I think the intellectual wing of conservatism is as robust as it ever was.
Has it occurred to anyone that the reason you don’t hear from them is that you don’t listen to them? That it’s much easier to attack Sarah Palin than Paul Ryan or Gary Johnson, so Palin dominates the discussion of the liberal chattering classes?
The same institutions that used to drive conservatism and libertarianism are still there: Cato, The Heritage Foundation, Reason, Fraser, etc. The heir to Buckley at National Review is Rich Lowry, who is a pretty sharp tack. George Will is a major figure in Conservatism, and no one would call him anti-intellectual.
The Tea Party itself has a lot of leaders who come from the ‘intellectual’ side of conservatism. Rand Paul is no slouch when it comes to explaining his philosophy and economics. Even bombthrowers like Glenn Beck seem reasonably well educated in conservative principles.
In fact, I think one of the frustrations conservatives have is that their more reasonable, intelligent defenders can’t get the kind of air time as the Palins and Bachmann’s get, because they don’t make for good television, and because the media itself is incredibly shallow and stupid and doesn’t want to operate on a deep intellectual level. I think liberal intellectuals often suffer the same fate, but not to the same extent because they’re at least preaching what the mainstream media already believes, and therefore don’t have to be challenged by a blow-dried moron pretending to be a deep thinker on TV.
There’s also the fact that the media has become more democratized. The proliferation of channels and the 24/7 news cycle has created a lot of demand for pundits and ‘spokesmen’, and some of those are being scraped from the bottom of the barrel. Add in the noise from bloggers and other web sites, and it’s harder for the serious people to get their message out.
Also, we live in populist times. That applies to the right and left. Populist leaders are rarely intellectuals - they are bombastic sloganeers who have a talent for riling up the crowd.
I think, to be fair, the OP would have to define intellectual.
But in my experience, conservatives seem to have a general distrust of intellectuals, indeed that has become a basic tenet of current conservativism. The notion that science and academia have been “hijacked” by liberals has fueled this distrust.
There are exceptions, including many posters I have found in this forum (in my limited time here).
There’s some fairly influential newcomers too over the past 15-20 years – the Institute for Justice has led the fight against eminent domain abuse and other economic liberty issues, very cannily.
Absolutely. The PNAC was the main driver behind almost all of Bush’s foreign policy, and its philosophy was entirely flawed. Its members had key roles in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Whether or not they are “defunct”, or whether they will latch on to or produce a new candidate for 2012 remains to be seen. The PNAC has closed but its philosophy is far from dead.
Charles Krauthammer
George Will
Rich Lowry
Victor Davis Hanson
Nick Gillespie
Richard Posner
Andrew McCarthy
Mark Steyn (who may say extreme bombastic things, but who is also wicked smart)
John Yoo
Thaddeus McCotter
Paul Ryan
Eric Cantor
Mitch Daniels
Daniel Pipes
Richard Epstein
Michael Barone
Peter Robinson
John Derbyshire
David Boaz
Eugene Volokh
John Stossell
Austin Bay
Larry Kudlow
Greg Mankiw
Bryan Caplan
David Henderson
Arnold Kling
Gary Becker
Megan McCardle
David Brooks
Ronald Bailey
Tim Cavanaugh
Jacob Sullum
I’m sure I could fill a couple more pages of names if you wanted. I don’t agree with all them, some are more libertarian than conservative (as was Buckley), but all of the people on that list are highly educated and live mostly in the ‘intellectual’ wing of the right. The list is heavy with Ph.D’s and even a couple of Nobel prizes.
If you want to see an example of smart conervatism, watch an episode or two of Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson. The linked episode is the first part of an interview with Mitch Daniels, who is still my bet to be the Republican nominee for President, and who is himself wickedly smart and highly educated.
See, Sam, I do read those sources, pretty much constantly. NRO is easily one of the top-5 blogs I read. I just don’t think that Rich “Starbursts” Lowry holds a candle to Buckley or Will. And many of the other posters there (McCarthy and Lopez in particular, and at least one other I can’t think of right now) are pretty worthless. Obviously YMMV.
It’s probably true that the average voter never listened to the thinkers of the movement anyways. But the politicians, by and large, did. Even in the 90s Gingrich was adopting policies proposed by many of the conservative think-tanks, including a health-care proposal largely similar to Obamacare. Reagan’s love for NR was pretty well-known.
As someone who is exposed to most of the spectrum, it does seem that the more serious thinkers are rather out of place within the mainline GOP right now.
To add, if Mitch Daniels becomes the GOP nominee then I will take back that entire post. It will be a sign that the sane, thoughtful branch of the GOP is indeed alive and well.
I think this is all a bit unfair. Who are the intellectual voices on the left? Obama, maybe, but he consciously (or perhaps unconsciously) dumbs down his message at times.
I’ll agree completely about Lopez. A total lightweight. There are a few lightweights at NRO, in fact.
McCarthy is a smart guy who I disagree with a lot. Same with Lowry. He’s definitely a smart guy, and he would fit in the ‘intellectual’ wing (you won’t hear any birther nonsense from him, for example), but I don’t always agree with him. In fact, I don’t agree with a lot of stuff at NRO, because it’s still too catholic and too old-school socially conservative for me. But it’s got its share of heavyweight intellectuals - probably as many as it ever did, sans Buckley.
I’m not sure what you mean by “behind” – in a lot of cases, the people shaping the strategy are the (generally very sharp, very conservative/libertarian) lawyers who run those shops and litigate the cases – Chip Mellor, Clint Bolick, etc. etc., just click through the staff listings, read the articles/position papers/briefs they write (most are posted). They also have research/support from the smallish but vocal and, again, very smart community of law professors on the right. I could get you names if you wanted but, for instance, IJ’s role in quickly and effectively getting state eminent domain abuse laws passed in dozens of states after the idiotic Kelo ruling, their concerted effort against protectionist licensing regimes, their backing of minority entrepreneurs, has not been driven by dummies or un-strategic, un-thinking people. Similarly CIR almost single-handedly brought academic affirmative action to the high-court level and while O’Conner’s baby-splitting decision in Bollinger was not everything they would have hoped for, without being a Supreme Court groupie I can say that anyone able of running with the big dogs in federal appellate litigation is not, generally, merely some simplistic ideologue or religious fanatic.
That wasn’t a list of my favorite conservatives, you know.
You don’t have to agree with him, but is there any question that he should be considered an ‘intellectual’ conservative? The guy has a Ph.D from Harvard, speaks Arabic, and has been a professor at top schools.
Thank you Sam. Liked the link. That’s exactly the type of discussion and rational voices we need. That’s the kind of thing that should be on cable news channels and being discussed by pundits and shamefully, is abandoned for useless blowhards like Trump.
On that same note, it is one thing to name off a bunch of intellectual Republicans, but it is quite another to show that they have a major influence in today’s GOP. Are the current frontrunners followers of these people? Which of the current frontrunners do the above named intellectuals support in the coming presidential race?
Yeah, you’re probably right. The way the system seems to work is that the think-tanks on either side come up with the policy proposals or guidelines and the politicians either adopt them or don’t. Then they either work or they don’t (PNAC being a prime example of a policy-generator that manifestly didn’t work).
There are useful thinkers on both sides, and it’s useful to be exposed to all of them. I’d be thrilled if the news media and the politicans made more out of that part of the debate, but in the end what plays with the public is what gets time (from both groups).
To Czarcasm - from what I can tell most of the right-wing non-Libertarian intellectuals are in the Romney or Daniels camps at this point. They pretty consistently disregard Palin, Huckabee, and Trump. Some of the more Libertarian like Gary Johnson or Ron Paul (maybe - I don’t think I’ve actually seen anyone seriously endorse Paul).
Sam Stone’s list included Nick Gillespie…I’m a liberal but I think Gillespie is often excellent. He does very little, if any, “lib bashing” that so many conservative columnists like Coulter have made a career of. I don’t always agree with Nick but I appreciate his perspective.
He has intellectual credentials. That doesn’t make him an intellectual. Buckley only had a B.A., so it should be clear that education is not itself indicative of intellectualism.
Combine that with his campaign to silence academics who disagree with him, and his bizarre conspiracy theories (“Obama is a secret Muslim”, “Iran will destroy the US with an EMP weapon”) and I can hardly think of anyone who better fits the anti-intellectual conservative stereotype.