Arthur Schlesinger: "No phenomenon has been more surprising than the revival of conservatism..."

[DeepModem Mom]

WP: A Historian Who Saw Beyond the Past
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Friday, March 2, 2007; Page A13


Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. in 2000. (By Michael Lutzky -- The Washington Post)

"No intellectual phenomenon has been more surprising in recent years than the revival in the United States of conservatism as a respectable social philosophy."...Thus wrote that lion of American liberalism, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., in 1955, long before the Reagan and Gingrich revolutions. Here was a historian whose understanding of the past afforded him remarkable perspective on the future.

Schlesinger's death on Wednesday at 89 raises the question of whether the liberalism to which he was devoted -- "I remain to this day a New Dealer, unreconstructed and unrepentant," he wrote in a memoir published in 2000 -- will be buried with him.

The short answer that arises from the body of Schlesinger's brilliant work is that reports of liberalism's death are always premature. Liberalism will rise again and again because renewing the public sphere and reviving concern for the less privileged and less powerful are inevitably what free citizens demand at the end of a conservative era....

***

Schlesinger is honored by foreign policy hawks for his loathing of communism as antithetical to any form of liberalism. A few years after completing "The Age of Jackson," his magisterial work on Andrew Jackson, Schlesinger wrote a polemical volume in 1949 called "The Vital Center" that denounced the "sentimentalism" and even "private neurosis" of the pro-Soviet left. Standing up to the Soviet Union, he argued, was a liberal obligation.

Yet, if Schlesinger understood the benefits of American power, he also knew its limits. He opposed the Iraq war and the "ghastly mess" it created....

***

At its best, Schlesinger said, democratic politics is about "the search for remedy." A belief in remedy -- in problem-solving -- is the antidote to social indifference and to despair about our capacity to act in common through government. This is the liberalism Schlesinger spent his life advancing. Thanks in significant part to his work, it will long survive him.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/01/AR2007030101325.html

[Erika]

1. W & his brand of conservatism has brought this country down

W're hated and we're feared. We don't even take care of our own needy but the administration acts as we are the world's savior.

I am not ashamed of this country but I am ashamed of this administration and the mindless bushbots who allowed it to take place.

[Jawja]

9. The Bush criminal cabal brand of

"conservatism" is Stalinism. They are not conservatives. CON-men maybe, but not true conservatives.

[OneBlueSky]

2. what's been revived is not conservatism . . . it is fascism . . . n/t

.

[nicknameless]

3. That quote looks to be from 1955

Thankfully

[malaise]

4. Schlesinger was a good man

We need another New Deal.

[The Backlash Cometh]

5. Well, I see his mistake already.

The revival of conservatism was anything but an "intellectual" phenomenon. It was just the opposite. It was the revival of ideological thinking. Of bonding based on common prejudices and networking based on social and political common interests. And, I might add, financially starving out those who did not agree with your point of view.

This was not an intellectual revolution; it was an anti-intellectual devolution.

[wellst0nev0ter]

6. Hey, We Needed Something To Justify Greed And Powermongering (eom)

[The Doctor.]

8. I wholly agree. eom.

[geiger]

12. true, but you're talking about now, not 1955.

although as a trainded historian I have always thought Schlesinger over-intellectualized his observations--a lot.

[geiger]

13. How incisive and smart your comments are! This post brightened my day.

[The Backlash Cometh]

14. Over-intellectualizing: The curse of liberalism.

As for your other observation, The title did read, an historian who looked beyond the past.

[xchrom]

15. he couldn't see in 1955 what billy graham would become or

the ''birth'' of paul weyrich, etc.

he couldn't see the marriage of corporatism and the religious right.

however -- the comment is still prescient.

[The Backlash Cometh]

17. Eisenhauer and Roosevelt were prescient too.

[tex-wyo-dem]

16. Nice observation!

I might add that the neo-con brand of "conservatism" is so radical and self-serving to the ultra-wealthy elite that the only way the handful of ideologues can sell their wares (and wars) to the general public is to use fear of a great enemy, which pushes the patriotism/nationalism hair trigger of their most fervent followers. Couple this with a large, highly organized and disciplined propaganda machine that parrots focus group tested talking points drummed up by numerous think tanks and, voila, instant society-wide group-think mentality.

The root motivation for this movement is money and power for a very, very select few...the ~30% who still support W are just too blinded and dumbed-down by the lies to realize this.

Money trumps everything...

[The Doctor.]

7. I think he means "artificial resuscitation"...

Kind of like raising the dead.

If you think about it, the 'conservatives' have been eating away at the brains of the people, sucking the lifeblood out of the economy, and desecrating both religion and democracy.

[BeFree]

10. Cannibals, all

I USED to know a FEW cool conservatives. But now they all suck the life right out of living.

[Ganja Ninja]

11. Isn't it ironic that the Iran hostage taking reanimated the ...

dead corpse of conservatism and now the Frankenstein is knocking on their door.

[Puzzler]

18. Demonization

It's more that just the rise of Conservatism (if you can really call it "conservatism"). It's really more due to the largely successful demonization of libralism.


-P