After the Hangover: Conservatives on the Road to Recovery?
Republicans eagerly anticipate this fall’s congressional elections as, in the words of a character from The Lord of the Rings: “It is long since we had any hope.” How well the GOP does is unknown but taking back the House is certainly a possibility.
Enter R. Emmett Tyrrell, the editor-in-chief of the American Spectator, and the author of his newly released book, After the Hangover: The Conservatives’ Road to Recovery. Tyrrell wrote ten books before this one and published last year a compendium of his monthly columns named after its title (“The Continuing Crisis”).
As his narrative in After the Hangover clarifies, he was present during the rise of conservatism and remains present during phony and fabricated news of its demise. Tyrrell coined the term “Kultursmog” to describe the nefarious way in which the counter-culturalists of the 1960s now direct our society.
Via political correctness, conformity, and a refusal to tolerate or acknowledge intellectual diversity, coat and tie radicals seek to reconstitute the citizenry in the hopes that we will eventually mirror their dysfunction. Tyrrell has been the left’s enduring and devout enemy for four decades which is high praise in itself.
BC: Mr. Tyrrell, congratulations on your new book. For those unfamiliar, what is its central theme?
R. Emmett Tyrrell: The central theme is that conservatism has steadily grown while Liberalism, which is not very liberal, hence the capitalization, has steadily declined. The Liberals’ decline is from their overactive political libido. They always overreach, but they do dominate the political culture with what I call Kultursmog. The smog only encourages even greater excess, which is the Taranto Principle as formulated by the inimitable James Taranto. In the meantime conservatism grows and now with its growing counter-culture — Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, talk radio, the Internet — it will grow faster.
BC: Blueprints for future conservative victory are all the rage at the moment. What does After the Hangover uniquely offer its reader?
R. Emmett Tyrrell: Well, I am not sure it offers anything new. The blueprint is pretty well established as are our principles. I point out that the conservatives’ road to recovery will come through an archipelago of think tanks that we conservatives have been maintaining since Hayek and other founders of the modern conservative movement laid down our principles. Next came our policies. Mine as interred in Hangover are derived from those think tanks. My main contemporary policy sources are the supply-siders, Congressman Paul Ryan, and Steve Forbes. One of the things I wanted to say in the book is that policy wonks usually practice a conceit that they are original thinkers. Most are not, but I was too polite to say it.
BC: In my opinion, the most interesting concept here is the one you just raised regarding political libido. If Democrats lust power, control, and victory then what — if anything — motivates Republicans?
R. Emmett Tyrrell: Well, at some point in Hangover I mention that conservatism is by definition “a temperament to delight in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” — that being happiness as understood by Locke, namely the ownership and exchange of property. As for the Liberals they start with an anxiety about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. A temperament is different than an anxiety, which explains the overactive political libido of the Liberal. It is like that of a nymphomaniac, at times that of a sex offender. Ponder the more moderate way Ronald Reagan advanced his position on abortion compared with Barack Obama’s suicidal pursuit of health care reform. It led to violence.
BC: Yes, and just as was the Holy 40th, conservatives are cautious and prudent when in power, but how can we overcome this basic deficiency virtue and manage to take our country back?
I wish I could share Tyrrell’s optimism. I fear he underestimates the strength of the special-interest dynamic, statists’ meat and drink for nearly a century, and the associated Washington Monument Defense, which has seldom failed to protect a usurpation of unhallowed power.
The key to political progress lies in getting Americans to think long-term, in particular about their personal and corporate interests. That’s a formidable hurdle to surmount — and the Right, which has seldom gotten “off the defensive” in recent decades, must confront it squarely.
The key to political progress…is three-fold:
1) Provide the people with the necessities of life during the coming Hard Times.
2) Encourage the creation of new wealth by new hi-tech capital manufacturing.
3) After Reform produces Recovery, do _not_ allow the people to vote their
saviors out of office, as the British did Churchill after WWII; Nothing
produces more self-destructive, vindictive behavior by fools than being
saved from their folly.
Conservatives? Does that mean Conservatives – members of that well-known
“right-wing conspiracy”, or does that mean “Republicans” who are republicans in “democrats” clothing (RINOS), which many have shown themselves at contested votes for additional encroachment on the Rights of citizens. Rights PROTECTED by the US Constitution. The Constitution / FUNDAMENTAL LAW in a “Country of Law not of men” which “representatives” in Congress, Court and Executive — without recourse to Party are bound on oath when accepting the job to UPHOLD AND DEFEND. We have seen very little UPHOLD/ DEFEND from some “Republicans”. But where can a Conservative able and willing to be faithful to the oath of office be found? In the present culture where any lie is permissible to “win” and fidelity to oaths private and public thought “unreal”,could we believe any who present themselves as “conservative? Cynicism is unfortunate effect of the almost complete untrustworthiness of the public “leaders”, in government, information media AND educational institutions of the past 50 years
I wish i could share Mr. tyrell’s optimism but I am afraid that the cancer of liberalism is beyond healing.
I do think that frank, clear, simply stated, lessons of the failure of liberal policies vs. the success of conservatism would have strong impact on the American public.
I often wish that the highly rated talking heads on radio and tv would do more to expose the fallacy of more government than working towards rateings.
thanks for writers like Emmett Tyrell and Thomas Sowell etc.
I share Tyrell’s optimism. The Statists will continue to make gains up to November 2010 and perhaps all the way to 2012, but then America will begin to turn away from statism in all its variations: Obama’s Marxism, Pelosi and Reid’s Fascism, and the hodge-podge statism of the Democrat members of Congress and the Senate. A complete turn-around will require years, but I believe we will see it.