The Pitiful State of the Conservative Intellectual

[alcibiades_mystery]

OK, fine, so a bunch of people are going to say "There's no such thing!" But, in fact, at one point there were conservative intellectuals - very smart, thoughtful people who - though I disagree with them utterly - were bona fide thinkers. You can pick up Richard Weaver's work, for instance, and know that you're dealing with a formidable philosopher whose ideas you have to actually wrangle with. However much I despise the work of a Milton Friedman or Friedrich Hayek, I know it is not lightweight stuff. It has to be seriously engaged. Hell, Claire Booth Luce was a thinker. John von Neumann, even, was a conservative hawk. Yes, even Buckley.

What do we have now? Ann Coulter. Jason Richwine. Michelle Malkin.

Erik Erickson:

I’m so used to liberals telling conservatives that they’re anti-science. But liberals who defend this and say it is not a bad thing are very anti-science. When you look at biology — when you look at the natural world — the roles of a male and a female in society and in other animals, the male typically is the dominant role. The female, it’s not antithesis, or it’s not competing, it’s a complementary role.

This is what the legacy of Richard Weaver has come to? It's fairly clear from this quotation that 1) Erickson actually believes this nonsense, and 2) Erik Erickson, one of the chief conservative intellectuals of our day, clearly does not know what science means. It's cringe-inducing.

There may be an inverse relationship between established power, dialectical conflict, and the quality of a movement's intellectuals. Conservatism is essentially the unchecked power in American society, and has been since the 80's. Their conservative intellectuals need not think too deeply; they need only become adept at spinning out moderately believable nonsense. Conversely, left intellectuals today generate massive volumes of completely ineffectual but brilliant studies - completely divorced from real power, they are able to truly uncover its workings, while remaining utterly incapable of making their case for the public. In the 30's and 40's and 50's, there was an actual contest of ideas, so intellectuals on both sides had to be sharp and vibrant (the right responded - to some extent - by essentially criminalizing left intellectualism). Today, we have a vibrant but ineffectual intellectualism on the left, and a stagnant but rhetorically effective (non-) intellectualism on the right.

Anti-science indeed.

[JustAnotherGen]

1. Oxymoron Subject Line

Conservative Intellectual!

[Demo_Chris]

4. Not at all.

If you believe people like Buckley or Rand were lightweights you are quite mistaken. There are brilliant people who happen to fall all over the political spectrum -- we have simply come to different conclusions about the solutions to our problems.

[JustAnotherGen]

8. Ayn Rand

Was a selfish opportunist. She really was NOT a 'great' writer and she had no great ideas. She was all about seflish self promotion. And who can blame her? She wanted to make a buck! That's it. And be adored. And ha ha ha - the one she thought adored her screwed her over. Remind you of anyone? Like say Malkin or Coulter?

Me? I grew up in a house were my father screamed at the nightly news - Reagan Era - and who as a school board member got Atlas Shrugged removed from the curriculum. I will not EVER support any 'promotion' of conservative thought at DU or in my personal life.

Never ever. Especially for THAT woman. Who died alone. On the 'dole' that her minions now spit on. That 'ideology' of that selfish little snot (Rand) is why we are moving towards a country where we 'laugh' at those less fortunate.


Anyone who thinks she is 'great' or had a 'great mind' is just as manipulated and 'snowed' as her minions. I'm not falling for it. Woman to woman? I see the little snot for what she was.

[AtheistCrusader]

36. Well, that explains why her books and the associated ideas aren't very popular.

Also explains why I'm not tripping over her bullshit and followers in every direction.


(Sales of Atlas Shrugged have increased since the 2007 financial crisis, according to The Economist magazine and The New York Times. The Economist reported that the fifty-two-year-old novel ranked #33 among Amazon.com's top-selling books on January 13, 2009 and that its thirty day sales average showed the novel selling three times faster than during the same period of the previous year. With an attached sales chart, The Economist reported that sales "spikes" of the book seemed to coincide with the release of economic data. Subsequently, on April 2, 2009, Atlas Shrugged ranked #1 in the "Fiction and Literature" category at Amazon and #15 in overall sales.[70][71][72] Total sales of the novel in 2009 exceeded 500,000 copies.[73] The book sold 445,000 copies in 2011, the second-strongest sales year in the novel's history. At the time of publication the novel was on the New York Times best-seller list and was selling at roughly a third the volume of 2011.[74])

[jmowreader]

46. Many of those copies were bought as gifts

I know I got one...nicely gift-wrapped, with a note on the cover "read this and you will understand."

The problem with that theory is I already understand, and it scares me.

I didn't use the book as toilet paper. The publicly-owned shit eating bacteria at the sewage plant have a hard enough time without having book paper to contend with, so I just threw the thing in the office recycling bin...we sell our scrap paper and a copy of Atlas Shrugged contains quite a bit, and I like to help the company make money any way it can.

[AtheistCrusader]

47. LOL

Hopefully the book didn't bind up the shredder/reclaimer.

[pscot]

10. Bill Buckley is dead

Newt Gingrich and Paul Ryan now epitomize conervative "thought".

[JustAnotherGen]

16. This is a good snapshot of the dead man named Buckley

Just months before the 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed, Buckley warned in his syndicated column (2/18/65) that "chaos" and "mobocratic rule" might follow if "the entire Negro population in the South were suddenly given the vote." In his 1969 column "On Negro Inferiority" (4/8/69), Buckley heralded as "massive" and "apparently authoritative" academic racist Arthur Jensen's findings that blacks are less intelligent than whites and Asians.

http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/william-f-buckley-rest-in-praise/


That's got a lot of tip offs to the rhetoric he espoused. Just because he was polished - doesn't make him any better than Bull Connor in my book.

[luckyleftyme2]

44. he was a typical "Have"

He was an educated a"A-HOLE" WHO USED A FORMAT IN HIS PROGRAM much like "RUSH THE LUSH" COMPLETE CONTROL AND ALWAYS THE LAST WORD!
I never see woman's hands softer than his.(merely a down easters comment for a pampered
over rated ,educated beyond his intelligence)
His self authority and constant speaking down to others made him unpopular. Remember their is "booksmart" and the "ability to create smart" ! the majority of the time book smart will not help you survive the real world we live in.
I once read a poll where the average ceo IN THE TOP 500 companies majored in liberal arts and had a "C" AVERAGE IN COLLEGE!
I spent my life in the construction field; I knew many company owners by their first name; Iknew several generations of some companies and the majority had either sold out or lost the family business by the third generation! the reason the grandfather earned it -they had it passed to them!

[JustAnotherGen]

45. Three of the happiest men I knew/know

Came home sweaty and stinking to high heaven every night.

[ieoeja]

12. "The Monologue" was necessary because Rand was incapable of embeding her message in the story.

The train gets stuck in a tunnel. The driver is too stupid to turn off the engine letting CO build up. Every single passenger is too stupid to notice. Every single passenger is evil and deserves to die.

You call this great writing?

Rand is one of the worst authors of all time.


Reminds me of the original "Cheaper by the Dozen". Movie would be going along just fine. Then the action would pause while the father or mother spends a couple minutes talking about some conservative idea while the kids looked on wide eyes going "gosh, I never thought about that" or some liberals sputtered then ran away in fear. Then the movie would continue until the next pause.


Conservatism may have had some good writers. They may have even had some good thinkers (a lot of people confuse the two; hence the idiotic idea that Chomskey is a great thinker; the man is extremely good with words, but couldn't think his way out of a paper bag).

But conservatives have always had a problem with lightweights. An ideology that opposes change is obviously going to attract those who can not handle change.

[JustAnotherGen]

17. EL Doctorow

Said more on the first page of Welcome To Hard Times than Rand said in her entire body of work. And he wrote what he said ten million times better than she did.

[AtheistCrusader]

38. +1

[Fantastic Anarchist]

21. Perhaps I'm not understanding you ...

... but do you think Chomsky is/was a conservative?

[ieoeja]

30. No. He is the Left equivalent of Buckley (except for the breathing part).

Both were extremely good with the written language. Both were extremely bad with logic. And both tended to conflate little things.

My favorite Buckley moment was reviewing Clinton's acceptance speech at the 1992 convention. He was outraged, outraged I tell you, that Bill Clinton used profanity in the speech. Everyone else confusedly asked him what he was talking about. He didn't want to say it on national television, but as Clinton already had, he reluctantly quoted, "they got the gold and we got the shaft".

Buckley is, of course, technically correct. While "we got the shaft" could be literally taken to mean we got a worthless played out mine after they removed all the gold, everyone knows the line really works because of the double entendre that we just "took it up the ass".

But, of course, it is a common saying that nobody but Buckley considered a profanity. Which all the other pundits made clear. That didn't stop Buckley from trying to push this meme for the remainder of the discussion, however.

He was 100% correct about the language. And 100% wrong about everything else.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

42. I'd like to see you cite an example for Chomsky, though.

You are, of course, correct about Buckley, as I don't agree with his conclusions.

Yet, Chomsky, doesn't really split hairs about irrelevant stuff such as the term "shaft," at least from what I have read. He may split hairs and dabble in semantics, if it actually goes into a point, such as US employed euphemisms that try to paint, otherwise tragic events, in a more favorable light.

I'm not saying that Chomsky is above reproach (that he's always right), but he certainly has a handle on what he's talking about, and his conclusions are far from tenuous, as I'm willing to bet that he's the most heavily scrutinized academic in the world precisely because of his political views. Sure, there's criticisms of his work, but it's mostly superficial. My criticism of his work when he's speaking (as opposed to writing) is that he's too timid. I wish he was more forceful and emotionally invested when he speaks. I hazard that he prefers objectivity over emotion; yet I think the two can coincide.

So, I'd like to see an example that makes you think that "the idiotic idea that Chomskey <sic> is a great thinker; the man is extremely good with words, but couldn't think his way out of a paper bag."

I'm also curious as to why you would include him in your post about conservative intellectuals?

[ieoeja]

49. He wrote an article about the US backing the Khmer Rouge.

His sole evidence consisted of the fact that US media stopped writing about the Khmer Rouge in 1978. Given that the Khmer Rouge was ousted by North Vietnam on 8 January 1978, any reasonable person would assume the US media stopped writing about them because they were no longer in power.

I included him in my post about political intellectuals who are not intellectual because he is a perfect example of one who compares with Buckley.

No comparison to Rand, though. I can't believe someone actually considers her an intellectual. The other two are good writers at least.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

50. But the US did support the Khmer Rouge!

Do you think this is false?

[AlbertCat]

15. Rand?!?!?!

Rand is intellectual if you are maybe 14 years old.

And Buckley's snobbery cancels out any intellectualism he may have happened upon. Unless you think calling out the Birch Society is somehow intellectual.

[JustAnotherGen]

18. Don't forget

Buckley's distaste at us 'negroes' getting the vote!

[Fantastic Anarchist]

20. Buckley, yes. Rand, no.

Rand was a charlatan. Nothing more.

[gtar100]

14. They've worked very hard to separate themselves

Last edited Fri May 31, 2013, 10:20 PM - Edit history (1)

from "intellectuals". It's another one of their dirty words... like science, community, social, democracy, welfare, regulation, progress, change, etc., etc.

On edit: How could I forget the word that hurls them all into the deep abyss of their stupidity - "liberal".

More: economic equality, fairness, unions, worker's rights, environmental, climate, French...

Imagine living life with negative attitudes towards these things... must be like rusting from the inside out.

[Shrek]

33. Burke, Chesterton, Hayek

It's a mistake to think they weren't exceptionally intelligent.

[MannyGoldstein]

2. Perhaps you can do an OP on the hatred of intellectualism

by the Democratic establishment, e.g., ignoring/dismissing reality-based economists like Krugman and Stiglitz in favor of banker shills like Summers.

[Egalitarian Thug]

3. The OP reads almost as if it were a lament.

[alcibiades_mystery]

6. It's too bad you resort to speaking in code

Instead of having the courage to say what you really mean.

In any case, the OP is in fact a lament.

[Egalitarian Thug]

9. Not my rules. n/t

[alcibiades_mystery]

54. Some people can at least

Own their own cowardice.

And some are even too cowardly to do that. Not your rules, indeed.

[Egalitarian Thug]

55. I'm glad I checked in. I'm laughing at you right now...

OK, that was an amusing moment. Carry on with your

[AtheistCrusader]

39. I'd rather face a hundred Goldwaters than

the yapping, nattering dipshits we face today.

[alcibiades_mystery]

5. Um, that would be this OP

[MannyGoldstein]

31. Good point

Although in the OP it sounds like the reality-based left is not competent of making good arguments, rather than their being actively shut down and drowned out by the Neolliberals.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

24. This ^^^^

Party establishment is irrelevant when it comes to intellectualism, or lack thereof.

[lark]

27. Democratic establishment

You might as well call it RINO lite, both support the 1% ahead of the workers and that's why they choose Geithner and Summers and Holder. Just because a pol has a D by their name does not mean that they support democratic values.

[Shankapotomus]

7. I agree with most

said here. Is this from an article by someone else or your own thoughts?

The question is : how can we make studies from the Left effectual?

Are they ineffectual because we are bouncing them off Right Wing evaders? Do we need to just stop trying to convince them and go our separate ways? Or do we sit here and wait for a micro social change at an evolutionary pace to flip people's minds?

[NewJeffCT]

11. There used to be some conservative intellectuals

William F Buckley and a few others. However, they've either died off, or they now get derided or become persona non grata if they dare criticize the Giants of 21st century conservatism like Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Jim DeMint or the Tea Party.

Buckley and others were the ones that started the GOP on the path to move from moderate Eisenhower to ultra-conservative Barry Goldwater in 1964, and then ultimately to Ronald Reagan.

[AlbertCat]

19. William F Buckley and a few others.

Being a snob and talking with an effected accent does not make one an intellectual.

[NewJeffCT]

23. True

But, conservatives actually had some ideas back in the 1950s and 60s. Sure, they didn't work in the long run, but at least they had ideas.

Nowadays, Republicans only idea is to oppose everything from Obama and cut taxes on the the "job creators"

[AlbertCat]

26. conservatives actually had some ideas back in the 1950s and 60s.

Indeed.
Government seems to work best when Liberals and Conservatives play off each other more or less equally. (Because Liberal ideas can get into the loopy category too)

But now the Repugs simply are not playing. They are out on their own. It's obvious conservative are the ones who took their toys home in a huff. Both parties, and everyone suffer.

[AtheistCrusader]

43. Yep, in the 50's and 60's they used to compromise too.

Now they burn the boats as soon as they hit the shore on every tiny little issue.

[Doc_Technical]

28. I watched "Firing Line" regularly

to see Bill Buckley do his David Frye impression.

But seriously folks, Buckley impressed me with his cold,
calm rational way of talking which is a vast improvement
over the shouting and name calling that often passes
for political discussion.
Buckley was a privileged jerk and I rarely agreed with
him but he was watchable.

[JBoy]

13. The Sunday morning talk shows back in the 70's

When I started watching them were actually pretty good discussions.

Since then they've degenerated into spin and talking point recitation.

[randome]

22. Sadly only one true intellectual conservative remains.

George Will.


[hr]
[font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font]
[hr]

[xtraxritical]

25. Yes, that's what Bob Dole said the day before yesterday and you are wrong about Democrats.

"Conversely, left intellectuals today generate massive volumes of completely ineffectual but brilliant studies - completely divorced from real power, they are able to truly uncover its workings, while remaining utterly incapable of making their case for the public."

I think the last Presidential election makes the above quote quite erroneous. We will message even better in 2014 and have majorities in both houses of Congress.

The point you make here is that the Republican brand has become a clown show. Bob Dole said just that on national tv the day before yesterday.

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

29. It's like talking to my brother

When asked to demonstrate an example of conservative liberalism he replied -who freed the slaves?

[bullwinkle428]

32. One just has to visit youtube, and look at old debates between Buckley

and Noam Chomsky, to see how far "conservative intellectual thought" has fallen, particularly since the Reagan era. I'd compare them to shit-flinging monkeys, but I really don't feel like insulting monkeys today.

[roamer65]

37. Yep. The flying monkey right.

[roamer65]

35. How can one be intellectual and conservative?

Nearly impossible as thought processes have to be engaged to be intellectual. Conservatism requires no thought, just follow the leader.

[ronnie624]

40. Every time I've ever seen Buckley debate a liberal,

he was twisted into a pretzel, just like any other foolish conservative when you examine their 'thinking'. I never got the impression he was a great thinker.

[Glaisne]

41. People who use biology

to justify their political ideology are committing a logical fallacy. You can find an example in biology to use as support for any ideological claims. Biological systems adapt to local environmental conditions. Therefore there are a myriad of different adaptations to many different environmental challenges. Anyone who uses a particular example from biology to justify their political views is just cherry picking. There will always be examples that support a different view. It should also be pointed out that Anthropology shows us that human societies and cultures exhibit a wide diversity adaptations that cover almost every kind of way of life. We should organize our society for what's best for the most people (everyone does better, when everyone does better). Looking to biology to justify your pet views instead of having an honest debate is a cop out.

[Larry Ogg]

48. I came to the conclusion a long time ago that...

Conservative intellectuals are not conservatives at all, they are psychopaths.

That's why right wing extremist are so dangerous.

[Lunacee_2013]

51. Eric Erickson trying to use science?

Don't make me laugh! Some female insects also eat their mating partners, but I don't think anyone would be okay with humans doing that. And isn't there a type of monkey or ape, bonobos maybe, where the females are the head of the troop? And female hyenas are dominate too, iirc.

As for Rand, she's always come across as self-centered and greedy, and it looks like Ann Coulter is following right behind her in her footsteps.

[Agnosticsherbet]

52. Any conservative intellectual would now be a center to center right Democrat.

Bill Buckley fought to kick the John Birch Society and other extremists out of the Republican Party. (That is the Koch brothers and their ilk.) Like Eisenhower, Nixon, and even Reagan, Bill Buckley would not be welcome in modern conservatism.

The reason is that the conservative movement left the right and embraced extremism. They are all ideological extremist now, and ideological purity is required. Deep thought and extremist ideological purity do not mix.

What is left of that brand of Conservatism, Rockefeller Republicans, are now Democrats.

[muriel_volestrangler]

53. Erickson "one of the chief conservative intellectuals of our day"?

I don't think I've even seen a conservative claim that. Having a blog and being on TV doesn't make you an intellectual, even in conservative circles. They think intellectuals are people who get cushy jobs from right wing thinktanks. And those people can fake being an intellectual a hell of a lot better than Erickson.