To the Right: the Transformation of American Conservatism.

FOR THE PAST three decades and more, sociological studies of the recrudescence of conservatism in America have been coming from the press. The authors of such books commonly look upon this phenomenon as an abnormality. How to account for the breaking out afresh of this plague?

Jerome Himmelstein, although himself a stereotypical liberal, instructs us that other sociologists have misunderstood the conservative revival. Unlike them, he does not believe the Right is marginal to American politics. In this he separates himself from such observers as Daniel Bell, who pronounced in 1963 that "what the right wing is fighting, in the shadow of Communism, is essentially |modernity.'"

Commenting on Bell's remark, Himmelstein writes: "This last word, modernity, sums up the attitude of a generation of sociologists . . . [about] the Right as a political force. Modernity implies something monolithic and inexorable, the inescapable result of overwhelming forces of change. To revolt against modernity is a futile gesture. To regard the Right, therefore, as a |revolt against modernity'--a phrase that recurs often in sociological writing--is to dismiss it as a political force of long-term significance."

Mr. Himmelstein does not so dismiss it. How can he, given the fact that conservative forces have won five out of the past six presidential elections? He denies that a general political realignment has occurred in the United States, yet, with conservative policies predominant in the executive branch of the national government, he concedes that something has happened, and that yesteryear's liberalism no longer charms.

What is this "transformation" of American conservatism that Himmelstein alludes to in his subtitle? On this question he is less than lucid, but it has something to do with a "reconstructed ideology," and with other changes discussed below. These developments account for the election of Republican Presidents, and the temporary frustration of the liberal impulse. For, "put simply, Americans are symbolically conservative but substantively liberal."

Mr. Himmelstein employs the word "ideology," correctly enough, in the signification Marx assigned to it: that is, a pseudo-philosophical, rhetorical veil that conceals but advances the economic interests of a class; a disingenuous apology for aggrandizement and exploitation. Himmelstein does not use "ideology" as a synonym for "principles" or "ideas"; nay, he endeavors to ignore altogether the possibility that conservatism embodies serious, honest thinking.

The names of Robert Nisbet, Eric Voegelin, Leo Strauss, and other leading conservative thinkers are missing from the book's index, although their names do appear--once. "[I]n the late 1940s and 1950s [among those] who influenced the developing conservative synthesis were Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin, Robert Nisbet, Russell Kirk, and Richard Weaver, to name but a few." With the exception of Weaver, these writers are merely named, and we are told nothing more about them or their doctrines.

For that matter, Himmelstein forthrightly denies that today's conservatism has any roots whatsoever: "One also ought not to be seduced by the kind of intellectual history that sees an unchanging conservatism extending back over the generations . . . American conservatism as we know it is neither brand-new nor timeless; it has a history of some three decades."

Mr. Himmelstein professes not to know why or how the opponents of New Deal liberalism ceased to call themselves individualists and began to wear the label "conservatives." (He notes that William F. Buckley Jr. did not call himself a conservative when, in 1951, God and Man at Yale was published; but that when National Review began publication in 1955, Mr. Buckley called his magazine "a conservative journal of opinion.") What formative event intervened? In 1953 a book entitled The Conservative Mind appeared. Why did its author, unnamed in Mr. Himmelstein's index, use the word then?

Himmelstein treats Frank Meyer and Richard Weaver at some length as forgers of a fresh conservative ideology. He endeavors to trace the development of the "Old Right" into "The New Right: Conservatism Triumphant," culminating in Ronald Reagan's election to the Presidency. But is this Himmelstein's "transformation"? According to Himmelstein himself, it isn't: "The most striking characteristic of the New Right was its continuity with the older conservative movement . . . Differences between the New Right and the Old Right were usually superficial."

No, Himmelstein goes on to relate, the transformation of American conservatism was worked by three phenomena of the late 1970s and early 1980s: "the rise of the New Religious Right, the conservative mobilization of big business, and the revival of the Republican Party."

Possessing small knowledge of the several Christian churches, Himmelstein exaggerates the political power of television preachers and much underestimates the power of conservative convictions among Roman Catholics. (Incidentally, since 1950 approximately half the members of most American conservative organizations have been Catholic--something of which Himmelstein seems perfectly unaware.) Ardent participation by Christians in politics results for the most part from well-justified resentment of court decisions and legislative enactments preventing prayer in public schools, interfering with the conduct of Christian schools, legalizing abortion-on-demand, and in other ways upsetting the old balance between church and state in America. The combined influence of Catholics and evangelical Protestants on the abortion question has certainly induced Republican politicians, in many states, to fight shy of the "pro-choice" zealots; otherwise, this reviewer discerns no transformation of conservative approaches by aroused Christians.

On the subject of mobilizing corporate conservatism, Himmelstein is more interesting and more detailed. "The political mobilization of big business in the mid-1970s gave conservatives greater access to money and channels of political influence," he writes. "These helped turn conservative personnel into political leaders and advisors, and conservative ideas, especially economic ones, into public policy."

Now certainly business executives took alarm at the decline of the American economy under Jimmy Carter, and tended, many of them, to turn to Ronald Reagan and the Republicans for remedy. But did this tendency transform the conservative movement? And, except for the growth or creation of conservative think-tanks, did it significantly reinforce the conservatives financially?

Although Himmelstein writes of mobilizing "corporate" money, in actuality a great part of the resources to which he refers is derived not from business or industry directly, but from large charitable foundations: e.g. Scaife, John Olin, Smith-Richardson. Yet, emulating the Ford Foundation, most large foundations remain obdurately liberal in their policies--a fact Himmelstein neglects to mention. Nor does he remark that most corporations have neither political theory nor ideology, preferring not to be bothered at all with politics.

The third phenomenon of this transformation, Himmelstein argues, is "The New Republican Edge." He observes that "the Republican Party made significant gains in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and this resurgence of course redounded to the benefit of the conservative movement." No doubt, but did that series of victories transform the conservative movement, except in the sense that the executive force, the White House circle, turned more or less conservative?

In his epilogue, Mr. Himmelstein comforts such readers as have persevered so far by the reflection that "the forward momentum of conservatism was largely exhausted" by the end of the Reagan Administration, "and hence the prospects of the Right making further major gains seemed slight." He expects the New Right, the Religious Rights, and Corporate Conservatism to decline in vigor. Yet he does not venture to predict the dissolution of the conservative movement.

This confused book is afflicted by various evasions and omissions. For instance, one might confidently have expected Himmelstein to explicitly discuss that faction of the movement called neoconservatism. Yet he employs that term not at all, and resorts to its adjectival form only twice or thrice. Is the reader to infer that the alleged transformation of conservatism has been so thorough that we all are neoconservatives now? Where is the evidence? (Certainly not in the academy. Is there a college or university campus on which neoconservatism has actually left a mark?) Were Himmelstein to attend any large gathering of conservatives today, he might find that traditionalists, libertarians, and neoconservatives stand at sword points. At least this book might have been more interesting had he analyzed the neoconservative faction that arose, chiefly among Jews, and principally in New York. According to Michael Novak, who professes himself a Papist neocon, in toto the neoconservatives are but sixty in number. Is it this Sacred Band which is supposed to have transformed American conservatism? If so, it is odd that the names of Norman Podhoretz and his consort are absent from text, from index, and from bibliography.

But an even more significant evasion is Himmelstein's insufficient examination of the Democratic Party's decay--particularly that party's affliction with what Gordon Chalmers called "disintegrated liberalism."

Mr. Himmelstein quite rightly observes that there has not yet come to pass any permanent realignment of the general public with respect to conservative or liberal preferences or prejudices. The word, the symbol conservative has triumphed over the word, the symbol liberal, yet most voters seem unable or unwilling to connect these general attitudes toward politics with their choices of candidates for Congress or for state legislatures. During the prolonged campaigns for nomination and election in presidential contests, the public grows aware of differences of principle among candidates, and, consequently, the more conservative candidates are recognized and elected. But in elections to legislative bodies the major issues often become blurred, local or particular interests loom large, and the degree of a candidate's conservatism or liberalism may count for little.

This is not altogether regrettable: like the British, the American electorate is not basically ideological, so we are ordinarily spared the politics of fanaticism. Still, in a time when great and irrevocable decisions must be made, it is not well that executive and legislative branches of a national government should be at loggerheads. Nor would it be well for either a liberal or a conservative ideology to triumph: for ideology is the negation of prudence and the foe of imagination--this despite the eagerness of some, such as Irving Kristol and Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, to fashion an ideology for us.

Conservatism in America has not been an ideology, but rather a drift, a movement, a loose league of people who prefer the devil they know to the devil they don't. They have resisted the menace of what Tocqueville called "democratic despotism," particularly in the form of the omnicompetent state that would keep its citizens in perpetual childhood. They have set their faces against Soviet imperialism and against the armed doctrine of Communism. They have, in Mr. Himmelstein's words, "decried the decline of the traditional family and traditional moral values and the rise of a secular, hedonistic culture. They have called Americans back to a moral consensus about the good and the true."

However that may be, Himmelstein objects, "Conservatives have won important symbolic battles but have failed to alter the practical political sentiments of Americans. Those who oppose conservatism--whether they call themselves liberals, progressives, populists, or something else--are often more in tune with these practical sentiments but have failed to articulate an effective political vision."

There is a good deal of substance in such an analysis. Keener imagination than is represented by the Republican Party's conservative impulses will be required if this nation is to preserve and renew the permanent things. In this tremendous hour when the world revolts against the consequences of the Marxist ideology, we do well to move to the right. Transformation of American conservatism is greatly to be hoped for; it is yet to occur.

Russell Kirk is the president of the Wilbur Foundation and author of the forthcoming book The Conservative Constitution (Regnery Gateway).