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A guy named Drew Westen has an insightful article about modern "conservatism" on HuffingtonPost that I might have written myself if I had better analytical skills. Westen identifies five strands of thought --- each one incompatible with one or more of the others --- twisted into a chimera ideology that really shouldn't exist in the real world. (Pardon me for my chimera of a metaphor.)
Westen refines the "three-legged stool" concept that we often hear about Republicanism: that it is supported by the triple pillars of religious fundamentalists, gunslinging libertarian refusniks, and captains of the military-industrial complex. He also identifies a somewhat well-intentioned (or at least intelligently self-interested) fiscal conservative who accepts the general New Deal style of federal governance, but with a stingier safety net. And, finally, he points to the unrepentant bigot strand of modern conservatism, which tries to stay out of the view of polite society but considers the Republican (and presumably Libertarian) party to be its political home.
The article does a nice job of arguing a point that most regular observers immediately feel in their guts: this whole complex of ideologies that goes by the name "conservatism" simply has never made any sense... except for the fact that they have managed to convince the nation otherwise since the days of Nixon. I agree with Westen's warning not to underestimate their ability to pull it back together and sell it to 51% of the voters again in the future. But, still, it is encouraging to me to see these lunatics and their sinister political cartel falling apart faster than a Chevy Cavalier.
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A Cavalier? The article did a good job of explaining how incompatible these ideologies are with each other, unless special accommodations are made. But it didn't address the schizo (or more likely flat-ignorant) individuals in whom several of these mindsets reside all at once.
ReplyDeleteEven if you separate the intellectual libertarian from the real (and rare) walking the walk Christian conservative, how do you break apart thousands of addled people so damned stupid they don't realize every word out of them contradicts their previous words?
These confused, hydraheaded, don't-know-what-they-are mutants are not so much Cavaliers as they are PT Cruisers. But-- still crap.
As I read it, the scope of the article was just to lay out how schizo the coalition itself must be to hang together. The issue of how people shoe-horn themselves into political bed with others whom they despise has fairly obvious answers that differ according to the individuals' needs. But in particular, people who claim to believe these conflicting ideas all at once are probably "true believer" types, as described by Eric Hoffer in his book of the same title. The ones who aren't true-believer types are likely stupid people who find personal identity in an us-vs-them world --- as long as they're part of an "us" then they are OK with themselves.
ReplyDeleteStupidity may be the most abundant element in the universe, as Frank Zappa said many times, but I don't think we have much evidence that stupidity provides an evolutionary advantage either to the individual or to the tribe.