Interesting to compare and contrast the species of conservatism Joshua Tait describes with David Brooks recent description of his conservatism in The Atlantic. Brooks takes "epistemological modesty" as the defining characteristic of philosophical conservatism. The Right Tait describes is anything but epistemological modest, and he righ…
Interesting to compare and contrast the species of conservatism Joshua Tait describes with David Brooks recent description of his conservatism in The Atlantic. Brooks takes "epistemological modesty" as the defining characteristic of philosophical conservatism. The Right Tait describes is anything but epistemological modest, and he rightly describes it as a form of Utopianism. What historically gave a degree of unity to Brooks style conservatism and this utopian right-wingism was anti-Marxism. Recall that orthodox Marxism asserts that there are laws of history as clear and simple as those of Newtonian physics and the adherents to this philosophy are here to lead us into this inevitable future. The two sides of conservatism hated Marxism for different reasons, but the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Now that orthodox Marxism has faded as a living force in our lives, those of us on the more Brooksian side of conservatism are discovering we really have little in common with the conservatism Tait describes.
There is a regular commenter at this site that reminds us that Adlai Stevenson described the Democratic Party of his time as conservative. Among Brooks style conservatives, this is not an idiosyncratic view. In this school, FDR's reforms are regarded as conservative reforms. Recall that so many at the time thought that the future was either communism or fascism, that the institutions of free governance had been thoroughly discredited. FDR conserved these institutions with his significant reforms.
The First New Deal had a lot of fascist economic ideas, especially the National Recovery Administration.
We forget that the biggest break that FDR had with Fascism and with conservative Republican dogma was with his total embrace of free trade and his western hemisphere Good Neighbor Policy. Dozens of reciprocal trade agreements happened on his watch and eventually the Republicans would admit that he was right (until Trump). And he stopped sending the Marines into every Latin American country where the government did something we didn't like. He let Mexico nationalize its oil industry, a decision that would have a huge positive impact on the US's ability to fight WW2, as it created a very friendly country to our south that sent us humongous amounts of raw materials, a huge surplus labor force to replace the agricultural workers who had been drafted into our military, and even an air squadron to fight in the Philippines -- the only time Mexico has ever sent its military to fight outside Mexico. Trump of course is aware of none of this.
Interesting to compare and contrast the species of conservatism Joshua Tait describes with David Brooks recent description of his conservatism in The Atlantic. Brooks takes "epistemological modesty" as the defining characteristic of philosophical conservatism. The Right Tait describes is anything but epistemological modest, and he rightly describes it as a form of Utopianism. What historically gave a degree of unity to Brooks style conservatism and this utopian right-wingism was anti-Marxism. Recall that orthodox Marxism asserts that there are laws of history as clear and simple as those of Newtonian physics and the adherents to this philosophy are here to lead us into this inevitable future. The two sides of conservatism hated Marxism for different reasons, but the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Now that orthodox Marxism has faded as a living force in our lives, those of us on the more Brooksian side of conservatism are discovering we really have little in common with the conservatism Tait describes.
There is a regular commenter at this site that reminds us that Adlai Stevenson described the Democratic Party of his time as conservative. Among Brooks style conservatives, this is not an idiosyncratic view. In this school, FDR's reforms are regarded as conservative reforms. Recall that so many at the time thought that the future was either communism or fascism, that the institutions of free governance had been thoroughly discredited. FDR conserved these institutions with his significant reforms.
The First New Deal had a lot of fascist economic ideas, especially the National Recovery Administration.
We forget that the biggest break that FDR had with Fascism and with conservative Republican dogma was with his total embrace of free trade and his western hemisphere Good Neighbor Policy. Dozens of reciprocal trade agreements happened on his watch and eventually the Republicans would admit that he was right (until Trump). And he stopped sending the Marines into every Latin American country where the government did something we didn't like. He let Mexico nationalize its oil industry, a decision that would have a huge positive impact on the US's ability to fight WW2, as it created a very friendly country to our south that sent us humongous amounts of raw materials, a huge surplus labor force to replace the agricultural workers who had been drafted into our military, and even an air squadron to fight in the Philippines -- the only time Mexico has ever sent its military to fight outside Mexico. Trump of course is aware of none of this.
On my long list of will-eventually-get-to books.