Readers of this blog may be interested in a piece I wrote about Burkeanism and the future of conservatism for The American Conservative. It’s in the March/April issue of the magazine, which has just been released. You can view the cover and contents of the issue here. Except for subscribers, my article is now only available in the print version of the magazine (not on its website), so you’ll have to find it on the newsstands. For those unfamiliar with it, The American Conservative follows the genuinely Burkean way – and is therefore critical of modern conservative orthodoxy. Among other things, its writers are suspicious of big business, the increasing concentration of wealth and power in American society, and military adventurism abroad, and are communitarians. In 2006, the magazine urged readers to vote for Democratic candidates in the midterm Congressional elections to protest and push back against the disastrous polices of George W. Bush’s administration – particularly the invasion of Iraq – and some of its key people revealed that they voted for Barack Obama in 2008. In a recent column about "vibrant and increasingly influential" conservative voices advocating fresh ideas, David Brooks mentioned The American Conservative first, and said: “The American Conservative has become one of the more dynamic spots on the political Web.” Though Brooks calls the magazine paleoconservative, I prefer the terms traditional conservative or Burkean. But however you label it, The American Conservative – both magazine and website – is well worth checking out, even for liberals.

Everyone who has ever eaten in a restaurant thinks he knows how to run one, it’s often said. But if you haven’t waited tables, worked in a restaurant kitchen, purchased food from commercial vendors, had experience hiring, retaining, and supervising chefs and other staff, negotiated rents with landlords, learned from hard experience what dishes appeal to customers and what don’t (even if they appeal to you), written business plans that impress bankers enough to lend you money at reasonable rates, and figured out how to make all of this fit together in a way that will earn a profit, then you haven’t gotten a clue. The naïve overconfidence that afflicts some people who were simply customers surely helps explain why most restaurants fail.

Things are much the same for colleges and universities: Everyone who has attended one thinks she know how to run one, even though she may be clueless – and clueless about being clueless. That certainly appears to be the case with Helen Dragas, head of the governing board of the University of Virginia.

Dragas was a student at the University of Virginia, where she earned both a bachelor’s degree in economics and foreign affairs and an M.B.A. Thereafter, she went into the family real estate development business, in which, by all accounts, she has been quite successful. She now heads her family’s company. In 2008, Virginia Governor Tom Kaine appointed Dragas to her alma mater’s governing board.

In January 2011, the board selected Theresa A. Sullivan to be the next president of the University of Virginia. Sullivan had impressive credentials for the job. She had a distinguished career as a teacher and scholar in sociology, and became chair of the sociology department at the University of Texas. She transitioned into university administration, serving in a number of important positions at Texas before becoming provost (the official in charge of academic affairs) at the University of Michigan. As is the University of Virginia, Texas and Michigan are among the nation’s best public universities, so Sullivan came to Virginia well versed in how great public universities operate.

In July 2011, Helen Dragas became head of U. Va.’s governing board. About a year later, Dragas paid a surprise visit on Sullivan and forced her to resign. Dragas’ action provoked a firestorm of protest from Virginia’s faculty, students, alumni, and contributors. Why, they wanted to know, was Sullivan – after only a year and half in the job – forced out? In several tries, Dragas failed utterly to articulate a persuasive reason for getting rid of Sullivan, who clearly had won great respect from faculty and other university constituencies. Dragas seemed to think that Sullivan wasn’t moving Virginia fast enough into the suddenly chic world of massive open online courses, though, as it turned out, Sullivan had been proceeding with a plan to do just that – not to mention that, even if true, this was a dubious reason to fire a university president. It was revealed that Dragas persuaded Sullivan to resign by telling her that there were enough votes on the board to fire Sullivan if she didn’t leave voluntarily; but, in fact, the board had never discussed forcing out Sullivan and some board members claimed total surprise at Dragas’ action.

The university senate adopted a resolution expressing support for Sullivan and a lack of support for Dragas. Governor Bob McDonnell publicly told the board that if it didn’t quickly resolve its differences, he’d fire and replace all its members.

The board voted unanimously to reinstate Sullivan. Dragas and Sullivan provided some nice photo ops, smiling and walking together to the meeting at which Sullivan was reinstated. (I’ve written about some of these earlier events here.)

Then the wackiest decision of all was made by Governor Bob McDonnell. When Dragas’ term expired, he reappointed her head of the university’s governing board. What was he thinking? Two things had been demonstrated beyond all reasonable dispute: First, Helen Dragas was a disaster as a university trustee. Even had she been right about the need to replace Sullivan – about which I am highly dubious – she went about trying to do it in a grossly ham-handed way. Second, their public statements and photo ops notwithstanding, Dragas and Sullivan could not possibly have any respect for one another. Moreover, they must have very different ideas about what is best for the University of Virginia. At least, after everything that transpired, one hopes that’s the case.

Governor MacDonnell should have anticipated that, after the drubbing she had received in the press, Dragas would want to prove herself right in the end. Otherwise, she would have done the sensible and magnanimous thing of declining reappointment, letting someone take over who could work with Theresa A. Sullivan – and someone Sullivan and the university community could trust. That would have been a bitter pill for Dragas to swallow, to be sure; it would cast Sullivan as the winner and Dragas as the humiliated loser in the struggle. But if Dragas had even a little wisdom, and a desire to put the interests of the University of Virginia before her own, that is what she would have done.

The Washington Post now reports that, predictably, Dragas is continuing to make Sullivan’s job a hell on earth. Dragas recently gave Sullivan a proposed list of 65 goals and told her that if Sullivan did not provide a satisfactory explanation in less than week why they should not be adopted, they would become permanent.

A university board of trustees properly sets broad goals and directions, decides whether the university president is making reasonable progress toward them, and after due deliberation replaces a president who, in their judgment, is not effective. But real estate developers are fools if they think they know enough to provide a university president with a list of 65 goals. Suppose the roles were reversed, and Theresa A. Sullivan – a sociologist and university administrator – were made chair of the board of directors of Dragas’ real estate development company? I’d bet then she’d understand the foolishness of an amateur in her business giving her a list of 65 goals. And if she had been told that if she didn’t satisfactorily respond to the proposed list in less than a week, the goals would be permanent, I’ll bet she’d understand how insulting it is to treat someone that way.

Thomas Jefferson, who took more satisfaction in founding the University of Virginia than in any of his other achievements, must be spinning in his grave.

How we talk about issues – the words we choose, the metaphors we select – reveal our deepest ideological perspectives.

Let me be clear upfront: By no means am I suggesting that there is something wrong about having an ideological perspective. Ideologies are inevitable. We all have them, whether or not we are aware of them, whether or not we acknowledge them. We cannot make sense of the world of politics, governance, and public policy without them. They are our north stars. They are about values – about what we believe a good life entails and how society can help or hinder our pursuing good lives. Both thoughtful and unthoughtful people are guided by their ideologies. The most thoughtful people have ideological self-insight; they are aware of their ideological perspectives and consciously examine the assumptions that underlie them and the values they reflect.

This is a windup to commenting on something John Boehner said on last Thursday that seized my attention. In making his point that under no circumstances would Republicans in the House of Representatives agree to a way out of the sequestration that involves new revenue, Boehner said the issue was “how much more money do we want to steal from the American people.”

In other words, taxes are thefts from the people.

Contrast Boehner’s comment with Oliver Wendell Holmes’ statement: “I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization.”

Is it too much to say that what undergirds Boehner’s view is an animosity for democracy? After all, in a democracy the people – through their elected representatives – decide what taxes they will pay, and what they will buy with those taxes. The people cannot steal from themselves.

But Boehner – and I daresay most of the modern conservative movement and Republican Party – draw a distinction between the people and the government. The government seems just as alien to them as it would be if – rather than being the people’s government – it were a foreign government, imposed by afar. It is as if they never heard of the American Revolution and still think our taxes are set by a Parliament in which we have no representation. (I’ll just make a quick nod here to the argument that citizens in the District of Columbia should be represented in Congress.)

Oh yes, democracy is messy and frustrating. The people are always deciding to do things that we, as individuals, don’t like. That’s because “the people” are not a unified group who all see things the same way. America is not a village of Stepford wives. We are a big, diverse society. We disagree about many things, often passionately. We tussle over what we want our government to do through the political process. But if the ongoing experiment in self-government that we call America is going to succeed, we need to appreciate the word “we” in the last three sentences.

It is so obvious that that an inability to compromise is making American dysfunctional that saying it is cliché. This is relatively new, at least in my lifetime. Leaders did not always stamp their feet like children, demand on having their way – all of their way, and believe that doing so was righteous. We are frustrated when our fellow citizens don’t see things our way; but when we become so petulant that we consider decisions with which we disagree to somehow be illegitimate, we weaken the Republic.

I lay much of blame at the feet of libertarianism, which is at the core of the modern conservative movement and the Republican Party. Libertarianism worships individualism and rejects community. It is an ideology that makes understanding “we” difficult. It is a point of view that sees the government not as something that belongs to the people but as an alien entity. It is a philosophy that, from Ayn Rand on, has seen taxation as theft.

If you believe that I am arguing that taxation is good and more taxation is better, you have missed my point (and you have a stereotypical view of liberals that is just flatly wrong). I do not pretend to be the man that Oliver Wendell Holmes was; I don’t really enjoy writing checks to the I.R.S. or my state or local government. There are, moreover, many things that our governments spend tax dollars on that I do not favor. But I do recognize that taxation is a choice – the people’s choice.

There is a world of difference between arguing that taxes are too high and saying that taxation is theft. The former is carrying on discussion and debate through the democratic process. The latter subtly and perniciously rejects democracy itself.