Mr. Sullivan cannonballs off the deep end:
...The inarticulate tendency in conservatism is what led John Stuart Mill to say the following:I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.Of course, I think that’s a misunderstanding. The inability to articulate the value of something you have come to love or do is, to my mind, part of its value. Some things in life are ineffable and to explain them almost a violation of their essence. Most of these lie in the practical arena. How does a master chef explain exactly how he makes a dish with his singular skill, developed for years? How do those who are doing beautiful things with scooters answer when you ask them how they became so good at it, and why they keep at it? How do I explain why the cutting down of a small copse of trees near my childhood home traumatized me – because of what it did to my little universe of boyish escape?
There are reasons we can come up with. But they don’t capture the lived experience and never can. And it is precisely when you explain it that you undermine it. As soon as you call the town you have always lived in a “community”, it no longer is one. This is the Tao of conservatism. If conservatism were to be properly represented by a religion, it would be the opposite of fundamentalist Christianity. It would be Taoism.
Seen from the outside, it has long been painfully clear that the most charitable thing one could say about Conservatism is that it has two things in common with an alien encounter: chronic butt-hurt and a complete inability to remember the past.
But I suppose if you are is a Conservative -- especially if are a very public Conservative who has the word "Conservative" indelibly stamped on every professional document that defines your public existence -- and you cannot afford to look like a complete dolt, you need to make up some shit about how Conservatism is completely other than what it obviously is.
How it is a purely mysterious, interior experience
that disintegrates once you try to pin it to the page with words.
Or explain it to people who don't fall for the bullshit.
that disintegrates once you try to pin it to the page with words.
Or explain it to people who don't fall for the bullshit.
How it isn't a fucked up witchbag of bigots and imbeciles and hucksters.
It is ineffable.
It is Tao.
It is,.,pineapple ice cream.
If Mr. Sullivan suddenly developed a taste for pineapple ice cream, within a week he would be penning columns about how "Liking Pineapple Ice Cream" is a cardinal Conservative value because of something something Edmund Burke. If he got sick on bad Thai food, we would suddenly see a spate of columns discussing bad Thai food and how it is something that only extreme Christianists or Left Liberal would ever put in their mouths.
10 comments:
Sully's just the pundit version of the stereotypical ditzy blonde. a male Peggy Noonan, but with a weaker prose style.
"How does a master chef explain exactly how he makes a dish with his singular skill,"
Hilarious.
Going out on a limb, I'd say that explaining why someone's wrong about everything is different than explaining why someone's good at something.
I wonder what sort of mystical Taoist force makes me suck at golf.
Good morning, Mr. Glass.
Dude, you could have a lot more fun with this than you realize.
From the Merriam-Webster page on "koan": "a paradox to be meditated upon that is used to train Zen Buddhist monks to abandon ultimate dependence on reason and to force them into gaining sudden intuitive enlightenment"
I think you try your hand at some Rightwing koans. For starters...
"How much proof does a Birther need before accepting that that's really Barack Obama's birth certificate?"
"How does quoting what one said two days ago count as quoting one out of context?"
"How many things must one be wrong about before one is not allowed back on Meet the Press?"
When Andrew asks how he should explain why the cutting down of those trees traumatized him, he goes right ahead and does explain it. We may not have the full, connotative understanding of "what it did to my little universe of boyish escape", but we can ask for and probably receive a story about it, ask a child psychologist to illumine it further for us, and come to some empathetic understanding about Andrew's lived experience. This is precisely the same as anyone who listens with empathy to a religious believer's testimony to their experience of the Holy Spirit in their lives, or what have you. At the end of the day you may or may not accept their beliefs as warranted, but at least you will understand why the person you're talking to thinks you should accept those warrants.
Conservative beliefs are not entirely ineffable. This is one of the weakest, cowardly defenses of Conservatism I have ever seen. As Drifty has pointed out in a recent podcast, conservatism, in it's classic sense, is the recognition that certain human institutions provide stability and continuity in society, without which that society would be imperiled. Which is a completely understandable and laudable observation about reality. But, as drifty pointed out, that is a far cry from Conservatism in contemporary America. Indeed, conservatism in its more classic sense is what nearly everyone is. Radical Marxists, Anarchists, and such are the only ones who have a prima facie objection to that form of conservatism. Social liberals, however, do not. They accept the basic insight of conservatism, but seek alterations to institutions, reforms, but not the complete dismantling of them--except when the perpetuation of the institution does the OPPOSITE of the observation made by conservatism--when an institution no longer serves social stability and peace, but rather undermines society's long-term viability, and must be stricken from society by legal means.
But our history has always been a struggle between those who would reform or remove institutions that prove fundamentally unjust and those who would see those institutions forever perpetuated. Conservatives are the latter. Perhaps Andrew is correct--defending injustice, at the end of the day, really is ineffable.
Sullivan's conservatism sure sounds a lot like religion. Whenever I ask believers about the gods they worship, they usually start out with some fairly confident statements about that god's nature. When I then ask them how they know this, they try to support it by arguments for the existence of a god (though not specifically their god) that clearly impress people who already believe in gods very much. When I point out why I am still unconvinced, they gradually descend into "Well, God moves in mysterious ways" and "we humans can't understand the ineffable". It's like an onion: As you peel off layer after layer, you realise there's nothing in there. They could have saved us both a lot of time by admitting it right away: "Believing this feels good, so I do."
I no longer expect more from religions. But I do think a political ideology should be able to pass a higher bar. You can't set tax rates based on the ineffable.
"Seen from the outside, it has long been painfully clear that the most charitable thing one could say about Conservatism is that it has two things in common with an alien encounter: chronic butt-hurt and a complete inability to remember the past."
This was so funny I snorted Jamba Juice out my nose, blowing all the arugula off my pizza, making my gay married cats howl and giving my girlfriend a spontaneous abortion.
This is certainly one of the stupidest things Sullivan has ever written - perhaps among the stupidest things anyone anywhere has written - and it reminds me why I stopped reading him long ago. And yet I still have to thank you for bringing it to our attention.
"The inability to articulate the value of something you have come to love or do is, to my mind, part of its value. Some things in life are ineffable and to explain them almost a violation of their essence."
- Darling, I love you.
- Oh, honey, I love you too.
- I would tell you more, but any elaboration would violate the essence of my love for you.
"How does a master chef explain exactly how he makes a dish with his singular skill, developed for years?"
It seems to me that such explanations are exactly the method by which one master chef creates more master chefs.
"As soon as you call the town you have always lived in a “community”, it no longer is one. This is the Tao of conservatism."
As soon as I call my beloved Fido a dog, he becomes a cat. Once I name the place where I show up at 8:30am each day a job, I cease getting a paycheck. Once I call celebrate the joy of life, and articulate its goodness to my comrades, I become suicidal. This is the inanity of conservatism.
Seriously, this kind of shit would make a postmodernist college student blush.
Dear Andy: Some people can get by as their own editor. Others cannot.
Jesus Christ, Sullivan, this is getting into Ricky Bobby territory.
"I like to imagine Conservatism as a warlock riding a dragon through a storm!"
"I like to imagine Conservatism as Tom Cruise stealing Top Secret files from the CIA!"
"I like to imagine Conservatism as a shape-shifting vampire in the Old West!"
James Hooten's excellent comments, but shorter version: "What complete and utter bullshit from a total twat-waffle."
I had trouble getting past Sullivan's start. There is nothing ineffable or Tao-like about willfully ignorant racists who defend their own stupidity by attacking blacks, Latinos, Jews, gays, women, etc. I actually first saw the comment about the stupid attributed to Voltaire. Voltaire was most definitely *not* talking about people who could not delicately articulate complex ideas. He was talking about people who's response to every problem was, "F* it! I'll blame the poor | British | Italians | Catholics | witches." He frequently alluded to the myth that wealth somehow made the slothful ignorance of the wealthy more refined than the uneducated ignorance of the poor. In fact, I had the impression Voltaire had a much lower opinion of those who did not know and did not care to be educated than those who did not know because they did not have the opportunity to be educated.
Mike.K.
If conservatism were to be properly represented by a religion, it would be the opposite of fundamentalist Christianity. It would be Taoism.
Hahahahaha! And he just said this! This isn't DG combing through the garbage at the Ministry of Truth!
It's not that Sullivan wanted to hippie-punch or denounce liberals as traitors. He simply was, existing in a state of nature and purity.
Fundamentalist Christianity is inarguably conservative, and fundamentalist Christians will quite insistently tell you so. Taoism isn't, and pretending it's "libertarian"/conservative is hilarious. Let's check out the Tao Te Ching for positions conservatives can embrace wholeheartedly:
"Wealth and position bring arrogance
And leave disasters upon oneself"
Social conservatives, of course, don't believe in this ephemeral definition of conservatism – they think they stand for eternal, unchanging truths. On one level, Sullivan is agreeing with Corey Robin's thesis in The Reactionary Mind, in that true conservatism has always been reactionary in nature; that part never changes, but their specific beliefs will as they lose battles (and then pretend they were down with progress all along). The lie (well, one of them) is that liberalism is an argument and conservatism just "is;" liberalism is evolutionary by nature (although not all change is positive), and conservatism, as Buckley told us himself, stands athwart history yelling "Stop!"… and let's recall that, in actual practice, that meant defending not only segregation but the racial superiority of whites.
Sullivan is actually very similar to the kulturkampfers Roy Edroso dissects all the time, if slightly less extreme; if they like something, it must be conservative and they try to claim it as such – they simply can't enjoy it otherwise.
Sullivan's pulled this one before, of course, when he argued (hilariously as well) that "conservatism is formless, like water." (Obligatory Hilzoy-Cole combo.)
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