So I’ve been wading through a lot of e-mail and articles on conservativism lately (see my USA Today piece here) And after careful consideration, my response to all of the griping about the decline of intellectual conservatism is . . . meh.

[Note: I’m on the train and, lacking other distractions, I’ve written a very long post. So it’s all below the fold so as not to annoy those not interested.]

On the liberal side there are scads of very phony, or silly, or weird obits of conservatism from people who really have no standing for their sudden disappointment and remorse for what they claim to be conservatism’s demise. When Jane Mayer blurbs Sam Tanenhaus’s book, it’s hardly as if conservatives should take his book more seriously. Likewise, when Jacon Weisberg starts writing prescriptions for what ails conservatism, I have the same reaction as when my barista starts writing me prescriptions for my sore feet. It’s not that Weisberg or Tanenhaus or any of the others are entirely wrong on every point. It’s that the fundamental premise and intent behind their analysis is to discredit the entire edifice — intellectual and popular — of conservatism today. They wail: Oh only if we had a real, vibrant, serious, empirical, conservatism that could perform the vital task of conservatism (which, according to Sam Tanenhaus, is to make liberalism better). But we don’t have such a conservatism. Instead, we have this vulgar and mean-spirited irritable mental gesture masquerading as conservatism! Woe, woe, woe for the Republic!

This is one of the most hackneyed rhetorical lines in the liberal script.

Ramesh and I wrote a piece a few years ago on the tendency of liberals — and some conservatives! — to argue that the best conservatives are dead conservatives. Goldwater, detested in his own day by liberals, is now loved by them as a model of what they “wish” conservatives could be like. If only today’s conservatives could be more like Goldwater! And Reagan! And Buckley! And, now, Kristol! everything would be wonderful.

The thing is, as much as I wish we could have all those guys around today, if they were around today, most of liberals now lamenting their passing would go right back to hating them and demanding that they disavow whomever liberals have demonized this week.

I’m reminded of an essay Bill Buckley wrote in National Review just six months after its founding. Addressing attacks on NR in Commentary (the left-leaning), Harpers, and The Progressive, Buckley wrote:

All three journals seem to resent the mere existence of NATIONAL REVIEW — not, understand, because they are intolerant of dissent (there is nothing-they-would-welcome-more-than-genuine -dissent); but because it pains them to be bored by it, and when they are not being bored by it they are being affronted by its vulgarity, appalled by its insouciance, or dismayed by its ignorance. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is more urgently needed than a real conservative magazine; but, alas, ours is not such a thing, and they must, accordingly, continue to scan the heavens for it.

Now, this is not to say that conservatives should bunker-down and ignore criticism from dissenting voices within, or antagonistic voices without. There’s some merit to the anti-populist arguments within conservatism. Or at least I think there is. I think Steve Hayward’s piece in the Washington Post makes many fine points, though I’m less sure about the wisdom of David Frum’s new project for conservatism.

But putting aside the argument about populism, what I don’t completely understand is why conservative intellectuals are having such a self-esteem crisis. The right has more eggheady journals of excellent quality than ever before. The Public Interest has just been revivified in the form of National Affairs under Yuval Levin, one of the Right’s very best young intellectuals. The number of scholarly conservative conferences is through the roof. National Review’s circulation is robust and rising and NRO is a powerhouse. Free-market economists — even after the attempt to use the financial collapse to discredit them — are as vocal and as influential as they have ever been, at least from what I can tell. There are more serious think tanks and right-leaning academic centers than there were under Reagan. And the right-wing blogosphere is festooned with sparkling intelligence. Serious conservative books can get published today in ways that they couldn’t a generation ago. And so on.

So what’s the problem? Well, I think there are a lot of possible reasons many of which have to do with a change in the media generally and the conservative media in particular. For instance, thanks to the growth of entertaining outlets for conservative viewpoints on cable, radio and most importantly the internet, the role for conservative intellectuals to serve as the official spokesmen of conservatism is of necessity diminished. Also, the professionalization of intellectual conservatism — for want of a better term — gives conservative scholars plenty of outlets without having to delve into the popular and political realms. The increased respectability of conservatism in intellectual circles means that intellectual conservatives don’t need to go “slumming” as much (again, for want of a better term).

But I think there’s another factor. I think there’s some resentment among the conservative intellectual classes that they don’t run the show as much as they used to. There’s is a great deal of romantic nostalgia about Richard Weaver’s phrase “ideas have consequences” and there’s a sense among some of the more scholarly types that conservative ideas don’t have the consequences they once had. In a way, it reminds me of the crush left-wing academics have for France. Over there, intellectuals are the celebrities (or so it is asserted). They appear on talk shows, stir controversy, influence debates etc. Over here, left-wing intellectuals don’t have the same impact and they think that must say something bad about America. I get the sense that conservative intellectuals increasingly feel the same way.

I think part of the blame can be laid at the feet of the Bush administration. It was not open to conservative intellectuals and ideas the way the Reagan administration was. In fact, you can make the case it wasn’t as open to conservative intellectuals as the Clinton administration was (we can discuss that later!). Now, after eight years of marginalization by Republicans, the idea-men now feel marginalized not only by the Democrats, but by the populists and popularizers on the right as well.

The 2008 GOP primary also fueled this problem in part because no one ran on Bush’s record and there was a subliminal antagonism toward “reformist” compassionate conservatism in much of the debate. People wanted to go back to Reagan, not continue Bush. So anything that smacked of “strong government” or “compassionate” conservatism was shot down as capitulation to liberalism. This meant that some fresh thinking was smothered rather than encouraged (though I think many on the Right — Brooks, Frum, Douthat — over-emphasized this problem).

In any case, I think the intellectuals should get over it. Stop apologizing for the lack of seriousness on the right. There’s plenty of seriousness on the right, and the fact that Jacob Weisberg or Damon Linker says otherwise shouldn’t count for much, if anything.

This post has gone on way, way too long already. So I will end it with one thought. This debate is colored by a huge confusion of means and ends. Much, if not necessarily all, of the populism we see today is exactly what is required given the political reality. A very liberal president and a very liberal Congress have locked out Republicans because they see this moment as a historic opportunity to vindicate their ideological priorities. For conservatives, this is a moment for shouting, “No!”

But all moments end — that’s why they call them moments; if they didn’t end, they’d be called “forever.” Populism is a battering ram. It’s useful for crashing through giant gates, but less useful for the door-to-door fighting that comes after you get inside. And it’s even less useful for the important work of governing. Liberals understood this quite well over the last eight years as they cultivated a populist movement that swept liberals into power. Whether liberal intellectuals are up to the task before them now remains to be seen. But left-wing populism did its job perfectly. I don’t see why intellectual conservatives should be terrified about a similar division of labor on the right. Rather than grinding axes against their own, they should be sharpening them for the battles ahead.

For intellectual conservatism is doing just fine, thank you very much. And its moment will come again.