Conservatism is Dead; Long Live Conservatism

American Thinker ^ | February 14, 2008 | Selwyn Duke

[neverdem]

It seems like just yesterday that many were reading liberalism's epitaph.  After the Reagan years, Republican Revolution of 1994, retreat of the gun-control hordes after Al Gore's 2000 defeat and George W. Bush's two successful presidential runs, many thought conservatism was carrying the day.

Ah, if only.

We might ask: With conservatives like President Bush and many of the other Republicans, who needs liberals?

While the media has successfully portrayed the Republicans as the party of snake handlers and moonshine, the difference between image and reality is profound.  Bush has just spun the odometer, proposing the nation's first ever $3 trillion budget.  On matters pertaining to the very survival of our culture -- the primacy of English, multiculturalism, the denuding of our public square of historically present Christian symbols and sentiments -- Republicans are found wanting.  As for illegal immigration, both the president and presumptive Republican nominee support a form of amnesty.

Yet many would paint America as under the sway of rightist politics, and some of the reasons for this are obvious.  Some liberals know that the best way to ensure constant movement toward the left is by portraying the status quo as dangerously far right.  If you repeatedly warn that we teeter on the brink of rightist hegemony, people will assume that to achieve "balance" we must tack further left toward your mythical center.  Then we have conservatives influenced by the natural desire to view the world as the happy place they'd like to inhabit.  Ingenuous sorts, they confuse Republican with conservative, party with principles, and electoral wars with the cultural one.  But there's another factor: One can confuse conservative with correct.

When is the right not right, you ask?  When it has been defined by the left. 

The definition of "conservative" is fluid, changing from time to time and place to place.  Some "conservatives" embrace an ideology prescribing limited government -- one remaining within the boundaries established by the Constitution -- and low taxation.  They favor nationalism over internationalism; prefer markets mostly unfettered by regulation; eschew multiculturalism, feminism and radical environmentalism; and take pride in our history and traditions.   

But there have been other kinds of conservatives.  In the Soviet Union, a conservative was quite the opposite, a communist.  Then, when Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn was assassinated in 2002, BBC News ran the headline, "Dutch far-right leader shot dead."  "Far-right" indeed.  Fortuyn was quite liberal by our standards; he was a pro-abortion, openly-homosexual ex-sociology professor branded a rightist mainly because he wished to stem Moslem immigration into Holland.  Moreover, his fear was that zealous Moslems posed a threat to the nation's liberal social structure. 

So here's the question: What definition of conservative would a communist or European statist conform to?  That which states, "One who favors maintenance of the status quo."  This brings us to a central point: 

As society is successfully transformed by those who detest the status quo, the status quo changes.  This means that the great defender ideology of the status quo, conservatism, will change with it.

"Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision, instead we are always changing the vision." -- G.K. Chesterton

Both liberals and conservatives have shape-shifting visions.  This is because the definitions of conservative and liberal are determined by the "position" of the given society ‘s political spectrum.  Shift that spectrum left or right by altering the collective ideology of a nation, and the definitions of those two words will change commensurate with the degree of that shift.  This is why a Pim Fortuyn is viewed as conservative in Western Europe. 

This isn't to say there is no difference between liberal and conservative visions.  Liberals construct their vision based on opposition to the conservative one; conservatives' vision is a product of the now accepted, decades-old vision of the left.  Thus, liberals promote today's liberal vision; conservatives defend yesterday's liberal vision.

"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected." -- G.K. Chesterton

Perhaps one reason we're losing the culture war is that it's easier to convince people to try new liberal mistakes than retain old liberal mistakes that have been tried and found wanting.  Regardless, we will continue losing unless we change our thinking radically. 

Wars are not won by being defensive.  Yet conservatives are seldom anything but, because they've been trained to mistake defense for offense.  When 13 states voted to ban faux marriage in 2004, some proclaimed it a great victory for conservatism.  But it only was so if the conservatism you subscribe to merely involves maintenance of a liberal status quo, for it was a successful defensive action, not an offensive one.  Who was proposing the societal change to which the vote was a response?  The left was.  What kind of change was it?  One that would move us in the liberal direction.

So it is always.  We play defense when, instead of striving to eliminate hate-crime laws, we merely fight proposals to make "transgendered" a protected category; when we accept the Federal Department of Education and simply use it to effect "conservative" education reform (read: No Child Left Behind Act); when we simply try to ensure that the separation of church and state ruling is applied in "conservative" ways; when we combat the tax-and-spend crowd by not taxing but then spending; and when we preach against illegal immigration while accepting a culture-rending legal immigration regime.    

In contrast, the left is as steadfastly offensive as it is dreadfully offensive.  If its minions' scheme to legally redefine marriage fails today, they'll try again tomorrow.  If a socialized medicine plan doesn't pass congressional muster, it will reappear five or ten years hence.  If a new tax is too rich for present tastes, they'll wait for a more gluttonous palate.  Or they'll sneak a different new tax into an innocuous sounding bill or accept a slight increase to an old tax, then another, and another, and another....   They simply have to wait for the political spectrum to shift a bit further left.

This brings me to another important point.  We often talk of compromise, but does compromising with those who always advance but never retreat constitute fairness?  The left proposes policy, "settles" for a half-measure, and we leave the table thinking it an equitable outcome.  The problem is that since virtually all the changes suggested are liberal in nature, constant compromise and granting of concessions guarantees constant movement toward the left.  So we see erstwhile secure territory that is now under attack and revel in victory when we repel a few of the enemy's charges.  But we don't realize that we are defining victory as a reduction in the rate of loss of our heartland, while the enemy defines it as the expansion of its empire.  We compromise our way to tyranny.

It's like a young boxer who never throws punches and, consequently, becomes quite adept at blocking vicious blows -- and inured to taking them.  He emerges from the ring with a twinkle in black and blue eyes, flashes a smile revealing two lost teeth, proudly shows off bruised forearms and says, "Look, Dad!  I blocked ninety-percent of the punches today!  This is my greatest victory ever!" 

Yes, perhaps it's a figurative victory insofar as exhibition of defensive skill goes.  As for real victory, thus engaging opponents time and again doesn't even bring the Pyrrhic variety.  It only guarantees slow, torturous losses, perpetual injury, and one day, perhaps, a knock-out.  

This places the current presidential race in perspective.  When some Republicans lament the absence of good "conservative" primary contenders, they often act as if our statist front-runners are visited upon us by an invisible hand, as if their ascendancy was despite the culture and not because of it.  In reality, these politicians are merely products of a society that has long been in the grip of Gramscian operatives in academia, the media and Hollywood, leftists who have been crafting their message, scheming, indoctrinating, and socially re-engineering the public for decades.

Besides, can we really say those candidates aren't conservative?  With the political spectrum having shifted so far left, perhaps people such as Bush, McCain and Huckabee really are today's conservatives. 

Perhaps, just maybe, we (me, and you if you're in my camp) are something else. 

After all, I criticized Mitt Romney for forcing Massachusetts residents to buy health insurance, but a recent poll indicates that a majority of Republicans support such coercion.  And if some of these people are "conservatives," I'm certainly am not one. I'm a revolutionary. A cultural revolutionary.

I don't want to preserve the cultural status quo, I want to overthrow it.  Then we can pull the statist weeds up by the roots and burn them in freedom's fire, just like our Founding Fathers did.  Do you think they were conservatives?  Conservatives don't start revolutions; they simply make sure their shackles are made no heavier.

Political victory rests on cultural victory, and changing the culture starts with changing our mentality.  We have only two choices: We can be revolutionary.

Or we can be wrong.  

Contact Selwyn Duke

Page Printed from: at February 14, 2008 - 05:54:43 AM EST

[KC_Conspirator]

I would prefer not to see that happen, especially after I saw Obama’s blame America speech the other day.

[KC_Conspirator]

The only place where you win by losing, is on the show the “The Biggest Loser”.

[JustaDumbBlonde]

"The only place where you win by losing, is on the show the “The Biggest Loser”."

Do you happen to have anything other than a cute phrase? Do you think that you've ever failed at anything, or do you simply readjust your standards to make yourself think that you are always winning? Somehow I suspect you may be one of those folks for whom I have great pity.

[JustaDumbBlonde]

I appreciate your kind words.

[COBOL2Java]

The definition of "conservative" is fluid, changing from time to time and place to place.

Hence, John McCain is a "conservative."

[ExSoldier]

We will be judged by God and by history, remember.

Izzat what God judges us for? I thought it was something else altogether. As to the other: Heavenly History has already been written. Human history won't last as long as the Heavenly sort but it will look marketedly different. Human history is written by victors, not those defeated. Conservatism and a government OF the people, FOR the people and BY the people will consigned to the dustbin of eternity. I for one await the arrival of my KING; the ONE who will come to clean up the mess and reset the universe to perfect order.

[ovrtaxt]

Thanks for the sermon.

But we will be judged for the stewardship of what we’ve been given. Matt. 25, Luke 19, etc.

[KC_Conspirator]

You should not pity me at all, but I see many here throwing themselves a pity party/tantrum.

[sageb1]

bookmark

[JustaDumbBlonde]

Ahhh, more insults ...

[Gator113]

Bookmark

[toddlintown]

Do what you want, but don’t come back here next year moaning because B. Hussein dropped a 10% tax increase on you and pulled all the troops out of Iraq, opening the door for Iran.

Go on, and pat yourself on your back because you’re so principled.

Ronald Reagan, on the other hand, would vote for McCain, just like he sucked it up and supported Gerry Ford.

“The battle between Reagan and Ford was a spirited one. Ford was successful in many early primaries, but after a surprising win in North Carolina, Ronald Reagan scored other victories, and the contest lasted right up to the Republican National Convention in Kansas City.

This brought the contest out of the realm of issues and voters and into the sometimes Byzantine world of back-room politics, jousting over the slates of uncommitted delegates who would determine the party’s nominee.

After all the ballots were tallied, Reagan narrowly lost the nomination, gaining 1,070 delegates to Ford’s 1,187. Had Reagan prevailed, he would have been the first candidate in 92 years to wrest the nomination from an incumbent president.

Among loyalists to the Reagan campaign, stories abound of
delegates who pledged their support to Reagan, but then gave
in to arm-twisting and good old-fashioned political threats, and who then threw their crucial support to Ford.

Even so, as disappointing as the outcome might have been, Reagan did not hang this unsavory laundry out for public view. He did not even publicly proclaim that he had been short-changed by the process, although there is ample evidence he felt that way.

In keeping with the unprecedented nature of these events, on the final night of the convention, after Ford delivered well-received remarks, a spontaneous demonstration ensued for Reagan to address the assembled convention crowd.

The newly nominated Ford had no alternative but to ask Reagan to come down to the platform. In that moment, the hardball political atmosphere of the convention was changed to a rarefied air of vision and ideas of which Ronald Reagan has no peer.

And his words that night resonated long after the delegates had gone off into the Missouri night.

Recalling an English ballad he had memorized as a child, Reagan soothed his supporters with the belief in future triumphs. ‘Lay me down and bleed awhile,’ he said. ‘Though I am wounded, I am not slain. I shall rise and fight again.’”

[Wallace T.]

The problem is that most of the market interventions, starting with the Interstate Commerce Commission in the 1890s and continuing to the present day, were not driven from the bottom up but from the top down. Many very wealthy men of the Robber Baron era, such as John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and J. P. Morgan, were not advocates of free enterprise, but of regulated markets. The "reforms" of that era were usually backed by these men, who saw in regulated competition a means of protecting their market share. The politicians of that era did it in the name of "the little people", as much as modern politicians like Bill Clinton locked up coal reserves in Utah, supposedly in the name of the environment, but actually to benefit his financial supporters, in this case Mochtar Riady.

If we look at the "reforms" of the Roosevelt and Truman eras, such as protection for labor union organizing, minimum wage laws, and so forth, much of the old Northeastern Anglo-Protestant elite, the heirs of the Robber Barons, did vigorously oppose these measures, as evidenced by the support of the anti-New Deal Liberty League by old line families like the Du Ponts and the Mellons. However, the New Deal era represented a shift in the nation's elites away from the industrial based business class toward a newer group coming from academia and the social sciences, with some allies in the financial community. This is not a new event in American history, as in the pre-Civil War era, the industrialist class became dominant over the plantation and mercantile elites that had dominated the early republic. From about 1880 to 1930, the educational and religious institutions with roots in the Anglo-Protestant upper classes, such as the Ivy League universities and the mainline Protestant denominations, became dominated by secularists and liberals who believed that human betterment could be achieved through government planning and control. In other words, the grandsons of the Robber Barons scrapped classical economics and Herbert Spencer individualism with Keynesian notions and John Dewey influenced collectivism. These Ivy League types dominated the FDR Brain Trust, and with the help of the labor union movement, defeated and overturned the old Republican ascendancy.

As with the Progressive movement of the 1890-1920 era, the New Deal reforms were not driven from the bottom up, but the top down. The spiritual descendants of the Brain Trust and in a few instances the lineal descendants like Harold Icke continue on in the top advisers of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. To a lesser extent, they are influential in the GOP, through both the country club and neo-conservative factions of the party.

The bottom line is that all of the so-called reform movements from the 1880s to today have been driven by an elite group, whether industrialists, bankers, or academics, and not by the middle or lower classes.

[KC_Conspirator]

Alot of “Oh poor me” crying going on here. Its drives me up a wall. People need to dust themselves off and look at this as an opportunity to shape things.

[rmlew]

the truth is that we need to be Counter-Revolutionaries in a liberal culture, rather than right-liberals.

[x]

We play defense when, instead of striving to eliminate hate-crime laws, we merely fight proposals to make "transgendered" a protected category; when we accept the Federal Department of Education and simply use it to effect "conservative" education reform (read: No Child Left Behind Act); when we simply try to ensure that the separation of church and state ruling is applied in "conservative" ways; when we combat the tax-and-spend crowd by not taxing but then spending; and when we preach against illegal immigration while accepting a culture-rending legal immigration regime.

He's right about some of those things. But like a lot of activists he has a "point-scoring" mentality. The idea is that after 10 or 20 or 30 or 40 years we can go back, get our way, and "win" the point.

Most Americans hate that way of thinking, and their feeling is understandable. It's not that we go back and undo what's been done and legislate a conservative philosophy.

Rather it's that we demonstrate that those liberal policies aren't necessary, either because they've done their work already or because they don't work. Voters care about what works, not about giving victories to this or that political team -- and rightly so.

[JustaDumbBlonde]

Well, that was certainly interesting, but you didn't answer two simple questions. Let me ask them again. 1) Where does 'winning an election' rank in your list of core principles? and 2) Why is it so difficult for you to understand that there is a line to be drawn sometimes and that 'principles' don't change to suit the political climate of the day?

"Go on, and pat yourself on your back because you’re so principled."

Not necessary. Principles are something so much a part of me that I don't any more expect congrats for them any more than I do for my heart beating all day.

"Ronald Reagan, on the other hand, would vote for McCain, just like he sucked it up and supported Gerry Ford."

I'm gonna need some sort of proof that you are now the official spokesman for Ronald Reagan. Truth is, you don't have the first idea whom Reagan would support today. None. And the fact that you have to invoke his name tells me that you posture from a weak position. Either your argumemts stand on their own or they don't.

Which leads me to the third and final question that I have for you: Do you have any core value or belief that you are unwilling to compromise?

I look forward to straightforward answers from you and less rhetoric.

[toddlintown]

Yap, yap, yap. You had me but you lost me.

Say hi to Obama.

[JustaDumbBlonde]

Of course I lost you, you have no compass. That was pretty much my point all along.

[ExSoldier]

Thanks for the sermon.

I'm not qualified to give a sermon. I'm but a poor sinner saved by grace and wandering in the wilderness, telling other folks in the same condition where I found food. My comments are simply my beliefs.

Your mastery of Bible verses is commendable. Satan knows it backwards and forwards, too. You can take the Bible out of context all you want, but I highly doubt that the physical condition of the planet is the thing the Lord is truly PO'ed about.