Professional "Conservatives" Gets His Paycheck

A conservatism of winners would look at Trump's substantial minority as a foundation and try to build from there. A conservatism of losers would insist that Bill Barr and Fed Society judges and Fox News are all leagued against them and only a remnant can be trusted.

— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) December 2, 2020

This is Professional "Conservatism"

... making observations and speculations into the wind.

My main observation (per the event) is that it's more a matter of adjusting the balance among existing factions than totally remaking the party, which is not what usually happens in a two-party system.https://t.co/v4eiqly3O1

— SamuelGoldman (@SWGoldman) October 26, 2020

"This is Conservatism"

We asked @roddreher, @DouthatNYT, @Heminator, @bradleybirzer, @KJTorrance, @JosephBottum, @fbuckley, @JZmirak, @WriterJonLeaf, @heymiller, @gracyolmstead, @kmanguward, @AnthonyMBarr et al. for their ideal *fictional* presidential candidate. Enjoy. https://t.co/FVhe58ImS8

— Modern Age (@ModAgeJournal) October 22, 2020

That Webinar with Ross Douthat and Gracy Olmstead

The Quest for Community Webinar 1- "Social Distancing" and Political Polarization - YouTube. With ⁦@DouthatNYT⁩ and ⁦@ubookman⁩ contributor ⁦@gracyolmstead⁩ https://t.co/J2Rdaw8mbn

— University Bookman (@ubookman) July 24, 2020

It Will Be a Respectable Webinar

📆 July 16: @PepperdineSPP hosts: The Quest for Community Webinar Series: A Future for American Conservatism - Is communitarian conservatism relevant in an age of 'social distancing' and political polarization? https://t.co/wlcawCwrzj with @DouthatNYT and @gracyolmstead

— R Street Institute (@RSI) July 9, 2020

Deneen Reviews Douthat

ISI: The Great Stagnation-Or Decline and Fall? By Patrick Deneen

"Progressive electoral reforms...weakened parties and local political attachments, making ideology increasingly the driver of politics." From @PatrickDeneen https://t.co/TNvEw0xU8T

— Modern Age (@ModAgeJournal) June 3, 2020

Safe Enough for NYT to Let Captain Obvious Conservative Speak

My Tuesday column: Crisis in the Liberal City:https://t.co/2huPYch325

— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) June 2, 2020

Superb essay by @DouthatNYT. This should have been the central argument of his book: the decay of the late empire as manifest in the decadence of both the many and the few. Instead of making each other better, they are accelerating the decline of both. https://t.co/5pmwMUZNdZ

— Patrick Deneen (@PatrickDeneen) June 2, 2020

Deneen v. Douthat

Differences among different kinds of conservatism: Douthat argues that a decadent society is mainly stagnant; I contend that decadence is decay. For Douthat, the solution is innovation; whereas I argue that conservatives should forestall decay, and hence are wary of “progress.” https://t.co/kuOdX5ZcZx

— Patrick Deneen (@PatrickDeneen) June 1, 2020

America’s great stagnation is looking more like a decline and fall. @PatrickDeneen contends with @DouthatNYT ‘s study of American decadence: https://t.co/Do9bXw6zui (at @ModAgeJournal )

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) June 1, 2020

Walter A. McDougall on Douthat's The Decadent Society

AmConMag: On Decadence, Decline, and Hope for a Renaissance by Walter A. McDougall
Ross Douthat says that a revolution is far-fetched, but the virus may provide the necessary alchemy for change.

My only objection to Douthat’s diagnosis is that it has little or nothing to say about elites, establishments, and plutocracies. I believe Americans have become decadent in good part because they have chosen to do so, but I also believe it is not paranoid to suggest the choices we make are rarely free ones. Rather, we are constantly tempted, manipulated, by those who occupy the commanding heights and who grasp the levers of power. That is why I recommend readers to pair The Decadent Society with James Kurth’s new book The American Way of Empire: How America Won a World—But Lost Her Way. Among much else, Kurth describes the “preferred domestic public policies” as well as the foreign policies of three American plutocracies. The first rose to power in the 1880s and 1890s on the strength of industrial sectors such as coal, steel, railroads, and oil. Its captains of industry, or “robber barons,” wanted a political system that seemed bracingly democratic, but in fact ensured that both political parties would do their bidding by supporting the gold standard, protective tariffs, a big navy, and foreign markets through the “Open Door” policy. The second American plutocracy that arose in the 1920s and 1930s was split between industry and the financial sector which rose like a rocket during and after the Great War. Wall Street favored free trade and internationalism and thus quarreled with the industrialists of the Middle West. When the Great Depression hit both were hurt badly, but did not succumb to populist or leftist movements thanks to Franklin Roosevelt, World War II, and Harry Truman.

Douthat is also ignorant of the economic collapse that is taking place, and decadence may be visible in blue urban areas, but I don't think the opioid crisis and the problems of middle red America.

Rod Dreher Interviews Ross Douthat

AmConMag: How To Fight Decadence in the Age of Pandemic
Will we find that this triggering event purged the rot from our system, or will something much darker be left behind?

Rod Dreher: When most of us hear the word “decadence,” we think of Sodom and Gomorrah, or the late Roman Empire, or Weimar Germany. But that’s not what you’re talking about. Would you clarify what you mean by decadence?

Ross Douthat: I’m following a definition proposed 20 years ago by the late cultural historian Jacques Barzun, who argued that we should understand “decadence” as referring to periods when wealthy and dynamic societies enter into stalemate, stagnation, and decay—when they lose a clear sense of both purpose and future possibility. Which doesn’t exclude scenarios like rapid moral decline or fascist or communist takeover: a decadent society is vulnerable to both. But under decadence you’re often more likely to get a kind of moral or cultural mediocrity than either radical villainy or sainthood. And our own decadence seems to fit that pattern: in certain ways we look more stable and less flagrantly debased than in the 1970s, when crime rates and abortion rates and divorce rates and drug abuse were much higher, and our vices have a more private, virtual, numbing style.

Likewise, a decadent society can collapse under the right circumstances, and our sclerotic institutions are certainly vulnerable to certain stresses—like the coronavirus! But decadence can also last a long time: Weimar fell to Hitler quickly, but the “late” Roman empire (or the Ottoman or Chinese empires later) lasted for centuries in a condition of decay. So I don’t think you can assume that our decadence is going to turn to crisis and collapse immediately; it might be a lot more sustainable than people think.

What Douthat calls decadence we identify as one facet of collapse.

Douthat on Secularism and Religion in "America"

Ross Douthat, "To Change the Church"

More from the Token Conservative at the NYT

More of Douthat on His Newest Book

What problems and guilty parties does he not name?


Ross Douthat on "The Decadent Society"

Drehering

Coronavirus & Conservatism’s Future by Rod Dreher
Of 'folk libertarianism,' and what the pandemic reveals about the American right

Here’s why it worries me. It’s not really about Trump, but what comes after Trump. To repeat: the Trump presidency, especially in how the president has responded to this unprecedented crisis (with the strong support of his usual followers), has unveiled the feebleness of philosophical conservatism. It’s not conservative at all; it’s just a species of right-wingery.

Something better: Orwell & SJWs
If the sworn left-wing enemy of cant were writing today, would he be able to publish in elite liberal journals?

Dreher Interviews Douthat

about his new book: The Decadent Society: How We Became The Victims Of Our Own Success



No mention of cultural Marxism, feminism, or Christian leaders watering down the Gospel and failing to respond properly to the state and its elites.

Decadence has enabled female vice and narcissism. Have many men in the West become soft? Sure. But how much power did they have to begin with, either to correct the state, the elites, rebellious women, or revolutionaries? 0.

link

Deneen and Douthat

Weekend At The Bruderhof by Rod Dreher
A conversation between Patrick Deneen and Ross Douthat

Ross Douthat for the Hoover Institution

Ross Douthat on The World Over; Author of To Change the Charge

full episode

Christians Naive About the State

Combined with other personality traits, becoming a cuckservative is a natural outcome.

As secular liberalism attacks the Church, Catholics can’t afford to be nostalgic (via Tea at Trianon)