Sarah Palin: A Champion of the West

On Thursday, J.R. Dunn of The American Thinker published this thought-provoking article about the uproar that Sarah Palin's vice presidential nomination has caused among a certain segment on the political right. Dunn refers to this segment as "Northeast Corridor conservatives" - including David Brooks, Richard Brookhiser, David Frum, Charles Krauthammer, and Peggy Noonan, among others.

Borrowing a description from Albert Jay Nock, Dunn refers to the ideology of these conservatives as "remnant conservatism" - a brand of conservative ideology that entered cultural isolation following the leftist political and social triumphs of the 1930s and 1960s. Dunn writes:

While the Northeast Corridor conservatives were avidly converting conservatism into a coterie, complete with gatekeepers, a private language, in-group behavior codes, and a uniform (blazers and khaki for the males, and for the women... well, let’s move on) American conservatism was changing beneath their feet. Neoconservatives and libertarians broadened both the content and appeal of conservatism, while the Religious Right brought in a powerful and cohesive voting bloc. None of these groups challenged the predominance of the Northeastern conservatives, content to play a useful role in the emerging conservative coalition. But none of them were given a particularly warm welcome either.

At the same time, and perhaps with even more consequence, the center of political conservatism was moving ever west. Through such figures as Goldwater and Reagan, the American West was transformed into the vital center of the conservative impulse. Though the primacy of the East Coast conservatives remained, the status quo could not last. As conservatism absorbed heartland influences, it began changing to a more individualistic, more libertarian, more religious, and more American form. Almost unacknowledged, the division between American western conservatism and the European-influenced northeastern variety became deeper and wider with every year.

William F. Buckley, Jr., despite his patrician background and elite schooling, was much more a product of western conservatism than of the remnant variety. Buckley's brand of conservatism was profoundly optimistic and proactive, much like that of Goldwater and later Reagan. Also, keep in mind that Buckley had some ancestral roots in Texas - his grandfather, John Buckley, served as the sheriff of Duval County (right next to Webb County, where I was born) from 1888 to 1896.

As the new conservatism of Buckley, Goldwater, and Reagan took hold over the Republican Party, the dour Northeastern Corridor elites became increasingly insular. This insularity has been highlighted by their indignant reaction to Governor Palin's nomination. Dunn continues:

And so isolated had the Northeast Corridor conservatives become, so deeply embedded in their Jamesian parallel universe (which can best be pictured as kind of a conservative version of the old Steinberg New Yorker cover, with E.35th St. and Allen Jay Lerner’s townhouse looming as the center of the earth while, off on the horizon, we see a dot labeled, “Nascar races”), that they couldn’t recognize her [Governor Palin's] clear conservative stance, couldn’t recognize her personal courage, couldn’t, in the end, be bothered to stand with her when she and her family were victimized by the most repellent political attack of our epoch.

If they won’t recognize that, they won’t recognize anything. Living in a Northeast that is steadily combining aspects of a Third-World state and a suburban mall, they have lost sight of what America actually is. Huge gaps exist in their knowledge of the country. In the same way that liberals view the U.S. a racist, militarist monolith, the Northeast Corridor coterie view it as a cultural wasteland populated by backwoodsmen, halfwits who need to be guided by an enlightened but aloof elite.

That’s what they saw when Sarah Palin stepped before the public. Not a superb example of the 21^st-century American woman, knowledgeable, capable, and admirable, but a hick with a roughneck husband and a load of kids. Quite the opposite of what the rest of the country saw, and accepted, and will likely send to Washington this November.

Dunn has seen the future, and it is ours.

***

Speaking of Northeastern Corridor conservatives, Dunn's article reminded me of a curious episode from several years ago. During the late 1990s, my mother and father were still living in Laredo, and at one point one of my mother's cousins (and her cousin's husband) were taking part in Laredo's annual Washington's birthday pageant - they were to represent George and Martha Washington at the event. Wanting to learn more about George Washington, my mom's cousin asked my mother to ask me if I could recommend a good biography of our first president. I recommended Richard Brookhiser's Founding Father.

A few years later, Brookhiser wrote in his National Review column that he had been invited to and recently attended a celebration of Washington's birthday in a South Texas bordertown. He didn't identify the city by name, but it had to be Laredo. I remember being amused by his description of some of the celebrants having "Aztec cheekbones."

Thus, in a roundabout sort of way, my book recommendation of more than a decade ago might have been responsible for Brookhiser being invited to Laredo a few years later. Just one of those "six degrees of separation" moments, I suppose.

***

Finally, I was struck by this snippet from Dunn's article:

This school of thought [remnant conservatism] may have reached its peak in Allan Bloom’s “The Closing of the American Mind which, while perfectly correct concerning many points -- political correctness and the degradation of campus life -- also contained much that was obnoxious: the Plato fixation, and a seething contempt for American culture that went far beyond criticism in into hyperbolic loathing. (e.g., the comparison of rock music listeners to junkies. As a musician competent in all modern styles, including rock, blues, jazz, and country -- along with classical, Celtic, and even a little Arabic -- I think I have the standing to dispute this. It’s all notes and intervals, is my contention, and it’s all good.)

I agree, especially where country music is concerned. As an example of good country music from my younger days, here is a video of Sylvia Kirby's "Snapshot":



Enjoy your weekend.