The conservative case for X...

There is an article from Boston University professor Andrew J. Bacevich making the rounds today. It is featured on the American Conservative website and is entitled "The Conservative Case for Obama".

I really have no opinion on the thesis of the paper but I've seen a lot of these types of papers written in the last year, as the unmitigated disaster that is the Bush administration comes to a calamitous end. Essentially the author defines what it is he thinks conservativism is, never mind that this definition generally ignores what conservativism actually is and how it has been historically practiced in the United States. The authors all seem to cling to some form of Burkean conservativism that never existed in the US and really didn't exist in Britain either.

Next the author delineates all of the ways that George W. Bush has violated the authors model of conservativism, ergo Bush is not a conservative. The key point they seem to be making time and time again is that conservative ideology can never fail, instead it is the improperly conservative politician who fails the ideology. Again, this is all based on some presumed form of Burkean conservativism that has never really existed outside the pages of a few works of political philosophy. It ignores all historical fact as to how conservativism has existed in American politics and instead exists in some fantastic utopia found in the authors head. Andrew Sullivan wrote an entire book based on this model.

It's the sort of thing that drove me nuts when reading philosophy as an undergrad - the author would arbitrarily define the literal terms of the argument to mean whatever was most convenient for the argument they wanted to make. Then they would reach their conclusion through the logical application of their terms. Amazing how things always turn out the way that you want when you get to define the terms of the debate.

What would be refreshing would be for a conservative to assess the history of American conservativism and give an honest appraisal of what conservative governance hath wrought. To do that though the author would have to be prepared to come to a conclusion he might not like - that conservativism as practiced in the United States is an inherently flawed ideology not fit for the actual practice of governing a large and diverse nation.

I'm not holding my breath. It's a much simpler and safer intellectual exercise to keep telling yourself that it's not your ideas that are flawed and that the problems lie with the idiots you keep supporting for office who can't get seem to get it right.