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In recent decades – when conservatism has been 'compassionate,' 'big government,' 'heroic,' and other such adjectives that devour the noun – its antibodies have broken down.
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| Chris Matthews: In the NBC-Wall Street Journal poll, just 22 percent believe this country is on the right track. Mayor Giuliani, how do we get back to Ronald Reagan’s morning in America?
Rudy Giuliani: We get back to it with optimism …
- Exchange from a debate between Republican presidential candidates at the Reagan Library, Simi Valley, California, May 3, 2007.
Pure and utter nonsense. Doubly so coming from Rudy Giuliani, perhaps the hardest-nosed public official in modern memory. Giuliani didn’t wish away New York City’s record-high crime rates, nor did he stop Gotham’s economic decline by handing out chrysanthemums to Manhattan schoolchildren. And for that matter, Ronald Reagan didn’t end the Cold War by having a case of Norman Vincent Peale books shipped to the Kremlin.
Rather, Giuliani as mayor – and Reagan as president – were energized by dispassion. Both coolly and rationally assessed the situation before them. Both deployed the means necessary to reverse a failing government despite intense political opposition. And both emerged victorious and (eventually) vindicated. Optimism was an effect, not a cause, of success.
That’s part of the critique leveled in “We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism,” the new book written by National Review’s eccentric resident malcontent, John Derbyshire (as Derb himself might appreciate, I mean neither “eccentric” nor “malcontent” as pejoratives).
In his pessimist’s manifesto, Derbyshire claims that weightless rhetoric and boundless attempts to remake the nature of man are to be expected from liberalism – a creed too aspirational to be empirical. Liberals thought John Lennon’s “Imagine” a landmark of non-fiction, after all.
There was a time when conservatism was generally immune to such temptations. But in recent decades – when conservatism has been “compassionate,” “big government,” “heroic,” and other such adjectives that devour the noun – its antibodies have broken down. As Derbyshire notes, elements of the right have spent the last decade touting universal homeownership, envisioning a future where every child is above average (think about that phrase for a minute), and promising an end to tyranny worldwide. Should this trend continue unabated, future GOP platforms will call for a repeal of the laws of physics.
To be sure, Derbyshire’s particular brand of sobriety may alienate more conservatives than it attracts. He’s dubious about the value of women’s suffrage, doesn’t have much use for religion beyond its role as a moral lubricant, and is decidedly gloomy about the future of race relations (many of his other complaints – the death of art, the cult of “diversity,” the excesses of teachers’ unions – are much closer to the conservative mainstream).
But his broader point about political seriousness is well taken. As an analytical response to tangible realities, hope can be justifiable. As a disposition untethered from facts, it’s a hallucinogen. And while conservatism has often been vilified for being too pessimistic about the possibility for change, critics fail to note the temperate optimism implicit in the idea that the status quo is not often as bad as it seems.
These will be invaluable lessons for the next generation of conservative leaders. Americans writ large may not be policy wonks, but they know that you cannot spend your way to prosperity, protect a nation through apologies, or expand any man’s stock of freedom by contracting another man’s. They don’t resent difficult choices as much as they resent being lied to about their reality. If conservatism insists on a modifier, “mature” might be a good place to start.
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