One of the distinct advantages the political left enjoys over the conservative movement is the affective property that Muslims call asabiyeh: unity, togetherness, group feeling. Of course, there are differences of opinion, degrees of dissension as to theory and practice, ideological ruptures here and there regarding tactics and strategy, but on the whole the left is comparatively of a piece.
Conservatives, on the contrary, are far more divided among themselves. As I pointed out a while back, in an article for PJ Media titled Fractures on the Right [1], the conservative predisposition is fissured with disagreements respecting the definition of the “enemy” and how most effectively to deal with him. These breaches and discontinuities run deep, especially when it comes to the putative relation between Islam and “Islamism,” radical and moderate Muslims, history and the present. Slack-thewed conservatives insist that Islam has been hijacked by the Islamists and that so-called “moderate Muslims” must be “friended” in order not to drive them into the camp of the jihadists. Insightful conservative thinkers understand that Islam, rooted in a vast theological, political, jurisprudential and philosophical literature, and boasting a 1400 year history of rapine and conquest, is consistently represented by these same extremists who are said to have hijacked the faith.
It seems me that the fault in the conservative orientation resides not so much in the intellect per se as in the will, a volitional exhaustion, a weakening of purpose expressed as a gradual turn toward the liberal perspective. Intellect is then mobilized to justify the backsliding tendencies of the will, as if in a rerun of the historical debate between two great Medieval theologians, St. Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus. Aquinas argued that intellect determines truth and the will carries out the appropriate actions. Scotus held otherwise; the will bloweth where it listeth, and the intellect assembles the arguments to support its appetitive pursuits.
