it would be a good idea to acknowledge that water is not always benign. (Think of the fisherman whose boat founders in the North Atlantic, the lobster thrown into the pot, the child lost in the freezing rain.)

The City of New Orleans destroyed in a flood!

One of the central flaws in Andrew Sullivan's blogging is the continual projection of some European conceit of conservatism onto the far messier and problematic United States. Seriously, does he really think Reagan had heard of Burke and Oakeshott, let alone read them? Despite twenty-odd years in this country, his inability to grasp the chimera of American conservatism is genuinely perplexing.

Sullivan would argue, of course, that Americans theocrats and plutocrats are not now, and never have been, true conservatives. I'd give him the benefit of the doubt on that one . . . if we were living in, say, London. My extended Baptist family proudly define themselves as authentic conservatives, and they wouldn't give a flying rat's ass about Burke, whom they've never even heard of.

Martin: I take it you didn't click the first two links ...

I enjoy Sullivan's writing, and read his blog every day, but when he rhapsodizes about how great Conservatism is, I wonder what he's talking about, since it bears no relation to the Conservatism we've had in this country for several decades.

At some point, you have to own up to the fact that Conservatism--in this country at least--has fundamentally changed, and those who keep thinking its coming back are dreaming.

Conservatism = Palin, Joe The Plumber, Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Eric Cantor. Deal with it.

It sounds like Zen to me. "No mind"

Isn't conservatism supposed to be great because it's concrete and absolute instead of squishy like liberalism? Whatever happened to moral certitude? Does Sullivan actually hang out with real conservatives or does he just imagines them in his mind?

Nb: Sullivan did not write this. He took it from someone who is, according to his bio, a senior at Patrick Henry University.

Conservatism is a mental illness.

And let's get real here (accurate). Sullivan invented himself as a "conservative voice" back when it was popular to go around announcing how much of a conservative you were. Hell, even Neil Young was going around in 2001 praising Bush and conservative values.

Sullivan is an archtypical example of those fact-free voters who gave the White House to the Bush administration (twice), supported everything they did until it became so whacked and toxic even they couldn't take it any more and then proclaimed that 'that kind' of policy wasn't reeeaally 'the true way'.

Conservatism isn't the calm between the waves. It has an active agenda and a biphasic philosophy. The "for public consumption" philosophy is in tatters right now given the skewed results of 'conservative' policies over the last 20 years and that is what Sullivan is trying to reinvent now. But the guiding principles have been and will ever be to maintain the transfer and accumulation of wealth and power to those best able to use it.

Anything other picture Sullivan tries to paint is at once an excuse for his previous position and an attempt to redefine the argument. The question is "Does anyone care what he thinks?"

Hizoy said:
Martin: I take it you didn't click the first two links ...

Of course not, it would slow down my snarking;>

If water were universally poisonous to everything it touches, then I might agree with the premise of the concept. However, water seems more of an "anti-Conservatism" model---because no matter the container in which it is placed; no matter the political spin to which it is subjected---it is still "water"---and not even ten thousand thousand Rush Limbaughs can change that one tiny fragment of a fact.

Water, rather than being Conservatism, is Conservatism's doom....

Andrew Sullivan 's ben slipping his head in the glue bag. If anyone can apply that pseudo intellectual blathering that he made as to somehow having something to do with conservativism of the last thirty years than monkeys will fly out of Sullivan's well used ass.

And here he never once said "all wet".

Bravo, Hilzoy. Some excellent links exposing conservatism for what it really is. Hat's off to you!

"Conservatism" in America today is a fake, phony, trumped-up, scripted, teleprompted, talk-radio-programmed, corporate-sponsored, one-dimensional cartoon comic-book pseudo-ideology, created by greedy ultra-rich oligarchs to manipulate weak-minded, ignorant, mean-spirited Ditto-Head dupes into thinking, doing and saying whatever the oligarchs need a zombie army to think, do or say at any given moment.

In short, "conservatism" is whatever Rush Limbaugh tells his Ditto-Heads it is on any given day. It doesn't matter if he completely contradicts himself from one day to the next -- his followers will mindlessly believe whatever he tells them.

The only real content of actual, on-the-ground conservatism is hatred of "liberals" -- just as the only real content of the pseudo-ideology of mid-1930s German brownshirts was hatred of "Jews".

There is no more perfect example of the phoniness of "conservatism" than the attitude of "conservatives" towards anthropogenic global warming. It is a universal article of faith among "conservatives" that global warming is a "hoax" driven by "liberals".

This notion of course deserves no other response than a loud sidesplitting guffaw of contempt, given the realities of climate science.

Of course, global warming is a scientific issue, not an "ideological" issue. But the fossil fuel corporations have used the corporate-owned "conservative" media to tell all the mentally-enslaved Ditto-Heads that global warming -- and climate science itself -- is "liberal", so they slavishly and obediently hate it.

The corporate ruling class can nowadays take any old piece of propagandistic idiocy, no matter how transparently fraudulent, no matter how mind-numbingly stupid, and brand it "conservative" -- and they know that they will immediately have legion of brainwashed Ditto-Heads at their disposal, like remote-controlled robots.

I can hardly imagine a sentence less true of American conservatism than: "conservatism (hopefully) does not pretend to know the definitive way".

And the real danger is that we never hold the idea responsible for anything that is done in its name. Conservatives today think they can simply wipe the slate clean and re-boot their movement by re-defining conservatism in a way that avoids any association at all with the conservative Republican governments since 1994. And in the most extreme cases conservatives like Gingrich have also tried to lay at the feet of the new Obama administration the worst failures of the conservative George W. Bush by creating an implicit "Bush-Obama" continuity that is an explicit piece of nonsense.

Actually, if take the word "conservatism" out of the meditation what you have is the Taoist belief of wu wei. Some of Lundy's language is almost verbatim (if such a thing is possible through translation) Taoist scripture.

So in principle, what Lundy suggests is perfectly reasonable - what bearing it has on liberal philosophy vs conservative philosophy escapes me entirely.

As has been pointed out, conservatism is what conservatism does, and by that measure Lundy's meditation misses the mark entirely.

Jake

Actually, this sounds like some drunk college conservative ran the Tao Te Ching through a blender.

That might be the definition of "conservatism." But if so, then today's dominant conservatism fits the definition of "reactionarism." In fact, I would even argue that today's liberalism fits this definition much, much better.

I could go with the blender one. It fits well with Occam's Razor.

Chuck Norris is "formless" like water: he takes the shape of his conditions, but always remains the same. This is why Russell Kirk calls Chuck Norris the "negation of ideology" in The Politics of Prudence. It is precisely the formlessness of Chuck Norris which gives him his vitality. Left alone, the spirit of Chuck Norris is essentially what T.S. Eliot calls the "stillness between two waves of the sea" in "Little Gidding" of his Four Quartets. Chuck Norris is both like water and the stillness between the waves -- the waves are not the water acting, but being acted upon; stillness is the default state of Chuck Norris:

Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always --
A condition of complete simplicity

Like the Greek concept of kairos -- acting in the right way, for the right reasons, at the right moment -- this sort of waiting is simply careful Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris is responsive, reactionary, reserved. Chuck Norris waits. Perhaps this is why Chuck Norris is most needed in the modern age of mobility. Being careful, and above all patient is crucial to doing something right. Realizing that one does not know the best way of doing anything guarantees not that one will find the best way, but that one might not find the worst way. The same principle applies to knowledge: Chuck Norris (hopefully) does not pretend to know the definitive way, but rather professes the virtue of ignorance with the quiet hope of finding knowledge.

It's also like writing about Catholicism as though it stopped at the Inquisition and didn't develop further. Did England cease to develop beyond the Age of Elizabeth when persecution of Catholics was rampant? Why not use this analogy? It's just as apt. Your bias is showing, Hilzoy. Between you and Steve, what a narrow website this is becoming.

Sullivan should have thought out his metaphor a bit more as water is something humans must hold their breath in when fully immersed. And, in such a circumstance, drowning is always the option when one tries to breathe within it!

Yes, conservatism is like water - a healthy prescription enough to sustain oneself is a good thing, but the ocean of our current form of conservatism is engulfing the unassuming, and causing the modern deluge drowning out any reasonable discourse among its followers. -Kevo

impartial I generally wouldn't defend Hilzoy but your completely full of it. Catholicism and England didn't make those ridiculous statements tryig to equate a Zen state to there present day condition.

Today's "conservatism" is so far on the right that the conservatives of the past would call it "fascism." It's become so unhooked from any reality that we all need a new term for how these people think. Other than insane, of course.

American conservatism is quite like water, and its practitioners want to strap you to a board and force it into your lungs.

Winddancer,

What is so insane about the desire for broad individual freedoms and limited government -- were our country's founding fathers also insane?

The irony in the current political environment is both conservative and liberals would oppose corporate bailouts. It is the in-power administration (Republican then Democratic) most interested in protecting the powerful elites.

Can anyone help me understand this dichotomy?

G.K. Chesterton gives a much better understanding of the way conservatism really works than the navel-gazing poppycock Sully linked to:

We have remarked that one reason offered for being a progressive is that things naturally tend to grow better. But the only real reason for being a progressive is that things naturally tend to grow worse. The corruption in things is not only the best argument for being progressive; it is also the only argument against being conservative. The conservative theory would really be quite sweeping and unanswerable if it were not for this one fact.

But all conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change. If you leave a white post alone it will soon be a black post. If you particularly want it to be white you must be always painting it again; that is, you must be always having a revolution. Briefly, if you want the old white post you must have a new white post.

But this which is true even of inanimate things is in a quite special and terrible sense true of all human things. An almost unnatural vigilance is really required of the citizen because of the horrible rapidity with which human institutions grow old. It is the custom in passing romance and journalism to talk of men suffering under old tyrannies. But, as a fact, men have almost always suffered under new tyrannies; under tyrannies that had been public liberties hardly twenty years before.

People, people. Let's stop and think a bit. The conservatism mentioned in the article and what passes for conservatism in the US since Ronny Raygun are not, and never were in any way, connected. We haven't had anything really resembling conservatism in my lifetime. What we have had instead is a oligopoly run by people with greater or lesser totalitarian instincts. Hence we have the Dick being described as a conservative, the Lush and Co., Inc. being described as conservative, Rep. Boehnehead and all the little boehneheads being considered to be conservative.

There is no possible way that these people can actually be considered conservative, so let's not get all bent out of shape by the analogy. Real conservatism CAN be described as being like water - formless, creativeless. The dorks going by the name now aren't even pale shadows of the concept. They're made of a completely different material.

"Conservatism sours like the mighty Eagle egg when left in the sun, and rots from the head like the mighty fish."

If you're going to spout gibberish why not go for it?

"I don't think there's an atom of meaning in it."

-- Alice in Wonderland to the King of Hearts.

Definitely, he took Lao Tzu and hit 'find and replace' for Tao and substituted 'conservatism'.
I just wish the conservatives would get into conservation. you'd think it would be a natural.

Was water benign to New Orleans?

Michael W beat me to it, but bravo Hilzoy!

It was tough to click through all the links on my phone, but well worth it.

I'll never forget the parody photo of 41 & 43 fishing in a boat, backdropped as though they were floating down the streets of NO.
unapologetic mother-fuckers.

"Conservatism is empty like skull".

In a way, conservatism is formless like water.

It's how conservatives under Bush accepted that "deficits don't matter," but condemn Obama for deficit spending.

And "a condition of complete simplicity" is a good description of Rush Limbaugh's audience.

Sullivan has for some time been sharing with us in real time his personal conversion from conservative to reasonable, rational human being. I know. I'm a few years older and went through the same thing, albeit at a younger age.

Firmly implanted conservative beliefs from one's youth gradually crumble as one experiences reality, leaving the once-firm believer a sense of floating without direction -- or drowning. All very water-like sensations.

Surrender, Andy.

I think these revisioners need to read the Monty Python "Oscar Wilde" sketch and replace "Your Majesty" with "Conservatism"...

The Oscar Wilde Sketch

Conservatism is alive and well in America today, and quite ably represented by Barack Obama and the Democratic Party. Today's GOP are of course not conservatives; they are better described as reactionary nativists whose binding principle is racism, borne out of there frustration due to their inability to get white Americans recognized as a distinct ethnic group in the manner of the French, Germans, etc. Such people have always been with us, and always will be.

What is missing is a genuine American left to balance the scales, due to the failure of any sort of Marxist tradition to develop here. You don't actually need to have Marxists in power, but you need enough to hold the reactionary racists in check, giving pragmatists like Obama and the Clintons more room to operate on their left.

They're so clever in the arts. This is poetry.

Here's another take on traditional & modern Conservatism:

Like a flame which can warm or cook food, in the wrong hands it's like a burning match pushed onto your skin and twisted with a sadistic glee unmatched by Hitler's henchmen.

Overdone?

I liken conservatism to the stillness between heartbeats. Some is obviously necessary. Too much is fatal.

I clicked a few links but there were just too darn many to go all the way through. But I just wanted to point out that of course W wasn't a REAL conservative. You know that, right? I mean, ALL the ReTalibans know it.

Oh, and also, what a bunch of blathering idiocy. he likes the sound of his own computer keys clicking much, much too much.

"But the guiding principles have been and will ever be to maintain the transfer and accumulation of wealth and power to those best able to use it."

oooh that's rich. ROTHLMAO

"What is so insane about the desire for broad individual freedoms and limited government -- were our country's founding fathers also insane?"

This isn't conservatism. It's just their propaganda. Note that anytime personal freedom issues came up in the last thirty years, the conservatives were inevitable opposed to them. And they NEVER limited government in that time. They ALWAYS expanded it.

It's just propaganda.

Conservatism is driving with the parking brake on.

60NCFp