Letters to a Young Conservative (20 page)

The second Republican challenge involves immigrants and minorities. Right now, nine out of ten blacks and two out of three immigrants vote for Democrats. Indeed, it is often counted as an achievement when a Republican candidate wins 30 percent of the Hispanic vote, as George W. Bush did. If these trends continue, they will prove to be an electoral disaster for the GOP. Republicans have been trying to address this problem by making histrionic displays of diversity at GOP events and by adopting various forms of “outreach” to blacks and Hispanics. I have heard it solemnly asserted at GOP events that African Americans are natural Republicans because they are quite conservative.

Yes, African Americans are slightly more conservative than white Americans on social issues such as abortion and school prayer. The problem is that African Americans do not vote on these issues. They vote on one issue: race. Wealthy blacks are just as likely as poor blacks to vote for the Democratic candidate. The reason is simple: The Democrats are willing to give blacks more goodies. Republicans cannot compete in this governmental auction; they are sure to lose. Therefore, in my view, Republicans should recognize that in the short term there is no way to win the black vote. What they should do, therefore, is allow the Democratic Party to be the party of blacks and black demands. Republicans can build a winning multiracial coalition based on economic growth, national unity, merit, and color-blindness.

In this area Republicans should focus on increasing their share of the Hispanic vote and on winning the Asian American vote. Asian Americans have a natural home in the Republican Party. They succeed in America mainly through merit. As immigrants who have chosen to come here, they tend to be very patriotic. No other group is as socially conservative: Divorce and illegitimacy are rare in the Asian American community. Asian American values—frugality, hard work, and deferred gratification—are precisely the values that Republicans champion. Yet mysteriously the Republicans are getting only 30-35 percent of Asian American votes. The GOP should be getting 90 percent. If Republicans can get 40 percent of the Hispanic
vote and decisively capture the Asian American vote, they will win virtually every election.

In general, the Republican Party can succeed through a Reaganite combination of philosophical conservatism and temperamental geniality. (Too many Republicans are philosophically insecure and temperamentally forbidding.) The general conservative themes of limited government, strong defense, equal rights under the law, and traditional values continue to be enormously attractive to people. The Republican agenda for the next several years is pretty clear: Defeat terrorism, enact a flat tax, give parents educational choice, eliminate race and gender preferences, and allow Social Security contributions to be invested in private accounts.

If Republicans do these things, and make their case to the American people, they will become the majority party for the next half century.

Dear Chris,

Among young people there is the perception that conservatives are stuffy and lugubrious, and that liberals are easygoing and fun loving. At one time this may have been true, but it is not true any more. Admittedly, a few on the right are always giving vent to frustration and gloom. But in general, I have found that conservatives tend to be much more cheerful than liberals.

The predominant liberal emotion is indignation. When I was at the
Dartmouth Review
the majority of letters we received from liberals began with the sentence, “I am shocked and appalled.” Liberals are always “shocked and appalled” by something. By contrast, the predominant conservative emotion is the horselaugh. The conservative is one who chuckles and guffaws. Some who have observed this levity on the right are puzzled
by it. Conservatives, after all, tend to believe in the weakness, if not depravity, of human nature. The cultural pessimists have given us a depressing portrait of moral and cultural decline. Consequently, one would expect the natural temperament of conservatives to be one of cultural and moral despair. So why are conservatives so cheerful and upbeat?

The issue of moral and cultural decline is a real one, and it will provide conservatism with its greatest challenge. Conservatives must not only conserve what is good but also provide arguments for rebuilding institutions—such as the church and the family—that have lost much of their traditional influence and rationale. Even so, there is no reason to panic, because we are fully up to the task. We are justified in being upbeat because we know that we are in the right, and that the right will eventually prevail.

Already conservatives have won stunning victories. Imagine if conservatives had assembled a national conference in 1980, the year Reagan was elected, and set forth the goals that they reasonably intended to accomplish in two decades. They might have resolved to push the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan. They might have hoped to scale back on some government programs. They might have expected to make headway in convincing people that capitalism is better than socialism.

But who could have reasonably expected the collapse of the entire Soviet empire? Who could have foreseen the utter discrediting of socialism? Who could have
known that the Republicans would take both houses of Congress? Or that welfare as an entitlement would cease to exist? Or that liberalism would be put completely on the defensive, while conservatives set the national agenda? These are spectacular victories, and they have emboldened many conservatives to believe that they are now on the winning side.

Conservatives have also discovered that a few people can change the agenda, and the country, with a powerful idea. A good example of this is the critique of affirmative action. When I first started writing about this issue a decade ago, racial preferences had become completely institutionalized. The issue seemed settled and the controversy over it destined to subside as people became reconciled to affirmative action.

The critics of race and gender preferences were so few that they could be counted on two hands. By contrast, the other side had legions of troops and enormous institutional resources. Moreover, there was a disproportion of incentives. The foes of affirmative action had no personal stake in the issue. If affirmative action ended, we gained nothing. By contrast, the other side had jobs and promotions and government contracts at stake. They could be expected to fight hard to preserve these privileges.

Even so, the critics of affirmative action have made huge inroads, and the momentum is with us. We have not only succeeded in putting the issue on the national agenda but also forced the opposition onto the defensive,
and we have won impressive victories in the courts. Slowly but surely, the courts have narrowed the circumstances in which race and gender preferences may be legally used, and it is now possible to envision the day when they are completely struck down.

There is a reason for conservatives to be cheerful, however, that goes beyond the contingencies of the time. Indeed, I venture to suggest that conservatives would remain upbeat even if none of the victories I have charted had occurred. Moreover, I believe that liberals would persist in being outraged and indignant even if they had not suffered the startling reversals of the past couple of decades.

But how can these things be so, given that liberals have an optimistic view of human nature and conservatives have a pessimistic view of human nature? It is precisely because liberals believe in the goodness and malleability of human nature that they are perennially outraged when this nature proves resistant to liberal reforms. It is precisely because conservatives believe that human nature is flawed that they have modest expectations about people, and about politics. Thus, when things turn out not so badly, conservatives are pleased. People who expect the deluge are always delighted that all they have to endure is an occasional thunderstorm.

So, fight on with a cheerful disposition, Chris. I realize that at times the battles seem never-ending and the odds appear long. There is an old Tibetan saying, “After
crossing the mountain . . . more mountains!” Those of us who have journeyed across harsh political terrain know the feeling. But we also know that truth is on our side and that it is a very powerful weapon. With truth as our guide and courage in our hearts, we will not only endure, we will prevail.

Dear Chris,

To be an educated conservative, you have to be familiar with the “best that has been thought and said” of modern conservative thought. Here, then, is my list of the most important works produced in the past half century or so that a young conservative should read. My list includes books written by conservatives as well as books that discuss themes that are important to conservatism. Some writers who would not call themselves conservatives, including Margaret Mead and George Orwell, are on the list. I should caution you that this is not a comprehensive catalog; it is necessarily biased toward books that I have found persuasive and profound. Finally, I have kept the list brief, because life is short.

Robert Bork,
The Tempting of America
(1990): The single best critique of liberal jurisprudence, and an argument
for interpreting the Constitution by consulting the intentions of the framers.

Allan Bloom,
The Closing of the American Mind
(1987): A great teacher’s learned account of how our best young minds came to the conclusion that there are no truths.

Patrick Buchanan,
Right from the Beginning
(1988): A pugnacious and absorbing account of how the author came of age as a conservative.

Whittaker Chambers,
Witness
(1952): A profoundly personal and deeply moving account of one man’s liberation from the shackles of Communism.

George Gilder,
Men and Marriage
(1986): An iconoclastic argument for why “women’s liberation” produces angry women and emasculated men.

Milton Friedman,
Capitalism and Freedom
(1962): Capitalism’s most powerful advocate in recent decades makes his argument for the free market.

Friedrich Hayek,
The Road to Serfdom
(1944): This hugely influential book shows the similarities between Communism and fascism and makes one of the first and best defenses of libertarian individualism.

Paul Hollander,
Political Pilgrims
(1981): A devastating account of the gullibility and outright stupidity of prominent liberal intellectuals who made pilgrimages to Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China, and Castro’s Cuba.

Harry Jaffa,
The Crisis of the House Divided
(1959): Through an examination of the Lincoln-Douglas debates,
this book offers deep and subtle reflections on the exercise of political statesmanship.

Russell Kirk,
The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot
(1953): A broad survey of the intellectual breadth of conservative thought, with a special emphasis on Edmund Burke.

Irving Kristol,
Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea
(1995): Learned and incisive essays by a former liberal who was “mugged by reality” and moved right.

Peter Laslett,
The World We Have Lost
(1965): This study of England before the Industrial Revolution shows the virtues, and the limitations, of the world that was transformed by technological capitalism.

Ludwig von Mises,
Human Action
(1949): Why capitalism works and socialism doesn’t, by the great man of Austrian economics.

Margaret Mead,
Male and Female
(1949): A comprehensive and politically incorrect survey of sex differences and their social consequences.

Charles Murray,
Losing Ground
(1984): One of the best arguments against the welfare state, this book became the intellectual blueprint for welfare reform.

George Nash,
The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945
(1976): A useful historical account of how American conservatism went from obscure philosophizing to a mainstream political movement.

Peggy Noonan,
What I Saw at the Revolution
(1991): A wonderfully revealing book that tells the reader a lot about Reagan, and a lot about Peggy.

Michael Oakeshott,
Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays
(1962): The limits of social engineering and of rational blueprints for society, advanced elegantly and reasonably by the English philosopher and essayist.

George Orwell,
Animal Farm
(1946): A parable about the totalitarian temptation embodied in socialism.

Ayn Rand,
Atlas Shrugged
(1957): A fast-paced novel that is also a capitalist manifesto; it celebrates the entrepreneurs who build and make new things.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,
The Gulag Archipelago
(1974): A devastating indictment of Soviet Communism, and a story of one man’s spiritual triumph over the gulag.

Thomas Sowell,
Ethnic America
(1981): Just one—because I had to choose one—of Sowell’s many books refuting the presumption that discrimination is the main reason why ethnic groups succeed or fail.

Shelby Steele,
The Content of Our Character
(1990): A revealing look at the psychological underpinning of affirmative action and other race-based policies.

Leo Strauss,
Natural Right and History
(1950): One of conservatism’s most important philosophers makes an eloquent defense of natural right against the twin currents of relativism and historicism.

Eric Voegelin,
The New Science of Politics
(1952): A learned, sometimes cryptic, account of liberalism as the modern version of an old Christian heresy.

Evelyn Waugh,
Brideshead Revisited
(1944): One of the great novels of the twentieth century makes the argument against the twentieth century.

Richard Weaver,
Ideas Have Consequences
(1948): The Southern Agrarian diagnosis of the ailment of Western civilization—the decline of belief in an abiding moral order.