Q&A: John Derbyshire

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Q&A: John Derbyshire

John Derbyshire writes for the National Review, The New Criterion, and The Washington Times. He has written five books, on topics ranging from politics to mathematics. He spoke at Hillsdale College on Tuesday, March about his most recent book, “We are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism.”

What do you mean by “reclaiming conservative pessimism?”

I wrote a book called “We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism.” More than anything, it was a reaction against the George W. Bush years. Conservatism had been led astray by optimism and conservatives need to return to a more pessimistic outlook — to avoid those kinds of errors in future — so we don’t get into the kind of vast new social programs that George W. Bush gave. Not to overlook, of course, these wonderfully optimistic wars, where we’re going to remake the Middle East in our own image. So my mood at the time was a reaction against what I saw as George W. Bush’s — I wouldn’t go as far as Bob Bartley, and say “betrayal” of conservatism — but wandering astray from the true path of Conservatism. Most people, including most political commentators, tend to personalize things quite intensely.

Have you seen any connections between British and American politics?

American and British politics tend to run on curiously parallel lines. You see a development in one country and then a couple of years later you see the same kind of thing going on in the other. We had Margaret Thatcher, and then a couple of years later you had Ronald Reagan. Then we had John Major and you had Bill Clinton. There’s a sort of rough parallel to the way things advance in the two countries. But I think that the English have made more mistakes than Americans. I think England’s in a bigger mess than America.

Do both messes come from spending too much?

Yeah. The runaway welfare state, yes. Runaway uncontrolled immigration, yes. This willful engagement in futile and half-hearted military adventures, yes. So there are all kinds of parallwels like that.

Who do you think will bear the brunt of these programs?

What’s that line in the Bible? We’ve all touched pitch? We’ve all got dirty hands in this, so we’re all going to suffer. I hope, anyway. I hope it’s equitable. But I think we’ll find a way out of it somehow. There’ll be a period of disruption, perhaps a few decades. But I don’t think we’ll actually go over Niagara Falls. I think it’ll be more like just bumping down the rapids for a few years. We’ll lose a lot of the things we have, like public services. I was talking recently to an oncologist, and he was saying that some huge proportion of Medicare costs go to the last few months of a person’s life. He said we can’t go on doing that. We can’t afford that. I said “What do you mean, death panels?” He said, “Yeah, it’s absolutely inevitable.” We’ve got some very difficult choices coming up, but we’ll work through them somehow.

Are there historical examples of countries surviving debt crisis?

There are some modern examples. Argentina went through a terrible crisis in the end of the 1990s. They pulled through. They’re not in great shape, but their country didn’t go up in flames. I don’t think modern countries do go up in flames. The French Revolution and fifth-century Rome, these were civilizations with universities and hospitals and so on, but in a lot of ways they were coarse and rough places. Look at the kind of punishments people had. There has been human progress.

— Compiled by Tyler O’Neil