Posted on 07/27/2024 6:12:47 AM PDT by MtnClimber
The conflict today is not simply a normal policy argument between conservatives and progressives. It is over the future of the historic American nation, both its creed and its culture.
The following is adapted from a talk delivered on April 18, 2024, at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar in Bellevue, Washington.
In the past two years, two competing groups of conservatives—National Conservatives or NatCons and Freedom Conservatives or FreeCons—have issued competing manifestos. These manifestos reflect a divergent understanding of the progressive challenge to the American way of life.
This divergence can best be understood in the context of the history of modern American conservatism, which can be broken into three waves: the first wave, symbolized by William F. Buckley, Jr. and Ronald Reagan, lasted from the mid-1950s to the end of the Cold War; the second wave, symbolized by Paul Ryan and the two Bush presidencies, ran from the 1990s to roughly the second decade of this century; and the third wave, symbolized by Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump, is ongoing.
Modern American conservatism began with the circle around Buckley’s National Review magazine. Conservatism in this period united traditionalists, who were concerned above all with virtue, and classical liberals, who were concerned above all with liberty. National Review’s Frank Meyer famously developed a theory called fusionism, which argued that freedom was a prerequisite for a virtuous society. Fusionism, whatever its philosophical inconsistencies—and aided by the common and urgent cause of anti-communism—worked politically to hold differently-minded conservatives together, particularly during the Reagan administration.
Following the end of the Cold War, American conservatism entered a new phase, embracing globalization at home and abroad. Conservatives supported an integrated global economy, resulting in the North American Free Trade Agreement and China’s entrance into the World Trade Organization. President George H.W. Bush supported legislation that greatly increased immigration, and the State Department under James Baker abandoned traditional American opposition to dual citizenship. President George W. Bush promoted North American economic integration and declared in 2005 that it would henceforth be the goal of U.S. foreign policy “to seek and support the growth of [democracy] in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.”
Paul Ryan exemplified this second wave of conservatism intellectually and politically by promoting free trade, entitlement reform, increased immigration, and amnesty for illegal immigrants. Ryan told the Washington Examiner: “We need an immigration system that’s more wired to give our economy the labor it needs to grow faster.”
The third wave of conservatism can be characterized as a nationalist-populist revolt against the policies and attitudes of the second wave, particularly on issues of immigration, trade, sovereignty, and national identity. Originally leading the opposition was U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions, who for years issued amendments, memos, and speeches, explicitly calling for a humble populism and “immigration moderation . . . so that wages can rise, welfare rolls can shrink, and the forces of assimilation can knit us all more closely together.”
Donald Trump, needless to say, turbo-charged the nationalist-populist revolt and remains the leading political figure of third-wave conservatism. But I note Sessions’ contribution to make the point that third-wave conservatism did not begin, nor will it end, with Trump.
To a large extent, the current divide between National Conservatives and Freedom Conservatives is a divide between third wavers (NatCons) and second wavers (FreeCons).
NatCon Statement
The National Conservative Statement of Principles recognizes that progressives have already achieved dominance in American universities, K–12 education, the media, Fortune 500 corporations, entertainment, Big Tech, Big Philanthropy, Big Law, the administrative state, many state and local bureaucracies, and the leadership of the military and the intelligence agencies. The statement thus rejects a strictly conservative approach of defending the status quo, calling rather for a counter-revolutionary sensibility........
An interesting article. I am going to have to think about it some.
Interesting. I was pure Republican from the age of 8 in a Democratic household. Was comfortable in the first wave, flowed into the rivers of the 2nd until I found it was heading out to sea and made my way, unhappily, to shore. When the 3rd wave arrived, it lifted all boats and I’ve decided I’ve found my permanent houseboat and I’ll moor right here.
National Review’s Frank Meyer famously developed a theory called fusionism, which argued that freedom was a prerequisite for a virtuous society.
I think we’d have to ask Frank to define what he means by ‘freedom’.
Not perfect, but a virtuous people came to America to have freedom of worship. They were virtuous before they came. It’s the human heart that needs a transformation that only the Son of God can bring about. Human governments don’t create freedom or virtuous people. Changed individuals can create human governments, or influence the ones that exist, that uphold godly principles that benefit the majority of citizens. Loving your neighbor as yourself, correct weights and measurements, not taking a bribe against the innocent, equal justice without partiality, etc. It starts with changed hearts and lives submitted to the King of kings. If you could pass just and moral laws but all your citizens were immoral then they would just change the laws back to benefit the corrupt. Hence, America at present.
“So if the Son has set you free, you are free indeed.”
John 8:36
I think a fourth Conservative wave will be a fusion between the first wave and the present “populist” wave.
As long as we don’t include any major parts of the second wave.
Not true at all. There was a fierce debate in the 90's when various groups of the right pushed and supported those ideas. It was the gop and Limbaugh wing that attacked the nationalist on the right like Buchanan and Perot on globalization, national debt, free trade and immigration.
The entire point of 90's talk radio was to run interference against nationalism and attack those who didn't toe the line.
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