I imagine I am not the only Republican/conservative who is pained by the rightward lurch of the GOP, or of that movement’s reactionary shock troops, the Tea Partistas. I am equally dismayed, however, by the Democratic response to it: an institutionalized Occupy movement as a new radical force designed to “counterbalance” the reactionary right.

Tit-for-tat extremism is no basis on which to build a stable polity. It is, however, a great way to bring to America the political deadlock of Weimar Germany, and we all know how that turned out for both Germany and the world.

The appropriate response to the Tea Party is reasoned dialogue driven by a better, more attractive vision that will neuter the shrill “burn it all” demagoguery of the reactionary right. We need to build a big tent under which the vast majority of Americans can be comfortable knowing that the nation is on a strong course for the future, a future where we agree on the same principles and spend our energies debating how best to put those principles into action.

We have a choice: a nation in decline that is gridlocked by extremists, or the systematic neutering of the extremists through a clear, practical, and attractive vision, even if that means having to compromise and break bread with some Democrats.

I’m for the latter. Who else is on board?

As it turns out, we do not have to reach too far back into the past of conservatism to find a movement that parallels what the Tea Party and its backers have become: the John Birch Society.

The JBS was a movement born in the heat of late-195os anti-Communism. Mind you, this was not the kind of anti-communism that said “we need to be vigilant against the infiltration of our government and armed forces by agents of our global rivals,” or “we need to ensure that the kind of government that rules in the USSR and China is never given purchase in America.” Rather, this was the kind of anti-communism that attacked President Dwight D. Eisenhower as an agent of communist conspiracy. It was, in short, paranoid-nutcase anti-communism that eerily echoed the ravings of the author of Mein Kampf.

But the Birch Society did not stop there. It declared government an enemy of freedom, and repudiated the Progressive era of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson as the beginnings of totalitarianism. Obviously, nobody explained to the Birchers why political corruption and commercial monopolies were bad, why women’s suffrage and standards for medical and legal education were good, and why having a railroad control the California state government worked against everything American.

The Birchers obviously made liberals absolutely nuts, but they really scared conservatives who saw the Society taking the country into a reactionary direction. A very small cadre of conservatives stood against them, including William F. Buckley, Jr.

The leading intellectual spokesman and organizer of the anti-Bircher conservatives was William F. Buckley, Jr., the editor of National Review. Buckley was by no means moderate in his conservatism. He was a lifelong defender of Joseph McCarthy and a foe of New Deal liberalism. But he drew the line at claiming that the course of American government was set by a socialist conspiracy, and he feared that the ravings of the extreme right would cost more balanced, practical conservatives their chance at national power. “By 1961,” his biographer John B. Judis writes, “Buckley was beginning to worry that with the John Birch Society growing so rapidly, the right-wing upsurge in the country would take an ugly, even Fascist turn rather than leading toward the kind of conservatism National Review had promoted.”

via Glenn Beck, the Tea Party, and the Republicans : The New Yorker.

I suspect that were he alive today, Bill Buckley and I would agree on much and disagree on a lot, but I give him a lot of credit for quietly drowning the John Birch Society and marginalizing them as a political force in the country.

The way Buckley pulled that off was through a combination of activism and advocacy: activism in his support of a conservatism with broad appeal, and advocacy in his efforts to create a forum wherein ideas could replace demagoguery on the right.

That Bill Buckley is not here today is sad, but I feel that the people who need to take up his mantle need to do so with a conservatism that addresses the challenges of our age, that appeals to a broad scope of Americans, and that shows the Tea Party to be nothing more than a recycling of the same old scourge of John Birchers.

Related articles

• The Strange Death of the Republican Moderate – New York Times (nytimes.com)
• Ron Paul Addresses the John Birch Society (jlue.wordpress.com)
• The Paranoid Wing Of The Tea Party (outsidethebeltway.com)

The WSJ has an annoying tendency to cuddle up to the far right on its editorial page, so it was refreshing to read in the paper’s obituary of Dr. James Q. Wilson a contemplation of a brand of conservatism it has previously ignored or belittled.

Noting that Wilson was best known for the “broken windows” approach to law enforcement that has helped New York and other cities turn the tide against crime, the Journal’s editors postulate:

One reason Wilson’s ideas were successful—welfare reform is among his other policy contributions—is that they were grounded in data, hard facts and the evidence of experience. But his empiricism was special because it always respected the complexity and contingency that prevails in the real world. Few phrases in the English language are responsible for as much bad thinking as “studies show” or “research suggests.” If Wilson was guided by good evidence, not ideology, he also understood its limits.

via Review & Outlook: James Q. Wilson – WSJ.com.

That’s an important distinction: policy guided by good evidence, not ideology, and an understanding of the limits of empirical studies. His approach to policy leaves us a foundation on which to build a 21st century progressive conservatism.

Related articles

• James Q. Wilson (online.wsj.com)
• R.I.P. James Q. Wilson (crimeinfocus.wordpress.com)
• James Q. Wilson Dead at 80 (outsidethebeltway.com)
• James Q. Wilson’s RINO Phase (thedailybeast.com)
• James Q. Wilson’s Moral Sense (american.com)
• Linda Flanagan: Appreciating James Q. Wilson (huffingtonpost.com)