"CONSERVATIVE MOVIES" CONT. In comments to the previous post, a careful reader points out that Brookhiser said "most conservative" rather than "best conservative" movies, a small but not irrelevant distinction.

Giving Brookhiser and those guys some slack (probably undeserved, but New Year's resolutions are still fresh in my mind), it may be that they realize a work by a gay Marxist like Visconti could evince a world view that conservatives might embrace. (I wonder what Brookhiser thinks of "The Damned," though.) A work of art presents a world view, not a bill of political particulars (unless the artist is particularly tendentious and cloying, or a satirist). I like Evelyn Waugh, for example, not because I buy his personal Tory bullshit, but because books like Decline and Fall and Scoop take a mordant view of the follies of men to which I strongly relate. They're also funny and well-crafted. What's not to like?

Also, when NR types talk about conservatism in the abstract, they define it so broadly that nearly anything fits. That's especially true of Goldberg when he starts talking about Burke, as in this passage from a dissection of (believe it or not) "Animal House":

But for the purposes of this discussion -- and for modern conservatism generally -- the most important aspect of Burkean thought is his view of tradition and change. Burke recognized the need for reform (the lack of it, he believed, forced the American colonists to revolt) and he did not fear change... But he thought haste in the realm of reform led to even greater injustice than deliberate inaction... Burke simply didn't trust the problem-solvers. No single individual is smart enough to impose changes on society willy-nilly.

Well, if that's conservatism, sign me up! This is cool-kid conservatism's version of "big-tent" Republicanism. One might call it Jeff Foxworthy Conservatism: if you're in favor of prudence and against heedless reform, y'all might a conservative!

It's a way of making the movement attractive to people who balk at its strictures on, to take one glaring example, gay marriage, which is why we find gaycon Andrew Sullivan throwing props to Neil Boortz -- the guy wants a ban on gay adoptions, but he hasn't specifically called for homosexual heads on pikes, so they're Burkean brothers, y'see.

This kind of woolly thinking has led to the ridiculous, forced phenomena of "South Park Republicanism" and "Crunchy Conservatism." And it's probably why they see validation of their world-view in movies that they like.

It's all good fun, as my mother used to say, until someone loses a legislative agenda. And it may be why many conservatives, historically tight with a buck, are relatively phlegmatic about the big-spending Bush adminisitration. Never mind the hypocracy and the ruination of our economy -- we said fuck you to France, how cool is that? Pass the popcorn.

comments please