Is it external intimidation, or internal conviction, that prevents conservatives from challenging liberalism?

Ed L. writes:

In your piece today, you write: “But this obvious logical conclusion [i.e., that the future of the GOP can be better secured by reducing Hispanic immigration than by pandering to Hispanics by increasing Hispanic immigration] never occurs to anyone in the GOP and the conservative movement, because that would require stepping outside the prevailing liberal mindset…”

The obvious question is, well, why can’t they abandon the prevailing liberal mindset? What is inhibiting them, especially given that it conflicts directly with survival prerogatives? If you leveled with any representative such member of the GOP and queried him on the characteristic views (e.g., the moral primacy of non-discrimination) that define the prevailing liberal mindset, do you think that he would explicitly endorse or defend those views?

You imply that the constraints are purely internal, and that if only enough minds begin to part company with liberalism, momentum for significant political change could begin to gather. I question whether that’s the case. As I argued last week, I think that it’s widely recognized that any significant departure from liberalism would require similarly radical changes in the basic political and legal order of American society. Since that’s verboten subject matter (for reasons that you identified well in your counter-arguments to me), departures from liberalism are preemptively suppressed in the vast majority of Western minds—liberal and conservative alike—and are therefore simply not discussed. Period.

That, in short, is my own conjectural answer to the aforementioned “obvious question.”

LA replies:

The reason I think it’s primarily internal is, if a person has a strong view about something, then, even if external orthodoxy doesn’t accept it, it tends to get expressed one way or another. The person may not make a full-blown challenge to the orthodoxy, but he says in a half-way or indirect way what he has in mind. The complete absence of such expressions on the part of the mainstream Republicans/conservatives indicates to me that it is not the case that they have certain views that they are afraid to express, but that they don’t have those views, period.

Ed L. replies:

I think that you may be right. The apathy that you’ve identified is widespread, and it often deeply puzzles me. One example, in a somewhat different vein, is the Americans with Disabilities Act. It quite amazes me that not once I have I ever heard the slightest murmur of opposition it—never a complaint about all those expensive wheelchair ramps and those annoying special parking spots, which displace and inconvenience the vast majority of normal people for the sake of a few. Most places have absolutely no real need for them. It’s a perfect example of the sort of mass cowed silence that characterizes liberalism.

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Stewart W. writes:

Regarding your point that conservatives will express themselves in some way against the liberal orthodoxy and Ed’s mention of the ADA as another source of conservative irritation, I can relate a story of my own. I recently had a new data center built at my company, and as it was an older facility, we were naturally constrained to work within an existing space. The primary design consideration for the physical infrastructure and HVAC turned out to be the Americans with Disabilities Act. The best design would have been to utilize a raised floor, but as we have two entrances to the room, the requirements for ramps on both doors would have cut our capacity in half.

When I jokingly suggested that we could replace at least one of the ramps with a block and tackle, the HR Director was much less amused than I was.

I think that was an example of my true conservatism finding a way out, despite my better judgement.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 02, 2007 11:50 PM | Send