Spencer says conservatism is an outmoded term

(Note: Be sure to see the comment from Jeff in England below the main entry.)

Robert Spencer has spent the last couple of days, as well as a couple of days last week, painting me as a disingenuous and reckless person for arguing that he is not a traditionalist conservative but a liberal or a neoconservative (which is a type of liberal). He has said, about 20 times, that I “smeared” him when I said this. Yet today at his website he replied to a commenter:

In fact I believe that the terms “conservative” and “liberal” are not much use today. In the face of the Islamic jihad that threatens all of us it is time to develop some new ways to meet this challenge.

The statement is a dead giveaway that Spencer is a liberal. As has been noted before at VFR, it is only liberals who say that the terms “conservative” and “liberal” have lost their meaning and are not of much use. The liberals’ ostensible reason for wanting to do away with the words liberalism and conservatism is invariably (as it is in Spencer’s case) that there is too much “division” in our society and we need more “consensus” so as to work better together. The liberals’ true reason for wanting to do away with the words liberalism and conservatism is that liberalism has a bad odor, so they seek to eliminate the concept of liberalism, in order to continue in their liberalism without anyone being able to identify what they are doing as liberalism and to oppose it as such. Traditionalists and conservatives, on the other hand, take the concept of liberalism very seriously and spend a lot of time thinking about it, since they know that liberalism is the dominant belief system of our society. Conservatives also spend a lot of time thinking about conservatism, writing articles and books on the subject, because they believe deeply in it. A major part of VFR over the past four years has been devoted to exploring the meaning of the terms traditionalism, conservatism, neoconservatism, and liberalism.

That Robert Spencer, after shouting for days that he’s a conservative and insisting that I am an ignoramus or liar to suggest otherwise, would turn around and—without any consciousness that he’s undercutting his whole position—admit that the term conservative doesn’t mean much to him, proves how unexamined his own political life has been.

- end of initial entry -

Reader J. writes:

Just finished scrolling through the comments you linked to on Mr. Spencer’s site. A few more observations:

1) Mr. Spencer’s favorable comparison of his alliance with Ms. Ali to an alliance with Stalin(!) seems significant.

2) There was support for Mr. Spencer’s position from people who believed that “post-Enlightenment secularism” and “egalitarianism” and “academics and civil rights activists” were ultimately the ticket to defend the West against Islam.

3) There seemed to be an equal amount of support from people whose expressed political philosophy was military/Republican party boosterism, with patriotic poems, and quotes from Patton (who I think viewed Stalin as the worse enemy), and a triumphant “off to relish hard won Liberty” for the Memorial Day weekend.

So, the leaders direct everyone to the ramparts to defend the city from the approaching barbarian army, thereby preserving for themselves the ability to continue undermining the walls and negotiating a surrender treaty in an orderly and civilized fashion.

“An open enemy is a curse, but a pretended friend is worse.” The question might be whether you’re disagreeing with him because he doesn’t see the latter, or because he is the latter.

LA replies:

Thanks for this. I had not picked up on all those comments from the Jihad Watch participants.

I would just say this. In World War II, the U.S. and Britain had no choice but to ally with Stalin if we wanted to defeat Hitler. Can it be reasonably said that we of the West today have no choice but to ally with Hirsi Ali if we want to defeat Islam? Is Ali really as important a force against jihadism as the USSR was against Hitler?

This shows how Spencer and others have lost all perspective in their embrace of Ali.

Jeff in England provides an excellent perspective on the Spencer-Auster imbroglio and the deeper problem in our society that it exemplifies:

While I agree with Spencer that Ali is a person to be allied with despite some of her views and while I also feel that aspects of “liberalism” have and can be beneficial for the West, I unreservedly support your right to criticise Spencer or any other person (conservative or not) in a thoughtful civilised way which is exactly what you have done.

In addition I feel that Spencer, like so many other thinkers on both the left and right, resorts to personal name-calling combined with assuming a type of self proclaimed victim role, instead of simply dealing with the issues at hand. Spencer is a limited thinker pretending to be otherwise, which is bad enough. What’s worse is his infantile refusal seriously to discuss several of your very reasonable criticisms of his thought processes and the viewpoints which stem from them. What Spencer should have said if he was honest was, Yes, I (Spencer) am at least partially liberal and so is the essence of the West and that’s what I believe in. That I would have respected. Probably you would have too even if you disagreed about the second point. Instead he dodged the perfectly legitimate criticisms you made (whether I agree with them or not is a separate point) and left serious dialogue behind as if he were some victim of a Lawrence Auster smear plot.

This inability to reply in a truly detached intellectual manner is part of the dumbing down of Western intellectual dialogue. From George Galloway to Michael Savage to Cornel West to Ann Coulter, this dumbed down personalised name calling has taken over, combined with accusations of “being attacked.” With it comes an inability to face serious criticism in a meaningful way. Spencer, a valuable critic of Islam and Islamo-fascism, has refused to rise above this fear of real dialogue, which is unfortunate for us and for him.

LA replies:

I thank Jeff for getting at what I think is the heart of the problem. In connection with Jeff’s remarks, I just went back and read my article, “Robert Spencer as a neoconservative,” which set off the clash between Spencer and me (here and here). Spencer’s main contention, as Jeff mentioned, was that I “smeared” him in this article, and that such smearing justified his repeated personal insults of me. I ask the reader to read my article again, and ask himself, does this article consist of personal smears, or of intellectual analysis and criticism? Also, please note how often I refer to Spencer’s own sincerity and his belief that he is defending the West. Could any rational person conclude that my article is written in the spirit of a smear? Is there anything here that justified Spencer’s public smearing of me?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 30, 2006 07:20 PM | Send