Your interview makes it clear that Princeton should have never hired and then given tenure to Cornel West, a scatter brain gadfly who cannot think straight. Hopefully this marks the beginning of the end of a toxic brand of racial politics when one of its prime spokesmen can only spout rubbish. He comes across so addled that one must wonder if he was able to sober up for the interview. Also, I wonder why West is so surprised that 0bama dropped him like a hot potato. Did he really think our thoroughly arrogant president has any motivation other than blind ambition?

Your last sentence gets to nub of the matter straightaway: What, precisely, is “conservatism”? This is an important question, but unfortunately it’s one to which there is no clear answer. For some, conservatism is closely tied to free-market capitalism (and to the Republican Party); for others, it embodies an ethos of “social conservative”; and for yet others, it is a certain intellectual stance in favor of only gradual social reform.

The way in which I use the term “conservatism” is in the latter two senses. Conservatism, for me, embodies a commitment to “traditional” values (community, family, etc.), as well as a resistance to radical revolution. (And in fact, it’s the conjunction of these two senses of conservatism that leads me into a position similar to Adorno’s. On the one hand, my commitment to social conservatism makes me critical of free-market capitalism, for the latter directly undermines the values that (social) conservatives hold dear. But, on the other hand, my commitment to the third sense of conservatism makes me wary of, say, endorsing a communist takeover. Like Adorno, I’m wary of – and perhaps against – attempts at hastily and radically reforming the system.)

You also ask: “[W]hat does one subvert other than tradition?” That is, how is critical theory (which aims at the critique of society and tradition) reconcilable with conservatism (which aims at their preservation)? The answer is, in fact, quite simple: critiquing a tradition is not incompatible with preserving it. Only if one is a Burkean conservative – where conservatism means an uncritical adherence to tradition – is this so. But this isn’t the only way we can see conservatism. For traditions are living only to the extent that they are subject to constant critique from those within them. A tradition that is only passively received and transmitted is a dead tradition; living traditions are traditions full of conflict. So, insofar as we as conservatives follow “tradition,” to that extent we have a duty to subject tradition to critique, to bring out its contradictions and develop it further. And in this sense, Adorno and the rest of the critical theorists, with the critical apparatuses that they developed, are allies.

Mrs. Pollnow’s logic that selling something which should not be taken by force can be extended to many other issues:
- Slavery is taking labor by force and is inexcusable, ergo labor should never be sold in a market
- the privacy of the home should never be invaded by force, ergo it is wrong to pay people to film documentaries in their homes
- wouldn’t adoption and lawful intercourse with someone who does not pay for the act be non-permissible by the same reasoning? What if you sell it for a low price, like a romantic dinner, perhaps?

She tries to circumvent that objection by an ad hoc argument that stealing an egg secretly could not be remedied by money (which does not address the slavery example just given – slavery is presumably not remediable by paying money). Also: Really? I don’t think everyone feels that way, as having something taken from me without my pain or awareness does not seem problematic and is one of a row of non sequitur in the article.

The argument completely veers off into farce at the point where she mentions that obviously human sexuality is never for sale anywhere. Ever heard of the Netherlands? So it’s a non sequitur sequence of unrelated concepts of theft and appropriation whose connection is assumed not proven and the transferred as a “parallell” to a case that is not obviously similar unless tautologically assumed to be so.

Don’t submit this for an ethics class where you actually have to show your assumptions…

It’s always refreshing to see Frankfurt-influenced critical analysis making its way into the world, and intriguing –to say the least– to witness your attempts to graft this analysis onto some kind of political conservatism. As far as I know, it’s never been done before; while Adorno has occasionally been accused of closet conservatism by more doctrinaire Marxists, I’ve never heard of an actual conservative embracing him into the fold.

Nevertheless, I use “grafted” in the strongest sense here; it seems to me like you’re taking two disparate and quite possibly opposing things and trying to force them together, with the result –despite being exceedingly well written– risking some sort of unworkable Frankenstein. Critical theory as both a method and a project is directed towards the radical transformation of society; conservatism in its broadest sense seems directed towards the preservation of tradition. It remains unclear to me how you intend to resolve (dialectically or no) these two opposing “movements” -opposing in both an ideological and a directional sense- and your last paragraph doesn’t do much more than baldly assert their synthesis. How does conservatism escape ideology? You seem to value the “subversive ground of thought thinking against itself,” but what does one subvert other than tradition? Perhaps most appositely: what conservatism, exactly, are we talking about?

1) You refuse to observe the rights of those who wish to explore their sexual horizons, these HIV test allow people to do so without fear of HIV.
2) Conservatives are the minority on the princeton campus, and our student government has to put policies in place that support the largest part of our campus.

I understand that you’re upset that the conservatives are being misrepresented, but you have to take into account how few of them there are left, they’re a dying breed and princeton must support the side that has the greatest chance of surviving.

-Chang

It is true that much of what is said in this article could be worded much more lucidly, and that many of the points that I make are rather straightforward. But because language shapes our view of the world, trading in concepts, phrases, and styles of diction that have become standard often serves only to reinforce the status quo. To change the way in which we see the world, then, it is sometimes necessary to change the way in which we use language. This article is an attempt to do just that, however successful or unsuccessful it may be.