Reclaiming conservatism

By Herbert London

Although Sam Tanenhaus, editor of the New York Times Book Review, argued the conservative movement is “dead,” R. Emmett Tyrrell argues otherwise. In his latest book titled “After The Hangover,” Mr. Tyrrell tells us reports of conservatism’s death are greatly exaggerated. With his usual panache, he offers a remarkable distillation of conservative history and how it is currently unfolding in the United States.

Editor-in-chief of The American Spectator, Mr. Tyrrell has lanced the boil of contemporary liberalism and has offered a valuable critique of conservatism, both its wisdom and failures. He chronicles the ebb and flow of contemporary politics from the Republican success in the 1994 congressional elections to their defeat in the 2008 presidential election.

Despite his inclination to embrace conservative ideas and what Mr. Tyrrell calls the conservative “temperament,” he nonetheless includes a scathing indictment of conservation as often “pinched by a smallness that has set the movement back and encouraged intramural squabbling.”

Without the heavy-handed club conservatives sometimes employ to attack media myrmidons, Mr. Tyrrell notes that gaffs of a truly amusing variety by President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are given scant attention by members of the press corps. Mr. Tyrrell recognizes the obvious bias, but doesn’t dwell on it; what he does dwell on is the difference between elites and the everyman. He recalls with nostalgia a time when there was genuine solidarity among conservatives, the height of what might be called the William F. Buckley era and the founding of National Review.

However, the political ascendency of conservatism in the 1950s and ‘60s occurred in large part because the movement was small, united and virtually powerless. Fragmentation insinuated itself into conservatism with the political success of the Reagan years. At that point, Young America’s Foundation conservatives saw themselves as the genuine article as opposed to the arriviste neo-cons and the paleos of yesteryear. Liberals, as Mr. Tyrrell points out, have “silenced disagreement,” a conspicuous difference with conservatives. And yet, even after Mr. Obama’s election, roughly twice as many Americans claim to be conservative as opposed to liberal, a legacy of first principles on which conservatism was founded. Nonetheless, it is important to note, that many of these conservatives are not registered Republicans.

What appears to enjoin liberal loyalty is a general cultural understanding ratified by moral sentiment, etiquette and reflexive cues: “Bush lied,” “McCarthy destroyed civil liberties,” and “trickle down economic theory adversely affects the poor,” are homilies that drip from the lips of liberals without the slightest regard for historical accuracy or context. Here is the herd of independent thinkers incapable of nuanced thought. These views, sculpted into the national culture through textbooks such as Howard Zinn’s A Peoples History of the United States, represent the conservative challenge for the future. Mr. Tyrrell describes it as overcoming “Kultursmog.”

A new generation of conservatives face a challenge their predecessors did not. Fifty years ago, the ideas that threatened America came from outside our borders. Now, the threat is from within as the servants of a command economy are attempting to impose a behemoth government on every American. They do so with the erroneous conviction this helps the poor and downtrodden.

It is difficult to convince youthful idealists that the road to serfdom is paved with good intentions. The conservative attitude is predicated on individualism and anti-utopianism—ideas that do not immediately awaken youthful enthusiasm. However, as the ship of state moves relentlessly down an ocean of hazards and icebergs, there will be many looking for a helmsman who can provide a different direction.

In “After The Hangover,” Mr. Tyrrell has outlined a remarkably sensible agenda for the GOP’s future with his policy prescriptions and his affirmation of American exceptionalism. Mr. Tyrrell notes the nation’s political center is shaped by conservatism. There is little doubt that is true, but there is a major task ahead in reclaiming the culture from radical elitists who dominate it. As Mr. Tyrell rightly affirms, despite this battle, America is still a beacon of hope.

-Herbert London is president of Hudson Institute and professor emeritus of New York University. He is the author of Decade of Denial and America's Secular Challenge.