I just received my copy of The American Conservative’s most recent issue. It’s a very porchy issue indeed. Includes my interview with Greg Wolfe, editor of IMAGE; an essay by Phillip Blond on Red Toryism, adapted from the speech he gave at Georgetown under the auspices of the Tocqueville Forum; Bill Kauffman on To Kill a Mockingbird; and much more. Really, please support the only magazine devoted to thoughtful, non-ideological conservatism by subscribing. And if you find a magazine devoted to thoughtful progressivism, subscribe to that, too (and let me know what it is).
Perhaps the best piece is Dan McCarthy’s on the growth of arbitrary authority. Perhaps he’ll let us reprint it here, in a while. One paragraph will give you the gist:
You can sleep with whomever you want, but there will be no legally binding commitments, and whether you keep your house or your children will be up to a judge. You can quit your job at any time, but good luck finding another. You can vote for the Republican or Democrat of your preference, and they will both give the country bigger government and mroe wars. Even which church to attend is a consumer choice, as self-interested and trivialized as which soft drink to buy. For all the fetishization of choice, Americans are taught by their institutions that there is only one way to live: casually, unconcernedly, without strong connections to anything but the provider state and its flag.
I’d say that last sentence, in particular, is insightful, wouldn’t you? But we are not just taught this; it is a dogma that is thoroughly culturally (and often enough legally) enforced.
What am I, Beer, chopped liver? Check pp. 14-15, “Ticket to Utopia,” by PATRICK J. DENEEN. Not the Olympic skiier. Sheesh.
No, Patrick, you’re “much more.”
Thanks Bill. It’s better than being “much less,” for a change. Nice to know where I stand on the Porch. Next to the spittoon, apparently.
My bad, Patrick. Your response to Blond is spot-on, actually. But I missed it as I was skipping Nicholas Capaldi’s contribution (which actually, now that I read it, isn’t as bad as I had expected).
Mr Beer:
“the only magazine devoted to thoughtful, non-ideological conservatism”
Surely you meant Chronicles. Anyone who read Ron Unz’s “His-Panic” was surprised to find such disingenuousness in an otherwise great magazine (fair disclosure: I subscribe to TAC and Chronicles).
Only? I think not.
“Really, please support the only magazine devoted to thoughtful, non-ideological conservatism”
You overlook Chronicles, which has been “devoted to thoughtful, non-ideological conservatism” for longer than any other magazine.
I thought that Capaldi’s shallow Randian psychology was ridiculous:
–“the drive to turn all of society into an enterprise association comes from people who have not made the transition to individuality”
–“the most serious problem within modern liberal societies is the presence of failed or incomplete individuals”
–“lacking faith in their ability to exercise self-discipline, incomplete individuals seek escape into the collective identity of communities”
But I appreciated having various opinions in the issue.
Mea culpa. Support Chronicles, too. I haven’t checked it out regularly for too long. It was never ideological, but it sometimes didn’t throw the net wide enough for my tastes. And how can you not support a magazine that has stayed put in Rockford, Illinois, for lo these many years?
Thanks for the kind words about my article, Jeremy. It’s now online here, http://amconmag.com/article/2010/jun/01/00011/ — though I hope that won’t stop anyone from subscribing.
Mr. Beer
Stand by for a gratis issue of Chronicles to be sent to you, with my compliments. My people will be contacting your people. 🙂
Chronicles does in one issue what TAC might do in three.
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