Jerusalem
I’ve spent much of this week in Jerusalem discussing with young Israelis the subject of America—both the classics of our political thought and the history of modern American conservatism. I’ve found the seminars interesting and the conversations stimulating, not so very different from similar discussions with young Americans. I’ve noticed, though, one difference—not in my interlocutors but in my own attitude. At home, one is wary of seeming too solemn or earnest even in discussing weighty matters. The ponderous self-regard of so many in public life inclines one towards the opposite stance. Abroad, especially perhaps in Israel, one is less embarrassed to be serious about history and politics, and one is inclined to err on the side of sobriety rather than irony.
So I write in that spirit, having spent the week with students reading William F. Buckley and Irving Kristol, discussing Ronald Reagan, and considering articles from National Review and the Public Interest and Commentary and, yes, The Weekly Standard. In considering the modern American conservative movement I’ve been reminded again of its tensions and ambivalences, its historical limitations and its many unresolved questions, and also the fact that today’s challenges require—as befits a living movement—new thinking for new situations.
But I’ve been struck, too, by the grand aspirations and signal achievements of American conservatism. One of the readings assigned was the 1957 letter from the political philosopher Leo Strauss to National Review, in which Strauss seeks to persuade the editors of the young magazine, and by extension the American conservative movement, to take a more favorable view of the state of Israel. American conservatism would soon abandon its earlier anti-Israel animus, so Strauss’s letter is today, in that respect, merely of historical interest. But his brief account and defense of Zionism remains relevant, and one statement in particular struck home with some of the seminar participants: “Political Zionism is problematic for obvious reasons. But I can never forget what it achieved as a moral force in an era of complete dissolution. It helped to stem the tide of ‘progressive’ leveling.”
I’m tempted today to say something similar about modern American conservatism. It is problematic for obvious reasons. But it helped win the Cold War abroad and renewed an understanding of and appreciation for constitutional self-government at home. One should never forget what it achieved as a moral and political force in an era of liberal dissolution.
American conservatism was able to achieve what it achieved because it was not afraid, as Bill Buckley wrote in 1955, to “[stand] athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one [was] inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.” It was able to achieve what it achieved because it was willing to argue, as Irving Kristol did in 1993, that “what is wrong with liberalism is liberalism—a metaphysics and a mythology that is woefully blind to human and political reality.” Kristol continued, “sector after sector of American life has been ruthlessly corrupted by the liberal ethos. It is an ethos that aims simultaneously at political and social collectivism on the one hand, and moral anarchy on the other. It cannot win, but it can make us all losers.”
Which brings us to 2016. I’ve half-jokingly written on Twitter—a medium suited to half-joking—that my only goal, my sole aim, for this year’s election is neither Trump nor Hillary. But sometimes a tweet isn’t merely a joke.
If Hillary Clinton (or another Democrat) is elected president at this crucial juncture in the fate of American democracy at home and American influence abroad, it will be hard to see a constructive way forward. We will, of course, continue the fight, as Whittaker Chambers battled on though convinced he was on the losing side, as Robert Bork sought to rally us though inclined to believe we were slouching toward Gomorrah. But it will be hard to see a plausible path out of the dissolution.
It will also be hard to see a plausible path forward if the political party with whom conservatives have thrown in their lot nominates as its presidential candidate Donald Trump—a demagogue with no history of attachment to conservative principles or respect for conservative ideas. In his letter to National Review, Strauss addressed the magazine’s apparent suspicion that Israel might well lose in its confrontation with neighbors who sought its destruction: “The possibility of disastrous defeat or failure is obvious and always close.” But, Strauss continued, “a conservative, I take it, is a man who despises vulgarity; but the argument which is concerned exclusively with calculations of success, and is based on blindness to the nobility of the effort, is vulgar.” Donald Trump is nothing if not vulgar.
Can the Republican party be saved from Donald Trump and the country from Hillary Clinton? The possibility of defeat is obvious and of failure is close. But American conservatism has overcome greater obstacles than Donald Trump and conquered more daunting adversaries than Hillary Clinton.
