Conservatism in a Divided America

George Hawley

Description

George Hawley, who has written extensively on conservatism and right-wing ideologies in the U.S., presents a telling portrait of conservatism’s relationship with identity politics.

The American conservative movement has consistently declared its opposition to all forms of identity politics, arguing that such a form of politics is at odds with individualism. In this persuasive study, George Hawley examines the nature of identity politics in the United States: how conservatives view and understand it, how they embrace their own versions of identity, and how liberal and conservative intellectuals and politicians navigate this equally dangerous and potentially explosive landscape.

Hawley begins his analysis with a synopsis of the variety both of conservative critiques of identity politics and of conservative explanations for how it has come to define America’s current political terrain. This historical account of differing conservative approaches to identitarian concerns from the post-war era until today—including race, gender, and immigration—foregrounds conservatism’s lack of consistency in its critiques and ultimately its failure to provide convincing arguments against identity politics. Hawley explores the political right’s own employment of identity politics, particularly in relation to partisan politics, and highlights how party identification in the United States has become a leading source of identity on both sides of the political spectrum. Hawley also discusses this generation’s iteration of American white nationalism, the Alt-Right, from whose rise and fall conservatism may develop a more honest, realistic, and indeed relevant approach to identity politics. Conservatism in a Divided America examines sensitive subjects from a dispassionate, fair-minded approach that will appeal to readers across the ideological divide. The book will interest scholars in and enthusiasts of political theory and psychology, American history, and U.S. electoral politics.

Although I argue the research on identity, tribalism, and group conflict tells an important story, the story is not always straightforward. Sometimes interesting studies are so flawed that they are ultimately useless – though this may not be understood until after the study has made a great impact. Sometimes researchers examining similar subjects reach very different conclusions, despite all using proper methods. In other cases, results are statistically-significant but not substantively important. In the pages ahead, I will try to provide as complete of a picture as possible, not relying too heavily on any single set of research, and acknowledging the research that contradicts my main arguments. This is a complex topic, and although I argue that identity cannot be extricated from politics, I do not want to overstate my case or oversimplify the subject.

I hope conservatives will view this work as a well-intentioned critique. I hope to start a conversation, rather than score partisan or ideological points. The United States benefits from a strong debate between competing ideological visions, even if ideological principles will always be rare in the electorate. This is harder to achieve when different sides fail to understand each other’s basic premises or have very different views about the basic nature of democratic politics in a heterogeneous society. Furthermore, I agree with the conservatives that say identity politics can create real problems for American democracy. However, resolving or at least mitigating those problems is not possible until we understand their true nature. I hope this book provides some clarity.

In various passages in this book, I acknowledge that figures on the far right and sometimes even the extreme right have made cogent arguments. This may be a controversial decision, but also one that is necessitated by intellectual honesty. One can recognize that the radical right sometimes makes arguments that cannot merely be waved away without agreeing with a radical right worldview. One can, after all, think that Lenin made some very perceptive arguments without being a Leninist or even a leftist of any sort. As I have argued in the past, the right should be treated in an intellectually serious manner. Although I take the field of political psychology seriously, I disagree with efforts within that field to pathologize the right, to treat right-wing views as a sign of some kind of mental disorder. Extremely learned and intelligent people can reach conclusions that many others find abhorrent. The mere fact that a position is discordant with the progressive Zeitgeist is not enough to dismiss it. I am sensitive to the concern that discussing extreme views in a dispassionate manner risks normalizing and amplifying these kinds of ideas, perhaps helping them make a breakthrough. In other forms of media, this may be a greater concern. For scholarly texts from a university press, however, I am confident any such effect would be, at most, miniscule.

As I write these words, identity questions are even more salient in American politics than normal. The death of George Floyd, an African American man, at the hands of a white police officer in Minnesota recently set off a wave of protests across the nation; in rare cases, these protests were followed by rioting and looting. The Black Lives Matter movement has achieved remarkable success in changing how journalists and the general public discuss questions of race and racism. At the same time, conservative activists have recently had great success demonizing Critical Race Theory, leading to acrimonious debates about how race should be discussed in public schools. These developments add an additional level of timeliness to this project, and a greater sense of urgency to the questions I consider here.

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. Conservatism and other Concepts

2. Conservative Arguments against Identity Politics

3. Conservative Explanations for Identity Politics

4. Conservatism and the Civil Rights Movement

5. Conservatism and Feminism

6. Conservatism and Immigration and National Identity

7. Partisan Politics as Identity Politics by another Name

8. Lessons from the Alt-Right’s Rise and Fall

Conclusion: Conservatism beyond 2020

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie politique
• Political Ideologies
• 20th Century
• Political
• HISTORY
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• Politics
• Republican
• United States

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 01 novembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268203733
• Langue: English

Extrait

CONSERVATISM IN A DIVIDED AMERICA
CONSERVATISM IN A DIVIDED AMERICA
THE RIGHT AND IDENTITY POLITICS
GEORGE HAWLEY
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
undpress.nd.edu
All Rights Reserved
Copyright © 2022 by the University of Notre Dame
Published in the United States of America
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022935753
ISBN: 978-0-268-20374-0 (Hardback)
ISBN: 978-0-268-20376-4 (WebPDF)
ISBN: 978-0-268-20373-3 (Epub)
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail]
For Thomas
CONTENTS Acknowledgments Introduction ONE Conservatism and Other Concepts TWO Conservative Arguments against Identity Politics THREE Conservative Explanations for the Rise of Identity Politics FOUR Conservatism and the Civil Rights Movement FIVE Conservatism and Feminism SIX Conservatism, Immigration, and National Identity SEVEN Partisan Politics as Identity Politics by Another Name EIGHT Lessons from the Alt-Right’s Rise and Fall NINE Conclusion: Conservatism in the 2020s Notes Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would not have been possible without extraordinary support from many generous people. I am grateful to the University of Alabama, where I have taught since 2013. Since my appointment, I have always felt supported as I pursued my various projects. My research agenda has shifted dramatically, more than once, since I began working here. My work today is decidedly different from what it was ten years ago, when I first entered the academic job market, yet I have never been discouraged from examining new topics. Over the last several years, I have written about public opinion, political behavior, immigration, history, and political theory. I even took an intellectual detour a few years ago and wrote a book on religion that had almost no connection at all to political science. This book tries to tie together many different themes I have been thinking about, and I hope my colleagues and superiors are satisfied with the end result, even if they disagree with my conclusions.
I am forever indebted to friends who read earlier drafts of this project, pointing out problems with my arguments, factual mistakes, literature I neglected to cite, and new ways of thinking about the questions I examine here. Special thanks to Leonard Chan, Pedro Zúquete, Richard Marcy, and Nicholas Drummond. I am also thankful for friends and colleagues who discussed the themes of this book with me, asking useful questions and helping to clarify my thinking: Jesse Merriam, Richard Hanania, David Azerrad, and Riley Matheson have my gratitude. I am also indebted to the anonymous peer reviewers at University of Notre Dame Press, and to Editor in Chief Eli Bortz, who has believed in this project since I first pitched the idea at the start of 2020. This book was much improved by all of these people’s efforts.

As always, I owe a special thanks to my wife. Over the course of seven books, Kristen has continuously been my most helpful sounding board and diligent copyeditor. For her selflessness, attention to detail, and thoughtful critiques, I will be forever grateful. Thanks also to our children: Henry, Wyatt, Nina, and Thomas. It would be inaccurate to say that they make academic research easier, but they are a valuable source of motivation, and the attention they require forces me to take needed breaks from projects that would otherwise consume most of my time and attention. My entire family is also indebted to Nicole Carter and Hope Hatter, who have always taken such fantastic care of our children. Especially during the long days of the COVID-19 pandemic, they were truly indispensable.
This book is not intended to solve the major problems it considers, but I do hope that it will introduce some useful ideas into an important debate, even if readers reject most of what I have to say in the pages ahead. If you find value in this work, credit must be shared with all of the people named above. Any mistakes belong to me alone.
Introduction
Over the course of its history, the American conservative movement has declared its opposition to several intellectual and political currents it considers antithetical to its vision of ordered liberty. Conservative intellectuals have lambasted socialism, relativism, nominalism, secularism, and hedonism. Some have attacked the very concept of ideology as unhealthy and dangerous. Recently, however, conservatives have focused much of their attention to the purported evils of identity politics. This is not a new subject of concern for conservatives, but the way conservatives have approached questions of identity—and related questions of equality and justice—has evolved over the last seventy years. This book examines this history and the current debates about these issues.
By “identity politics,” I mean the tendency to think about politics in terms of groups engaged in a zero-sum struggle for resources. In a sense, it is not entirely dissimilar from class-based politics, such as that described by traditional Marxism. Identity politics, however, is focused on different kind of groups. When we describe identity politics, we typically mean a form of politics built around mostly fixed demographic attributes. That is, politics focused on race, ethnicity, language, gender, sexual identity, religion, and region. This form of politics—alternatively described by conservatives as “tribalism”—is presumably not conducive to compromise and rational discussion. It is qualitatively different from political struggles defined entirely by specific material interests. Conservatives argue that identity politics degrades people, reducing us all to our tribal characteristics, rather than treating us as free-thinking, rational, and unique individuals.
Most American conservative intellectuals look toward the Enlightenment era for arguments in favor of individualism and against collectivism. The modern American conservative’s fondness for the Enlightenment and its most important thinkers—John Locke, Adam Smith, and Thomas Jefferson, among others—is one characteristic that sets American conservatives apart from many other conservatives around the world. Classical liberalism, and the individualism it promoted, is a vital part of the American conservative tradition. Conservative arguments are often rooted in claims about the natural rights of individuals.
Despite the impressive intellectual pedigree that many of these conservative arguments possess, the primary conservative claims about identity politics are challenged by our everyday experience. The kind of “individual” that conservatives promote as the ideal—someone not focused on any particular identity group beyond, perhaps, the nation as a whole, and rationally weighing every argument through the use of his or her personal reason—is exceedingly rare. Whatever its origins, tribalism, in some form or another, seems to be an inescapable element of democratic politics.
This implies, of course, that conservatives do not fully understand their own movement. Conservatives promote the narrative that they are the side of ideas, whereas the progressive movement is just a collection of aggrieved identity groups, united by nothing beyond a shared resentment of white, Christian, cisgender, heterosexual men. In terms of how the respective intellectuals, journalists, and activists on the left and right present their arguments, there is some truth to this claim. 1 However, a closer look at the literature on political psychology reveals that self-described conservatives who vote Republican can be just as tribal as their political opponents.
In defense of conservatives, I will note that identity politics can be difficult to understand because identity is complicated, as are the political attitudes that emerge from identity. There are many facets to identity, and different people will find different personal attributes salient to their sense of self. These can further change over time. For most people, identity is not determined by a single variable—be it racial, ethnic, religious, and so on—but some attributes tend to be more politically significant than others.
The latest research has made this subject even more complex. It is well established that our political identities—especially our party identifications—are usually downstream from other forms of social identity. However, in this era of affective partisan polarization, party identification itself has become an important form of social identity. That is, for many of us, identifying as a Republican or a Democrat is not just an indication of which party we vote for. These party identifications have become a meaningful part of our sense of self, as significant as many other forms of identity. The fact that we increasingly, to the extent that we can, reshape other elements of our identity to be consonant with our political loyalties shows that political categories have an incredible emotional hold on us. This is true for both Republicans and Democrats. These findings challenge some of our basic assumptions about how democracies are supposed to function.
In many ways, U.S. politics would be healthier if we followed conservatives’ advice. At an individual level, we should strive to think beyond our identity groups when thinking about public policy, and perhaps the conservative call to do so has had some success. Nonetheless, it is important that people across the political spectrum think clearly about these issues, considering the electorate as it actually exists rather than insisting it meet an unrealistic ideal. Nor is it helpful to simply blame identity politics on a liberal conspiracy to divide Americans into antagonistic groups. This argument is incongruent with the facts, and, to borrow conservative firebrand Ben Shapiro’s catchphr