In the New York Post today, I diagnose the shock at the powerful Constitutional arguments advanced against Obama’s health-care plan as another example of the self-defeating parochialism of American liberals, who are continually surprised that conservative ideas and conservative arguments are formidable and can only be bested if they are taken seriously: “the strength of the conservative arguments only came as a surprise to [Jeffrey] Toobin, [Linda] Greenhouse and others because they evidently spent two years putting their fingers in their ears and singing, ‘La la la, I’m not listening’ whenever the conservative argument was being advanced.” (There is nothing new under the son, as the “fingers in their ears” analogy was, it turns out, rather more wittily deployed by James Taranto in February 2011 in a column called “Law Law Law.”)
Indeed, yesterday, as I was writing my column, liberal New York Times columnist Gail Collins literally wrote these words: “How can this law not be constitutional?…Really, I have my hands over my ears. Not listening.”
But this gets at a more fundamental point about American discourse. Until very recently, American conservatives were, by necessity, bilingual. To be sure, they were fluent in the language of conservative or classical liberal thought—the language of Burke and Adam Smith, the language of enumerated rights and governmental limits, the distinction between freedom and egalitarianism and between liberty and license.
But they were also entirely conversant with liberal concepts—the centrality of fairness as an organizing principle, the notion that justice (in John Rawls’s understanding) involves redistributing goods to repair the injustices of nature and human nature, the elevation of reason over faith.
That has never been true of American liberals. They know their own language but they don’t know the language of their ideological and partisan opposite numbers, and usually default to a form of prosecutorial analysis or psychoanalytic diagnosis to explain how so many people could come to so wrong a conclusion about things. They ascribe it to naked self-interest (i.e., greed), or irrational hatred and fear (i.e., ignorance), or mere stupidity.
So conservatives speak liberal, but for liberals in the United States, conservatism might as well be Esperanto.
This is less and less true in a way that is both fair (in the liberal sense) and relativistic (in the conservative sense). It is possible, now, for a young conservative to be born and raised and come to adulthood in a world in which liberal ideas are seen entirely through a conservative prism—through Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and conservative talk radio and homeschooling. This represents an enormous cultural advance for the Right, in that it is no longer forced to make its way through entirely hostile precincts.
But there is something lost at the same time—the comparative advantage of knowing two languages and using that knowledge to strengthen arguments and blindside the opposition. Paul Clement and Mike Carvin, the two conservative lawyers at the Supreme Court this week, show just what is possible intellectually as a result of this bilingualism. It would be more than a shame if the rise of the conservative bubble proved just as blinding as the liberal bubble has been for the past 40 years.
Voegelin tells us that we owe much to the Leap in Being recognized or created, however one might wish to define it, by ancient Israel. Mailer said that the great damage that Hitler inflicted upon his people was the ever greater need to ask “is this good for the Jews?” He passionately confessed that born of circumstance you were born to think, and that deeply wounding what had been so painfully acquired by wound was like sinning against oneself. n nYou know, I thought Jesus was Italian until I was about 12 years old. Well, “He hung around with the same guys, He lived at home because He didn’t marry,” what was I supposed to think? n nTruth is the biggest casualty of hatred between partisans. It leaves people of good will no place to turn. n nThank you, Mr. Podhoretz. n
I worry that conservatives are not embracing their intellectual past. Yes, Glenn Beck sold more copies of Hayek's Road to Serfdom than the economist ever did, but the framing of arguments and the encroaching sense of victimhood many grassroots conservatives express is reactionary and troublesome.
Those who believe their cause trumps all don't limit themselves to what is true or what is right or what is good. They fit the profile described by Eric Hoffer in his 1951 book "The True Believer." Fanatical delusion at the expense of others.
John, n I liked the overall message of your article…but…your misspelling of the phrase "…nothing new under the sic son…" burned my eyes like battery acid. The correct phrase is "nothing new under the sun", and is attributable to King Solomon (of biblical fame).
I guess that makes us neo-conservatives very valuable commodities, sort of like Arabic speakers at the C.I.A. n nYour article makes me think of the day Newt Gingrich took the Speaker's gavel from Dick Gephardt in early 1995. He gave a surprisingly conciliatory speech citing important concepts such as racial justice and workers' rights that had originated on the political left. The address displayed a magnanimity and generosity of spirit that I believe to this day was Gingrich's finest moment. Needless to say, the Democrats did not grasp Newt's outstretched hand. n nI can't imagine any Democrat today making a similar gesture.
The grotesque Affordable Healthcare Act should never have reached the Supreme Court level. It was a bad act from the outset; it was a ploy designed to increase bureaucratic tyranny over the life of every citizen. Democrats apparently believe that government bureaucracy should be the biggest of all employers in the U.S.A. Democrats want a huge interlocked unionized bureaucracy bossed by the likes of AFLCIO president Richard Trumka. Democrats should not wonder that Liberty-loving citizens despise their ambitious hive-mind dishonesty.
The thing is that democrats never allow opposing views, because they feel superior thinking, that only their thought process is the correct one. It's almost like a 'herd mentality'; everything always in one direction, forgetting that listening to opposing view can lead to a healthy agreement.
Add to that the fact that most liberals live in a bubble. They ONLY have like-thinking friends. It is rare to find someone with differing views and opinions in their inner circle.
Brilliant piece, so very true. I am going to make others read it!
Dr. Rossiter wrote an excellent book explaining the psychosis inherent in the Liberal mindset. Most other writers just call them IDIOTS which doesn't help us to understand their behavior.
This is a MUCH better essay that the one in the NYPost. That was all celebrating and a little taunting of liberals. I really believe that celebrating, though satisfying, is totally inappropriate at the moment. There has just been 3 days of hearings and while maybe 4 justices of the court (Thomas was silent) seemed very sympathetic to the plaintives, nothing is settled. Only in June will we know for sure. n nEveryone looks at Liberal vs. Conservative differently. I see that most of it is petty and sort of like a sporting match with each side endlessly trying to score points on the other. This goes on while the majority of the country pays almost no attention whatsoever. There are serious economic problems facing our country and neither left nor right seems willing to do more than pay lip service to them and the middle still isn't paying attention. I guess the whole system will have to collapse before anything gets done.
I don't see how the nature of conservatism and its propensity for argument can become like modern liberalism with its propensity for non-argument and character assassination. It is true that many people do not like to argue, or like to hear others argue, about religion and politics. But that doesn't mean any two sides that are presented are equally right or true. Conservatives should not shy away from turning up the heat – the less we need to be bilingual the less we will be, and having less need is a sign of winning, not losing. We should not be afraid to win.