Kirk, Coulter, and the Question Mark

Back in late November, James Fitzpatrick made very good use of the question mark. The first question was the title of his op-ed for The Wanderer in which he asked, “would the late Russell Kirk think of Ann Coulter as a positive force in the conservative cause?” His second use of the question mark didn’t quite follow convention, but it sets up most of his piece; he writes, “Kirk? I suspect that few younger conservatives will even know his name, despite the fact that he is generally credited with being one of the founders of the conservative movement.” The last two questions run right next to each other so I’ll first display them and then explain them in their context: “Is McCarthy on to something? Has conservatism lost its intellectual vigor, its soul?” The McCarthy referred to by Fitzpatrick is Daniel McCarthy who when looking at what passes for conservativism in the United States sees College Republicans parading “in shirts proclaiming ‘George W. Bush Is My Homeboy’…. where once students were at least familiar with the names Kirk and Weaver, or Mises and Nock, today they look to Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter for guidance. They're little acquainted with the wisdom of the contemporary Right's founding generation, and it shows.”

My own experience suggests that McCarthy is dead on. In conversations and email exchanges with self-proclaimed young conservatives, dropping Russell Kirk’s name is about as effective as sending your senator one of those little tear-out postcards. One proud hater of all things liberal berated me for bringing a movie star like Kurt Russell into the fray. It would be funny, if it wasn’t so sad. On the other hand, if you question the integrity or intelligence of Sean Hannity (two things I am prone to do) well let’s just say that’s the equivalent of broadcasting to the world that you obviously voted for John Kerry and couldn’t be happier hearing “Speaker Pelosi.”

Yes, McCarthy is clearly on to something, but does that mean that conservatism has become wishy-washy and soulless? The answer depends on how you define conservatism today and how you answer the original question, “what would Russell Kirk say about Ann Coulter?”

If conservatism in 2007 is represented by the same man who can in one breath rail against James Webb and can praise Arnold Schwarzenegger, then conservatism has become wishy-washy. If Ann Coulter is the darling of the conservative movement then it needs to go soul-searching. Yet, I do not believe Russell Kirk would even go so far as to call Hannity or Coulter conservatives.

To expect that all the world should, and must, adopt the peculiar political institutions of the United States – which do not often work very well even at home – is to indulge the most unrealistic visions…. Such naïve doctrine led us into the wars in Indo-China – the notion that we could establish or prop up in Viet Nam a “democracy” that never had existed anywhere in southeastern Asia. Such foreign policies are such stuff as dreams are made of; yet they lead to the heaps of corpses of men who died in vain.

That was Russell Kirk explaining the Neo-conservative foreign policy of exporting “Democratic Capitalism” in his book The Politics of Prudence. Does it sound like something that a conservative can safely say today? Does it sound like Kirk would be fond of the loud-mouths of conservative talk radio? Russell Kirk where have you gone?

Read James Fitzpatrick's article by clicking here.