Postmodern Conservatism

The left are wrong if they think conservatism is dead, writes Frederick Greene.

It is not obvious why a conservative would choose to call himself postmodern.  It is not obvious why anyone would call himself postmodern anymore.  Postmodernism is dated, thrown on the same garbage-heap as heliocentrism -- its tenets are generally understood to be indisputable but not in the final analysis very useful to anyone.

Outside of a lit-crit bramble patch through which I do not wish to bushwhack, these tenets were actually quite simple: God is dead, war is hell, and Winston tastes good like a cigarette should.  Postmodern man saw through the smoke-(or was it the mustard gas of Ypres?)-and-mirrors of old-fashioned virtue and the deceptions of modern advertising, and he chucked the former and kept the latter because, although there may be neither meaning nor purpose in this vast, indifferent universe, we've still got Saturday night.  

All of which is not to say that postmodern folks don't believe in morality.  Far from it; by their lights, they have distilled it down to its essence -- less hocus-pocus, more hugs.  The final product resembles actual ethics the way a model train resembles the TGV.

Not a bad way to leave things, what with the sex and rock'n'roll and everything.  In fact, the Left was so impressed with its new arrangement that it presumed the only reason conservatives weren't on board was that they hadn't noticed.  Who, having seen the man behind the curtain, could go back to believing in the Great and Powerful Oz?

Postmodern conservatives did notice that modernity happened, which is the reason we call ourselves that.  We enjoy poking needles into the Left's smug conviction that right-wingers are rubes in the city of the future.  The rubes still believe the just-so story that thunder is angels playing ninepins.  Postmodernists believe the just-so story that all traditions, articles of faith, and irrational loyalties are just-so stories.  Postmodern conservatives believe that some of them -- like allegiance to family, love of God, and fealty to country -- aren't.  And, because we blend in enough among other folks our age to "pass," they know we must have good reasons for being otherwise so reactionary.

The postmodern Left denies that conservatism has any credibility, either intellectual or cultural.  There are qualified economists in charge of proving that the Right really does have the former; pomocons try to reclaim the latter.  I am not suggesting that we trick out the old throne and altar in white Apple plastic -- Apple plastic wouldn't suit them, nor would they suit modern society.  Neither do I think that traditionalism is the only kind of conservatism that could use a little more cultural cred.  Classical liberalism could use a makeover, too -- the cigars can stay, but the top hats and robber-baron muttonchops have to go.  Postmodern conservatives want to prove that struggling actors with part-time waitressing jobs can believe in capitalism just as strongly as picket-fenced suburbanites, never mind titans of industry.  They prove it by doing it.

I once watched Duck Soup, the old Marx Brothers movie, with the DVD commentary on.  It was some film historian explaining the ways in which each slapstick joke was terribly historic and awfully relevant to American politics at the time.  Needless to say, it ruined the film.  Sometimes over-analysis kills the goose that laid the golden eggs.  But sometimes it doesn't.  Etiquette, when unpacked, reveals itself not to be a system of silly rules embraced by maiden aunts but a thing of enormous moral depth.  Religious ritual may seem arbitrary, but only in the same way that "you should share those toys with your sister" seems arbitrary to a five-year-old.  Pomocons deconstruct social institutions, like the good postmodernists they are, but then they build them back up.  To offer one final example: Capitalism can be justified with the pre-modern saw "I've got mine, so to hell with the other fellow," but it can also follow from a postmodern reading of "peace on earth and goodwill toward men."  Pomocons are just as mushy and class-conscious as your average leftist; the only difference is we've read Bastiat.

We take the Left's cultural verities and twist them to conservative ends -- what could be more postmodern than that?

Frederick Greene is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where he developed his passion for social and intellectual history. After Upenn, he spent two years at a Roman Catholic seminary before realising that his vocation was not to ordained ministry, although he is still involved with several Roman Catholic charities. Greene now teaches religious studies and history at an independent secondary school in New York City, and writes freelance articles for several conservative publications.

[Editors Note: Visit the Postmodern Conservative blog for more information on the Postmodern Conservative movement]