ACTUALLY, “JAZZ JUDAISM” SOUNDS KINDA COOL…: Got a good challenging email from Ben A., which I think will allow me to clear up some misunderstandings and give a much better sense of what “rock’n’roll conservatism” is and isn’t about. As always, Ben is in bold and I’m in plain text:

“Rock and Roll Conservatism” is a catchy phrase, and I support the desire to tell Allan Bloom to suck eggs. But, at the risk of being hyperbolic, I think it makes about as much sense as “jazz Judaism.”

I suppose I am reacting to a pet concern. Too many people read their politics off their larger cultural identification: the things they like to do, the movies they watch, and yes, the music they listen too. Well, this is a mistake. Verdi doesn’t have a position on the gun control, and even if David Bowie does, we shouldn’t much care what it is. But sadly, people do care: about Rage Against the Machine, about the whole silly story of rock music as Symbol of Social Rebellion.

I realize you don’t mean to rediscover rock and roll as a conservative voice: that’s the same mistake in reverse. Rather, you seem just to be signalling that you’re not a culture snob. But if so, I would think it’s irrelevant to your politics. Indeed, of your listed principles, surely an appreciation for popular culture is the most trivial and negotiable, right?

Let me talk about what I’m not doing first; then I’ll get to what I am doing:

1) Actually, I dig Allan Bloom a lot; I just disagree with his account of rock music, which is sloppy.

2) More importantly, I totally agree that people shouldn’t “read their politics off their larger cultural identification”; I think that’s one of the criticisms Jonah Goldberg leveled at Rod Dreher’s whole “crunchy conservative” deal. I actually don’t listen to rock all that often these days; I’m more into random shards of punk, country, New Wave, and various film scores. You can be a rock’n’roll conservative even if the only music you ever listen to is Hank Williams Sr. and “The Ring of the Nibelung,” or Public Enemy and Palestrina, or what have you. “Rock’n’roll” is being used half as allusion, half as metaphor. If it is confusing, we’ll have to drop the term and find something better.

3) So, OK then, what is “rock’n’roll” supposed to allude to? What are we supposed to be thinking of here? First, the dynamic quality of rock–the way it constantly reinvents itself, the way it is willing to borrow and meld and confuse genre boundaries, the way it’s willing to capture good ideas, powerful hooks and rhythms, or iconic storylines wherever it finds them. Second, rock connotes a certain rough and ready quality.

4) And most importantly, rock alludes to some of the ways that the five of us came to become what we call, for lack of a better word, men and women of the right. Engaging pop culture isn’t in any way peripheral to our project–it’s actually a central and extremely useful method, because it relies on a) the strengths inherent in contemporary culture–it builds on what’s already present; and b) surprise. Rockers, scriptwriters for movies and TV, comedians, and all kinds of other pop-culture types are, whether intentionally or not, presenting us with songs and stories that reflect the world in either true or false ways (or, of course, a mixture of truth and falsehood). Conservatives tend to deal with pop-culture stuff in one of two ways: Condemn/ignore it, or attempt to use it to prove their hipness (“I’m not a culture snob! I’m COOL!”). Both of these approaches are really lame. Condemning/ignoring, of course, totally fails to meet people where they are and to show the implications of the roles, characters, and stances they already embrace. But an uncritical, self-congratulatory approach to pop culture (“Look, this is me, enjoying a Tori Amos album!”) is condescending–because it treats pop culture as unworthy of tough examination–and unhelpful.

Instead, RNRC will very often use the method of drawing out the underlying, unspoken implications of movies or books or songs that people already love–here are a few examples: “Malcolm in the Middle,” a bunch of rock songs, “Vertigo,” DMX. The basic idea is to show people the implications of what they already know and love. I was surprised–and intrigued–when I started investigating the underlying philosophical stances of the kids’ books or TV shows or music I liked. With the companionship of friends, I was able to draw the conclusions that ultimately led me to shift from left to right politically. (And other, more important changes.)

5) The important thing to keep in mind is that RNRC is not only a list of principles; nor is it only a stance, a way of being in the world, an ethos. It’s both. (And “ethos” here doesn’t mean “lifestyle”! Like I said above, this is not about whether you like Pink Floyd or–shudder–Cristina Aguilera, etc.) The tension contained within the odd name is intended to draw that out–“conservatism,” which we generally think of as a list of principles, lived in a “rock’n’roll” way.