The Death of Conservatism

It abandoned culture, tradition and learning.

From Forbes
By Melik Kaylan

What a strange, appalling time to be an American conservative. Obama is the hope of the world; G.W. has duck shoes hurled at him. At home: the severest deflation, unemployment, bankruptcies, bailouts since ... well, the marker keeps changing, shifting all the way back to the 1930s. Abroad: yes, after eight years, there's a clear victory in Iraq.

That's no small matter. But it is a small matter if Iran, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine remain unchanged, more intractable than ever, more intractable for being exacerbated by the retrogression in Russia, Afghanistan, Georgia, Pakistan. It's not axiomatic that all leaders on the right are universally vilified anyway because they make the tougher choices, therefore, when they're vilified we should take comfort. This is not how the conservative cause looked after Reagan, Thatcher or Bush the elder.

One keeps hearing that there's a broad, behind-closed-doors, reconsideration afoot of basic principles--heaven knows we need it--but look and listen as I might, I see no evidence of it. For some years now, I've been puzzled by what has increasingly passed for conservatism in the Republican party. Herewith, I offer a short list of such puzzlements, at first modest-seeming perhaps, but ultimately at the heart of the debate we must have.

Consumption Trumps Thrift. After 9/11, we were told to go shopping. And now again, consumer confidence, the restoration thereof, is first priority--for which we must borrow against the future. Borrowing is not a conservative cause, nor spending a conservative virtue. The Founding Fathers did not espouse "life, liberty and the pursuit of shopping." Suddenly, thrift, sacrifice, saving--the process by which real wealth gets incrementally generated over time--have disappeared from the pantheon. Apparently, if the economy whizzes around at a faster and faster rate, the very act of unrestrained mass selling and buying creates a Brave New World, new value, new wealth, even though the money is borrowed. Well, we now know it doesn't. It creates a new class of charlatan zillionaires and money that blurs around so fast that there's no accounting possible.

Down With The Elites. Here's a puzzle: Suddenly, the orators of the right have taken up the 1970s leftist obsession with overthrowing "elites." Certainly, it's true enough that 30 years on, those leftists have become the elites, in academe, in art, in Hollywood and many parts of the media. But advocating class war, even intellectual class war, is hardly a sound conservative policy. The sight of Bill O'Reilly hurling accusations of elitism at his guests appeals merely to the basest populist instincts. Elites are necessary, have always existed and will exist willy-nilly in nature and in society whatever rancor we may feel. The top athlete, top chef, the airline pilot, the engine driver, the semi-conductor expert, the solo-violinist are all members of elites. If we don't like the current elites, we ought to best them through argument and ideas, not Robespierrian envy.

Anti-Intellectualism. Bill Buckley, the ideological father of the modern conservative movement, was arguably the most intellectual figure in the land and prevailed because his erudition, sense of context and history went deeper than the trendy new leftist thinkers he confronted. Conservatism is about studying and preserving the highest, oldest intellectual traditions--not about making the ignorant feel good about being uneducated. What's all this pride in heartland provincialism and ignorance of world geography? This is what Putin appeals to in Russia. If the education system has excluded conservative values, we don't ditch education, we redouble efforts to instruct the heartland in Western Civilization at its highest expression.

Entertainment Trumps Culture. Conservatives have largely ceded the landscape of cultural life to the left. You do not hear aesthetic commentary from Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly on their favorite Shakespeare tragedy or the loveliest painting they've seen. You might hear polemical words on a movie flouting family values and offending decency--and good for them for saying so. But on the left, you will hear discussions of art and culture at all levels of discourse. On the right, serious thought, erudition in general, remains largely political.

Here again we see a direct reversal of roles since the '70s, when the left viewed all culture from political or polemical criteria. When did conservatism become a lowbrow pursuit? Traditional values created the greatest churches, paintings of the Renaissance, country houses, book collections and a love of learning. As it stands, these days, the conservative masses mostly consume entertainment, and culture is considered elitist. This is nonsense. We need an aesthetics of conservatism.

Much of this may sound Utopian, and yet it's not new, not invented from whole cloth. It's about rediscovering lost traditions deep in the roots of our collective memory. This is where values come from, not from the economy or from political ideas alone. It's time for a profound consideration of what conservatism meant before we lost our way. Let the debate broaden and deepen. At the very least, let it begin.

Melik Kaylan, a writer based in New York, writes a weekly column for Forbes.com. His story "Georgia In The Time of Misha" is featured in The Best American Travel Writing 2008.