dissent magazine Summer 2012 http://dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=4339
The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism From Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin by Corey Robin Oxford University Press, 2011, 304 pp.
Conservatism is idea driven. Its idee fixe is the defense of inequalities of wealth and power against challenges from below--that is the thesis of Corey Robin's provocative new book, The Reactionary Mind. To some this might seem familiar, even obvious. But the common opinion on the Left is that conservatives are fire-breathing idiots, who make up in heat what they lack in light. Robin's book is a welcome correction of this simplistic view and puts the debate where it ought to be: on the force and content of conservative ideas.
The Reactionary Mind is presented in two parts, but it is really composed of three. The first, comprising a substantial introduction and first chapter, advances the thesis through a brisk, sometimes virtuoso, reading and reconstruction of conservative thinking from Edmund Burke and Joseph de Maistre to Michael Oakeshott and the greater and lesser Kristols, Irving and Bill. The most absorbing, and possibly most original, aspect of Robin's discussion is of the anti-traditional, even radical, character of conservatism. If conservatives are unified by the "animus against the agency of the subordinate classes," they are not static defenders of existing institutions. For Robin, the raw power of movements for revolution and reform often cast doubt in conservative minds about the value of old hierarchies: "If a ruling class is truly fit to rule, why and how has it allowed a challenge to its power to emerge?"
On Robin's telling, conservatives have met this challenge by separating a defense of hierarchy and privilege from the blind defense of tradition. They have even showed a tendency to admire the vim and vigor of new historical actors and have often attempted to absorb and redirect them toward the creation of new relations of domination and subjection. Not only are conservatives not necessarily traditionalists, argues Robin, they often cheerfully celebrate the liquidation of an enfeebled ruling class so as to install a more vigorous and virtuous one in its place. According to Robin, "this is one of the most interesting and least understood aspects of conservative ideology. While conservatives are hostile to the goals of the left . . . they often are the left's best students." The conservative will to power also accounts for the tendency of conservatives to see violence as a regenerative force. An early chapter on Hobbes and a concluding chapter on Burke are especially strong meditations on the often violent and revolutionary character of counterrevolution and contain some of the most insightful writing of the book.
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