It is with considerable pleasure that I observe this turnout for the tenth annual gathering of the H.L. Mencken Club. Our organization has survived both its troubled beginnings (which I won’t bother to recount on this happy occasion) and its growing pains to become a focal point for the independent Right. This has come to pass because of your kind participation, generous donations, and the persistent work of those who serve on our board. Unlike those who work for the Beltway conservative movement, the H.L. Mencken Club depends entirely on voluntary efforts; and these have come from dedicated people who feel strongly about our mission. And let me acknowledge at the outset the work of our board, all of whose members serve tirelessly without compensation. Despite her protests, I must also give special mention to my wife Mary. This “great person,” to adopt the rhetoric of President Trump, labors every day to make sure the Club is solvent, dues are dutifully recorded and arrangements are made with hotels so that we can hold our conferences in a pleasant environment. She has even contributed her own pennies in past years to make sure our yearly expenses are met. My wife has made these sacrifices for a club, whose political mission she only vaguely shares, although in last year’s presidential campaign she proudly identified herself as a “Deplorable.”
A question that some of us may ask ourselves in our darker moments is why bother to maintain an organization like ours. Many of our members are nearing seventy, some even eighty. The Village Voice and other vehicles of establishment opinion depict us as geriatric babblers who are too doddering to be dangerous. The gargantuan media enterprise that Peter Brimelow styles “conservatism, inc.” runs away from us like bearers of the Black Plague. The employees of this multibillion dollar enterprise avoid mentioning our names, except to deny they had met us. Until recently, being involved in the H.L. Mencken Club carried a heavy price, at least for those who crave the company of successful professional conservatives.
Allow me to begin my remarks with this question. Have those who mock our mostly older members made note recently of all the graying Fox-news-viewers and aging subscribers to National Review? The average age of the first (according to information gleaned from the British Daily Mail) is 68; while the average age of a National Review reader is 66. Viewers of MSNBC and CNN range on average between 62 and 64. But there is more disheartening news for media conservatism. Although Fox-news desperately showcases blacks in order to acquire a more politically correct audience, these efforts have yielded meager results. Less than 1.1 per cent of Fox-news viewers are black; and this percentage gives no indication of rising.
The remarks which follow are not being aimed at us. We in this organization have exemplified the principle of open discussion and intellectual freedom in a way that the movement I’m criticizing has, with few exceptions, no interest in. Next to our record of open debate and intellectual tolerance, conservatism, inc. is hardly better than the PC Left it sanctimoniously attacks. If I now dwell on the failures and misdeeds of this establishment, it is precisely to show a path we have not taken, and one that I doubt we would have taken, even if we had been faced by the temptations to which others have readily succumbed. Let me also confess that I’m dwelling on these failures in much the same way that Hebrew Scripture dwells on the depravity of the Israelites’ neighbors. Underlining the misdeeds of others may have the effect of keeping the virtuous on the straight and narrow.
Unlike us, “conservative” spokespersons have a foreign policy that appears to be fixed in concrete—and one that seems designed to attract certain donors. Among its unshakeable pillars are lockstep support for AIPAC, diatribes against Vladimir Putin as the new Hitler, and demands that we bestow on the entire planet our vintage democracy, including feminism and gay rights. Promoting democracy means among other things having Max Boot, Charles Krauthammer, Ralph Peters, James Kirchik or one of their impersonators warn us that our failure to get entangled militarily somewhere, could lead to a new “Munich.” Supposedly the hour calls for another Churchill, who will address the latest Nazi menace or the current reincarnation of Kaiser Wilhelm. We must also battle Muslim extremists everywhere because “they hurl gays off buildings” and deny women equal rights.
Conservatism, inc. has a selective approach for dealing with academic intolerance. Fox-news and townhall rage about how their representatives have been kept by intolerant mobs from addressing various universities. But there is another side to this repetitious complaint that Peter Brimelow has called to my attention. Invitations that “conservative” celebrities receive to speak on campuses are usually accompanied by lavish funding from Washington-based organizations. Campus GOP clubs are used to lure speakers who are likely to create incidents with the far Left. Once this occurs, and rioting conveniently erupts, the conservative media spew forth indignation. But this “fascist riot,” as Fox-news then designates the commotion, get chased off the screen by other “hot items.” This is especially the case when there’s a counterdemonstration on the Right. Then we’re told that our side believes in discussing differences (with the Left of course but never with the unauthorized Right). Fox-news viewers are made to believe that they’re too high-minded to act out, unlike those leftist activists who are dragged on to Fox-news to present their case. The “conservative” media then move on to another incident that furnishes a fresh “news cycle.”
The same establishment also delights in highlighting socially acceptable victims of academic intolerance. And this too may cause us to wonder. Why are those victims of intolerance showcased by authorized conservatives so often situated on the Left, e.g., a liberal professor at Evergreen University who has been abandoned by his black allies or a Muslim feminist who is berated by her colleagues for scorning Sharia? Is there no one further on the Right who has suffered sufficient discrimination to be noticed by the conservative establishment? And why should the fact that Berkeley has refused to welcome some employee of conservatism, inc. matter more to us than the far more glaring injustice that befell, for example, Jason Richwine who was ousted from the “conservative policy community”? Poor Richwine was fired by Heritage Foundation after it was learned that his Harvard dissertation made reference to IQ disparities. While Scientific American may explore this topic freely, movement conservatives who show a similar curiosity are stripped of their careers.
Lest I burden you with my horror stories, I shall keep this narrative short. Over the last thirty years, all efforts at destroying me professionally have come exclusively from the conservative establishment. Attacks on me from the Left have never had the same harmful effect because they were not as persistent or as insidious. Since my only sin has been to comment critically on the neoconservative takeover of the conservative movement and its ensuing leftward lurch, this retaliation may have been disproportionate with my crime. But mine is no different from the punishment that befell other right-wing and libertarian dissenters, a practice that punctuates the history of the cm but which its official scribes have happily whited out. Particularly worthy of mention in my case was an unsolicited letter sent to Yale University Press aimed at dissuading the director from publishing my manuscript on Leo Strauss. The letter-writer, whom I instantly recognized from his klutzy prose, warned the director against publicizing the work of an “angry man.” Needless to say, I had every right to be angry, although this was not reflected in my book. In fact if I had the letter-writer in my grasp as I read his epistle I would have strangled him at once.
Another characteristic of the fake Right I’ve highlighted in books is that no approved “conservative” can fall out of media favor by moving too far to the Left. In 2015 a New York Post and Commentary contributor Seth Mandel published essays defending Black Lives Matter, as a highly principled response to racist police targeting inner-city blacks. Mandel then modified his position when he lamented in Commentary that BLM members had demonstrated with Palestinian advocates against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. Mandel thereby proved his good standing to his patrons by turning against BLN for the proper reason, namely that black activists were on the wrong side in the Middle East. Presumably Mandel’s gushing defense of these radicals against police officers did not faze his patrons in the least.
Parroting the Left has in fact never hurt an authorized conservative, as can be seen by looking at the careers of Bret Stephens, Bill Kristol, George Will, Megyn McCain, David Frum, Charles Sykes and David Brooks. None of these longtime conservative celebrities became anathema to their movement for fraternizing with the enemy. It is they who turned their backs on their erstwhile comrades because they wished to move up professionally. Such a motive may likewise account for the concerns recently expressed by Max Boot as a Russian Jew allegedly facing right-wing xenophobia. Arguably minicons who say these things are doing more than venting their inner selves. They may also be queuing up for jobs in a more socially respected environment than the one they’re presently in.
The conservative movement exhibits a boundless capacity for generating meaningless opposition to itself, which Sam Francis described as “artificial negativity.” Since the ascendancy of Donald Trump, well-financed websites, like American Thinker and National Affairs, have popped into existence that pretend to be resisting the “movement.” I’ve noticed that none of the editors of these websites will even return my polite inquiries for information from them. The most ridiculous representative of this bogus populism may be the Fox-news host Steve Hilton, who dresses up each Sunday evening like a fascist black shirt and prattles about “the next revolution.” Significantly, most of the “people” whom Hilton invites on to his program are Fox-news regulars like Dana Perino and Chris Steierwalt, and Democratic operatives who are encouraged to debate with Hilton’s establishment GOP regulars.
I don’t mean to castigate (at least not this evening) the conservative establishment for its narrow range of permissible topics. This movement is joined to certain interests, such as the GOP and a donor base, which demand compliance with its wishes. I myself was struck by the way “conservative philanthropy” has exploded since the late 1980s, when I worked on the revised edition of The Conservative Movement. At that time Heritage and AEI were each raising about 15 million dollars per annum. The last time I checked Heritage was pulling in many times that amount every year. Of course obligations come with these gifts. Republican members of the Washington “policy community” strive to be “socially respectable.” When their Democratic counterparts lavish praise on MLK, Heritage rushes in with even more fulsome tributes. And when other policy foundations in the Acela Corridor deplore the history of American racism or sexism, the Republican ones naturally follow suit.
When all is said and done, I don’t think conservatism, inc. can act any differently and still maintain itself as a well-financed movement. In this matter I take my lead from Karl Marx who explained why the members of a particular class behave as they do. Objective circumstances require the historical actors to take certain positions, and so personal feelings have to be subordinated to collective interests. While I wouldn’t deny the actors in this case are mostly personally vile, I’m not sure they could act in a less vile fashion without hurting their interests. I would also apply this observation to essentially decent people (and there are some) who work for the movement I’ve targeted. Those who find themselves favored by the heads and donors of this movement may feel pressured to conform when it comes to examining certain questions and (yes) avoiding contact with those whom their leaders have purged.
I thought about these restrictions recently when I read National Review-senior editor David French, who was briefly neoconservative presidential alternative to Donald Trump. French was responding to an attack on his reputation by the SPLC. Because of his membership in a Christian Evangelical political group, French was accused by leftist activists of being a bigot. In NR, he expressed shock that someone of his immaculately antiracist background (he famously adopted a black child) would have such a charge leveled against him. He then gave this advice on how the SPLC might improve its performance: “What’s the solution? The media should stop using it as a source — unless the SPLC again starts focusing on its original valuable mission of exposing and combating racist terrorists and white supremacists. “
Given his professional position, should French have noticed that the SPLC has been corrupt since its beginnings in 1979? Should he have pointed out that the SPLC’s head Morris Dees has always shaken down frightened donors for money, which he has often spent on himself, by exaggerating or fabricating far Right dangers? Would NR’s key donors have been pleased if French assaulted the entire history of a longtime antiracist sacred cow? Would his superior Rich Lowry, who has recently seconded the NAACP in demanding the dismantling of Confederate monuments, have sat by quietly if French had been more outspoken in going after the SPLC?
The fact is Lowry can’t even finish a column about NFL players disrespecting the American flag (on September 26), without declaiming against Confederate monuments, which are apparently “the opposite” of the American flag. French’s boss seems so fixated on his left flank that he’s not likely to indulge right-wing deviationists on his staff. Let’s think about Lowry’s onetime employee John Derbyshire, who lost his gig at NR for speaking out of turn. Might this not serve as a cautionary tale? Please note that I’m not depicting French as a principled man or even as a credible right-winger. I am suggesting that his references to the glorious past of the SPLC may have been influenced by his life situation.
Unlike the examples I’ve cited, we do not engage in purging and blacklisting people in order to accommodate our associates on the Left; nor do we live with the expectation that the liberal media or national press will help advance our careers if we pull punches or besmirch those on a more serious Right. Let me avoid overgeneralization: Not everyone or everything associated with the conservative establishment displays the same bad behavior. But the character flaws in question seem deeply embedded in the movement and reveal themselves in the double standard that acceptable conservatives apply in how they relate to the Left and to those further on the Right. In one case dialogue is pursued even when the other sides scorns those wanting to converse; in the other case marginalization and dehumanization are the order of the day.
I am furthermore astonished by the chutzpa of those who practice this double standard, by posing as defenders of academic and intellectual freedom. The reason many of us came together to form the Mencken Club, in honor of a no-holds-barred journalist who fearlessly exercised his First Amendment right to political speech, is that we were sick of the shabby behavior of what calls itself the cm. Whether or not its most disturbing traits and actions, suppression of dissent on the Right, groveling to the center Left, and blatant hypocrisy, are driven by personal character defects, fear of losing one’s donor base, or (more likely) both, no one in this room could mourn the disappearance of this establishment.
If conservatism inc. does begin to disintegrate, what challengers on the Right could take its place? One possibility is there will be no replacement, because no rival to the conservative establishment will acquire the resources and media connections necessary to replace it. These long entrenched opinion-shapers still dispose over massive financial and media backing; and it’s not at all clear that any rival could muster comparable resources. In some Western countries, like Canada and Germany, the Right has shrunk to near non-existence, and any attempt to revive it has been met with cries of “racism” and “fascism.”
In this at least imaginable American future without a Right, some token opposition to the Cultural Marxist Left will remain but mostly as a meaningless place-marker. This neutered Right in all likelihood would provide a constant diet of Max Boot, Rich Lowry, David Brooks and Ross Doutat, and I doubt anyone in this room would be able to read this pap without losing his dinner. A friend told me about how a gathering of conservative dignitaries sponsored by an organization headquartered in Indianapolis turned into a therapy session for those who were panicking that someone might identify them, however remotely, with the Altright. One of the most frightened attendees was the young owner of a website that claims quite implausibly to speak for “the people.” It is at least conceivable that conservatism in the future will be dominated by such wusses. Watching an ad run by Fox-news multiple times every night celebrating October as LGBT Month, I had to ask myself whether the conservative movement could rise to even higher levels of misrepresentation. The answer of course is an emphatic yes.
And then there is this unpleasant possibility: If a future Right starts out looking different from conservatism, inc., it might be ultimately forced to rely on the same donor base as the one that now funds the official conservative movement. Defense industries, Las Vegas casino owners who are Middle Eastern super-hawks, the pro-immigrationist and pro-amnesty Koch Brothers, the gay-rights promoter Paul Singer and liberal media that will only deal with a domesticated opposition, may turn this Right into the spitting image of its predecessor. I have to think about this when I consider the prospects for adventurous websites like Daily Caller or TV personalities like Tucker Carlson, who try to chart an independent course within the conservative movement. How long will they be able to continue this course, before their patrons and the movement’s ideological censors come down on them for straying too far from party lines?
But I’m assuming hypothetically that some group on the independent Right can make it over the hurdles. And for the sake of argument, let’s imagine this Right looks markedly different from the one we now have. From whence will it come and who will support it? Quite possibly, no one group on the now marginalized Right would be able to unify all the competing factions. This alternative Right might find itself in the same position as the anti-Communist opposition to Soviet-controlled dictatorships in the 1980s. Groups that were brought together by a common tyranny began to compete for power as the occupying empire withdrew. Would paleolibertarians, the Alt-Right, and what is left of the Old Right suddenly come together in a sacred union with the weakening of their shared enemy? More likely, different groups on the Right would vie for public attention; and even conservatism, inc. might survive, as one of several alternatives being marketed as “conservatism” or “the Right.”
What I’m suggesting as a possible future is a free market of right-wing ideas in place of the sclerotic democratic centralism that presently characterizes the conservative movement. Given our present situation, I’d find nothing objectionable if this were indeed our future. In fact given the relative powerlessness of outsiders on the Right, what I’m outlining may look like a dream. But for any of this to happen, two preconditions must be met. The conservative movement must begin to come unglued from internal contradictions; and another Right must be able to crash the party (for certainly it won’t be invited in) with sufficient resources to become a media force. Unless these things happen, any repeal and replacement of the conservative establishment will remain beyond our reach.
Let me however close on this upbeat note. I applaud those who labor to improve the American Right properly understood; and I am pleased they have not yet abandoned themselves to despair. Their labors remind me of a line from the golden oldie movie “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” in which the youthful Jimmy Stewart tells the corrupt Senator Payne, famously played by Claude Raines: “the lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for.” I know everyone in this room believes that. I certainly do.
