The Unmaking of Conservatism

http://www.sobran.com/columns/2003/030424.shtml ^

[Continental Op]

The Unmaking of Conservatism

Joe Sobran

April 24, 2003 Conservatism — or at least something calling itself conservatism — is now fashionable, and those who claim the label are triumphant today. Their government has just won a war, and they can afford to gloat not only over liberals, but over an older breed of conservatives who are suspicious of big government even when (or especially when) it’s winning.

When I began to consider myself a conservative, back in 1965, conservatism didn’t seem to have much of a future. Lyndon Johnson had just crushed Barry Goldwater in what looked like a final showdown between the philosophies of limitless and limited government. I was clearly enlisting in a losing cause.

But that, in a way, was what attracted me to conservatism. It was a philosophy of reflective losers, men whose principles and memories gave them resistance to the conquering fad and its propaganda. Such men hoped for victory, naturally, but they were fighting heavy odds, fierce passions, and powerful interests. They were ready for defeat, but they weren’t going to adjust their principles in order to win. They knew that if you win power by giving up your principles, you’ve already lost.

I was a college student, and my reading in English literature had already predisposed me to conservatism. The great writers I admired — Shakespeare, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke, John Henry Newman, G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, George Orwell, Michael Oakeshott — were all notable for opposing the fads and enthusiasms of their times. They took being in the minority for granted. They even treasured solitude and meditation. Their minds and hearts were closed to statist propaganda and the passions it sought to incite, and they were prepared to endure abuse and libel for refusing to join the herd — especially what has been wittily called “the herd of independent minds.”

It soon turned out that the Goldwater campaign marked only the beginning, not the end, of a powerful new conservative movement, which astonished itself by managing to get one of its own, Ronald Reagan, elected president in 1980. Few had imagined this possible in 1965.

But by winning power, the conservative movement began to loose its grip on conservative principles. It had hoped to reverse the gains of liberalism — not only Johnson’s Great Society, but Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, both of which had violated America’s constitutional tradition of strictly limited and federal government. Now it quietly dropped its original goals.

As a powerful movement, conservatism also attracted new members who were more interested in power than in principle. Some of these were called “neoconservatives” — admirers of Roosevelt and recent supporters of Lyndon Johnson who cared nothing for limited government and the U.S. Constitution. Few of them, if any, had voted for Goldwater.

The chief common ground between the conservatives and the neocons was an anti-Communist foreign policy. All talk of deeper principles — and of repealing the welfare state — was discreetly dropped for the sake of harmony within the movement and political victory.

The conservatives wanted to keep the neocons within the movement. In this they succeeded only too well. Today the neocons have not only stayed; they have taken over the movement and pushed the principled conservatives out — or cowed them into silence, which comes to the same thing.

The older conservatives were wary of foreign entanglements and opposed on principle to foreign aid. But these are the very things the neocons favor most ardently; in fact, they are the very things that define neoconservatism and separate it from genuine conservatism.

As the neocon Max Boot recently wrote, “Support for Israel [is] a key tenet of neoconservatism.” He failed to name any other “key” tenets, because there aren’t any. War against Arab and Muslim regimes — enemies of Israel — is what it’s all about. Reagan’s all-out support for Israel, when Jimmy Carter was toying with Palestinian rights, is what won him neocon support in 1980.

A Rip Van Winkle conservative who had dozed off in 1965 would wake up in 2003 to find a movement that has almost nothing to do with the creed he professed when he last closed his eyes. It also has nothing to do with the conservative temper we find in the great writers of the past. It has everything to do with a shallow jingoism and war propaganda. It has become the sort of hot fad wise conservatives used to avoid, back when wise conservatives still defined conservatism.

[Consort]

If the law did trump truth then those the law declared to be guilty would truly be guilty.

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Nope. That doesn't make sense as you will agree if you analyze it.

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Religion.

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It has nothing to do with religion. Just ask an atheist or a very religious person or a legal scholar.

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...already existing truth...

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Sometimes we confuse facts with truth. New facts can undo a conviction whether or not those facts are the truth.

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It seems to me that you consider effect more imortant than intent or circumstances.

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You keep misreading me.

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Would you convict someone who takes a life in self defense of murder because the end result is the same? Would you consider them as guilty as the person who maliciously intended to take a life?

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I would not vote to convict someone who clearly acted in self defense. No, I don't consider it to be murder.

[ModernDayCato]

Wow...more of that rapier wit! She must be VERY proud. Now, on to your next half-baked fantasy...tell me how Bush's 'tax cuts' will help the economy RIGHT NOW, and how supply side they are.

[sparkydragon]

You consider a fact to be a very slippery thing. I was under the impression (gained the last time I referenced a dictionary) that a fact was an actual happening. Unless the definition has changed in the intervening years, the fact of a happening that did not take place is not a fact, but rather a false statement, misinterpretation, or other nonfactual imformation.

New evidence can undo a conviction whether or not it is interpreted correctly. Not quite the same, though similar in concept.

I asked about religion to acsertain whether you believe God (Allah, YHWH, Shiva, the Goddess, The Higher Consciousness, Odin, Zeus, Jupiter, or whomever I forgot or never knew to mention) will judge you according to what the law says you did or according to what you truly did. Generally, when something wins out over something else in the last judgement, the frist something is considered to have trumped the something else. If the law does trump truth the God will make you account for that which the courts judged you guilty even if you didn't actually do it. Or karma will kick you for it. Atheism, and the neomorality taught in public school, is the only religion I can think of at the moment where law could effectively trump truth.

I do not believe I was misreading you in saying you consider effect more important than intent. You base the idea of law trumping truth on the effect of imprisonment meaning more than the literal fact of innocence. Law can only trump truth if the truth would not overturn a conviction legally obtained.

[Consort]

I was under the impression (gained the last time I referenced a dictionary) that a fact was an actual happening.

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I'm not sure, but I think that in a trial, a fact could be what someone thinks they witnessed, for example. They are telling the "truth" as they believe it to be, which may later prove to not be the case.

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Religion.

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I don't want to go there.

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Law can only trump truth if the truth would not overturn a conviction legally obtained.

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No, again. The law is applied whether or not the truth is ever found out. It happens every day. People are found innocent or guilty on the available facts as presented and as interpreted by subjective people.

[Consort]

Also, how do one challenge a law on the grounds that it is un Consitutional if it is Constitutional until it has been overturned?

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A law is a law until it is repealed and determined to not be a law. Laws are repealed, not non-laws?

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According to your logic no law could be legitimately challenged because the fact that it had not been overturned would be proof positive that the law was Constitutional.

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Bad logic. The challenge is part of the overturning process that could result in declaring a law that is now constitutional to become unconstitutional.

[sparkydragon]

I think I may see one problem in my arguments. I was reading them over to see where I had gone wrong becuase it seemed to me you were being more obstinate that you should have been. I miscopied a quote the first time I posted you. I quoted you twice instead of copying a quote from a Supreme Court case. Maybe this will clear up the confusion. I apologize for messing this up the first time.

"An unconstitutional law is void, and is as no law. An offence created by it is not a crime. A conviction under it is not merely erroneous, but is illegal and void, and cannot be a legal cause of imprisonment." (100 U.S. 371 (1879) Ex parte Siebold)

[inquest]

Sometimes we confuse facts with truth. New facts can undo a conviction whether or not those facts are the truth.

Herein lies the impasse. How can something be a fact if it isn't true? It would be considerably more accurate to say that alleged facts can undo a conviction whether or not those alleged facts are the truth.

[Consort]

"An unconstitutional law is void, and is as no law. An offence created by it is not a crime. A conviction under it is not merely erroneous, but is illegal and void, and cannot be a legal cause of imprisonment." (100 U.S. 371 (1879) Ex parte Siebold)

That's pretty much what I thought you meant all along and I still stand by what I said. I believe that all laws that are put on the books by proper authority and are being enforced by proper authority are assumed to be constitutional and legal until repealed or invalidated. Your statement above must be imposed on an existing law or statute for it to have any practical meaning — it has to have something to repeal or invalidate. Convictions are made and sentences are imposed under laws that are assumed to be constitutional by federal, state, local, military or other courts.

[inquest]

We could make a giant leap forward to rational discussion if this false equivalence of Jews and Israel could be put behind us.

Hence, their reason for keeping up this false equivalence. They know exactly where rational discussion would lead.

[Consort]

It would be considerably more accurate to say that alleged facts can undo a conviction whether or not those alleged facts are the truth.

Exactly. The truth may never enter into any particular litigation at any particular time but the process will be carried out regardless.

[inquest]

OK, but that's far different from saying that facts don't need to be true in order to be facts. This isn't just a semantic consideration. It goes right to the heart of the discussion.

[Consort]

OK, but that's far different from saying that facts don't need to be true in order to be facts. This isn't just a semantic consideration. It goes right to the heart of the discussion.

Facts do not need to be true. A jury can make a finding of fact based totally on false evidence or on supposed circumstances but any subsequent conviction still stands unless voided, IMO.

[inquest]

Regardless, you said "Sometimes we confuse facts with truth." There's no "confusion" going on there. Facts are units of truth. That's the point I'm trying to get across.

[iconoclast]

What I have a problem with is the "neo con" effort to demonize conservatives who don't agree with current American foreign policy goals as "anti semites" or closet Nazis. Those are the tactics of the Left.

Old habits die hard, huh?

[sparkydragon]

The problem is that the President, being sworn to uphold the Constitution, has an obligation to not enforce unConstitutional laws. Only if he believes a law it unConstitutional and the Supreme Court disagrees with him then is he required to enforce it. And even the its iffy. He has an obligation by virtue of his oath of office to avoid unConstitutional proceedings whenever possible. Otherwise his oath is even more meaningless than Clinton made it appear.

[Consort]

The problem is that the President, being sworn to uphold the Constitution, has an obligation to not enforce unConstitutional laws.

Presidents don't enforce unconstitutional laws, but you already know that. If one of those laws is subsequently ruled to be unconstitutional, then the Pres stops enforcing it, and you already know that, as well. Again, only certain individual can say whether or not a law is or is not constututional, not you or me or the President or Congress, as far as I know, and you already know that, too. So, what are you trying to get at?

[Consort]

Regardless, you said "Sometimes we confuse facts with truth." There's no "confusion" going on there.<.i>

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Yes there is. The dictionary talks of "true facts" and "real facts". That could be very confusing in certain situations.

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Facts are units of truth.

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Not necessarily, as I pointed out above. Facts are determined; truths exist. Facts can be determined on false premises but are not true. If you are on trial and the facts of the case point to guilt and the truth is that you are innocent, you are in trouble.

[inquest]

Facts are determined; truths exist. Facts can be determined on false premises but are not true. If you are on trial and the facts of the case point to guilt and the truth is that you are innocent, you are in trouble.

It looks like we may be talking about two different things. If an alleged fact is false in and of itself, then it is not a fact. If it is true but leads a person to a false conclusion, then it is still a fact. It's the person's fault, not the fact's, for arriving at the false conclusion.

[inquest]

Presidents don't enforce unconstitutional laws

Are you still proceeding from the assumption that laws aren't unconstitutional until the courts declare them to be so? Despite the fact that courts have repeatedly stated that unconstitutional laws are invalid from the get-go?

[Consort]

Are you still proceeding from the assumption that laws aren't unconstitutional until the courts declare them to be so?

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Yep.

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Despite the fact that courts have repeatedly stated that unconstitutional laws are invalid from the get-go?

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Yep. The get-go (retroactivity) part provides the mechanism to undo, as much as possible, what the newly determined unConstitutional law did while it was still Constitutional. The problem is that "get-go" can't undo time served in prison or the death penality or the effects and ripple effects on those involved. Court decisions are overturned all the time. Laws are repealed. Again you know all this. (Clinton was fond of parsing, as well).