So says Patrick Deneen, a fellow I like, have corresponded with a couple times, and once had drinks with who suddenly seems quite vexed with me. He writes of my “change or die” post, in part:
I can’t remember a more deceptive piece of agitprop in recent American politics. Goldberg is a free-marketeer, small government (i.e., let the market do as it will), big national defense (i.e., U.S. should run the world in our best interest), secular-minded “conservative”: i.e., there’s not an actual conservative bone in his body. In “Old Europe” he would more accurately be called a liberal. What galls in this exchange is Goldberg’s apparent Burkeanism which is a thin mask on his deeper commitment to the instabilities fostered by “free” markets and the preeminence that contemporary Republicans place on individual choice and thoroughgoing mobililty. The call to “just stand there” is a “conservative” defense of liberalism (i.e., “just stand there” means “let us be as free and mobile and individualistic as ever”); the call for “change” in several cases (Huckabee in particular) points in the direction of being a “revolutionary” defense of conservatism.
He goes on and readers interested should read the whole thing. First, what I find the most shocking is Deneen’s tone. “Agitprop”? Don’t phrases like that imply some sort of dishonesty or bad faith on my part? Does Patrick really think I’m being dishonest in some fundamental way? That’s a shame if he does, though I’m hoping that his normally incisive writing and thinking merely gave way to brain-outpacing typing.
But if he does think this, does he really believe that post constitutes “the most deceptive piece of agitprop in recent American politics”?
Golly. Smoke pot much?
More substantively, I think Deneen isn’t really mad at me so much as mad at someone he imagines me to be. He writes:
Now that social conservatism and economic libertarianism have begun to uncouple (an inevitable development in the aftermath of the fall of communism, which is all that kept this ungainly couple in the same political bed; the worst loser last night was not Hillary!, but the Republicans who hoped she would win and would replace communism as the glue that kept them together), the mainstream Republicans are desperate to ditch that part of the coalition and pick up whatever they can, including their desperate hope that a pro-choice candidate become the eventual nominee of the party.
That’s supposed to be aimed at me? There is exactly zero evidence I want, let alone that I am “desperate for,” a pro-choice nominee. Could I live with Rudy? Yes, yes I could. Would I rather he be pro-life? Yes, yes, I would. That’s not quite the same thing as desperation for a pro-choice candidate. Indeed, just recently, I reiterated my own case for being pro-life (in rather Burkean terms, I would add). I am socially conservative on all sorts of issues. Heck, I believe I’m still the only mainstream conservative columnist under 40 who favors censorship (if there are others, let’s start a club!).
Besides his strawman, there’s a larger problem in debating Deneen on his diatribe. The fellow knows a great deal about political philosophy and uses terms like conservative and Burkean with a level of precision and in a context that might confuse folks who don’t know where he’s coming from. Nonetheless, let me concede that in Europe I might well be called a “liberal” though I’d rather be called a Whig or a Tory as I prefer to remain in the Anglo-American tradition and transporting us to Europe confuses things too much. But I certainly agree that European conservatism ain’t my bag, even if I have respect for elements of it.
So let me just assert my belief that American conservatism does in fact seek to conserve liberal institutions (though not necessarily the progressive ones folks like Mike Huckabee like). This is a point both Sam Huntington and Friedrich Hayek agreed on, and I stand with them. What surprises me is that Patrick doesn’t.
Modern American conservatism certainly isn’t merely classical liberalism, but conservatism without classical liberalism ceases to be a conservatism worth conserving, indeed it turns into rightwing progressivism.