Table of Contents
The Art of Mentoring from Basic Books
Also by Dinesh D’Souza
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1 - Conservatives vs. Liberals
Chapter 2 - The Libertarian Temptation
Chapter 3 - The Education of a Conservative
Chapter 4 - Pig Wrestling at Dartmouth
Chapter 5 - Fighting Political Correctness
Chapter 6 - Authentic vs. Bogus Multiculturalism
Chapter 7 - What’s So Great About Great Books
Chapter 8 - How Reagan Outsmarted the Liberals
Chapter 9 - Why Government Is the Problem
Chapter 10 - When the Rich Get Richer
Chapter 11 - How Affirmative Action Hurts Blacks
Chapter 12 - The Feminist Mistake
Chapter 13 - Who Are the Postmodernists?
Chapter 14 - Why Professors Are So Left-Wing
Chapter 15 - All the News That Fits
Chapter 16 - A Living Constitution?
Chapter 17 - More Guns, Less Crime
Chapter 18 - How to Harpoon a Liberal
Chapter 19 - Lies My Teacher Taught Me
Chapter 20 - Was Lincoln a Bad Guy?
Chapter 21 - The Self-Esteem Hoax
Chapter 22 - Who Cares About the Snail Darter?
Chapter 23 - Against Gay Marriage
Chapter 24 - Family Values Since Oedipus
Chapter 25 - Speaking As a Former Fetus . . .
Chapter 26 - The Hypocrisy of Anti-Globalists
Chapter 27 - Are Immigrants to Blame?
Chapter 28 - Why Liberals Hate America
Chapter 29 - A Republican Realignment?
Chapter 30 - Why Conservatives Should Be Cheerful
Chapter 31 - A Conservative Reading List
Copyright Page
The Art of Mentoring from Basic Books
Letters to a Young Lawyer
Alan Dershowitz
Letters to a Young Contrarian
Christopher Hitchens
Letters to a Young Golfer
Bob Duval
Letters to a Young Conservative
Dinesh D’Souza
Letters to a Young Activist
Todd Gitlin
Letters to a Young Therapist
Mary Pipher
Letters to a Young Chef
Daniel Boulud
Letters to a Young Gymnast
Nadia Comaneci
Letters to a Young Catholic
George Weigel
Letters to a Young Actor
Robert Brustein
Also by Dinesh D’Souza
Illiberal Education:
The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus
The End of Racism:
Principles for a Multiracial Society
Ronald Reagan:
How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader
The Virture of Prosperity:
Finding Values in an Age of Techno-Affluence
What’s So Great About America
For Jeffrey Hart,
who showed me the world
1
Conservatives vs. Liberals
Dear Chris,
Thanks for your letter. I’m glad you enjoyed my talk at your university. Can you believe the number of protesters who showed up? There were people from the International Socialist group, the Spartacus League, the Coalition to Save Humanity, even some jobless guys from the local community. Wow, did they create a ruckus! Apparently they were distributing copies of a pamphlet called “Who Is Dinesh D’Souza?” I didn’t see the pamphlet until later, but I discovered from it that I am a racist, a liar, a stooge of the ruling class, and an enemy of the people. All of which I hadn’t realized until I read the pamphlet.
I don’t know whether you are aware this, but the protesters almost prevented me from speaking. When I arrived, they had already surrounded the building. They were screaming into bullhorns and carrying placards that read DINESH D’SOUZA: RACIST AGENT OF U.S. CAPITALISM AND IMPERIALISM. As I made my way through the demonstrators, behind heavy security, I gave the protesters the thumbs-up signal and told them, “Fight on, brothers and sisters.” This seemed to make them angrier. One of them yelled, “You’ll be lucky to get out of here alive!”
Despite the university’s rule against bringing placards and bullhorns into the auditorium, the protesters managed to force their way inside. I am sure you found their gyrations on the stage quite a sight. My amusement over their antics subsided, however, when they began to disrupt my lecture with their shouts and chants. As you saw, the dean of the college had to warn the demonstrators to hold their fire until the question period, or else they would be evacuated. Only then did they quiet down and allow me to speak.
Undoubtedly the high point of the evening occurred near the end of my talk when the large, disheveled woman came rolling up the aisle shouting, “We don’t need a debate! Stop this man from speaking!” My usual strategy in such circumstances is to try to calm the protester down and engage in a discussion, but this time there was no point. Finally, the woman was dragged from the room by the campus police. On her way out she yelled, “I am being censored! I am being censored!”
Yes, the American campus has become an interesting place for a conservative. I cannot blame you for asking, What has happened to liberalism? Where did it go wrong? Is this what liberals stand for?
Today, alas, it is. But in saying this, I am not describing liberalism in its original or classical sense. We need to understand the big changes that have come over liberalism. The term liberal, in its Greek meaning, refers to the free man, as opposed to the slave. Liberals were originally the partisans of liberty. The American founders, for example, were committed to three types of freedom: economic freedom, political freedom, and freedom of speech and religion. In their classical liberal view, freedom meant limiting the power of government, thus increasing the scope for individual and private action. The spirit of this philosophy is clearly conveyed in the formulations of the Bill of Rights: “Congress shall make no law . . . ”
This classical liberalism underwent two dramatic changes in the last century: the revolution of the 1930s, and the revolution of the 1960s. The revolution of the 1930s, the FDR revolution, was based on the assumption that rights are not meaningful unless we have the means to exercise them. As Franklin Roosevelt himself argued, people who lack life’s necessities are not free. Roosevelt believed that to give citizens true liberty, the government should insure them against deprivation, against the loss of a job, against calamitous illness, and against an impoverished old age. Thus the liberal revolution of the 1930s introduced a new understanding of freedom that involved a vastly greater role for government than the American founders intended.
The second liberal revolution occurred in the 1960s. Its watchword was “liberation,” and its great prophet was Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Before the sixties, most Americans believed in a universal moral order that is external to us, that makes demands on us. Our obligation was to conform to that moral order. Earlier generations, right up to the “greatest generation” of World War II, took for granted this moral order and its commandments: Work hard and try to better yourself, be faithful to your spouse, go when your country calls, and so on.
But, beginning in the sixties, several factions—the antiwar movement, the feminist movement, the gay activist movement, and so on—attacked that moral consensus as narrow and oppressive. They fought for a new ethic that would be based not on external authority but on the sovereignty of the inner self. This is the novel idea that received its most powerful expression in Rousseau’s writing. To the American founders’ list
of freedoms, Rousseau added a new one: inner freedom, or moral freedom. Rousseau argues that we make major decisions—whom to love, what to become, what to believe—not by obeying our parents, teachers, preachers, or even God. Rather, we make such decisions by digging deep within ourselves and listening to the voice of nature. This is the idea of being “true to yourself.” It is the new liberal morality.
Now that we have a sense of what liberals believe, let us contrast their views with those of the conservatives. Modern American conservatism is very different from European conservatism, or from conservatism traditionally understood. For one thing, conservatism in this country is “modern,” and for another, it is “American.” Ours is not the “throne and altar” conservatism that once defined European conservatism, and that is still characteristic of many Europeans on the right. These conservatives were true reactionaries. They sought to preserve the ancien régime and the prerogatives of king and church against the arrival of modern science, modern capitalism, and modern democracy.
American conservatives are different because America is a revolutionary nation. For the founders, the ancien régime was the world they had left behind in Europe. Ours is a country founded by a bunch of guys sitting around a table in Philadelphia and deciding to establish a “new order for the ages.” Being a conservative in America means conserving the principles of the American revolution. (One of the most conservative groups in America calls itself the Daughters of the American Revolution.) Paradoxically, American conservatism seeks to conserve a certain kind of liberalism! It means fighting to uphold the classical liberalism of the founding from assault by liberalism of a different sort.
Classical liberalism, however, does not wholly define modern American conservatism. There is an added element: a concern with social and civic virtue. The term virtue has become a bad word in some quarters of American life. (It is especially unpopular with the chronically wicked and depraved.) Young people, especially, tend to associate it with finger-wagging and with people who tell you how to live your life. This is a very narrow view of virtue: It applies only to what it is good to do, rather than what it is good to be and what it is good to love.
The conservative virtues are many: civility, patriotism, national unity, a sense of local community, an attachment to family, and a belief in merit, in just desserts, and in personal responsibility for one’s actions. For many conservatives, the idea of virtue cannot be separated from the idea of God. But it is not necessary to believe in God to be a conservative. What unifies the vast majority of conservatives is the belief that there are moral standards in the universe and that living up to them is the best way to have a full and happy life.
Conservatives recognize, of course, that people frequently fall short of these standards. In their personal conduct, conservatives do not claim to be better than anyone else. Newt Gingrich was carrying on an affair at the same time that Bill Clinton was romancing Monica Lewinsky. But for conservatives, these lapses do not provide an excuse to get rid of the standards. Even hypocrisy—professing one thing but doing another—is in the conservative view preferable to a denial of standards because such denial leads to moral chaos or nihilism.
Since modern conservatism is dedicated both to classical liberalism and to virtue, it is open to the charge of contradiction. What happens when there is a tension between liberty and virtue? Conservatives are often accused of resolving the tension by opting for liberty in the economic domain, but for virtue in the social domain. If liberals inconsistently hold that government should get out of the bedroom and into the pocketbook, conservatives appear to espouse the opposite philosophy of government: “Out of the pocketbook and into the bedroom.”
Conservatives find this slogan amusing, but only because of its absurdity. I certainly don’t know of any conservative who has advocated government surveillance in a person’s bedroom. But it is true that the conservatives are willing at times to curtail liberty. When there is a threat to national security, as in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks, conservatives believe that to protect citizens’ lives it may be necessary to curtail certain freedoms. Conservatives in general see nothing wrong with restricting pornography, with limiting the legal benefits of marriage to heterosexual couples, or with outlawing the use of hard drugs.
Thus neither conservatives nor liberals are the unqualified partisans of freedom. Both groups believe in a certain kind of freedom. What really distinguishes conservatives from liberals is not that one is for freedom and the other is against freedom; rather, what separates them is that they have different substantive views of what constitutes the good life.
Let us make a list of the liberal virtues: equality, compassion, pluralism, diversity, social justice, peace, autonomy, tolerance. Liberals become impassioned when they use these terms: They make up the moral priorities of the modern liberal worldview. By contrast, conservatives emphasize other virtues: merit, patriotism, prosperity, national unity, social order, morality, responsibility. Both sides are willing to place occasional restraints on freedom to achieve their substantive vision of the good society. Indeed, some liberals attach little importance to freedom. The Columbia radicals felt perfectly justified in trying to silence my talk: In their view, I have forfeited my right to free speech because I oppose their leftist agenda.
There is some overlap in the moral vocabulary that liberals and conservatives use. Both speak of “equality,” although they mean different things by the term. Conservatives emphasize the equality of rights, and they are quite willing to endure inequalities that are the product of differential capacity or merit. Liberals emphasize the equality of outcomes, and they tend to attribute inequality to the unequal opportunities that have been provided by society. Another term that both liberals and conservatives use is “morality,” but conservatives tend to define morality personally, while liberals define it socially. Conservatives find it hard to believe that a sexual reprobate can be a good person, but many liberals who acknowledge Bill Clinton’s personal failings nevertheless consider him an admirable fellow because of his public positions in favor of the poor and women’s rights.
Since conservatives and liberals have different conceptions of the good society, their priorities are different, and this leads to contrasting policy positions. Conservatives emphasize economic growth, while liberals emphasize economic redistribution. Conservatives like to proclaim their love of country, while liberals like to proclaim their love of humanity. Conservatives insist that force is required to maintain world order, while liberals prefer the pursuit of peace through negotiation and dialog. Conservatives are eager to preserve moral standards; liberals cherish personal autonomy.
At root, conservatives and liberals see the world so differently because they have two different conceptions of human nature. Liberals tend to believe in Rousseau’s proposition that human nature is intrinsically good. Therefore they believe that people who fail or do bad things are not acting out of laziness or wickedness; rather, society put them in this unfortunate position. Since people are innately good, liberals hold, the great conflicts in the world are not the result of good versus evil; rather, they arise out of terrible misunderstandings that can be corrected through ongoing conversation and through the mediation of such groups as the United Nations. Finally, the liberal’s high opinion of human nature leads to the view that if you give people autonomy they will use their freedom well.
Conservatives know better. Conservatives recognize that there are two principles in human nature—good and evil—and these are in constant conflict. Given the warped timber of humanity, conservatives seek a social structure that helps to bring out the best in human nature and suppress man’s lower or base impulses. Conservatives support capitalism because it is a way of steering our natural pursuit of self-interest toward the material betterment of society at large. Conservatives insist that because there are evil régimes and destructive forces in the world that cannot be talked out of their nefarious objectives, force is an indispensable element
of international relations. Finally, conservatives support autonomy when it is attached to personal responsibility—when people are held accountable for their actions—but they also believe in the indispensability of moral incubators (the family, the church, civic institutions) that are aimed at instructing people to choose virtue over vice.
I am a conservative, Chris, because I believe that conservatives have an accurate understanding of human nature and liberals do not. Since liberals have a wrong view of man, their policies are unlikely to achieve good results. Indeed, liberal programs frequently subvert liberal objectives. Richard Nixon once described the liberal Democrats as the party of “acid, amnesty, and abortion.” For all its grand proclamations, today’s liberalism seems to be characterized by a pathological hostility to America, to capitalism, and to traditional moral values. In short, liberalism has become the party of anti-Americanism, economic plunder, and immorality. By contrast, conservative policies are not only more likely to produce the good society, they are also the best means to achieve liberal goals such as peace, tolerance, and social justice.
2
The Libertarian Temptation
Dear Chris,
I can see that you are not entirely happy with my definition of conservatism. Like a lot of young people, you have strong libertarian instincts, and you are inclined to a “leave us alone” ideology that calls for the government to stay out of your pocketbook and your private life. In policy, I generally agree. Even so, I want to point out that libertarianism is not the same thing as conservatism.
Letters to a Young Conservative Page 1
