Conservatives Without Conscience

Austin W. Bramwell, one of the best and brightest of the new generation of conservatives, laments the great quantity of information about conservatism that has little quality, as he explained in the magazine for traditional conservatives, The American Conservative. Bramwell says that “whereas 50 years ago the American Right boasted several political theorists destined to exert a lasting influence, today it has not one to its credit.” He adds that “conservatism has reached an unacknowledged consensus about the outcome of the theoretical debates of the ’50s and ’60s. The consensus holds, first, that someone has discovered the Holy Grail that will vindicate conservatism once and for all, otherwise why be a conservative in the first place? Second, it holds that, whatever the Grail actually is, it does not do any good to describe it with too much specificity. These beliefs contradict each other, yet the conservative consensus has proved remarkably stable.”[76] This is a highly accurate assessment of conservative thinking.

Who is Austin Bramwell? To begin with, he is Sarah Bramwell’s husband.[77] Sarah is another well-credentialed young conservative, a former chairperson of the Conservative Party of the Yale Political Union, a former senior editor of a Yale University journal of conservative opinion, a former associate editor of the National Review, a former deputy press secretary to Colorado’s Republican governor Bill Owens, and a featured speaker at the fortieth anniversary of the Philadelphia Society, which has been described by the New York Times as “a prestigious club for conservative intellectuals.”[78] The Bramwells were married at the Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest in New York, so they do not appear to be conservative Catholics or evangelical Christians. Austin, at twenty-six, became the youngest member of the board of trustees of the National Review, taking his seat when founder Bill Buckley relinquished control of the journal in June 2004. Austin had written for National Review throughout his years as an undergraduate at Yale and at Harvard Law (2003), where he was an officer in the school’s chapter of the Federalist Society. After clerking with Judge Timothy M. Tymkovich of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit (a Bush II appointee who sits on the bench in Denver), Austin joined the trusts and estates division of the prestigious New York City law firm Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy. The Bramwells’ intelligence is conspicuous and their dedication to conservatism has been steadfast. The Bramwells are the future of American conservatism. Where do these young conservatives believe conservatism should be focusing its energy?

Sarah Bramwell shared her thoughts at the Philadelphia Society’s national meeting. She began by noting that the early goals of modern conservatism were to “defeat Communism and roll back creeping socialism.” Today neither remains relevant, she acknowledged. As for future foreign affairs, she explained that “articulating and defending some kind of international policy is not the major goal of conservatism in the next forty years.” Domestically, conservatives can continue to “nibble away” at the administrative state (read: “creeping socialism”), but she accepts the fact that the administrative state is “here to stay.” So what comes next? “Well, since the 1960s, the conservative movement took on a third goal, namely winning the culture wars,” by which she means, “everything from preserving traditional morality, to passing on the Western inheritance, to preserving a distinctly American common culture, to resisting the threat posed by biotechnology to human nature itself.” And what must conservatives do to win these wars? Sarah believes they must continue to “make the case against such things as gay marriage, stem-cell research, open borders, and our hideous suburban sprawl.” Because her time was limited, she focused on the terrible job conservatives were doing on “the cultural battle of our age”—gay marriage.[79] Sarah left no doubt where she sees the battles, and her husband is of like mind.