A lot of the reaction to my conservapedia piece falls along the lines that you would expect – essentially that I’m painting with too broad a brush.  I probably was in that post.  Obviously a lot of conservatives are thoughtful, independent-thinking, and honest people.  It’s primarily, therefore, a reaction to the conservative leadership that leads me to write posts like that one.  To the movers and shakers on the quasi-populist right.

What I think we’re seeing and have been seeing now for some time is the heating up of an internal war within the GOP and the broader conservative movement, which includes the Tea Parties and other grassroots efforts that may or may not be directly affiliated with the Republican Party.  This was bound to happen after the McCain loss.  It gave the real right-wingers in the party (and outside of it) a chance to blame the moderates for the loss, and it gave the GOP insiders a chance to settle old scores.  I’m not at all sure that the factions here are really “moderates vs conservatives” so much as a certain brand of right-winger vs. another.

I’m not really entirely sure of Sean Scallion’s break down of the sides involved as Conservative Inc. vs. the establishment.  I think that they overlap far too much, and I think that it is a certain faction within the establishment that is also at the heart of the Tea Parties, warring against other factions within the establishment.  In other words, the grassroots base is not its own entity but rather part of a larger faction.

Nor is it simply social conservatives vs. fiscal conservatives, or neoconservatives vs. realists, or neoconservatives vs. social conservatives.  The factions at play here are not the old divisions, and the old rules don’t apply.  People like David Frum are pushed to the margins for entirely different reasons than people like Daniel Larison. [Read more →]

This interview with Andy Schlafly [below] of conservapedia.com is hard to watch.  It’s almost embarrassing.  I think Colbert is at his best for most of the exchange, and the zinger about creating his own reality is marvelous.  Schlafly really is the ultimate self-parodic conservative, and I’m not just saying that because he has one of the most annoying laughs in the history of television.  He says, and I shit you not, that most of Jesus’ parables were lessons in free market economics. I really am spoiled reading the conservative writers that I do read at the Scene and the Porch and Pomocon and the other little pockets of intellectual conservatism remaining.

But really.  Good grief.  I’ve heard of conservapedia but I never realized how utterly inane the project really was.  Of all the silly things on the internet, this one is beginning to take shape as a future hall-of-famer. That’s the magnificent thing about the internet – there’s always room for one more elegant disaster.

Let’s see – here’s the opening paragraph in the entry on evolution: [Read more →]

” The premise of today’s story was that the Catholic Church was threatening to cease to provide charitable services if the law legalizing gay marriage is passed. In point of fact, it is the DC government that would cease to license or contract with the Church unless the Church conformed to a definition of marriage that violates its faith tradition. Without a set of broader legal exemptions allowing for the Church to remain faithful to its definition of marriage, it will cease to be permitted by the City to provide the contracted and licensed services that it has for well over a century. The Church’s fundamental desire in this controversy is to continue its desire and freedom to serve.” ~ Patrick Deneen, responding to news that the Catholic Church will end social services in D.C. if a gay-marriage law is passed there

I think the Catholic Church is wrong about a lot of things, including its stance on gay marriage.  I also think that they’re wrong when they go political and actively seek funds to oppose same sex marriage at the ballot box.  But on this one, I think they have a pretty valid stance.  Religious liberty is a fundamental American value, and even the ACLU thinks the D.C. gay-marriage law goes too far, and provides too few religious exemptions.  For instance, any church that hosted any public event at all would be required to also host events for gays.  This includes weddings.

John Wimberly, the president of the ACLU in Washington and a pastor, agreed the current phrasing could cause problems. He told the council that while the ACLU supports the bill he would recommend taking out part of the exemption to avoid confusion.

“A church shouldn’t have to host a wedding it doesn’t want to host,” said Arthur Spitzer, an ACLU attorney who reviewed the legislation.

This isn’t the Catholic Church simply saying that if gay-marriage is passed in D.C. they’ll stop providing services.  They’re saying that they won’t receive contracts for services that they won’t provide due to religious conflicts of interest.  The Church hasn’t stopped providing services in all the states where gay marriage has passed, after all.  In New Hampshire the religious exemptions are written in such a way to avoid these conflicts. In Massachusetts, on the other hand, the state has pulled many contracts from the Catholic Church because their exemptions are not as strong.

So I have to disagree with Jamelle on this one, who writes:

The Catholic Church, on the other hand, has always been a bit more measured in its approach.  This might be my naivety talking, but I expected a bit more of the Catholic leadership. Sure, the Catholic Church isn’t particularly enamored of gays, but as an institution (and at least in the United States) it’s always seemed much more concerned with fighting the war on poverty than the war on gays.  What’s more, unlike evangelicals – who are overwhelmingly Southern and conservative – Catholics represent a wider geographic and ideological cross-section of America, which had a moderating influence on the church’s leadership.

But things changed, and in the past decade or so, Catholic leadership has become more and more committed to a socially conservative political agenda.   If given the choice between saving the needy and sticking it to the gays, these Church “elders” would rather let 68,000 of the most vulnerable Washingtonians suffer in the dead of winter than have to extend basic legal protections to gay people.

The misreading of what’s actually going on aside – this is not a simple threat, as many are painting it – I think Jamelle makes a good point.  The Church has become too politically involved in all of this.  But they’ve done so because they’re legitimately worried about religious liberty, and moves like this reaffirm their fears.  Gay marriage advocates, and I am one myself, need to craft legislation that doesn’t impinge upon one set of liberties in favor of another.  This is a matter both of respect and practicality.   The Church shouldn’t be politicized, but its leaders will continue to take on political causes if they feel their own rights are threatened.

I hope that one day the Church will change its positions on many things, but until that time it isn’t the job of the state to do it for them.  There are devils in all the details here, and turning it into an Us vs. Them moment only helps to avoid addressing those devils we don’t know, in favor of the ones we do.

Update.

Commenters are pointing out that there have been some revisions to this bill.  That is true.  Religious organizations would not be forced to provide space or perform marriages for gay couples.  They would still be required to do a number of other things, including provide benefits to gay couples, offer other charitable services to gay people, and so on and so forth.  Again – I think they should do this, but what I think really isn’t the issue here.  The issue is whether they should be required to by law.  If they are required to follow specific rules in order to receive federal funds, and they believe that those rules are in conflict with their beliefs, then they will have no choice but to refuse those funds.

You can’t really have it both ways.  These funds are used to provide for the poor.  You can’t complain that the Church is awful for receiving the funds on the one hand and awful for not providing these services on the other.  The two are connected, and if the law makes it impossible for the Church to do both, then there really is little that can be done except change the law.  Or change the Church.  And so this comes back to a question of religious liberty.

“While I agree that it’s fairly pointless, as a tactical matter, for dissidents to attack the talk radio giants, this comes, I think, out of a deep frustration that people with little more than slogans and attitude have bigfooted discussion among conservatives, and have helped turn the GOP and the movement into something that’s extremely hostile to change (as distinct from skepticism of it, as all real conservatives should be), and almost fanatically opposed to dissent from within. A fairly conservative friend of mine and I were talking the other day about something Glenn Beck had said, and my friend looked disgusted, saying, “I’m sick of being associated with conservatives.” The impulse to take on the Becks and the Limbaughs comes from a sense that these guys are hurting us bad, and preventing the kind of clear thinking that we need to get back in the political game. I’d love to know how Mark and the League propose for dissident conservatives to “engage” the base when the kind of people the base trusts and takes its cues from demonize dissidents as RINOs, closet liberals, squishes, wets, suck-ups, and so forth. I’m asking seriously. I don’t know how to go about this in the current climate.” ~ Rod Dreher

There’s no easy answer to this question, of course.  Dreher and other critics of Beckian talk-show conservatism are right: the talking heads do hurt the  cause.  Think of William F. Buckley back in the days leading up to the launch of National Review.  Imagine if he’d had to compete with Fox News for the heart and soul of conservatism.  It wouldn’t have been easy.  Indeed, on the field of battle, Buckley with his more reasoned and polite approach to political discussion (which isn’t to say he always threw soft punches, the man could be rather straightforward after all) may very well have lost to the populists now manning the airwaves in defense of “true conservatism.”  Buckley would be painted like every other East Coast Elite.

But I doubt very much that Buckley would have taken to that particular field.  He was too canny to become embroiled in a fight he couldn’t win, and too immersed in ideas to need to resort to those measures – at least until he was sure of victory.  What’s the point in taking on the Goliaths of the conservative movement anyways?  They have a higher bully pulpit, a wider audience, a louder megaphone.  And they’re okay fighting dirty, and dragging you down to whatever level they need to drag you in order to win.  Wait until they’re marginal players.  Wait until they’ve outworn their welcome.

Conservative dissidents these days have nowhere near enough patience.  Impulsively, they attack the easiest and biggest targets they can find: the talking heads.  As Dreher points out, the impulse for this fight is two-fold.  On the one hand it’s the impulse to remove Rush and co. from the conversation, because they’re “preventing the kind of clear thinking we need to get back in the political game.”  But much, much more importantly, I think, is the desire to simply not be associated with that particular brand of conservatism.  Guilt by association.  We’re not with them, we say.  And to prove it, here’s post after post on just why this is so, on why we hate Limbaugh even more than you do.

And it works.  Nobody who knows Conor or Rod would ever couple them with Limbaugh or Levin – right?  Only, it has unintended consequences.  Sure, you’ve blacklisted the pundits, but you’ve also been blacklisted, by a pretty significant portion of the conservative base.

Isn’t there a better way?

I think there is.  Let’s call it the Trojan Horse strategy. [Read more →]

Freddie nods approvingly at Conor Friedersdorf’s latest manifesto for conservative writers and entertainers at Doublethink online, and sure enough, it’s a good read. But I wonder if Hollywood’s laissez-faire approach to ideology extends to all stripes of conservatism, not just libertarian-minded fiscal tightwads. As one commenter put it over at the American Scene, would outspoken cultural conservatives get the same treatment as their fiscally conservative comrades-in-arms? One of Friedersdorf’s subjects seems to acknowledge this divide, noting that “hardcore social conservatives might find things a bit tougher,” but that’s about as far as the piece delves into the state of social conservatism in the entertainment industry.

One reason “liberaltarianism” has always seemed so plausible is the close cultural affinity between libertarians and progressive liberals. I’ve always imagined that despite their differences, the editors of Reason and, say, The Nation could get together and smoke a few joints on the weekend. This may be a result of coming up in the Age of Bush, but I have trouble imagining a similar rapprochement between Reason and National Review.

In other words, haggling over marginal tax rates or the stimulus bill seems less contentious than trading blows over abortion or gay marriage. The former is at least supposed to be an empirical question; the latter strikes me as a more fundamental, value-oriented disagreement. As the cultural apogee of crass materialism, I doubt Hollywood would exile anyone disenchanted with forking over piles of cash to the federal government. But what about someone whose worldview is an implicit challenge to the industry’s core assumptions?

N.B. – Freddie’s alternative hypothesis – that art is fundamentally at odds with cultural conservatism – is also plausible. But Hollywood and art aren’t synonymous, and the success of one film in particular implies that there’s a financial incentive to cater to a socially conservative audience.

So, true to form, there were problems hooking the discussion up via Blog Talk Radio, but Dan, Conor, and I gave Skype another whirl and managed not just to get through over an hour of conversation, but also had a really great and spirited dialogue. [Read more →]

Lots of blame to go around in the current decimation of the conservative movement.  I wanted to just break down my own thoughts on some of the competing interests here.  So far we have social cons blaming hawks and neocons; hawks and neocons blaming social cons; fiscal cons blaming hawks and social cons; paleocons blaming the movement; the movement blaming the paleos.  So who’s to blame?  I mean, Michael Steele doesn’t want any more apologizing (was there any?) about the GOP’s past mistakes, but that doesn’t mean there can’t be lots of blame-shoveling.  I say the blame falls predominantly amongst the leadership of the conservative movement over the past eight? sixteen? years, and this falls into two camps: the social conservatives and the neocons.

The Social Conservatives

The social conservatives – namely the religious right, the moral majority, the evangelical partisans, whatever you want to call them – got into bed with the hawks early on in the Bush administration.  There have been many social conservatives who have adopted a “who me?” attitude now that the war in Iraq has proved so unpopular, but in the beginning the social conservative/neoconservative marriage was one of convenience, and both sides played a big role in the Bush policies.  I don’t recall much opposition to Bush policies coming from the social conservatives, who it must said, are largely in the movement camp.  Those who remain outside it – generally paleo-catholics and other indie-cons like Daniel Larison – are the exception to this unholy alliance, not the rule.  So yes, blame can be laid at the feet of the social conservatives for much of the mess the conservative movement finds itself in. [Read more →]