Conservatives Without Conscience

Antipathy to liberalism has been present from the outset of the conservative movement but it only became a powerful unifying influence in the early 1980s. Sidney Blumenthal, when still a staff writer at the Washington Post, concluded that “conservatism requires liberalism for its meaning,” for “without the enemy [of liberalism] to serve as nemesis and model, conservative politics would lack its organizing principle.”[52] Blumenthal’s observation, made two decades ago, is even more valid today. Leading conservative Web sites, including well-funded think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the right-leaning libertarian Cato Institute, spend a lot of time and money criticizing or complaining with varying degrees of contempt about all matters perceived to be “liberal.”[53] Important conservative opinion journals, like the National Review and Human Events, see the world as bipolar: conservative versus liberal.[54] Right-wing talk radio could not survive without its endless bloviating about the horrors of liberalism. Trashing liberals is nothing short of a cottage industry for conservative authors. Take the “queen of mean,” Ann Coulter, whose titles speak for themselves: Slander: Liberal Lies about the American Right (2002); Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism (2003); and How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must): The World According to Ann Coulter (2004). Slander, for example, contains page after page of scorn, criticism, belittlement, and bemoaning of ideas she believes liberal. Her books have also generated a subsidiary cottage trade in fact-checking her work, which has amply demonstrated that Coulter apparently considers accuracy as something that needs only to be approximated.[55]

All the hyperventilating about liberalism by conservatives is surprising, because it is so unnecessary. Liberalism is a straw man conservatives love to attack, but there are not, in fact, enough liberals to be a true threat to conservatism. A recent Harris Poll found that only 18 percent of American adults call themselves liberals,[56] and the TIPP poll, cited earlier, found the figure to be 20 percent. Although then Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich unequivocally declared in 1998 that the “age of liberalism is over,” condemnation of the liberal bogeyman continues to be a clarion call for most conservatives. In truth, conservatives attack liberals, or those they label or perceive as liberal, for several reasons. It is, of course, a handy means to rally the troops, for the conservative base enjoys it when their leaders and prominent voices attack those who do not share their views. It is also a means to raise money; fund-raising letters and drives regularly recount the horrors of liberalism. Many conservatives, however, are simply entertained by reading conservative authors or hearing conservative talk-show hosts rant about liberals. The exaggerated hostility also apparently satisfies a psychological need for antagonism toward the “out group,” reinforces the self-esteem of the conservative base, and increases solidarity within the ranks.[57]

Law professor John Eastman described the contemporary conservative movement as “a bit of a three-legged stool.”[58] Eastman wrote that conservatives find cohesion in their efforts to pack the federal judiciary with judges who will work at “recovering the original understanding of the Constitution—one that recognized the scope of federal power over matters truly national, such as national security, but that sought to revive the limits on federal authority in other areas of daily life, as the Constitution envisioned.”[59] In short, the concerned effort to oppose so-called judicial activism is important to most all conservatives, and indeed, books, blogs, and essays on the subject have come from high-profile voices throughout the conservative factions.[60] Thus, when Bush nominated his White House counsel, Harriet Miers, for the Supreme Court, notwithstanding her stellar conservative credentials she was attacked relentlessly by other conservatives, who doubted she had the cerebral wherewithal to wage battle behind closed doors at the high Court on their behalf.[61] National Review writer John Derbyshire was a leader in the snarling pack chasing Miers, employing conservative rhetoric to do the job. After “reading her thoughts, messages and speeches,” Derbyshire reported, “I mean, the sheer, dreary, numbing m—e—d—i—o—c—r—i—t—y of them.” He concluded: