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02 Dec 2008 12:45 pm

The Future Of Conservatism

This is a typically concise and brilliant summation of the problem from Richard Posner. And this paragraph helps lay out the depth of the challenge for conservatives right now:

The financial crisis has hit economic libertarians in the solar plexus, because the crisis is largely a consequence of innate weaknesses in free markets and of excessive deregulation of banking and finance, rather than of government interference in the market. Believers in a strong foreign policy have been hurt by the protracted and seemingly purposeless war in Iraq (the main effects of which seem to have been discord between the United States and its allies, increased recruitment of Islamic terrorists, and the strengthening of Iran and of the Taliban in Afghanistan and of al Qaeda in Pakistan) and the Bush Administration’s lack of success in dealing with Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. And social conservatives have been hurt by the stridency of some of their most prominent advocates, who all too often give the appearance of being mean-spirited, out-of-touch, know-nothing deniers of science (e.g., evolution, climate change).

The combination of all three is a very potent one. The crisis is at two levels - the dreadful incompetence and incoherence of the Bush-Cheney administration, which has poisoned the Republican brand for more than one generation, and the emergence of inherent flaws in several strains of conservative thought.

The banking crisis is so close to us and so unresolved it's hard to see it in context, but I fear that Greenspan is right: it's a huge flaw that cannot be explained away by government. The limits of hard power are, in fact, perfectly in line with conservatism's deeper insights into human affairs, with Bush and Cheney acting more as over-reaching utopians than conservative statesmen. And the social conservatism problem has been a function of Christianism: an inability to shape society as it is because their theological doctrine demands adherence to eternal dogma not development of pragmatic policy. So we have their rigid refusal to countenance any legal abortion or any civil recognition of gay couples.

Grappling with any one of these problems would be serious enough. Untangling all three at once? The GOP had better hope Obama really screws up.

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