Andrew Sullivan: The Limits of My Conservatism - 0 views
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conservatism reactionary gender leftist indoctrination immigration
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I had a very pleasant dinner with Michael Anton, the brilliant, bespoke Straussian who went to work for Trump’s National Security Council for a while
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Anton is something of an intellectual pariah — a Washington Post columnist wrote last year that “there is little reason to ever listen” to him — but he’s a pariah in part because he’s a reactionary with a first-class mind
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He reminds me why I’m a conservative, why the distinction between a reactionary and a conservative is an important one in this particular moment, and how the left unwittingly is becoming reactionism’s most potent enabler
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one core divide on the right: between those who see the social, cultural, and demographic changes of the last few decades as requiring an assault and reversal, and those who seek to reform its excesses, manage its unintended consequences, but otherwise live with it. Anton is a reactionary; I’m a conservative
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there is a place where conservatives and reactionaries find common cause — and that is when the change occurring is drastic, ideological, imposed by an elite, and without any limiting principle.
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On immigration, for example, has the demographic transformation of the U.S. been too swift, too revolutionary, and too indifferent to human nature and history?
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Or is it simply a new, if challenging, turn in a long, American story of waves of immigrants creating a country that’s an ever-changing kaleidoscope?
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If you answer “yes” to the first, you’re a reactionary. If “yes” to the second, you’re a liberal. If you say yes to both, you’re a conservative.
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If you say it’s outrageous and racist even to consider these questions, you’re a card-carrying member of the left.
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In a new essay, Anton explains his view of the world: “What happens when transformative efforts bump up against permanent and natural limits? Nature tends to bump back
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But what are “permanent and natural limits” to transformation? Here are a couple: humanity’s deep-seated tribalism and the natural differences between men and women
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I’d say that by any reasonable standards in history or the contemporary world, America is a miracle of multiracial and multicultural harmony. There’s more to do and accomplish, but the standard should be what’s doable within the framework of human nature, not perfection
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More to the point, the attempt to eradicate rather than ameliorate these things requires extraordinary intervention in people’s lives, empowers government way beyond its optimal boundaries, and generates intense backlash.
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if you decide to change the ethnic composition of an entire country in just a few decades, you will get a backlash from the previous majority ethnicity; and if you insist that there are no differences between men and women, you are going to generate male and female resistance.
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That kind of left-radicalism will generate an equal and opposite kind of right-reactionism. And that’s especially true if you define the resisters as bigots and deplorables, and refuse to ever see that they might have a smidgen of a point.
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This is not to say that some of the resisters are not bigots, just that no human society has been without bigotry, and that many others who are resistant to drastic change are just uncomfortable, or nostalgic, or afraid, or lost
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I’m a multicultural conservative. But when assaulted by the slur of “white supremacist” because I don’t buy Marcuse, my reactionism perks up. The smugness, self-righteousness, and dogmatism of the current left is a Miracle-Gro of reactionism.
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Subject young white boys to critical race and gender theory, tell them that women can have penises, that genetics are irrelevant in understanding human behavior, that borders are racist, or that men are inherently toxic, and you will get a bunch of Jordan Peterson fans by their 20s. Actually, scratch that future tense — they’re here and growing in number.
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Many leftists somehow believe that sustained indoctrination will work in abolishing human nature, and when it doesn’t, because it can’t, they demonize those who have failed the various tests of PC purity as inherently wicked.
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n the end, the alienated and despised see no reason not to gravitate to ever-more extreme positions. They support people and ideas simply because they piss off their indoctrinators. And, in the end, they reelect Trump.
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None of this is necessary. You can be in favor of women’s equality without buying into the toxicity of men; you can support legal immigration if the government gets serious about stopping illegal immigration; you can be inclusive of trans people without abolishing the bimodality of human sex and gender; you can support criminal-justice reform without believing — as the New York Times now apparently does — that America is an inherently racist invention,
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Leftists have to decide at some point: Do they want to push more conservatives into Michael Anton’s reactionary camp or more reactionaries into the conservative one? And begin to ponder their own role in bringing this extreme reactionism into the mainstream.