Conservatives Without Conscience

maintenance of social order,” Senator Goldwater wrote, and in balancing between these forces, he argued, “the conservative’s first concern will always be: Are we maximizing freedom?”[42]

I have always thought of these fundamentals—draw on the proven wisdom of the past; do not debase the dignity of others; and maximize freedom consistent with necessary safety and order—as conservatism’s “paragon of essences,” and have considered them broad enough to address a wide range of issues, from fiscal responsibility to libertarianism (toward which the senator was strongly inclined) to acknowledging the threat of communism (and today, terrorism) without getting hysterical about it. Distinctly absent from Goldwater’s conservatism was any thought of the government’s imposing its own morality, or anyone else’s, on society. In other words, the values of today’s social, or cultural, conservatism had no place in the senator’s philosophy.

Philip Gold, who campaigned for Goldwater in 1964, argued in his meditative Take Back the Right: How the Neocons and the Religious Right Have Betrayed the Conservative Movement that conservatives should have retained a covenant with the fathers of conservatism, for “continuity across generations [is] the essence of conservatism.” What has breaking that covenant, as has clearly occurred with Goldwater, meant? It is a serious loss, believes Gold, for Goldwater “cared deeply about civilization…. He also was humane, one of his party’s few who took issues such as civil rights, women’s rights and the environment seriously.”[43]

Conservatism Today: A Dysfunctional Family

No doubt the adamancy with which some conservatives insisted on their interpretations, or views, of history led to the movement’s eventual splintering into several factions. Whatever the origin of their disagreements, however, they remain a divided family. Today the Republican Party strives to contain conservatism’s constituent groups, some of whom get along and others who do not. It is not possible to identify precise divisions within conservatism, because many conservatives identify with more than one dogma. William Safire cleverly made this point when he conducted a personal “depth-poll” of his own brain to find out what held together at least “five Republican factions.” Safire, it appears, sees himself as an “economic,” “social,” and “cultural” conservative with “libertarian” impulses and the idealistic instincts of a “neoconservative.” “If these different strains of thought were held by discrete groups of single-minded people,” acknowledges Safire, “we would have a Republican Party of five warring bands.” He concedes that all these varying attitudes cause him “cognitive dissonance,” which he experiences as “the jangling of competing inclinations, with the owner of the brain having to work out trade-offs, suppressions and compromises until he or she achieves a kind of puzzled tranquility within.” Safire said his dissonance is “forced into harmony by the need to choose one leader who reflects the preponderance of” his views.[44]

In 1996 the Washington Times’s magazine Insight examined “Who’s Who in America’s Conservative Revolution,” an article that highlighted the remarkable degree of sectarianism in the right wing, a fact well known to most conservatives. Insight noted that there were thirteen print journals geared toward the various factions of conservative readers.[45] These journals represented “distinct, though overlapping, philosophies,” which the magazine, a well-known conservative publication itself, divided into ten different species of conservatives. Here, in highly compressed, occasionally paraphrased, and updated form, is a glimpse of the modern conservative family tree:[*]

Austriocons: The paleoconservatives (paleocons), so called because they were conservatives back when most of the neoconservatives (neocons) were still Trotskyites, are split over the issue of free trade. Those paleos who are followers of the “Austrian” school of economics, i.e., the free-trade libertarians who honor Ludwig von Mises, were dubbed by Insight as “Austriocons.”

Buchanocons: Paleos who have rebelled against free trade and the unaccountable global bureaucracies that they believe it is producing. Their political leader is Patrick Buchanan. Since 2002, they have had their own journal, The American Conservative.

Neocons: Intellectuals who drifted from the far left to the center to the right, carrying their flagship magazine, Commentary, with them. They are mostly Jewish, and mostly New York based. Neocons tend to be militant internationalists. They publish their own inside-the-Beltway weekly, The Weekly Standard.

Aquinacons: Neocons acquired a Christian wing when the Reverend Richard John Neuhaus founded his monthly magazine, First Things, patterned after Commentary. However, this is an increasingly distinct group, one that can be called “Aquinacons” because its members focus on the work of a rising generation of academic experts on the natural-law theories of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas.

Radiocons: (Just kidding, says Insight.) This group includes talk-radio conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, Gordon Liddy, Mike Reagan, Blanquita Cullum, Dr. Laura Schlessinger, and other popularizers of the political and cultural right, if not their enormous middle America audiences.

Sociocons: Often lumped with the religious right, these social conservatives advance secular arguments for curbing abortion, divorce, illegitimacy, rights of homosexuals, and drugs. Its leading lights are the Family Research Council, the Institute for American Values, and columnist Cal Thomas.

Theocons: Conservatives who actually favor a more or less theocratic application of biblical law. Unlike Aquinacons, they reject natural law. In fact, this faction is far smaller than some in the news media believe, according to Insight.

Republicons: Young people who learned their conservative theory back in college and since have given themselves over to activism, either as Republican campaign strategists or as policy advocates. Newt Gingrich is their hero, and Grover Norquist (of the Americans for Tax Reform) is their leader. They have politically gold-plated resumes and no time for pessimism.

Catocons: Hard-core libertarians who recognize that even if your goal is to dismantle government, you have to play the Washington policy-wonk game to change things. Their leading think tank is the Cato Institute.

Platocons: Allied with, but different from, the Aquinacons, the Platocons are the disciples of the late Leo Strauss, who excited generations of students at the University of Chicago about classical political philosophy. Not all Straussians are conservatives, however. Still, their belief that ideas are intrinsically important, and are not just manifestations of class interest or historical prejudice, puts them at odds with the academic left.[46]

There is almost no end to the ways in which the conservative factions can be sliced and diced.[47] Nonetheless, they all fall neatly within three general categories, with their current significance determined by poll numbers that indicate their relative size within the conservative movement.[48] In February 2004 TechnoMetrica Institute of Policy and Politics (TIPP) conducted a nationwide survey that gathered information across the left/right political spectrum. It found that conservatives constituted 43 percent of their respondents, with moderates at 35 percent and liberals at 18 percent. The TIPP poll sample revealed a higher percentage of conservatives than has been the norm for other polls. For example, the national election exit polls for eight elections between 1976 and 2004 have fairly consistently shown conservatives at 33 percent, moderates at 47 percent, and liberals at 20 percent.[49] But the size of the conservative response to the TIPP poll provides an excellent basis for the poll’s follow-up question, which asked conservatives about the nature of their conservatism. In response, 52 percent of conservatives described themselves as social conservatives, 49 percent as fiscal conservatives, and 13 percent as neoconservatives. (The 114 percent total appears attributable to overlapping responses, for there is no doubt that some social conservatives would also view themselves as fiscal conservatives.)[50] Absent from this TIPP poll are breakdowns for categories like traditional conservatives, religious conservatives, and right-leaning libertarians, because these groups can easily fall within social conservatism, fiscal conservatism, and neoconservatism.[51] Most revealing in the TIPP poll is the strength of social conservatism.

Conservatism’s Power of Negative Thinking

Given the rather distinct beliefs of the various conservative factions, which have only grown more complex