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.
I think that the key to reading Posner’s critique is the following quote:
Posner seems to be speaking of the Republican party, not “conservatism” as a whole. Certainly the fact that he explicitly mentions “conservative intellectuals” as having no party would indicate his belief that there does, in fact, remain a strain of conservatism that admits intellectuals. Given this, let’s look at his criticisms as they apply to the Republican party specifically and not to conservatism as an overarching political theory.
1) The failure of the military to secure foreign policy objectives. I see this as meaning that, while military force to accomplish foreign policy aims is not necessarily bad, it has failed in recent cases. As much as I agree that Iraq is better off as a democratic republic (indeed, the entire world is better off when dictators are replaced with republics), the simple fact is that the deposition of Saddam was not the stated foreign policy goal. The initial stated foreign policy goal was to remove WMDs, which were later discovered not to have existed.
To be sure, I believe that this was due to a lack of intelligence data and not to any intentional deception by those in power. That does not, however, change the fact that the initial foreign policy goal was never reached. Similarly, the foreign policy goals in Afghanistan regarding Al Qaeda have not been reached. While good things are indeed coming out of our intervention in Iraq, it strikes me as disingenuous to claim that those results were the original goals. The overall impression of both actions is that we blundered in without a clear plan or exit strategy and this, I believe, is where the failure comes into play.
2) The inanity of substituting will for intellect. To deny that there are religious litmus tests within the current Republican party is to be oblivious to reality. The amount of pull that the “religious right” has within the party very effectively stifles the party’s ability to put forth any national candidate who does not adhere to some form of Christianity. The plain fact is that a person’s religious orientation, something that is properly an irrelevancy, is considered to be of vital importance to a significant (and highly vocal) portion of the Republican party.
As regards the denial of global warming, I am of two minds on this. On the one hand, there does exist legitimate research that is highly critical of many claims made by those who push the global warming agenda and many proposed actions to counter global warming would provide little, if any, measurable benefit if implemented. On the other hand, it is reckless to claim, as many do, that global warming is categorically not occurring. This is an area that requires rather extensive scientific study, especially considering that there is still a lack of consensus within the scientific community about mankind’s contributions to climate change. The Republican party is clearly losing face here by making categorical denials of climate change which are no different from the Democratic party’s claims of certainty. To be truly friendly to intellectuals, the Republican party would need to admit that climate change is an open issue that requires additional study.
3) A continued preoccupation with abortion. I believe that this gets blurred a little with the religious litmus tests that exist within the current iteration of the Republican party. It is one thing to develop a logical and secular argument against abortion. It is another to merely invoke “faith” or “the sanctity of life” and use that as an excuse to engage the opposition in any rational discussion. While I agree with your evaluation that the Republican party has always contained a large segment that opposed abortion, this did not become its own litmus test issue until recently. The problem is not so much that many Republicans are against abortion as it is that anyone who attempts to identify himself (or herself) as a Republican while simultaneously supporting a woman’s right to choose will quickly find himself (or herself) disparaged on all fronts by his (or her) own party.
A person may agree with every other Republican position, but if they are not staunchly pro-life, they are very clearly unwelcome within the party. I believe it is this phenomenon to which Posner is referring.
4) Fiscal incontinence. No arguments here. I think that you’ve said it all on this one.
Comment by Zenmervolt — Friday, 15 May, 2009 @ 06:56
Posner’s entire article is interesting and relevant, but the decline of intellectualism can most clearly be seen in how the GOP has publicly responded to the abortion issue for the last twenty-nine years.
Basic conservative principles would argue that government should refrain from interfering in personal liberties absent a clear necessity to do so. The need to infringe on any personal freedom should be demonstrated by a clear and convincing argument that the exercise of that freedom either unreasonably infringes on the rights of others, or that it undermines the orderly operation of society in a material way.
For too long, the only argument conservatives have articulated against abortion has been based on Christian religious doctrine. Each person should be free to act according to the tenets of their faith, but not to impose them on others. We have to be concerned when we begin asking government to create laws based solely on religious principles.
Either we can make a clear secular argument for how banning abortion is in the public interest or we can’t. If we can’t, then it seems to run counter to basic conservative philosophy to seek government intervention to impose our will. If we can make the argument, then we should set aside the faith-based justification for the purposes of forming public policy.
While we may revile abortion, we need to have the courage to act in accordance with the principals we espouse. If we can’t do that, perhaps we should admit that we don’t really believe in a limited role for government. At least not when we’re getting our way.
I couldn’t have said it better myself, Mark.
- Zenmervolt
Comment by Mark — Friday, 15 May, 2009 @ 23:55
I think you’re right to lament the abortion litmus test for true-believin’ Republicans. I’d like to change the focus of the discussion just a bit. One concern I have is that an intra-party repudiation of what I think of as “kneejerk” social conservatism (or kneejerk neoconservatism) might undermine what I think are valid secular arguments in favor of those positions. When Republicans denigrate their own party members as Bible-thumping populists, that may well be construed by liberals as a concession that the Bible-thumpers’ positions have no merit whatsoever, when in fact there are rational and nuanced arguments supporting those policies. Thus, I think we need to be very careful to distance ourselves from the tone (and sometimes the reasoning) of the kneejerks’ arguments without trashing the ultimate policy position.
Of course, I recognize that a lot of libertarian-minded Republicans don’t agree with any of what the kneejerks (it’s a noun now) have to say, which is fine. But I believe that there are at least a few thoughtful social conservatives out there, and I would hate to see their views marginalized by a kneejerk reaction in the opposite direction, which would cut off all association with social conservative positions, no matter how well-reasoned or articulately presented. This is why I think Posner’s abortion criticism is too simple; it implies that pro-life policies should be put on the back burner. Well, maybe they should be, but not just because they’re supported by the vocal Bible thumpers; you need a better reason than that.
Comment by Strix nebulosa — Sunday, 17 May, 2009 @ 08:40