In the Agora: On Burke and Bush

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October 10, 2007

On Burke and Bush

David Brooks's essay on "The Republican Collapse" is a must-read, if you haven't already. In it, Brooks argues that the failure of Republican conservatism in recent times is due to the fact that it's a "creedal" conservatism, rather than a conservatism of disposition like that of Edmund Burke, characterized by "a reverence for tradition, a suspicion of radical change." I think there's something to Brooks's argument, even if it is somewhat simplistic. Or perhaps it just speaks to the kind of conservatism I've always identified with--a kind of conservatism that says "let's slow down and think this through before we go changing things"--rather than have any transforming ideas of its own. It certainly explains my discomfort with Christian Nation types or world-conquering neoconservatives. A few more quotes:

When conservatism came to America, it became creedal. Free market conservatives built a creed around freedom and capitalism. Religious conservatives built a creed around their conception of a transcendent order. Neoconservatives and others built a creed around the words of Lincoln and the founders.

Over the years, the voice of Burke has been submerged beneath the clamoring creeds. In fact, over the past few decades the conservative ideologies have been magnified, while the temperamental conservatism of Burke has been abandoned.[...]

The world is too complex, the Burkean conservative believes, for rapid reform. Existing arrangements contain latent functions that can be neither seen nor replaced by the reformer. The temperamental conservative prizes epistemological modesty, the awareness of the limitations on what we do and can know, what we can and cannot plan.[...]

To put it bluntly, over the past several years, the G.O.P. has made ideological choices [the war in Iraq, doctrinaire free market ideology, too much social policy meddling] that offend conservatism's Burkean roots. This may seem like an airy-fairy thing that does nothing more than provoke a few dissenting columns from William F. Buckley, George F. Will and Andrew Sullivan. But suburban, Midwestern and many business voters are dispositional conservatives more than creedal conservatives. They care about order, prudence and balanced budgets more than transformational leadership and perpetual tax cuts. It is among these groups that G.O.P. support is collapsing.

Brooks's essay has prompted responses from Andrew Sullivan, Rod Dreher, and Daniel Larison. The letters to the editor in are worth reading too, as it seems Brooks has touched a nerve.

UPDATE: I thought this bit from Larison's post was good too:

Perhaps it is implicit in the rest of the column, but Brooks does not seem to stress enough that the reason why GOP support among these groups ["suburban, Midwestern, and many business voters"] is collapsing is that ideologically driven policies take little account of present realities and attempt to shoehorn society into an imagined model. GOP support isn't simply collapsing because its increasingly ideological nature offends the temperamental conservatives in America, but because the policies it has managed to implement have generally failed even on their own terms. It is in no small part ideology's hostility to reality and the repeated, doomed attempts to force reality to conform to absurd expectations that makes the temperamental conservative flee from it.

Posted by David Darlington at October 10, 2007 07:22 PM

Comments

I would also recommend commentary on the column by John Cole and Doghouse Riley. I also took a crack at it.

Posted by: Doug at October 10, 2007 08:22 PM | permalink

Thanks for those.

Posted by: DMD at October 10, 2007 08:30 PM | permalink

I've read the Riley piece twice, and I still can't figure out what his point is.

Posted by: Zach Wendling at October 10, 2007 09:47 PM | permalink

His point is to show us how angry he is, throwing rocks at an imaginative, unrealistic caricature of the conservative movement, and also at a conservative who criticizes the conservative movement. If you were looking for an intellectual point in there, though, I don't see it, either.

Posted by: Karl at October 11, 2007 06:25 AM | permalink

I think Doghouse's point is that Brooks didn't see fit to examine the conservative bona fides of the Bush administration's policies, particularly with respect to Iraq, until Bush and his administration had shown themselves to be failures. Furthermore, Brooks does not seem to recognize any personal responsibility in the successful implementation of these bad policies.

I don't know enough about Brooks to say whether this is an accurate critique or not. But, I think that's the point.

Posted by: Doug at October 11, 2007 10:01 AM | permalink

I didn't find Riley's post terribly useful, but I do agree with Doug that its point was to chastise Brooks & those of his ilk who were all too happy to ride the Movement Conservatism train while it was doing well for them, but want to get off of it scot-free now that it is turning into a train-wreck.

Posted by: philosopher at October 11, 2007 01:29 PM | permalink

October 10, 2007

On Burke and Bush

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