Bramwell – 2004 National Meeting
Sarah Bramwell
The Philadelphia Society 40th Gala! National Meeting
May 1, 2004
In your program, you will read that I am a freelance
writer. This was true at the time the program was printed, but it is no longer.
I am in the employ of Colorado Governor Bill Owens as his deputy press
secretary. I tell you this not only because of the obvious benefits of
self-aggrandizement, but because my position obliges me to say that the
following opinions are my own, and do not reflect those of the Governor.
Modern American conservatism began in an effort to do two
things: defeat Communism and roll back creeping socialism. A half century later,
these goals are no longer relevant. The first was obviated by our success, the
latter by our failure. So what is left of conservatism?
Many conservatives, especially since September 11, believe
that a major, if not the
major calling of conservatives today is to articulate and defend a certain brand
of international grand strategy. Let me say that I believe this view to be not
only mistaken, but quite possibly harmful to the conservative movement.
It is mistaken because the truth of the matter is that
conservatism neither has nor ought to have a particular foreign policy. I
certainly do not mean to say that conservatives should cease to be interested in
foreign policy. But the role of conservatives qua conservatives in foreign
policy, as in every other area, is to resist the temptations of ideology.
Everything else, like so much in politics, is a matter of prudence and judgment,
on which there is wide room for legitimate disagreement.
I suspect that confusion exists today on this rather
elementary point in large part because the Cold War created an artificial
situation in which all conservatives agreed on the same foreign policy goal and
strategy. Communism was an armed, international ideology that threatened to
obliterate civilization. All conservatives, therefore, were obliged to fight it
and buck up the Westís resolve in the struggle against the Soviet Union. In
sum, anti-Communism was not a question on which conservatives could reasonably
disagree, but an essential conservative principle.
No similar principle, however, exists today. Despite this,
many conservatives have continued the Cold War habit of making foreign policy
into an ideological battle. On one side we have conservatives who believe that
the United States has a moral obligation to spread democracy anywhere and
everywhere around the globe; on the other, we have conservatives who believe
that an activist foreign policy betrays conservatismís isolationist or
“America First” roots.
Neither view will wash. Isolationism in the 1930s was
nothing but a logical deduction from conservative anti-Communism. Right-wingers
argued against intervening in World War II because Nazi Germany, as unappealing
as it was, thwarted Stalinís ambitions. With Nazi Germany gone, therefore,
hardly a single conservative isolationist remained by the time the Cold War was
in full swing. All quondam isolationists either died like Nock, or converted,
like Buckley.
Isolationism, in other words, was a strategy, not a guiding
principle. Today, it wears a no less utopian guise than pro-democracy
triumphalism. What do we do, after all, with our myriad deployments and
alliances around the world? To back out on them all immediately would be
disastrous. It is all very well and good to say that in some Platonic Empyrean
the United States would only worry about its own liberty and not that of others,
but here in our fallen state, such a scenario is unimaginable.
We likewise have no moral obligation to spread democracy
around the world. After all, democracy is not even the best form of government.
Conservatives, together with the weight of the Western tradition, have always
favored a mixed constitution that balances the interests of the one, the few,
and the many. It goes without saying that “We must make the world safe for
mixed constitutions” is not the most euphonious rallying cry.
None of this is to say that some form of isolationist or
interventionist foreign policy cannot be endorsed by conservatives. On the
contrary, my very point is that both policies
could be seen as properly conservative grand strategies for achieving American
interests. For some time now, conservatives have enjoyed the liberty to disagree
on important questions of foreign policy. What I would like to see is that we be
allowed to do so without fear that someone else in the movement will declare us
anathema.
My own opinion is that while Islamist-inspired terrorism is
the most immediate threat to our security, in the long term our major struggle
is against the international class of technocrats that in the name of
“international law” seeks to efface our bitterly-won rights to
self-government. Conservatives must fashion a strategy not only against
terrorism but also against the international New Class, and our strategy for
defeating the one must not be inconsistent with our strategy for defeating the
other.
In any case, the important point is once again that
articulating and defending some kind of international policy is not
the major goal of conservatism in the next forty years. How about the second
founding goal of the conservative movement, namely, halting creeping socialism?
Like it or not, the administrative state is here to stay. Conservatives can
continue to nibble away at it, and the past decade has seen a small wave of
reforms that leaves one with some modest hope for the future. Weíre not going
to abolish social security, but we are going to see private health accounts that
give Americans more freedom. The public-school system will clatter along in all
its disastrousness, but charter schools will become more and more popular. These
and other improvements on the margins should continue, but there are other
things that are more important.
So, when the two founding goals are no longer relevant,
what is left for us as conservatives to do? Well, since the 1960s, the
conservative movement took on a third goal, namely winning the culture wars. By
culture wars, I mean everything from preserving traditional morality, to passing
on the Western inheritance, to preserving a distinctly American common culture,
to resisting the threat posed by biotechnology to human nature itself. To win
these wars, conservatives must make the case against such things as gay
marriage, stem-cell research, open borders, and our hideous suburban sprawl. All
these battles are really part of the same war&emdash;a war, unfortunately, that we
seem determined to lose.
Since my time is limited, Iíd like to examine our losing
ways by looking only at one issue: gay marriage. In college, even as we
conservatives would lament the inglorious decline of the West, even as we
steeped ourselves in doom-and-gloom conservatism like so many Romans in their
baths, still we could not help but be mightily optimistic about the future of
conservatism. Never had conservatives at Yale been so many and so active; never
had conservatives had such a wealth of opportunities for writing, bringing in
speakers, and influencing the debate on campus.
And yet in the past nine months, this has all appeared
quite hollow to me. Why? Because of the amazing disappearing act conservatives
have pulled in the face of gay marriage. After so many advances, it seems, we
have rolled over and played dead.
The most rigorous and intellectually impressive
conservative writers&emdash;the ones we depended upon to articulate the conservative
position on such controversial issues as stem cells, abortion, and affirmative
action&emdash;have, it seems, been struck dumb. They have relegated themselves to
reporting on the political reaction to gay marriage or critiquing the
vicissitudes of federal marriage amendment proposals. Virtually everyone has
avoided the basic issue of whether sodomy ought to be normalized.
It used to be that, when challenged in the culture wars,
conservatives only gain in strength. The conservative movement benefited greatly
from an infusion of intellectual firepower and initiative from disenchanted
liberals and democrats during the 1960s and í70s. Ronald Reagan extended this
crossover effect into the political arena, solidifying the intellectual gains
that conservatism had made in a very public and concrete way. Conservatism has
continued boisterously to defy the aftershocks of the 60s and 70s.
Now, by contrast, as gay marriage becomes a reality, we
have amazingly only become weaker. I have no idea what accounts for this
extraordinary lack of nerve. What I do know is that no sooner had the Lawrence
decision come down from on high but conservatives, discouraged before the battle
had even begun, lamented the inevitability of gay marriage, posited a new world
of alternative arrangements, and even urged that family law be in some sense
privatized. It seemed that the fighting spirit had all of a sudden departed from
even the most reliable conservative organs.
That few prominent conservative thinkers and writers are
making the intellectually difficult and socially risky case against
homosexualism has had a devastating effect. Thousands of conservatives&emdash;college
students, housewives, activists, even President Bush and members of
Congress&emdash;rely on the pundit class to make the controversial arguments
normal”>not just so that they know what to think and say, but because the pundit
class has given them the intellectual cover to do so. The most important job
of polemicists is constantly to move&emdash;or, at the very least, defend&emdash;the
boundaries of debate. In effect, they are expanding and securing the perimeter
for the footsoldiers to occupy. Well, when the advance guard goes AWOL, the
whole conservative side in the culture wars collapses.
To say that the institution of marriage is important to
Western civilization and therefore worth fighting for is an understatement. And
yet when this institution is under attack as
never before in Western history, conservatives are silent. One need look no
further than the covers and tables of contents of the most prominent
conservative journals for evidence of this. Of 50 articles, probably 40 of them
will be on the War on Terror, and only two or three on gay marriage. This is the
cultural battle of our age, and we write an article here and there on the
subject. There is no precedent for this disappearing act in the history of the
conservative movement.
This is precisely what the other side wants. This is a
fight, mind you, not only for traditional sexual morality, but for the very
liberty that conservatives have always prided themselves on defending. With the
advent of government-mandated gay marriage, what is taught in the public schools
will change: gay sex will have to be taught just as heterosexual sex is. The
words “husband” and “wife” will have to go. Meanwhile, the full power of
federal anti-discrimination laws will be brought to bear, making discrimination
against gays illegal. Catholic charities and Christian schools may be forced to
hire and teach against their religion. I am not being hysterical, for these
things have already come to pass in other Western nations. Sure, we have the
free speech clause of the First Amendment to protect us, but that only goes so
far, and it is subject to the vagaries of Supreme Court interpretation. There is
a chance that we conservatives will no longer even be allowed our saving
remnant, much less be a major political and moral force.
Once we lose the gay marriage fight, the hard-won gains
that have been made with regard to traditional sexual morality will be lost. How
do you argue for abstinence and monogamy when thereís a whole population of
people who can get married but donít bother? Once heterosexual and homosexual
sex are equated, all the arguments for traditional sexual morality&emdash;from
prudence, from nature, from religion&emdash;collapse.
So, where do I think conservatism will be in the next 40
years? I must confess that I am not exactly full of hope. The danger in the next
40 years is not losing the battles but, for want of fighting them, becoming
irrelevant.
The issues with which we will grapple in the coming
decades&emdash;chief among them cloning and other matters biotechnological&emdash;will
require our focus and our unity. If we can but put aside our differences for a
while, we stand a chance. If we cannot, then we donít deserve that chance.
Thank you.