The Third Generation

...Now, of course, opportunism is not a good reason to be a conservative...

...The First Generation raised the conservative movement from obscurity during the 1950s, but its success was stymied by Barry Gold-water's unhappy fate in 1964...

...But the Third Generation seems oblivious to such inconveniences...

...By hammering away on Joe McCarthy's sins," she says, "liberals have made it impossible for conservatives to point out that there are people in this country who are, in fact, working in concert with the enemy...

...A reading of the book makes clear, however, that the post-Reagan generation has a great deal of growing up to do, if it is to build on the successes of the first and second generation conservatives...

...THE THIRD GENERATION: YOUNG CONSERVATIVES LOOK TO THE FUTURE Edited by Benjamin Hart/Regnery Gateway/$17.95 Richard E. Burr A peril of the publishing business is that current events can repudiate the theme of a book in production...

...The first step, he says, is to remove liberal personnel from politics altogether, leaving conservatives with their pick of powerful and influential government positions: Stalin taught the importance of this principle...

...Experience teaches that all movements have their ups and downs, but my impressionistic peers make the age-old mistake of drawing their sense of optimism from the short timeline of back-to-back Reagan landslides, and thus obscuring the paradoxical, often contradictory impulses of U.S...

...His people were in place and Trotsky's were not...

...Conservatives are taking away the platitudes and buzzwords of the Left," she says, as if stealing slogans from a discredited group were some sort of coup...

...Even when the young conservatives veer from the beaten path, there is no guarantee of a provocative, cogent argument...

...the scope of government should be radically reduced, as the libertarians argue...

...In addition, Norquist, whose group lobbied for Reagan's tax reform proposal, believes the way to build new constituencies is to have a 25 percent flat tax but also to allow "every tax break imaginable...

...The second-generation son follows his dad's example and expands the business into a large, profitable company...

...But such a dangerously loose comparison is, well, inevitable when you flirt, however sardonically, with a conservative version of the Marxist inevitability theory...

...nly in the next-to-last chapter do we get a breather from the Third Generation's unrelenting, warrantless optimism and occasional hypocrisy...

...An air of certain victory pervades most of these speeches, which deal with ideas that older conservatives have more eloquently and thoroughly argued: a welfare state that breeds dependency and more poverty should be dismantled...

...Indeed, in the wake of Jimmy Carter's disastrous presidency, he says, "they cannot imagine America ever turning back Richard E Burr is...

...For in their determination to gain power, these young conservatives are looking for lessons from a different direction—the left...

...He was running the personnel department while Trotsky was fighting the White Army...

...an editorial writer for the Detroit News and a 1984 graduate of the University of Oregon, where he edited the Oregon Commentator...

...With this principle in mind, conservatives must do all they can to make sure that they get jobs in Washington...

...Communism, which is on the defensive, should be rolled back, not just contained...

...That's what the Republicans' loss of the Senate and the continuing intrigue of the Iran-contra business have done to The Third Generation, a collection of predominantly optimistic comments and speeches made by young conservatives at a fortnightly Heritage Foundation forum known as The Third Generation Project...

...But then Norquist, who Hart says is "called by some the Lenin of the Third Generation," soon drops the caveats...

...The first-generation founder works hard to establish a respectable enterprise...

...So even if only for opportunistic reasons, it behooves young blacks to look in the conservative direction...

...Having conservative journalists merely congratulate conservative politicians is not only dishonest, Vigilante adds, it is a waste of resources...

...social issues should receive higher priority on the political agenda, as the Religious Right complains...

...Until conservatives persuade the electorate to settle these questions in their favor, "moderate" Democrats will continue to be elected, as they were in most 1986 senatorial races...

...This Mandan notion of an inevitable, irreversible victory sounds strange coming from conservatives...

...Only through criticism, Teachout says, will conservatism remain a vital philosophy that goes beyond "a simple checklist of road-tested policies...

...But such sensible suggestions don't seem to be making much headway in the Third Generation...

...rr he problems of the Third Genera-1 tion are sadly analogous to the problems that normally beset a family-run business...

...Sure, conservatives should create doubt in the minds of liberals so they think the passage of a certain conservative proposal is unavoidable...

...Trotsky got an ice ax through his skull, while Stalin became the head of the Soviet Union...

...Benjamin Hart, who edited the book and who oversees the project as director of lectures and seminars at Heritage, writes that the members "appear confident, almost cocky at times" of rolling back the gains of an "inept" liberal opposition...

...Most people familiar with the conservative literature will find this repetition boring, a reaction compounded by the fact that most young conservatives —understandably—are not outstanding speakers...

...Conservatives are so tired of being labeled racist that today they are sometimes guilty of violating their own principles and giving conservative blacks a boost at the expense of others," says Deroy Murdock, a member of Young Americans for Freedom's national board and currently an MBA student at New York University...

...Laura Ingraham, then an assistant in the U.S...

...Teachout further tries to caution the Third Generation by noting that one of its prized assumptions—that a policy solution exists for every problem—is a liberal ideal: "It is the ethos of rational man, of man the improvable . . . the ethos that conservatives down through the ages have unanimously rejected as simple-minded and unrealistic...

...National Review editor Richard Vigilante and Terry Teachout, then a Harper's editor, argue for fearless and thorough self-criticism, a function Vigilante thinks no one in the movement is performing...

...We need a bogeyman of our own...

...Before the PRI came to power, Mexico was wracked continuously by revolutions, with the government turning over every few months or so," he says...

...Does this mean the conservative movement will take no prisoners...

...Other previously documented or published feuds on social issues such as abortion, prayer in school, and pornography are covered as well...

...For "if we target tax cuts, we can give certain groups more than others...

...How else does he think you make a revolution permanent...

...T o make the conservative revolution 1 permanent, says Grover Norquist, the executive director of Americans for Tax Reform, the Third Generation can learn an important lesson from Mexico's dominant Institutionalized Revolutionary Party (PRI...

...Apparently, one bad turn deserves another...

...Assuming that Murdock is serious, he ignores the fact that conservative affirmative action is just as condescending toward blacks as the liberal quotas he disparages earlier in his speech...

...Polls show, for instance, that most voters dislike big government and taxes, yet favor many individual social programs...

...That is the danger confronting theconservative movement, as the contents of this book attest...

...Thus, Ingraham finds that the way to gain the moral offensive is to engage in name calling, as the liberals do by crying "McCarthyism...

...voters...

...But then someone decided to make the revolution permanent and created the PRI, which rules to this day...

...Later statements indicate Norquist advocates conservative replacement, not liberal liquidation...

...But it is better than not being a conservative at all...

...I do not mean that we ought to imitate the Mexican government's corrupt and antidemocratic policies...

...Department of Education, says young conservatives also borrow heavily from the radicals of the 1960s...

...Conservatives need intellectuals and journalists who will criticize violations of conservative principles designed to achieve a short-term objective, he argues, "so that when Ronald Reagan raises taxes, as he did in 1982, everyone will understand that his capitulation was not the conservative position...

...But only the oldest members of the Third Generation, which is defined as those born in 1953 or afterward, have experienced such serious defeat and hardship...

...The Second Generation endured the Vietnam war and Watergate while it formed the think tanks, journals, political action committees, fundraising techniques, and political ideas that made conservatism a powerful force by the late 1970s...

...Norquist acknowledges that tax breaks create artificial, inefficient markets—the key objection of the tax reformer—but he would rather buy votes...

...To most young conservatives today," Hart notes in his introduction, "Watergate and the Vietnam War are bizarre and inexplicable chapters from history books...

...Soliciting essays might have solved the prose problem, but the content remains a fatal flaw...

...Conservatives must declare a Brezhnev Doctrine stating that conservative gains can never be reversed...

...The book hopes to introduce to a wider audience the philosophical and political approach of the Third Generation members, who now number about 400...

...American conservatives, of course, had a long row to hoe before they became intellectually respectable and politically successful...

...But the third-generation grandson, pampered by inherited wealth and unaware of the blood, sweat, and tears that went into building the business, deviates from the traditional operating philosophy and runs it into the ground...

...Conservatives can only hope this premature publication will prompt the First and Second Generations in the Heritage hierarchy to pay closer attention to their generational heirs apparent...

...to his policies and way of thinking...

...He understood that personnel is policy...

...But must we consult Communist case studies...