Dan Larison reverts to form and has a long, nasty and fairly vapid diatribe against my own alleged vapidness. It’s not just my stupid Corner posts but my whole “schtick” in general that makes me represent everything stupid and silly about mainstream conservatism. Frankly, I think he makes some good points about some conservatives or conservatism generally, but they are overstated in the usual paleo fashion and I think he is quite simply idiotically unfair in using me as the symbol of all he hates. I don’t do or represent nearly any of the things he imputes to me. And to the extent I have, I generally stopped years ago as I have discussed several times.

He’s always been very whiny about my views on Crunchy Conservatism (which is when I first heard of the guy) and I assume he shares the usual vitriol of the Buchananites towards me. But basically, I am so befuddled by his ongoing animosity and hatred of me, I am sorely tempted to explain his evidence-free table-pounding as driven by motives a great distance from honorable intellectual or philosophical ones. But I don’t follow the guy or know enough about him to have any clue what those motives might be. I do generally find that people who latch on to the arguments of Eric Alterman don’t deserve a lot of my time. One possible explanation is that it is the curse of paleocons to take themselves way, way, way too seriously and hence despise those who don’t act likewise. As I’ve said before, I take ideas and arguments very seriously, but I don’t take myself very seriously. I have a sense of humor about life and try to have fun in this business. If people like Larison can’t tell the difference or go crazy trying, well that’s a small price to pay.

Anyway, he’s responding to a post about Paleocons from FlyingSpit who comes somewhat to my defense (suggesting, I guess, that this argument about me is longer and older than I realized or care to explore). And Ross Douthat, while not coming to my defense at all (thanks Ross), does address the question of Paleocon obsession . I think he scores some very good points. But I’d offer two partial objections. First, Ross says:

… I think there’s some truth to the underlying idea, which is that paleoconservatism tends to display the weaknesses you would expect from an intellectual movement that hasn’t held power, in any meaningful way, in God knows how long – specifically, a tendency to advance ideas without any regard whatsoever to their practicality, to condemn others for making compromises without pausing the consider the constraints and difficulties involved, and to obsess endlessly over battles that were lost a long time ago.

My first objection is this phrase “haven’t held power…in God knows how long.” This obscures an important point: The Paleocons were never, really, in power before. Sure, some heroes of Paleoconservatism once held some powerful positions. But the case that these heroes were Paleocons in a meaningful way, or that the Old Right (which, recall, was never really “in power” either) was a coherent Paleocon whole, is a case that is rarely made persuasively. These things are usually simply asserted. But because this sort of history is the playground of the Paleos, few people take the time to question it (and because arguing with paleos can often be more trouble than its worth). And, since the Left very much wants to believe that the Old Right were a bunch of isolationists, Social Darwinists and defenders of the Confederacy and nothing more, they’re perfectly happy to take the Paleos’ word for it. (I’m not saying that many on the Old Right weren’t these things, to one extent or another. What the left fails to understand is that so were many people on the Left).

Which leads me to my second point, which really isn’t an objection to Ross himself, since I don’t think this describes him at all. But one could read his post as condoning a certain turning-away from the old arguments the Paleos help keep alive. I think this would be a mistake. Yes, obsession is bad. And the efforts to turn Lincoln into a villain are both unpersuasive and counter-productive. But American popular culture is so forward-looking and the force of Progressivism’s effort to make everything about “tomorrow” is so compelling, America can use more people talking about yesterday. The popular narrative taught in schools and the media is that the forces of conservatism were always wrong and the “agents of change” were always on the side of the angels even when they went too far. Conservative = bad is the reigning formula of historical analysis (Just look at how the left is already hard at work turning Don Imus into a conservative).* If conservatives won’t take up that fight, then what’s the point of being a conservative? One of the things I admire about so-called paleos is that they won’t let these old fights go. Today’s conservatism — with its often misplaced passion for scoring Republican victories — too often gets its history from RNC talking points. America is forward looking, thank goodness. But American conservatives must be at least a little backward-looking because if they won’t be, no one else will.

* Except, of course, when one can use the conservatives of yesteryear to make the conservatives of today look bad — witness the recent liberal rehabilitations of Goldwater and Reagan.