The American Spectator

xqqme| 12.3.08 @ 2:52PM

'we'? I practice what I preach, fiscal conservativism. I live debt free and I will weather the financial 'storm' quite well, thank you.
Grasshopper, don't come knocking on my door. signed Ant.

Mary| 12.3.08 @ 2:58PM

From the indispensable Spengler:

***The strangest feature of Dreher's account is the implication that his crunchy cons have more in common with one another than they do with other people raised in the same faith. Only in America! What they have in common is an aching desire for tradition and rootedness, and a common alienation from mass commercial culture. With the exception of Stegall, whose "New Pantagruel" site takes its theology neat, what unites them is a characteristically American willingness to move down the street.

That is not necessarily a bad thing. Christianity requires tradition less than it does conversion. To become a Christian, the Gentile forsakes the gentium of his origin to join a new people in flesh and blood, through the ancient rite of rebirth by passage through water, that is, baptism. Because the new people of God into which the Christian is reborn is not quite of this world, conversion must be perpetually renewed. That is something no tradition can do.

No US congregation will live through Johann Sebastian Bach's "Passion According to St Matthew" as an inner experience the way German evangelicals once did. But who is to say that black Baptists singing Gospel are further from God? I agree with Dreher that the Chartres Cathedral is more conducive to spirituality than a shopping-mall megachurch, but there is a reason why Chartres is full of tourists and the megachurches are full of worshippers. What if this is as good as it gets?***

The rest is here: http://tinyurl.com/5wyogp

ruth| 12.3.08 @ 6:13PM

Why is individual freedom blamed for every ill? It's ridiculous.

BD57| 12.3.08 @ 6:21PM

OK, that makes no sense at all.

There's nothing "conservative" in the idea that our problems are caused by liberty & self determination.

Rod's arguing we need "something" to restrain us - the only candidate for exercising such power being government, i.e., coercion ... and that's "conservative?"

ruth| 12.3.08 @ 6:32PM

I think it's just another socialist jerk's attack on conservatism because we espouse personal freedom.

helene devinsky| 12.3.08 @ 7:33PM

"Too much personal freedom"? Is this a guy a paid propagandist of the Obama govt?

Ran| 12.3.08 @ 10:40PM

"... too much individual freedom." Ah. So the warped market caused by CRA and Fannie & Co. is an example of "too much individual freedom."

Perhaps, in a sense... too much individual freedom WITH OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY, COURTESY OF THE FEDS. It's bad form to use the sort of words I'd prefer... How's this: The Crunchy Con has a con going all right, but please don't tell me his views are Conservative.

As a geology student (U Tornoto, 8T1) one of the first learned facts of the geological record is that climate change is the only constant. This pure bullshit about a causal relationship to anthropogenic CO2 would be a laughable hoax if less were at stake. Of course, these days, Toronto is talking about "particulates" from diesels and from China "offsetting" the CO2 effect... And of course, the very same solutions are proposed. Imagine that!

Hell, I'm not even so convinced about the Crunchy part of the con. I'm thinking... Flaky might be appropriate.

Scott| 12.4.08 @ 1:12AM

You guys aren't conservative at all. You're classical liberals with some kind of emotional attachment to your particular nation-state. St. Paul or St. James, especially the latter, would have a few things to say about the disordered appetites that all of us must learn to curb, lest they kill us. That "personal freedom" you so espouse usually works out to be a one-way ticket to hell, unless it is tempered by self-discipline, prayer and almsgiving. Look around. America is certainly fat and dumb, but not very happy. Remember something about,"By their fruits ye shall know them?" Read a bit of what Isaiah and Jeremiah had to say about material prosperity and the idol worshipers therein who enjoyed their personal freedom too.

ruth| 12.4.08 @ 2:15AM

You're nuts, Scott. I am a conservative; I espouse individual liberty tempered by responsibility. It's not that we have too much freedom, we just don't have enough integrity.

Paul E More| 12.4.08 @ 4:45AM

Scott is of course correct. The late Russell Kirk (died in 1994) who wrote for National Review for 25 years and wrote the famous book The Conservative Mind was fond of saying that and I quote: A controlling power must be placed on will and appetite or our civilization will be lost or destroyed.

Kirk summed up conservatism as and I quote:

The belief that man is a distinct being, governed by laws peculiar to his nature; there is law for man and law for thing. Man stands higher than the beasts that perish because he recognizes and obeys this law of his nature. The disciplinary arts of the classical humanities teach man to put checks upon his will and his appetite. Those checks are provided by ethical will and reason—not by the private rationality of the Enlightenment, but by the higher reason that grows out of a respect for the wisdom of our ancestors and out of the endeavor to apprehend that transcendent order which gives us our nature.

END OF QUOTE

I would suggest that if any of the posters here wants to understand conservatism, they turn off the computer and pick up Kirk’s books. They could also read a short book on conservatism by Robert Nisbet, a friend of Kirk’s, whose book entitled “Conservatism” is excellent as is his book The Present Age.

ruth| 12.4.08 @ 1:10PM

That controlling power for me is God (internalized) not the State.

Paul E. More| 12.4.08 @ 3:47PM

The State as such is not the problem. Only Marxists and Libertarians want to abolish the State. The problem is Big Government which has made war on genuine community, local community and voluntary associations, what in former times was termed “civil society.”

Now that civil society has been destroyed, Big Government is going after the nuclear family, as that is the last institution that stands between the Individual and the Government.

Note that the State is not the same thing as the Government. The Government is the administration of the State often referred to as a bureaucracy. If we could downsize the Government we could rebuild local community as well as families, thus reducing the “need” for the intervention of the Government. Ironically, if we rebuilt local communities and families we would strengthen the State but weaken the Government.

If we don’t do that and continue with stripping away all the intermediate institutions between the Individual and the Government, then the Government will always win and always grow bigger.

ruth| 12.4.08 @ 5:06PM

I understand, and I agree. This breakdown originated with the individual when relativism was accepted. Is this the natural evolution of society, is it inevitable? As an empire, our country has devolved rapidly compared to empires of the past, don't you think? Our grand experiment is just over 200 years old--and look at us.

ruth| 12.4.08 @ 5:08PM

Define a Conservative for me, please.

Paul E. More| 12.4.08 @ 6:58PM

I agree that “empire” is a large part of the problem. While the USA isn’t an empire in the classical sense, it acts in certain aspects like an empire because of our role overseas since the end of the Second World War. We have focused on serving the interests of our foreign allies to our own detriment. Our trade policy is almost exactly the same as the one the enemies of Germany imposed on that country in the Treaty of Versailles, namely open or free access to the German (and now American) market but allowance of trading partners to use tariffs or tariff substitutes (e.g., Value Added Taxes that tax imports and subsidize by rebating the tax to exporters). Note that all empires end up sacrificing themselves to the benefit of their provinces. We are doing the same thing.

I don’t think this is inevitable unless we continue to pursue the policies that we have for half a century. The bad policies are mass immigration, “free” trade, and excessive intervention overseas. We are expending our blood and treasure externally and we are not using our energy to defend and build our own country.

Great national cultures respect and understand other, including competing, national cultures, but they have an element that wants to protect and preserve the unique nature of that culture. But Americans have become “globalized” and thus have lost that sense of the unique American identity. At the same time they have lost the connection we formerly had with our vital Anglo-European cultural roots.

One of the last books Russell Kirk wrote was “Our British Culture” and it was aimed against the multicultural movement of the early 1990s.

In order to recover our culture and identity as Americans we need to give up the “project” that Neocons named “benevolent global hegemony” and focus again on our domestic needs. Those needs include reducing the size and influence of the central government to allow local and regional communities to reemerge in playing the role that they did before big government pushed them aside. This would entail repealing some of the laws that interfere with the free choices people make that are not “politically correct” regarding free association and various “value” issues concerning the role of men and women etc.

I’d also suggest that reversing the globalization of our economy (via tariffs and various national and local regulations) and returning to a national and regional economic model would strengthen non-governmental forces and lead to a return to more traditional cultural values and forms of living. I’d assume this would mean less consumption, but it would also mean more production and would mean our policies would favor producers instead of just consumers.

All of this is anathema to the Neocons, to National Review and the current “establishment” right and left alike. They are committed to a global order that in my view will destroy America and traditional culture.

ruth| 12.5.08 @ 2:35AM

You lay a lot of our problems at the feet of Neocons, okay, but how do you respond to 9/11? Do you think President Bush would have been as adventurous internationally if we had not been attacked? I just don't see much individual integrity left in our country but I guess that could rebound with strong, articulate leadership. What about the left's part in our decline such as the culture war and unfettered immigration ? Do you see our decline as inevitable?

Paul E. More| 12.5.08 @ 5:41AM

I don’t think the Neocons caused most of these problems, but they along with others in the political and intellectual establishment have OPPOSED policies that would reverse some of these problems. The Neocons, along with so-called Neo-liberals (i.e, the New Republic liberals and the Democratic Leadership Conference types) have also PROPOSED some policies that have made these problems worse, e.g, the Iraq war, more “free” trade, more mass immigration, amnesty for illegal immigrants (which acts as a magnet for yet more illegal immigration).

I don’t really see Neocons as on the “right” of the political spectrum. They are fans of Wilson, FDR, Truman and LBJ, all left wing icons. Russell Kirk clashed with them over the last decade of his life, whereas previously he had fought against the libertarians the most.

As to 9-11, we would not have been attacked if we had strict immigration controls. The plotters simply would not have been allowed in, as some were known by the CIA as terror associated. Beyond that of course going after the plotters in Afghanistan was necessary, but beyond that most of the response should have been covert, financial and focused on border control and strict immigration. The terror threat is another example of the weakening of the State as most terrorists are not State actors but groups that exist independent of any State. And most traditional States don’t have good options for responding to terror attacks as there is no enemy State to deter or retaliate against.

Terrorism really ties in with the issue of immigration, which is tied into the decline of State authority and territorial sovereignty. Notice that with regard to immigration, the State actually gets weaker (as long as the immigrations are “diverse” and thus effectively end up creating a culturally divided population where once there was a unified population). But at the same time, the Government gets bigger even as the State gets weaker!

Note that mass immigration, especially but not only illegal immigration waters down citizenship. This is very important because the rights and duties of citizenship have to be jealously guarded for a republican form of government to survive. The Neocons at the Weekly Standard and Commentary and National Review have been adamant in favor of amnesty (at least until it failed the last go around). Note also that mass immigration tends to make worse the problem of an “unsettled” population. Without a settled population it is very difficult to build the strong local communities that can make do without government assistance AND have the power base to resist power grabs by the government which are made at the expense of local communities and families.

The tendency is to strip away all the intermediate institutions and leave the INDIVIDUAL alone facing the government without any settled strong base to resist various intrusions. This is known as the process of social atomization, leaving each individual an “atom”.

These are some of the issues that “conservatives” should be dealing with but simply aren’t.

ruth| 12.5.08 @ 1:19PM

Who thinks like you? I believe we are weak and don't stand up for our sovereignty; it's analagous to not defending yourself in a fight. But if you don't care enough about yourself to defend your life, I don't think you deserve to live any way. The argument is moot because obviously you die if you don't defend yourself. This goes back to my basic contention that we have become weakened at the individual level; the rot starts here. How do you infuse integrity and honor into people? I also take note of your description of atomization: The individual alone facing the government because of the destruction of intermediate institutions. Why did this happen? Is it the inevitable evolution of government (which is just made up of individuals) or was this planned?

Paul E. More| 12.5.08 @ 6:38PM

Ruth, Here is an essay in the November issue of this very magazine that I think is making some of the points that I am making. And yes there are people who think as I do otherwise I wouldn’t think this way, as I learned it from them. The point I’m making is that conservative activist and talking heads (Rush, Hannity, National Review etc) ARE NOT talking about these issues, e.g., national sovereignty, immigration, smaller government but a strong nation-state, a tough but realist and NON-NEOCON foreign policy. If all those talking heads were talking about this stuff, we could turn this around. Free will exists and the disasters taking place are NOT inevitable. They are the most likely outcome if we continue the same policies that got us in this mess.

THE FOLLOWING IS FROM THE ARTICLE LINKED HERE:

http://spectator.org/archives/2008/11/01/freedom-and-the-nation-state
FREEDOM AND THE NATION STATE

By Jeremy Rabkin on 11.1.08 @ 11:56AM

If freedom has a natural home in the modern world, therefore, it is the nation-state: the legal entity that claims sovereignty within a bounded territory, and which can grant freedom within that territory through its law. It is very hard to imagine the survival of freedom in a world that has left the nation-state behind.

Paul E. More| 12.5.08 @ 7:05PM

One of the reasons that Americans can no longer control their government is because we have become increasingly diverse and therefore divided. Since the 1965 mass immigration act, tens of millions of immigrants have arrived in America with different traditions than had ever previously existed here or within any single nation state. Along with the foreign burdens of empire, the mass immigration that is transforming America has turned it into a multi-ethnic empire instead of a unified nation-state.

The old colonial policy of divide and conquer, used by Great Britain as well as other powers is being used to transform America from a country whose government was of, by and for the people into a government that serves the interests of elites. Whether this was part of a grand plan or the result of stupid acts is a question I can’t answer. By now the disastrous results of these policies should be clear to everyone. It is time for those who understand these issues to speak up about them.

In the article linked below, Prof. Rabkin alludes to the fact that the more diverse a political entity, in that case a multi-ethnic empire, the less possible it is to form or maintain a representative government.

http://spectator.org/archives/2008/11/01/freedom-and-the-nation-state
FREEDOM AND THE NATION STATE

By Jeremy Rabkin on 11.1.08 @ 11:56AM

Multinational empires have found it particularly hard to maintain democratic governments. In the late 19th century, when most states in western Europe had developed parliamentary forms of government, the Austrian Empire tried to join the trend. Representatives from different ethnic communities not only could not manage to form stable majorities but could not manage to keep their disputes from descending into actual violence in the parliament building. So the empire was ruled by bureaucratic decree until it finally collapsed into separate national states. The old Soviet Union managed to keep “captive nations” under its rule by ruthless repression until it, too, collapsed into separate national states in 1990. Fear of separatist movements— combining with others to overthrow the government or trying to leave the country and taking their part of its territory with them—remains a motive for repression in a number of countries today, most notably China. Even democratic countries have sometimes found it hard to conciliate ethnic differences, leading to the actual breakup of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia in the 1990s and persistent demands for independence or at least greater autonomy in Quebec.