alien & sedition.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
  Conservatism and Community

Conservative blogger Daniel Larison considers another possible implication of Stanley Greenberg's data (upon which I commented below). Larison suggests that if Americans do, indeed, value community over individualism, this is "good news" for a certain kind of conservative:
In the battle between solidarity and dislocation, conservatives should naturally be on the side of the former, and it should be conservatives who benefit from the public’s interest in “strong community” and even, yes, “a sense of togetherness.” (For some reason, the latter sounds much less ridiculous when you call it solidarity.) Conservatism’s “failure” has been that conservatives have defined themselves or allowed themselves to be defined as individualists and advocates for the interests of the self. A conservatism of place and virtue has very little to do with these things. These numbers suggest that a conservatism that is both skeptical of government action and that also encourages the building up of community life and a politics of solidarity would fare very well. It would not be the slash-and-burn, “every man for himself” anti-government style of certain libertarians, nor would it be an endorsement of the effects of “creative destruction.” Settling people in a location, a place, not dislocating people through the constant flux of what some might call “cosmopolitan dynamism” and what we call social insanity, is the conservative way forward.
Larison has elaborated upon the relationship of individualism to conservatism elsewhere; while I'm not sure "cosmopolitan dynamism" is something that can be simplified enough to be opposed, his rough philosophical ideas are interesting, and most notably they seem to be much more along the lines of traditional European conservatism than the overbaked right-Whiggish classical liberalism that the American right has generally embraced.

Labels: , ,

 
Comments: Post a Comment



<< Home

"An obscure but fantastic blog." - Markus Kolic

About

Critical analysis of the American conservative movement from a progressive perspective. Also some stuff about the Mets.


Email Me


Favorite Posts

I Was a Mole at the Conservative Summit, Part One
Part Two
Part Three

Wars of Perception, Part One
Wars of Perception, Part Two

Conservative Futures
Reading Conservative History


Blogroll

I also post at:

The Daily Gotham
The Albany Project
The Right's Field

Various favorites:

Alicublog
Ben Weyl
Chase Martyn
Cliff Schecter
Crooked Timber
D-Day (David Dayen)
Daily Kos
Digby
Ezra Klein
Feministing
Five Before Chaos
Future Majority
Glenn Greenwald
The Group News Blog
Jon Swift
Lawyers, Guns, and Money
Mahablog
Majikthise
Matt Ortega
Matthew Yglesias
MaxSpeak
My Thinking Corner
MyDD
New Democratic Majority
The November Blog
The Osterley Times
A Pedestrian View
The Poor Man Institute
Progressive Historians
PSoTD
Skippy the Bush Kangaroo
Slacktivist
Talking Points Memo
Think Progress
The Third Estate
Undercover Blue
Vernon Lee
wAitiNG foR doROthY

Watching the right:

Orcinus (Dave Neiwert)
Rick Perlstein
Right Wing Watch
Sadly, No!

The conservative wonkosphere:

American.com (AEI)
The American Scene
Andrew Sullivan
Cato @ Liberty
Contentions (Commentary Magazine)
Crunchy Con (Rod Dreher)
Daniel Larison
Eye on '08 (Soren Dayton)
Jim Henley
Josh Trevino
Mainstream Libertarian
National Review Online
Patrick Ruffini
Ross Douthat
Ryan Sager
The Weekly Standard

New Yorkers:

Amazin' Avenue
Chris Owens
Esthetic/Aesthetic
Isebrand
Unfutz
Z. Madison


Archives

December 2006

January 2007

February 2007

March 2007

April 2007

May 2007

June 2007

July 2007

August 2007

September 2007

October 2007

November 2008


Powered by Blogger