Irritable mental gestures

I need to keep this quote handy from Lionel Trilling’s The Liberal Imaginination (1950):

In the United States at this time Liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition. For it is the plain fact that nowadays there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation. This does not mean, of course, that there is no impulse to conservatism or to reaction. Such impulses are certainly very strong, perhaps even stronger than most of us know. But the conservative impulse and the reactionary impulse do not, with some isolated and ecclesiastical exceptions, express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.

Trilling of course neglects to distinguish liberalism from leftism there, which frustrates leftists (including me). The Left do not lack for an intellectual tradition; if anything, the Left is plagued with too much intellectual tradition. But I forgive Trilling since his turn of phrase is so vivid and I imagine him offering a vigorous argument that in 1950 there was no meaningful American Left to talk about.

I learned this turn of phrase from a long essay which is perhaps the single most clarifying thing I have had about the intellectual bankruptcy of conservatism in the US, talking about conservative David Frum’s book Dead Right (1995).

What Frum has got, to repeat, is just a feeling that the kids these days are getting a bit soft. Everyone feels this way sometimes, of course – since it’s true. But some people have thoughts as well as feelings about this attendant effect of civilization. And so it turns out Lionel Trilling was maybe not such a poor prophet after all, when he wrote way back in 1953: “in the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition;” for the anti-liberals do not, by and large, “express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.” Irritable mental gestures. Yep. Frum.

OK. Trilling too strong. I do concede there are serious conservative thinkers and intellectuals. I make a point of reading – and I quite enjoy reading - quite a number of quite conservative writers and thinkers, and I hope I am smart enough to learn from them when I should. But it is seriously easy to pretend you’ve got a conservative philosophy when really you’re armed with nothing but irritable gestures.

(Frum has acquitted himself surprisingly well as a Never Trump’er, and his reward has of course been estrangement from the conservative movement and the Republican Party.)