Your Email:

Subject:

Message:
Entry: A response to my critics Link: http://www.takimag.com/sniperstower/article/a_response_to_my_critics#26814 Post contents: Although it is not my intention to tout my own horn, at least not on this website, Austin would do well to consult my recent monograph on conservatism,which will be discussed at a forthcoming Liberty Fund seminar. In that work I call into question the leisure practice of assigning "conservative" labels as a conceptual exercise without noticing social contexts. "Conservative" and "liberals" are nineteenth-century political markers. They pertain to the reaction to the French Revolution and to the political ascent of the bourgeoisie. They are not eternal descriptions of dispositions or of the shifting politics of the National Review and The New Republic. I for one am not a "conservative" because the term, although I use it as a courtesy, is now a total anachronism. Rightwing is however not,because at least some of us are reacting from the right to the neocon and social engineering left. One could attack or defend Lincoln from the right,although the current celebration of the Great Emancipator is an act of leftist self-affirmation. Sent at: 2008 12 02