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1/ The left-conservative intellectual tradition: a thread. Feat. Daniel Bell, Nathan Glazer, Christopher Lasch, Mike Lind @GoodwinMJ @David_Goodhart @JohnBJudis @WilliamClouston @shadihamid @sullydish @Edsall @Phillip_Blond @blue_labour @Fox_Claire @PatrickDeneen @aaronsibarium
2/ In 1979, Daniel Bell, a key figure with roots in the mainly Jewish, anti-communist left 'New York Intellectuals' of the 1930s-60s wrote of the way cultural liberalism was reshaping the political map - precisely what is happening now
3/ His critique of the 'New Class', ancestor of Goodhart's 'Anywheres' and Piketty's 'Brahmin Left' drew on that of fellow New York Intellectual Lionel Trilling, who remarked, in 1965, on the expansion of an intellectual 'adversary culture' into universities & major institutions
4/ Bell tracked a major shift in western intellectual life, between a prewar period, when there was a strong conservative (and fascist) element among the intellectuals, to their discrediting post-1945. Conservatives were now largely gone from respectable high culture.
5/ Critics of the 'New Class' sometimes backed the Republicans (Irving Kristol, Kevin Phillips), while most were centre-left Democrats (Daniel P Moynihan, Bell, Nathan Glazer)
6/ The left-conservative critics focused on New Class elitism, its detachment from the working-class, and its hostility to tradition. Bell, along with Peter Berger, were most concerned with religion. Nathan Glazer, along with Phillips, worried about the loss of national tradition
7/ The social conservatives were joined by Christopher Lasch in the 1970s and 80s.
Bell's letter to me in 1995 (then a PhD student at LSE lamenting his absence from LSE's Sociology syllabii) refers to a 1993 article by Russell Nieli on Lasch & Bell:
https://www.scribd.com/document/48471132/Social-Conservatives-of-the-Left-Collier-Lasch-and-Bell-Russell-Nieli
Bell's letter to me in 1995 (then a PhD student at LSE lamenting his absence from LSE's Sociology syllabii) refers to a 1993 article by Russell Nieli on Lasch & Bell:
https://www.scribd.com/document/48471132/Social-Conservatives-of-the-Left-Collier-Lasch-and-Bell-Russell-Nieli
8/ The Republican Party's embrace of religious fundamentalism, militarism and tax cuts benefiting the wealthy alienated populist intellectuals from this tradition like Kevin Phillips, as John Judis explains in this retrospective: https://carnegieendowment.org/2006/05/22/kevin-phillips-ex-populist-elite-model-pub-18360
9/ In 1995, Judis, along with Michael Lind, who founded the centrist New America think tank, wrote 'For a New Nationalism', arguing Clinton was aping the Republicans by endorsing free trade, and criticized his multiculturalism & affirmative action agenda https://newrepublic.com/article/104783/new-nationalism
10/ Meanwhile my doctoral dissertation examiner, 'New York Intellectual' Nathan Glazer, had emerged as a trenchant critic of both affirmative action (1975): https://www.amazon.co.uk/Affirmative-Discrimination-Ethnic-Inequality-Public/dp/0674007301
and multicultural education (1997): https://www.amazon.co.uk/We-are-All-Multiculturalists-Now/dp/0674948513/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=we+are+all+multiculturalists+now&qid=1589821523&s=books&sr=1-1
and multicultural education (1997): https://www.amazon.co.uk/We-are-All-Multiculturalists-Now/dp/0674948513/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=we+are+all+multiculturalists+now&qid=1589821523&s=books&sr=1-1
11/ In 1995, Glazer worried about immigration: 'I think one of the great yearnings of Americans today is for more stability. One thing that immigration inevitably brings is a lack of stability.' Lind criticized 'massive immigration overburdening the institutions of assimilation'
12/ In 2004, @David_Goodhart, influenced by Lind as well as Robert Putnam, wrote his pathbreaking & controversial 'Is Britain too Diverse' essay in Prospect, the UK's leading centre-left intellectual magazine, which Goodhart founded in 1995: https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/too-diverse-david-goodhart-multiculturalism-britain-immigration-globalisation
13/ I later met Goodhart & was fortunate to have him, Glazer, Lind, Geoff Mulgan, John Patrick Diggins & Joseph Dormon to a conference I organized in London on the Legacy of the New York Intellectuals. A major theme was the left-conservative tradition: http://www.sneps.net/uploadsepk/NYI.htm
14/ Meanwhile my LSE doctoral supervisor, the late Anthony Smith, defended the cultural value of nations. Though a liberal, he was a practicing Jew & thus never on the same wavelength as Hobsbawm or Gellner. One who knew him well is Steven Grosby, who also influenced @yhazony
15/ As globalization took hold in the 1990s, distaste for New Class detachment from the masses morphed into the Lind-Judis-Lasch critique of elites' post-nationalism. As Bell noted, the adversary culture was progressing, generation-by-generation, through universities & beyond
16/ Many authors in the left-conservative tradition hark back to the Populist-Progressive era (esp. late 1880s-1920s), when social reformers sought to address problems linked to growth & inequality thru reforms, inc. slow immigration to enable assimilation & forge national unity
17/ Recent books by @David_Goodhart, Lind, @JohnBJudis, @NJ_Timothy, @GoodwinMJ @BillGalston Mark Lilla, @amychua @yhazony Yael Tamir @PatrickDeneen & others suggests that the left-conservative nationalist intellectual tradition is enjoying a major revival and efflorescence /End
