Matthew Yglesias linked to an article in the Atlantic about how John McCain is a Burkean conservative. Personally, I think it's trying too hard.
Perhaps, just perhaps, he isn't a neocon. But it isn't metered change he's doing, it's pandering. The reason he's for the tax cuts now is because it will get him votes. Same reason why he voted against the anti-torture bill. It isn't that he philosophically opposes changes and restrictive reforms, he's just more spineless than we give him credit for.
Yes, the James Dobsons and Rudy Giulianis of the American right aren't real conservatives. Yes, what the Republican party needs to get it back on some kind of philosophical path is more Burke. But John McCain just isn't the guy. He's a maverick, remember? He stands up for what he believes in, even if it isn't the norm! Granted, John McCain is as much a maverick as Mike Gravel is a libertarian, but conservatives (authentic or otherwise) can't have it both ways.
The way I see it, the Republican party has three directions they can go:
1. Neoconservatism. Like Reagan with a sadistic edge. Low taxes for the rich, strong military presence in every country between Egypt and India, and a centralized government doing whatever the hell it wants with its people, resulting in generations of debt, broken alliances, and wholly useless moral "highground."
2. Federalism. Starve Washington, let the libertarians run free in the streets, and kick back as the poor of America rise up and bring the long-awaited Proletarian revolution.
3. Real conservatism. Elitism. The kind of thing Burke wanted- social conservatism, economic protectionism, and a heavy dose of aesthetic power plays. This direction is actually impossible.
These options all have some stuff in common, and McCain has to an extent flirted with all of them without commiting to one. Intriguingly, this is one of the things that makes him so appealing to moderates. They don't know what kind of a conservative he is, so they can't be sure of all the terrible things he'd most likely do. He might invade a country, but he might not be a neocon. He might gut welfare and education and social security, but he might not be a small government libertarian. He might purely maintain the status quo and waste everyone's time talking a big game about America versus the ideological forces of evil. Is he John? Is he President McCain? Or is he J.S. McCain III? Hopefully, time will never tell.
In any case, he's no Edmund Burke, and he's still a bad candidate.
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3 comments:
Burke is great, but beyond the whole "founder of modern conservatism" thing I don't really understand the right's obession with him. American conservatism is not Burkean, nor should it be. The only way one can consider the American Revolution and the fundamental tenets of Americanism to be "conservative" is by accepting that America was never feudal Europe. Failing to understand this, Rauch is forced to seriously misrepresent Burke to fit his ideas more closely to those of American conservatism ("The Burkean outlook takes individual rights seriously, and understands that civic order serves no purpose if its result is oppression or misery." um?).
I'd personally like to see the Republicans try option two. Jefferson would approve.
You're right, American conservatism isn't Burkean, but I think it should be. As of now, the biggest uniting factor is that American conservatives think that they're right and that everyone else is wrong.
It should be...why exactly? Elitism is un-American and just not politically viable. Intellectuals can masturbate to Burke all they want but that doesn't change a thing. If you think conservatives need a uniting factor, how about individual rights? And conserving the ideology that drove the American revolution (yes, property). This is totally possible, and actually conservative.
And I have to ask, what is the biggest uniting factor of American liberalism? Besides Stephen Colbert, of course.
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