I have been asked to define respectable
conservatism.
It is very important to understand
that a more correct term would be "conservative
respectable," because "conservative" is the
modifier here. The first real aim of respectable
conservatives is respectability inside the present
liberal-conservative political system. If he must
choose between conservatism and respectability,
a respectable conservative never hesitates to choose
respectability.
The commentators you see on television
and read in the syndicated columns are selected
by a bureaucracy. Bureaucracies always choose people
who "fit in."
Liberals run the media bureaucracy,
and they only want to talk to conservatives they
feel comfortable with.
This is the problem with conspiracy
theories. Routine bureaucracy ACTS like a conspiracy,
but it is nothing of the sort. A conspiracy is run
by the head. You can remove the head men of the
media bureaucracy and the body will act exactly
the same.
Also, do not think of the "bureaucracy"
here in the terms one would usually picture it.
I am not using it to refer to a single organization
of bureaucrats run from top to bottom.
The "media bureaucracy" simply means
those who produce our media commentary. They all
answer to each other, argue with each other, and
select each other, so they constitute what amounts
to a single bureaucracy.
For example, William Buckley became
a champion media bureaucrat, though he never worked
directly under anyone else.
Buckley was selected for his role
because he "fit" into the media bureaucracy. He
became the perfect respectable conservative who
would show just the right combination of criticism
and respect for liberals.
The obvious question here is, who
is NOT part of the media bureaucracy?
Well, to start with, Matt Drudge is
not a media bureaucrat. He selected himself, and
the media bureaucracy hates him bitterly for it.
As long as he succeeds by going directly to the
market the way he does, he will not be declared
"respectable." Any right-winger who has not
gotten this "respectable" title from liberals is
blocked from the mainline media.
If you are not a right-wing Uncle
Tom, you are not allowed to open your mouth. Meanwhile,
the Uncle Toms themselves are going to make sure
those who refuse to be Uncle Toms are kept in their
place. As you would expect, nobody is more fanatical
in shouting down "right wing extremists" than respectable
conservatives themselves. You can count on Jack
Kemp or Orrin Hatch or John Inglis to jump right
in on the attack on anyone the media call "racist."
The Bushes and the Doles are at the head of any
liberal lynch mob.
Bless his soul, Jeffrey Hart reviewed
my book, A Plague On Both Your Houses, in 1976 in
National Review, under the title, "Read This One!"
In this review, he freely admitted that even people
like him had to make truly bad concessions to respectability
in order to get their case to the public through
the media.
But Jeffrey Hart never became a full-fledged
respectable conservative. He is allowed media access,
but he will never be "one of the boys" like Bob
Novak or Pat Buchanan or William Buckley.
A conservative respectable will not
hang onto real world truths that are uncomfortable
for liberals, and they can be sidetracked very easily.
You can count on Novak to be an economic theologue,
and, in the end, you can count on Buchanan to end
up as a harmless religious nut.
While rewriting this, I was watching
MSNBC. A conservative laughed at a liberal who was
giving the same old routine spin. The liberal was
terribly upset. I have noticed this many times -
when he is going through his routine silliness and
a rightist LAUGHS, the liberal commentator gets
terribly upset. Watch and you will notice this,
too. In the end it will be LAUGHTER that will RID
US OF THE LEFT.
The left will only be destroyed when
people start calling their nonsense nonsense, and
denounce the morons who keep repeating this bilge
as the morons they are. As long as there are conservative
respectables who will look stern and serious as
"progressives" recite their nonsense, the left is
safe. As long as conservative respectables say what
True Intellectuals and Honest Patriots leftists
are, liberals will survive and dominate our national
dialogue. Conservative respectables live to oblige
this leftist need. What is important to a respectable
conservative is to maintain his respectability.
Any point he was making takes a distant
fourth. Clinton's recent use of frivolous court
privileges is very much like the routine liberal
use of frivolous labels to throw conservatives off.
When the heat was on, he used what liberals always
use, fast footwork to get attention off of the hot
problem. Few people have noticed the fact that it
worked -- again. In January, almost everybody, from
Moynihan to Ginsberg, agreed that if Clinton had
had sex with an intern in the White House, he should
go. No more!
As always, not one conservative respectable
confronted these people with their earlier statement
about demanding Clinton's impeachment for using
his office to have sex with an intern in the Oval
Office.
Novak was busy trying to be trendy
and Buchanan went back into his moralist groove.
The basic point was utterly forgotten by the respectables.
That is, after all, what they are
there for.
If a respectable conservative starts
making a point that bothers liberals, the "progressives"
simply throw frivolous labels at him like "racist"
or anaziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews. By the time
he has saved his respectability, he has completely
forgotten the point he was making. It never really
mattered to him anyway.
This is not a conspiracy to select
kooks and lightweights. It is simply that, if you
had someone there who would not let liberals get
away with silly stuff, the debate would collapse.
A man who worked with me on the House
Education and Labor Committee appeared once, just
once, on a national television debate. The debate
concerned increasing federal aid to education. My
friend would not get off the point that, the more
federal aid there is, the more student scores fall.
The two liberals were furious. They accused him
of saying that giving money could actually HARM
education - which was exactly what he WAS saying
- and they were shouting that this was impossible.
They said education money HAD to help.
My friend was pointing out that Federal money goes
with federal regulation, and federal bureaucrats
are ruining education.
There was a respectable conservative
on the program. He was supposed to be on the same
side as my friend. But this conservative respectable
knew better than to join in this exposition of liberal
silliness. The liberals were furious about it, and
he had to satisfy them first.
He did so, and took their side against
my buddy.
My buddy was, not surprisingly, never
invited for another national debate anywhere. You
will see that conservative respectable on national
television a lot.
The right will fail as long as it
selects its spokesmen this way.
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