A “conservative mind” Russell Kirk never dreamed of

Paul Cella, in his postings at the mainstream conservative site Red State, has been pushing the idea that the U.S. should ban the promotion of jihad under our existing sedition laws. The response from many of his readers has been a certain kind of philosophical—or, rather, temperamental—reactiveness that I myself have also experienced. He writes:

Curiously enough, the conjecture is very often attached to some comment along lines of: “it would be great,” or even, “it would be just and righteous.” The statement amounts to this: I support your proposal, but give it up, man, ‘cause there aint no chance. Now my question is this: if indeed the proposal is favored, why answer it with such a declarative prediction of failure? Why answer in the negative on the speculation that it will fail, if you believe it should justly succeed? What purpose does this serve?

All Cella is saying is that, as part of our supposed “war on terror,” we should outlaw the promotion of the terror-supporting ideology. A reasonable and unexceptionable thought, no? Yet his conservative readers, many of whom have invested themselves body and soul and blood and ouns (see Ulysses, chapter one) in the “war on terror,” respond: “Impossible. Can’t be done. A waste of time.”

Mr. Cella continues:

So why these conjectures of impotence? My worry is that their roots lie in the sterile soil of despair. Despair is a state of mind characterized by a want of hope; but there is always hope. I offer this, that hope is in our domestic tradition of dealing with sedition. But despair, I fear, is also what lurks behind all our braggadocio about democracy and the American destiny to bring it to the world.

I’m not sure this is Cella’s point but what I pick up from this passage is the irony that the very conservatives who are filled with endless braggadocio about our supposed ability to democratize the Muslim world, react with cynicism at the suggestion that we suppress jihadist Islam in our own country. They have false elan when it comes to a utopian policy of transforming Islam, yet despair at the practical thought of defending ourselves from Islam. They bravely insist we can do the manifestly impossible, yet cravenly reject doing the readily possible.

All of which, I would suggest, reveals a certain escapism and bad faith at the heart of pro-Bush conservatism. There’s no there there.

At bottom, the conservative mind is an adjunct of the liberal order, cannot think outside its limitations, and resents being asked to do so.

—end of initial entry—

Mr. Cella replies:

I agree. The wild hope of democratism must function (speculating here) as a kind of salve for the raw conscience—the conscience made raw by facing the possibility that all this idealism is but ash in the mouth.

Another piece in this puzzle is that false patriotism which loves only America as She Might Be, not America has she is. By this weird alchemy of liberalism, the natural sentiment of patriotism becomes attached to this fleeting abstraction or prediction. Dangerous stuff.

Gintas writes:

I think you and Mr. Cella have zeroed in on it: there’s despair down in the heart of these men. It’s the despair of a dying civilization, more poignant because it’s a dying Christian civilization. It looks like they’ve already embraced one of the false pseudo-Christian hopes of liberalism: Islamic Democratic Revolution. I’m not a guru of civilizations, but it seems that other civilizations that died or just ran out of gas (China, India) didn’t embrace a pseudo-Christian hope, like the West has, because they didn’t have a Christian hope to start with, then lose, and replace with a variant.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 01, 2007 11:22 AM | Send