Eugene notes Geoff Stone’s column on the challenges facing liberalism. Stone correctly notes that conservatives in the 1970s (actually beginning with the New Deal) were equally adrift, but that a “movement” was born from the ashes. How this came about is a fascinating story that I won’t retell here (one source I have previously recommended is Nash’s “Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945”).
In a nutshell, though, I think the key story here is the rise of conservatism as a movement that was larger than its doctrinal differences–i.e., an umbrella that enabled libertarians, traditionalists (and later religious conservatives), and anti-communists (today, supporters of the “War on Terror”) to work together in common cause both intellectually and politically. The unifying theme, however, was a discussion of fundamental questions of the relationship between the individual and the state, and a willingness to do so in an empirically-informed and reality-based context. Think about the problems that eventually overwhelmed liberalism–Communism, the crime explosion of the 1960s and 1970s, the decline of the American economy in the 1970s, etc. “Conservatism” offered a vision of man and his relation to the state and community that reached back to traditional American values, and provided a unity that was able to pull together the disparate strands of the conservative coalition.
Looking at liberalism today, I honestly don’t see how liberalism can replenish itself. Assuming that liberalism can articulate an overarching vision, I am at a loss to see what this vision possibly could look like, especially in light of the failure of liberalism in the 1970s. Most fundamentally, I don’t see how liberalism it can simultaneously stand for its traditional focus on individualism as well as the rise of modern “identity politics,” which is focused on group rights. Stone says, for instance, “In truth, it is much easier to see the injustice in racial segregation than it is to justify affirmative action.” Of course it is–the two positions are inherently contradictory. Either one’s rights flow from their status as individuals, or as members of particular racial or other groups–it can’t be both. This isn’t a question that can be compromised or finessed. And even this dichotomy leaves aside other movements within liberalism such things as radical environmentalism, with its deep pessimism, elitism, casual attitude toward coercion, and dismissal of economic prosperity.
So, unless I’m missing something, it seems to me that the project of restoring liberalism is going to be much more difficult than it was for conservatism. Conservatism circa 1945 was an intellectually bereft movement, empty of ideas. But liberalism today seems to have it worse–it seems to have too many mutually-incompatible ideas, many of which are deeply contrary to the American tradition of individualism, optimism, and economic growth.
Incidentally, I think Stone probably overstates the role of the Federalist Society, which came along pretty late in the game. Legal issues are (or should be) fundamentally issues of implementation of a vision, rather than formative of a vision. In fact, this conflation may be part of the problem with liberalism’s malaise, I suspect. Legal issues are (or perhaps more accurately, should be) inherently parasitic on a larger political and ideological vision, primarily a vision of the relationship between the individual and the state. The key players here are actually Friedman, Hayek, Rand, Kirk, etc.–Bork and Scalia come along later, and the conservative legal philosophy arises out of the intellectual construct of conservatism. Of course, this relates profoundly to the discussion that David Brooks triggered a few months back that liberalism today is “bookless,” in the sense that it has no coherent animating ideas that knit together the liberal vision of the world. Even the questions that Stone poses are basically programmatic, not philosophical.
I think that one reflection of the robustness of a conservative intellectual philosophy is that it is not uncommon at all for a libertarian to be personally pro-choice, but to oppose Roe v. Wade as a legal doctrine, or to be opposed to school prayer or the Pledge of Allegiance yet recognize it as a legitimate sphere for majorities to hold sway. The position of conservative jurisprudence flows pretty easily from distrust of elitist power and the empirical record of the mischief spawned by prior generations of judges. Perhaps there are similar examples on the liberal side of the line, but my sense is that the conflation between political preference and constitutional policy is much closer.
Update:
A reader reminds me that Stone also overstates the role of Scalia and Bork when he says, “In a period of conservative crisis, conservative law professors (including Antonin Scalia and Robert Bork) established the Federalist Society in order to reevaluate conservative positions and define a new strategy for articulating and explaining their views.” The Federalist Society was almost entirely the result of efforts by law students, not professors.
Update:
A reader asks whether one implication of this is that liberalism may have to jettison some of its internally-inconsistent ideas, even if this means losing some short-term political support. For what its worth, this is what the conservative movement did, first by jettisoning the John Birch society (which was huge at that time) and later by overwhelming the isolationists during the Cold War (for better or worse). Both of these decisions, I think, turned out to be largely correct in retrospect.
At some point there are some big questions where a movement may have to have the courage to choose–and hope that you choose correctly. To make these tactical decisions, however, requires having the courage of one’s convictions to know what the benchmark for decision is. For conservatism, the touchstone has been the preservation of individual freedom, which has provided the overarching vision, even if there are squabbles about how this plays out in the details.
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