Postmodern Conservative.

Blogging Madness

Before turning the helm over to the Pomocon Crew of Worthies! for an unprecedented fortnight or so away from the 'puter, it seems fitting to take a step back and say, Don Rumsfeld-style, my goodness. 2,078 posts, over 113,000 vists...it's been a busy few years. A fresh debt of thanks is owed to you, the readers: May has been Postmodern Conservative's second biggest month ever -- despite the stiff competition which has debuted this year at The American Scene and Doublethink Online. You make the insanity worthwhile.

It's probably not an exaggeration to remark that bloggers, especially on the right, are needed now more than ever. Courtesy of the past eight years, the Republican Party has wound up in fairly dire straits and even the basic meaning of conservatism has been thrown into question. It's a relief and a privilege to be part of the blogversation that's started to take place among the young right, but everyone recognizes that much work is left to be done and things will get worse before they get any better. Of course this is exactly the sort of sweeping but nonlethal catastrophe that every rising political intellectual wants to wind up in; so let's make the most of it, for the sake of Western civilization if not our own selves.

In that spirit, I'm trying to be a little more systematic, frank, and concentrated about rolling out my own political theory. If Fear and Loathing in Georgetown is any indication, I've been just a bit too coy about what I imagine postmodern conservatism specifically to be. Don't expect any manifestos anytime soon, but do expect a continued series of ruminations along the lines of this defense of elitism, improvisation, and the meaning of conservatism. Also expect a deepening of the lines of attack you've come to know and love against people like Michael Gerson and Austin Bramwell.

Sixteen Days of Glory

You know you've really made it as a blogger if you can abandon your laptop for two weeks without coming back to see that your blog has in turn been abandoned by what you'd coaxed yourself into thinking of so recently and so fondly as your readership. But this is really only possible if you've befriended some helpy heroes who also happen to like blogging. I am fortunate to enjoy several such friends and colleagues -- who will transform into Pomocon Guest Star Bloggers! beginning on June 1st.

Starting on that date, for approximately sixteen days, all the Olympian summer excitement you've come to expect will be dealt out in spades by Shawn Macomber, Helen Rittelmeyer, John Schwenkler, and Will Wilson. They are all incredibly credible writers and brilliant mental talents, and I owe them much gin and grapefruit. As for you, dear readership, roll out the red carpet!

Capitalism: A Gay Old Time

It's all about the benjamins. Andrew's quote for the day:

"First comes love. Then comes marriage. And now it's a milestone every couple in California can celebrate," - a Macy's ad for its gift registry in today's NYT.

Our go-to corporations for life's big transactions know what celebration means in America -- $$$. Note it may be useless or moot to claim there's anything wrong with that. But it's revealing nonetheless how monetary celebration has so seamlessly taken the place of that baby in the baby carriage.

There's an argument on the right that gay marriage is a radically Lockean rejection of our obligations to reproductively maintain our communities and to instrumentally view marriage accordingly. I have a both more munificent and nastier argument, which orbits around the question why are our radical Lockeans rejecting gene egotism? There is something creepily socialistic about the inclination of straight and gay celebrities alike to view children as creatures that ought not necessarily have any biological connection to their parents -- or, more specifically, that your 'own flesh and blood' is just one of many kinds of young person with whom one can have a relationship of parentishness. This seems like a trend with legs.

Curiously, the eros lo volt movement oscillates between radical individualism and radical panhumanism -- with each seeming somehow to need to be demonstrated as proof of the other. Naturally the 'unnatural' transactions created by these oscillations are all easily (hungrily) integrated into capital markets. Untold numbers of new profits turned, everybody wins, right?

A Wicked Webb We Weave

Jason Zengerle has your entrypoint to Ross's talk on Webb, which also pulls in Daniel and I think was started by Noah some time ago. Peter Lawler has the best take on the veep drama:

Jonah G suggests that McCain pick Sam Nunn for his VP nominee. David Brooks, among others, made that suggestion to Obama. They could both pick him, I guess, adding needed stability to our political system.

Now that's a nightmare ticket. Though Daniel is surely talking sense when he argues that Webb shows everyone exactly why and how Obama isn't 'electable', I'm not sure that point does as much work as Daniel may be claiming. Voters simply may not care or be thinking that hard. Media-influenced public opinion always has its impact, but certainly Tom Daschle, for instance, would be a far worse pick than Webb, judging simply by standing the two up side by side. That said, I think Daniel's valid criticisms of Webb don't apply at all to John Edwards; but then again I've always thought that if Edwards were the Democratic nominee for President in 2004, Bush would have lost. It's possible that Edwards thinks this too. I can't think of a better pick for Obama...but then again I still haven't been sold on an Romney alternative for McCain.

Random Acts of Blogging

Doublethink Online. Where the wild things are.

Post-Bush Dementia

Is Web 2.0 Breeding Blond Beasts of Prey?

Your Summer Drink List

The Soft Despotism of Low Expectations

Cultural vs. Political Libertarianism, Again

Jon Henke, at Megan's blog, evocatively but a little too glibly sums up the Conservative Problem with two  apparently contrasting quotes:

From Ronald Reagan:

If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. ... The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.

To Rick Santorum:

One of the criticisms I make is to what I refer to as more of a libertarianish right. ... This whole idea of personal autonomy, well I don’t think most conservatives hold that point of view. Some do. They have this idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do, government should keep our taxes down and keep our regulations low, that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn’t get involved in cultural issues. You know, people should do whatever they want. Well, that is not how traditional conservatives view the world and I think most conservatives understand that individuals can’t go it alone. That there is no such society that I am aware of, where we’ve had radical individualism and that it succeeds as a culture.

I am no great defender of Rick Santorum, and I am inclined to think about 'community' the way Thatcher thought about 'society', but it's obvious that what falls through the cracks in the easy contrast between Reagan's and Santorum's comments is the difference between cultural libertarianism and political libertarianism. Reagan is clearly talking about the latter; Santorum is talking about the former. There are obvious problems: Reagan says 'less centralized authority', not 'less centralized power', and Santorum says 'succeeds as a culture' but also talks openly of 'government' getting 'involved in the bedroom.' So I don't want to be too glib in the other direction and suggest it's easy in today's climate for conservatives or anyone else to neatly separate out political from cultural issues.

But I do think it's easier as a rule than it is now, and this is so because the basic general (as opposed to central) authority governing our cultural conduct has more or less unraveled, and we are trying to fill that gap through politics and, specifically, through law. This won't work, but it's a stopgap measure until the culture reconstitutes itself authoritatively. But since cultural libertarianism holds, when it comes to cultural authority, that the only rule is there are no rules, this is something of a pipe dream. And this is the main point Santorum is trying to make, even though he is the wrong messenger because he wants to put central (i.e. Federal) power to work in institutionalizing a cultural authority that can no longer stand on its own two feet. Reagan, on the other hand, is clearly speaking in political terms, speaking of conservatism as a political disposition that carries, viewed from the national level, a bias against checking cultural libertarianism with centralized political power.

I agree with this disposition and this bias. But in no way do they lead me to celebrate cultural libertarianism. In a further complication, I am a great fan of cultural pluralism or cultural federalism, seeing it as a better and more practical realization of Nozickian politics. Libertarians hate making this switch because it results, politically speaking, in more injustice toward individuals, which I care less about insofar as I am very forgiving (from a decent distance) when it comes to 'cultural injustices.' At least in America: where if you don't like it, move. We are very very fortunate to be able to do this as easily as we can and do. And no, this isn't simply a function of our oil-based economy. In covered-wagon times it worked as well. Yes, there were hardships that raised the barrier to entry. But that kind of suffering to live the way you want with like-minded Americans of your more or less choosing seems to me worth the payoff in decentralized power and decentralized authority. Sadly this may not be a popular attitude among mainstream conservatives -- or even, given their true preferences, a sustainable one.

It's Arrogance, I Tell Ya

The former president added that his wife had not been given the respect she deserved as a legitimate presidential candidate. "She is winning the general election today and he is not, according to all the evidence,” he said. “And I have never seen anything like it. I have never seen a candidate treated so disrespectfully just for running.” -- CNN.com

A hell of a thing to say for a man who never won the majority of the popular vote.

Find Your Favorite Line and Laugh

From the talk of prep-hip crosstown romance winning raves from Megan, Ross, Wonkette:

Also have a slight fetish for arm tats on them (gross i know, would NEVER marry one for the record).

Sigh. In order to keep our many social niches from becoming inbred, however, from time to time the popped collar and the doodled-on Converse will have to mix. A fusion of preppiness and hipsterness would certainly appeal to me, because currently the only representatives of that promising style are Vampire Weekend. But both preppiness and hipstertude are about so much more than the Hamptons and Williamsburg. Then again putting this burden on the greater DC metropolitan area seems overambitious, or at least unfair.

Any combination of niche stylings is tolerable and even exciting if the people who inhabit them are pleasant to be around. The main problem -- as Peter remarked recently, sort of -- would be that social scenes, regardless of the niches they support, often have this strange way of making people unpleasant to be around. Awkward poserishness wears many uniforms. Any uniform!

We Suck Young Blood

Ezra asks a sort of unnerving question: why are Republicans -- really -- so hot on Bobby Jindal? Is it because he is the Second Coming of Ronald Reagan? Because he is highly competent with policy figures and from a cool, new ethnic group with plausibly conservative leanings? Or is it really because he's attained the great accomplishment of not being a total tool from an obsolete and pathetic era? I certainly have nothing against Jindal, and he seems like the sort of guy whose career will develop well and naturally rather fast. But stacked up against the GOP's current crop of would-be leaders, he looks like the Ubermensch, even though he's really about as tested and experienced as...well...

Is Bobby Jindal the right's Barack Obama? If he is, this should be fairly strong evidence that the ruling classes of both parties have more or less exhausted themselves.

Believe the Hype

Next week, some very cool Pomocon news will be revealed. I'm excited, and you should be, too. Watch this space!