So next week we are going to have a skypecast up of Conor Friedersdorf and Dan Riehl discussing/debating their different ideas about the necessary tonic for the future of American conservatism. I’m exploring the possibility of being able to broadcast the discussion live, though I’ve never done such a thing, so if anyone has any experience with broadcasting live on the Internets please drop a comment to this post or fire me an email via the League’s contact page.
The purpose of this post; however, is to solicit questions from you that can be put to Conor and Dan while we have them on the line. So fire away because both Dan and Conor, as well as everyone here at the League, are curious to see what you come up with. As always, keep it clean, civil, on topic, but still interesting and challenging.
Thanks much.
Jaybird 
Tod Kelly 
Katherine 
Will Truman 
Kyle Cupp 
Burt Likko 
spivak
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Semantic question (for Scott, not Conor/Dan): If the term “Leaguers” doesn’t just refer to the bloggers, but also readers/commenters, how do y’all justify using the gender-specific term “gentlemen”? I wouldn’t mind getting to wear a bowler hat, but still.
How about what are the weaknesses of conservative philosophy? When have conservative ideas failed? See if they have the courage and intellectual ability to honestly look at their ideas and judge them in the real world.
@Dara: You can always have my bowler, though I did have to modify it for Class Day last year.
American conservatism, eh? I guess I have two questions one serious, one not so serious. The serious one, does American conservatism need a new intellectual ballast – in the Burkean-Hayek-Friedman-Buckley vein to right itself?
The not so serious question, to survive does American conservatism need more Sarah Palins or Helen Rittlemeyers?
Dara I have a bowler…it goes with my shadbelly for riding intermediate level dressage tests.
I think this awesome though…a steel cage death match for the hearts and minds of the GOP intelligentsia.
But be advised that Palin is running in 2012.
She is releasing carefully worded statements on current events via Sarahpac and NOT TALKING. I suspect she has a speech coach trying to cure her heartland pageant speak. Her book will come out in the spring of 2010.
Even if you win this match, you will have to fight the demon Sarah for the hearts and minds of the base.
You could sign up for a BlogTalkRadio account if you don’t have one. For that matter, I could give you my login and have you do it as a special episode of OTB Radio.
The format is free, supports live broadcast, call-ins, and archiving/downloading for podcasting or later streaming from the Web. The caveat is that you have to set the time in 15- or 30-minute increments ahead of time. If you run over, it’ll still record but the live broadcast will be cut off.
What do you see as the biggest problems facing America in the next 20 years, and what solutions does conservatism provide?
Scott –
I’d pose this question to both participants:
How do you distinguish between constructive intramural criticism and counter-productive sniping?
Dara:
Indeed, we struggled endlessly with this moral dilemma in deciding on this name. I think, in the end, one has to think of “gentlemen” in a slightly more figurative sense. That or in terms of practicality. Calling the site “The League of Ordinary Gentlemen and Ladies” is a bit long. Perhaps the “ladies” bit could be implied? Assumed? In any case, nobody of the fairer sex has yet even so much as offered to write a guest post so beyond the larger community we’ve yet to wrestle with the implications.
Wanna write a guest post?
Please note: I’m going to be monitoring this thread much more closely than I do most others, anything that amounts to a simple ad hominem attack will be deleted. The goal here is to have a constructive and valuable debate and I am grateful to both Dan and Conor for their willingness to participate.
In no small part, the success of this experiment will be determined by the quality of questions we get here and as mentioned, Dan, Conor, and myself are very interested to see what our readers come up with. The contributors here have all, from time to time, noted that our commentariat tends to be well above par for the blogosphere, and so that is part of why we’ve thrown the questions open to you: we could never come up with as broad a range of quality questions amongst ourselves as you will amongst yourselves.
So to reiterate, let’s keep it clean, civil, on topic, but still interesting and challenging.
Dara – what E.D. said.
When we started the site and before we had any readers/commenters it was all boys and so the reference to the League was, technically speaking, accurate. As we’ve grown, I think we’ve come to see the name as emblematic of the approach to blogging we attempt to embody here. I’m not sure that I can come up with a feminine correlate that doesn’t have a metric tonne of loaded baggage that would make me uncomfortable with its use. So I think E.D. is spot on when he says that our use of the term “Gentlemen” is more figurative than anything else.
Plus, again, E.D. is right, any decent blog needs a catchy name, this is the one we went with. And, we really would be honoured if you were willing to grace us with a post.
Scott,
Ask the discussants if “conservatives” would be better served to initiate a third party (or join the existing conservative parties) or try to defeat the neocons, rinos, and statists that already dominate the GOP.
In a related question, do they think that the epigonic Marxists of the Obama regime will give up power as the result of an election?
@Conor…
How would you respond to those who would offer the critique of some in the League (Yourself, Freddie, and E.D.) who do indeed hold many liberal views (and in Freddie’s case, radically so) as not “vertiable” conservatives, while expressing the view that someone like R.S. McCain, who while much more difficult to stomach, will for the most part be more conservative on important issues such as abortion and gay marriage, and therefore more legit?
Great question, Neil. One I wrestle with myself. Indeed, I used to blog as “indie-pundit” because I am not really “conservative” in that sense, and my own brand of “conservatism” requires a healthy mix of progressive policy. How to reconcile that with conservatism is beyond me. And of course Freddie is not in any way trying to reconcile himself with conservatism as he is a Marxist leftist socialist liberal fascist nihilist. So. There you have it.
Agreed, good question. It is probably worth noting that neither Conor nor Dan blog here at the League. Conor blogs over at The American Scene and Dan operates The Reihl World View.
Hmm….somewhat going off of Neil’s question, but how about this:
Is conservatism a set of foundational principles/philosophies, or is it a set of immutable policy preferences? If the former, how should movement conservatives respond to those dissidents who argue that the policy preferences do not seem to line up with the foundational principles/philosophies? If the latter, how is a defense of those policy preferences principled?
A second question:
Movement conservatives nowadays have increasingly sought to distance themselves from Republican politicians, in essence claiming that they are conservatives first and that the GOP is merely the lesser of two evils. Despite this, they continue to derisively accuse anyone who calls themselves a Republican and/or a dissident conservative who deviates from the official movement conservative line of being a “RINO” (whether or not that self-described conservative votes Republican). Doesn’t this imply that, protestations to the contrary aside, movement conservatives continue to view the Republican Party as essentially indistinguishable from movement conservatism? If not, then shouldn’t movement conservatives be more tolerant of Republicans who dissent from movement conservatism but live in areas where movement conservatism is not particularly attractive?
Sounds good, E.D.
Going off that question, while I have been cheering Freddie et. al on against R.S. and Levin et. al, I would just wonder what problems arise out of having a “Marxist leftist socialist liberal fascist nihilist,” making the excoriations of these (very, in Rush’s case) popular Neo-Con figures in terms of branding and marketing. One can certainly see that this would complicate selling this sort of “dissident conservatism,” which is, I take it, one of the main aims of Culture11, League etc.
(just a note, but Freddie is actually just an avowed Leftist – all those other tags were just me being whimsically hyperbolic…)
Please accept my sincere apology for the unclean incivility. As a peace offering, how about this:
Debate/discuss the (for lack of a better word) slogan “Conservatism didn’t fail us, we failed conservatism.” I suspect Conor and Dan do not share the same viewpoint on this.
Good question, Dave. Thanks for it.
How will, or should, conservatives continue to be associated with the religious right?
The religious right has, to a great extant, branded conservatism as anti-intellectual. I mean specifically their stance on evolution an ID. How should conservatives deal with perceived anti-intellectualism?
Looking forward to your discussion.
1a) How can conservatives maintain or expand Reagan’s “Big Tent” without betraying core principles?
1b) Does it help or hurt the conservative movement to “cast out heretics”?
2) Is it possible for social conservatives, big government conservatives and libertarians to coexist in the same movement?
3) What political lessons, if any, can be learned from the recent Tory revival in Great Britain and how can that help the conservative movement in the United States?
From Wikipedia: “Robert Bork, often considered an originalist, has likened the Ninth Amendment to an inkblot. Bork argued in The Tempting of America that, while the amendment clearly had some meaning, its meaning is indeterminate; because the language is opaque, its meaning is as irretrievable as it would be had the words been covered by an inkblot. According to Bork, if another provision of the Constitution were covered by an actual inkblot, judges should not be permitted to make up what might be under the inkblot lest any judges twist the meaning to their own ends.”
Was Bork correct in his assessment? If not, what did he get wrong and why?
(And, of course, if you want to get whimsical, you can ask about whether we’re better off with Kennedy getting that particular seat.)
Wonderful questions, folks. Keep ‘em coming!
Scott, is there a limit you would like to suggest or may we continue to add questions?
For better or worse, conservatives will have to look to the Republican Party as the party to capture the White House in 2012 and bring about a conservative government. Which potential nominees best represent conservative ideas and has a realistic shot at winning?
No limits, ask as many questions as you would like, so long as they aren’t throw away questions and you’ve put some thought into them. We likely won’t get to all of the questions whether folks post one or twenty, so will have to go through a process choosing which ones we wind up asking.
Ergo, the more we have to choose from the better. Thanks for asking.
PS – you floated an apology in another post, was totally unnecessary.
First time commenter, long-time (well, several weeks in my RSS feed anyway) reader. Several questions, sorry if this repeats others:
1. What do you believe are the core principles of conservatism in 5 bullet points or less?
2. What _should be_ the role of the Republican Party in promoting conservative thought? In implementing conservative policies?
3. In building political coalitions, compromises are often made. How should conservatives reconcile different emphases on social conservatism, economic conservatism, and/or foreign policy conservatism when building intra-movement alliances? (Not sure if these are the most meaningful distinctions but they make sense to me and are hopefully clear and obvious to others.) Does it naturally follow that e.g. economic conservatives (classical liberals or libertarians) and social conservatives should belong to the same coalition?
4. In considering candidates for political office, when if ever should considerations such as managerial competence, experience, character, etc. trump political philosophy? Should conservatives believe that political philosophy is the overwhelmingly most important aspect in supporting candidates?
5. Why are the most prominent conservative voices mostly white and mostly male? Why does the message fail to appeal to a broader demographic if the principles of conservatism are abiding and correct? Should the movement (a) change the message, (b) change the messengers, or (c) stick to its guns and wait for the rest of the country to come around?
Amitav,
Great questions, thanks for posing them. Great to have you in the comments and thanks for your readership.
Let me add/expand on previous questions
1. Richard Posner said on his blog a while back:
“I believe in limited government and so do not support government activities that cannot be justified convincingly by reference to considerations of economic prosperity, basic individual liberties, or domestic or national security. I do not favor the curtailment of individual liberties on the basis of religious beliefs, nostalgia for the “good old days,” or traditional social beliefs (such as distaste for racial minorities or homosexuals) that cannot be related to economic, libertarian, or security values. ”
I believe this is increasingly the view of younger people who identify themselves as conservative, e.g. with respect to gay marriage or marijuana legalization. In fact, there is a fundamental tension between social conservatism and the views Posner expresses on matters of individual liberty. Assuming Posner espouses the basic tenets of modern (or youthful) conservatism, what role, if any, should the religious right play in the conservative movement?
2. Posner says elsewhere on his blog: “The end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the surge of prosperity worldwide that marked the global triumph of capitalism, the essentially conservative policies, especially in economics, of the Clinton administration, and finally the election and early years of the Bush Administration, marked the apogee of the conservative movement…. At this writing, however, the conservative movement is at its lowest ebb since 1964. But with this cardinal difference: the movement has so far succeeded in shifting the center of American politics and social thought that it can rest, for at least a little while, on its laurels.”
On matters of economics and foreign policy, the center of the Democratic Party today is arguably to the right of Richard Nixon. In many of the biggest battles, conservatives “won.” What do non-social conservatives offer the country now? And what does the Republican Party offer non-social conservatives now?
Wanna write a guest post?
I do but you would hate it. ;)
My question: How can conservatives win back their equal share of the youth demographic?
Tsk. Allow me to give the requisite response to any ‘we picked the male version because picking both was too cumbersome’ claim: Why didn’t you pick the female version? But I’m less than half serious.
More seriously, I think ‘Gentlepersons’ is, if anything, even more refined and Gentlemanly.
“Gentlepeeps.”
matoko: I double dog dare you to submit a guest post that you’re serious about and you feel would add the the discussion on the site. scott dot h dot payne at gmail dot com, my inbox awaits.
sidereal, half serious or no, the answer to your question is contained in the quote you chose,
I’m not sure that I can come up with a feminine correlate that doesn’t have a metric tonne of loaded baggage that would make me uncomfortable with its use.
That doesn’t boil down to ‘we picked the male version because picking both was too cumbersome’, though you may well disagree with the supposition. If you can come up with such a correlate I’d be game to stand publicly corrected.
As per “Gentlepersons”, perhaps it marks me dismissive, but it just doesn’t have the catchy ring to it that we were looking for. I would take Gentlepeeps rather, but still it has an element of “this site is not to be taken seriously,” to my ears. It’s entirely possible that’s just my own take, but at least it’s an honest take.
And besides, I’d gladly veto any attempt to change the name of the blog, and you can call me a sexist if you like but I prefer the term “aesthetically obsessive” and the thought – the very thought – of calling this site the League of Ordinary Gentlepersons (or peeps or whatever) makes me shudder.
Q’s for the faceoff? Who will actually vote the stock proxies owned by the Government?, At what point do we get to really realize the outyears budget deficet and how & who is going to pay for all this printed outlay of money? What happens if GM continues in a downward slide? From some readings I hear the Sotomayor would not qualify as a juror so how would she qualify for the position of the highest court in the land? Could go on & on but answers to these would surfice. Thank you.
1) What should conservatives have learned from the Bush years?
2) Which of the following is the most essential belief of American an conservatives:
A) Protecting traditional social norms based?
B) Restricting the size and scope of government?
C) A policy of vigorous national defense?
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