Richard Posner (for non-lawyers, America’s most famous judge not on the Supreme Court) describes the decline of the role of intellectuals in the modern conservative movement. Posner’s post is worth reading in full for its interesting historical synopsis of twentieth century conservatism, but here is the crux of his argument:
My theme is the intellectual decline of conservatism, and it is notable that the policies of the new conservatism are powered largely by emotion and religion and have for the most part weak intellectual groundings. That the policies are weak in conception, have largely failed in execution, and are political flops is therefore unsurprising. The major blows to conservatism, culminating in the election and programs of Obama, have been fourfold: the failure of military force to achieve U.S. foreign policy objectives; the inanity of trying to substitute will for intellect, as in the denial of global warming, the use of religious criteria in the selection of public officials, the neglect of management and expertise in government; a continued preoccupation with abortion; and fiscal incontinence in the form of massive budget deficits, the Medicare drug plan, excessive foreign borrowing, and asset-price inflation.
By the fall of 2008, the face of the Republican Party had become Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber. Conservative intellectuals had no party.
I think there is a lot to unpack here, so let me take Posner’s four major criticisms in reverse order. First, “fiscal incontinence”: there’s no arguing with this one. Republicans are guilty as hell, and I think Posner is correct to identify the party’s increasingly populist timbre as the root cause of its abandonment of fiscal conservatism (perhaps it’s not a cause; the two are just the mirror images of one another). At any rate, we’ve screwed this one up. It’s time to own up to this mistake and return to first principles. But let’s be clear here: there is nothing wrong with the principles themselves. The basic philosophy of fiscal conservatism is still sound (indeed, it’s the only fiscal philosophy that is sound, in my view). We’ve simply paid inadequate attention to those principles.
Second, “preoccupation with abortion.” This one is trickier. I’m not convinced that opposition to abortion was any less central to the conservative movement forty years ago (when conservatism, according to Posner, was legitimately idea-driven) than it is today. Roe v. Wade was a lighting rod for criticism as soon as it was handed down. Now, perhaps the pro-life position did not become genuinely associated with political conservatism until Reagan built his coalition of economic and social conservatives. But the point is this: there are and always have been an awful lot of people in this country that believe that abortion is murder. One cannot dismiss such concern for human life as a mere political “preoccupation” that gets in the way of more pressing matters. Since when was opposition to abortion an anti-intellectual, populist position? Basically, I think Posner is too quick to lump the abortion issue with the all-too-real, growing economic populism of the conservative movement. Perhaps the tenor of the pro-life movement has become more populist over the years, but I still think it is only loosely related to economic populism (with which true conservatives should be genuinely concerned).
Third, the substitution of will for intellect. I might quarrel with Posner as a descriptive matter on this one. I’m not sure any of the examples he gives (denial of global warming, use of religious criteria in political appointments, and general lack of governmental expertise) are really characteristic, mainstream features of the modern conservative movement. Certainly they’re not part of the philosophy of conservatism. To the extent that some Republicans have exhibited these characteristics, I would be the first to condemn them. Denial of science and ineptness of public officials (like reckless fiscal policies) are not conservative principles.
Finally, the “failure of military force to achieve U.S. foreign policy objectives.” This criticism is susceptible to two interpretations: (1) using military force to attempt to achieve U.S. foreign policy objectives is a really bad idea, or (2) it’s not necessarily a bad idea, but where we’ve used military force, we have executed poorly. In either case, I think Posner is wrong on multiple levels. We’re winning in Iraq, period. Success has taken awhile, to be sure, in no small part due to the Bush administration’s short-sightedness of what regime change in Iraq would actually mean, but I think it is hard to deny that the Iraq war has turned into a painful, costly success. We are on the verge of drawing down our troops and leaving a democratic, moderately stable Iraq. That is an enormous boon to our foreign policy interests in the globe’s most critical region. I do not see how such a policy – in principle or eventual execution – can be characterized as a failure. What is more, the architects of the successful surge strategy were neocon nerds like Frederick Kagan. Indeed, neoconservatism has always been driven by intellectuals; it can hardly be called a populist movement. In short, I think Posner erred in including the neoconservative agenda on his list of “major blows” to conservatism, both because it has worked, and because it is certainly not an anti-intellectual position.
To review the bidding: Posner’s critique of conservatism’s recent fiscal irresponsibility is legitimate, but the problem is indicative of neglect of core conservative principles, rather than of a fundamental flaw in the principles themselves; his concern with the preeminence of the abortion issue is unrealistic; his concern with the substitution of will for intellect is overstated; and his concern with the neoconservative foreign policy agenda is flat wrong. The lesson, in my mind, is that conservatives who wish to remain true to the movement’s traditional principles should focus their energy on stopping the recent slide toward economic populism. If we succeed there, then we’ll give ourselves the luxury of bickering among ourselves and with the liberals about all the rest.