David Frum calls serious debate about the nature of conservatism “acrimony”

The other day I analyzed David Frum’s recent op-ed in the New York Times, “Turning the Triple Play,” and concluded: “Frum’s call for conservatives to compromise with each other is really a call for conservatives to abandon conservatism.”

Frum at his NRO Diary replies that the “legendarily testy Laurence Auster” [sic] has “penetrated my cunning scheme…. Contra me, the best way to strengthen conservatism is for conservatives to engage in endless mutual acrimony!”

It would have been nice if Mr. Frum had responded to my arguments, instead of resorting to the usual ad hominem smear, used to marginalize me, that I am “angry” or “testy” and so can be ignored.

The issue here is not anger but the truth. Is it not the case, as I pointed out in my article, that Frum—who in the 1990s wrote a book advocating a renewed conservatism of small government and 19th century-style self reliance—is now, without having ever explicitly renounced his earlier position, telling conservatives to sign on to a universal health insurance scheme, the first step toward socialized medicine?

Is it not the case that Frum, who in recent years repeatedly and with strong emotion opposed the institutionalization of homosexual “marriage,” is now, without admitting that he’s changed his former position, telling conservatives to go along with homosexual marriage?

Is it not the case that by neglecting to tell his readers that he has moved away from his previous positions, Frum is leading them to believe that his current positions are consistent with conservatism, when in fact they are the opposite?

And is it not the case that Frum made these proposals in the New York Times, thus joining the neoconservative David Brooks (and now the neoconservative William Kristol), who employs the op-ed page of America’s leading left-liberal publication to tell conservatives that they should give up conservatism?

Furthermore, is it not the case that in 1993 the godfather of neoconservatism, Irving Kristol, wrote in his son’s magazine, the Weekly Standard:

[T]he historical task and political purpose of neoconservatism would seem to be this: to convert the Republican party, and American conservatism in general, against their respective wills, into a new kind of conservative politics suitable to governing a modern democracy.

Of course, what Kristol meant by “a new kind of conservative politics suitable to governing a modern democracy” was a conservatism brought into conformity with liberalism, rather than a conservatism that challenges and resists liberalism on fundamental principles.

Finally, is it not the case the Frum’s proposals are in line with Irving Kristol’s agenda to create such a liberalized conservatism?

What Frum daintily dismisses as “mutual acrimony” I call debate—the vitally needed debate conservatives must have if the conservative vision of man and society is to survive against the dominant forces of modern liberalism, the debate that has been suppressed for years by mainstream conservatives such as Frum himself, who consistently refuse to respond to rational and principled criticism coming from their own right, even as they continue to move conservatism to the left.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 30, 2008 02:21 PM | Send