern University, Jeffrey M. Berry of Tufts University, and Jerry Goldman of Northwestern University, who discuss this political philosophy in their textbook, The Challenge of Democracy: Government in America. They provide a remarkably simple yet sophisticated chart that graphically shows the distinction between political conservatism and other ideologies (liberalism, libertarianism, and communitarianism) from both historical and contemporary vantage points, and the dynamics of these conflicting points of view.[*]
Their graphic requires a little explanation, since it addresses four ideologies. It depicts their conflicts along with their relationships to “freedom,” “order,” and “equality.” Freedom in this context means liberty, as in the freedom of speech, religion, and association. Order refers to the use of the government’s police powers to maintain or protect public health, safety, welfare, and morals. Equality, at minimum, envisions one-person one-vote political equality. But there is more to political equality than voting, for those with wealth, public prominence, or political connections can influence the political system to a much greater degree. If the system is to be fair, all citizens would have equal influence regardless of wealth, education, and status. Stated differently, modern liberals argue that there should also be social equality, including both equality of opportunity and equality of outcome, thereby giving every person the same chance to succeed. The Janda-Berry-Goldman chart (following) is as good a visual representation as any of the conflicts and the fundamental dynamics of conservatism vis-à-vis other political ideologies.[*]
Given the growing dominance of social conservatism and its transformative impact, along with the influence of neoconservatism on American foreign policy, “definitions of conservatives now have to be entirely rewritten,” explained Lewis Gould, University of Texas emeritus history professor and author of the most complete single-volume study of Republicans available.[86] I would phrase this a bit differently: Both social conservatives and neoconservatism have overwhelmed the conservative movement and the Republican Party, and to gauge their influence, and its consequences, it is essential to understand authoritarian thinking and behavior. Social conservatism and neoconservatism have revived authoritarian conservatism, and not for the better of conservatism or American democracy. True conservatism is cautious and prudent. Authoritarianism is rash and radical. American democracy has benefited from true conservatism, but authoritarianism offers potentially serious trouble for any democracy.
79.
Sarah Bramwell, May 1, 2004, speech to the Philadelphia Society, at http://www.townhall.com/phillysoc/bramwellchicago.htm.
80.
Perry Bacon, “Yale panelists spar over speech and sexuality,”
*
Most recent Gallup Poll figures show about 53 percent of Americans oppose gay marriage. See http://www.pollingreport.com/civil.htm/.
*
I do not believe I know any communitarians, but I am not unfamiliar with their outlook, which here is helpfully illustrated. Communitarianism is defined by Janda, Berry, and Goldman, who rely on the
*
To fully understand the Freedom-Order-Equality dynamics, I urge you to visit the Web site that Ken Janda and Jerry Goldman have created. It provides a tutorial, and a self-test that will show you where you fall on their chart. See http://idealog.org. For comparison, you might also visit a libertarian site that also offers a self-test at http://www.self-gov.org/quiz.html.