Jonah Goldberg makes an interesting point, but I’m not sure it was quite supposed to come out the way it did. Namely, there is a recognizable sub-genre of liberal-progressive journo-punditry that might be termed ‘conservatives in the mist’.
A liberal reporter puts on his or her Dian Fossey hat in order to attempt to write another installment of Conservatives in the Mist. I’ve followed this particular brand of reporting for years, it’s almost a fetish of mine. Most attempts fail. Of these lesser varieties, there’s fear (“Troglodytes!”), mockery (“Irrelevant troglodytes!”), condescension (“I had to explain to them they’re troglodytes.”), bewilderment (“Why don’t they understand they’re troglodytes?”), astonishment (Dear God, they’re not all troglodytes!”), and a few combinations of all the above.
But sometimes they even succeed, to a point. Thus, like the real Dian Fossey, they manage to saunter into the leafy thickets of conservatism, and are welcomed into a band of gorillas. They hold out the equivalent of a banana or maybe a fistful of grubs for long enough and eventually we come sniffing around. We’re intrigued by the creature lavishing attention on us. And the reporter eventually begins to feel as though he has been accepted into the band. Eventually, we conservatives grow comfortable enough around them to return to our old patterns. We scratch and fight and do our gorilla things and the chronicler dutifully takes notes. The notes eventually make their way into an article for the New York Times or The New Yorker or Vanity Fair.
“Who knew?” the readers will say over their morning bagels and coffee in Southampton or Fire Island, “I had no idea conservatives were such intelligent creatures. Why they even have the capacity for emotion and even some rudimentary forms of kindness.”
Rick Perlstein’s Before The Storm comes to mind (fitting in nicely with our late discussions of Goldwater around here). [And Rick shows up in comments to object to being compared to Fossey in this derogatory way. Sorry, in not objecting to that more strenuously, I was just trying to give Goldberg enough rope to hang himself, and I sort of entangled Rick in that.] The impulse to conservative anthropology is not even restricted to liberals or progressives. Dave Weigel is hard to pin down, ideologically. It is also understandable why this sub-genre would be a bit tiresome to conservatives. It has an element of kayfabe. The posture of interpretive charity is, in effect, functioning to generate dramatic tension. The outcome is not seriously in doubt: the liberal point of view prevails. And the very fact that it prevails in this way confirms the encompassing validity of liberalism! Liberals can understand where conservatives are coming from, and even be sympathetic to the roots of all that. (Not that it has to be played this way. Dave Weigel, again. And ‘conservatives in the mist’ is often played, by liberals, as a sort of self-lacerating Higher Broderism.)
It is also true – I take it this is Goldberg’s point, by implication – that there is no corresponding ‘Liberals in the Mist’ genre. Writers from National Review do not venture forth, attending academic seminars on John Rawls’ philosophy, or examining the inner workings of Acorn or the ACLU or the Sierra Club, in some spirit of bend-over-backwards interpretive charity and anthropological tolerance, which eventually bears fruit in the form of surprisingly favorable reports brought back to NASCAR-loving red staters, who turn down their Glenn Beck and Mark Levin and Rush Limbaugh to peruse over whatever non-latte coffee product they favor. “Who knew? The people behind ACORN and the ACLU aren’t a bunch of America-hating, election-stealing traitors at all. True, they aren’t conservatives. But still, it’s quite understandable how … Conservatives should understand better the deep appeal of … We shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the arguments for … But still, in the end …”
Of course liberals would find this sort of assured, stagy, semi-condescension somewhat tiresome, after the sheer novelty of the style of engagement wore off. But the fact is: kayfabish ‘liberals in the mist’ anthropology would be hugely preferable to what we’ve got.
Writing about political philosophy – if you are going to stage it as a kind of ‘fight’ between positions – is a kayfabe-ish business. “In this essay, I am going to examine whether standard liberal arguments against certain conservative policy proposals have any actual merit.” If a conservative is writing the essay, the answer is probably going to be: no. Or: not much. That is, the moment of doubt at the beginning is sort of fake. The outcome pre-scripted. That’s ok. It’s a script. A written thing. We can deal with the fact that philosophical fights in essays are more like dramatic re-enactments than actual fights between actual antagonists. The fact that sometimes liberals script elaborate anthropological encounters, adopting semi-pantomime postures of tolerance and understanding, is not actually something that should annoy conservatives any more than the fact that liberals write anything at all. Which is to say: somewhat.
Conservatives write a ton of stuff about liberals and progressives, of course. But their characteristic mode of approach is almost the inverse of the one Goldberg is mocking. There is this huge continent – contemporary liberalism/progressivism – and then, as on your standard issue ye olde mappe, there are these funny sea beasties and ‘here there be monsters’ banderoles around the edges. And the way you read the map is to avert your eyes from what the central landmass is shaped like and just sort of guess what the worst case scenario might be, based on the drawings of the monsters. Goldberg’s own book seems to me to be written according to this formula. ‘Liberals in the mist’ would be a huge step forward for political anthropology. Venture forth into the terra incognita of the Dark Coasts – Hollywood, academe, even inside the Beltway – and emerge with elaborately charitable and understanding, but faintly condescending portraits of the so-called ‘primitive’ inhabitants, who may not be as savage as you think!
{ 92 comments }
noen 05.27.10 at 2:08 am
Please, you’re only encouraging him.
“it’s almost a fetish of mine”
See? Now where did I put my brain bleach?
PHB 05.27.10 at 2:39 am
Perhaps we could tell them all that the planet is about to be eaten by a mutant star goat and point the way to the B-ark.
Martin 05.27.10 at 2:41 am
I’m glad you mentioned Weigel — listen to his interview on Fresh Air for more insight into how he covers the conservative movement. I would also recommend listening to the recent bloggingheads discussion between Julian Sanchez and Conor Friedersdorf, in which Friedersdorf describes his efforts to expose conservative radio hosts as the root problem and not conservative radio listeners. It’s more sincere than what you’re describing, but in impact similar. It also occurs to me that Weigel has appeared on bloggingheads as well.
Glen Tomkins 05.27.10 at 2:43 am
They don’t believe that they have to do anthropology on us. Thye all understand, all too well. The standard conservative line is that the culture is dominantly liberal, even jack-bootedly liberal, if you follow the Liberal Fascism idea. They feel that they can’t escape our ever-constant oppression, so they obviously don’t feel the need to send anthropologic expeditions to discover our ways. They can’t escape them!
I’m originally from Louisiana, and I can assure you that even conservatives in that great state talk and act as if they constitute some sort of ecclesia pressa, that only just yesterday they may have gained some slight, and probably brief, respite from the oppression of a liberal governance that only yesterday fed them to actual lions on a daily basis. Whatever.
Of course, they also claim that this country is overwhelmingly rock-ribbed conservative, and that liberalism is indeed some freakish affectation of a tiny minority. But not an obscure, tiny minority, because we somehow still manage to dominate society despite being a bizarre, cult-like, minority with values and beliefs completely alien and antithetical to real Americans. Alien, but completely and thoroughly understood! Whatever.
Warren Terra 05.27.10 at 2:49 am
Isn’t this sort of writing style commonly followed whenever any sort of subgroup is profiled, be it conservative activists, liberal activists, software engineers, gaming enthusiasts, stockbrokers, rural farmers, etcetera? And that includes the condescension, although it takes different forms: the god-guns-and-gays people are mocked as throwbacks, the software engineers are mocked as nerds, and the masters of the universe on Wall Street are mocked using inverted snobbery, with biting examples of the stupid ways they burn through their vastly inflated incomes.
In any case, you’re to kind to Jonah, who salts his piece with inane jokes about Jayson Blair (2003) and Stephen Glass (1998).
politicalfootball 05.27.10 at 3:05 am
I can’t bear to read much David Brooks, but isn’t Liberals in the Mist part of his schtick?
John Holbo 05.27.10 at 3:10 am
Yes, come to think of it, you are right. David Brooks does a bit of it. But the element that is missing – which is sort of crucial – is that there’s this ‘conservatives all know this already, but many of my liberal readers won’t realize …’ element to the Conservatives in the Mist narrative. If Brooks were to write columns like that, but reversed, they would actually become more palatable to liberals, and less palatable to conservatives.
TGGP 05.27.10 at 3:49 am
Joseph Schumpeter’s “Capitalism, Socialism & Democracy” is quite sympathetic to socialism (and Marxism more specifically), even while he claims to abhor its impending arrival. I haven’t read it, but Daniel Flynn’s “A Conservative History of the American Left” is apparently sympathetic (if not respectful) toward the all-American “freedom left” that the Bill Kauffman “Ain’t My America” front-porch republicans would also sympathize with.
aaron 05.27.10 at 3:55 am
The movie Lord, Save us from Your Followers has an interesting scene that plays into this relationship. The movie is by a Christian who decides to find out why liberal, agnostic, GLBT, or atheists find American Christians so off-putting. (So this might be something of the variety you are looking for, but a slightly different angle). In the scene I found most interesting, Dan Merchant (the director) staged a game show between liberals and conservatives where they were supposed to answer questions that seemed to be tailored to one of the two groups (i.e., questions about the bible in one round, questions about evolution in the next). The liberals knew the “conservative” answers, but the conservatives didn’t know “liberal” answers at all. I don’t know if this just reflects what you are talking about, the fact that liberals read these conservatives-in-the-mist texts, and conservatives haven’t had an interest in the equivalent. But it seemed interesting to me.
ed 05.27.10 at 4:23 am
Why any reasonable person would spend time analyzing, let alone reading, Jonah Goldberg baffles me.
Rick Perlstein 05.27.10 at 4:34 am
John, I don’t get it. How is my work like Diane Fossey?
FlyingRodent 05.27.10 at 4:55 am
Re: there being no equivalent “Liberals in the Mist”…
It’s been touched on here, but there is a long and thriving tradition in modern conservatism of citing godawful things said by “liberal friends”, “work colleagues” and “acquaintances”. I’m pushed for time, so here’s just one quick example…
Then our host chants the liberal mantra: “Bush has alienated us from the rest of the world. Europe hates us. The Muslims hate us. He’s taking us into an abyss!” The crowd raises their goblets, yelling “Kill Bush.”
http://opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110005032
The short version – sure, yer conservatives probably do hate these anthropology pieces. OTOH, at least these journalists bother to get off their arses and do a bit of, you know, journalism rather than pulling allegorical, unverifiable liberal nutters out of their backsides.
John Holbo 05.27.10 at 4:58 am
Hi Rick. The Dian Fossey/anthropology analogy is intended by Goldberg to be mildly derogatory, obviously. I’m surprised he didn’t mention that old Far Side strip about the scientist living down in the gopher hole. (“I feel these strange creature have finally accepted me as one of their own.”) Rhetorically, in the post, I am giving Goldberg way too much credit – letting a lot of stuff pass – just so I can give him enough rope to hang himself. As a result of that, I now see that I am rhetorically giving you, in particular, too little credit – for which I now formally apologize. Your history is not in the least like a ‘gee whiz, these conservatives have ideas’ journalistic thumbsucker. My point was supposed to be that if only conservatives would rise to even that comparatively low level, it would be a step up from, say, “Liberal Fascism”. But I didn’t mean to drag your history down to that level, thereby.
You are like Fossey only to the extent that your book is a kind of anthropology of conservatism. I think that’s a fair characterization. I also feel that this is a better characterization of “Before The Storm” than of “Nixonland”. I think, in writing the former, you actually do a bit more of what Goldberg is grousing about: namely, you cultivate extra layers of sympathy for stuff you don’t agree with. You go native, for the duration. Which is more of an anthropologist tic than a historian’s one. I think Goldberg is also right that this is a classic, liberal thing to do, going back to, say, Trilling’s “The Liberal Imagination”. (He doesn’t mention that ur-text, but I’ll bet he’s actually thinking about it.)
Myles SG 05.27.10 at 5:57 am
“I’m originally from Louisiana, and I can assure you that even conservatives in that great state talk and act as if they constitute some sort of ecclesia pressa, that only just yesterday they may have gained some slight, and probably brief, respite from the oppression of a liberal governance that only yesterday fed them to actual lions on a daily basis. Whatever.”
Which is sort of funny in a way, because conservatism/Toryism/Royalism (you can go as far as you want, maybe even Roman paganism or the Baltic pagans lamenting Christianization) has always felt itself to be a sort of ecclessia pressa. It’s sort of hard-boiled into the bone and marrow. Conservatism is about defending, to some extent, the past, and the past is always be, in a sense, the ecclesia pressa of the present. That’s why it is the past and it remains in the past. Because we have reduced and removed it, to some extent, from our existence.
Doesn’t mean it is justified; but it’s what it is. Conservatism that doesn’t feel itself to be a sort of ecclesia pressa will have limited emotional appeal. Witness the conservatism of Nelson Rockefeller.
Glen Tomkins 05.27.10 at 5:57 am
aaron,
Though conservatives like to complain that they are a culturally oppressed majority, that the liberalism against which they struggle dominates the culture, and they therefore are all too familiar with our point of view, while we are arrogantly ignorant of theirs, of course the real relationship is pretty much the reverse. We know more about their views and outlook, and do better on the role reversal Jeopardy you describe because, of course, you can’t escape their shouted views wherever you turn. And most of the shouting is about how much they are an ignored Silent Majority. If only the former part of that phrase were a true description of them, and thank God the latter part isn’t.
Myles SG 05.27.10 at 6:00 am
But of course American conservatism has taken a curious turn, because it isn’t traditionalist, at least not very much so. It is a great (and admittedly partial) deal classically liberal in thinking. And it is not clear libertarianism will be so readily buried by history, at least not without wrenching changes.
But then, libertarian conservatives engage readily with libertarians. I suppose it’s a mark of their confidence in the ultimate victory of their cause that they do so.
Myles SG 05.27.10 at 6:01 am
I meant libertarian conservatives engage readily with liberals. Sorry.
Laura 05.27.10 at 6:10 am
I’m probably missing the point entirely, but is there some obvious reason why being compared with Dian Fossey would be derogatory?
John Holbo 05.27.10 at 6:24 am
“I’m probably missing the point entirely, but is there some obvious reason why being compared with Dian Fossey would be derogatory?”
In the present context, it hints at silly failure to notice that conservatives are not, in fact, gorillas. I take it that is what Rick is objecting to.
John Holbo 05.27.10 at 6:37 am
Just to finish that thought: Goldberg is talking about something that can be done well or badly, and he says as much. It would have been better to compare studying conservatives to cultural anthropology. But that would have the defect of making it sound like a presumptively sensible thing, which can be done badly – which it is – rather than a presumptively ridiculous activity, which can be heroically redeemed – which it isn’t. Goldberg is cultivating a backwards view, as I tried to bring out in my post. But it is actually backwards in a couple different ways. And I didn’t hit them all.
alex 05.27.10 at 7:39 am
failure to notice that conservatives are not, in fact, gorillas
Are you quite sure about that? The only way I’d be prepared to vouch for the difference was through a recognition that it might be an insult to gorillas, who are gentle, peace-loving vegetarians.
On second thoughts, scratch the ‘might be’.
Ori Livneh 05.27.10 at 7:41 am
Goldberg’s brand of “conservativism” bears no meaningful resemblance to the social and political philosophy of the same name. There are no ethical, epistemic, or political commitments underlying his positions. Rather, his brand of “conservativism” is modified ad hoc to conform to whatever the interests of elites happen to be at a particular moment. If his positions can be said to follow any guiding principle at all, it is Thycydides’s famous maxim: “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must”. This “conservativism” should be held in contempt by anyone with a shred of integrity, conservative or otherwise.
Jack Strocchi 05.27.10 at 7:55 am
John Holbo said:
Tom Wolfe, Barry Humphries, P. J. O’Rourke? These guys are Right-wing satirists who tend to dramatise for effect. Anthropologists are scientists who “go native” in the quest for participant observatory. Right-wing satirists tend to go the other way, caricaturing rather than sympathising, with their Left-liberal subjects.
Perhaps Right-wingers are just nasty by nature and enjoy being spiteful
Sebastian 05.27.10 at 8:10 am
” We know more about their views and outlook, and do better on the role reversal Jeopardy you describe because, of course, you can’t escape their shouted views wherever you turn. ”
What did you think of The Shack?
Alex 05.27.10 at 8:25 am
It’s an insult because a) she’s a woman, b) she’s a scientist, but not in a Khosla Ventures or LANL sort of way, and c) she’s a wussy environmentalist. The signal is directed to the sort of people who polled more favourable to offshore drilling after the BP oil spill – the craziest 27% of the crazy 27%ers.
This ought to be obvious.
Jack Strocchi 05.27.10 at 9:33 am
John Holbo@#19 said:
Perhaps, but that implication would be the sort of thing that conservative would object to. Speaking as an on-again/off-again conservative I don’t mind this analogy. Conservatives do believe that humans are glorified apes, after all. And the subject of Alpha-males is dear to our hearts.
I think that Perlstein is a bit touchy about his work being demoted to the status of a mere anthropological field study of an odd tribe of primates. (With respect to Dr Fossey whose work is wonderful in more ways than one.) His subject matter – RMN – is, after all, guy far smarter than the intellectuals who feign to critique him.
Perlstein is aiming to construct a general theory about the evolution of a political cadre (the REP elite) of world-historical importance. How did Ike-Rockefeller REPS (d)evolve into Bush-Gingrich REPs? Thats a huge canvas, requiring a mightier brush and grander perspective than a mere anthropologist.
BTW I think Perlstein’s work is great on Nixon’s Southern Strategy and Culture War politics. But it does Nixon a grave injustice on the awesome task he faced re-jigging the Great Society policy to deal with a cultural revolutionary polity. A task that Clinton more or less completed. Its no accident that Clinton was a big fan of Nixon. He would know.
ajay 05.27.10 at 9:51 am
Speaking as an on-again/off-again conservative I don’t mind this analogy. Conservatives do believe that humans are glorified apes, after all.
Not generally true in the US. Most US conservatives believe that humans were separately created by God. Evolution is more of a liberal belief.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_support_for_evolution#United_States
(Admittedly those results are broken down by Republican/Democrat rather than by liberal/conservative)
Western Dave 05.27.10 at 12:11 pm
Where do the 1960s writings of Joan Didion fit into this? Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The White Album, etc. Leftists in the midst?
y81 05.27.10 at 12:59 pm
Further to @22:
There is a genre of conservative journalism in which the writer (say, Andrew Ferguson) visits liberals in their native habitat (say, a literary or academic gathering, possibly even including a John Rawls symposium), but the overall tone is one of mockery, not banal, sentimental observations to the effect that they are people just like us, only stupider.
Mockery of this sort is very rare in liberal journalism. Possibly, the lack of such mockery reflects the liberal belief that those people are dangerous, not a laughing matter. The right of our children to study evolution hangs by a thread, etc.! Alternatively, it may reflect the fact that, in some cases, those people are indeed dangerous, at least in a narrow professional sense. You could write a mocking piece about a libertarian convention without repercussions, but a piece mocking a Southern Baptist convention would probably trigger complaints from advertisers. For whatever reason, liberal journalism tends overwhelmingly to adopt a tone of moral earnestness.
Or maybe conservatives are just funny, and liberals just banal, by nature.
Bill Gardner 05.27.10 at 1:47 pm
I don’t think conservatives have any valid reason to view themselves as an ecclesia pressa. That said, in my experience the median liberal intellectual knows little about the history, major figures, beliefs, or lebenswelt of, say, pentecostalism (or the charismatics, or the LDS, etc. [and I only know a little through family]). These are global networks of hundreds of millions of people. How can we, given that it is impossible to take the foundational ideas seriously? Nevertheless, we are living, as it were, with maps of the world that have large blank areas.
My bet, however, is that the median conservative intellectual is nearly as clueless.
Bill Gardner 05.27.10 at 1:58 pm
I should have acknowledged that Sebastian made my point more concisely @23. But I bet that < 1% of CT readers got it. And that maybe 5% of NRO writers would…
Uncle Kvetch 05.27.10 at 2:12 pm
Or maybe conservatives are just funny, and liberals just banal, by nature.
That would help to explain both the resounding success of The 1/2 Hour News Hour and the abysmal failure of Jon Stewart.
Uncle Kvetch 05.27.10 at 2:14 pm
Ugh. Italics begone.
Bill Gardner 05.27.10 at 2:15 pm
Sorry about the italics.
John Holbo 05.27.10 at 2:38 pm
Dude, those are some stubborn italics. I went in and tried to get rid of them but they’re still there. Let’s try again.
John Holbo 05.27.10 at 2:40 pm
Whew.
y81 05.27.10 at 3:07 pm
“it is impossible to take the foundational ideas seriously”
I’m not sure what the author means. Is this peculiar to Pentecostalism and Mormonism, or is it meant to include that it is impossible to take seriously the claim that the Power that made the universe chose the Jews as his special people, promised them the land of Israel, etc., and the claim that the angel Gabriel appeared to an Arab merchant in a cave and dictated to him the uncreated word of God?
roac 05.27.10 at 3:15 pm
Conservatives’ sense of themselves as an ecclesia pressa must be due to some extent to the multiplicity of voices constantly telling them that they are one.
Many of which, of course, are telling them that in order to extract money from them in one way or another. (A scheme that was conspicuously employed by Urban II towards the end of the eleventh century, but was surely not new then.)
roac 05.27.10 at 3:22 pm
Thinking about modern applications of historical methods of church finance, in connection with my last post, fixed my attention on the recent revelation that the major environmental groups have been selling indulgences to BP.
chris 05.27.10 at 3:26 pm
“Who knew? The people behind ACORN and the ACLU aren’t a bunch of America-hating, election-stealing traitors at all. True, they aren’t conservatives. But still, it’s quite understandable how … Conservatives should understand better the deep appeal of … We shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the arguments for … But still, in the end …â€
I’m not sure if a conservative, qua conservative, is even capable of conceiving or writing something like that without deconverting in the process. I’m pretty darn sure that publicly *saying* it would result in quick loss of their conservative-in-good-standing status.
Demonizing their adversaries is baked into the conservative pie. (Assuming we’re talking contemporary American conservatives here, and not someone’s dream of what Burke might have been like.)
“Possibly, the lack of such mockery reflects the liberal belief that those people are dangerous, not a laughing matter. “
Surely you jest. Conservatives are *far* more paranoid about the dangers posed by liberals than vice versa (despite being armed to the teeth and convinced that liberals are all a bunch of wusses).
“Friedersdorf describes his efforts to expose conservative radio hosts as the root problem and not conservative radio listeners. “
Isn’t this a bit like blaming bartenders for alcoholism? They couldn’t sell what they sell if there weren’t people who wanted to buy it. (There’s a deep question about causation and free will in there somewhere, but I don’t think anyone of any political persuasion knows how to solve it.)
Unless Friedersdorf is going to argue that the “defects” of the product are hidden, like smoking and cancer, or Ford Pintos. This is an exception to Hayek, who would otherwise stand in the way of an attempt to hold producers responsible for the shape of the market — they have no relevant preferences of their own because the ones who prefer to make products customers don’t want will be eliminated by competition. On the other hand, the hidden defect exception to Hayek is also one conservatives generally prefer not to dwell on in their quest to clear away “unnecessary” government regulation — if experts can find defects in a product not apparent to the ordinary consumer, then they aren’t so unnecessary after all.
Anderson 05.27.10 at 3:42 pm
Western Dave, Didion was a bit too alienated to be “leftist,” I would think. The woman voted for Goldwater.
the intellectuals who feign to critique him
??? So they are *pretending* to critique him, but not really? Man, wish I’d known that before I read that whole Nixonland book!
(“Deign,” sir. Which still doesn’t make much sense. Like “conservatives who deign to critique Obama.”)
y81 05.27.10 at 3:48 pm
“Conservatives are far more paranoid about the dangers posed by liberals than vice versa (despite being armed to the teeth and convinced that liberals are all a bunch of wusses).”
No person capable of reading would claim that, say, Eugene Volokh and Greg Mankiw are more alarmed about the danger to the republic from the Obama administration than Jack Balkin and Paul Krugman were about the danger from the Bush administration. For that matter, no one would claim that the crowd at a Ron Paul rally is more prone to paranoid delusion than the crowd at an Al Sharpton rally. Or the Southern Baptist Convention versus MARHO, etc., etc. You have to compare apples and apples.
Bill Gardner 05.27.10 at 4:05 pm
y81 @37:
I take your point that there are many foundational ideas in orthodox Judaism, Catholicism, Islam, and Buddhism that are also impossible to take seriously.
someguy 05.27.10 at 4:20 pm
Honestly, I don’t read any liberals who write as if they understand conservative thought. You certainly don’t qualify.
On the other hand I read plenty of libertarians who seem to understand liberal thought. Tyler Cowen is just one example.
I really don’t read many conservative writers. Maybe just Professor BainBridge.
But I consider myself a conservative and I understand liberal thought just fine and I don’t find anything particularly objectionable about it or think that the base assumptions are wrong.
On the other hand, that is pretty clearly not true for you and most CT commentators.
Uncle Kvetch 05.27.10 at 4:27 pm
You have to compare apples and apples.
Fine. Glenn Beck suggests one read Mein Kampf in order to understand Barack Obama’s political philosophy and his plans for the country. Can you point me to an instance of someone on the left espousing a similar level of ludicrous, over-the-top paranoia, on national television, to a seven-figure viewership?
A specific instance, mind you. Just saying “Well, Olbermann gets very worked up sometimes” isn’t going to cut it.
jfxgillis 05.27.10 at 4:42 pm
John:
Just figured it out.
Conservatives invariably think that liberals think the exact reciprocal of whatever it is that conservatives think. For conservatives, Liberals in the Mist, therefore, is just a waste of time when there’s a simple function to do all the work:
l = 1/c
Gingrich, for example, a day or two ago decided that liberals are scared of Michael Steele because they can’t play the race card against him. Huh? ALL the empirical evidence in the public record suggests liberals think Steele is a clown. Gingrich wasn’t making an observation, he was applying a formula.
marcel 05.27.10 at 4:54 pm
y81: I am quite willing to accept your equation of Rand Paul and Sharpton. I think it’s a bit unfair Sharpton, but not too much much so. I cannot imagine Sharpton winning a Democratic senatorial primary in any state. One of the differences between both liberals and conservatives, and between Democrats and Republicans.
Doctor Science 05.27.10 at 5:15 pm
I agree with Alex:
And she died because of her work and beliefs, which makes invoking her a veiled threat.
I don’t actually think Perlstein’s work *is* like Fossey’s in any significant way, but I think that’s the reason Goldberg compares them. Note particularly that Jonah did not compare Perlstein to Jane Goodall — because Goodall isn’t dead, so the comparison doesn’t have the subtext “that’s what happens when b*tches get out of line”.
Rick Perlstein 05.27.10 at 5:16 pm
JH, no offense taken, and I think you’re leading a very interesting and useful discussion. I indeed proudly compare myself to an anthropologist in this interview:
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/285290-1
Our misunderstanding above arises from an oversight (Goldberg’s fault) in recognizing the difference between primatology, whose subject is apes, and anthropology, whose subject is human beings. As a matter of fact, in college, I read a ton of anthropological theory and loved it and (I’m just realizing now) take very, very deeply to heart the notion that the best anthropology (and the best social science and humanities writing generally, with good anthropology as an ideal) is “reflexive anthropology”: the recognition that we are humans writing about other humans, making strange the familiar and the familiar strange, and using cultural difference as a lever to achieve a richer humanism–bringing the glib “deep down, we’re all just people” to a more elevated, richer level.
Can’t do that with gorillas, as noble as those creatures may be.
And of course this is a fundamentally “liberal” pursuit. Which is why all the people In the interview I link to above I say that we Americans, red and blue, are “all anthropologists of each other,” but why, just as you say, in “real life” there simply isn’t any reflexive anthropology–respectful, empathetic, fine-grained, thickly-described, fair-minded–of liberals by conservatives. The engine that drives my work: a reflexive fascination that deep down “liberal” and “conservative” are just different ways, honorable in their own right, of being human, and that you can achieve empathy for that “other” way of being human without (if you have a manage to possess a somewhat healthy ego-structure) while not abandoning “your own” way of being human.
Which is to say you can simultaneously be a reflexive anthropologist of conservatism, and a hell-raising liberal activist.
I write about that balancing here, with regard to my hero the late Paul Cowan:
http://www.amazon.com/Tribes-America-Journalistic-Discoveries-Cultures/dp/1595582304
Doctor Science 05.27.10 at 5:17 pm
The closest equivalent to Liberals in the Mist that I know of is UnChristian, written by the evangelical sociologists at the Barna Group.
mds 05.27.10 at 5:21 pm
I probably didn’t give it the close attention it deserved, but it struck me as a warmed-over Wheaton College bull session that tackles its general subject with much less substance than C.S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed, or it seems just about every other rabbi. Al Mohler didn’t like it much either, but I suspect he also wouldn’t be too fond of The Great Divorce, so his distaste probably comes from a different place than mine. (You’re familiar with Mohler and his controversial executive decisions, right, Sebastian? Given how welcome you’d be in his circle?) Anyway, why do you ask? What did you think of it?
y81 05.27.10 at 5:26 pm
@45:
Well, there’s this guy writing at The Atlantic who claims that Trig Palin is not Sarah Palin’s child. He has this bizarre theory that she faked her pregnancy. She was wearing a pregnancy suit. (Why she would do all this is unexplained.) Really bad craziness.
Now, admittedly, The Atlantic doesn’t have the same size audience as a TV program, but it has a lot more prestige, so I think the two are about equal on a “cultural mass and majesty” scale. In any case, I don’t watch TV, so I will never be able to answer your precise question.
Uncle Kvetch 05.27.10 at 5:30 pm
Well, there’s this guy writing at The Atlantic who claims that Trig Palin is not Sarah Palin’s child.
True. And in case you hadn’t noticed, he’s a self-identified conservative.
piglet 05.27.10 at 6:02 pm
Sebastian 24: I am just reading The Shack, out of curiosity. I have also read one of the Left behind novels, and Dembski’s book Intelligent Design, all out of curiosity about contemporary religion in the US. The most interesting observation about the latter is that Dembski is totally unapologetic about his religious agenda. About two thirds of the book explicitly treat theology, and only one third pretends to be about science. For some reason it is often said that ID proponents avoid mentioning God in order to mask their true intentions. I find that this is not the case, or only in specific circumstances.
chris 05.27.10 at 6:05 pm
Eugene Volokh and Greg Mankiw
You pick your conservatives carefully, I see. I plead guilty to abuse of a generic plural. Not all conservatives are paranoid. Furthermore, you are correct to observe that there are some nuts on both sides (as well as many nuts that can’t really be said to be on any side). But they really, really don’t look evenly distributed. Maybe that’s an artifact of perspective. Do you have some proposal for how to study it objectively? Find some kind of standardized test of fearfulness/paranoia/conspiracy-theorizing and ask a bunch of people of all political persuasions to take it?
BTW, what the hell is MARHO? Am I correct to infer from the fact that I don’t know who or what it is that it is far less powerful and influential, and probably smaller, than the Southern Baptist Convention? (Among which I suspect, but admit I am not 100% sure, that I could find some members, probably even some preachers, claiming Obama was literally a tool of Satan.)
Whether you meant Ron Paul or, as marcel seems to think, it was a typo for Rand Paul, either of them enjoys an official position and formal affiliation with their political party that Al Sharpton just doesn’t. Maybe Sharpton could be elected to Congress in some ultra-blue district somewhere, I dunno (I doubt very much that he could win a Senate primary in any state in the Union, even disregarding the requirement that he actually live there). But he hasn’t been yet.
So I’m not sure your comparisons are really apples to apples.
politicalfootball 05.27.10 at 6:15 pm
Just saying “Well, Olbermann gets very worked up sometimes†isn’t going to cut it.
Surely if you’ve ever watched Olbermann, you realize he accused the Bush administration of things like permitting torture, using federal prosecutors to pursue political vendettas, lying to get the US into war, allowing the regulatory machinery to be captured by industry, indifference to the suffering of the citizens of New Orleans, etc.
Granted, that isn’t quite as nasty as calling him “Hitler,” but it’s still pretty nasty. And the fact that it’s true doesn’t make it any less nasty.
piglet 05.27.10 at 6:19 pm
“But they really, really don’t look evenly distributed.”
Our regional newspaper some time ago published 1930s Nazi propaganda posters about the plight of the working class. The explanation was given in an editorial: those who, in the present-day US, support unionism and the labor movement, are Nazis. Again, this is not some wingnut in the letter pages or some anonymous comment on some liberal blog. This is a mainstream publication, in fact the only relevant newspaper in the state. Believe me, looking for left-wing analogies of right-wing craziness in the US is a fool’s errand. You can never win that bet.
roac 05.27.10 at 6:24 pm
(Why she would do all this is unexplained.)
The hypothesis that Sarah Palin is Trig’s grandmother is far from proven — and there may be evidence that I haven’t seen that refutes it — but a possible motive is not hard to find. At one time, in large segments of US society, the pregnancy of an unmarried daughter had serious adverse consequences for the standing and reputation of the entire family, and people would go to great lengths to try and conceal it. Most commonly, the girl would go off for an extended visit to an aunt in another state. But it was far from unheard of, though I don’t have an instance, for the baby to be passed off as the mother’s and grow up believing that her mother was her sister. It is not unfair to say that many conservatives are nostalgic for that state of affairs and would like to revive it, nor that Palin plays to that segment.
An anecdote from the church where my wife grew up: When it came out that one of the the son of one of the three elders (=guys in charge) had gotten his girlfriend pregnant, there was serious debate as to whether he should be forced to resign. There is a text somewhere in the Pauline epistles, which this sect takes very seriously, saying you can’t be a leader of a church unless you have “believing children.” (It is taken for granted that you have to be male, hence “guys” above.) The argument was that the kid couldn’t be one or he wouldn’t have done this.
mds 05.27.10 at 6:41 pm
If it hasn’t already occurred to you, I’d suggest stopping with one. It really shows that they wanted there to be twelve books in the original series. Even with bombs dropped on US cities, and a climactic earthquake / solar eclipse / meteor shower, Nicolae managed to bore me enough to keep me from tackling Soul Harvest . (Whoops, sorry for the spoilers. But if you’ve ever simultaneously tried to read Revelation, Daniel, and part of Ezekiel while overdosed on codeine, you’ve already been spoiled.) On the other hand, perhaps Sebastian can recommend one from later in the series that’s actually any good.
Ginger Yellow 05.27.10 at 6:59 pm
“It is also true – I take it this is Goldberg’s point, by implication – that there is no corresponding ‘Liberals in the Mist’ genre. ”
Oh, but there is. It’s Big Hollywood and Bernie Goldberg and Ann Althouse and Megan McArdle. Granted, it takes a different form, namely “Help! Help! I’m being oppressed by people who won’t invite me to their dinner parties! But that’s the point, no?
Barry 05.27.10 at 7:07 pm
politicalfootball 05.27.10 at 6:15 pm
(re: Olbermann’s accusations against Bush)
“Granted, that isn’t quite as nasty as calling him “Hitler,†but it’s still pretty nasty. And the fact that it’s true doesn’t make it any less nasty.”
As a matter of fact, if does. If I accused somebody of being (e.g.) a child molester, that’s nasty. If they *are*, then it’s not nasty.
Henri Vieuxtemps 05.27.10 at 7:15 pm
Ivan Karamazov?
mds 05.27.10 at 7:37 pm
Er, I’m going to go out on a limb here, and hypothesize that politicalfootball was being sarcastic, Barry.
derino 05.27.10 at 8:11 pm
roac – the most famous example of that was Jack Nicholson, who found out that his “sister” was actually his mother during the shooting of Chinatown…
chris 05.27.10 at 8:15 pm
After a little Internet research, I’m still not aware of what type of paranoid delusions are espoused by the Metropolitan Association of Race Horse Owners, but whatever they may be, I think my point that that organization is less powerful and influential than the Southern Baptist Convention and therefore not an apples-to-apples comparison stands.
Barry 05.27.10 at 8:24 pm
mds 05.27.10 at 7:37 pm
“Er, I’m going to go out on a limb here, and hypothesize that politicalfootball was being sarcastic, Barry.”
good point – sarcasm can be hard to detect on the internet, since at least 40% of the US population probably does believe that accusing Bush of those things are is wrong *and* supports Bush doing those things.
piglet 05.27.10 at 8:24 pm
mds: the one I read was I think the very last one, and it was mostly boring but also I think gave an insight into the thinking of some significant portion of the country. It is just amazing to what length the authors go to try and take a text literally every word of which resists being taken literally. This book should probably be on every college reading list.
Ginger Yellow 05.27.10 at 8:25 pm
After a little Internet research, I’m still not aware of what type of paranoid delusions are espoused by the Metropolitan Association of Race Horse Owners
Obama kidnapped Shergar to stop him revealing the truth about the Kenyan birth certificate, which was branded on him.
Ginger Yellow 05.27.10 at 8:27 pm
Also, Alex the African grey parrot had memorised the whitey tape before his untimely death.
piglet 05.27.10 at 8:43 pm
Slightly off-topic but really not:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/27/opinion/27collins.html
Admitted, this op-ed doesn’t quite have the non-judgmental quality of anthropological field research but it does make a fair effort to explain conservatism to a liberal audience. If it fails, don’t blame the author.
Harry 05.27.10 at 8:47 pm
roac — I have at least three friends who were raised by their grandmothers, believing their actual mothers to be their sisters until they were teenagers. Two are older than me, one is 38. All rural-ish Midwesterners.
Uncle Kvetch 05.27.10 at 8:54 pm
After a little Internet research, I’m still not aware of what type of paranoid delusions are espoused by the Metropolitan Association of Race Horse Owners, but whatever they may be, I think my point that that organization is less powerful and influential than the Southern Baptist Convention and therefore not an apples-to-apples comparison stands.
I think it’s more likely to be these folks — all 1,500 of them. But they have a degree of prestige and cultural majesty that the 16 million Southern Baptists can’t even aspire to, so this is definitely a case of apples all the way down. I graciously concede the point.
politicalfootball 05.27.10 at 8:55 pm
This book should probably be on every college reading list.
Similarly, I think liberals should be demanding that creationism be taught in public schools.
chris 05.27.10 at 9:35 pm
@71: With those dues, they have a terrifying $30,000 a year to push their agenda (before overhead, of course).
But as you point out, historians in our society wield an influence greatly disproportionate to either their numbers or the evidence supporting what they have to say… no, wait, that’s preachers again. Historians have influence over the menu at conventions of historians and that’s about it.
bianca steele 05.27.10 at 10:15 pm
Stylistically, the first pages of Left Behind are strikingly similar to an anecdote in a self-help or pop psychology book, which makes me think I know what Mr. Steele has coming to him. I suppose not everybody has the same associations.
Chris A. Williams 05.27.10 at 11:51 pm
We can control the menus? No way! I must have missed that memo.
Cryptic Ned 05.28.10 at 12:24 am
For that matter, no one would claim that the crowd at a Ron Paul rally is more prone to paranoid delusion than the crowd at an Al Sharpton rally.
Because people at an Al Sharpton rally are more likely to be poor, homeless, unemployed, victimized by society, all factors correlated with suffering psychological disorders. Thanks for pointing that out.
Alice de Tocqueville 05.28.10 at 12:43 am
The President came to SF Tuesday, and I got another chance to converse with some of the tea-party (self-identified). They were astonished to hear that all the people on the other side of the police’ separation barrier (who incidently outnumbered them) were opposing Obama FROM THE LEFT! And that socialists can’t stand Obama.
I said to one lady that I’m a christian, and so opposed the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq because of that. She said, ” I’m a christian, too!”
“Well, I think Christ was against making war.” (me)
“We’re not Christ.” She had me there.
We were having a perfectly calm and civil discussion, but the police told us we couldn’t stand there and talk – we were in the NO SPEECH ZONE, and to repair to our own respective, IGNORED SPEECH ZONES.
Actually, the left was much more ignored in the local press; the tea party still has some cache. None of our demands to stop the wars, drilling, violations of the constitution, etc. wiped the smiles off the ecstatic persons paying $1,000 and $2,000 to Barbara Boxer’s and the Dem’s war chests.
politicalfootball 05.28.10 at 1:07 am
Because people at an Al Sharpton rally are more likely to be poor, homeless, unemployed, victimized by society, all factors correlated with suffering psychological disorders.
People at Al Sharpton rallies are nuts because they believe they are the victims of a massive conspiracy to deny them equal treatment based on the color of their skin, when everyone knows that racism was solved decades ago (despite the Civil Rights Act).
Nowadays, whenever rightwingers suggest that people on the right and the left are equally nuts, they select black people as the left-wing nuts. Given the headlines, it’s tough to mock environmentalists or peaceniks any more, but ever since racism was solved, ongoing problems in the black community prove that those people are simply crazy.
ajay 05.28.10 at 8:32 am
75: We can control the menus? No way! I must have missed that memo.
Whoa, steady on there boy. You get influence over the menus. The economists get the final say.
Alex 05.28.10 at 10:46 am
Stylistically, the first pages of Left Behind are strikingly similar to an anecdote in a self-help or pop psychology book
I wonder what Max Blumenthal would say about that?
JD 05.28.10 at 2:01 pm
Most “elite”, well-educated conservatives attended universities where their professors and, to a lesser extent, the student body were overwhelmingly liberal. So they’ve had their anthropological moment, if you will.
Doctor Science 05.28.10 at 4:45 pm
No online discussion that mentions “Left Behind” can be complete without pointing to slacktivist’s close reading. Truly a heroic effort to analyze and discuss what slacktivist (Fred Clark, a liberal evangelical) calls The Worst Books in the World. He’s in Tribulation Force now, updates on Mondays.
lemmy caution 05.28.10 at 8:59 pm
Well, there’s this guy writing at The Atlantic who claims that Trig Palin is not Sarah Palin’s child. He has this bizarre theory that she faked her pregnancy. She was wearing a pregnancy suit. (Why she would do all this is unexplained.) Really bad craziness.
Andrew Sullivan is not a liberal:
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/01/forbes-definiti.html
Liberals don’t support the flat tax.
Western Dave 05.28.10 at 9:22 pm
@Anderson
Yeah, she was the conservative trying to explain the hippies to the straights. So it doesn’t exactly map onto the conservative explaining liberals to other conservatives. Hence the attempt at a pun “Leftists in the midst.” Which brings me back the old insight of “if you need to explain the joke, you shouldn’t have told it in the first place.”
valuethinker 05.29.10 at 9:31 pm
You have most surely missed the essential psychological difference between liberals and conservatives.
(we’ll set aside libertarians for a moment. Even then most libertarians I know are actually conservatives, with an applique of Ayn Rand).
Conservatives see black and white. Liberals see shades of grey, nuances, balances, the virtue of the other guy’s point of view.
A conservative wants to bomb Iran. Nuke North Korea. A liberal wonders whether those actions will have unforeseen consequences. And worries about innocent people on the ground who will get hurt. Conservatives see the solution.
A liberal thinks that complex factors including unregulated financial institutions and explosive financial innovations like CDOs caused the credit crunch. A conservative knows it was Congress encouraging the GSEs to lend more to minorities.
A liberal worries about global warming. A conservative knows there is no such thing, and this is another plot to weaken capitalism.
A liberal wonders if there is a God, and wonders what his view of various policy issues would be. A conservative knows there is a God, and he has always stood foresquare behind America and American values.
Why would a conservative study liberals, and seek to understand their point of view? It’s WRONG. It threatens American liberty. It’s at best naive and willfully stupid, and at worst, traitorous.
(I’ve taught conservatives. Yes they do believe these things, with absolute clarity. These guys were majors in the US Army Reserve, and had served in Iraq or Afghanistan).
Why would a conservative study what he knows to be fundamentally wrong?
http://www.karlbranting.net/papers/LiberalsConservatives.pdf
from the above:
Numerous psychological studies
have shown that conservatism is associated with avoidance of uncertainty, discomfort
with ambiguity, and need for order, structure, and closure. (Conversely, liberalism is
associated with the opposite traits)
…..
To summarize, 60 years of psychological research identifies three sources of
liberal/conservative political orientation:
1. Individual psychological traits that seem to be rooted in neurological differences
in response to novelty, uncertainty, and threats,
2. Social factors, like ideologies that justify social dominance and oppose social
change or vice versa, and
3. Situations that trigger fear or thoughts of death.
……
To recap what I have told you so far, political orientation has both psychological and
moral dimensions. The psychological dimension consists of:
• individual differences in reacting to novelty and surprise,
• ideology, and
• situational factors involving fear or thoughts of death.
7
On the moral dimension, liberals focus primarily on fairness and compassion, while
conservatives also emphasize group loyalty, authority, and purity. As a result, liberals
often perceive conservative positions as being immoral when in fact they are based on
one or more of the 3 more traditional moral foundations.
etbnc 05.31.10 at 3:51 pm
valuethinker, I’m not sure to what extent you meant your entire comment to be snarky, but I’ll reply seriously. Well, mostly. I think.
I see you’ve jumped into Prof. Jon Haidt’s work on moral foundations, which I appreciate. I think he’s on to something important there.
Haidt’s metaphor about audio equalizer sliders (which you’ve invoked implicitly, I think) works well to communicate his concepts to wide-ranging audiences. Thus it makes sense to me that he would use that analogy for the audiences he addresses. It seems to me other explanatory interpretations exist. (I have my own, which I prefer because, hey, it’s mine.) Some may be less flattering to particular audiences, however. Haidt’s work seems to me a good start, though.
I thought your points about novelty and surprise and such were already built into this thread. Er, wait, did I just step on a punchline? Darn it. Seems to me that’s an occasional hazard of mixing the snark and serious. That, or I just admitted I suck at mixing ’em.
Oh, well. Most models are wrong, but some are useful. I see value in your explanatory model. I’m not sure it was necessary for this audience, but acknowledging the utility of Prof. Haidt’s work is just fine by me.
Cheers
chris 06.01.10 at 2:48 pm
As a result, liberals often perceive conservative positions as being immoral when in fact they are based on one or more of the 3 more traditional moral foundations.
Which catapults us right into the last 10,000 years of unsolved problems in moral philosophy. What does it mean for the foundations of someone’s morality to be immoral? If we can judge and condemn slaveowners or Nazis or human sacrificers or genital mutilators, why (in principle) can’t we equally judge people who base a substantial part of their morality on ingroup identification or a subjective judgment of purity?
There are some people who really are amoral and think that moral systems are for suckers, but most conservatives aren’t them (although some of their leaders are). But does the mere fact of having a moral system validate its contents? The historical parade of horribles would seem to indicate otherwise, for anyone other than a strawman relativist or nihilist.
Sebastian 06.01.10 at 3:33 pm
“I probably didn’t give it the close attention it deserved, but it struck me as a warmed-over Wheaton College bull session that tackles its general subject with much less substance than C.S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed, or it seems just about every other rabbi.”
I’m certainly not going to defend The Shack as great literature on par with Shakespeare or something, but you know it is positioned as literature, right?
I was going to discuss how the super-popularity of the book in US Christian circles (despite essentially no marketing until *after* if hit number 1 on the NYT list and despite the fact that many of the top level evangelical pastors counseled against reading it) was a good sign because the book itself takes such a different tact on religion and authority than you typically find in Christian circles. And it would be fun to discuss that.
But it is fairly clear that most of the people here can’t even understand a casual reference to one of the most important fiction phenomena in Christian circles in at least a decade (again #1 seller for almost a year and a half on a laughable marketing budget cobbled together by maxing out personal credit cards). So that puts lie to the idea that liberals “…know more about their views and outlook, and do better on the role reversal Jeopardy you describe because, of course, you can’t escape their shouted views wherever you turn.”
You don’t.
You don’t know anything important about THE book that practically everyone in conservative Christian circles has recently read and is talking about excitedly. You don’t understand how it is subversive to the top level preachers by taking evangelical teaching on the relationship with God seriously. You don’t know unless you read it in a review how its portrayal of God is rather different from what you might expect from the group you make fun of, nor how little that is mentioned as an important fact among those who discuss it.
Hell, I only initially knew about it because my mother, who last read fiction in like the 1980s, told me I had to read it so that we could talk about it.
If you think you know what is going on in Christian circles because you have the perception that it is shouted at you all the time, you’re probably wrong.
Like as wrong as the person who thinks he understands Muslims because he read an article about the 9/11 bombers.
You would laugh at someone who thought they understood Muslims that way. Think about it.
Alice de Tocqueville 06.02.10 at 5:48 am
So, no one could understand anything about so-called Christians before this book was published?
Walt 06.02.10 at 7:12 am
Sorry, he’s got you there. The fact that there is a book that you haven’t read, that you don’t dedicate yourself to full-time to an ethnological study of the Christian right proves that you are no different from someone who gets all of their information about liberals from Glenn Beck.
mds 06.02.10 at 12:51 pm
First, notice how “Christian” is conflated with “right-wing Christian” in Sebastian’s piece? Because it all falls down if UCC congregants read The Shack. I’m fairly sure some of us here know what’s going on in “Christian circles” because we belong to them, or used to.
It’s actually almost cute the way Sebastian had his point ready to launch regardless of what was actually said. The comment of mine that he excerpted to “prove” his contention was actually noting that The Shack offers little new even within evangelical literature. Obviously, he is insufficiently acquainted with conservative Christianity, despite seeking to use it as a club against liberals. I mentioned C.S. Lewis because he is not actually unknown in Christian circles. He tackled the notion of personal loss in the context of faith in A Grief Observed, he offered a broadening of “I am the way” in The Last Battle, and he advanced the notion of self-imposed sin trapping us in a Hell that we would otherwise be able to leave via God’s gift of joy in The Great Divorce. So none of that breaks new ground. Nor does egalitarianism, which waxes and wanes in its influence: Francis Bellamy was a Baptist preacher and a socialist, and even Francis Schaeffer declared his admiration for the organization of the first century church. Heck, the aforementioned Al Mohler provoked controversy partially because of his take on hierarchy. What we’re left with is the notion that a relationship with God can be unfiltered by either church or scripture, and that the Father and the Holy Spirit can appear as women. The former is a recurrent theme, popular in some of the charismatic churches of my youth. The latter is unexceptional to modern liberal Christians, yet could not have all its implications accepted by conservative Christians without them ceasing to be conservative Christians. The tribal identification as a fundamentalist doesn’t have a lot of wiggle room at the end of the day, no matter how many potentially inappropriate books get passed around the congregation. And plenty of them do, let me tell you.
Sure, it would be nice if rehashed “heretical” theology would cause people to question the moral authority of Chuck Colson or Al Mohler. I’m just not seeing how this book would actually be the catalyst for that in most cases. The Prayer of Jabez was wildly popular amongst the Christian Right for a while, too, even though a great many of them were already familiar with the prosperity gospel. So was The Purpose Driven Life, until Rick Warren started straying too much from fundamentalist orthodoxy, though he still has a following. And Left Behind books are still being churned out. To suggest that this one book is a touchstone for understanding conservative thinking requires a rather narrow definition of conservatism, and ignorance of American conservative Christianity. And if it’s not fundamentally about the theology, well, there are plenty of popular books that technically count as literature.
Hey, does Stieg Larsson count as a liberal? If so, I hope lots of conservative Christians are reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and thoughtfully discussing its significance. It’s a NYT #1 bestseller, after all.
And I’m still hoping that Sebastian can tell me whether anything beyond Soul Harvest in the Left Behind series is any good. Because as a liberal, I’m not familiar with any of that Scofield premillenial dispensationalism.
Right, right, you primarily brought it up in order to offer a fun discussion topic, and not as an attempted “gotcha.” True fact: many Christians and Jews officially frown upon bearing false witness. You can look it up.
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