If liberals, progressives, and even Marxists are most common in history and political science departments within universities, then it goes to reason that these fields and the scholars might have deep anti-conservative, anti-libertarian, and anti-capitalist biases.<\/p>\n
Corey Robin<\/a>\u2019s book\u00a0The Reactionary Mind<\/a><\/strong><\/em>\u00a0<\/em>manages to be all three: anti-conservative, anti-libertarian, and anti-capitalist.<\/p>\n When a scholar (or passionate author) seeks to analyze \u201cthe other side\u201d in politics, the results are inevitably mixed and often contaminated by the biases of the writer. Some of the challenges of studying the other are common to anthropology and ethnography: we naturalize our experiences and beliefs, making the viewpoints of others seem more alien. We wonder how they cannot see the world as we do. This happens at the local level as we try to understand other philosophies, economic theories, political ideologies, and so on. How could \u201cthey\u201d be so wrong?<\/p>\n Books purporting to reveal what is wrong with the other side tend to embrace one or more of the following theories:<\/p>\n Robin hits the four theories above, theorizing that conservative intellectuals and leaders are not actually about any single idea or theory. Instead, conservatives are reactionaries dedicating to preserving their dominance over other groups<\/strong>. To preserve this oppressive power, the conservatives persuade the ignorant masses to believe that they too can win within the existing system \u2014 or that in some way, they are already winners.<\/p>\n I have several problems with Robin\u2019s approach, beginning with his connecting of quite disparate schools of thought. The Austrian School<\/a> of economists were not conservatives in a traditional sense, having resisted Fascism and the Nazi movement much as their colleagues in the Frankfurt School<\/a> did. It\u2019s not surprising that members of both groups sought refuge in the United States, either. And both groups were, in their own way, elitists who preferred classical European culture to a popular culture they viewed as debased.<\/p>\n Also, Robin associates the term \u201clibertarian\u201d broadly with \u201cconservative\u201d and this presents a problem, at least globally if not within the United States. There are left-leaning libertarians, especially within the economic schools of thought. I am among the \u201clibertarians\u201d who do not believe companies can own natural resources, but I am also for limited government and Utilitarianism\u2019s personal freedom.<\/p>\n Robin isn\u2019t intentionally making mistakes about conservatives, even when he lumps too many thinkers under the umbrella. Instead, he is working from within his personal biases, hearing and reading into statements what he wants to believe about conservatives. He has a viewpoint and has written a book to support that viewpoint. By comparison, Nancy MacLean is a sloppy scholar<\/a> who\u2019s\u00a0Democracy in Chains <\/em>contains many errors, omissions, and questionable assumptions. (Worst of all, MacLean suggested libertarians are \u201cautistic\u201d<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 a disgusting use of neurological condition as an insult.)<\/p>\n Though more such books and articles are published by progressives analyzing conservatives at the moment, the right has its own list of such books. There are three major reasons more books examining conservatives are more widely reviewed:<\/p>\n Regarding the media and academia, the conservatives create their own conspiracy theories when simpler explanations exist. Professors are more liberal in the humanities, by a ratio of 11.5:1 based on voter registration data<\/a>\u00a0compiled in 2016.\u00a0History professors are liberal by a 33.5:1<\/strong><\/em> ratio,\u00a0<\/strong>an estimate supported by a famous 2007 paper by\u00a0Neil Gross of Harvard University and\u00a0Solon Simmons of George Mason University.<\/p>\n What is it with these historians? Nothing. As with any career, people with similar interests and similar beliefs have come together in a profession. You\u2019re unlikely to find a Communist working at a hedge fund or a Democratic Socialist overseeing a leveraged buyout. Historians self-selected as the nature of the discipline changed; those interested in traditional Western history<\/a> were relegated to the margins of history departments, while new forms of history, including historical theorizing (Marx was searching for a scientific history, after all), took hold.<\/p>\n The highly educated conservatives and libertarians I know are economists, doctors, lawyers, engineers, farmers, and small business owners. I know few conservatives or even centrists within the humanities, but many within business departments and in the STEM fields<\/a>. It is self-selection bias, reflecting the changing natures of many fields in the humanities.<\/p>\n Robin\u2019s view reinforces the assumptions and biases of his most likely readers, those people following Vox<\/strong><\/em>, Slate<\/strong><\/em>, Salon<\/strong><\/em>, The New Republic<\/strong><\/em>, and so on. The various book review publications also have a narrower readership than other publications. (I thought about including\u00a0Mother Jones<\/strong><\/em>,\u00a0<\/em>but even my friends who did read that storied progressive journal now prefer to follow\u00a0Vice<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0<\/em>for some reason. I like\u00a0Mother Jones<\/strong><\/em>.<\/em>)<\/p>\n It isn\u2019t nefarious that reviewers from similar backgrounds and with similar ideologies as Corey Robin embrace his interpretations of the history of conservatism. It is people reading like-minded scholarship, which lends academic authority to their biases against anything conservative or libertarian.<\/p>\n From a recent review in\u00a0The Los Angeles Review of Books<\/strong><\/em>:<\/p>\n Conservatives and Counterrevolutionaries: Corey Robin\u2019s \u201cThe Reactionary Mind\u201d<\/a> JANUARY 19, 2018<\/p>\n WHAT SHOULD WE MAKE of conservatism in the Trump era? Last spring, Rick Perlstein, a historian of the American right, published a mea culpa in The New York Times Magazine explaining how the election of Donald Trump had led him to reconsider the settled narrative of modern American conservatism. Perlstein bemoaned the fact that 20th-century political historians mostly restricted their attention to establishment figures like William F. Buckley Jr., Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan. Instead, he exhorted his colleagues to look fringeward, to \u201cconservative history\u2019s political surrealists and intellectual embarrassments, its con artists and tribunes of white rage,\u201d in order to understand the foundations of Trumpism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Sadly, we know that Democrats and Republicans played race politics, and the Republicans embraced the libertarian mantra of \u201cstates rights\u201d to appeal to the worst of the Dixiecrat South. This contamination of both conservatism and libertarianism has harmed the GOP and the libertarian movement in the United States to no end. I\u2019ve argued that libertarians can and should more loudly reject people who would use \u201cfreedom\u201d as a cloak for hatred. It is this Southern Strategy, embraced by political operatives for too long in the GOP (at least since 1964, and most obviously since 1968) that allowed Trump to become the standard bearer for the party.<\/p>\n But, what the GOP has for 50 years, as much as it should be reviled, does not suggest that\u00a0conservatism<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0<\/em>or\u00a0libertarianism <\/strong><\/em>lack philosophical foundations. Instead, I would argue the GOP has abandoned its roots as a religiously conservative group dedicated to rights and liberties, morphing into the religious intolerance the original GOP rejected. Basically, Republicans became what they fought against, at least the social conservatives did.<\/p>\n The distinction between\u00a0social conservatives<\/strong>\u00a0<\/em>and the fiscal conservatives<\/strong> is obvious within economics departments, but less so in practiced national politics. Libertarians, especially those who were within the Republican Party, complicate matters further. Add in British, Canadian, Australian, and European conservatives and libertarians and there are few if any coherent connections between the theorists and someone like Sarah Palin or Donald Trump. Intellectual conservatism and libertarianism, the theories associated with negative rights, property rights, free will, and free markets, don\u2019t appeal to Palin or Trump in the abstract. Palin, Trump, and the core of the GOP stand for something else\u2026 fear<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Though much of its contents were written and published prior to this call to arms, the updated edition of Corey Robin\u2019s The Reactionary Mind<\/em> can be read as a powerful rejoinder to Perlstein\u2019s argument. Robin posits that the roots of Trumpism are not on the right\u2019s fringe but rather among its standard-bearers<\/strong><\/em>, going back as far as Edmund Burke, the father of modern conservatism, and winding through respected figures like Joseph de Maistre, Friedrich Hayek, and Antonin Scalia.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Lily Geismer\u2019s review isn\u2019t uncritical, but it embraces the basic theory that conservatives are more about retaining power than managing social stability. Such conflation of conservative faith in slow change with a fear of losing power is common among my colleagues in the humanities. They do not believe, nor do they understand, why conservatives would want moderately paced social change. (Again, it does not help that the GOP has ruined the image of conservatism by embracing the fear of change as a campaign device.)<\/p>\n The educated conservatives I know point to Canada compared to the United States: graduate change versus revolution. Canada has its problems, some the same as its southern sibling, but it is stable and prosperous. Conservatives prefer such stability to the violence of the American or French Revolutions.<\/p>\n My preference for changing laws from within the system do not mean that I endorse the biases currently codified and defended by the system<\/strong>. My faith in the democratic system to\u00a0eventually work\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>is not blind faith \u2014 after all, we\u2019re stuck with a Pres. Trump at the moment. Instead, as with all markets, I have faith that the market will return to the mean and improve.\u00a0Too often, it seems that progressives lack a faith in democracy and markets, two forms of crowdsourcing<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Robin would not believe my commitment to theories, or he would find ways to associate those theories with my perceived privilege as a white male. He does not accept what conservatives or libertarians say or write at face value. His cynicism means he would not trust my history of writing and commenting on philosophy and economics. For Robin, my acceptance of some economic theories (backed by various Nobel\u00a0laureates) masks a commitment to conservatism and power.<\/p>\n He has refocused on the economic ideas of the right, adding a chapter on the Austrian School and reworking his earlier chapters on Burke to emphasize that ideas about capitalism have long been central to conservatism<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Geismer notes:<\/p>\n \u2026Robin sees conservatism less as an autonomous intellectual tradition than as a series of reactions to the progressive left. He defines conservatism as \u201ca meditation on \u2014 and theoretical rendition of \u2014 the felt experience of having power, seeing it threatened, and trying to win it back.\u201d<\/strong> The sequence begins with Burke\u2019s outrage at the French Revolution, which Robin argues was due less to the revolution\u2019s violence and more to the ways in which it called for inverting the obligations of deference and command.<\/p>\n Robin rejects those who define conservatism as a commitment to limited government and liberty<\/strong>; these ideas, he allows, are perhaps \u201cbyproducts of conservatism,\u201d but they are not its \u201canimating purpose.\u201d In one of his most provocative formulations, he contends that the fundamental difference between the left and the right is not that one values equality and the other freedom, but rather that \u201cthe conservative has favored liberty for the higher orders and constraint for the lower orders.\u201d<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The theories of the economists I read and those I know personally are not byproducts<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0of their ideologies. In fact, several were Marxists, Democratic Socialists, or progressive Democrats before their work in economics changed their opinions of markets and the benefits of capitalism. One can read\u00a0HumanProgress.org<\/a>\u00a0for data on the benefits of capitalism, even though the media and our politicians might make it feel like life is the worst it has been.<\/p>\n Geismer offers something of an excuse for Robin, noting that, \u201cRobin is a political theorist, not a historian\u2026.\u201d If capitalism is so bad and all about power, why has it increased equality more than other systems in the world? The market-based economies of Europe, with social safety nets, are quite conservative and resistant to change, yet they do well because they are stable.<\/p>\n I dislike what Robin does by associating the Austrian School of economics with conservatism, but I also must admit that racists and other intolerant individuals have embraced the Austrians. It does not help that the \u201cAmerican\u201d Austrians did not reject association with racists and hate-mongers. Then again, do we reject all phenomenology and existentialism because Heidegger was a Nazi? If anything the Austrian School was shaped by a fear of fascism and servitude.<\/p>\n Robin discusses Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and the \u201cChicago Boys\u201d associated with the University of Chicago School of Economics. Robin discounts any claims by economists that they hoped for political change driven by economic change. While I recognize that faith in change through economics was naive, I do not discount faith in markets. Many people supported better relations with China and now Cuba for the same reason: change through economic relations. That doesn\u2019t always happen, though.<\/p>\n Geismer doesn\u2019t critically examine the claims Robin makes against the Austrians and other economists. The Freshwater Schools of\u00a0Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Chicago, New York University, Cornell University, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Rochester are apparently not engaged in economic theory and quantitative testing of these theories. For Robin, these scholars are motivated by the conservative desire to retain power and influence \u2014 economics being merely a means to an end.<\/p>\n The Austrians were not Nietzschean in their philosophy, though they did believe that leaders should be well-educated and cosmopolitan. How does that differ from what many on the left now say about wanting a \u201cmore qualified\u201d president? I certainly want a president and congressional leaders better-prepared than the average citizen.<\/p>\n For instance, Robin offers an original interpretation of the Austrian School that illuminates both the aristocratic dimensions of their ideas and the parallels in their vision to that of Nietzsche. While he notes that this connection is one of \u201celective affinity\u201d and not \u201cdirect influence,\u201d Robin sees key similarities in the ways that both aimed to address the challenge of socialism and labor and called for \u201ca new ruling class in and for an age of mass politics.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n If conservatism (and libertarianism) are all about power, then it must be intrinsically linked to all the horrible forms of power abuse. Conservatives are the oppressors \u2014 and only oppressors \u2014 in Robin\u2019s world and in that of many reviewers. If it is ugly, it is conservative.<\/p>\n The Reactionary Mind<\/em> argues that the right has increasingly come to understand, over the course of the past few centuries, that in order to defend the old regime and preserve the power of elites they have to build alliances with the masses, and practice a form of \u201cupside-down populism.\u201d He argues that \u201cconservatism really does speak to and for people who have lost something,\u201d and to be politically successful the elites need to convince the masses that they have lost something, too. This is why conservatism, though fundamentally concerned with economics, has also been inextricably linked to forms of patriarchy and white supremacy: what unites them all is the effort to protect power<\/strong> in both the public and private sphere.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Recall that in my introduction I noted that such claims about conservatives inherently rely on arguments that supporters of conservative politicians are ignorant lemmings, led over the cliffs by masterful con artists and evil robber barons.\u00a0On this point,\u00a0Geismer offers a critique:<\/p>\n The exclusion of the voices and experiences of the working- and even middle-class conservatives from The Reactionary Mind<\/em> makes it seem that any non-elite who votes Republican or adheres to conservative ideas must be suffering from a bad case of false consciousness<\/strong><\/em>. This problem is by no means unique to Robin; this is often the default assumption of scholars of the right and intellectual historians more generally<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n If you do not trust voters, you cannot support democracy. Not that I am for direct democracy, as I fear mob role, but I do have faith in our system to self-correct over longer periods of time. I discussed this earlier in this essay: democracy is a marketplace of ideas, the ultimate form of crowdsourcing. Like other crowdsourced projects, democracies learn from mistakes and evolve. I have faith that, over time, people will understand that we need better-qualified leaders. Then again, our \u201cleast-qualified\u201d were among our best leaders and the \u201cmost-qualified\u201d were often horrible leaders. The voters seem to understand credentials aren\u2019t markers of leadership.<\/p>\n I deeply dislike Donald Trump. He has no core values. Sarah Palin also lacks core values, based on how fluid her allegiances have been. Trump is not an anomaly within the contemporary GOP (precisely why I am not a Republican), but he is not a fiscal conservative, either. He believes what he says, which saddens me. He is a racist, a sexist, xenophobe, and worst. I cannot understand why any true fiscal conservative or any libertarian would remain within the GOP.<\/p>\n On the following, I do agree with Robin: Trump does embody the GOP of the last 50 years. That\u2019s appalling and heartbreaking. However, 50 years are not the whole of the conservative or libertarian traditions.<\/p>\n Though Trump was frequently portrayed by both liberals and conservatives, especially during the campaign, as an unholy anomaly within the history of the modern Republican Party, Robin has little trouble assimilating him to the broader reactionary canon. All the things that supposedly separate Trump from the conservative tradition \u2014 his racism, his populism, his inconsistencies and contradictions \u2014 are in fact, in Robin\u2019s eyes, central features of that tradition.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Let is look back to the first edition of The Reactionary Mind<\/em> and an exchange between Robin and Mark Lilla, another scholar of history, which was published in the\u00a0New York Review of Books<\/strong>\u00a0<\/em>when the first edition was published in 2012.<\/p>\n \u2018The Reactionary Mind\u2019: An Exchange<\/a><\/p>\n Corey Robin, reply by Mark Lilla To the Editors:<\/p>\n Mark Lilla [\u201cRepublicans for Revolution,\u201d NYR, January 12] makes three claims against my book The Reactionary Mind: it fails to take seriously the statements of \u201cconservative intellectuals who lay out benign-sounding political principles\u201d; it\u2019s simplistic, situating the opposition between left and right in a \u201cnot overly complex\u201d history of oppressor versus oppressed; it elides changes and cleavages on the right. It\u2019s difficult to find my argument amid these claims, so let me restate it here.<\/p>\n My book argues that conservatism is a reaction against movements of the left\u2014from the French Revolution to feminism<\/strong>. While this is a revisionist claim, it required no elaborate digging on my part to make it. I simply looked at what conservatives have said about themselves<\/strong>. Robert Peel, who practically invented Britain\u2019s Conservative Party, defined its aim as opposition \u201cto the restless spirit of revolutionary change.\u201d Russell Kirk, one of the intellectual architects of the American conservative movement, described conservatism as a \u201csystem of ideas\u201d that \u201chas sustained men\u2026in their resistance against radical theories and social transformation.\u201d George Nash, court historian of that movement, identified conservatism as \u201cresistance to certain forces perceived to be leftist, revolutionary.\u201d All this, and more, I cite in my book.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n As I noted earlier, Robin does look at the words of conservatives and libertarians, but he reads them as he wants to read those words. His biases shape how he reads, as it does for all of us. Even those things I consider to be sarcastic utterances, Robin takes seriously. Conservative authors do this to liberals and progressives, and it bothers me when anyone takes words out of context or misses obvious hyperbole and humor.\u00a0Robin is certain of his argument that conservatism is all about preserving power. He analyzes conservative works accordingly.<\/p>\n Lilla is correct that I believe conservatives oppose these movements because they threaten public and private hierarchies of power<\/strong>. Again, I provide ample evidence for this. But he seriously distorts my position when he says that I depict conservatives as \u201cblack-hatted villains\u201d whose ultimate vision is \u201csimply a defense of privilege.\u201d As I write in the introduction:<\/p>\n “No simple defense of one\u2019s own place and privileges\u2026the conservative position stems from a genuine conviction that a world thus emancipated will be ugly, brutish, base, and dull<\/strong>. It will lack the excellence of a world where the better man commands the worse. When [Edmund] Burke adds\u2026that the \u201cgreat Object\u201d of the Revolution is \u201cto root out that thing called an Aristocrat or Nobleman and Gentleman,\u201d he is not simply referring to the power of the nobility; he is also referring to the distinction that power brings to the world. If the power goes, the distinction goes with it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Robin makes use of the word\u00a0emancipation<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0<\/em>to imply conservatives oppose emancipating the oppressed. Yes, the Party of Lincoln and the original party of Women\u2019s Suffrage apparently opposed emancipation. The same party of Eisenhower, who continued and completed Truman\u2019s integration of the United States\u2019 armed forces. The GOP did accept the Dixiecrats by 1968, but before that the \u201cconservatives\u201d were religiously conservative and compelled to fight for equality based on their understanding of faith.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also true that the GOP of old resisted federal aid during disasters and believed in self-sufficiency under\u00a0Calvin Coolidge. I\u2019d argue that the conservative values were a moral vision of self-reliance and local community over federal government.<\/p>\n Conservatism is a moral vision in which excellence depends upon hierarchy<\/strong>. Inequality is the means, not the end\u2014that is a belief, I show, shared by everyone from Burke to Ayn Rand, the slaveholders to Ludwig von Mises.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n No. No. And no again. Conservatism in the United States traces its roots to our founding and Calvinist values of self-reliance as a community responsibility. You take care of yourself and your family so others won\u2019t have to do so. You take in friends and family when they need help. You rely on people close to you and you support them when necessary. Tossing in \u201cslaveholders\u201d is another rhetorical move by Robin, reinforcing my view his biases run deep.<\/p>\n As I have written many times, mention Ayn Rand when you wish to attack conservatives or libertarians. I cannot imagine someone more outside the tradition of Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill. Still, at least\u00a0The Fountainhead<\/em> promoted being authentic to yourself over wealth and power. If you didn\u2019t realize the hero of Rand\u2019s only good story would rather be poor than create mediocre art, then you probably should read the book or watch the film.<\/p>\n At least Robin recognizes how strange it is that the groups so many different individuals together as conservatives.<\/p>\n “Some conservatives criticize the free market, others defend it; some oppose the state, others embrace it; some believe in God, others are atheists. Some are localists, others nationalists, and still others internationalists. Some, like Burke, are all three at the same time. But these are historical improvisations<\/strong><\/em>\u2014tactical and substantive\u2014on a theme.\u201d (p. 36, first edition)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Ah, yes, it is all about manipulation, not authentic beliefs in various philosophies, ideologies, or economic models. No, the conservative only embraces what is useful to retain power. I would despise all conservatives if they were indeed so malevolently creative. Thankfully, the conservatives I know (and with whom I often disagree) are the among the best-intentioned and most committed people I have met.<\/p>\n Mark Lilla\u2019s reply to Robin is worthy of some excerpts.<\/p>\n \u2018The Reactionary Mind\u2019: An Exchange<\/a><\/p>\n Corey Robin, reply by Mark Lilla Mark Lilla replies:<\/p>\n Though, as I said in my review, Corey Robin can be insightful when he writes profiles of some individuals on the right, his letter confirms my main point: when it comes to thinking about \u201cthe right\u201d he\u2019s hopelessly confused. The main confusion is conceptual and arises because he has no clear idea of what he means by \u201cconservatism.\u201d He could argue that there are genuine conservative principles that provoke conservatives\u2019 \u201creaction against movements of the left,\u201d and then criticize those principles and the people who hold them. This he does not do. Instead he argues there are no such things as conservative principles, only ideological \u201cimprovisations\u201d for defending hierarchy and privilege shared by a heterogeneous cast of characters running from Tocqueville and Nietzsche to Carl Schmitt and Phyllis Schlafly. So his real claim can be reduced to this: \u201cthose who react against movements of the left\u201d react against movements of the left\u2014which is a tautology, not an argument.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Lilla properly points out that you cannot reduce conservatives to self-serving power-hungry oppressors of other men. In fact, many conservatives have sought to improve the lives of others. Do we ignore these efforts as manipulations? Did George H. W. Bush sign the Americans with Disabilities Act because he assumed it would win him votes? Did Richard Nixon create the Environmental Protection Agency for the power it might offer? Sometimes, we need to assume that the good conservatives have done was because they believed in the causes. Nixon also supported mandated insurance. There was a good economic reason for this, yes, but also a benefit to the workers.\u00a0Robin ignores such social causes or considers them cynical ploys. Lilla writes:<\/p>\n Robin\u2019s Manichaeanism distorts the historical reality of the conservative tradition, which includes the Disraeli who shepherded through the Reform Act of 1867, the Bismarck who laid the foundation for the German welfare state, and the Heritage Foundation, which first floated the idea of mandating that adult Americans all carry some form of health insurance<\/strong>. Though these proposals met challenges from the left, they were shaped by a recognizable conservative sensibility. Robin also ignores the liberal tradition, which gets no mention in his letter and barely a nod in his book<\/strong>. (The book\u2019s index entry reads \u201cliberalism, see left.\u201d) There are good liberal reasons to resist \u201cthe restless spirit of revolutionary change,\u201d too, since it can so often lead to despotism in the end (which is liberals\u2019 great worry about the Arab Spring). Liberals stress the need for individual liberty, the rule of law, and stable constitutional structures, which are not revolutionary principles; does that make them reactionaries? In Robin\u2019s eyes, perhaps it does.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Like Lilla, I take the conservative politicians and voters at their word. They believe in what they say, generally. Unfortunately, the modern GOP doesn\u2019t hide its anti-intellectualism and its lack of philosophical depth. But, the voters aren\u2019t stupid or manipulated: they are just like the politicians they support. They don\u2019t trust the academic elites and are pushing back against them. The GOP base also pushed away its own intellectual supporters, most of whom want nothing to do with Donald Trump.<\/p>\n He is correct, though, to note that I didn\u2019t engage with his explanation of right-wing populism\u2014for the simple reason that it was too weak and condescending to take seriously. Robin believes in false consciousness and in intellectuals\u2019 ability to see through it; that\u2019s why he can claim that a conservatism seeking to free the world from all that is \u201cugly, brutish, base, and dull\u201d gives \u201cthe lower orders\u2026a taste of lordly power\u201d and gives arriviste Irishmen and Jews their Napoleonic moments in the sun. I, like most people, take the populists at their word. When figures like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck (and now Newt Gingrich) demonize educated elites and praise the wisdom of \u201csoccer moms\u201d and plumbers, they mean it<\/strong>. And those on the bottom rung who cheer and vote for them know what they are cheering and voting for.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The original review in The New York Review of Books\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>appeared as \u201cRepublicans for Revolution<\/a>\u201d by Mark Lilla in the January 12, 2012 issue. In that review, Lilla wrote:<\/p>\n But the current public dissatisfaction with our parties is not just about partisanship. It also reflects a sense that the labels we use to distinguish factions, principles, and programs have lost their value. What does it mean to call oneself a liberal or conservative today? Does it make sense to distinguish \u201cprogressives\u201d and \u201creactionaries,\u201d or are those just terms of abuse and self-flattery? It\u2019s hard to know how to talk about the new classes of rich and poor created by the global economy, and their strangely overlapping political commitments. Or where on the linguistic map to put the new populisms spawning around the world, some anti-global, some anti-immigrant, some libertarian, some authoritarian. Words are failing us.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Apparently, words aren\u2019t failing Sarah Jones, who wrote a \u201creview\u201d praising The Reactionary Mind<\/em> for\u00a0the November 21, 2017, issue of\u00a0The New Republic<\/strong>. <\/em>Jones\u2019 suggests that it is the capitalism of conservatives that must be challenged. After all, Trump is a businessman and business is to blame for most social ills, which only government can address. Conservatism for Jones is the crony, corporatist capitalism that libertarians generally despise. It is the capitalism without failure that gave birth to both the Tea Party and Occupy movements as banks weren\u2019t allowed to fail. It is an un-conservative capitalism Jones critiques using Robin\u2019s work as a gateway.<\/p>\n\n
\n
\nBy Lily Geismer<\/p>\n
\nFEBRUARY 23, 2012 ISSUE
\nIn response to:
\nRepublicans for Revolution<\/em> from the January 12, 2012 issue<\/p>\n
\nFEBRUARY 23, 2012 ISSUE
\nIn response to:
\nRepublicans for Revolution<\/em> from the January 12, 2012 issue<\/p>\n