It takes an iconic conservative judge like Richard Posner to state, very plainly, why the Republican party has become such a spectacular basket case [emphasis added]:
By the end of the Clinton administration, I was content to celebrate the triumph of conservatism as I understood it, and had no desire for other than incremental changes in the economic and social structure of the United States. I saw no need for the estate tax to be abolished, marginal personal-income tax rates further reduced, the government shrunk, pragmatism in constitutional law jettisoned in favor of “originalism,” the rights of gun owners enlarged, our military posture strengthened, the rise of homosexual rights resisted, or the role of religion in the public sphere expanded. All these became causes embraced by the new conservatism that crested with the reelection of Bush in 2004.
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.
Bravo, Judge Posner.
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I don’t know where you got the idea that Richard Posner is conservative. (Or that he’s iconic, for that matter.) But as he demonstrates just in that blog post, he’s pro-choice, anti-Iraq-War, and anti-free-market: basically a liberal.
Twitter: davidshankbone
says:
I believe the word you were looking to use is “Libertarian“:
If conservatism is going to reject everyone who doesn’t subscribe to the narrow, emotion and religiously-based policies of the people who have gotten it thrown out of power, your ranks are just going to continue to dwindle, dwindle, dwindle.
There’s plenty of room for Posner in the Democratic party
It’s kind of a “big tent”
And if conservatism is pairing itself with the Iraq War, it just goes to show how sadly down the wrong path it has been taken. Like the liberals of the 1970′s, the conservatives deserve their time in the wilderness for their intellectually vacuous and divisive politics.
very interesting post David, I read the Becker-Posner blog in it’s entirety and it was very ‘eye opening’ for me, I learned a lot, thank you!!!
xoxoxo
Well, if anything, he’s a former libertarian who now believes in market regulation. And yes, supporting the Iraq War is a conservative position. I don’t see how supporting it is any more “divisive” than, say, opposing it.
Posner’s a Reagan appointee if I remember correctly. As an attorney who practices in the federal courts, I can tell you that any judge appointed by a Republican is a conservative at least on paper. So strictly speaking he’s been aligned with the Republican party, and it’s interesting to hear him speak out about this.
That being said I love this post. I’ve never been quite able to peg what it was that was so very frustrating about the Republican party. The fact that so much of the party stance is founded on emotional and religious ideology is exactly why Republicans have moved away from intellectual groundings. Fascinating. I never thought of it that way. Thanks Dave!
I agree with Samantha. When Bush decided to make policy based on religion instead of intelligence, it was pretty much over, and IMO that’s what made room for Palin to move into the spotlight. And we all know how that worked out.
I don’t know what “conservative on paper” means, since Posner is evidently not a conservative on paper. And the same obviously goes for Supreme Court justices like David Souter and Sandra Day O’Connor.
It appears that these are just basic disagreements with conservative philosophy, masquerading as the taking of some sort of intellectual higher ground.
Twitter: davidshankbone
says:
I think it depends upon how you define “conservative” Westerly, and there is no uniform definition. You seem to be arguing that there is; and that definition, no doubt, is in accord with how you define yourself as a conservative. Perhaps you could point to some examples of exemplary conservatives?
Fine – among commentators: Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol and Mark Steyn; among politicians, Jeff Flake and Mark Sanford (Palin’s a little suspect because of some early support for pork projects); among personalities, gotta go with Hannity and El Rushbo, though I find both somewhat grating. Flake might be more libertarian than conservative, but it’s a close call. Of these, Krauthammer, at the least, has true intellectual heft.
Whoa. If you’re holding Kristol up as an example of reasonable conservatism,, then your head is really skewed up. Even the ‘reasonable’ conservatives have branded him as a – what shall I call him – a lunatic? a maverick? an idiot? or all of the above.
Sheesh.
Who are these anti-Kristol conservatives you’re talking about?
Twitter: davidshankbone
says:
Westerly, Posner cites the sources of his conservative intellectual underpinnings as Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, George Stigler. I grew up under Reagan (I was born in 1974). In 1988 I was a Bob Dole supporter who could not vote (age 14). At the age of 16, I became an Associate Chairman of the Georgia Federation of Teenage Republicans. I was a youth coordinator for Newt Gingrich’s 1990 re-election campaign.
This is all to say that the conservative movement that Judge Posner found attractive was the same one I did back in my “youth”:
Now, my views have changed somewhat, but what Posner wrote struck a chord with me, perhaps a nostalgic one. The conservatism of today, the one he describes and I quote above in this post, is essentially the inverse of the excesses of liberalism of the 1970′s. Whereas I had appreciation (at a young age – yes, I was a nerd) for conservative philosophy, it was not so tinged with religion and emotion. It was intellectual, and that appealed to my young brain.
You seem to have paired yourself with the “new conservatism” that Posner writes about. But it was the old conservatism that Reagan espoused. It was the old conservatism that attracted the middle ground. The “new conservatism” is what is losing, for the same reasons the 1970′s liberalism failed. It goes too far. It vilifies those who disagree with it in the most dvisive–even McCarthyite–terms imaginable (“So-and-so hates America”; “Real America” etc.)
Krauthammer I agree with. Rush and Hannity? Pretty much demagogues. I don’t like demagogues – conservative or liberal.
This was rambling – but I think somewhere my point becomes clear. The conservatism that you are using to deem who is, and is not, a true conservative is only going to make the Republicans the Whigs of the 21st Century.
Well, I never understood the concept of treating liberalism and conservatism as brands. If you believe in lower taxes and aggressively fighting countries who sponsor terrorism, does it make sense to switch over to the other side for any reason? I think Posner confirms that point by making it clear that he’s just not much of a conservative/libertarian in his views any more.
Twitter: davidshankbone
says:
But Posner hasn’t said he has switched to any side, as much as he disagrees with the extreme of where conservatism has gone. It’s often a natural progression. FDR’s policies were somewhat socialist, and necessarily so as they spared the country from going toward Communism. Successes in liberalism from FDR to Johnson meant that liberalism had to find new things to go after. The bar kept getting moved as to what the goals and aims of the movement were, to the point that it was moved so far left that liberals were finally told to piss off. They went too far.
Posner makes this same argument with conservatives. He hasn’t changed his views; he’s remained true to them. But the bar of what it means to be conservative keeps getting moved further and further right as the movement achieved its initial goals. Conservatives still hark back to Reagan. So does Posner. The difference is that “new conservatives” only see Reagan as a stepping stone into refashioning a stalwart conservative country that mixes emotion and religion and eschews reason and science (Posner nods to the 2004 election). You find yourself on that far side of the bar, it appears. You are essentially George McGovern, but the ultra-conservative version. You aren’t coming across as a Reagan. Posner is Reagan; still is.
To say that means he is not a conservative is the problem. He is; he’s just not ultra right-wing. This is why the Republican Party is becoming the 21st Century’s Whigs. A party that only appeals to 20-30% of the populace, mostly the ones found in rural, southern states.
It’s a dire situation, because democracy can’t function without a good opposition. The U.S. needs the Republican Party to be strong, and to move back to “right of center” and not “ultra-right wing”. I would be making these arguments about the Democrats if I had been around in 1970.
I don’t understand why you’re making all these statements about me: I haven’t said a thing about my political beliefs here, as far as I know. And I don’t see that Ronald “government is the problem” Reagan was some kind of moderate by today’s standards. Did Reagan believe in man-made global warming, gay marriage, keeping the estate tax in place, or the various other things Posner argues for? As I’m sure you recall, Reagan was attacked for many of the same things today’s conservatives are – being a warmongering “cowboy”, being anti-intellectual and anti-science, etc.
Twitter: davidshankbone
says:
Sorry, Westerly, but when you said that you consider commentators like “Hannity and El Rushbo” to be exemplars of conservative thinking, and pretty much all of your posts are informed–and critical of Posner–from a right-wing conservative perspective, that you are identifying your own politics without having to flat out say it. That’s a little nit-picky on your part, I think. Another aspect that is revealing is that you have come to a determination of what it means to be conservative, as if dissent with Reagan on one issue or another means he wasn’t a real conservative.
It’s this sort of “who is a conservative; who is a Republican” sorting that is bringing more people to the Democrats, who are more comfortable with dissent on issues and there has never been an expectation that they should march in lockstep.
Well, I’d gladly share my opinion of who is and isn’t a real liberal, if that were the topic at hand. And I don’t think it’s one issue or another: Posner seems to have a stance different from Reagan’s, for better of for worse, on every issue he mentions.
Twitter: davidshankbone
says:
Well, it was also that you had said that you “sometimes” find Hannity and Rush grating. An indication that you watch them, generally don’t mind them, except sometimes. That had implications for your political views.
Westerly, I’m an editor on Wikipedia. When you get some free time–I’m sure that’s hard–I wouldn’t mind hearing your opinion on this article on Wikipedia. I’ve never touched it myself, as my focus tends to be less political on the site.
I’m also on Wikipedia sometimes (that’s how I found this blog); I try to avoid the political stuff too, since there’s too much chance that whatever I added will get wiped out two months later.
…although that article seems fine; as complicated a term as “conservative” is, it hasn’t gone through nearly the number of shifts as “liberal”.
Twitter: davidshankbone
says:
I’m being playful with you, Westerly, but regarding your last comment: DUH!
Conservatives, as a rule of thumb, are for the status quo or harken to tradition. Liberals want change from the status quo for “progress”. Of course the shifts of what it means to be
“liberal” have outpaced what it means to stand for the status quo.
I was asking for your opinion on that article to see if there were POV problems you saw, per the tag at the top. I just wanted to make sure you didn’t see anything that stood out as particularly problematic.
Well, I doubt the first liberals, like Adam Smith, would describe themselves as being for “change”, but I don’t know for sure. Anyway, I read through the whole article – in general it looks fine, and it’s not clear in the talk page what the POV tag is for. The article could definitely use a lot more citations, and more information on certain topics, like the silver and gold standards, and the conservatism of presidents Lincoln, Nixon and G. W. Bush. The one real POV violation I see is the implication that Herbert Hoover was a laissez-faire president (again uncited). But the POV tag should probably be removed.