Republicans for Revolution

That’s the title of an excellent review essay in the NYRB by the reliably excellent Mark Lilla, on lefty academic Corey Robin’s The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin. Lilla commends Robin for having a genuine interest in the right—unlike older generation left historians—but is critical of his approach, which he says is not “an example to follow, but one to avoid.” One of Robin’s shortcomings, Lilla points out—and which I have observed for decades among American lefties I know (many of whom are dear personal friends)—, is a failure to appreciate the deep cleavages within the right—that right-wingers are not all the same—, not only over tactics or strategy but fundamental world-views. Lilla writes

And what about all the factionalism within the right? Isolationist paleoconservatives at magazines like The American Conservative hate “American greatness” neoconservatives at The Weekly Standard for their expansionist foreign policies and unconditional support of Israel, and the feeling is mutual. Theoconservatives at the journal First Things who resist gay marriage drive libertarians at the Cato Institute up the wall. There are serious and consequential disagreements on the right today over immigration, defense spending, the Wall Street bailouts, the tax code, state surveillance, and much else. Who wins those arguments could very well determine what this country looks like a generation from now. Robin registers none of this.

This is not news to me, as I have had a longstanding intellectual and academic interest in the right—knowing the enemy sort of thing, or at least how “the other side” thinks—, not only in the US but in Europe, the Middle East, and elsewhere. As an object of study, the right has always interested me more than the left (mainly because I already know how and what lefties think, as I’m around them all the time and have been my entire life). But I’ve known hardly any lefties who have any interest in the right or read its literature. E.g. in following the prolific writings of the so-called neocons over the years—in The Weekly Standard, AEI web site, etc—it is clear that there have been significant differences, even conflicts, among them over a number of issues, one being Iraq in the 2003-04 period. But one would not know this had one only read liberal/left web sites or publications. Mark Lilla himself knows something about the subject, in part on account of his past as a youthful evangelical.

In the latter part of his essay Lilla discusses the recent transformation of the Republican party into a reactionary force by any definition of the word. We know it—and reasonable conservatives know it all too well—but Lilla hits it on the head. It’s truly frightening. Read the essay. All of it.

ADDENDUM: Harvard sociologist Theda Skocpol—whose politics are liberal-left—has been studying the Tea Party up close and just come out with a book on the subject, which she discusses in the New York Times. She sees it as a more complex movement—and riven with contradictions—than it has been made out to be on the left.