Think Tank Purposes, Left and Right: "more of an echo chamber of Heritage"

Jonah Goldberg :

[T]his is what you get when you copy the form of, say, the Heritage Foundation, without actually understanding the function. Places like the Center for American Progress ( allegedly "the liberal Heritage Foundation)" were explicitly created to mimic what self-styled progressives believe to be the vast rightwing conspiracy (It was the same agenda that brought us Air America). In one sense, they were great at mimicking all this stuff, but like the aliens in Galaxy Quest they lacked a certain level of understanding of how this stuff works internally to these organizations. For instance, they don't seem to understand that the purpose of institutions like the Heritage Foundation is to make the White House and Congress more of an echo chamber of Heritage, not the other way around.

Rush Limbaugh, Disliked Because He Is Not Partisan Enough

Jay Nordlinger in NR is good on Rush Limbaugh. One reason Limbaugh irritates people, I think, is precisely that he uses remorseless logic to rub it in when liberals go wrong. The other reason is that he uses humor. In both, he doesn't pull his punches when he decides to go after something, and he has far more substance than more timid pundits. Ann Coulter is much the same in her style, except that she is more pointed and sarcastic. Both are also really unconcerned about winning elections. It is actually the more partisan Republicans who can't stand them, because the partisans want to sound moderate so as to get swing voters. Also, the partisans think you should never criticize other Republicans.

One thing Rush has always been happy to do is engage with ideas.

Are his critics willing to engage with him? Or just sneer and resent?

Rush has had a considerable influence on people, for the good, I believe. In my time at National Review, I’ve interviewed a lot of young people, for jobs — internships and junior editorships. And I often ask how they became a conservative (presuming they are). And a good many people have said — sometimes sheepishly — “I listened to Rush Limbaugh.” And a good many of those have said, “I listened to Rush behind my parents’ back.”

Are these dumb kids who hate books and long to join up with the Klan? Not on your life — they are among the fanciest: Ivy Leaguers, brainiacs, world-beaters.

Whigs and Tories, Tradition and Progress

Reading Prof. Henry Smith's "Community and Custom in Property" working paper I thought of some different ways of thinking about tradition and progress. This was shortly after I was grousing yet again about how badly designed car radios are nowadays compared to the past. With digital tuning, we don't have the quick and easy controls of analog tuning, where the dial was round and quick and the pretuned buttons stuck out so you could punch them without taking your eyes off the wheel. I consoled myself with the idea that after 20 years or so the engineers would figure this out. That made me realize that progress is just the establishment of tradition-- which takes time. Starting from zero-- as one does after an innovation--- it takes time to build up a tradition. Till you have the tradition built up, change is desirable. Once you have the tradition, it's time to stop making changes unless some radically new and good innovation is found. But a fondness for tradition and a belief in progress are not incompatible.

The four parties of Victorian Britain illustrate different combinations of liking for tradition and for progress.

The Tories--- the mainstream Conservatives--- favored no change. They admired the old and disliked the new.

The Whigs--- the mainstream Liberals--- favored gradual change. They were neutral on the old and the new. They liked both tradition and progress.

The Radicals--- the left Liberals--- favored big changes. They hated the old and loved the new.

The Tory Democracy--- the "Fourth Party" of Randolph Churchill--- favored big changes. They admired the old, but rather liked the new too, as supportive of the old. Bismarck would perhaps be in this category. (They were actually not called the 4th party because of my categories here, but because the Conservatives, Liberals, and Irish Nationalists were three parties and Churchill and friends were rather like Newt Gingrich and the young House Republicans, wanting to be much more barbed and inconvenient with the ruling Liberals than their senior party members thought proper.)

I'm a Whig myself. In England, they went over to the Tory PM Salisbury, if I remember correctly, after Gladstone allied the Liberals with the Irish Nationalists, and the Whigs were absorbed into the Conservative Party. Hayek liked to call himself a Whig too.