Horizon

More Psychologizing

Bouncing around some parts of the net today is Austin Bramwell's review of Conservatives Without Conscience, by John Dean. We at Horizon love to mock the pseudo-psychological analyses churned out by partisans nowadays to prove that their opponents are not merely wrong, but sick, sick, sick, so the Bramwell's demolition of the "authoritarian personality" meme makes for fun reading. (And if that's not enough, there's an elaboration at Classical Values.)

One thing nobody in the conservative blogosphere is talking about is the final couple of paragraphs, which I think are worth quoting below.

Second, those at the top of the conservative movement have wide discretion to set its movement’s official positions. Bedrock or founding principles, whatever they may be, play very little role in determining what policies the conservative movement will embrace. Whatever may be said of the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq, for example, they were surely not deduced from immutable conservative principles. Nevertheless, the signature achievement of the conservative movement in the past decade has been to rally—or, perhaps more accurately, manufacture—public support for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. With just one or two changes in personnel, however, one could easily imagine events turning out very differently. Reckless or prudent, thoughtful or ignorant, the opinion-mongers at the top set the movement line; the other constituents—the donors, the directors, and the other writers and the consumers of opinion—then accept and promulgate whatever positions the movement tells them to.

This is, of course, precisely how ideology works. In one of the better passages in Conservatives Without Conscience, Dean rejects the view—upon reflection, almost patently false—that “conservatism” as now understood is not an ideology. He rightly senses that conservatism, in the philosophic sense, does not define the conservative movement; rather, the conservative movement now defines conservatism, at least as far as the media and the public understand the term. In Dean’s model, however, conservative elites respond to the (dangerous) psychological demands of the conservative masses. It is much more likely that, on the contrary, the conservative masses respond to the demands of a handful of movement elites. An open question remains as to who, exactly, constitutes the elite, especially as movement institutions that once sought to change minds now passively disseminate opinions devised by newer, more vigorous outlets.