Steven F. Hayward, a Reagan scholar and a conservative himself, asks Is Conservatism Brain-Dead?. I’ll put his argument simply, so my fellow conservatives can understand it in case he’s right: Conservative intellectuals–such as William F. Buckley, Irving Kristol, Milton Friedman–are dying out and have few replacements. That leaves conservatives only with “populists”: Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin. He does not discount the latter, saying that a successful political movement–such as the Reagan revolution–must have BOTH populists AND intellectuals. Hayward says that conservatives today need to be able to refute the liberal’s ideas and come up with better ones.
Read the article, which ends up praising Glenn Beck for actually bringing up ideas, in addition to stirring up the masses. Here are a few of my thoughts on the subject, brain dead though I might also be: First, ideas do not die with the person holding them. Buckley, Kristol, Friedman, etc., if they were right, can still inspire conservative policies. Second, where are the liberal ideas that are supposed to be so dominant? Who are the liberal thinkers who are the equivalent of Buckley, Kristol, Friedman, etc.? What are the books that are inspiring all of these great policies? Isn’t it true that the liberals too have nothing but populists? Third, there are indeed conservative intellectuals, going in some new and provocative directions that only a living and vital tradition can do. (You can get a sense of that at blogs like this one: Front Porch Republic. )
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In