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14 Nov 2008 09:44 am

Conservative "Movement"

Austin Bramwell responds to Ross. He captures something about the mindset that has captured the Republican "movement":

Ross correctly observes that it’s possible both to build a movement and to influence those outside of it.  Again, he cites environmentalism as an example. Again, there are crucial differences between the conservative movement and a movement like environmentalism.  Environmentalists have never sought to create a counter-establishment. Rather, they try to supply establishment institutions with environmentalist ideas.  Conservatives, by contrast, have sought to create a whole alternative institutional world.   

The movement offers entire career tracks for aspiring conservatives. Moreover, the movement preaches hostility to non-movement institutions. From the moment a movement conservative starts his career at his college conservative paper, he learns to conceive of conservative organizations as the City of God and traditional establishment institutions as the City of Man. The two Cities, he believes, are antagonists. Hence, movement conservatives have not generally succeeded in reaching sympathetic outsiders – if anything, they have actively sought to alienate them.

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