TheAgitator.com
Quote of the Day
Sunday, January 27th, 2008Will Wilkinson on “National Greatness” conservatism:
I am more and more coming to the conclusion that National Greatness Conservatism, like all quasi-fascist movements, is based on a weird romantic teenager’s fantasies about what it means to be a grown up. The fundamental moral decency of liberal individualism seems, to the unserious mind that thinks itself serious, completely insipid next to very exciting big boy ideas about shared struggle, sacrifice, duty, glory, virtue, and (most of all) power. And reading Aristotle in Greek.
I sometimes think that liberal individualism is something like the intellectual and moral equivalent of the best modernist design — spare, elegant, functional — but hard to grasp or truly appreciate without a cultivated sense of style, without a little discerning maturity. National Greatness Conservatism is like a grotesque wood-paneled den stuffed with animal heads, mounted swords, garish carpets, and a giant roaring fire. Only the most vulgar tuck in next to that fire, light a fat cigar, and think they’ve really got it all figured out. But I’m afraid that’s pretty much the kind of thing you get at the Committee for Social Thought. If you declaim the importance of virtue loudly enough, you don’t have to actually think.
My Fox column next week will also address that awful Weekly Standard article.
“All libertarians care about is superficial shit like not starving, living a long time, and being creative and happy. Blah blah blah. But, really, what’s the point of living to 200 if all you do is enjoy yourself the whole time? I mean, don‘t you want to know what it is like to kill a man?”
Wilkinson’s “translation” of the article he was critiquing actually made me shoot soda out of my nose from laughing and I thought he pegged it exactly. Personally most of the people I’ve met who would qualify as National Greatness conservatives would never consider joining the military themselves and going off to fight in wars…they appear to see that as a job for less-enlightened people than themselves. I believe that’s what Roger Waters referred to as the bravery of being out of range.
I was thinking about this this weekend. The only thing I can attribute it to is that they do not have a genuine understanding of adulthood (or rather, manhood since it is primarily the boys). They can identify mature responsible male role models but they mistake things incidental to adulthood with the genuine article. Dad hunted and watched NASCAR – therefore anyone who did do those things must not be a man. And they are eager to point out all the non-conforming adults
I don’t mean to go all pop-psychology but I would say that they surround themselves with cigars, NASCAR, army lingo, homophobia or whatever because they do realize that they don’t have an understanding of what it means to be an adult and are deathly afraid that someone is going to call them out on it. Insead they just end up sounding like a walking “Dangerous Book for Boys”
But they’re young and dumb – as I once was, too. Here’s hoping that, unlike the podhurtzes and jonah goldbergs, they can outgrow it – .