Rod Dreher and the Eternal Quest
for ‘Some Other Conservatism’

posted at 11:27 pm on November 18, 2009 by The Other McCain
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No one who has witnessed the travails of the conservative movement and the Republican Party in the post-Reagan era can deny that there are problems, numerous and substantial, within the movement. Furthermore, there are obstacles outside the movement that present formidable challenges to prospects for a revival of Reaganesque conservatism. For example, there is the problem of the massive entitlement programs — Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — which have powerful built-in constituencies resistant to any reform and yet which, if not reformed, threaten the nation with fiscal disaster.

Beyond this, however, is the basic confusion caused by the fact that no one holds a copyright on the word “conservative,” and there is nothing to prevent anyone from saying, “I am a conservative and therefore . . .” Which brings us to the problem of Rod Dreher, who has provided what he calls “A Conservative Read On Palin’s ‘Going Rogue’” at National Public Radio.

Why was this invitation extended to Rod Dreher? Because he was willing to do what NPR wanted: Slam Sarah Palin.

We will stipulate that it is possible to dislike Sarah Palin — or at least to believe her not to be an ideal Republican presidential candidate — and still be a conservative. But the person who accepts an invitation from a liberal outfit like NPR to be the token “conservative” who attacks Sarah Palin has a few other hurdles to clear. And over these hurdles, Dreher stumbles badly.

THE BUDDHIST GURU OF ‘CRUNCHY CONS’
The basic problem is that Rod Dreher hates capitalism. He evidently views free markets, profit and commercial endeavor as evils. In his 2006 book Crunchy Cons, the main economic thinker Dreher cites is E.F. Schumacher, author of Small Is Beautiful.

As free-market economist Mark Skousen has explained, Schumacher was something of a peripatetic character who in the 1930s declared himself a “revolutionary socialist,” who subsequently fell under the influence of John Maynard Keynes, and who converted to Buddhism during a visit to Burma in the 1950s (one of the chapters of Small Is Beautiful is called “Buddhist Economics”). All of which makes Schumacher a rather unlikely hero for anyone professing to be a “conservative.” If Schumacher was a “conservative,” what does that make Ronald Reagan?

Jonah Goldberg of National Review wrote the definitive critique of Crunchy Cons — more than 3,600 words — so when I was allotted a mere 700 words to review the book for the libertarian journal Reason, there wasn’t much left to say. What I tried to get across was the shallowness of Dreher’s economic vision:

What is a crunchy con? Dreher provides a “manifesto” describing those “who stand outside the conservative mainstream” and therefore “can see things that matter more clearly.” According to Dreher, “Modern conservatism has become too focused on money, power, and the accumulation of stuff, and insufficiently concerned with the content of our individual and social character.” . . .
Heck, I’m a fundamentalist father of six homeschooled children — the very epitome of crunchiness, according to Dreher. Yet because I believe in economic freedom, he says I don’t even exist. Crunchies “orient their lives” toward “serving God, not self,” Dreher writes. “By way of contrast, a libertarian conservative sees the point of life as exercising freedom of choice to serve his self-chosen ends.”
Look, Rod: My kids have to eat, our minivan needs a new transmission, and my daughter wants to go to college in the fall. Unfortunately, the grocer, the auto mechanic, and the university registrar seem to be libertarians who expect payment in something more substantial than spiritual bliss. So I write for money, not because these are my “self-chosen ends,” but because God cursed our mutual ancestor Adam: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread” (Genesis 3:19).
Others have chastised Dreher for praising Hillary Clinton’s mantra “it takes a village,” but I’m more disturbed by his economic views. Crunchy Cons mentions neither Ludwig von Mises nor F.A. Hayek, and it seems entirely possible that Dreher has never read anything by the free-market Austrian economists or their successors.

Three years later, it seems that Dreher has still not bothered to study the basic arguments for economic liberty, as he writes in his review of Going Rogue:

Palin positions herself as a populist, but her populism is entirely cultural. . . .
A little of that goes a long way, and I wouldn’t begrudge Palin a bit of it if her populism had any economic substance. Early in Going Rogue she talks in detail about how Exxon exploited the people of Alaska in the Exxon Valdez disaster. And her experience tangling with oil companies taught Palin about how big business colludes with government to create a crony capitalism that harms the common good.
And yet, she’s incapable of understanding how the uncritically pro-business economic agenda she touts makes this possible. . . .
Palin’s economic program amounts to nothing more than tax-cutting, deregulating and the endless repetition of shopworn GOP talking points.
This is the Republican Party’s great populist hope?

If Dreher is going to excoriate Palin for “endless repetition of GOP talking points,” it would behoove him to get a little more specific about the “economic substance” of the sort of “populism” he could endorse. More tariffs? More subsidies? More regulation? The whole kit-and-kaboodle of the Al Gore/Michael Moore anti-”Corporate American” crusade?

THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF ECONOMIC LIBERTY
Whatever the policy details of the Dreherist Manifesto, I suspect it would not be something recognized as conservative by most Americans who think of themselves as conservatives. Because the main thing that American conservatives want to conserve is, and always has been, their freedom.

Without economic freedom, there can be no other freedom. Unless a man can earn a living, all the political “rights” in the world will do him no good, because he’ll starve to death, and “rights” are no use to a dead man. We must therefore have economic activity, wherein people produce and distribute, buy and sell. And it is certainly the consensus opinion of American conservatives that this arena of economic activity — that is to say, the market — functions best when government interference is kept to a necessary minimum.

Lower taxes and less regulation are therefore not merely “GOP talking points,” they are fundamental to conservatism, insofar as it involves economic policy. This preference for policies of economic liberty does not require conservatives to worship Mammon, to engage in mindless “consumerism” or “materialism,” or to kowtow to Corporate America. In fact, you can prefer economic freedom and still hate rich people. (By my standards, both Michael Moore and Al Gore qualify as a selfish plutocrats, as do Barbara Streisand and Jane Fonda.)

The irony of economic “populism” is that it is not actually good for the “little people” it claims to serve. Economic liberty is far more important to the poor than to the rich. The rich already have their money, after all, whereas the poor man who aims to improve his lot in life can only hope to do so in the kind of free-market environment that leads to economic growth and opportunity.

Ronald Reagan, who was not born rich and who lived through the Great Depression, liked to say, “No poor man ever gave me a job.” And when liberals start whining about economic inequality — “the growing gap between rich and poor,” yadda, yadda — I’m reminded of what Reagan said in 1964: “We have so many people who can’t see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one.”

DREHER, BROOKS AND ‘SOME OTHER CONSERVATISM’
What’s weird about Dreher’s desire for an economic “populist” conservatism is that it aligns his basic political impulses with that hater of all things populist, David Brooks. Dreher wants a whole-grain “Small Is Beautiful” conservatism, and Brooks wants “National Greatness,” but the two of them are in perfect agreement in not wanting the kind of basic conservatism — with an emphasis on economic liberty and limited government — which united millions behind Barry Goldwater in 1964, elected Ronald Reagan in 1980, and powered the “Republican Revolution” of 1994.

What they want is Some Other Conservatism, a boutique specialty brand that they can call their own. This quest for Some Other Conservatism is hardly new, nor is it limited to Dreher and Brooks. There are many varieties of Some Other Conservatism, each with its own temple cult leaders, its own esoteric ideology, its own arguments for eschewing the mainstream of conservative thought.

Yet all of these subspecies of Some Other Conservatism have much in common, including their tendency to disdain any personality who is genuinely popular with conservatives: Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck, etc. And this year, they have also been generally united in their disdain for the Tea Party movement. (Dreher wants to send Tea Partiers to the loony bin.) This habit of lashing out at the popular and successful is what they call in Vegas a “tell.”

When Dreher called Levin a “creep” — Mark Levin, who served in the Reagan Justice Department under Ed Meese! — I responded: “You’re like the geek at the dance, complaining that the prom queen and the quarterback are so popular.”

SARAH VS. THE COOL KIDS CLUB
Unhappy with their status as small fish in the big pond of mainstream conservatism, the intellectual malcontents try to establish Some Other Conservatism, over which they can reign supreme like the president of the Cool Kids Club, deciding who is or is not worthy of the club’s approval.

Are we really surprised that the Cool Kids Club makes a point of snubbing Sarah Palin? Ordinary Americans are camping out in freezing cold just for a chance to have her sign their books. Of course the malcontent snobs don’t want anything to do with her.

The advocates of Some Other Conservatism have much in common, you see, and here’s something else that unites them: Some Other Conservatism can’t win. The guys who play that game are selfish losers who lack team spirit. If they can’t be the starting quarterback, they don’t want to be on the team, so they sit on the sidelines and complain about the guys who are actually getting knocked around out on the field.

And — oh, yes — these small men always love to pick on girls, don’t they?

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