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Jun 23, 2008 at 11:00 PM |
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[Originally published: Dallas Morning News, July 2, 2006] In the 1980s, the historian and social critic Christopher Lasch pronounced dead the conventional political categories of right and left and argued for a revitalization of politics through a redefinition of terms. "The idea of a 'left' has outlived its historical time and needs to be decently buried, along with the false conservatism that merely clothes an older liberal tradition in conservative rhetoric." Since that time, a number of third-party candidates have tried to do just that – from Pat Buchanan to Ross Perot to the perpetual candidacy of Ralph Nader – with a mixed record of success and virtually no electoral victories.Yet there remains a growing sense that the times finally have caught up with the prophetic Mr. Lasch. Could it be that the old political stereotypes and national parties are no longer capable of addressing the needs of the nation? Could we be on the verge of a tectonic shift in American politics? |
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Jun 21, 2008 at 11:00 PM |
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[Originally published: Intercollegiate Review, Fall 2006] It is an occasional convention in conservative literature to talk about the “real split” in the world that animates contemporary political and cultural disagreements, a split deeper than the more pedestrian divide of Republicans versus Democrats. Russell Kirk liked to quote Eric Voegelin’s remark that the “great line of demarcation in modern politics...is not a division between liberals on one side and totalitarians on the other.” Rather, it is between materialists who recognize only a temporal order and those who admit to a higher, transcendent order. To Voegelin, liberals and totalitarians of various stripes were essentially alike in their progressive materialism, the price of which was “the death of the spirit.” |
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How Can George Will Defend the Retail Giant? |
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Oct 02, 2006 at 11:00 PM |
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[Originally published: Dallas Morning News, Sept. 24, 2006] As many employees as the U.S. military! As important as the Federal Reserve in holding down inflation! Provides economic "savings" to the lower middle class far greater than popular government programs such as food stamps and the earned-income tax credit! Is there anything, according to George F. Will, that Wal-Mart can't do? As Mr. Will sees it, the liberal war on Wal-Mart in the name of the common man is really a war on the preferences of the common man. By couching his arguments in terms of "consumer sovereignty" and the "preferences of ordinary Americans," Mr. Will undermines liberal objections to Wal-Mart by co-opting the historically liberal defense of unconstrained freedom of individual choice. This is effective for puncturing the pretensions of liberal elites, but it's a curious position for an avowed conservative. Arguments from preference for, say, complete sexual freedom, unlimited abortion license and illicit drug use have never been very convincing to conservatives. Instead of asking what conditions most Americans prefer, postwar conservatives have traditionally asked the more important question: What conditions will make common Americans free – free not just to pursue their baser appetites, but to fashion an independent and virtuous life? Further, conservatives have argued that our democratic system of self-government cannot last in the absence of a class of men and women who are truly free by virtue of their moral, economic and cultural independence from the centralized management classes. |
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Jul 03, 2006 at 11:00 PM |
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[Originally Published: Christianity Today, July 2006] From Thoreau's description of men who lead "lives of quiet desperation" to James Howard Kuntsler's recent castigation of our landscape as a "geography of nowhere" to critics such as Russell Kirk, John Lukacs, and Wendell Berry, dissidents have argued that the American suburban experiment is toxic to the human soul. Joining this tradition is David Goetz. |
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Practicing the Discipline of Place |
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May 31, 2006 at 11:00 PM |
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[Originally published: Re:generation Quarterly, Spring 2003] Commencement speakers sum up the wisdom of the age, and last May, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anna Quindlen did so with particular clarity. “I have seen your salvation, and it is you,” she told the graduating seniors of Sarah Lawrence College. “Custody of your life belongs in full to you and you alone. Do not cede it to anyone else,” she warned. “Why should you march to any lockstep? Our love of lockstep is our greatest curse … because it tells us there is one right way to do things, to look, to behave, to feel, when the only right way is to feel your heart hammering inside you and to listen to what its tympani is saying.” For Quindlen, conformity of any kind is our original sin, and salvation comes when we discover and express an authentic self unencumbered by the demands of others. |
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