by John W. Dean
Jost and his collaborators developed their working definition of “conservative” by reviewing dictionaries and encyclopedias along with the literature of historians, journalists, political scientists, sociologists, and philosophers from the mid-1950s (which, according to most conservative scholars, generally marks the beginning of the modern conservative movement in the United States) through the end of the 1990s. The study placed apt parameters on its inquiry while focusing on those who would be considered conservative under most any characterization. Their survey of the usage of the term “conservative” over roughly a half century revealed “a stable definitional core and a set of more malleable, historically changing peripheral associations.”[67] While its core meanings were considered to include “a resistance to change” and “an acceptance of inequality,” its peripheral meanings were more complex, because not only did they change with time, but in some cases they overlapped the core meanings. For example, the study found the peripheral focus of “conservatism in the United States during the 1960s entailed support for the Vietnam War and opposition to civil rights, whereas conservatism in the 1990s had more to do with being tough on crime and supporting traditional moral and religious values.” In addition, the authors provide examples of people who became conservatives for reasons having nothing to do with the identified core meanings, yet who later accepted those aspects of conservatism “because of their association with likeminded others.”[68]
The heart of Jost and his collaborators’ findings was that people become or remain political conservatives because they have a “heightened psychological need to manage uncertainty and threat.”[69] More specifically, the study established that the various psychological factors associated with political conservatives included (and here I am paraphrasing) fear, intolerance of ambiguity, need for certainty or structure in life, overreaction to threats, and a disposition to dominate others. This data was collected from conservatives willing to explain their beliefs and have their related psychological dynamics studied through various objective testing techniques. These characteristics, Dr. Jost said, typically cannot be ascribed to liberals.
Right-wing talk-radio hosts, conservative columnists, and conservative bloggers generally dismissed Jost’s study, although apparently few could be bothered to read it. Jonah Goldberg of the National Review wrote a lengthy piece about it, but managed to focus on such irrelevancies as Alec Baldwin, Viagra, Napoleon, and what he calls “the left’s medicalization of dissent.” Goldberg described the study as “gassy, insubstantial, malodorous…cow flatulence.”[70] Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter offered characteristic attacks, with Limbaugh mixing name calling with false and misleading information before dismissing it.[71]
After being hammered by conservatives for several months, Jost and his collaborators responded with a Washington Post op-ed piece, noting that their critics remained conspicuously less than familiar with the actual contents of their study. Notwithstanding commentary to the contrary, the Jost group pointed out that they had not, in fact, implied that conservatism was “abnormal, pathological or the result of mental illness.” Nor had they claimed that conservatives themselves were insane, sick, or strange.[72] At the same time, they were not claiming their study was welcome news for conservatives.[73]
The difficulty of identifying in oneself such psychological factors as fear, intolerance of ambiguity, need for certainty or structure in life, overreaction to threats, and a disposition to dominate others does not mean that such dynamics can be summarily rejected. These characteristics are, in some cases, not only easily recognized by others but are discernible through psychological testing. A study published subsequent to Jost’s confirmed the findings of his group. It is an unprecedented survey of nursery school children, commenced in 1969, that revealed the personalities of three- and four-year-olds to be indicative of their future political orientation.[74] In brief, this research suggests that little girls who are indecisive, inhibited, shy, neat, compliant, distressed by life’s ambiguity, and fearful will likely become conservative women. Likewise, little boys who are unadventurous, uncomfortable with uncertainty, conformist, moralistic, and regularly telling others how to run their lives will then become conservatives as adults.[75]
Future Direction of Conservatism
Austin W. Bramwell, one of the best and brightest of the new generation of conservatives, laments the great quantity of information about conservatism that has little quality, as he explained in the magazine for traditional conservatives, The American Conservative. Bramwell says that “whereas 50 years ago the American Right boasted several political theorists destined to exert a lasting influence, today it has not one to its credit.” He adds that “conservatism has reached an unacknowledged consensus about the outcome of the theoretical debates of the ’50s and ’60s. The consensus holds, first, that someone has discovered the Holy Grail that will vindicate conservatism once and for all, otherwise why be a conservative in the first place? Second, it holds that, whatever the Grail actually is, it does not do any good to describe it with too much specificity. These beliefs contradict each other, yet the conservative consensus has proved remarkably stable.”[76] This is a highly accurate assessment of conservative thinking.
Who is Austin Bramwell? To begin with, he is Sarah Bramwell’s husband.[77] Sarah is another well-credentialed young conservative, a former chairperson of the Conservative Party of the Yale Political Union, a former senior editor of a Yale University journal of conservative opinion, a former associate editor of the National Review, a former deputy press secretary to Colorado’s Republican governor Bill Owens, and a featured speaker at the fortieth anniversary of the Philadelphia Society, which has been described by the New York Times as “a prestigious club for conservative intellectuals.”[78] The Bramwells were married at the Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest in New York, so they do not appear to be conservative Catholics or evangelical Christians. Austin, at twenty-six, became the youngest member of the board of trustees of the National Review, taking his seat when founder Bill Buckley relinquished control of the journal in June 2004. Austin had written for National Review throughout his years as an undergraduate at Yale and at Harvard Law (2003), where he was an officer in the school’s chapter of the Federalist Society. After clerking with Judge Timothy M. Tymkovich of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit (a Bush II appointee who sits on the bench in Denver), Austin joined the trusts and estates division of the prestigious New York City law firm Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy. The Bramwells’ intelligence is conspicuous and their dedication to conservatism has been steadfast. The Bramwells are the future of American conservatism. Where do these young conservatives believe conservatism should be focusing its energy?
Sarah Bramwell shared her thoughts at the Philadelphia Society’s national meeting. She began by noting that the early goals of modern conservatism were to “defeat Communism and roll back creeping socialism.” Today neither remains relevant, she acknowledged. As for future foreign affairs, she explained that “articulating and defending some kind of international policy is not the major goal of conservatism in the next forty years.” Domestically, conservatives can continue to “nibble away” at the administrative state (read: “creeping socialism”), but she accepts the fact that the administrative state is “here to stay.” So what comes next? “Well, since the 1960s, the conservative movement took on a third goal, namely winning the culture wars,” by which she means, “everything from preserving traditional morality, to passing on the Western inheritance, to preserving a distinctly American common culture, to resisting the threat posed by biotechnology to human nature itself.” And what must conservatives do to win these wars? Sarah believes they must continue to “make the case against such things as gay marriage, stem-cell research, open borders, and our hideous suburban sprawl.” Because her time was limited, she focused on the terrible job conservatives were doing on “the cultural battle of our age”—gay marriage.[79] Sarah left no doubt where she sees the battles, and h
er husband is of like mind.
During a 1999 forum at Yale on free speech and homosexuality, as the chairman of the Yale Political Union’s Conservative Party chapter, Austin Bramwell claimed that “principled objections to homosexuality and to the gay movement can rarely be voiced on [the Yale] campus.”[80] In 2004, Austin wrote in the National Review on why those who oppose gay rights should not use the argument “If homosexuality is okay, what’s wrong with incest?” The better question is “If homosexuality is okay, what’s wrong with self-mutilation?” Austin again took the cudgel against gay marriage in the January 2005 issue of the American Conservative, advising gay marriage opponents not to despair, for the people were on their side, and all they needed was the right strategy.[*] He explained that the strategy was simple, for no constitutional amendment was needed. A simple act of Congress, based on the Fourteenth Amendment, would do the job, based on his rather tortured reading of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Loving v. Virginia, which struck down antimiscegenation laws.[81] It is unsettling that a young conservative would today rely on the same approach employed by an uglier version of conservatism in a past era: white supremacy.[82]
Austin does not hold out much hope for new thinking. He recently wrote about how today’s young conservatives “rarely come to right-wing ideas through any kind of epiphany. Rather they inherit their conservatism from parents or grandparents. Through generously funded seminars and think tank internships, they study the canon of conservative thought…almost all written in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s.”[83] (I would add that the earlier teachings are largely irrelevant in today’s conservative politics.) Austin appears to be speaking for himself, his wife, his friends, and his own associates in explaining how they came to conservatism.
So What Exactly Is Conservatism?
Cut through all the smoke of conservatism and what is really left? David Horowitz—an intellectual who was once active with the radical left but had second thoughts and moved to the right—has described it as well as any amorphous thinking can be analyzed. Horowitz’s shift in outlook appears to have given him unique insight, and he has offered a concise definition of conservatism vis-à-vis liberalism. In 1992, as part of a lecture series at the Heritage Foundation, Horowitz said that “conservatism [is] an attitude about the lessons of the actual past. By contrast, the attention of progressives [is] directed toward an imagined future. Conservatism [is] an attitude of caution based on a sense of human limits and what politics [can] accomplish” (emphasis added). In his response to the question being addressed by this Heritage Foundation conference—whether contemporary conservatism was truly conservative—Horowitz candidly answered, “No,” acknowledging that today’s conservatives are “rebels against the dominant liberal culture.”[84] In later updating his Heritage lecture, Horowitz wrote that conservatism “begins as an attitude, and only later becomes a stance,” and noted “that conservative attitudes derive from pragmatic consideration.”[85] This, clearly, is a highly conceptual view of conservatism, but an accurate one.
To further clarify the elusive nature of conservatism, and the elemental attitudes it encompasses, let us turn to political science professors Kenneth Janda of Northwestern University, Jeffrey M. Berry of Tufts University, and Jerry Goldman of Northwestern University, who discuss this political philosophy in their textbook, The Challenge of Democracy: Government in America. They provide a remarkably simple yet sophisticated chart that graphically shows the distinction between political conservatism and other ideologies (liberalism, libertarianism, and communitarianism) from both historical and contemporary vantage points, and the dynamics of these conflicting points of view.[*]
Their graphic requires a little explanation, since it addresses four ideologies. It depicts their conflicts along with their relationships to “freedom,” “order,” and “equality.” Freedom in this context means liberty, as in the freedom of speech, religion, and association. Order refers to the use of the government’s police powers to maintain or protect public health, safety, welfare, and morals. Equality, at minimum, envisions one-person one-vote political equality. But there is more to political equality than voting, for those with wealth, public prominence, or political connections can influence the political system to a much greater degree. If the system is to be fair, all citizens would have equal influence regardless of wealth, education, and status. Stated differently, modern liberals argue that there should also be social equality, including both equality of opportunity and equality of outcome, thereby giving every person the same chance to succeed. The Janda-Berry-Goldman chart (following) is as good a visual representation as any of the conflicts and the fundamental dynamics of conservatism vis-à-vis other political ideologies.[*]
Given the growing dominance of social conservatism and its transformative impact, along with the influence of neoconservatism on American foreign policy, “definitions of conservatives now have to be entirely rewritten,” explained Lewis Gould, University of Texas emeritus history professor and author of the most complete single-volume study of Republicans available.[86] I would phrase this a bit differently: Both social conservatives and neoconservatism have overwhelmed the conservative movement and the Republican Party, and to gauge their influence, and its consequences, it is essential to understand authoritarian thinking and behavior. Social conservatism and neoconservatism have revived authoritarian conservatism, and not for the better of conservatism or American democracy. True conservatism is cautious and prudent. Authoritarianism is rash and radical. American democracy has benefited from true conservatism, but authoritarianism offers potentially serious trouble for any democracy.
CHAPTER TWO
CONSERVATIVES WITHOUT CONSCIENCE
ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS such as why so many conservatives are hostile and mean-spirited, why they embrace false history, and why they take on a cause like attempting to impeach President Clinton despite public opposition to the undertaking are not found in any traditional conservative philosophy—however that attitude might be defined or described. Nor does conservatism explain the truly radical policies and governing of the Bush and Cheney administration. It certainly does not explain conservatives’ engaging in conspicuously unconscionable activities. I am not referring here to their practice of defaming perceived enemies, or to the corruption that has infected the K Street to Congress corridor. Rather, I have in mind more consequential activities, like taking America to war in Iraq on false pretenses, and the blatant law breaking by countless executive branch departments and agencies that, directed by the president or with his approval, torture our perceived enemies or spy on millions of Americans to look for terrorists. These activities have been acquiesced to by the Republican-controlled Congress, and by millions of conservatives who are tolerating, if not encouraging, this behavior.
Why is this happening? How can young American men and women working for the CIA or armed forces ignore their consciences to carry out orders that defy well-known international laws? How do employees who go to work every morning at the National Security Agency, the most powerful electronic spying machine in the world, illicitly turn their awesome surveillance powers on fellow Americans? Is it merely a matter of dutifully following the president’s instructions? What was going through the heads of Justice Department lawyers as they sifted through the law to create dubious arguments justifying torture of our enemies? Where are the consciences of the conservatives who are now running the government, and where are the consciences of the countless conservative voters who tolerate, and in many cases actively support, this behavior? Or are these activities, in fact, reflective of their consciences?
I found answers to these and many other questions primarily in two places. During the years following Watergate, when I was looking for explanations of what had gone so wrong with Nixon’s presidency, I encountered the work of Stanley Milgram. Later, when writing this book, I discovered the research of Bob Altemeyer. Both have conducted studies so important that it is dangerous to ignore their findings.
In the aftermath of Watergate a significant number of studies were undertaken by political and social psychologists, in fields of inquiry with which I was not familiar but which I found extremely revealing. Many seemed right on the mark and were helpful in understanding the dynamics of what had transpired. Some of these studies examined the mind-set within the Nixon White House that produced Watergate, and to assist in them I frequently shared my insider knowledge. One such study resulted in my encountering the classic experiments developed by social psychologist Stanley Milgram, who invited me to be the featured speaker at a gathering of psychologists in New York not long after I had published my book about Watergate, Blind Ambition. The purpose of the conference was to discuss Watergate as it related to Milgram’s pioneering work on obedience to authority.
Obedience is “the psychological mechanism that links individual action to political purposes,” Milgram explained, and he called it “the dispositional cement that binds men to systems of authority.”[1] Without it many organizations simply would not work; with it, they could also run amuck. Because I had witnessed obedience facilitate both good and bad in government, I believed Milgram’s work was both relevant and important. Today I think the implications of that research should be known by everyone working in Washington, if not in governments everywhere.
