Light On Dark Water

Time to Dump The Atlantic

Here's the cover of the current issue:

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The magazine has always been a very mixed bag. But over the last few years the mixture has tipped decisively toward the conventional thinking of affluent liberals. The good things have been fewer, and the bad things more numerous and egregious. And whether good or bad, the whole magazine has become thinner, in both paper and ideas, and more superficial. I supposed I should have dropped it several years ago, when this cover appeared:

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Of course I don't expect a secular magazine to see things from a Christian point of view. But respect is not too much to ask, not to mention reason. The article to which the cover refers actually was not as bad as the title made it sound–as I recall, it was mainly about the influence of prosperity-gospel preachers. But still, the title was ugly enough.

Maclin Horton

182 responses to “Time to Dump The Atlantic”

  1. Rob G

    Speaking of affluent liberals, a friend sent this today:
    http://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-spiritual-crisis-of-the-bourgeois-bohemians/

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  2. Mac

    Very perceptive. This is a key point that neither side really appreciates: “Rather, it was a predictable result of the takeover of Democratic Party by the New Left, which was far more interested in sexual and cultural revolution than in representing unfashionably conservative workers.”
    It cannot be overstated: the average affluent liberal Democrat of today does not care at all about the working class, except in a ritualistic way. The actually existing American people outside liberal circles disgust and appall him.

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  3. Rob G

    The friend who sent the piece added this comment:
    “The Right can protest all they want that they desire capitalism plus traditionalism, but the former subverts the latter; the Left can protest all they want that they desire cultural liberation plus economic solidarity, but the former subverts the latter. Period. The end.”
    The Left had their prophet, Lasch, and they didn’t listen to him. As of yet, no rightist version of Lasch has risen up. I remain hopeful, but I don’t have much faith that the outcome would be any different, alas. What is needed is an intellectually heavyweight version of Rod Dreher. I love Rod, but he’s a journalist, not a political philosopher.

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  4. Louise

    I’m getting pretty tired of this issue (homosexuality) to say the least.
    For such a tiny proportion of the population, they sure take up an awful lot of time and energy in politics and even socially.

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  5. Art Deco

    Rob G,
    Why not attempt an algorithmic representation of how ‘capitalism’ subverts ‘traditionalism’? (You might start with formulating a definition of ‘capitalism’).

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  6. Louise

    Maybe I’ll read the article, but I can’t imagine straight couples learning anything from homosexual couples.

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  7. Louise

    Research finds that same-sex unions are happier than heterosexual marriages. What can gay and lesbian couples teach straight ones about living in harmony?
    Good grief. I’m pretty sure that any serious research shows the exact opposite, especially over the long term.

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  8. Louise

    Could be way past time, Maclin.
    Maybe you should subscribe to “Southern Living” instead. 🙂

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  9. Art Deco

    Alas, both The Wilson Quarterly and Policy Review have expired, though supposedly there is an electronic edition of The Wilson Quarterly. The trustees of the Institute on Religion and Public Life have had some difficulty in locating someone adequate to replace Fr. Neuhaus. Touchstone is still publishing. If you want an agreeable diversion, there is Early American Life, though it does not have much of a Dixie aspect.

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  10. Art Deco

    What is needed is an intellectually heavyweight version of Rod Dreher.
    That’s a bit like saying we need sweet tasting anchovies.

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  11. Marianne

    I struggled through the entire, essentially superficial, article. But maybe worth it because otherwise I wouldn’t have come upon this gem:

    Sex, then, may be one area where the institution of marriage pushes back against norms that have been embraced by many gay couples. [The Very Rev. Gary R. Hall, dean of the Washington National Cathedral] allows that in many ways, gay relationships offer a salutary “critique” of marriage, but argues that the marriage establishment will do some critiquing back. He says he would not marry two people who intended to be non-monogamous, and believes that monogamy will be a “critical issue” in the dialogue between the gay community and the Church. Up until now, he says, progressive churches have embraced “the part of gay behavior that looks like straight behavior,” but at some point, churches also have to engage gay couples whose behavior doesn’t conform to monogamous ideals. He hopes that, in the course of this give-and-take, the church ends up reckoning with other ongoing cultural changes, from unmarried cohabitation to the increasing number of adults who choose to live as singles. “How do we speak credibly to people about their sexuality and their sexual relationships?” he asks. “We really need to rethink this.”

    Wow. An actual line in the sand on monogamy. Think it will hold?

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  12. Mac

    Louise, in reply to your 5:44 comment: some wit observed that “The love that dare not speak its name has become the love that won’t shut up.”

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  13. Mac

    You’re more determined than I am, Marianne. I read the first couple of sentences, where gay marriage was described as “the premier civil rights issue of our time” or something, and decided to skip it. But to answer your question, no, I don’t think it will hold. I mean, who’s drawing it? Sounds like the tut-tuting of an old WASP who wants to be in on the new thing and justifies it by trying to hang on to some kind of convention.
    “gay relationships offer a salutary ‘critique’ of marriage”–I can’t imagine how that could make much sense. I guess if I want to know what they mean I have to read the article.

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  14. Mac

    “Why not attempt an algorithmic representation of how ‘capitalism’ subverts ‘traditionalism’? (You might start with formulating a definition of ‘capitalism’).”
    Obviously it can’t be proved scientifically that capitalism subverts traditionalism. But it seems equally obviously true. As for defining capitalism, that’s one of the things that makes such discussions difficult or tiresome: it really doesn’t have any clear definition that’s accepted by everyone. It’s not a fixed ideology like communism. So, let’s just say that modern forms of commerce and industry tend to act as a solvent to traditional principles and mores.

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  15. Mac

    Re your magazine recommendations, Art: I have several “starboard,” to use your word, subscriptions. Part of the point of reading The Atlantic was to stay somewhat in touch with other views. But most of what’s on offer there now is just lightweight.

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  16. Rob G

    “So, let’s just say that modern forms of commerce and industry tend to act as a solvent to traditional principles and mores.”
    Well put.
    “That’s a bit like saying we need sweet tasting anchovies.”
    Not at all. Just take a cup of Marion Montgomery’s philosophical acumen and agrarian sensibility, add a cup of John Lukacs’ historical sense, and top it off with a dollop of Rod’s journalistic skills, and bingo…
    Hell, even an American version of Roger Scruton would be nice.

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  17. Art Deco

    Well, there is Dissent for the other side, or The New Yorker. These might be worth the effort. Harper’s went over the edge around about 1985. The dismissal of Michael Kelly in 1997 was the end of the line for The New Republic as a worthwhile publication. The void left by the decay and demise of Saturday Review has never been filled.
    The trouble with the New York Review of Books is the craftsmanship often successfully obscures content. They published Elaine Scarry’s nonsense on civil aviation. Read it if you want the finest example you could have of something absolutely cock-eyed presented in the most persuasive possible format. I think you should avoid it except on topics where you are passably schooled. I would skim it at the public library rather than receiving it at home.

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  18. Art Deco

    Not at all.
    Rubbish. Rod Dreher’s writing consists of updates on the state of Rod Dreher’s inner turmoil. There is not any there there. It’s the finest example you could have of the confounding of the personal and the political. You cannot manufacture an ‘intellectual’ version of it.

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  19. Art Deco

    Obviously it can’t be proved scientifically that capitalism subverts traditionalism. But it seems equally obviously true.
    No, it is not obvious. No one asked you to prove a wretched thing. They did ask you to delineate your social hypotheses.
    You should puzzle out at least a schematic of social and psychological processes; otherwise it just sounds like a recitation of phrases cribbed from summaries of Russell Kirk. You might also attempt to clarify in your own mind what you mean by ‘capitalism’ and what you conceive of as an alternative.

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  20. Rob G

    “You cannot manufacture an ‘intellectual’ version of it.”
    Who said anything about manufacture? It’s about finding rather than making. Rod is Wendell Berry + Russell Kirk, lite. An intellectual version would be someone like Scruton or Phillip Blond with some agrarian color.

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  21. Will

    The only reason I have a subscription to the Atlantic is because I needed to use some frequent flyer miles to keep the rest from expiring. At some point I realized that I was just getting annoyed every time I picked it up because it’s always got at least one article gloating about how women are surpassing men in education and financial achievement, and how pathetic that makes modern men. I believe the accepted term is “ladyblog” (assuming you read the online version). They generally now go straight from the mailbox to the trash.

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  22. Paul

    I’ve tried reading the New York Review of Books a couple of times, but had the odd feeling that it was written in a sort of code that I didn’t have the cypher for.

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  23. Mac

    Whatever else one may say about the NYRB, surely no one except the crowd who provoked someone to call it The New York Review of Each Other’s Books would deny that it’s really boring.

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  24. Mac

    “…it’s always got at least one article gloating about how women are surpassing men…”
    Hannah Rosin et.al. Yes, that’s one of their big enthusiasms, and another of the big reasons why it irritates me. It’s not so much their expressing views I don’t share as that on questions like this they’re generally so glib and superficial. You might think you were reading Time. I have been having this argument with myself about it for some time, and I think the side in favor of dumping it has won. One thing that always kept me reading it was Benjamin Schwarz’s book reviews, but now they’ve shrunk his space.

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  25. Mac

    I thought of Lukacs, too, Rob. Also of Kirk, naturally. Though there was always something a bit other-worldly about Kirk.
    Art, re your 7:05: don’t make the mistake of supposing blog comments constitute a complete explication of a person’s views on big questions. I don’t feel obliged to present my views in full on demand, nor do I have time for it. If you care to peruse ten-plus years of this blog you can get a fairly good idea of what I think, although economics per se is not something I spend a lot of time on or claim to have any technical knowledge of.
    “You might also attempt to clarify in your own mind what you mean by ‘capitalism’ and what you conceive of as an alternative.”
    It is pretty clear, thanks, and as suggested earlier I think the word is unsatisfactory and certainly does not serve as a simple term describing the American system. It’s rare to see a debate about it which does not get bogged down in definitions. Very tiresome.

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  26. Mac

    Regarding Dreher, I am not nearly so negative as Art (6:57 above), but that description does touch on Dreher’s big weakness: the feverish agitation that colors most of his writing. I had to give up reading his blog some years ago because it was just too wearing, not to mention too much in sheer quantity. But he’s often pretty sharp.
    For some reason that I don’t quite get he seems to infuriate a certain number of people to both his left and his right.

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  27. Rob G

    Yes, I agree about his writing’s emotional content, but I was speaking more in terms of Rod’s “ideology” or politico-social ideas. I gather that the Crunchy Cons book wasn’t as successful as he or his publisher had hoped it would be, but I always figured that if it did nothing other than got some people reading Kirk and Berry, then he did a good thing.

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  28. Art Deco

    For some reason that I don’t quite get he seems to infuriate a certain number of people to both his left and his right.
    1. His default mode is one of accusation.
    2. He has a terrible time filtering and sorting through information on topics with regard to which he has emotional investments (something Gerard Serafin noted many years ago).
    3. He really does not know much about anything.
    4. But he is always telling abstractly conceived groups they are doing their jobs poorly because they are self-deluded.
    5. His exhibitionism (which incorporates a deficit of a sense of propriety) is grating. He has been running excerpts of this book about his sister and they are most embarrassing. I guess his niece has decided she does not mind her intramural disputes with her mother (which include crying fits) are fodder for her uncle’s storytelling. What his father makes of the betrayal of intimacies (including his own tears) I cannot imagine. Ditto his brother-in-law…

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  29. Mac

    I found Crunchy Cons somewhat disappointing, a missed opportunity. There were a lot of good things in it but it seemed hasty and sorta…lightweight (e.g. the title and the CC manifesto).

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  30. Art Deco

    J. Bottum had this to say about Dreher:
    Rod and I were friends, I thought, or, at least, we spent some fun days together in Rome once. But then, a while ago, he used me as an occasion for an unpleasant column he wrote attacking Scooter Libby. I guess I should have understood, and, no doubt, he felt it all strongly. But, in truth, that cashing in of a friendship for the sake of scoring a transient political point was as painful an experience as I’ve had in public life, and Rod Dreher’s eagerness to do it weakened my ability to trust the kind of points he now wants to score by cashing in on his acquaintance with Fr. Neuhaus.
    A more concise rendering of Bottum’s point is as follows: the man has no honor.

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  31. Rob G

    Even if that is true, of which I have my doubts, it has little if anything to do with the rightness or wrongness of his socio-political views.

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  32. Mac

    I generally remain agnostic about personal disputes where I don’t know the people or have any stake in the outcome.

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  33. Art Deco

    I do not have any stake in the outcome, either. You asked why it was he bothered people, and that is a reason supplied.

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  34. Grumpy

    Dan might agree. Do you remember that really weird event where Dreher offered to help out his Orthodox priest over an abuse claim?

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  35. Mac

    Daniel most definitely agrees–he’s one of the people I was thinking of. No, I don’t remember (or never knew) that about the priest.
    I mean people who don’t know him personally, Art. He seems to have that effect immediately on some people, purely on the basis of his writings. Well, I guess in the case of some Catholics, there was some resentment about his ferocity on the abuse problem–people felt he was unfair. And then when he bolted for Orthodoxy that confirmed their hostility.

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  36. Grumpy

    I didn’t resent him bolting. I thought I could easily have done so. I have occasionally got really near to the end of my tether with the GB Bps and some situations back in Scotland in 2010-2011. If you follow the news you will know the kind of thing I’m talking about. It’s easy to forget, six or seven years on, how emotions ran high during the American abuse crisis years. If I had had to deal directly with the American Bps at that time, it could have been me as well as RD who joined the Orthodox church. I like everything I know about Eastern Orthodoxy.
    I was very fond of the web-blog Crunchy Con. The Templeton site was dull and never really materialised. I detest TAC, but when Ron D migrated there, I used to read his pieces from time to time. Then one day he said, does anyone have any information about such and such? He was trailing the bait for people to retail bad stories about Catholic conservatives in certain institutions. The way he put the question was faux innocent. It creeped me out, and I never read Rod D in TAC again. What you say about J Bottum is just the same kind of thing.

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  37. Grumpy

    BTW I saw that Atlantic cover on my way to DC and thought, well, that’s a magazine I’m not buying! The same thing happened with the New Yorker over the past 18 months. It’s a real shame, because I love the cartoons and short stories and informative articles, Ie the whole magazine.

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  38. Mac

    I was going to say earlier, in response to Art’s mention of the New Yorker: aside from stuff like frantic gay marriage proselytizing etc., the NY is just way too much for me in sheer volume. I’ve always loved the cartoons, though.

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  39. Mac

    No, I didn’t resent RD bolting, either, but I also can’t say I thought very highly of it. I didn’t react that way but I can see how someone would.
    I liked that CC blog at first, but the feverish quality and quantity just got to be too much. Now, that trailing the bait for bad stories about specific people or groups is pretty shabby.
    Why do you dislike TAC so much? I don’t have very strong feelings about it either way.

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  40. Grumpy

    I’m more of a political liberal than a paleocon. I’m even a liberal interventionist in some cases. For instance, I think the intervention in former Yugoslavia was morally justified, apart from being long overdue. I agree with those who say that one problem with the Iraq war is that it made it much harder to make the case for necessary interventions.

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  41. Mac

    A neocon! 🙂
    I think it’s justified in some cases, too. It’s a very knotty question. I was even willing to give Bush & Co. the benefit of the doubt on Iraq. It definitely has put the American people into a “none of our business when they kill each other” frame of mind.

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  42. Grumpy

    Well I just subscribed to the Weekly Standard! (Bottum put a link to his obit of Ray Manzarek on fb, and I couldn’t read it so I subscribed).

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  43. Rob

    Didn’t Bottum leave FT under, uh, “inauspicious” circumstances? In addition, he seems quite the self-promoter.

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  44. Mac

    I dunno. I don’t read the magazine, and the web site only occasionally. I did notice he was gone and had reappeared at Weekly Standard, which I read even less often. I remember liking some things he wrote for FT very much, in particular a piece about memories of Christmas in South Dakota.
    Obit of Ray Manzarek by J. Bottum is an intriguing thought. I would like to read that…Well, that was easily found: http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/ray-manzarek-1939-2013_729011.html

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  45. Art Deco

    Well, I guess in the case of some Catholics, there was some resentment about his ferocity on the abuse problem–people felt he was unfair. And then when he bolted for Orthodoxy that confirmed their hostility.
    More precisely, he was invariably making an exhibit of himself but developed and articulated no understanding of how he expected bishops (or the rest of us) to evaluate disputed claims. Leon Podles was much less florid, but had the same foundational problem. As far as anyone could tell, he simply assumed both the veracity and the moral standing of people who made claims.
    You recall the accusations against Bp. Hubbard of Albany in 2004? Very odoriferous to begin with, as there was no reason to assume that Bp. Hubbard was acquainted at all with either of the people presenting claims; one of the claims was a typescript supposedly composed 26 years earlier by a man who committed suicide in 1978; another of the claims was by a quondam male prostitute who contended he met the bishop twice (at night) in 1977/78, recognized him on television in 1992, and could reliably identify him 12 years later; the mouthpiece of the first claim was a well-known ambulance chaser / shyster named John Aretekis. Dreher was more tentative than usual, but he did believe these characters.
    You recall Elizabeth McKenna? This dame contended she had an affair with a priest between 1965 and 1977 (from the time she was 17 to the time she was 29) and, upon mature reflection, thought the diocese in which Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario is located should fork over a six figure sum of money (more than a dozen years after the affair concluded). This blatant and insufferable grifter persuaded a civil court in Canada to 1.) recognize a cause of action and 2.) hold the diocese liable. Yes, Rod Dreher took her quite seriously.

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  46. Art Deco

    Why do you dislike TAC so much? I don’t have very strong feelings about it either way.
    Aside from the current proprietor (Ron Unz) and Andrew Bacevich, the contributors consist of people with dubious pasts (Philip Giraldi) or of very limited accomplishment (the current and former editor and Dreher, among others) or some of both (Larison). However, the editorial line is that the starboard politics, policy research, and journalism is composed of self-deluded idiots (whom we will instruct week after week). The whole place runs on steep conceits.
    As for discussions of policy, you have long running complaints on foreign policy questions (of dubious validity); you once had them (IIRC) on immigration as well, but they do not offer that anymore because the current patron has a long history as an immigration enthusiast. Otherwise, they offer precisely zero commentary on any subject or of any kind that would be considered as aught but indifferent or antagonistic to the common Republican voter. They have no respect for the rank and file or anyone who speaks to them or attempts to speak for them. A continual upraised middle finger is an irritant.
    During the period of time I looked in on his column at The American Conservative, I would say about two-thirds of Dreher’s regulars were leftists, and he would periodically run on about how much he appreciated their participation. Another quarter were the usual palaeocon crew, out to argue that Franklin Roosevelt Jedi mind-tricked the Japs into Pearl Harbor and fussing that we were “fighting Bibi’s wars for him”. There might have been a half-dozen others, if that, and two of the others were eventually banned, yours truly being one of the two. It makes perfect sense if you realize that the institutional purpose of the magazine has nothing to do with expounding a recognizably starboard political economy.
    I have to chuckle about one item. Part of your friend Daniel’s brief against Dreher is that RD did not share Mr. Daniel’s (incomprehensible) loathing of the State of Israel. Now Dreher earns his living in a journalistic subculture shot-through with anti-Semites. Do what you gotta do, I guess…

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  47. Art Deco

    Didn’t Bottum leave FT under, uh, “inauspicious” circumstances? In addition, he seems quite the self-promoter.
    But your fond of Dreher. At leas try for consistency.

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  48. Rob G

    “But your fond of Dreher. At leas try for consistency.”
    Allow me to rephrase: if Dreher is a self-promoter, then Bottum seems to be no less of one.
    “It makes perfect sense if you realize that the institutional purpose of the magazine has nothing to do with expounding a recognizably starboard political economy.”
    Of course not, if your understanding of “starboard” is the advancement of GOP-style plutocracy and pro-corporate shilling (not that the Dems are any better).
    I subscribed to TAC briefly a couple years back, but cancelled after a couple issues. I found it too focused on politics narrowly understood and not enough on culture. More a matter of taste and personal interest to me than anything else. ‘Modern Age’ and ‘Humanitas’ are more my speed. I had a subs. to FT for a year, but didn’t care for it much, other than the book reviews and D.B. Hart’s column.

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  49. Grumpy

    David Bentley Hart is one of the funniest men alive.

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  50. Mac

    Sorry, I’ve been out all day.
    So that’s why I couldn’t understand Beauty of the Infinite? It was meant to be funny?

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  51. Mac

    “…[TAC’s] editorial line is that the starboard politics, policy research, and journalism is composed of self-deluded idiots (whom we will instruct week after week).”
    As is generally the case, my view is considerably less harsh, but let’s say I recognize what you’re describing. That’s a big part of the reason why I’ve only read it intermittently. There seems a much higher proportion of snark, grouse, and whinge than I want to listen to. I’ve read some good stuff there. But none of the big conservative mags are without some pretty off-putting qualities for me. Maybe that’s partly because I’m simply more interested in other things than politics and economics. I’ve been subscribing to The New Criterion for over ten years now and still am pleased when a new issue arrives.
    I’ve read Modern Age occasionally and like it, but it really requires more time than I have.

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  52. Mac

    That Ray Manzarek obit is excellent, btw.

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  53. Rob G

    Lol. That reminds me of a story a friend of mine told me. His family had come here from Romania when he was eight and his grandmother came with them. One day he was visiting her and he asked her what she was doing — she said she had been watching a movie but she turned it off because she didn’t understand it. She said it was some movie about a “bunch of crazy people going to the moon.” He was puzzled, so he turned the TV back on. The movie was “Airplane 2.” She hadn’t realized it was a comedy.
    Re: DBH — there are some laugh-out-loud funny lines in some of his essays. His takedown of the ‘New Atheist’ Daniel Dennett is a howl.

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  54. Mac

    That I’d like to read (the last item).
    I’ve occasionally suspected people of not really understanding that the characters in TV shows–not the “reality” stuff, but traditional comedies and dramas–are not real.

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  55. Grumpy

    The Dennett piece is very funny.
    With a good TV show, it is easy to forget the characters are not real.
    Thre’s a radio show in England called the Archers which has been going on for about 60 years. Someone at the BBC once told a journalist that a character couldn’t have another child because it would cost too much. He inquired how it could cost money for a character on a radio show to have a child. And the BBC person explained that when a character in the Archers has a child they get people sending in baby clothes and baby milk powder and they have to dispose of all the gifts, and it costs a lot of time and money.

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  56. Mac

    Not long after I’d finished watching The Wire, I was at the grocery store and saw a guy who at a glance looked a lot like…hmm, guess I won’t say who, because it would be a spoiler…let’s just say one of the major characters. And for a moment I was about to walk up to him and tell him how glad I was that he had gotten off drugs.
    But that’s different from fundamentally not knowing the difference between real and fictional.

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  57. Art Deco

    There seems a much higher proportion of snark, grouse, and whinge than I want to listen to. I’ve read some good stuff there. But none of the big conservative mags are without some pretty off-putting qualities for me. Maybe that’s partly because I’m simply more interested in other things than politics and economics.
    Their purpose is to disseminate topical commentary. They have some book reviews as well. If you are interested in other things, read those other things.
    The thing is, a publication should be concerned about promoting a certain social vision. That is going to concern critiquing contemporary problems. The troublesome thing is when the whole thing decays into a self-aggrandizing exercise. This can have a number of manifestations. You have publications for which complaint is the whole point (which is what made The Nation under Victor Navasky a waste of time) and then you have publications for whom complaining about other publications is the whole point (which is what makes The American Conservative a waste of time).
    The difficulty you have with Modern Age is that it is really a quasi-academic journal for students of intellectual history and the like. Unless you are writing college papers, I would not bother with it. Humanitas is much the same, just more verbose. The publishers of Humanitas cannot even market the thing. It is given away gratis.
    One problem you get is that the best are dying. Policy Review has ceased publication (The American Conservative penned an editorial dancing on its grave, natch); The Public Interest ceased about 10 years ago; the American Enterprise Institute shut down its general interest publications some years ago; and so forth. The Manhattan Institute is still publishing City Journal, but that is just about the last survivor.

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  58. Art Deco

    Of course not, if your understanding of “starboard” is the advancement of GOP-style plutocracy and pro-corporate shilling (not that the Dems are any better).
    I get the impression you think in cliches.

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  59. Grumpy

    Well Rob G and I don’t agree on politics but he makes the best movie and music recommendations I have ever seen.

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  60. Mac

    I don’t agree 100% with any of you about politics, as far as I can tell. But I do have great confidence in both Rob’s and your book, movie, and music recs.

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  61. Mac

    ” If you are interested in other things, read those other things.”
    Like I said, I read The New Criterion avidly, cover-to-cover most of the time.
    I must say, re Rob’s remark about pro-corporate shilling etc., going back to what you (Art) said a day or so ago:
    “[TAC] offer[s] precisely zero commentary on any subject or of any kind that would be considered as aught but indifferent or antagonistic to the common Republican voter.”
    I don’t see that as a serious problem. The common Republican voter is not very impressive.

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  62. Rob G

    “I don’t see that as a serious problem. The common Republican voter is not very impressive.”
    Bingo. Pro-wealth, pro-big business — that’s the GOP party line, generally speaking. If that’s what conservatism has become, then the hell with it.

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  63. Art Deco

    I don’t see that as a serious problem. The common Republican voter is not very impressive.
    To whom and in what circumstance? Most people do not follow public affairs. Many people who do have trouble filing and retaining information and many who remember are viewing things through broken lenses. About 40% of the population habitually votes. About a quarter tell the pollster they follow public affairs, a metric I think has been verified by other survey tools. About half the people who follow public affairs are ‘news junkies’ who read the paper assiduously but retain little. The Republic might be better off with a lager corps of informed voters, as I believe they have in Switzerland and in Israel, but we live where we do.
    Now, the remaining 12% have their interests and their hierarchy of values. In Israel, you have all kinds of cross-cutting cleavages – ethnic, subcultural, confessional, and social-ideological – which make for quite an carnival given the characteristics of the electoral system. In the United States you do not. You have cleavages, but these are highly correlated and not-cross cutting; the electoral system tends to promote aggregation into omnibus parties.
    Something Phyllis Schlafly has called attention to in her commentary – there are trade-offs to be had between different sorts of electoral systems. In Israel, you can likely find a party which advocates just what you want; if that party is successful, they get two seats in a 29 member cabinet. In a system of omnibus parties, a higher proportion of preferred policies are implemented even though the parties be disappointing. (Unless, of course, you live in the United States, where all public policy is the result of jerry-rigged wheeling and dealing, but that is a different issue).
    The common Republican voter has his tendencies, prejudices, hierarchy of values, and interests. Because the Republican Party is an omnibus party, these can be quite variable. The Paul-bot faction of the Republican Party comprehends, best anyone can tell, about 11% of the total. It is a pretty neat trick to never say anything that might interest or please the other 89%, and Paul himself does not manage that, but the editorial staff of The American Conservative do. There is a reason for that: they are poseurs.
    Both of you are manifesting the bad attitude of The American Conservative‘s editorial staff. It is doubtful that the quality of people’s arguments and the degree to which they are informed is highly correlated with their hierarchy of values and you would not credit that if they were. The number of people of libertarianish views on economics and business faculties is legion. The list of soi-disant “distributists” in the academy has only one name on it: Race Matthews. Somehow, I do not think either of you finds that data motivating. Neither would I.
    Bingo. Pro-wealth, pro-big business — that’s the GOP party line, generally speaking. If that’s what conservatism has become, then the hell with it.
    I think it would benefit you to be able to characterize someone’s views without caricaturing them. You’re just not there.

    Reply
  64. Mac

    “To whom…”
    Well, to me, obviously.
    Yes, I understand about the makeup of the electorate, the two-party system, etc. But you were complaining that AmCon doesn’t appeal to the ordinary Republican voter, and my reply is, more or less, so what? I mean, if that’s what AmCon wants to do, then I offer them a moment of sympathy on their disappointment, but it doesn’t have anything to do with whether I want to read the mag. Appealing to the ordinary Republican voter would not make it more appealing to me. That would probably involve going in a more Rush-Limbaugh-ish direction. I’m not particularly knocking Republican voters here, as Democrats are at least as bad. It’s the nature of mass politics.

    Reply
  65. Art Deco

    Mr. Horton,
    You put out a starboard political magazine, you will induce a variable reaction among people with an affinity for starboard politics. My point, which you persistently do not get, is that The American Conservative does an exceedingly poor job at articulating any sort of social vision and publishes material of interest only to an intensely subcultural audience. I can benefit from libertarian literature and find things I agree with, even though I am not in that box at all and never was. In my own household, various sorts of publications have arrived on a regular basis that I did not order and would not, but I can still benefit from them. We have had Harper’s, the New York Review, the old Washington Post Bookworld, and so forth.
    The American Conservative has a circulation of 12,000. The Weekly Standard has a circulation of 80,000. The former is not more rarefied than the latter (though do not try to tell their editor that). It is just that the latter produces topical commentary which weaves some sort of social vision, like it or not. The former is marketing its contempt for others; that’s harder to do (and really impossible to do for those who do not respond to certain emotional cues).

    Reply
  66. Art Deco

    That would probably involve going in a more Rush-Limbaugh-ish direction.
    Um, no. Limbaugh’s program is a different sort of discourse and a different market segment. Look at Regnery’s back list and then look at that for ISI Books. It is not so much a different ideology as a different level of discussion, different emphasis, and different sensibility. There are people who appreciate both, of course.
    TAC is what it is. There is no use in attempting to improve it unless you thought the brand were worth retaining for marketing reasons (which it is not). You could attempt a publication that had some critical distance from ordinary starboard politics – supporting some measures and critiquing others – and had a manifest affinity for its practitioners. That may have been what Pat Buchanan wanted and intended, but that is not what TAC is and other than M.B. Dougherty, you would not hire any of its regulars if that was what you had a mind to do. You would attempt to recruit some of those who write for Chronicles. Chronicles has always been odd: a collection of temperate and engaging academics contributing monthly to a publication run by a manifest head case. People are funny.

    Reply
  67. Mac

    “It is not so much a different ideology as a different level of discussion, different emphasis, and different sensibility.”
    Yes, that’s what I meant–Limbaugh’s general style. That general direction is obviously where the audience is.
    “My point, which you persistently do not get, is that The American Conservative does an exceedingly poor job at articulating any sort of social vision and publishes material of interest only to an intensely subcultural audience.”
    I’m not sure how this got going in the first place, but you seem to think I’m somehow attached to or defending TAC. Your point is an explanation of why you don’t think much of it. Fine. I don’t care much for it, either, though probably I don’t dislike it as strongly. I thought that was clear.

    Reply
  68. Grumpy

    I am not at all sure what this disagrement is about 🙂 It is clear that Mac’s blog is a model for conservativism, since all kinds of conservative read it and normally converse in a very civil manner.

    Reply
  69. Mac

    Nor am I. And thank you.
    I’ll be travelling all day today and probably won’t have a chance to look in here again till tonight.

    Reply
  70. Art Deco

    Yes, that’s what I meant–Limbaugh’s general style. That general direction is obviously where the audience is.
    That is where a commercially viable audience is. Opinion magazines have for about four decades now been part of the philanthropic sector. Saturday Review, Harper’s, and The Atlantic were commercial propositions once upon a time and I believe the New York Review of Books still is. National Review has always been donor supported, just like public radio.
    National Review and The American Conservative are similarly formatted and pitched to constituencies that process information similarly, but have quite different editorial lines. If you put the utterances of Sean Hannity in a transcript, a representative subscriber to National Review would not find too much objectionable, but might not be part of Hannity’s viewership for a number of reasons, among them an objection to the production values, emphasis, mode of presentation, &c.
    There is a great deal of chuffering in TAC about ‘movement conservatives’ and the like. It does not just concern Hannity or events like CPAC but the whole array of conventional starboard offerings. They do not like the Hoover Institution any better than they like a vulgar drive-time host in Las Vegas. However, they have very little to offer in the way of an authentic alternative or reply. Someone once said of Ralph Nader, “Consciousness III doesn’t give a damn about the FTC. Ralph does”. TAC offers a mess of prescriptions about foreign policy that are foundationally silly, and otherwise has nothing to say other than ‘you’re stupid’. They don’t give a damn about the FTC, either. If your business is public policy, there had best be someone in your stable who does. (It is also sort of grossly amusing how palaeo outlets attract Jew-haters like green bottle flies to manure).

    Reply
  71. Grumpy

    I googled FTC and I’m guessing you mean Federal Trade Commission not Farmers something Cooperative.
    I’m also geussing that by ‘starboard’ you mean right, ie conservative.
    Generally, Art, I find your contributions to the LDW comments interesting. But on this occasion I have not been able to follow you. Perhaps I simply do not know enough about the American ‘starboard’

    Reply
  72. Rob G

    Both TAC and Chronicles are mags that operate somewhat in protest against what mainstream conservatism has become. Because of that one wouldn’t expect them to have large readerships among your typical Republicans. It is partially that, and not simply “lack of a cohesive vision” that affects their popularity. Even if they were presenting a vision as you describe, I don’t see it getting much traction — it’s too anti-establishment (the establishment here meaning the GOP party line). Like Mac, I don’t mean to defend either mag, as I don’t particularly like them much. TAC is too strictly political, and Chronicles is just too cranky. Neither one appeals much to the cultural conservative in me.

    Reply
  73. Art Deco

    Rob G,
    Chronicles prior to 1987 bore the title Chronicles of Culture. Topical questions have always been a secondary concern. In any case, their forays into them have been peculiar, e.g. Thomas Fleming’s long employment as press agent for violent Serb particularists. Yes, that is “anti-establishment”, but so what?
    You could call The American Conservative ‘anti-establishment’, but, again, so what? They are also largely vacuous. They are not going to develop a readership because there is not much to them.

    Reply
  74. Louise

    some wit observed that “The love that dare not speak its name has become the love that won’t shut up.”
    Indeed. This was a favourite of mine several years ago when I was blogging. I wonder who coined it? Kathy Shaidle used it a lot.

    Reply
  75. Art Deco

    Richard John Neuhaus favored it, but his version was as follows: “the love that dare not seek its name is now the neurosis that doesn’t know when to shut up.” I think I must have read it in one of his commentaries nearly twenty years ago and IIRC he was quoting someone else.

    Reply
  76. Mac

    I may have heard it from Mark Steyn. The phrasing I quoted sounds like it could easily have been his variant of what Neuhaus said.

    Reply
  77. Rob G

    “Chronicles prior to 1987 bore the title Chronicles of Culture.”
    Yes, I’m aware of that. I was a subscriber for two or three years sometime after ’83 but before the name change. I was faulting TAC for not being culturally-focused enough. Chronicles has a cultural focus, but the overall tone is too dyspeptic.
    I do not think there’s much to The Weekly Standard either, but your typical GOP rah-rah boy who listens to Rush and Hannity, and thinks Mark Levin is the supreme intellect of the conservative movement is going to find much more to agree with in TWS than in the others. It has what amounts to a built-in readership among the GOP/Fox/Rush true believers, of whom there are legion.

    Reply
  78. Art Deco

    I do not think there’s much to The Weekly Standard either, but your typical GOP rah-rah boy who listens to Rush and Hannity, and thinks Mark Levin is the supreme intellect of the conservative movement is going to find much more to agree with in TWS than in the others. It has what amounts to a built-in readership among the GOP/Fox/Rush true believers, of whom there are legion.
    The problem here is not them. The problem is you.

    Reply
  79. Mac

    I also subscribed to Chronicles when it was still Of Culture. “Dsypeptic” might be an understatement. I admit I often enjoyed the denunciations, but it didn’t seem healthy.
    I suppose it’s almost inevitable for anyone who’s not a classical liberal to end up ranting in a corner, because there’s not much purchase for those ideas among any but a very small minority, and almost none in practical politics. Well, ok, not inevitable, but something one would have to fight against.

    Reply
  80. Robert Gotcher

    I neither call Mark Levin “The Great One,” nor have I seen or been given any reason ever to do so.

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  81. Rob G

    “The problem here is not them. The problem is you.”
    Heh-heh. Spoken like one of said true believers.

    Reply
  82. Art Deco

    I suppose it’s almost inevitable for anyone who’s not a classical liberal to end up ranting in a corner, because there’s not much purchase for those ideas among any but a very small minority, and almost none in practical politics. Well, ok, not inevitable, but something one would have to fight against.
    The name was changed after the founding editor (Leopold Tyrmand) died and the Rockford Institute turned it over to Fleming. Years later, his widow said her late husband would have been disgusted at much of what Thomas Fleming had done with his publication. Guess she must be one of the rah-rah boys, or whatever.
    I do not think there is a structural reason Thomas Fleming was issuing press releases for Radovan Karadzic. That is just how he rolls. There is not a structural reason Claes Ryn’s discussions are not transposed into practical politics; he just lacks the skill set.
    While we are at it, there are ant heaps of people in this country who would never be called classical liberals. What you do not have is followers of Joseph de Maistre. I am not sure public discourse is terribly injured by that.

    Reply
  83. Grumpy

    What you do not have is followers of Joseph de Maistre. I am not sure public discourse is terribly injured by that.
    Hear hear

    Reply
  84. Grumpy

    Art Deco: I do not think there is a structural reason Thomas Fleming was issuing press releases for Radovan Karadzic.
    I had imagined it was TAC that pro-Serb. That was one reason I disliked it. Maybe I mixed it up with Chronicles. But it seems unlikely because I just looked at Chronicles for the first time in at the very least five years, as a consequence of this discussion.

    Reply
  85. Mac

    I will have to look up Joseph de Maistre.

    Reply
  86. Mac

    What’s the problem? Sounds like a pretty sharp guy to me. 🙂
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_de_Maistre

    Reply
  87. Rob G

    “While we are at it, there are ant heaps of people in this country who would never be called classical liberals. What you do not have is followers of Joseph de Maistre.”
    Sheesh. As if all Right-leaning critics of today’s faux-conservativism are crypto-monarchists. On the contrary, the majority of such critics are Burkean, broadly speaking. Of course the faux-cons have no time for Burke (never mind de Maistre) other than the occasional breezy contentless bit of lip service.
    “I suppose it’s almost inevitable for anyone who’s not a classical liberal to end up ranting in a corner”
    Mac, I think I’d amend that just a bit to “any conservative who’s not a classical liberal” — which may be what you intended in the first place.

    Reply
  88. Mac

    Well, actually I thought of that, and then I thought about libertarians, and, if there are any, liberals who are classical liberals, and thought they probably rant in corners, too.

    Reply
  89. Rob G

    True — what remains of the Old Left is just as marginalized as the traditionalist Right. The more doctrinaire sort of libertarian isn’t enamored with today’s conservatives, but the “lighter” type has been absorbed into the mainstream with the Tea Partiers (something I was afraid would happen when the T.P. first came to prominence).

    Reply
  90. Art Deco

    True — what remains of the Old Left is just as marginalized as the traditionalist Right.
    Come again? Michael Harrington died in 1989, Irving Howe in 1993, Penn Kemble in 2005, and Frank Zeidler in 2006. No, they do not have any successors. The actuarial tables devoured the old left.
    As if all Right-leaning critics of today’s faux-conservativism are crypto-monarchists. On the contrary, the majority of such critics are Burkean, broadly speaking. Of course the faux-cons have no time for Burke (never mind de Maistre) other than the occasional breezy contentless bit of lip service.
    Rubbish. Scott McConnell is not a ‘Burkean’. He is a screwball. An authentic Burkean critique of contemporary public affairs and at currents of starboard thought would take a special interest in
    a. George Gilder and a certain species of business literature;
    b. The libertarian nexus;
    c. Real estate developers and currents in town planning.
    Here is a sample of George Panichas writings:
    http://www.amazon.com/George-Andrew-Panichas/e/B001H6RRPC
    Here is Claes Ryn’s CV:
    http://politics.cua.edu/Information/Ryn/CV/cv.cfm
    I doubt either have written one sentence on urban development.
    Given that the most vigorous institutional expression of the alt-Right is the von Mises Institute and the most vigorous popular expression is Ron Paul’s campaigns, it is difficult to see these characters as antagonists of libertarianism.
    As for George Gilder, his is a very individual voice.

    Reply
  91. Louise

    Re: the de Maistre link
    Just going by the first paragraph, I quite liked him. I don’t know anything else about him so perhaps y’all can tell me what’s not to like.

    Reply
  92. Rob G

    “they do not have any successors. The actuarial tables devoured the old left.”
    To paraphrase a certain young woman from Georgia, “You can’t be any more marginalized than dead.”
    I only know McConnell’s name from Chronicles. An authentic Burkean critique with the qualifications you mention is active at Front Porch Republic, ISI, and Solidarity Hall.
    As for Panichas and Ryn, does every critic have to write on all subjects? If they didn’t write on urban development, who cares? Others have.
    The Mises Institute may be alt-Right, but obviously comes at it from a different direction than FPR. Ditto the Paulites. That the current conservative establishment is much more accepting of libertarians than it is of paleos and trads speaks volumes.

    Reply
  93. Art Deco

    No it does not ‘speak volumes’. The libertarian nexus is populated by intelligent men who have policy insights congruent to a degree with what others are promoting (and incongruent to a degree). The palaeo nexus has characters like Thomas Fleming and Bill Kauffman.
    Fleming at his best trafficks in ideas at an airy distance from topical questions of political economy. Fleming at his worst has apoplectic seizures about Slobodan Milosevic’s army being run out of Kosovo. Kauffman wants to re-argue the Mexican War; he’s a piece of performance art, not a serious social critic.
    Keep in mind in all this that the crew we are discussing is a coterie. The Rockford Institute has four salaried employees. The Howard Center, which is what is left of the working-papers-and-conferences aspect of the Rockford Institute has (last I checked) three. The National Humanities Institute (Claes Ryn et al) listed two salaried employees on its website at one time. The only activity left of the Rockford Institute’s portfolio is issuing Chronicles. The National Humanities Institute’s activities are exhausted by issuing the (lightly edited) Humanitas. You discuss two people and you discuss a large sample of the whole.
    Did I mention Samuel Francis, Thomas Fleming’s erstwhile right hand? A quondam historian of early modern England, he ended his days as the editor of the newsletter issued by the organization descended from the old white Citizens’ Councils. The there was the unfortunate Joseph Sobran…
    Did I mention the Taki crew – Steven Sailer, John Derbyshire, et al., who are one step in this direction from Jared Taylor and the American Renaissance crew?
    Lots of people are disgusted with the malicious aspect of contemporary public life and in particular how the left grants itself plenary indulgences, but they also do define what they have a mind to promote and what is chaff. Sorry, eugenicist blather, the Jew stuff, and the dregs of white supremacy are not part of the educational mission of most people.

    Reply
  94. Art Deco

    Just going by the first paragraph, I quite liked him. I don’t know anything else about him so perhaps y’all can tell me what’s not to like.
    Well, we have in this country a 400 year history of government by elected deliberative bodies. These in turn were chartered bodies in form inspired by medieval municipal corporations. Here is a discussion of the origins of London:
    http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a/records.aspx?cat=075-col_01#0
    So, no, having some latter-day answer to the Count d’Artois making public decisions in not traditional.

    Reply
  95. Art Deco

    As for Panichas and Ryn, does every critic have to write on all subjects? If they didn’t write on urban development, who cares? Others have.
    Who?

    Reply
  96. Rob G

    No it does not ‘speak volumes’
    Sorry, but I’m afraid it does. We’re not talking intellects here but ideologies. The Tea Party “lite libertarian” mentality fits in much more readily with that of pro-wealth, pro-business GOP mainstream Right, than does any traditional conservatism, Burkean or otherwise. That some full-bore libertarians are a thorn in the side of the GOP establishment matters little.
    “Who?”
    Philip Bess, Mark Mitchell, Patrick Deneen, to name three off the top of my head.
    “Sorry, eugenicist blather, the Jew stuff, and the dregs of white supremacy are not part of the educational mission of most people.
    Yep, and it’s a good thing too. Thankfully, you won’t find any of that at the sources I mentioned above. Of course, if you read them you’d know that.

    Reply
  97. Rob G

    To put it more bluntly, no one offering a Rightist critique of modern capitalism is welcome at the mainstream conservative table, unless their critique is limited to the problems of cronyism and/or “state capitalism.” The problems of consumerism, rootlessness, sprawl, pollution, cultural crassness, pornography, erosion of tradition, etc., MUST NOT in any way be linked to capitalism — that is verboten! The modern right is just as committed to this as the modern left is committed to sexual “liberty.” As I think Tony Esolen said, it’s the Party of the Wallet and the Party of the Zipper.

    Reply
  98. Rob G

    Louise, I don’t know much about de Maistre’s works but I believe that when he is read today it is as a counter-Enlightenment writer and a critic of the French Revolution.

    Reply
  99. Art Deco

    Philip Bess, Mark Mitchell, Patrick Deneen, to name three off the top of my head.
    The link to Dr. Deneen’s twenty page long vita is at the bottom. MEGO. Maybe you can find the umbrella.
    http://politicalscience.nd.edu/faculty/faculty-list/patrick-deneen/
    Mark Mitchell’s faculty page is here:
    http://www.phc.edu/MTMitchell.php
    The index to his most recent book is here:
    http://www.amazon.com/The-Politics-Gratitude-Community-Global
    /dp/1597976636#reader_1597976636
    (there are three (3) pages devoted to the new urbanism).
    And his topical commentary at Front Porch Republic is here and forward
    http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/page/14/?author=2
    I find one entry.
    Philip Bess is the real deal. However, you will note here
    http://architecture.nd.edu/people/faculty-directory/philip-bess/#cv
    That he has never published in a recognizable palaeo outlet.

    Reply
  100. Art Deco

    Thankfully, you won’t find any of that at the sources I mentioned above. Of course, if you read them you’d know that.
    You keep telling me to look over here and look over there. You have managed to rule out of discussion every publication and institute of the alt-Right other than ISI (which is not a sectarian organization and predates these factional squabbles by nearly thirty years) and Front Porch Republic, while at the same time attempting to appropriate an architecture professor at Notre Dame.

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  101. Art Deco

    To put it more bluntly, no one offering a Rightist critique of modern capitalism is welcome at the mainstream conservative table, unless their critique is limited to the problems of cronyism and/or “state capitalism.”
    Yes, but who is offering that and what is it worth? At this juncture, your bill of particulars amounts to a complaint that Republican pols and journalists are not reading Front Porch Republic. The trouble is, Front Porch Republic publishes little that illuminates contemporary social problems and nothing that illuminates how to get from here to there.

    Reply
  102. Rob G

    I’m not sure how sympathetic the paleos are to the Porchers, as I don’t read the former much anymore. I know there is some small amount of overlap between a few of the writers, but I wouldn’t call FPR a “paleo” outlet. Bess was a speaker at the first FPR conference a couple-three years back.
    There are, of course, the ISI types who are not really allied with the paleos, strictly speaking — Mark Henrie, Ted McAllister, Richard Gamble, etc. I find them much better reading than the Chronicles crowd.

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  103. Rob G

    Do they read Burke? Weaver, Kirk or Nisbet? How about Montgomery, Bradford and the Southern Conservatives? Voegelin? Albino Barrera? Amintore Fanfani? David Schindler, Brad Gregory, William Cavanaugh or Christopher Shannon? Tony Esolen? John Medaille or Wendell Berry? Phillip Blond or Jesse Norman?
    My complaint is not that they don’t read FPR, but that they won’t read anything that even sounds like FPR, because it subverts their raison d’etre.

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  104. Rob G

    “who is offering that and what is it worth?”
    It doesn’t matter. The critique is ruled out from the get-go based on its anti-capitalist content irrespective of who is offering it.

    Reply
  105. Mac

    I have relatively little interest in wrangling about the conflicts of personalities and ideas within conservatism, but I have to say I think this last comment of Rob’s is right on.

    Reply
  106. Art Deco

    Do they read Burke? Weaver, Kirk or Nisbet? How about Montgomery, Bradford and the Southern Conservatives? Voegelin? Albino Barrera? Amintore Fanfani? David Schindler, Brad Gregory, William Cavanaugh or Christopher Shannon? Tony Esolen? John Medaille or Wendell Berry? Phillip Blond or Jesse Norman?…My complaint is not that they don’t read FPR, but that they won’t read anything that even sounds like FPR, because it subverts their raison d’etre.
    To which ‘they’ are you referring? There is little doubt the editorial staff at National Review, including and especially Jonah Goldberg, are conversant with the first four names on your list, Wendell Berry, and Eric Voegelin. Ditto Anthony Esolen, who is actively writing in readily accessible outlets (and is not a political sectary). David Schindler’s work has been reviewed in National Review. John Medaille likely no as not worth their time. With regard to Commentary and The Weekly Standard, I would wager a different mix of writers. M.E. Bradford was a rank-and-file literary critic and literary criticism is not for everyone.
    And what of it? Academic and quasi-academic writings have small audiences and are never going to be anything but a modest subset of people interested in public affairs. And sorry, you do not see among the contributors or in the comboxes at Front Porch Republic or The American Conservative very much erudition. So what’s your beef?

    Reply
  107. Art Deco

    It doesn’t matter.
    Oh yes it does. You publish half-baked tripe and people do not listen. Get a clue.

    Reply
  108. Mac

    People listen to a great deal of half-baked tripe, and even pay for it.

    Reply
  109. Grumpy

    No, I agree with Art Deco. The reason there is almost no audience for ‘Russell Kirk conservativism’ is that people has an implicit or common sense intuition that it’s not ‘about’ anything that could really happen in the real America.
    Yes, people will look at rubbishy movies, say, or read novels which are half-baked tripe.
    But politics is supposed to be connected ‘to what we should do next’. It’s more like a manual or guide. And people do have the common sense not to be interested in a manual or guide which doesn’t connect to the real world.

    Reply
  110. Mac

    You have a point, a good one actually, but Art’s clear implication was that people reject it because it’s half-baked tripe.
    Kirk is not really even political in the usual sense of that term. I do think you put your finger on his real weakness–he carved out for himself a sort of undefined territory that’s neither politics nor religion nor literature, and it’s a little frustrating. One puts aside one of his books with an uneasy sense of something not too far removed from “so what?” because you don’t really know what if anything is being recommended. Or at least that’s the way I’ve sometimes felt, e.g. after reading The Conservative Mind.

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  111. Grumpy

    Politics is not really a wholly speculative science. It’s a practical science. Of course it rests on speculative truths.
    I think Art Dec is right to call it half-baked tripe, because anyone who doesn’t realize that politics is largely a practical science is going to spout tripe.
    This is quite a impolite thing to say, by the standards of this blog, but in this discussion in my opinion Art Dec has expressed himself in an annoying way and has been unnecessarily rude to Rob G (practically calling him an idiot at times), but is nonetheless largely right.

    Reply
  112. Mac

    But I don’t think Kirk is talking politics, really. It’s more just sort of a reverie about the state of culture and society. The ones I’ve come to think of as tripe-peddlers are the ones who are very down-to-earth and specific in their complaining, but really without much clue as to how things actually work and how they might be improved, and are essentially just striking poses. Occupy Wall Street is a colorful example, though there are voices on the right that are not so different in their fundamental position re the world as it is. I might grant a streak of this in Kirk, but I don’t think it’s the essential characteristic.
    “unnecessarily rude,” to say the least. It has been right at the limit of what I’m willing to allow.
    I am over-internetted and am going to get off the computer for the remaining hour or so before I go to sleep.

    Reply
  113. Art Deco

    I have nothing to say about Kirk. Literary criticism and ghost stories are not things I read. The ‘half-baked tripe’ consists of much of the content of Front Porch Republic. I do not wish to call anyone an idiot and was not the person who introduced the phrase ‘your typical GOP rah-boy’ into this discussion or elected to cast aspersions on Republican voters (“not very impressive”).

    This discussion has gone on way too long. I will close with three thoughts:
    1. The inchoate discontent of a certain circle is just that. It does not make for a strand of social thought.
    2. The personal should not be the political and one should not try to put a patina of civic engagement on one’s inner turmoil.
    3. Most people are not well informed about even obtrusive public issues. The Republic bumps and grinds forward in spite of that. People have lives.
    4. In point of fact, nearly everyone is ignorant of nearly everything worth knowing.
    5. Studying Alexis de Tocqueville is not going to render Prof. Dineen any more understanding of the problems with real property taxes than the great unwashed, your typical GOP rah-boy included.

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  114. Grumpy

    Art, I grant you you were not the only rude person, but even those of us who are not paleo-cons believe in chivalry.

    Reply
  115. Rob G

    “The reason there is almost no audience for ‘Russell Kirk conservativism’ is that people have an implicit or common sense intuition that it’s not ‘about’ anything that could really happen in the real America.”
    Ah, then the stalemate therefore seems to me between those who believe that politics leads culture and those who see culture as primary. If American conservatism espouses the former, one must then come to the same conclusion as C. Rossiter, namely that American conservatism is in no way Burkean, and hasn’t been at least since 1865. The Burkean stream is a minor backwater, and the rehabilitation of Burke by Kirk, Stanlis, etc., in the 50’s, partly in an attempt to demonstrate that there is more to conservatism than politics and economics, is at best the undamming of that backwater, and at worst a complete failure.
    I would disagree with Grumpy as to the cause of the lack of a Burke/Kirk audience, and agree again with Rossiter: it’s not because it’s not “about” anything practical, but because our culture has become almost entirely materialistic (in both senses) and non-materialist arguments can find no purchase. Richard Weaver, call your office.
    Given that, the term “conservatism” doesn’t really apply to the modern American political Right, because there seemingly is nothing it is really trying to conserve, culturally speaking. The culture will therefore continue to rot, and political measures, while perhaps ameliorating some symptoms of that rot, will not, because they cannot, do anything to cure the underlying disease.
    To put this complaint down as “the inchoate discontent of a certain circle” is both simplistic and insensitive. For myself, I fear mightily for my child and my (potential) grandchildren, seeing what kind of culture will be passed along to them. The GOP and its propaganda arm, the modern conservative mainstream, are doing practically nothing to prevent this from occurring, other than their (fully warranted) bitching about the debt being passed on to our posterity by Obamacare. What they do not see is that financial debt is, alas, not the only kind of debt there is.
    As for Art’s rudeness — no biggie. It’s what I’ve come to accept from a certain sort of “conservative.” They take critique of their ideology personally, and cannot help but respond via the thinly (or not so thinly) veiled ad hominem, no matter how “chivalrous” the opponent. I and other traditional conservatives run across this constantly, and have come to expect it.

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  116. Rob G

    This may be of interest. It’s rather lengthy, and somewhat difficult in style, but it’s a quite detailed rebuttal to various criticisms of Dreher’s ‘Crunchy Cons’ idea, by the erstwhile blogger Jeffrey Martin (‘Maximos’).
    http://web.archive.org/web/20060420104619/http:/www.enchiridion-militis.com/?p=51

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  117. Louise

    Thankyou, Art. I was just wondering if it was simply the whole American anti-monarchy thing, or if there were some other reason to dislike de Maistre.
    Louise, I don’t know much about de Maistre’s works but I believe that when he is read today it is as a counter-Enlightenment writer and a critic of the French Revolution.
    Thanks, Rob. Maybe I should read some of his work.

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  118. Rob G

    I wrote, “It doesn’t matter. The critique is ruled out from the get-go based on its anti-capitalist content irrespective of who is offering it.”
    Here is why, in the opinion of the aforementioned Jeff Martin:
    What is symptomatic of the contemporary Right is that past generations of conservatives, even once-lauded philosophers and intellectuals, are now written out of the Right, on the grounds that “their analyses are homologous with those of some leftists”. One could demonstrate homologies between the following thinkers, not complete, but partial, and significant: Weaver, Chambers, Voegelin, Strauss, Southern Agrarians, Sheldon Wolin (a leftist), Patrick Deneen, Terry Eagleton (Marxist), John Milbank (Radical Orthodoxy, somewhat left), and others. So, what the Right is now saying is that, for example, a Voegelin-esque critique of Lockeanism and capitalism is verboten, because Wolin’s critique is 75% similar. Of course, this is not said literally; it’s all much cruder than that: anything that sounds leftist, by questioning Actually-Existing Conservatism and its power structures and ideological formations, is banished.
    In other words, you can be Voegelin or Weaver or Nisbet or anyone else with even considerable confirmed conservative bona fides, and still be written off if your politico-economic thought sounds “leftist.” The origins of the critique are unimportant.

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  119. Art Deco

    Rob G, the only people Jeff Martin could possibly be referring to are..
    1. Academics; or
    2. Journalists who write on the subject of intellectual history.
    When did Victor Davis Hanson or Jonah Goldberg “write out” anyone as overly similar to Sheldon Wolin? He is referring to characters in his imagination, not to working commentators.

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  120. Rob G

    I’ve had numerous conversations with intelligent, fairly well-read mainstream conservatives, both online and face-to-face, who have exactly that response when I bring up any critique of capitalism emanating from the Right: it is summarily dismissed as “liberalism.” I’ve seen Martin and others engage conservatives of a higher pay grade than I have, including some fairly well-known ones, and get the same response.
    I’m sure that academics and higher-brow journalists might be more tolerant of a bit of ideological diversity, but they are not the ones acting as gatekeepers. I don’t follow right wing journalism much, but I can’t think of an instance in the moderate past where a substantive critique of modern capitalism from a Rightist source was entertained/engaged. Who, for instance, among the mainstream Right wingers in any sort of spotlight has read Bell’s ‘Cultural Contradictions’? I doubt that most of them have even heard of it.

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  121. Rob G

    The most recent example I can think of is the brouhaha over ‘Crunchy Cons.’ Given the establishment’s reaction to that relatively innocuous little book, I can’t imagine what might happen if, say, an American counterpart to Phillip Blond came out with something like Red Tory over here.

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  122. Marianne

    On a completely different note — I agree that The Atlantic has become a pretty much worthless magazine, but then they go and surprise by publishing Eve Tushnet: “I’m Gay, but I’m Not Switching to a Church That Supports Gay Marriage”.
    This is probably just on its website, not in the actual magazine, but still…

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  123. Art Deco

    The most recent example I can think of is the brouhaha over ‘Crunchy Cons.’ Given the establishment’s reaction to that relatively innocuous little book, I can’t imagine what might happen if, say, an American counterpart to Phillip Blond came out with something like Red Tory over here.
    The ‘most recent example’ was published seven years ago. The ‘brouhaha’ in question consisted of Dreher’s erstwhile colleagues at National Review setting up a public blog and critiquing various aspects of it. There was a Catholic site run by various obscure people called Contra Crunchy. Dreher stepped on many a toe over the years, so people are less inclined to cut him slack. The prevailing reaction was humor. This is one example:
    http://reason.com/archives/2006/06/06/god-guts-and-granola
    Dreher makes a habit of being fuzzy-headed, sanctimonious, and, in this case, pretentious. No one would expect such a book to receive positive reviews (though the people who shelled out for it seemed to have enjoyed it).
    (While we are at it, how do Kathryn Jean Lopez and the pseudonymous ‘pauli’ qualify as ‘the Establishment’? Why do they so qualify and Patrick Deneen does not?)

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  124. Mac

    I saw that last night, Marianne, but have not had a chance to read it yet. It was a pleasant surprise.

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  125. Rob G

    “The prevailing reaction was humor. This is one example”
    One expects such a response from the greed-glorifying faux-cons at Reason.
    This two-parter from historian Walter McDougall is interesting along these lines.
    http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2011/07/the-challenge-confronting-conservatives-pt-i/
    http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2011/07/sustaining-a-republic-of-hustlers-pt-ii/
    The Pulitzer Prize winner gives a bit of his conservative history and his own experience of voicing challenges to the conservative establishment.
    But I’m sure Art will find McDougall to be a “second rate popular historian who never published anything of merit, and why did this piece originally appear in Humanitas, which no one reads,” yada-yada-yada.

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  126. Mac

    We can quibble about specific people and specific reactions, but that there is a general tendency in mainstream conservatism toward a knee-jerk defense of capitalism seems pretty plain to me. In my experience it manifests itself in a false dichotomy: either you accept a fairly strong free-market-ism, loath to question the judgment of the market or suggest external constraints on it (beyond enforcement of contracts, penalties for fraud etc.), or you’re a socialist and/or a statist. Which is not to say that those who attack capitalism-as-we-know-it are always right or that they have a plan for a workable alternative.

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  127. Rob G

    Exactly. I bowed out of one conservative website where I had commented for several years because two of the main posters there, one of them with a PhD in philosophy no less, repeatedly referred to me as a crypto-Leftist, a paleo-lib, etc., despite the fact that I was in 100% agreement with them on the social issues, and had often railed long and hard against the statism of the Left. My questioning of capitalism trumped all that.

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  128. Art Deco

    But I’m sure Art will find McDougall to be a “second rate popular historian who never published anything of merit, and why did this piece originally appear in Humanitas, which no one reads,” yada-yada-yada.
    1. My assessment of the first article is that McDougall has episodes where he is unable to hold a coherent train of thought together. It’s a binge of free association. If he wants to do that, he should talk to a shrink.

    2. There are two noticeable fallacies in the second, or two noticeable sets. One is that history as a discipline can do the work of sociology or anthropology. It cannot and he should drop the notion that it can. The other is the banal rubbish about ‘neoconservatives’ which has been done to death in this forum (tinged with spite over critical book reviews) and his rather fallacious policy assessments.

    Kind of a disappointment given his professional accolades.

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  129. Art Deco

    One other thing. An annoying fellow on the contributor list of the Institute on Religion on Public Life has offered that much of contemporary political talk is a set of self-validating narratives. I expect better than that from old men on college faculties. I didn’t get it.

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  130. Art Deco

    but that there is a general tendency in mainstream conservatism toward a knee-jerk defense of capitalism seems pretty plain to me. In my experience it manifests itself in a false dichotomy: either you accept a fairly strong free-market-ism, loath to question the judgment of the market or suggest external constraints on it
    1. Practical politics as undertaken by working politicians is not that way. There are a whole mess of mercantilist measures and Republican pols are generally fairly ineffective about excising any of them. Principled working politicians are invariably confronting someone’s political property right. There are invariably imbedded (if not necessarily optimal) regulatory regimes in realms of market failure.
    2. Again, self-validating narratives (at the worst) or political rhetoric that is not altogether prosaic. People paint in broad strokes.
    3. There are actually not an unlimited number of ways to organize an economic sector. You have command and control, you have markets, and you have attempts to juxtapose the two or manufacture hybrids. The last of these often ends badly: the recent trouble in the financial sector, the condition of higher education, the condition of the medical sector show some problems.
    4. There is also a philanthropic or donor economy. This tends to be very small; conceivably it could be more substantial where you have high levels of civic mobilization. Not every place can be Israel though (and remember that palaeo’s tend to despise Israel).

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  131. Grumpy

    I took a Dominican from the Ecole Biblique (in Jerusalem) to see ‘Mud’, a movie recommended by Rob G. Both of us thought it was an excellent film.

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  132. Mac

    I think I missed it, if it showed here at all.
    131 comments. I was thinking this might be a record-setter. But I’m pretty sure the great Ayn Rand thread of some years ago was over 200.

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  133. Mac

    Uncharacteristically early for this morning’s sessions, I just read the Eve Tushnet piece. It’s really, really fine.

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  134. Mac

    Hmm, apparently I forgot to click ‘post’ on a comment in which I complained that I seem to have missed Mud when it was here, if it was.

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  135. Grumpy

    I liked it. I put it on my FB.

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  136. Rob G

    Glad you liked ‘Mud’, Grumpy. Both the friend I saw it with and I thought it was one of the better films we’d seen in quite a while. He felt it was easily as good as any of the films that were up for the best picture Oscar last year, possibly even better.
    The director, Jeff Nichols, is a guy in his mid-thirties who’s made only 3 films so far. All three are excellent, the other two being ‘Shotgun Stories’ (2007) and ‘Take Shelter’ (2011). They both feature Michael Shannon in lead roles — the latter was an Oscar-caliber performance, imo, and I thought it was a crime that he didn’t get a nom.

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  137. Grumpy

    I enjoyed Take Shelter. I saw it last year on the plane home, going to my mother’s funeral. So I didn’t want to see it again right away. But I could see it again some time, and I’d like to do that. Of course I didn’t notice that the lead was the same in both movies.
    We both thought the music in Mud was really good.

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  138. Grumpy

    I put Shotgun Stories in my cart. I noticed some of the reviews said it had a good use of music. It must be characteristic of this director.

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  139. Rob G

    Yes, all three of Nichols’ films have featured good music used well. If you like this sort of film, another good one is ‘Small Town Murder Songs,’ an indie Canadian picture about a small town sheriff, trying to live a newfound reformed life, who has to investigate a crime that brings back to the surface some unsavory elements of his past. Great music in this one too.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VB22oo_f8g0

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  140. Rob G

    Yeah, all his movies feature good music.
    If you like movies of that sort you’ll want to check this one out:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VB22oo_f8g0

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  141. Rob G

    Nichols’ movies all feature great music.
    If you like that sort of film you’ll want to check this one out:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fONM50ExpU

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  142. Rob G

    All Nichols’ films feature good music well used.
    If you like this sort of film you’ll want to see Small Town Murder Songs, a Canadian indie picture I mentioned here once before, I think. You can check out the trailer on Youtube.

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  143. Grumpy

    Yes, I watched Small Town Murder Songs with a group of grad students at my house at the start of this year. All of them loved it – great movie. I think in the summer you recommended it, and I showed the trailer to some students, and we agreed it would be a good one to watch.

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  144. Mac

    The spam catcher is acting up again. When one comment disappeared, I thought I had failed to click ‘post’. When the next one disappeared, I realized something was wrong, but was traveling all day and couldn’t log in to check. When I did this evening, I found mine and several of Rob’s. I thought they had that fixed.

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  145. Grumpy

    Mac, Mud is worth getting on DVD. It’s rare for a good movie to be in the AMC places in South Bend. We watch art movies on campus and action movies in the AMC. This movie went across the divide. It was at the AMC long enough for me to catch it – I wanted to watch it for several weeks but I was too busy. It had good enough audiences to stay at the AMC for long enough for me to catch up with it. It has 9 out of 10 on Rotten Tomatoes, or it did when I checked. Its really good – on the border between art and popular, which is where great movies are, usually, in my opinion.

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  146. Rob G

    sorry about the multiple posts — when I was posting them it appeared that the thing wasn’t taking them, so I kept trying. Won’t do that again!

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  147. Mac

    Not your problem–it was the spam catcher misbehaving. Usually I try to keep an eye on that, but it had stopped happening for a while, and I was out of pocket last week.

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  148. Mac

    Well, I just found Mud showing at a semi-local theater–it’s about 45 minutes away. Can’t think how I would get there before next weekend, because it’s in the opposite direction from where I work. Maybe if it’s still there at the weekend…

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  149. Grumpy

    http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/mud_2012/

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  150. Mac

    The spam catcher caught my 5:26 comment above, in which I accused the spam catcher of misbehaving. I only just now released it.

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  151. Mac

    “…on the border between art and popular, which is where great movies are…”
    Interesting observation. I might half-agree–only half because most of the movies I think are great are pretty much on the arty end of the scale.

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  152. Grumpy

    If you look at the amounts grossed on Rotten T, Mud is near the bottom of the scale.
    But I think there is something in my point, because movies are a popular art form. And an unpopular movie seems to me to fail by the criterion of the art form. I would grant a few exceptions – if you want Bergmann or Tree of Life or whatever (I like the Dardennes). But in general, I would stand by the idea that the really good movies are neither wholly artistic nor wholly populist, but at some median point between the two.

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  153. Louise

    131 comments. I was thinking this might be a record-setter. But I’m pretty sure the great Ayn Rand thread of some years ago was over 200.
    Janet’s undead threads don’t count in this?

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  154. Mac

    I’m not disagreeing, just not entirely sure. Give me some examples of a great movie by this standard.

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  155. Grumpy

    Casablanca
    The African Queen
    Almost anything with Humphrey Bogart in it
    Manhatten, Annie Hall
    The Bicycle Thieves (most Italian Neo-Realist was popular in its day – Ok I made that up, but I bet it was, quite popular)
    Mononoke
    Legally Blonde

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  156. Grumpy

    Quite a lot of Hitchcock movies

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  157. Grumpy

    Don’t all the French art movie crowd say how they adore Westerns?

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  158. Grumpy

    Apocalypto

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  159. Mac

    Well…I’ve seen most of those in your first list, a fair amount of Hitchcock, but not Apocalypto, and it sort of depends on what you mean by “great.” I’d say Casablanca, for instance, is a great movie in the same way I’d say Revolver is a great album. But there’s another level of music that Revolver doesn’t belong in, and another level of movie that Casablanca doesn’t belong in. There are very very few movies in that other category, though. All I can think of right offhand are the very best Bergmans.
    I think I’ve mentioned before that I don’t quite get why Hitchcock is considered so great, though I do like his work.
    Legally Blonde?!?!

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  160. Marianne

    It’s been a long time since I’ve watched it, but I remember thinking when I first saw it that Jean de Florette was one of the best movies I’d ever seen. And I think it fits that being “on the border between art and popular” standard.

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  161. Robert Gotcher

    So, a great movie is like Arthur Fiedler conducting the Boston Pops?

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  162. Grumpy

    Jean de Florette is a perfect example.

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  163. Grumpy

    Maybe Babette’s Feast.
    Did you notice on “The Bicycle Thieves” – it’s one of my best egs

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  164. Mac

    Heh. No, that’s the great-in-one-sense-but-not-another movie.
    Jean de Florette and its companion together make a masterpiece, or so I thought exactly 6 years ago.

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  165. Mac

    “heh” was to Robert.
    Yes, Babbette’s Feast would make the “great” category. I haven’t seen The Bicycle Thieves (I thought it was Thief, or is that a different movie?). I know it’s considered a classic but I’ve never gotten around to it.

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  166. Grumpy

    To me, TBT is one of the most touching films I’ve seen. I also like Rome Open City and Shoe Shine, though they are not in the same class.

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  167. Mac

    I’m pretty sure I have it either in my Netflix queue or recorded from TCM. I’ll have to bump it up.

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  168. Grumpy

    No it is thieves. This chap who needs his bike to work has his bike stolen so he steals someone elses and is caught and humiliated in front of his young son. That’s the whole story. Sorry Rob G, I know you cannot abide spoilers!

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  169. Mac

    There’s not a “Thieves” on Netflix, but there’s a “Thief.”

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  170. Grumpy

    Wiki
    Bicycle Thieves (Italian: Ladri di biciclette), also known as The Bicycle Thief, is director Vittorio De Sica’s 1948 story of a poor father searching post-World War II Rome for his stolen bicycle, without which he will lose the job which was to be the salvation of his young family.
    Ladri is plural in Italian.
    I can remember my father commenting on the title – he thought the movie was about just the one bicycle thief, and that the plural was wrong.

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  171. Mac

    Ah. I was wondering how their could be two classic Italian movies with such similar names.

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  172. Paul

    That just sounds too depressing.
    Where does “Au revoir les enfants” fall on the scale?

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  173. Mac

    Well…that question sort of requires that I admit the fundamentally arbitrary nature of my distinction, because I would put it in the Art category, but not necessarily in the Great category. The Art vs. Popular distinction is really pretty hard to defend, except maybe at the extremes. But anyway “Au revoir” is a very, very good movie.

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  174. Grumpy

    I thought of putting Au Revoir in, but then I thought maybe it was just a personal favourite.

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  175. Mac

    It’s been some time since I saw it and I don’t remember it very clearly, but I do remember thinking it was very good.

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  176. Rob G

    My five favorite movies all-time are (no particular order):
    Lynch — Mulholland Dr.
    Hitchcock — Vertigo
    Leone — Once Upon a Time in the West
    Kurosawa — Ran
    Malick — Tree of Life
    The Malick is probably the one true art film of the bunch, but the other four are borderline art/popular, I’d say.
    I think it’s also the case that some older films may not have been consider “art” when they were released, but have gained that status over the years. I recently watched John Ford’s ‘The Searchers’ and ‘The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,’ and Kazan’s ‘East of Eden.’ All three of those were released as “popular” films, but in retrospect there’s no doubt that there’s a true artistic component to them, as opposed to most of your run-of-the-mill westerns or dramas of the 50s/60s.

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  177. Mac

    The only one in your top 5 that might be in mine is ‘Tree of Life’. I do like ‘Mulholland’ quite a lot, but not at the top 5 level. I haven’t seen ‘Ran’ but on the basis of other Kurosawa I’ve seen I don’t think it would be in the group. I’m actually not 100% sure I’ve seen ‘Vertigo’–I get it mixed up with ‘North by Northwest’–but I think I have.
    Of the other three you mention, I’ve only seen ‘Liberty Valance’ but I didn’t think that highly of it. Although your point is valid–there is a true artistic component in it, and a lot of those old movies that may not have been recognized at the time. I find this especially true of noir, but that may just be a reflection of my taste.

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  178. Paul

    I really like Kurosawa, but Ran just seemed to be a lot of blood and shouting.
    Is Mulholland Dr. the lesbian vampire one?

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  179. Mac

    Lesbian, yes; vampires, no.

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  180. Grumpy

    The only Kurosawa I have seen is Ikiru, as recommended to me, for my ‘What is a Person’ class by Ryan.
    I thought Rob G would agree with my point, because most of the films he’s recommended on here are neither straight art films nor the biggest box office hits, but on the intersection – eg The Machinist.

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  181. Grumpy

    I thought also that many films of the 1940s which then were called popular films would now be classified as ‘art films’, eg the Westerns.

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  182. Mac

    By the way, if y’all are having any problem, or are tired, of getting to the end of this thread to post/read a new comment, we can switch the discussion to the most recent post on Film as Art.

    Reply

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