METRO CONS

Confessions of a Metropolitan Conservative (John Derbyshire, 5/08/03, National Review)

Yes, yes, said the lady, but where did I stand on sodomy laws? For or against?

I said I didn't see why the people of Texas shouldn't have sodomy laws if that is what they want. And having already said that I didn't see a right to sodomy in the Constitution, I didn't see how such a law could be unconstitutional...

The lady was losing patience. Would I kindly give her a straight answer? If I lived in a state that put matters to referendum via a ballot initiative, and if there was a referendum to put a law against sodomy on the books, which way would I vote?

I said I would vote against, because I don't see much point having laws on the books if you aren't prepared to send people to jail for breaking them; and sending homosexuals to jail seems to me to be a really, really silly idea.

"Ah," she said, in the tone of someone who has just had her worst expectations confirmed, "that's typical of you National Review types! Milk and water conservatives! You talk a good game, but when it comes down to it, you're just another bunch of metropolitan liberals!"

I was thinking about this all the next day. The lady had a point, of course. I seriously doubt there is anyone at National Review who would vote for a sodomy law. None of those NR writers who have declared on the matter have come out in support of such laws. That is not the same thing as saying that a state should not be permitted to have such laws, if the people of that state want them. We are mostly Tenth Amendment, strict-construction types here at NR, and I'm guessing that my position on the constitutional point is widely shared. We don't want to lock up homosexuals, though.

Now, 43 percent of respondents to a Gallup poll last May said that homosexual relations between consenting adults should not be legal. So the uncomfortable question arises: If we NR-niks are to the left of 43 percent of Americans on this issue, just what kind of conservatives are we?

It's the same with Creationism. I touched on this topic in a column a few days ago, where I called Creationism "pseudoscience." A poll conducted last March showed that 48 percent of Americans believe in Creationism, vs. only 28 percent in evolution. It happens that a couple of years ago, someone on a private e-list I belong to asked me if there were any Creationists at NR. I said I thought there was one. I had forgotten that NR had eavesdropping rights on this particular e-list. Kathy Lopez, who eagle eye never misses a thing, e-mailed me to ask who it was I had in mind. I told her. She checked. Nope, he wasn't a Creationist. To the best of my knowledge, therefore, there were no Creationists at NR, and to the best of my knowledge there are none now.

This means that on at least two points of importance to conservatives, we are to the left of vast numbers of Americans, over 40 percent in each case. So again I ask: What kind of conservatives are we? "Milk and water conservatives," according to my dinner companion.

To get it back from the institutional to the personal: look at me. I have not the slightest doubt that I am a conservative by thought, feeling and instinct, yet on a lot of the issues that define American conservatism, I barely move the needle from the zero mark on the dial. I have guns but only fire them down at the range once a month, for the satisfaction of it, and to develop confidence in handling them. I have never hunted with guns. I am only feebly religious ? feebly Episcopalian, in fact, which is feebleness squared! Homosexuality? I don't like it, and have got myself in a lot of trouble for saying so rather bluntly, but I wouldn't criminalize it. Abortion? Pretty much the same. Creationism? Sorry, I think it's pseudoscience. I'm fine with evolution.

So ? What kind of conservative am I? Taking a cue from my dinner-table accuser, I think the answer is: I'm a metropolitan conservative.

The problem is that the metropolis is antithetical to conservatism. Living conditions are antihuman--pile folk on top of one another like a Habitrail and it's no wonder the intellectuals show up to experiment with them. They aren't communities, since so few know even the people they see every day. Residents aren't true stakeholders--they're renters,, not owners, and transient almost by definition. They require massive daily influx then outflux of workers, like a human tide with the accompanying flood and undertow. The management challenge very nearly invites authoritarianism. There's too much noise, too much light, too little soil, too little wildlife, too many people, too few children, etc., etc., etc.

For the rest of us, reading the NY Times or Boston Globe is like watching a National Geographic special, the columnists like baboons picking nits off each other. It's interesting, even comical, too watch, but unserious. When the columns are reprinted in our own papers the point is not what some ivory-towered nincompoop has to say, but the letters to the editor that will follow from our peers--from Ed the guy who's a John Bircher and Edna who's worried about what it will all mean to her cats. But, live in the city and you think the nincs are your peers. Meanwhile, we know Edna and know she's crazy, but the cityfolk don't know Tom Friedman so they think he's a genius.

Sodomy? Well, if you live in the city and you're surrounded by it, what choice do you have but to accept it. If you have to walk past the Ramrod just to get to your subway stop and you allow yourself to think about it you'll come to loathe your own home. That seems like a recipe for misery.

As for evolution, well, to the urbanites a National Geographic special is amazing in its own right, all those undreamt and mysterious aspects of unfathomable nature. Why, if that lizard really can stand up and run with his neck flaps all puffed out, we may as well believe just about anything they tell us to. The city is so divorced from the rhythms and realities of nature that any theory that explains it all must be grasped like a straw in the wind. Live in the country, on the other hand, and not only are the simple facts of predation nd selective breeding a commonplace, it's just as likely that your own brother has impregnated a cow. That takes away a fair bit of the mystery of how species change.

So, inevitably, when you add it all together, the conservatism of the city dweller takes just one form: Leave me alone. I'll accept the pathologies around me as normal and mouth any politically correct nonsense that's demanded of me, just keep enough cops on the street so that I don't get mugged. Everybody do their own thing and just let me get from my apartment to my office in one piece every day. "Can't we all just get along?"

But "I won't bother you if you don't bother me" makes for a rather meager political philosophy, and a tragically short-sighted vision of what life can be, does it not? Posted by Orrin Judd at May 8, 2003 4:31 PM