On November 14, Jonah Goldberg, editor-at-large of the National Review Online spoke in the Fillius Events Barn. After an introduction by Hamilton Republicans president Ben Noble, Goldberg stated that the recent election is not the death of American conservatism, and we are not in a new era of liberalism, even if Republicans deserved to lose. In fact, he pointed out, liberals have been announcing a new age "about once every 15 minutes for the last century." He joked that while he can't remember the last time Republicans advocated for the pedophilic IM-ing of pages, with Republicans like Mark Foley on voter's minds, corruption ranked highly in exit polls as a reason why Republicans were voted out.
Despite his support of Bush, Goldberg dislikes the term "compassionate conservative." Goldberg argued that the term slanders conservatives as if they "eat puppies or something." For the past five years people have called Bush "the red hot zealot" and said the same things that were said about Reagan, even though they don't apply. In fact, Bush is the first president to spend over 3% of the GDP on public health programs, to approve stem cell research, and to increase the number of people on the government payroll since the Cold War, said Goldberg. Bush increased spending on labor by more than 50%, passed the largest expansion of entitlements in 40 years, and approved steel tariffs. Goldberg's point was that Bush "is not too hot, he's too sweet," he is not a "red hot zealot," but a robber of liberal issues. President Clinton on the other hand, took time off the campaign trail to "go home to Arkansas to execute a mentally retarded man." Goldberg commented that he is "very pro-death penalty, but not necessarily pro-killing-retarded-people."
According to Goldberg, all political arguments essentially boil down to Rousseau vs. Locke, to the communal vs. the individual. Followers of Locke believe individuals should decide how to lead their own lives. Liberals think conservatives are totalitarians out to run their lives, while conservatives think liberals are totalitarians out to control theirs. Communists are pure "Rousseau-ians" and libertarians are pure "Locke-ians," but everyone else is in between, Goldberg said.
Conservatives are comfortable with man's imperfection, according to Goldberg. In the 90s, Blair and Clinton held that any difficult choice where X comes at the expense of Y is a false one. Liberals under this mode of thinking say "I refuse to believe" that a clean environment will come at the expense of economic growth, and "I refuse to believe that we have to sacrifice our civil liberties to fight the war on terror." Goldberg finds the argument that the terrorists win if we sacrifice our civil liberties idiotic. He went on to discuss how liberals speak of youth as if it somehow speaks an authentic truth that has been beaten from the rest of us, and how liberals like Hillary Clinton (with her "concern for New Yorkers") esteem passion and concern above logic. Goldberg said that while liberals value passion, concern, empathy, and religious-sounding rhetoric, conservatives discuss ideas. Goldberg described young conservative events as superior to liberal events where youth testify their useless passions and dreams. Young conservatives walk around in their Adam Smith ties, arguing about what would happen if Spiderman fought the Hulk, or whether Ayn Rand was a libertarian. Contrastingly, liberals, who according to Goldberg can't even identify John Dewey as an important liberal philosopher, don't have any relationship with their own history.
While Goldberg supports the religious right, he does not believe their arguments are effective to people outside their religion. "If you don't believe that god told you gay marriage is wrong…me saying god said so is about as persuasive as saying this Petri dish of mold said so," he said. Goldberg finds Edmund Burke's idea of trial and error more effective. Successive generations have made mistakes, learned from them, and incorporated them into their lifestyles. Conservatives believe there are real arguments for the way they live, while classic leftist desires to create new politics, reject the past, and reject bourgeois codes of morality date back to the French Revolution. According to Goldberg, doctors found weird diseases like "the rot, the grunt, and the drip" in the liberal "hippies" of that time. He said these diseases reappeared in the hippies of Haight Ashbury….who were not following the basic codes of morality dating back to the French Revolution. In their rejection of hygiene and bourgeois morality they ate communal food, didn't bathe, and slept around without washing their sheets. "Diseases came rushing in as social norms were left behind," Goldberg noted.
To Goldberg, this is historical proof that it is good to respect old practices. Liberal vanity and ignorance are analogous to "pulling up the hood of the car, yanking things out saying 'these wires aren't necessary,' and acting surprised when things don't work." It's the job of the conservative to "be the guy in the room to say that's not a good idea…and more often than not, you wont be wrong, you'll be right," Goldberg said. He went on to say that liberals hate hypocrisy because it violates their sense of authenticity and the unity of all things. Mocking liberals, Goldberg said "If you've ever used drugs, you have to endorse drug use for everybody. Being a closeted gay man is not being true to yourself."
Goldberg said that in the 80s Madonna mastered the "hip whorishness" that Spears and Aguilera mimicked. Anyone who pointed at her and said "she's an idiot," or "she's sending a bad message to teenage girls," were labeled a prude. Now Madonna has been reborn as the super-mom in total rejection of her own past, and admits that she "can't believe how self-indulgent and irresponsible" she was. It is now clear that the conservatives who were told "oh you judgmental old fart" in the 80s were right. In Goldberg's opinion it's easy for Madonna, who's never changed a diaper, to be "progressive," but it's "much harder for a blue-collar family who makes $50,000 a year…who have some really dire consequences that can screw up their lives." Moral knowledge is cumulative, and there are prices to pay for following your "own internal compass" in everything you do and think. Sometimes, Goldberg conceded, outdated norms deserve to be overturned, but trial and error must be respected and things must always be done for a reason as opposed to "happenstance".
Conservatism, unlike communism and fascism, respects that no individual can conceive of a perfect. Goldberg believes that liberal concepts of social engineering and political science stem from a false notion that we can somehow do the math and figure things out for everybody, while conservatives understand that "no one is that smart." If we simply returned to the superior federalism of the framers of the Constitution, most arguments would be irrelevant. To Goldberg, democracy is better than a lot of other systems, but there have been tyrannical democracies that allowed for slavery. "Idiots who aren't smart enough to be a spell-checker at an M&M factory say 'the UN voted to condemn Israel,' but voting doesn't make them moral…voting is not immoral, its amoral," he said.
In an appeal for federalism specific to the audience, Goldberg described college residential scenarios under different governments. Under absolute democracy, a coalition of "stoners, jocks, hippies, deadheads, and guys who wear beer hats" could vote for a 24/7 party environment and impose this on the rest of the students, or a coalition of "Mormons, foreign exchange students, and geeks" could vote to impose an extremely quiet environment on the rest of the students. Under dictatorship, the administration could impose a residential policy that would "piss of 80% of the students," Goldberg said. However, a federal system would allow each building to decide what was best for itself. One might have total quiet time and another total party time, but the system would let people decide for themselves. According to Goldberg, Washington is trying to pursue a one-size fits-all policy while there are people like Barbara Streisand who want abortions for all, and people like Pat Roberts who want abortions for none, fighting it out. While Goldberg opposes gay marriage, he believes the decision should be pushed back to the states. Instead of what he believes to be the ACLU position, that something supported by one person must be supported by 99 percent of the population, he believes in federalism.
Goldberg noted that democracy is not about agreement, its about argument. At the end of the day, if you feel oppressed where you live, you can move. Goldberg went on to lament the state education is in, joking that federalism to young people is "like brunch: no one really knows what it is, and there's a slice of cantaloupe at the end." However, young people raise the legitimate concern that we hung on to the tradition of slavery long after it was proven wrong, and Jim Crowe was evil. But we fought the civil war and we amended the constitution a couple of times, so people should lose the slippery slope notion that because of what happened with slavery and Jim Crowe laws, the government needs to be involved in "what kind of pop tarts you eat and what kind of car you drive." Goldberg would rather live in a system where "you take risks, and if you make mistakes, it doesn't affect everybody." Ultimately conservatism is the doctrine that says there is nothing new under the sun. It is not always right, but it rightfully says most new ideas are stupid, and that's the way to bet. "A conservative may be wrong once, but that doesn't mean he's wrong the other 99 times out of 100," Goldberg said.
Goldberg concluded that conservatives don't find ideal societies in the future; they find them in the past. Where liberalism's major weakness is idealism, conservatism's major weakness is nostalgia. People often forget that Sir Thomas More contrasted Utopia with Eutopia, not the ideal society, but the good society. Eutopia is the humble conservative idea. Ultimately, Goldberg cannot offer a vision of an ideal conservative society, he "just (has) a pretty good vision of what an ideal society isn't."
-- by Mariam Ballout '10
Despite his support of Bush, Goldberg dislikes the term "compassionate conservative." Goldberg argued that the term slanders conservatives as if they "eat puppies or something." For the past five years people have called Bush "the red hot zealot" and said the same things that were said about Reagan, even though they don't apply. In fact, Bush is the first president to spend over 3% of the GDP on public health programs, to approve stem cell research, and to increase the number of people on the government payroll since the Cold War, said Goldberg. Bush increased spending on labor by more than 50%, passed the largest expansion of entitlements in 40 years, and approved steel tariffs. Goldberg's point was that Bush "is not too hot, he's too sweet," he is not a "red hot zealot," but a robber of liberal issues. President Clinton on the other hand, took time off the campaign trail to "go home to Arkansas to execute a mentally retarded man." Goldberg commented that he is "very pro-death penalty, but not necessarily pro-killing-retarded-people."
According to Goldberg, all political arguments essentially boil down to Rousseau vs. Locke, to the communal vs. the individual. Followers of Locke believe individuals should decide how to lead their own lives. Liberals think conservatives are totalitarians out to run their lives, while conservatives think liberals are totalitarians out to control theirs. Communists are pure "Rousseau-ians" and libertarians are pure "Locke-ians," but everyone else is in between, Goldberg said.
Conservatives are comfortable with man's imperfection, according to Goldberg. In the 90s, Blair and Clinton held that any difficult choice where X comes at the expense of Y is a false one. Liberals under this mode of thinking say "I refuse to believe" that a clean environment will come at the expense of economic growth, and "I refuse to believe that we have to sacrifice our civil liberties to fight the war on terror." Goldberg finds the argument that the terrorists win if we sacrifice our civil liberties idiotic. He went on to discuss how liberals speak of youth as if it somehow speaks an authentic truth that has been beaten from the rest of us, and how liberals like Hillary Clinton (with her "concern for New Yorkers") esteem passion and concern above logic. Goldberg said that while liberals value passion, concern, empathy, and religious-sounding rhetoric, conservatives discuss ideas. Goldberg described young conservative events as superior to liberal events where youth testify their useless passions and dreams. Young conservatives walk around in their Adam Smith ties, arguing about what would happen if Spiderman fought the Hulk, or whether Ayn Rand was a libertarian. Contrastingly, liberals, who according to Goldberg can't even identify John Dewey as an important liberal philosopher, don't have any relationship with their own history.
While Goldberg supports the religious right, he does not believe their arguments are effective to people outside their religion. "If you don't believe that god told you gay marriage is wrong…me saying god said so is about as persuasive as saying this Petri dish of mold said so," he said. Goldberg finds Edmund Burke's idea of trial and error more effective. Successive generations have made mistakes, learned from them, and incorporated them into their lifestyles. Conservatives believe there are real arguments for the way they live, while classic leftist desires to create new politics, reject the past, and reject bourgeois codes of morality date back to the French Revolution. According to Goldberg, doctors found weird diseases like "the rot, the grunt, and the drip" in the liberal "hippies" of that time. He said these diseases reappeared in the hippies of Haight Ashbury….who were not following the basic codes of morality dating back to the French Revolution. In their rejection of hygiene and bourgeois morality they ate communal food, didn't bathe, and slept around without washing their sheets. "Diseases came rushing in as social norms were left behind," Goldberg noted.
To Goldberg, this is historical proof that it is good to respect old practices. Liberal vanity and ignorance are analogous to "pulling up the hood of the car, yanking things out saying 'these wires aren't necessary,' and acting surprised when things don't work." It's the job of the conservative to "be the guy in the room to say that's not a good idea…and more often than not, you wont be wrong, you'll be right," Goldberg said. He went on to say that liberals hate hypocrisy because it violates their sense of authenticity and the unity of all things. Mocking liberals, Goldberg said "If you've ever used drugs, you have to endorse drug use for everybody. Being a closeted gay man is not being true to yourself."
Goldberg said that in the 80s Madonna mastered the "hip whorishness" that Spears and Aguilera mimicked. Anyone who pointed at her and said "she's an idiot," or "she's sending a bad message to teenage girls," were labeled a prude. Now Madonna has been reborn as the super-mom in total rejection of her own past, and admits that she "can't believe how self-indulgent and irresponsible" she was. It is now clear that the conservatives who were told "oh you judgmental old fart" in the 80s were right. In Goldberg's opinion it's easy for Madonna, who's never changed a diaper, to be "progressive," but it's "much harder for a blue-collar family who makes $50,000 a year…who have some really dire consequences that can screw up their lives." Moral knowledge is cumulative, and there are prices to pay for following your "own internal compass" in everything you do and think. Sometimes, Goldberg conceded, outdated norms deserve to be overturned, but trial and error must be respected and things must always be done for a reason as opposed to "happenstance".
Conservatism, unlike communism and fascism, respects that no individual can conceive of a perfect. Goldberg believes that liberal concepts of social engineering and political science stem from a false notion that we can somehow do the math and figure things out for everybody, while conservatives understand that "no one is that smart." If we simply returned to the superior federalism of the framers of the Constitution, most arguments would be irrelevant. To Goldberg, democracy is better than a lot of other systems, but there have been tyrannical democracies that allowed for slavery. "Idiots who aren't smart enough to be a spell-checker at an M&M factory say 'the UN voted to condemn Israel,' but voting doesn't make them moral…voting is not immoral, its amoral," he said.
In an appeal for federalism specific to the audience, Goldberg described college residential scenarios under different governments. Under absolute democracy, a coalition of "stoners, jocks, hippies, deadheads, and guys who wear beer hats" could vote for a 24/7 party environment and impose this on the rest of the students, or a coalition of "Mormons, foreign exchange students, and geeks" could vote to impose an extremely quiet environment on the rest of the students. Under dictatorship, the administration could impose a residential policy that would "piss of 80% of the students," Goldberg said. However, a federal system would allow each building to decide what was best for itself. One might have total quiet time and another total party time, but the system would let people decide for themselves. According to Goldberg, Washington is trying to pursue a one-size fits-all policy while there are people like Barbara Streisand who want abortions for all, and people like Pat Roberts who want abortions for none, fighting it out. While Goldberg opposes gay marriage, he believes the decision should be pushed back to the states. Instead of what he believes to be the ACLU position, that something supported by one person must be supported by 99 percent of the population, he believes in federalism.
Goldberg noted that democracy is not about agreement, its about argument. At the end of the day, if you feel oppressed where you live, you can move. Goldberg went on to lament the state education is in, joking that federalism to young people is "like brunch: no one really knows what it is, and there's a slice of cantaloupe at the end." However, young people raise the legitimate concern that we hung on to the tradition of slavery long after it was proven wrong, and Jim Crowe was evil. But we fought the civil war and we amended the constitution a couple of times, so people should lose the slippery slope notion that because of what happened with slavery and Jim Crowe laws, the government needs to be involved in "what kind of pop tarts you eat and what kind of car you drive." Goldberg would rather live in a system where "you take risks, and if you make mistakes, it doesn't affect everybody." Ultimately conservatism is the doctrine that says there is nothing new under the sun. It is not always right, but it rightfully says most new ideas are stupid, and that's the way to bet. "A conservative may be wrong once, but that doesn't mean he's wrong the other 99 times out of 100," Goldberg said.
Goldberg concluded that conservatives don't find ideal societies in the future; they find them in the past. Where liberalism's major weakness is idealism, conservatism's major weakness is nostalgia. People often forget that Sir Thomas More contrasted Utopia with Eutopia, not the ideal society, but the good society. Eutopia is the humble conservative idea. Ultimately, Goldberg cannot offer a vision of an ideal conservative society, he "just (has) a pretty good vision of what an ideal society isn't."
-- by Mariam Ballout '10
