Conservatives and Conservatism

Nicholas Mosvick has worked within and on behalf of the American conservative intellectual movement for many years.  He has witnessed several variations of one central fight on the right: what is conservatism? 

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Transcript

Michael Lee: [00:00:00] When We Disagree is a show about arguments. How we have them, why we have them, and their impact on our relationships and ourselves. The Rhetorica ad Herennium. Is a 2, 000 year old text on the art of persuasion that is deeply relevant today. One of the landmark concepts in the book that still influences the way we argue with one another is called the five canons of rhetoric.

Michael Lee: Invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. Let's talk about arrangement, or how to organize a memorable argument. This is the first writing we have about one of the most discussed and researched topics in movies. Think about plot sequencing, plays, think about third act problems, TV shows, think about jumping the shark, and even advertising.

Michael Lee: Even think about the ways that many of us are taught how to write. The five paragraph essay or, in public speaking, the [00:01:00] adage to tell the audience what you're going to tell them, then to tell them, then to tell the audience what you've already told them. Near replicas of these ideas are in this ancient book which recommended that all speeches have the following parts, and I'm about to butcher the Latin on this.

Michael Lee: The exordium, or the introduction of your topic, the narratio, the thesis or the main takeaway of the speech, the divizio, the conclusion. The preview of the main arguments, the confirmatio, the body of the address, and the refutatio, noting that some might disagree and then rebutting their potential counterclaims, and then finally the conclusio, a memorable statement of the basic ideas so that the audience feels the gravity and urgency of the situation the speaker's talking about.

Michael Lee: I'm Michael Lee, Professor of Communication and Director of the Civility Initiative. At the College of Charleston. Our guest today on When We Disagree is Nicholas Mosvick. Nicholas is the Buckley Legacy Project Manager for National Review [00:02:00] Institute. His writing can be found in Fusion Magazine, among other outlets.

Michael Lee: Nicholas, tell us an argument story. 

Nicholas Mosvick: Okay. Thank you, Michael, for that, uh, wonderful introduction. So, uh, what I want to talk about is one of the most important, if not the most salient, uh, intraconservative dispute both today and in the recent past. So, in my work, uh, I, as you might imagine, Do a lot to think about Bill Buckley is the founder of the modern American conservative movement and, uh, what was known as fusionism.

Nicholas Mosvick: Um, and to understand fusionism to understand this, this notion of, uh, that was behind the creation of the modern American conservative movement. You have to understand this dispute. In other words, why would fusion be necessary in the first place if fusion was sort of this, [00:03:00] um, somewhat arcane, uh, metaphor, uh, for competing interests?

Nicholas Mosvick: Now, uh, that's, that's a way of taking from, uh, the great, uh, uh, Brent Bozell, who coined the term, uh, is, is a critique. Uh, Frank Meyer. Now, those, those two gentlemen worked at National Review in the 1950s and 1960s together, and, uh, Brent Bozell's point was that, uh, to bring together conservatism and libertarianism, uh, was nonsense because they were antithetical to each other.

Nicholas Mosvick: Therefore, Fusion was a sort of way of saying, uh, you can't actually, these, these are things like in an atom, where if you put them together, then actually they will collide and explode. Yeah, exactly. Um, and, uh, the, the proposition of those who were in support of this, Let's suppose a fusion and say, no, no, no, actually, uh, libertarianism and conservatism or really not just libertarianism, but classical liberalism were [00:04:00] reconciled, right?

Nicholas Mosvick: So this is, this is a key debate that is over 60 years. Um, old in terms of what is American conservatism and can these notions of classical liberalism that is a, uh, an 18th or 19th century notion of liberalism based on, um, things like the rule of law. Um, the freedom of the individual can be reconciled with conservatism, which is normally thought of as sort of a disposition as opposed to an ideological, uh, program.

Michael Lee: How does this dispute show up? You work, you're the Buckley Legacy Project Manager for National Review Institute. National Review has long been the house organ of American conservatism since the 1950s. How does this dispute show up in your work, not just as a kind of. interesting philosophical puzzle, but in your day to day or in conferences that you host, or in articles that you review, or [00:05:00] just take us through that.

Nicholas Mosvick: Yeah. So I think it's, it's, it's, it's a way of showing how we're not just doing the past, but we're, we're dealing with the present, right. Which is one of the reasons we look Or at least I think it's worth looking to these, these past disputes precisely because, uh, they never really went away. One of, one of the ways of sort of thinking about the ebbs and flows of American conservatism is that a, uh, a key factor in keeping the, the coalition together, right, this, this fusion was anti communism.

Nicholas Mosvick: Um, and, uh, one of the historical explanations for the sort of the breakdown of the American conservative movement was the end of the Cold War. Um, in other words, once the Cold War ended, Uh, in anti communism ceased to be this glue that held the, uh, movement together. Those old disputes, which were always still there, right, um, [00:06:00] came back to the surface, particularly between, uh, neoconservatives who were, uh, uh, former liberals who, uh, joined the movement in the 1970s and 1980s.

Nicholas Mosvick: And then, uh, people called themselves paleoconservatives. 

Michael Lee: They 

Nicholas Mosvick: found themselves as traditional conservatives before the 1950s and the 1960s, um, in that mold, right? And so that started coming to the surface after the end of the Cold War. I think today you see that very much alive. Um, now the titles that the various factions give themselves have changed.

Nicholas Mosvick: Paleo conservative itself, of course, was a way of single filing sort of before, you know, I, it's sort of, um, like, before the flood, right? Uh, it's, um, so it's kind of a way of saying that, no, no, no, we're, we're a different tradition, right? And that's what these used things usually signify. So today it's, um, the, the factions call themselves [00:07:00] national conservatives, uh, freedom conservatives, and, uh, even some call themselves post liberals.

Michael Lee: Yeah. Let's, let's talk about the reconciliation of those two polls and the degree to which it can work for a political movement, despite its philosophical inconsistency. So on the one hand, we have a position that says, I should be able to pursue my freedom so long as my freedom does not impinge upon your freedom.

Michael Lee: Full stop. End of story. And then another side says, no, there are moral goods in the universe that are objective, that all of human societies and individuals should on some level be beholden to. And if you're pursuing a freedom against those goods, you are unvirtuous in some way, shape or form. The question is, can those two ever become one in a kind of God and markets conservatism?

Michael Lee: And then the [00:08:00] second question is independent of whether it's reconcilable, which from the way I've rendered it, it seems really hard. I've spent a long time trying to reconcile them and can't in my academic work. But second, can people who believe in those two very different ideas get along well enough?

Michael Lee: to behave as one in a common political movement. What's your sense of both those questions? One, does it work? And two, is it reconcilable to you? 

Nicholas Mosvick: Yeah, the, the, the philosophical question is, is difficult precisely because it, I think it was 160 some years ago. I mean, Orestes Brownson wrote about this, um, and, uh, many of his essays and his, his, his great work, The American Republic.

Nicholas Mosvick: Um, so these aren't really even the first thinkers to consider this. Uh, possible quandary, which is you talking about, um, the difference between, um, what would became known as capitalism and sort of, uh, uh, an economic freedom based on property rights. So [00:09:00] he was saying like, look, I mean, there's a difference between sort of exploitive, uh, exploitative, um, capitalism in the sense of if your one highest value becomes simply making money, um, then that becomes a problem because it actually, what it does is it works against your ability to maintain traditions and the sorts of freedom that you actually thought were necessary to keeping the Republic, right?

Nicholas Mosvick: In other words, Uh, his point would have been that, uh, there's a difference between, uh, thinking property rights are the key and defending capitalism per se, right? That those things aren't necessarily the same thing. Um, and I think that's also a way of pointing out part of our confusion long term is, is the way with the degree to which we've forgotten the difference between those things.

Nicholas Mosvick: over time, right? So if we, we go all the way forward, um, I, I think [00:10:00] that's part of why your first question is actually so difficult because really what it is, is actually, it's an ontological question in the sense that it's, if you think that, um, that God made the universe and that morality is objective and true, and there are punishments and rewards for what we do and the choices we make.

Nicholas Mosvick: Then freedom itself is based on that ontological proposition. In other words, the freedom is not simply, uh, Millsian in the sense of, um, and in the harm principle, um, because the harms themselves are not defined by the individual, they're defined objectively. Um, and if that's true, and you think therefore virtue and, uh, the creation of a moral, uh, uh, moral society according to the existing moral propositions that derive from God, then you have a very different idea of what freedom is, um, I think.[00:11:00] 

Nicholas Mosvick: Now to the second question, is a political project, I think that that's what Bill Buckley was getting at. What Bill Buckley was trying to do is, okay, Frank Meyer, uh, philo, uh, your philosophical project. Keep doing that, but I'm going to try to do the groundwork of, um, to actually make this work isn't really just a philosophical project because that may or may not work, but what we actually have to do is build a coalition politically, um, and socially, culturally.

Nicholas Mosvick: How do we do that? We, we make institutions, uh, we make parties, uh, we, we do all sorts of things that make that work. Uh, and the other thing that, uh, Bill pointed out in one of his more famous essays, uh, which was on the question of can an atheist basically be a conservative, um, uh, in his answer to that was, well, it depends.

Nicholas Mosvick: On whether or not they maintain a certain, uh, certain respect and understanding and [00:12:00] veneration for those, those ontological propositions. In other words, if they, they, as he put it, if they're a God hater, then it's impossible. If they don't 

Michael Lee: like religious people, then it's difficult to find space. Yes. And let's talk about the brass tacks of this a little bit, because whether this dispute is over Christians versus atheistic, agnostic libertarians.

Michael Lee: Or whether the dispute is over kind of capitalist versus communalists, you know, how should society be organized first with the community or first with the individual, we're still talking about a huge split on the right, but the way that this shows up in most people's lives who haven't read these relatively obscure essays and books is in politics or politicians or American presidents or what the Republican party is doing.

Michael Lee: In any way, shape, and form. And it seems very clear to a lot of us that the party can be pulled in two different directions because conservatism is pulled in two different directions. One is towards [00:13:00] libertarian pro business, laissez faire economics, or even corporate kinds of welfare, or, or towards the religious right to use a kind of catch all term for that.

Michael Lee: And so to many of us on the outside, looking in who don't work for the Republican party or the conservative movement in any way, shape, or form. It can seem like, well, which Republican party is going to show up in a future administration, a Republican party that looks more libertarian in a kind of Barry Goldwater ish union busting Reagan kind of a way, a cold warrior internationalist Reagan plus George W.

Michael Lee: Bush kind of a way, a national first make America great again, kind of a way like Trump or some fusion of all three. Or an even more aggressive Mike Pence, Christian nationalist kind of way. So how does this, how does, how does this show up for you? How do these tensions you see in the philosophy of [00:14:00] conservatism show up in conservative politics on the ground?

Nicholas Mosvick: Yeah, I, I, I think it's actually something interesting. I came out in your question and I don't know that this was on purpose, uh, but it struck me, which is one way to even describe. Um, sort of the new Republican party and the, and Trump himself as a political figure is it is in some ways, perhaps a new fusion.

Nicholas Mosvick: And what I mean by that is, uh, there are disparate elements and that coalition and that idea of politics, um, that assessment, I'm not sure has been made that often, but nonetheless, I think that that's, that's true. And just in the way that, um, uh, the success of the first fusion. Um, politically, uh, was, was Nixon in 1968.

Nicholas Mosvick: I mean, you have Bill Buckley's run for mayor in 1965 of New York City, which is very important. Um, but really the, the, the first, [00:15:00] uh, you know, two major Republican politicians ran on similar platforms who won. One is Nixon in 1968. The other is Ronald Reagan for governor of California in 1966. Similar platforms.

Nicholas Mosvick: Yes, yes, precisely. Um, but are those also somewhat disparate? Uh, elements in terms of the underlying philosophy, uh, having some difficulties, I think that's true. Uh, how do you maintain that, uh, and maintain that balance? It's a, it's a difficult one. I think it's actually also precisely why you see on the right today, um, such energy in these disputes.

Nicholas Mosvick: Uh, trying to figure them out and, and trying to see we have political success. And a rising movement, but what is the underlying philosophy? Is it more communal? Is it more, um, is it more libertarian? Which is it? And sometimes the answer [00:16:00] seems that in part, it depends on the particular issue or, or, or policy question, right?

Nicholas Mosvick: If you look at Trump, this is a support for Trump, even for instance, you will find traditional conservatives. Libertarians, uh, former, uh, Reagan fusionist type people, and you'll find people very much against him who also fit those descriptions or, uh, and, and therefore that even that kind of support tells you something about, um, to build coalitions in American, uh, the American constitutional political tradition.

Nicholas Mosvick: Always requires this, and therefore, in some sense, Madison remains right. 

Michael Lee: Let me close on a personal note here. So you have spent much of your professional career, not just studying, but participating in this, to put it maybe in an exaggerated way, a kind of like royal rumble on the right. There's many, many fighters [00:17:00] for the soul of American conservatism.

Michael Lee: And at any one point, some are winning and some are losing, but the fight continues to go on. The rumble remains. Why does this fight matter so much to American conservatives? And more specifically to you, why does this fight matter so much to you? 

Nicholas Mosvick: Yeah. Um, I don't want to hold those things together if I don't have to, in part, because, um, I think in fairness, one conservative value is, uh, trying to maintain humility, right?

Nicholas Mosvick: Um, to some degree, it's not terribly about me. Um, so the reason I care is in part because to be a conservative. And, uh, the Bill Buckley mold is to care about gratitude and, uh, to really put that highly and gratitude comes, I think, in part from trying to follow humility as much as possible. And to think that things that we inherited are so [00:18:00] valuable, important, and, uh, took so long to mold and to fight for and to create, and then, you know, as the famous phrase goes, uh, easy to, um, destroy.

Nicholas Mosvick: Difficult to create, uh, when you recognize that, right, um, that the things that are most valuable, um, are, are hard to preserve, uh, then I think that's in part going to spur your, your desire to do something better, be interested in it, um, uh, but I think the other part is, um, this, my scholarly background is history and I, so I'm naturally drawn, uh, to the war over ideas.

Nicholas Mosvick: and who we are and what it is exactly that we're preserving. So, and in some ways, I think it's, it also just derives from my interest in, um, fights that exist even amongst historians, right? Which is what ideas, um, what propositions are behind this nation? What is it we're still fighting about? Well, I care about that too.

Nicholas Mosvick: I may, I [00:19:00] may care about it from a somewhat different point of view, but I think essentially in many ways, it's also what the right continues to fight about. And so it's not just about current politics, but a fight over the meaning of our inheritance and which propositions underlying. underline the foundations of this country in the first place.

Nicholas Mosvick: And so it's a, um, it's a political battle and it's a current battle, but it's also one about ideas and in history and moral values. And I think there couldn't be a more conservative fight in that sense. 

Michael Lee: Nicholas, thank you so much for being on When We Disagree. All right. Thank you very much, Michael. When We Disagree is recorded at the College of Charleston with creator and host Michael Lee.

Michael Lee: Recording and sound engineering by Jesse Kunz and Lance Laidlaw. Reach out to us at whenwedisagree at gmail. [00:20:00] com.