Piecing Together the Crack-Up
Piecing Together the Crack-Up After reading your symposium ("Is There a Worldwide Conservative Crack-Up?," Aug. 25/Sept. 1), I concur with those who point out, as Gary Bauer did, that troubles...
...Did anyone think to invite Mona Charen or Suzanne Fields—or Bill Allen or Walter Williams...
...The question Joffe does not ask is this: How could the voter not behave this way...
...I have often thought that it's a shame that conservative magazines like National Review and The Weekly Standard are read mostly by conservatives, not liberals...
...The first thing conservatives should do is figure out exactly what country we're living in, and how to communicate with it...
...Those of us in Michigan who had hoped for a true restructuring of government services to make them more efficient and cost-effective are checking out...
...Today, if there is no singular cultural identity, what has replaced it...
...Our July 9 Edmund Burke reception attracted about 200 friends...
...Not only did the Republicans totally surrender, they appeared to admit that they had been wrong all along...
...They probably wouldn't be pleased with the gift, but it's possible that some of your erudition might be absorbed by osmosis...
...The liberal news media, of course, contributed to this depiction...
...I agree with Paul M. Weyrich: Conservatives are without a party...
...When I was in high school and college, conservatives believed that Americans needed more prosperity, while no-growth liberals believed that Americans were too rich and needed to stop consuming...
...When conservatives forget that fact, they deserve to lose...
...Sounds a lot like our relationship with Congress, doesn't it...
...Thus the overarching cultural identity of the nation generally trumps discrete political ideology and specific issues...
...Paul M. Geary Pacifica, CA What a great issue...
...Conservatives must break the hold of public discussion held by the Left in every institution of society, from the universities to elementary schools, from the media to the workplace...
...For 50 years, the American identity was expressed as "leader of the free world...
...seemed to understand that true American conservatism must offer a challenge to American nationalism to awaken and do battle...
...Only Paul M. Weyrich and R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr...
...Is there a conservative crack-up in Michigan...
...Good men are able to rise above party...
...It's time to get serious...
...But only Mike Murphy came close to explaining why...
...I enjoyed reading all of the contributions, agreed with many, and learned from most...
...Would it be possible to send a free copy of The ^Weekly Standard to the most liberal members of Congress...
...The Leadership Institute did...
...And Mrs...
...Some of your panelists' replies unwittingly reveal the problem we face as conservatives: our inability to connect with Americans on pocketbook issues...
...Or Richard Rodriguez, who might offer a uniquely West Coast contribution...
...This identity, as Michael Barone points out, produced winning Republican candidates seven times in ten presidential elections following the Age of Roosevelt—even in the face of an ascendant liberal political ideology...
...However, there is a larger sense of the word "culture": It is everything that gives a people a sense of their place and role in the world...
...4) asserts (on the basis of an unnamed source) that I told an unnamed reporter that one L.D...
...One of the things that appear to be hurting the conservative movement is its incompetence in grass-roots campaigning—the effort to explain to undecided or uninformed voters how conservative policies will improve their lives...
...Rather than run on principle, they ran in pursuit of approval...
...John Clark Salyer Sterling, VA Iread with great interest the thoughtful articles in your symposium...
...Christopher Karas Washington, DC Several of your writers touch upon something that most conservatives either overlook or reject: The so-called crack-up results more from sweeping cultural changes than from specific strategic decisions by conservative politicians...
...We're already chucking the gimmicky fundraising letters...
...Michael E. Lewyn Buffalo, NY I ronically, your symposium on the conservative crack-up inadvertently confirmed the supposedly inaccurate stereotype that conservatives are simply a "white male club...
...Preeminent Burke scholar Dr...
...Also, while I enjoyed reports from Israel, Britain, Germany, and France, I would have been delighted to read something by someone in the trenches of, say, Michigan...
...But just as the polls were beginning to show that people believed Clinton was equally responsible, the Republicans caved in...
...noted the recent 200th anniversary of Edmund Burke's death and asked, "How many American conservative institutions or journalists paused to let out a yell...
...Clinton, who really had been close to irrelevant, was made to look like a winner...
...Indeed, the presence of such perceptive observers would have helped break the groupthink assumptions of identity politics...
...I have made no such assertion...
...For example, Michael Barone writes, "the country that . . . overpays its workers will be sharply punished...
...I'm still getting fund-raising letters from the Republican National Committee, despite the fact that its leaders are behaving disgracefully and are operating with no clear agenda...
...Robert A. George Washington, DC You asked a variety of conservatives what ails conservatism...
...Similarly, Seymour Martin Lipset appears to praise an Australian socialist politician who "boast[ed] that an accord with the unions had resulted in reducing real wages by at least 1 percent in each of the eight years during which he was head of government...
...Peter J. Stanlis delivered an address entitled "Edmund Burke as Statesman: The Philosopher in Action...
...What we are faced with today is cowardly men in high places...
...Should you decide to undergo diversity training, I'd be happy to recommend a gentle consultant...
...1), I concur with those who point out, as Gary Bauer did, that troubles flourish when good men do nothing...
...Frederick R Lynch Claremont, CA Thank you for the pageant of explanation in your special issue...
...Those who used to heed the call of class, religion, or ethnicity," writes Josef Joffe, "have become nimble-footed shoppers in the market of political goodies...
...The symposium was virtually all male and, with one exception, appears to have been all white men at that...
...Brown murdered his mother...
...Good men are inclined to take action, to take chances to advance their principles...
...The voter wants it both: the right-ish jam and the leftish honey...
...Indeed, informing the people has been a problem for this governor and for conservatives in general...
...Our conservative governor soared as a possible national candidate last spring, only to see his party lose the lower house...
...R. Stockton Sikes Lewiston, NY While nursing the headache caused by your symposium, it suddenly came to me that conservatism as described by most of your participants fits very well with the career of Bill Clinton...
...A flood of solicitations for money flows from them, yet we hear nothing about cutting back the bureaucracy, or initiating an across-the-board tax cut...
...Norman Ravitch Riverside, CA In his lively analysis, R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr...
...Moreover, he has lost the confidence of a winner and is now an on-again, off-again candidate for reelection next year...
...Conservatives have critiqued the most obvious—the popular culture—for decades...
...Part of the problem, of course, is the current scarcity of good men...
...Thus R. Emmett Tyrrell's observation regarding conservative politicians is true: "After all they were modern politicians...
...The alternative is the dreaded crack-up...
...Charles H. Higgins El Dorado Springs, MO As a subscriber to The Weekly Standard from its first issue, I believe your special issue is one of your most noteworthy...
...Certainly, conservatives were blamed for the shutdown, and were trailing in the polls...
...David E. Kendall Washington, DC...
...In an information age that gives us more television stations than we could ever want, an Internet that allows us to surf where we wish, and technology to create our unique worlds through Web sites, how can we understand that we can't "have it all" and that one opinion is not as valid as the next...
...Yet today, the tables appear to have turned...
...Just so, it appears that the Republican party has no respect for the American people...
...That is precisely the problem...
...Lipset also praises Swedish socialists who "dropped their steady wage-growth . . . policies...
...I suspect that there is not a crack-up of conservative ideas so much as a failure to be consistent and forceful in presenting them...
...American conservatism with Clinton seems unprincipled, contradictory, opportunistic, flabby, self-indulgent—and successful...
...Instead, nearly all of the correspondence I have received from conservative groups has been for money, which I don't have much of in the first place...
...We don't feel as though we were ever really on the team...
...Morton C. Blackwell Arlington, VA A Word from the Inside Your article "Inside the Clinton Attack Machine" (Aug...
...And even the conservative press castigated the House freshmen who dared to stand up for their principles...
...In every society, there are actually two cultures...
...Thus, wage increases are good, and wage cuts are bad...
...They do not have enough confidence in themselves or in the people to keep us posted...
...But I have one quibble: With so much space and so many slots, why not include the thoughts of non-Washington, D.C., and non-foundation types...
...Wendell Jennings Grand Blanc, MI Of the 28 writers who contributed to your symposium, many mentioned the government shutdown of 1995 as a loss to conservatives...
...As long as the Republicans want to continue to tear their party apart, and to fail to bring their message to the American people, I am going to place their fund-raising letters where they put their principles, loyalty, and courage: the garbage can...
...This is false...
...Conservatives need to be reminded of a simple, common-sense truth: To succeed in office, they should seek not merely to shrink government for the sake of shrinking government, but to make Americans more prosperous...
...You bet there is...
...Russell Kirk unveiled a grand new oil painting of Burke the Leadership Institute had commissioned...
Vol. 3 • September 1997 • No. 1
