Always the Last to Know
Orrin Judd links to a quote from Slate contributor Beverly Gage, a Yale history professor, who asks, “American conservatives have a canon. Why don’t American liberals?”
Ask Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan how he became a conservative and he’ll probably answer by citing a book. It might be Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Or perhaps he’ll come up with Friedrich Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, or even Barry Goldwater’s Conscience of a Conservative. All of these books are staples of the modern conservative canon, works with the reputed power to radicalize even the most tepid Republican. Over the last half-century, they have been vital to the conservative movement’s success–and to liberalism’s demise.
We tend to think of the conservative influence in purely political terms: electing Ronald Reagan in 1980, picking away at Social Security, reducing taxes for the wealthy. But one of the movement’s most lasting successes has been in developing a common intellectual heritage. Any self-respecting young conservative knows the names you’re supposed to spout: Hayek, Rand, Ludwig von Mises, Albert Jay Nock. There are some older thinkers too–Edmund Burke, for instance–but for the most part the favored thinkers come out of the movement’s mid-20th century origins in opposition to Soviet communism and the New Deal.
Liberals, by contrast, have been moving in the other direction over the last half-century, abandoning the idea that ideas can be powerful political tools.
Yes, I know. Jonah Goldberg explored that topic in-depth four years ago in Liberal Fascism, and earlier, in a preview of his then-book-in-progress, eight years ago at the Corner, where he first wrote on “the generalized ignorance or silence of mainstream liberals about their own intellectual history:”
Obviously this is a sweeping — and therefore unfair — generalization. But I read a lot of liberal stuff and have attended more than a few college confabs with liberal speakers speaking on the subject of liberalism itself. And it seems to me that liberals are intellectually deracinated. Read conservative publications or attend conservative conferences and there will almost always be at least some mention of our intellectual forefathers and often a spirited debate about them. The same goes for Libertarians, at least that branch which can be called a part or partner of the conservative movement.
Just look at the conservative blogosphere. There’s all sorts of stuff about Burke, Hayek, von Mises, Oakeshott, Kirk, Buckley, Strauss, Meyer, the Southern Agrarians, et al. I can’t think of a single editor or contributing editor of National Review who can’t speak intelligently about the intellectual titans of conservatism going back generations. I’m not saying everybody’s an expert, but I think everybody’s made at least the minimal effort to understand their intellectual lineage and I think that’s reflected in conservative writing, for good and for ill. I would guess that the same hold true about the gang over at Reason.
I just don’t get the sense that’s true of most liberal journalists. When was the last time you saw more than a passing reference to Herbert Croly? When was the last time you read an article or blog posting where a liberal asked “What would Charles Beard think of this?”
At Power Line today, Steve Heyward adds:
This is not a new question from liberals who look up long enough from their primal quest for power to ask whether their intellectual shelf is bare. A few years ago Martin Peretz wrote in The New Republic that “It is liberalism that is now bookless and dying. . . Ask yourself: Who is a truly influential liberal mind [on par with Niebuhr] in our culture? Whose ideas challenge and whose ideals inspire? Whose books and articles are read and passed around? There’s no one, really.” Michael Tomasky echoed this point in The American Prospect: “I’ve long had the sense, and it’s only grown since I’ve moved to Washington, that conservatives talk more about philosophy, while liberals talk more about strategy; also, that liberals generally, and young liberals in particular, are somewhat less conversant in their creed’s history and urtexts than their conservative counterparts are.”
Of course, Peretz was practically run out of TNR on a rail for being too center-right via numerous JournoList contributors — despite Peretz’s magazine serving as the farm team for numerous MSM publications. And an earlier generation of leftists destroyed the Middlebrow concept that attempted to make pop culture one to grown on. Similarly, today’s academy has denuded the study of history, seeing it as nothing but war and racism. All of which has led inexorably to our 44th president, David Gelernter (like Slate’s Gage, a Yale professor himself) writes in his new book America-Lite:
Everyone agrees that President Obama is not only a man but a symbol. He is a symbol of America’s decisive victory over bigotry. But he is also a symbol, a living embodiment, of the failure of American education and its ongoing replacement by political indoctrination. He is a symbol of the new American elite, the new establishment, where left-liberal politics is no longer a conviction, no longer a way of thinking: it is built-in mind-furniture you take for granted without needing to think.
As Gelernter adds, “How could thirty-plus years of educational malpractice not matter? It has already dyed the country a subtle shade of left, and the color will deepen every year.” Even if many on the left don’t know the wellspring of their ideas and are trapped in present-tense culture.
Update: I almost forgot that I employed a certain Mr. H. Roark (or “Coop,” as his friends call him) last month in response to Obama’s “You didn’t build that” Lakoffian sophistry; this seems the perfect post to bring him back again.
Why is there no liberal Ayn Rand? That’s too easy, because Ayn Rand was smart. Liberals are emotional. Ayn Rand distrusted big govt, liberals worship big government. They are diametrically opposed. It’s almost like asking why are there no black KKK members. But I guess that’s really a question for Joe Biden.
The reason is pretty simple.
The Left’s view of the world is one of victimization, submission, subservience, and helplessness. There are no heroes and no achievements – the Deified State administers to everybody’s needs. Just recall Obama’s “Julia.”
It is pretty hard to sell a book like that…
Why would they need a different Ayn Rand?
The Obama Administration is already using “Atlas Shrugged” as a how to manual.
“The Obama Administration is already using “Atlas Shrugged” as a how to manual.”
It’s spelled “Karl Marx” Not “Atlas Shrugged”. Glad to help you out tho.
It’s spelled “Atlas Shrugged”.
An amusing parlor game is to match up the collectivist characters from Rand’s novel to the real-life Obama thugs. How about:
Mr. Thompson, Barack Hussein Obama (this one’s a gimme)
Cuffy Meigs, David Axelrod
Lee Hunsacker, (think Solyndra or Sen. Obama during Fannie & Freddy’s heyday)
Dr. Floyd Ferris, George Lakoff
Dr. Robert Stadler, James Hanson
Wesley Mouch, (any of the Obama Czars)
Orren Boyle, (GE head, any of a number of NY bankers)
Wikipedia conveniently provides a list that can be printed and handed to your party guests.
Two variations on the game are match up talking points of the DNC and Obama campaign with dialogue from the book and match incidents during the Obama presidency to incidents in the book. An example of the latter would be the disastrous food crop diversion by Kip’s Ma being matched up to this year’s shortage of edible corn being worsened by ethanol subsidies/mandates.
Have fun!
Speaking of bankers:
http://classicalvalues.com/2012/08/running-the-laundry/
It is ironic that so much emphasis is being placed on Ryan when Obama himself is the embodiment of one of Rands most memorable characters-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppgg_vF3Z-0
There ARE liberal icons and proponents. They are just not akcnowledged by most liberal/ progressive/ socialists because the ideas espoused are so far from mainstream that the references to them would be met with horror and distain.
Mao, Lenin, Marx, Alinsky, Engels, Che Guevara, Trotsky…….
Let’s not forget that icon of liberal bullcrap wrapped in pseudo-illectualism: Noam Chomsky. Gag.
We are not computers. We are neural networks. We require emotions to think (to make decisions actually). The networks do require proper training to do proper thinking.
We need to give up the whole emotional/rational dichotomy. It misleads.
Really. Some days I think “conservatives” are just as ignorant as “liberals”. The neural network aspects of thinking have been known for decades. The inability to make decisions without emotions has also been known for quite a long time.
To that I say phooey!
The Left, the media, and their sideline supporters seek to make the arguments they put forth emotional in nature. Since they cannot win the argument by intellectual means, they have sought to do so by exploiting the most vulnerable part of our humanity, our emotions. As with Pavlov’s dog, they know that a certain stimulus, having been applied over a predetermined period of time, will produce a desired result. The problem comes when the ridiculousness of what they’re attempting to do starts to overshadow their own argument.
B.F. Skinner: Walden II
Well, that might explain why in college I hated B.F. Skinner so.
It’s impossible for these people to ever have a canon. Every generation of leftists thinks they’re better than anyone else, even past leftists. “We’re the change we’ve been looking for!” If only they tinker more, spend more, manipulate more, propagandize more, then society will be perfect. When that ends in disaster, the next wave of idiots say and try the same thing.
The only way out of this madness is to abandon leftism.
What he said. I was gonna say it, but he said it better, and certainly more succinctly than I could have…
Liberalism is, by its very nature, anti-canon. Conservatism respects the past, learns from the past and often fights against changes to successful practices from the past. For liberals the past and present are never good enough. They can always find some group that failed to benefit from past/present policies and argue for wholesale change for the benefit of “all”. Whereas conservatives can rally around one common past, liberals are united by a vision of a better future. At times one vision of the future may dominate, like Marx, but the future is always a day away and ever changing and subject to reintpretation.
Yes, but to be fair to Lefists, they have to claim they’re better than the previous batch of lefitsts, since that batch failed spectacularly.
Leftism, being a philosophy of rent-seeking and parasitism, always fails when given an opportunity to implement it’s policies. So once in power, it can’t acknowledge any sort of history. The only things their propaganda can admit to is a troubled present (created by Conserative greed and bigotry) and a utopian future (created by Leftist compassion and brilliance).
You offer a sound explaination. It’s how liberals can overlook the repeated failures of socialism because “the right people weren’t in charge” (meaning themselves, of course). Without a shred of evidence, they believe they’re not only superior to conservatives but to everyone else as well, even other liberals. That’s why I so often hear even said about the merely rabid as opposed to moon-barking mad rabid liberals, “I don’t consider him a true liberal” (because he only agrees with the speaker on 99% of things, so therefore is impure and wrong.
If one attempted to put into book form all the claptrap illogic that passes for “liberal” culture and logic, the result would be laughed at, just like OWS, which is a bunch of incoherant derelicts who have not even mastered potty training, trying to teach us all what is wrong with US! Talk about beams vs. motes!
This stupid Emperor not only has NO clothes, but doesn’t seem to want any!
There is only so much defining one can do, when one has lived by lies all their life. Does one define the lie, so all can laugh; or defend the lie; or try to somehow explain the lie? Decisions, decisions!
What sort of enlightening ouvre do you reckon will ever come from people who will recite any foolishness shouted at them through a bullhorn in a manner that most sheep would find disturbing! Theirs not to reason…why or no.
A book? So people can actually analyze your idiocy? PREPOSTEROUS! Nothing, for example, that Obama has EVER DONE is on-the-record, is it? Hmmm. I thought not.
Besides, university presses publish such merde all day long, yet noone reads it. Because it is unreadable. Who really has the time to read such drivel and incoherance, bordering on mental illness?
I wonder what happens to all those useless books? Perhaps they burn well. But, OH! the greenhouse gasses!
Thank you, Ed Driscoll
Whether an objectivist or a conservative, both think historically and factually, which is to say, contextually. Neither interprets reality as a burden. Neither is so wedded to a premise that either would fashion an argument to suit, even if the original assumption were found wanting.
How many liberals can claim that territory?
The difference has to do with the difference in brains
http://classicalvalues.com/2012/02/the-ptsd-party/
For once, I’m rather disappointed with one of Ed’s pieces. While I wouldn’t expect him to be familiar with left philosophy, I’d at least expect he wouldn’t make such simplistic, one-dimensional conclusions that are unfortunately somewhat comical. Stick to your strong points Ed!
The reason one has a hard time finding an equivalence to Rand is rather a limitation of right and libertarian philosophies. The field is rather narrow, both in terms of serious authorship and epistemological breadth. Because conservative ideology tends to be limited on conceptions of negative rights, limited government, etc., the role for a philosophy to define epistemological topologies is minimal. There certainly are others in addition to the fiction writer Rand (one I personally grew up studying, embraced Austrian economics, but have realized her scholarship was idealistic, creative and also quite problematic; this is not a polemic against Rand and I’ll just leave that here). Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick also deserves a mention here, particularly for his libertarianism expressed in Anarchy, State and Utopia.
The left is not a monolith. Look at how it really functions as an aggregation of a variety of special interests: gender politics (e.g. GLBT rights), race politics, traditional liberal feminism rights (e.g. NOW, abortion rights, etc.), animal rights, environmental interests, Marxists, Leninists, Stalinists, Maoists like Anita Dunn’s coalition, anti-American global capitalists like Soros and the Open Society types, the church of global warming, etc.. In each of these regions, there are philosophers and sustaining myths much like Rand’s material. Lenin is a champion to some of Obama’s inner circle (just read Zizek’s text on Lenin and you’ll be unable to sleep for a few nights realizing Obama’s ripped a lot of his personal ideology right out of Lenin’s writings). Alinsky is embraced as a philosophy for some left groups, and so on. I’d even suggest that NASA “scientist” James Hansen is seen as an Ayn Rand by some in the warming faith. It’s subsequently not an analogue for comparison.
I’d add that up until recently, the Left also out-read the right when it came to philosophy. That’s beginning to change and I’d credit Mark Levin and Glenn Beck for some of that revitalized interest. There is a terror lurking within the left that the right might figure out many of the top theorists of the past four years (including many associated with France’s May 1968 uprising and movement) are actually more compatible with the radical individualism embraced by movements like the Tea Party. French philosopher Michel Foucault can and should be read as one profoundly in resonance with the Tea Party, not the imperial hierarchical tyrannical Left of our contemporary times.
“Look at how it really functions as an aggregation of a variety of special interests…”
All of which are based on — and expressed in terms of — Marxism of one flavor or another.
That’s it right there almost all liberal philosophy comes down to Marx. No matter how much makeup you put on that pig it is still Marxism.
And even calling it “Marxism” is overrating it.
As if a title or an “ism” lends it some stature or credibility.
Marx was nothing but a lazy pig…a self-important jackass/con artist spouting his b*llshit to the equally lazy son of rich Industrialists, while he mooched off that families wealth AND complained about it.
Its not Marx, the man or his idea’s that are so “foundational” to the left.
The same lazy, disingenuous, self centered style of thought. The simple fraud of theft because “I want”, the insistence of (subsidized) indulgence because “I need”, and the prohibition of any sense of manly discipline to get the f*ck up off your ass and DO SOMETHING, besides complain that someone else has not provided for your means.
Marx is in that way, rather like Narcissus. Just a name we now use to provide identity to an undesirable condition. In Marx’s case, the condition of lies and fraud are the “natural condition” of most opportunists.
Politicians, Unionists and assorted criminals naturally fall into that category…they don’t believe in “marxism” per se, they believe in THEMSELVES abusing YOU to have the things they want.
You can call it most generously, a Freudian slip that they all eventually read-up on this pig, and suddenly see his “system” as the one that makes the most sense to them…thus the love affair they have with him.
Or, you simply can call them liars, cheats fraud’s and thieves.
I myself prefer not to let the “-ism” give any veneer of credibility, or illusion of “intellect”, to the thuggish.
And as anyone who has sniffed around the sty of Marx they will know that he was a hypocritical tyrant of the first order with zero first hand knowledge of the working class he so fervently defended. He was an elitist snob and an disgusting one at that. Sound familiar.
Wrong! The left think they are followers of Marx. They are really followers of Georges Sorel via Paul de Man. Marx and Lenin would reject the factionalization of the Prolitariat as reactionary.
“…..the radical individualism embraced by movements like the Tea Party.”
The three basic pillars of the Tea Party are (1) Fiscal responsibility (2) Constitutionally limited government (3) Free markets. Pretty radical stuff by your standard is it? Which of those three do you find to be the most radical? Or is it that you really no little or nothing about the Tea Party movement?
Edit: I know it’s not no.
I agree with Multitude’s main point. Go to any Studies Department and you will see the canon’s. Listen to these groups and you will hear the references.
It is also true that many try to downplay the influence of Marx, Gramsci, Marcuse, and so on and so forth. Preferring more esoteric and refined references.
The Conservatives bookshelf is a bit bare compared, but that is why the volumes are so well known. The core is tighter, because there is less of a core. Excepting of course if you go back beyond the 20th Century, then you have a multitude of Christian philosophy, the Founding Fathers, European Christian Enlightenment, right back to Rome and Greece (Aristotle/Plato,etc) to draw upon. The Canon of Western Civilization.
Your last two sentences contradict your initial thought and dismantle Multitude’s argument. Conservatives didn’t pop up out of nowhere after, say, WWII. They condensed custom, rationality, experience, etc., which were centuries in the making, in order to preserve them. Otherwise the left would have squashed all of it (which is what they’re still trying to do.)
It is the left’s value system (as much as they have values) that is more recent, not the right’s. It is the left that is constantly trying to start over, not the right. Conservatives don’t take their cues just from Ayn Rand or the Founders or Cicero or even the birth of Christ. To religious conservatives, who are the majority of conservatives, some of these concepts date back to before the earth existed. They started with God himself.
Find me a leftist philosopher who predates the creator of the universe.
“Find me a leftist philosopher who predates the creator of the universe”
Find me one who believes the universe WAS created.
Remember, to a leftist, nothing before THEM, matters at all
That’s right, visit almost any college bookstore and the Leftist canon is on display for all to see. And in #27 comatus does well in naming a sampling of authors of the Leftist canon off the top of his head. But one must ask, why did the Slate scribbler blank out, unable to come up with any of that?
dhe best answer I’ve seen yet comes from Eric E. Frisch who in response to this article at Powerline, wrote “it’s the same reason each new edition of the Newspeak dictionary is smaller than the last. For the progressive weltanschauung to function, they keep having to declare more and more mental territory off-limits for debate.”
And they have taken direct assault upon the canon itself…
Revisiting the Canon Wars – Books – Review – New York Times
excerpt…
“The Closing of the American Mind” hit the scene at a time when universities were embroiled in the so-called canon wars, in which traditionalists in favor of centering the curriculum on classic works of literature faced off
against multiculturalists who wanted to include more works by women and members of minorities. In early 1988, students at Stanford held a rally with Jesse Jackson, where they shouted, “Hey hey, ho ho, Western culture’s got to go,” to protest a required Western civilization course. (The faculty quickly voted to replace it with a requirement including more works by women and minorities.) Bloom’s book shared space at the top of the best-seller list with E. D. Hirsch’s “Cultural Literacy” (1987), which argued that progressive education had left
Americans without a grasp of basic knowledge. It also inspired further conservative attacks against the university, including Roger Kimball’s “Tenured Radicals” (1990) and Dinesh D’Souza’s “Illiberal Education”(1991).
Although it had great popular appeal, “The Closing of the American Mind” did not go over well among academics. Bloom’s detractors criticized everything from his interpretation of the Greeks to his views on youth culture and feminism, which he saw as corrosive influences. “The amazing thing about Allan Bloom’s book was not just its prodigious commercial success … but the depth of the hostility and even hatred that it inspired among a large number of professors,” John Searle, the Berkeley philosophy professor and former proponent of
the ’60s radical Free Speech Movement wrote in The New York Review of Books in 1990. Searle also noted a “certain irony” that the Western canon, from Socrates to Marx, which had once been seen as “liberating,” was now seen as “oppressive.” “Precisely by inculcating a critical attitude,” Searle wrote, “the ‘canon’ served to demythologize the conventional pieties of the American bourgeoisie and provided the student with a perspective from which to critically analyze American culture and institutions. … The texts once served an unmasking function; now we are told that it is the texts which must be unmasked.”
Today it’s generally agreed that the multiculturalists won the canon wars. Reading lists were broadened to include more works by women and minority writers.
I agree here, if for no other reason that thinkers developing arguments concerning the use of the power of the state (or monarchy, or imperium, or chiefs, etc) to do wonderful things goes back literally to the dawn of history. The idea of formally limiting the state and wondering whether it should leave the people alone to organically solve social problems on their own is quite new.
I’d say that Driscoll’s point withstands your critique with respect to “liberals.” Yes, the radical left is fragmented and each sub-group has its favorite texts (which are all marxist or neo-marxist to one degree or another. My experience, however (which is admittedly limited as most of my left and liberal friends no longer share their opinions with me since they do not like to be challenged with contrary opinions), suggests that even they don’t read those texts anymore. With liberals it’s even worse: they have no idea where the assumptions underlying their “progressive” opinions come from; they have no awareness of even having underlying assumptions. They just think it’s common sense, and that anyone who doesn’t share those assumptions and opinions must have something wrong with them (heartless, racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, greedy, rich, etc., etc.). What I would add to this discussion is that the real, fundamental, thinker underlying the assumptions of the left and liberals (and Marx) was Rousseau, and he’s never read by any of them.
“How do you tell a communist (Liberl or Leftist)? Well, it’s someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It’s someone who understands Marx and Lenin.” Reagan
Well, I think the root of the answer is that American classical liberalism is dead, and has been for decades now. It is no longer a force in American politics. Its demise began in the mid-20th century, when it began to reject its roots in Locke and the Federalist Papers, in search of a “next step” that was never actually defined. By the mid-1960s it was foundation-less and lacking in any principle other than a vaguely felt “be nice to people”, which rendered it ripe for takeover by the first power-thirsty group to come along. Which is what happened; the Marxist Left invaded the empty body and took control of it.
Buckley saw this coming and made a persuasive argument that conservatism should capture and incorporate what was good about classical liberalism. That fight still goes on; a lot of progress have been made but most of it has been in the last two decades (Goldwater was too far ahead of his time), and conservative thinkers are really just now getting a handle on what it really means. I have personally seen the conservative philosophy evolve hugely since 1990, but it does still have a way to go yet. The basic principles have not changed, but a lot of thinking has needed to be done about how the principles actually apply to various situations.
Leftism as it exists today is basically the Cluster B personality disorders rendered in the form of politics. Its main attraction is an appeal to narcissism and avarice; a great many of its adherents seem to hold that they are inherently superior to all others, and therefore ordinary constraints of law and civilization should not apply to them. It’s the rawest form of politics; the only reason it doesn’t advocate the outright extermination of its opponents is because the parasite realizes that it can’t survive without a host to feed on. Meaningful thinking is precluded because such requires reason, and logical reasoning is nearly always the enemy of the narcissist. To leftists, all of life is nothing but a raw power struggle anyway; winning is self-justifying and morals are viewed as a sign of weakness. What need, or use, has it for philosophy?
Cousin Dave, classical liberalism is not dead, it is now the center right.
I think it is dangereous to think that today’s left does not have any founding treatises. They are too young and too ill-informed, or too old and too knowledgeable.
About the same time I was getting my first degree, my sister was getting her graduate degree at Harvard – the same years Barack was there. Though it doesnt matter to my anecdote, no, she did not know him. What is important is what we were taught during that time. In my 400 level PolySci course, the prof spent the entire semester explaining why Marxism failure in the Soviet Union, China, and elsewhere was inevitable. He laid out the intellectual history of Marxism, and showed that it failed because it was tried in the wrong countries – agrarian countries, not the industrial laissez-faire that Marx had foreseen.
Marxism didn’t fail, it’s practical implementation failed… (let’s try it where Marx knew it would work, nudge, nudge.)
Now I don’t know if this twist of history wasy an original idea of my professor or a legacy of his professors (he graduated in the late 60′s) but in hindsight, the indoctrination was on. I escaped because I was working my way through college; my sister did not. (She clings to James Cone’s Liberation Theology which was rampant at Harvard at that time.)
Further hindsight leads me to believe that the foundational treatises of modern leftism are readily apparent (see Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism”) and include Nietzsche, Heidegger, Hegel and Marx, with updated tactical suggestions by Machivelli, Alinski, Chomsky, etc. It is not that anyone of today’s left identifies with Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Mussolini, Stalin, Mao, Castro, or Ho Chi Min -they have just been lead to believe that all the above tyrants were really well intentioned men only interested in the betterment of their society/culture. Furthermore, as students of “enlightened history” they were lead to believe that they would become part of the “Vanguard of the Proletariat” – those so well educated and mentally equipped that they could better determine what was and is in the best interests of their fellow ‘comrades’; those so beknighted that they can ignore common laws to forcably impose upon the dullards that which they are to stupid to see.
There are millions of Thomas Franks, and Michael Bloombergs, and Michelle Obamas. And because they have a college education at some ranked school, they think they have every right to, not just point out, but correct other folks gravious maladies, solely based upon the fact that those other folks dont act, nor vote, in and on what these ‘educated’ elitists deign in their best interests.
The left has increasingly cocooned themselves in a world where their Marxist underpinnings are unassailable. These smarty pants will never get to the more important question – What is wrong Washington DC.
“Now I don’t know if this twist of history wasy an original idea of my professor…”
It wasn’t. They started pushing this line since about five minutes after Stalin’s crimes were admitted.
bains, thanks for the thoughts. I certainly won’t argue that classical liberalism makes up a big chunk of the foundation of modern libertarianism. I’m just saying that classical liberalism, as a political movement particularly within the Democratic Party, is dead.
I caught some of the same crap you speak of in high school: “We don’t know if Communism works because it’s never been done properly.” That was sort of my point, though: Leftists will persist in attempting what’s already been shown to not work, because they don’t care if it works or not — for them, it’s purely an exercise in self-gratification, and damn the consequences. They may cite an underpinning in Marx or Derrida or whatever, but it really doesn’t matter because all of them are nothing more than philosophical fig leaves — ways to rationalize and excuse what the leftists were going to do anyway. Narcissism is hostile to reason, because reason tends to expose narcissism for what it is.
And by extension, this leads to another reason for lack of meaningful scholarship on the Left: it’s structured as something of a Gnostic cult. It has to be, because if leftists running for office camapaigned on what they really believe, they’d lose every election. So they conceal their true beliefs, and speak honestly only when confident that they are among other true believers. Critical examination simply isn’t possible in that environment.
Bains it did not start with your professor. My PoliSci profs were pushing this line when I matriculated in ’67. Still pushing it according to my grand-kids.
“classical liberalism is not dead, it is now the center right.”
Not even close. Classic liberalism would absolutely reject the police statism and soft socialism that are halmarks of today’s center right.
I think you’re on to something. But the left has a different relationship to their founding thinkers, and that has something to do with their beliefs.
The left doesn’t look to Marx, because it’s embarrassing to do so, but also because Marx had a specific agenda with a conclusion. The left doesn’t seek a particular goal; they seek change (or, arguably, disruption). They don’t aim for a Marxian world the way the right may aim for a Lockean or a Biblical world. Aim implies a target. They don’t aim; they move. So what good is a foundational text?
The authors that I think constitute the modern left’s intellectual core – Chomsky, Alinsky, and Foucault – study power. They don’t present philosophy so much as tactics. That’s what would appeal to people who seek change. It’s why the Occupy movement knows exactly how to organize but can’t formulate a uniting policy prescription. The Tea Party, on the other hand, stumbles in organization, but every member has a copy of the Declaration of Independence in his pocket.
The (disappearing) headline reads: ‘Why Is There No Liberal Ayn Rand?’ Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism is incomparable to any other. She is, in effect, the whistle blower on the whole subjectivist-collectivist-mystical snow job the power seekers from antiquity discovered for the subjugation of innocent men. What compares to that? What thinker was ever capable of seeing what she saw? Paul Ryan and the Tea Party, as most others, are clueless about the depth and breadth of her achievement.
Not disappearing — I simply used it (quoting it from Slate) to be more to the point on the PJM homepage.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/56968697/Bertonneau-Ayn-Rand-From-Romantic-Fallacy-to-Holocaustic-Imagination
For anyone (not suicidal)who thought that GALT’s speech was too long, try the above.
To/From @8 Curtis Plumb: “‘Why Is There No Liberal Ayn Rand?’ Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism is incomparable to any other. She is, in effect, the whistle blower on the whole subjectivist-collectivist-mystical snow job the power seekers from antiquity discovered for the subjugation of innocent men. What compares to that? What thinker was ever capable of seeing what she saw? Paul Ryan and the Tea Party, as most others, are clueless about the depth and breadth of her achievement.”
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^THIS^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The left has its own Ayn Rand, his name is Karl Marx. He is the father of all their ideas and most cherished beliefs. He is also politically untenable. So they never mention him.
There is no ‘liberal canon’ because liberalism is about power, not thinking. Thinking is allowed insofar as it serves the cause of liberalism, but not beyond that. A liberal commentator can engage in clever wordplay to support liberalism for example, but can’t develop well considered principles as principles can be used against power at some later time.
No doubt some of this is a holdover from cold war days. A large number of ‘intelligentsia’ liberals were primarily interested in supporting the Soviet Union. For the USSR: good; against the USSR: bad. That habit of mind continues into the present.
The phrase logical conclusion comes to mind. Liberals are unwilling to assess their ideology to its logical conclusion, because doing so would demonstrate those ideas inherit failings. In addition many liberals have the historical hindsight of a newborn. They refuse to accept, or refuse to even look, to the past to see that their philosophies are not new but are demonstrably old. They’d prefer to labor under the delusion, as others have said, that it just wasn’t done correctly, and they are always quick to blame a convenient political enemy for its failings.
Just look at the left today. Nothing that has happened in the last 4 years has been their fault. I hear it in the liberal echo chamber every day, be it the news cycle, liberal co-workers, or liberal acquaintances. It’s either George Bush’s fault, or it’s the “party of no” Republican congress that is holding closed the utopian floodgates. They have no rudder, as the naval saying goes, therefor they cannot have any cogent philosophy.
In ’08 I read Goldberg’s “Liberal Facism” along with Jung’s “Undiscovered Self” [originally penned in the 50's]. I am again working through both during this election. Any human interested in understanding individual enlightenment would do well to read both, as well.
Those we identify as ‘left’ do have cannons. However, their cannons are more like matchbooks. Light them once and it is then time to find a new book of matches.
Why doesn’t the left have a canon? Simple…time demolished their lies. The Soviet Union in ashes falsified their whole world view. All that remains is the adolescent demand to fulfill their covetous lusts.
I’ve long thought the roots of modern liberalism go all the way back to Plato’s “Republic.” In his utopia, Plato wrote that the masses should be controlled by “Philosopher-Kings.” – Men of superior intelligence who, because they are so smart, would control the people justly and wisely. Intelligent men like…well, like Plato, himself.
This idea would wander aimlessly down through the centuries, finally finding a home in the fevered brain of Karl Mark. There it would metastasize into the thinking of George Bernard Shaw, the American Progressive Movement, Lenin, Mussolini and Adolph Hitler. It now rests comfortably in the thinking of the modern Democratic Party and Barrack Obama.
Spend any time with a true leftist and you soon see that he believes, really believes in his heart of hearts, that he is smarter than the rest of us. And because he is so smart, he need not consider any view but his own. To him, he was born to rule over us lesser beings.
This explains why the true leftist has a low regard for democratic ideals. Why he supported the Soviet Union until it crumbled before his very eyes. Why he favors Islam over Christianity. Why the Palestinians are more worthy of his support than the Israelis. Why the Constitution is an impediment to the progressive advancement of the species (just ask Obama.)
It is all about control.
Well said.
“It is all about control.”
Always was. Ask a leftist, or an islamist for that matter, why they hate it’s because others won’t submit. Power is their god.
Been awhile since I read Plato’s “Republic”, but didn’t he also suggest that those who sought to rule be denied and those who didn’t want power be trusted to rule? I recall he recanted in the end.
Dave, as my wife put it: “Liberals are Cartesians – I think therefore I’m right.”
Not an ounce of humility or doubt about their own worth or ideas, ultimate arrogance.
Mr. Smith,
Go to Washington!
One of the entertaining parts of linking Plato to liberalism is that, according to modern liberals, Plato was an arch-conservative—just try Googling “Plato Republic fascism.” Karl Popper in his Open Society And Its Enemies pretty much claimed that the Republic was a totalitarian guidebook. Weirdly, these discussions somehow insist on separating Plato and Socrates, so that Socrates (even with all his lines written by Plato) turns into a champion of left liberalism.
I agree with your point about how Plato’s Republic is commonly interpreted, but I would defend Plato against the naive reading of the Republic that fails to get his joke: no real philosopher would want to rule (because philosophy is the highest human calling and the responsibilities of power would make philosophizing (i.e., the search for truth) impossible); and if a philosopher-king did have absolute power the result would be a totalitarian nightmare. For Plato, the ideal regime is the one that leaves space for philosophers and philosophizing, and the regime Socrates describes in the Republic does neither. The liberal democratic regime, with all its warts and blemishes, comes closest to Plato’s ideal.
Hub
I’d follow you about 90% of the way. I’m less certain of any claim that something we could call liberal democracy would have been Plato’s choice as Best Regime based on its friendliness to philosophy. If nothing else, he was well aware that it was the Athenian democracy that put Socrates on trial and put him to death. However, this would be the subject of a lengthy discussion.
uhh, in the interest of historical correctness: what conservatives in the US are trying to preserve is classical Liberalism. The US is a liberal country that is currently undergoing a sustained attempt to take it over and convert it to a socialist, fascist state. We’ve seen this before.
True enough; bains and I had a discussion about that up-thread. I think the point there is that today’s “liberals” are nothing of the sort, which is why I prefer using the term “leftist” for them.
Surely the better question is why doesn’t the Left have any popular writers?
The most striking thing about Ayn Rand is that she has no support in The Academy whatsoever (never mind why) but she finds a vast readership and has considerable influence beyond her readership.
The Left has its Canon (Nietzche, Heidegger, Walter Benjamin, Foucault) and these days the Left’s Canon is The Canon in The Academy. But these writers have no readership outside of The Academy: no voluntary readers.
I suspect their “canon” would include LOTS of Karl Marx. They just can’t ADMIT it.
That’s certainly part of their problem: too many of their ‘canon’ authors are extremists they are shy of admitting to, in public. Possibly compounded by a lack of pride in who they are, because who they are is so hard to define succinctly.
The left has no self-recognized lineage because they believe they were the first to ever think “progressive” thoughts. That is why they think their ideas will actually work, when the world has seen them fail over and over again.
Why is there no intellectual canon on the left? It’s very simple – for there to be an intellectual canon, there must first be intellect. Multitude tries to contest the premise above, but only confirms it. He tosses out a few names, none of them known as great intellects or writers.
Others have noted the complementary reason. Leftism is predicated on EMOTION, not intellect. Thus the “politics of envy” campaign that Obama is waging now. Without that, he would be forced to run on his record, i.e. facts, which would not be a wise move on his part.
The reason why modern leftists no longer look to old-style left-wing intellectuals for inspiration, is that they have long since run off the end of what those intellectuals had to offer. Now they’re venturing into totally uncharted waters, like multiculturalism. Multiculturalism now dominates over socialism as the Left’s main goal. Instead of socialism empowering the working class, the Left now sees the white working class as an enemy of “diversity.”
None of the old-style leftists like Harrington and Galbraith and Walzer talked about this stuff, societies as salad bowls rather than melting pots.
I looked at the Wikipedia article on “Multiculturalism” to see how this idea got started in the first place. It did NOT arise from any intellectuals who gave it a lot of philosophical thought.
Rather, it first arose from a Canadian Royal Commission on Bilingualism. IOW, the concept of multiculturalism arose as an after-the-fact *rationalization* of French-speaking Quebec, and then spread to America from there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiculturalism
So the Left’s Big Idea–Multiculturalism–had no intellectual foundation. None.
The success of the indoctrination program largely explains the lack of leftist thinkers. The left is like the Borg, you’re assimilated and that’s the end of the story. New ideas are crushed and new thinkers are destroyed. There can be only one… thought that is.
What we’re seeing from the left is the endgame. They’re nothing but “mind-numb robots” repeating the mantra of the day. Their actions were programmed decades ago and by now they were supposed to be masters of the universe. Yep, that’s right, Barack Obama is the result of bad programming.
That programming also explains the left’s infatuation with dictators. The fundamental principle of the modern leftist is blind obedience to power. How do you come up with new ideas when you are fundamentally opposed to new ideas?
Yep. Progressivism is a cult.
The reason is that “liberals” are no longer liberal. Their foggy philosophy has drifted ever leftward into progressivism and socialism. Classical liberalism has little to do with collectivism, multiculturalism and political correctness. Modern conservatism has taken up the torch of limited government, constitutionalism, rule of law, due process, individual liberties including freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and free markets while modern “liberals” have fallen for the siren song of redistribution, victimhood and class warfare.
From the comments at the article: “[Liberals] have no overriding philosophy because their focus is purely on their own desired outcomes. When you do not restrain yourself by concepts of ‘limited resources’ or ‘trade-offs’ there is no need for philosophy or ideas. There is, ultimately, simply want you WANT. This is not intended as a petty insult, but simply an observation: a child that wants its pacifier does not need a philosophy – why would a liberal?”
“Imagine” by John Lennon is part of their “canon”.
That is a classic! I almost fell out of my chair laughing.
I cannot disagree with anything Gage or Driscoll have said on the subject. I think we may be missing a key point, however. The intellectual dishonesty necessary to support the ideas of modern “liberalism” is so great as to preclude any great thinkers from sinking so low.
“Why is there no liberal Ayn Rand?”
I thought they had one. Karl something…
Tolstoy, Upton Sinclair, and Rachel Carson come immediately to mind out of the hoary past. And if you think Rand is hard to get through, oh, my brother…
I’m not saying everybody’s an expert, but I think everybody’s made at least the minimal effort to understand their intellectual lineage.
My intellectual lineage comes out of my gut, with a soupçon (ok, more than a soupçon) of my parents thrown in. Toss in my kick ass Scottish genes.
Then there is life experience, since it took me almost 2 decades to undo my Berzerkley (liberal) brainwashing.
I take issue with the idea that one’s commitment to liberty and free trade amongst competitors must have emanated from some well-known writer or thinker since, to me, such ideas are simply right as an extension of the nature of man.
(Plus today’s Leftists are such creepy micro-managerial sorts who, apparently, deeply resent human freedom. It’s easy to resist such creeps.)
Rand, Hayek et al. reinforce my gut, and it’s exciting to read the depth to which they take their arguments, but they haven’t (actively anyway) shaped my thinking.
The reason the Left lacks a Rand or a Hayek or a Milton Friedman is the same reason the Left lacks a Mark Levin or a Rush Limbaugh. Brains.
The Left tries to shut down the marketplace of ideas in which it cannot compete. That’s why this President has told his college audiences to expand their reading horizons and go over to the Huffington Post etc. and other lame and self-serving “advice”.
Leftists hate that their critics are able to speak, let alone breathe.
Matthew Arnold speaks volumes to me:
“The need of expansion is as genuine an instinct in man as the need in a plant for the light, or the need in man himself for going upright. The love of liberty is simply the instinct in man for expansion.”
There’s no Left canon for the same reason the Left has no counterpart to Rush Limbaugh: Leftist positions cannot withstand intellectual scrutiny.
Everyone agrees that President Obama is not only a man but a symbol. He is a symbol of America’s decisive victory over bigotry.
Everyone agrees ?
To me, this first American President of mixed race (known, anyway, and thank you Morgan Freeman for that obvious clarification) has been a charlatan from the getgo.
And not even a symbol of a charlatan but the real deal.
Anton LaVey, founder of the Satanic Church: Satanism is “just Ayn Rand’s philosophy, with ceremony and ritual added”.
Many years ago I tried to read von Mises. Gave up in disgust. I wouldn’t suggest his Human Action as a basis for anything.
The liberal Ayn Rands are Karl Marx and his ilk. That’s why they don’t speak of their ideological mentors. Or maybe they are so simple-minded they don’t bother to figure it out, but simply parrot the pablum they have been fed. The fact still remains: their “fountainheads” are Marx, Engles and the like.
“…conservatives talk more about philosophy, while liberals talk more about strategy…”
What do they say about arm-chair generals:
Amateurs talk about strategy, professionals talk about logistics!
Hayek, Burke, von Mises, Rand, etc., are The Logistics of Conservatism.
There are, obviously, many intellectual forbears that Progressive intellectuals know and could cite: Rousseau, Hegel, and Dewey to name three, not to mention many, many lesser lights of the 20th century. But that last name on the list is one major reason that Mr. Driscoll’s article has a grain of truth. Pragmatism is one of the parents of Progressivism and, by its nature, it eschews any sort of foundational thinking. Hence, it makes sense that contemporary liberals would tend to avoid citing any particular book or even thinker; in Pragmatism – and its postmodern offshoots – all thinking is fragmented, momentary, always in revision.
Not to mention the fact that Hegel and Dewey are virtually unreadable. Both are used simply as intellectual fig-leaves for dogmatic statism: Hegel simply requires too much effort to read, and Dewey simply isn’t worth the effort–there’s no there there.
“Liberals, by contrast, have been moving in the other direction over the last half-century, abandoning the idea that ideas can be powerful political tools.”
That is because the “New liberals” have nothing but all roads lead back to Marx. And he has been proven wrong over and over again. So they make up catchy words and phrases and repeat them until the brainwashed sheep digest it and then fall in line.
Problem for the Liberals now is freedom has been chrushed enough there now is a movement to gain it back.
I was just thinking the same thing myself; most “liberal” ideas are essentially derived from Marxism. They just hate to admit it.
The left doesn’t try to defend their ideology because you cannot defend the indefensible. That would require some modicum of logic and reasoning, and their ideas to not operate by either.
Well, one obvious name would be George Orwell, only the Left used his message as a cookbook instead of a warning.
George Orwell (real name: Eric Blair) was a leftist and an a profoundly gifted man. He was also a world weary pessimist. He earned it in the Spanish Civil War and elsewhere. It was hard not to feel that way during his time. He felt his utopian dreams were being (had been) destroyed by what happened in Europe in the 30′s and 40′s. He was right. His books help (but only help) tell us why. He was a good, though very troubled, man who smoked himself to death at age 47. He remains my favorite writer. I have tried to read every word he ever wrote. It is really not as much as you might think.
This seems to be missing the forest because there are all those damn trees in the way. America and Western civilization has been moving steadily, and now almost plummeting, to the left for a few hundred years. Conservatives are losing and may have simply last the contest. Plain and simple. Yes, we have our heroes but the culture has largely abandoned us. Ronald Reagan, bless his soul, was at heart a pragmatist. You don’t get to be President of the Screen Actors Guild or Governor of California by being a staunch conservative. Reagan had conservative instincts and his heart was in the right place. But he didn’t really deliver on his rhetoric. And after him who has there been in public life standing as a principled conservative with real political power? Antonin Scalia? He’s a judge. Mitch McConnell? Please spare us. After that…who? This essay is kind of silly. Leftists have everyone from Karl Marx to Woody Guthrie/Bob Dylan. Joe Stalin to Ralph Nader (yeah, a joke, I know). And countless others. That is their “canon”. Our country is going bankrupt and not just financially. There is going to be terrible upheaval and violence in the decades to come. Navel gazing about who has a literary “canon” and who doesn’t is not helpful.
[I live in Virginia, I lie to pollsters]
The left as Borg. I love. Consider it stolen, and oft repeated. Ta.
When one chooses to use liberal politics to exploit others for what they want, instead of honestly working or trading for it, success requires deceit, not a philosophical search for truth.
The reason there are liberals, at all, is because most of their opposition believes liberal ideology represents a compassionate error in means, a confused inability to comprehend the opposite results in the political use of redistributive taxation vs cooperative exchange and charity as means to harmonious prosperity, rather than a deliberate choice to deceitfully hide this difference as means to personally profitable political exploitation.
“He is a symbol of the new American elite, the new establishment, where left-liberal politics is no longer a conviction, no longer a way of thinking: it is built-in mind-furniture you take for granted without needing to think.”
Why would they need fresh ideas or critical thinking skills when they can engage in demagoguery and demonization? Why take the high road when you can achieve one’s goals by trudging through the gutter, especially when one’s sole goal is power, consequences be damned?
The same question can be asked about radio, why are there no successful Liberal talk radio shows? One reason is that Liberalism isn’t a broad based philosophical belief system but is rather a motley crew of grievance groups held together by their anti-Westernism, anti-intellectualism, and anti-capitalistism.
…anti-capitalism
Talk shows are usually about conspiracy whether Art Bell or Politics with a mysterious “them” who want control. UFOs are real but “they” don’t want the people knowing; “they” are trying to make us buy into gay marriage. And so on. Listen to (obvious) black callers on either southern gospel radio or art bell type shows and there’s no end to conspiracy by the whites to suppress those of colour via food alteration, immunisation, etc.
Liberal talk radio doesn’t exist in big numbers because there just isn’t that much in the way of bogeymen that make liberals afraid.
What would liberals talk about? Gays? What’s there to talk about re gays? It’s not the liberals who are pestering the legislatures to define marriage as some sort of biblical thing. Liberals don’t care if gays get hitched. Not much to talk about if you don’t care. Contrast this to the petabytes of daily digital vitriol aimed at gays by the right wing, who speak in terms of… conspiracy…
Exactly…Talk Radio is …TALK…
Hours and hours of persistant talking.
So, when what youre saying ISNT factual, isnt conversational, truthful, honest or realistic, it falls flat in a matter of MINUTES…
It is so utterly “un-listen-able” that no body, not even LIBERALS, can stand it’s droaning on and on in its indefensible, illogical opinions that defy all rational human thought….
Liberal Talk Radio FAILS because its premise and subject matter is FALSE.
Conservative Talk Radio succeeds because its premise and subject matter are TRUE
Liberal opinions can only succeed when they are physically enforced from the top down…Schools, Colleges, Government Policy, tax-funded programming and the like…
Or Gulags.
Which, (funny isnt it?) is always the end-game of all its proponents
The “Left” has no Canon — because it has (had) so many cannons — to the tune of 150+Million dead in the last century alone — more to come in this century!
Who needs a Canon when lies and cannons will do as well? — That’s part of the answer.
The other part is: As knowledge of the 150+Million dead, with more to come, spreads, any Canon is automatically discredited; and, needs to be replaced with a Narrative, better yet with many narratives. A New Narrative for every special case. That’s what we see the “Left” telling a lot of, in recent years.
Narratives to replace any (untenable) Canon(s). AKA as fairy-tales — lies! To be backed by more cannons — as needed! THEY know what they’re up to. When will we?!
I’m going to disagree with you. Not on the premise on what the canon is.
Let’s start with the Constitution, writings of the Founding Fathers, and Adam Smith.
Then your excellent choices.
Then I would add Thomas Sowell, Mark Levin Liberty and Tyranny, Jonah Goldberg Liberal Fascism, The Forgotten Man (can’t remember her name) and Walter Williams.
Not much of a canon, if you can’t remember their names.
Perhaps it is because liberals don’t even know their own philosopical roots.Ask even one of todays college educated liberals if they ever heard of Herbert Croley or John R. Commons. “John R who?” “Herbert who?” is the response will most likely get.
Ooops! I accidently clicked the “submit” button efore I was finished.
Perhaps the reason why no reads any of these founders of modern liberalism is because works like Croleys PROMISE OF AMERICAN LIFE are pretty rough going today, while ATLAS SHRUGGED is still a good read.
By definition a ‘liberal’ seeks to liberate themselves from what has gone before. Their default position is that they are better than the past so what could those authors possibly have to say to them? ‘Conservatives’ on the other hand seek to conserve that which has been passed down.
That being said, these ideas have been floated since the beginning of time, from Epicurus to Rousseau to Marx to Alinsky, equality of outcome is the goal.
A liberal Ayn Rand?
Karl Marx?
Liberal Ayn Rand = Gene Roddenberry. The Star Trek socialist utopia is fixed forever in progressive minds.
So, Root 83, is this a polite way of suggesting I should go to hell?
The leftist canon is simpler that what everyone thinks. The aldult leftist is the two year old on Christmas morning, saying “MINE!” to every present. The grow taller, not up and get the idea that if they all get together they can make all those gifts “MINE!”
“American conservatives have a canon. Why don’t American liberals?”
Oh but they do. American liberals have several.
The Communist Manifesto.
The Naked Communist.
Rules for Radicals.
Shall I continue?
I nominate Hebert Marcuse’s “One Dimensional Man” (1964) as the progressives’ canon, although any of the Frankfurt School’s publications would do.
Star Trek wasn’t always a socialist utopia. It took the Next Generation to seal that deal. And, by then, Gene was old, tired, Lwaxana Troi had taken over his mind and others were driving his vision.
The Left has a ‘canon’.
It starts with ‘Mein Kampf’, along with other famous children’s books.
When you tell them this to their faces, they cry.
I like watching them cry.
Love this quote from Prof. David Gelernter:
“Everyone (huh?) agrees that President Obama is not only a man but a symbol. He is a symbol of America’s decisive victory over bigotry (Huh? What?).”
Obama has nothing but contempt and intolerance for the Right. He calls them “bitter clingers.” Well, well, Mr. Bigot, who’s the true bitter clinger? Me thinks that “racist” also applies. How the professor gushes over his own ideology — “Gosh-darn, aren’t we magnificent people!” — is also laughable.
Jacque Derrida is one of the few I can think of.
Postmodernism is going out of fashion – officially at least. They finally figured out that objective truth is a powerful tool against oppression, so perhaps it’s a mistake to be tossing it on the garbage heap. Why it took decades for the left to realize this is a deep mystery.
Nevertheless modern progressive thought still remains steeped in postmodernism’s tenets and outlook. “That’s your truth but it’s not my truth” is still considered a deep and incisive rebuttal.
If YOUR intellectual (I use the term loosely) heritage consisted of Karl Marx, Chairman Mao,and Saul Alinsky, would YOU want to advertise it?
Secular philosophy is a dead end in general.
There is no liberal Ayn Rand because you can’t ‘go Galt’ until you have done something noteworthy.
Re: “Over the last half-century, they have been vital to the conservative movement’s success–and to liberalism’s demise.” Mr. Driscoll, do we live in the same country? That is a sincere question, because I certainly do not see the “success of conservatism” you mention above; in fact, everywhere I look, I see evidence of the triumph of leftism in our culture. Oh, certainly the GOP wins an election here and there – but in the culture wars – the ones that really matter – conservatives (real conservatives, not the fake variety) have been fighting a rear-guard action for decades, steadily losing ground all the while as the Overton Window shifts ever-leftward.
To paraphrase Mr. Obama, I didn’t build that meme, the liberal historian writing at Slate did. I can only imagine how much further left America would have shifted without conservatism as a counterweight after WWII, however imperfect it’s been at times though.