By 1960 he was insisting that conservatism's traditionalist and libertarian camps were indeed in fundamental agreement, yet each -- and this is the relevant key -- was so self-righteously cocksure of what it alone postured as philosophically "decisive," a self-destructive "distortion" set in; which is to say, each side took its dogma to exclusive extremes, refusing necessary compromise and accommodation -- necessary, that is, if ultraconservatives were ever to gain electoral dominance.
Thus, wrote Meyer, "Conservatism, to continue to develop today, must embrace both: reason [libertarianism] operating within tradition [old-school Burkeanism] ... It can only be achieved by a hard-fought dialectic ... in which both sides recognize not only that they have a common enemy" -- that being modern liberalism, glibly conflated by Meyer with communism -- "but also that, despite all differences, they hold a common heritage."
And achieve it they did; [...]
And now, it's all unraveling -- the primordial fault line between, loosely, conservative traditionalists and economic libertarians has reemerged. A half-century of conservative unification appears shaky at best.
As Politico reported last week, "the evangelical Christian right ... [has] begun to express concern that tea party leaders don’t care about their issues" -- and that, friends, is a colossal understatement. More than "concern," they're at each other's throat, just like the good old days of a half-century past, those conservatively disunified days of self-righteous cocksuredness which denied accommodation's admission.
The right's reemerging divisions range from the delicately stated to the deliciously ugly: "There’s a libertarian streak in the tea party movement that concerns me as a cultural conservative," said Bryan Fischer, of the American Family Association; said another social conservative leader, "As far as I can tell [the libertarian tea party movement] has a politics that’s irreligious. I can’t see how some of my fellow conservatives identify with it" as well as their "incivility" and "name-calling"; and said the ubiquitous Tony Perkins, of the Family Research Council, "They’re free to do it, but [the libertarians] can’t say [their economic platform] represents America. If they do it they’re lying."
What's more, there now runs a kind of tributary fault line among evangelical Christians, as much a generational as philosophical rift: "I don’t think younger Christians are all that interested in the tea party movement," wrote a "younger evangelical" leader to Politico. Yet he framed his dissent in a most curious way -- one that expresses even greater discontent with his evangelical elders: His generation, he said, is "increasingly dissatisfied by a myopic Republican party that seems unwilling to tackle important social justice issues" (my emphasis). And that's an in-house argument less with the 15-minute-stardom of Glenn Beck than with Tony Perkins.
Can they regroup? [...]
I hope they tear each other's throats out.
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