Conservatism is the “sick man” of American politics and culture. At least that seems to be the view from the 19 social and political commentators in the new collection of essays from Encounter Books titled “Up From Conservatism: Revitalizing the Right After a Generation of Decay” (“Up From Conservatism”). And whether one reads these essays or not, such a conclusion cannot be dismissed. Dismissiveness, in fact, is what has led to the sickness.
Conservatives may take offense at such a claim, but it is more a diagnosis than an accusation. The sickness, or decay, is not from a cultural disease, such as sexualized perversion or contempt for the Constitution; rather, it stems from the terminal symptoms of the Right’s ongoing passivity.
The authors of these essays contend that conservatives have long been the moral majority bent toward compromise. This is a group in search of hills to die on but rarely agreeing on which one.
On the other hand, the Left has been unbending with a willingness to die on every hill. This political and social dichotomy has resulted in a country caught in an identity crisis. America now finds itself on the only hill that is left. The hill that determines fate. A clash between two sides. An American Mount Olympus.
The New Right
“Up From Conservatism” is a call for the bolstering of what is termed as the New Right. It is a conservatism not of extremity but of a more unbending nature, one that is more willing to take the fight to the enemy (enemies aplenty in the cultural sense) rather than idly waiting for the invasion. As the editor of the book, Arthur Milikh, suggests, the New Right must overtly oppose the Left rather than accept its “subordinate position in America.”In a sense, “Up From Conservatism” is an echo of the Old Right. Conservatives have long decried the views and actions of the Left (with terms like “the illiberal Left”) by word (books and essays) and deed (the formation of organizations and think tanks). These methods have hardly resulted in more than circling the wagons. But this book of essays is only that “in a sense.”
“Up From Conservatism” is an urgent call, a demand even, for conservatives to gird their loins, so to speak, and not just prepare for battle but also go to battle. All that has been done, through conservative groups like the American Enterprise Institute and the Federalist Society, is good but not enough.
As one reads the essays (most are worth reading, and some not so much), it is obvious that the New Right has learned from the tactics of the Left. It is a replication of aggressive tactics that result in small to large changes—changes to counter the counterculture in a bottom-up and top-down strategy, a pincer movement.
Guilt and Economics
Two primary problems the essayists of the New Right pinpoint are that, first, conservatives are easily guilted into retreat; and, second, that economic output has guided their decision-making. These problems have led to intellectual weakness and decay, and ultimately the disease of passivity. Conservatives have turned into an ostrich-head-in-the-sand, praying for the worst to be over, and that those on the Far Left who herald views so opposed to theirs will not take things as far as they claim they will. But recent years have proven that the Left has no problem bringing about a cultural revolution, even a cultural apocalypse.
David Azerrad, who does not hide his irritation by the Right and disdain for the Left, states that white guilt (a term made famous by social commentator Shelby Steele) has led conservatives to buy “into the reigning moral framework of the Left, which makes black representation in all realms of life the measure of justice.“ He adds, ”Let’s be honest: most prominent conservatives would rather be photographed helping inner city black kids than helping Appalachian white kids.”
Sexuality, Religion, and Education
Scott Yenor’s essay on the Left’s “queer constitution” and its devastating results is an example of how “nearly all [conservatives] acquiesced to [the LGBT demands] serially—fighting against new extensions while accepting their previous defeats.” The Left’s ongoing sexual revolution, which has resulted in the Yenor-termed “queer constitution,” has placed America’s population on the threshold of societal suicide: “Society must honor man-woman, marital procreative sex over other expressions of sexual mingling if it wants to survive and thrive over the long haul.”Joshua Mitchell and Aaron Renn address the Right’s intellectual laziness by consistently claiming “identity politics” as “a further development of Cultural Marxism or Progressivism” in their essay “Conservatism in Protestant America: What Went Wrong?”
Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Renn deplore the state of Protestant America and its acceptance of the mythology of America’s “original sin” of slavery, and how the ongoing condemnation by the Left of past actions and decisions by long-gone ancestors must forever be paid by current and future generations.
“Identity politics is a Protestant problem,” they write. “[It] will be defeated only by [a] more profound theological insight that a scapegoat does indeed take away the sins of the world, but that there will be no end to trouble if that scapegoat is mortal rather than divine.”
The elephant in the room—America’s secondary and post-secondary education systems—is addressed by Mr. Milikh and Mr. Yenor, noting that “no country can countenance, much less subsidize, schools that destroy a decent social fabric” and adding that the Right has not done much to combat this destruction. “The growing anger on the Right at the incompetence, expense, and moral corruption in our schools is not matched with a plan to take away the Left’s institutions, or to provide an alternative vision of education.”
The Point
The authors of these essays bang drums we’ve heard before, but with additional ferocity. It is not just the Left that is in their sights, but the Old Right as well. In many ways, the New Right advocates the Old Right, but it is the Old Right of the pre-1970s rather than the post-1970s.“Up From Conservatism” is less a call for action and more a call to arms against the Left, and against its old self. Just as the Left has advocated the dismantling of America’s societal norms that enabled its rise to world leader status in just about every conceivable category and established it as a beacon on a hill, this collection of essays and their authors are advocating a different kind of dismantling, but with it, a rebuilding of the older ways that will reestablish that “decent social fabric” and empower it “to survive and thrive over the long haul.”
Readers may find the suggestions of these writers too harsh—words too plainly spoken with an air of resentment for the lackluster Conservatism of yesterday. If so, isn’t that just the point?
