Of Posner, Bartlett et al: a truly conservative uprising

Conservative appellate judge Richard Posner has some fun with John Roberts:

The chief justice criticizes the majority for "order[ing] the transformation of a social institution that has formed the basis of human society for millennia, for the Kalahari Bushmen and the Han Chinese, the Carthaginians and the Aztecs. Just who do we think we are?" We’re pretty sure we’re not any of the above. And most of us are not convinced that what’s good enough for the Bushmen, the Carthaginians, and the Aztecs should be good enough for us.

As for Samuel Alito's dissent, Posner leaves an even larger pile of ripped-up rubbish, such as Alito's assertion that traditional marriage laws smartly "encourage potentially procreative conduct … within a lasting unit that has long been thought to provide the best atmosphere for raising children." Replies Posner: "That can't be right." What of the sterile? Are they forbidden to marry? And when it comes to advisable atmospheres for "raising children," which is better? — to permit parentless children to "languish in foster homes?" or to provide them with the emotional and financial stability of adoption by gay couples?

Judge Posner, I'll remind you, is a conservative. Yet he abjures the contorted logic, the cynical sneers and the arm-folded stubbornness that have come to define the character of modern conservatism — as strutted by modern Republicanism.

It is a challenge, I'll grant you, to get a good handle on just when Republicanism was on a sustained roll, from the standpoint of human decency. Sure, there were civil-rights-supporting Republican pols in the 1960s, but their heads were soon on the party's chopping block — and they haven't peeped over the log since. And there were Republicans of TR's visionary sensibilities at the turn of that century; alas, they were rather rapidly subsumed by the blind banality and ill-schooled shopkeeping of W.G. Harding & Co. Indeed one must travel back to Republicanism's Genesis and its Adam, Abraham Lincoln, and subsequently to the almost biblical virtues of Radical Republicanism (with which the marbled Lincoln clashed, and, absent a J.W. Booth, would have clashed further), to locate the party's prolonged ethical reason for being.

How delightful it is to now watch authentic conservatives — who, Burkelike, harbor progressive realities — rip into counterfeit conservative minds. Posner, as noted, is one of the blessed authentic. But there's also Bruce Bartlett, whose latest enterprise has been to expose the fraud of Fox News as a legitimate news network; and then there are the banished conservatives, such as Andrew Sullivan, who, from time to time, persist in skirmishing against the dead pseudoconservative weight of modern Republicanism's contorted logic, cynical sneers and arm-folded stubbornness.

I wish them all well. They'll get there. Someday, they'll get there.

 

Comments

[Peter G]

I'll leave it to the guy with the doctorate in history to figure out those points in history where sustained decency ruled the Republican party. For me the important point is that the tides are changing and rapidly. The defensive walls of the Republicans are crumbling rapidly but not only because of shifting demographics but shifting public opinion. This is a generational shift that in many respects is cutting off the Republican party from a huge pool of potential future adherents who don't buy the phony religious sanctimony. The solution to every single blessed problem they have must offend some part of their base. The big tent is on fire.

[Bob]

The most publicized objections to the Obergefell ruling have been by fundamentalist Xians and pandering Republicans, and all have been on religious grounds. Most Biblical law is recorded in the book of Leviticus. It does outlaw homosexual relations, but it also outlaws clothes made of more than one fabric, cutting hair and shaving, pork, shellfish, and more other things than the average person could imagine. One wonders how many evangelicals won't touch barbequed pork or breakfast sausage.

I'll quibble again about the existence of "authentic conservatives," and state that the people noted don't represent conservatism but practical good judgment. Political philosophy is not and has never been static. Classical conservatism seeks to maintain traditions, or conserve the existing order. How can that square with the conservative programs to overturn government regulations and programs that have existed for nearly a century, or overturn SCOTUS decisions that are inconvenient to the Republican Party, sometimes undermining the democracy striven for in the Constitution?

There's also the other side of the coin. To save myself too much thinking I'll quote Wikipedia on what liberalism was in the 19th century: "Adopting Thomas Malthus's population theory, they saw poor urban conditions as inevitable; they believed population growth would outstrip food production, and they regarded that consequence desirable, because starvation would help limit population growth. They opposed any income or wealth redistribution, which they believed would be dissipated by the lowest orders." Would any liberal today want to own up to that?