Twenty-First Century Conservatism

Some weeks ago I posted a piece saying that Republicans and conservatives were missing a golden opportunity to engage in a full-throated reconstruction dialogue under the Obama administration and noted that to date Republicans seemed to be presenting themselves as nothing more than the Party of No. The presentation of what is by all accounts an extremely flimsy budget alternative seems to indicate that not much has changed. In that post, I said that conservatives and Republicans needed to put themselves to the formulation of a conservative movement for the twenty-first century, particularly given the tide of demographics working against them. I’ve been pressed for some details on what I meant by “twenty-first century conservatism”, which I’ve been tossing around in my head. Below is what I’ve come up with (in no particular order or ranking):

Go populist without going populist: I’ve spent some time warning against the dangers of populism in regards to the AIG scandal and generally, but the fact of the matter is that there is smoldering populist sentiment out there that is not completely off-base in terms of its raison d’etre. People rightly believe that their government has gotten away from them and increasingly has little to do with their everyday lives and addressing the issues present in those lives in a positive fashion and a movement/party that can present a believable narrative about how they care about the challenges facing Americans and are interested in focusing on those issues in a collaborative fashion stands a decent chance of capturing a sizable proportion of the national imagination.

Look, John McCain and Sarah Palin were on to something with their decision to go hyper-local in how they addressed supporters and finished in what was a respectable place given that this election was the Democrats’ to lose and they did very little to actually lose it. The problem is that Palin and McCain practiced actual, base-line populism that appealed to people’s lowest common denominator inclinations. Such traditional populism generally winds up looking pretty ugly as a result and will get you a certain segment of support, but doesn’t offer the means for developing a broad base of support. But if conservatives can find a way of walking the walk of populism without necessarily talking the talk of populism, they might have a recipe for success sooner than we all tend to think. Walking the walk but not talking the talk to me means eschewing notions of appealing to peoples’ lowest common denominators and meeting people where they are but challenging them to bring the angels of their better nature to the game. Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam’s arguments around Sam’s Club Republicans come to mind in this regard, as does the kind of localism/regionalism/integrity of living articulated by the likes of Daniel Larison, John Schwenkler, and particularly Rod Dreher (though Rod runs in to his troubles in other areas).

Give up on small government, focus on limited government: I’m going to get hammered on this issue from some quarters, but I think it’s time for conservatives to face up to the music when it comes to small government. For all intents and purposes, government has been growing for the past number of decades regardless of the leadership in power at any given time. The fact of the matter is that with a country the size of the US, you need to have a fairly large government structure and the kind of spending that goes along with that structure. The bottom line is that Americans expect too much of their government for it to every truly be small. So by sticking to the “smaller government, fewer taxes” motto religiously, conservatives have an easy to understand and winning message, but remain permanently unable to deliver on fifty percent of that message and end up getting criticised for it.

On the other hand, the less easy to convey notion of a limited government, whose role and scope in the lives of everyday Americans is an area that is still wide open for debate and in which considerable reforms can be managed — especially given how George W. Bush trounced this notion over the past eight years. This, to my mind, is prime redemption ground for American conservatives and they would do well to take the ball and run with it. You’re not going to get any kind of rhetoric from the Obama administration that can’t be refuted because of their commitment to broad based spending (regardless of what Obama himself may think about limited government, and I’m inclined to believe he is sincere), so conservatives have the opportunity to take the ball and run it more than a few yards here. Beyond just winning elections, though, I think this is robust area for debate for years to come and think that conservatives would be well advised to take the lead on that debate.

Take the libertarian route when it comes to culture: I would suggest that more than in economics or role of government, conservatives are on the business end of the demographics shotgun because of cultural issues. The debate on whether spending should be vigorous or tempered swings back and forth depending on prevailing circumstances in America, and that debate winds up affecting the dynamics of the debate on the role of government, as well. But there is a steady procession of resolve on certain cultural issues, perhaps currently typified by the same-sex marriage issue, that marches to beat of different and less erratic forces. Understanding that there are reasons why conservatives may not be able to find sufficient reason to come out in exuberant support of these issues (and it would be great if they could, because that would strengthen their case even further), the obvious way forward here is to address these social issues from the movement/party’s libertarian perspective.

The basic line goes something like, “Look, I might not condone homosexuality, but it isn’t my place — and it certainly isn’t the state’s place — to determine who can and can’t get married. That is a decision that two rational and competent adults should make, so I’ll leave it to them.”

To my mind, that is essentially the tact that Obama is taking on some of the more contentious social issues and as far as I can tell it is both working like a charm and has the bonus of being a thoroughly intellectually defensible position. It’s not going to convince progressives, but it could be very appealing to some moderates, places conservatives on the right side of history, and picks up that contingent youth that wound up adoring Ron Paul in the election.

Give up on neoconservatism: ’nuff said.

Re-embrace intellectualism: now opinions are going to vary depending on who you talk to about whether or not the conservative movement actually ceased embracing intellectualism, but regardless I think the broad perception is out there and impressively pervasive. You can’t go about escaping that perception when the face of your movement is George W. Bush for eight years, rightly or wrongly. The worst part about this perception is that the conservative movement has an incredible cadre of extremely intelligent and talented young intellectuals at its disposal who are to some degree or another on the outside looking in (many of them have managed to slip in through the sliding glass door leading to the patio, but they shouldn’t have to sneak about). Whether you’re looking at people like James Poulos, Ross Douthat, Reihan Salam, Conor Friedersdorf, David Frum, Daniel Larison, Rod Dreher, Patrick Deneen, Ramesh Ponnuru or Andrew Sullivan (and that’s my own relatively myopic list of favourites), it’s hard to deny that there is a metric tonne of talent that isn’t being a thoroughly utilized as it could be. Finding channels for bringing these folks further into the party and letting them stretch their intellectual and conceptual legs for your movement’s benefit isn’t just optically wise, it’s actually going to strengthen your movement.

The challenge, of course, is that these folks aren’t died in the wool movement conservatives, as is the case with most of the young intellectuals that conservatism could avail itself. So by engaging them you have correspondingly understand that they are fairly comfortable moving some of the building blocks around, and in some cases, removing them altogether. Time to give up some sacred cows people, trust me it’s all part of the ideological process. The kind of openness and intellectual honesty that these thinkers bring to the table has been able to draw out the respect of even staunch liberal minds, so believe me the increase in the price of your stock combined with the ultimate strength that the restructuring will provide a movement bereft of many exhilarating ideas is more than worth it.

If restructuring is good enough for the Big Three, it’s good enough for the GOP. I see a bumper sticker in my future.

Critically embrace tradition: a conservatism of the twenty-first century doesn’t need to cut is umbilical cord to tradition altogether, by my lights. In fact, conservatism’s connection to tradition is potentially one it’s strong points in a world increasingly loosened from any moorings. But conservatives need to find ways of embracing those traditions with a critical eye and be prepared to let go of traditions that no longer make any sense. This post by Will Wilson that keep going back to on engaging self-reflective traditions is the key here and I keep waiting for Will to pick that line of thought back up on move it forward a couple more yards, but it’s somewhere to start. This links in to some degree with my comments around culture and is, in many sense, a more full-bodied approach to reform in this regard, but I think there is a whole separate project and element to the ideology at work here that speaks to one of the core planks in conservative identity, so I’m loathe to mash the two together.

For another good example of what I’m talking about, specifically in regards to dropping certain traditional mores when they no longer make sense, see Conor Friedersdorf on same-sex marriage.

Find meaningful ways of talking about religious pluralism: a big hang up for a lot of people around conservatism is the degree to which it seems yoked to religion, specifically Christianity. I think there are powerful reasons why it is the case that even a twenty-first century conservatism is going to continue to have a strong relationship to religion, but there are also ways of presenting that relationship in a palatable way. Alan Wolf had an impressive article that I’ve referred back to on a couple of different occasions about the “market place of religion”, that demonstrated in what I took to be a fairly impressive manner that the direction of religion is away from absolutism and towards a plurality. To my mind, this is the migrating pattern that conservatives need to follow.

Again, this is the piece of rhetorical jujitsu that Obama has so adeptly employed to great effect. As well, in that article, Wold points to some of the more socially responsible tendencies that arising within the specifically evangelical strains of faith, finding ways to focus attention on those elements, rather than proclamations of non-believers burning in hell would be mightily helpful.