Conservatism

My motivation for coming to this blog was to have the opportunity to discuss ways in which the Republican Party could more eloquently and successfully get out the message and philosophy of conservatism.  (We had a long discussion about it here.)  Traditionally conservatism is defined according to the three pillars of fiscal conservtism, social conservatism, and national security.  For purposes of this discussion, these three pillars may be separated into their philosophical bases and their potential policy positions that flow from their corresponding bases, as follows. Now I can't say that these three descriptions are 100% complete but I hope they get the idea across. 

Fiscal Conservatism

Philosophical basis:  The marketplace is a more efficient allocator of resources than the government; hence when deciding how resources should be allocated, the bias should always be in favor of private-sector decisionmaking.  Free markets build wealth, create prosperity, and raises standards of living for all; hence markets should be kept as free as reasonably possible.  Moreover capitalism and free markets do a great job at preserving individual liberty, as those participating in the marketplace aren't requied to obey the will of the majority (e.g. if 90% of the population prefers Pepsi but I prefer Coke, I can still buy Coke if I so desire); hence regulations that restrict choices in the marketplace should be kept to a minimum.

Potential Policy Positions: Cut taxes; this returns money to the private sector and therefore leads to a more efficient spending of that money.  Cut government spending; this reduces the demand for taxes and also makes the marketplace freer as duplicative government services are eliminated in favor of private-sector offering of those services.  Reduce the regulatory burden; this preserves choice in the marketplace and leads to a freer market.

Social Conservatism

Philosophical Basis:  Traditional values, customs and ways of viewing the world have withstood the test of time, hence they should be given deferential treatment over newer values or customs that have not survived the same level of temporal scrutiny.  Moreover social change often leads to unintended consequences, most of the time deleterious ones, so change by itself should be regarded skeptically and, if deemed beneficial, should happen slowly, cautiously and methodically, so that any unintended consequences can be recognized and overcome.  Finally, individual liberty is only beneficially meaningful when it is conjoined with a moral people; hence policies that promote moral clarity should be favored over those that create moral obfuscation or relativism.

Potential Policy Positions:  Promote policies that strengthen traditional social institutions such as marriage and family.  Appoint conservative judges who will agree to interpret the Constitution in a traditional manner instead of imposing their own views onto it.  Promote a culture of life, as a moral people should err on the side of caution when dealing with this most precious gift anyone may have.  Finally, faith is a traditional source of values and moral guidance, so while government should not promote any particular religion over another, neither should it attempt to banish religion from the public square entirely.

National Security

Philosophical Basis:  The United States, as the only nation to have been formed as a result of ideals rather than simple geographical proximity, bears a special responsibility to promote and uphold those ideals throughout a world that has seen more than its fair share of barbarism and tyranny. 

Potential Policy Positions:  Reflexively and overtly support the service of our brave soldiers; they deserve nothing less.  Promote the interests of the United States first and foremost, as our government works to serve us, not a 'global consensus'.  Unapologetically defend the ideals upon which this nation was founded.

"Yet though hot socialism is probably a thing of the past, some of its conceptions have penetrated far too deeply into the whole structure of current thought to justify complacency.  If few people in the Western world now want to remake society from the bottom according to some ideal bluepoint, a great many still believe in measures which, though not designed completely to remodel the economy, in their aggregate effect may well unintentionally produce this result.  And, even more than at the time when I wrote this book, the advocacy of policies which in the long run cannot be reconciled with the preservation of a free society is no longer a party matter.  That hodgepoedge of ill-assembled and often inconsistent ideals which under the name of the Welfare State has largely replaced socialism as the goal of the reformers needs very careful sorting-out if its results are not to be very similar to those of full-fledged socialism.  This is not to say that some of its aims are not both practicable and laudable.  But there are many ways in which we can work toward the same goal, and in the present state of opinion there is some danger that our impatience for quick results may lead us to choose instruments which, though perhaps more efficient for achieving the particular ends, are not compatible with the preservation of a free society.  The increasing tendency to rely on administrative coercion and discrimination where a modification of the general rules of law might, perhaps more slowly, achive the same object, and to resort to direct state controls or to the creation of monopolistic institutions where judicious use of financial inducements might evoke spontaneous efforts is still a powerful legacy of the socialist period which is likely to influence policy for a long time to come."

-Hayek, in the Preface to the 1956 Edition of The Road to Serfdom.

First, I think we should all agree that single-payer health insurance is probably the most un-conservative idea that one could possibly imagine and that this is one issue that Republicans should go to the mat and beyond fighting against.

But what I most object to is the philosophy behind single-payer health insurance.  It is a philosophy of dependency on government.  It is the philosophy of entitlement - that we are all entitled to certain things without having to work for them.  It is the philosophy that government should provide citizens with needs, even if they are able to pay for them themselves.  It truly is the old-school hard-core central-planning-style socialism.

De Tocqueville was an amazing man.  In his book Democracy in America, he wrote (among many other things) about ways that a democratic nation like America might succumb to despotism.  It would of course be different than the despotism of a king, emperor or tyrant since a democratic nation has none of these.  Instead, he wrote (yes it's long but read the whole thing anyway):

"I think, then, that the species of oppression by which democratic nations are menaced is unlike anything that ever before existed in the world; our contemporaries will find no prototype of it in their memories. I seek in vain for an expression that will accurately convey the whole of the idea I have formed of it; the old words despotism and tyranny are inappropriate: the thing itself is new, and since I cannot name, I must attempt to define it.

"I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men, all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest; his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind. As for the rest of his fellow citizens, he is close to them, but he does not see them; he touches them, but he does not feel them; he exists only in himself and for himself alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his country.

 "Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?

 "Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things;it has predisposed men to endure them and often to look on them as benefits.

 "After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd."

The reason why De Tocqueville couldn't come up with a name for this despotism was because it hadn't yet been invented in the early 19th century.  He was writing of the despotism of the welfare state.  It doesn't crush a person's spirit like a jailhouse tormentor might, but it simply attempts to divert a person's life into a prescribed direction, like a shepherd does for his flock.  I don't want government as my sheperd.  And that is why I oppose single-payer, and that is why I am a conservative.

P.S. For those of you seeking conservative ideas about health care, see this website and associated book from the Cato Institute.

This is getting a bit frustrating.  I was initially attracted to this site because I thought it could be a place to discuss conservative strategy and ideas in a more-or-less safe environment - where I could discuss, e.g., how we could advance the cause of limited government without the shrill calls from the left about wanting to throw grandma out on the street.  But lately it seems this place has been overtaken by a bunch of leftists who, while they aren't exactly trolls, don't seem to have quite the same motives.  I mean, we have In Between who thinks that "tax cuts drained our economy", we have Jim Dandy who thinks Republicans want to "bulldoze public schools" and we have people like NextRightNando and RisingTide who appear to spend extraordinary amounts of time defending every government program, especially the welfare state itself.  It is frankly tiring all the time having to continually repeat "no, tax cuts don't need to be 'paid for', they actually generate more tax revenue for government" and "no, conservatives don't want to throw grandma out onto the street".  If I had wanted these same tired left-right battles I would go to a Usenet discussion forum, not a place labeled "The Next Right".  So I have to ask:

To our liberal interlopers: what is your reasoning for coming here?  Do you wish to instruct us wayward conservatives on the error of our ways?  Because, really, don't bother.  We don't want that kind of 'help'.  Do you want to help forge a new center-right consensus in this country?  Because I think we'd all appreciate the help.  But you have to understand that the consensus that we want to form is center-right, and repeating liberal myths about conservatism isn't going to help in that aspect either.

To my conservative colleagues: Am I just totally off-base here?  Is this place nothing more than a left-right battleground?  Or should we be talking more about advancing the cause itself?  Despite how dispiriting the last election was, I feel like I have more energy now to put towards seeing the conservative cause grow and prosper, but that energy is as yet unchanneled.

Thoughts?

duplicate

While we are recreating conservatism and rediscovering our roots, can we stop to examine the foundation we stand upon?

Russell Kirk:

"The conservative is not opposed to social improvement, although he doubts whether there is any such force as a mystical Progress, with a Roman P, at work in the world. When a society is progressing in some respects, usually it is declining in other respects. The conservative knows that any healthy society is influenced by two forces, which Samuel Taylor Coleridge called its Permanence and its Progression. The Permanence of a society is formed by those enduring interests and convictions that gives us stability and continuity; without that Permanence, the fountains of the great deep are broken up, society slipping into anarchy. The Progression in a society is that spirit and that body of talents which urge us on to prudent reform and improvement; without that Progression, a people stagnate.

Therefore the intelligent conservative endeavors to reconcile the claims of Permanence and the claims of Progression. He thinks that the liberal and the radical, blind to the just claims of Permanence, would endanger the heritage bequeathed to us, in an endeavor to hurry us into some dubious Terrestrial Paradise. The conservative, in short, favors reasoned and temperate progress; he is opposed to the cult of Progress, whose votaries believe that everything new necessarily is superior to everything old."

It feels like the only thing I get to read from a lot of conservative blogs since Obama's election is how the conservative movement is in shambles, how the Republican Party has lost its way, etc. I was in the boat for a few days, and while there is some regrouping that needs to be done, I think those on the right who are in dire straits - and those on the left who are rubbing their hands together - need to take a step back a bit. Things aren't so bad, and this is why:

1) Conservatism Generally Isn't Trendy: I say "generally" because Ronald Reagan largely bucked this trend. Even then, the trendiness of Reagan had as much to do with how ineffectual Carter was as the reality of Reagan as one of the great communicators. But, generally speaking, conservatism isn't trendy. It's an ideas-based, values-based ideology, and one that resonates best when sticking to its principles. I'll come back to that point, but contrast it with the Obama campaign that generated, purposefully or not, a cult of personality complete with art and songs and what have you. No matter how good your ideas are, you're going to have a lot of trouble beating a fad, and that's the type of buzzsaw that the Republican Party and the conservative movement ran into this year. After all, for comparison, Kid A came out in 2000, but N'Sync's No Strings Attached is still the highest selling debut week in history from that same year - sometimes the superior doesn't always resonate.

2) Barack Obama Can't Run Every Year: I have to highlight this following the Georgia run-off and the results of the Minnesota Senate race - with Barack Obama on the ballot, Democrats will do better as a result. In Georgia, Saxby Chambliss couldn't pull a majority. When Obama's not there to boost turnout? A massive swing. On the same token, in Minnesota, Franken never polled as well as Obama in Minnsesota, it's difficult to imagine that he'd come close to Coleman if there wasn't something else to boost Democratic turnout. The true test of this will be in 2010, of course - granted, one can't expect the trend of the White House party in power to be bucked again like it was in 2002 with Bush, but the likelihood of Democrats getting an extra 4-6% of downticket support is unlikely in 2010. 2012 might be a different story altogether, but it's obviously too soon to see how the left will ultimately react to an Obama Presidency.

3) We're Still Center-Right as a Nation: As much as I'd like to say that Obama's waffling on Iraq and taxes is evidence of this, we have more significant evidence than that: even with Obama's apparent mandate, the electorate doesn't agree with his original positions on issues such as drilling or the death penalty, not even touching moral issues. The reality is that the conservative or even center point of view is more like to win out today, and the demographics are trending toward that as well - young people overwhelmingly want to be able to opt out of Social Security, and, to use a Presidential poll, the investor class (defined as folks who have more than $5000 invested in stocks) trend conservative/Republican. A majority of Americans own stock today, and if you invest, you're more likely to vote conservative/Republican. We elected a hardline liberal into the White House this year, and elected some hardline liberals into the House and Senate. This isn't evidence of a shifting electorate as much as what appears to be a unique circumstance.

4) Conservatives Can Win as Conservatives, Not as Centrists: We saw this happen a bit during the special elections between 2006 and 2008 - squishy, centrist (if not left-leaning) Republicans against Blue Dog Democrats, Republicans are going to fail. The plus side to the losses in 2006 by the Republicans was the way many of the Republicans who lost were ones Republicans could afford to lose in the long term. While it's hard to say whether any conservative could have won against Obama in the Fall 2008 political climate, running a guy who's spent most of his Senate career annoying conservatives may not have been the brightest move.

This isn't to say there aren't some marketing issues to be addressed, or that the Democrats haven't possibly made some strides, but I do think things are better than they look.

Does anyone know of right wing (preferably online) groups in Ohio like RightMichigan.com?

*When postulating the composition of The Next Right, it is crucial to do some digging beyond the oft-quoted think-tanks and talking heads.  The GOP can enlarge its base while sticking to its principles by identifying the multitude of ways those principles can be applied to the world.

Let me begin with a Financial Times Q&A with Christopher Buckley:

Is it possible for the conservative movement to reinvent itself without the reliance on the cultural boogeyman that has made them so onerous? Can the Party separate itself from religion?Mark Glover, Mass

CB: This is a key question, to which I very much hope that the answer is yes. Remember what Burke said (I shall now proceed to misquote him): “I believe neither in permanent defeats or permanent victories.” My late father (WFB, Jr) once said to me, “I have spent my entire life trying to separate the Right from the kooks. Let’s hope the next WFB, whoever he may be, will be successful.

This answer says much about the state of conservatism in America.  Here Christopher Buckley blames the "conservative movement's" failings on its "reliance on cultural boogeyman."  I happen to agree that, yes, conservatism stands for more than backwoods irrationality; but to stop thinking there would be to miss the point.

WFB "spent his entire life trying to separate the Right from the kooks."  This is necessary in any political "movement" so as to avoid a schism (like we are seeing today in the GOP and among conservative circles.)  So why, then, are we witnessing a schism if the conservative movement's "architect," "father," and "Sir Galahad" spent his life trying to avoid such a travesty?  It happened because Buckley succeeded.

William F. Buckley Jr. wrought exactly what he was trying to avoid by his very own success.  The "conservative movement's" public persona is dull, flat, unexciting and completely unoriginal.  For the last 8 years, the "conservative movement" was a veritable echo-chamber with FOX News leading the way.  This was tenable for the GOP while the wind was at its back.  With national security at the forefront of the nation's attention, the GOP had little to worry about on election day.  Meanwhile, short-term strategists negotiated completely unconservative "compromises" with liberal Democrats on everything from prescription drug welfare to education-centralization under NCLB along with many other unconservative endeavors that created a huge ballooning in domestic spending and the national debt.

It's not surprising the GOP isn't in worse shape when one couples these domestic blunders with very unpopular and ill-communicated initiatives like the unfortunately named "domestic surveillance" program and a few bungled national disasters (ahem...New Orleans) plus unmitigated immigration and a very difficult global war with seemingly amiguous fronts (Mission Accomplished?).

All of that happened precisely because the conservative movement became an echo-chamber that rubber stamped the RNC and other GOP leaders (that means you, W).  The GOP's 1996 party platform vowed to abolish the Dept. of Education (completely conservative); but then in 2007 after nearly two GOP presidential terms, the Dept. of Ed. was fatter than ever with a headquarters renamed for Lyndon B. Johnson (completely unconservative)!

This is why we need "the kooks."  For two long, ideological diversity has been replaced by TV's talking heads and books with covers that resemble the "I'm With Stupid" t-shirts.

The Right of the future (ie. the Next Right) needs an intellectual insurgency.  A lot has been said about conservatives being cast out to the wilderness to find our way.  Some of that sentiment has merit, but I suspect the trip to the woods won't last too long precisely because many "conservatives" have been in the "wilderness" quite awhile already.

In order to make a comeback fast, conservatives need an all-out intellectual insurgency.  The Right must throw open the doors to the "good kooks" in the following groups that should have voted enthusiastically for the Republican in Novemeber but didn't:

the young Americans for liberty,

the paleoconservative interventionist Right,

the free market Austrian School of Economics capitalists,

the privacy rights libertarians (especially the energetic Ron Paulers),

the antiwar Right,

the young conservative activists,

the intellectual collegiate scholars,

the spectators of American politics and culture,

the traditionalist studiers of statesmanship and public policy,

the anti-illegal immigration patriots,

and the societally sophisticated paleoconservative alliance that "prefers peace with honor to proxy wars, Western civilization to multicultural barbarism, Christendom to the European Union, and Russell Kirk to Leon Trotsky."

Now, I don't characterize myself as a pacifist libertarian nor as a zero-immigration xenophobe, but I do believe vigorous debate from the Right would inform the American electorate in favor of the Repubs and against the Dems.  By framing the debate by interjecting passionate "kooks" into the public eye, the Dems will be shown for the socialist frauds that they are.  The entire campaign the media and the American people never heard Barack Obama's true plans for the country or the consequences of his ideas because the debate was controlled by his minions (in other words, the Left's "kooks").

Notice that I did not list the

American Enterprise Institute,

National Review,

Heritage Foundation,

sly Southern nanny-state hucksters,

"bloviators" like Bill O'Reilly,

"thinkers" like David Frum,

radio hosts that talks much but says little,

or the much flaunted conservative "authority" that seems more like a histrionic mannequin. 

I left them out because they have had either too much sway during the Bush years or they failed to capitalize on the opportunities afforded to them.  It's not that they aren't important to the Right wing in American politics, it's just that they aren't the only shows in town.  The conservative "movement" needs to open its eyes and realize that conservatism is much bigger and deeper than the Bush Administration would have us believe.

Also, "fusionism" is imperative to the next Right.  The tripartite alliance of the social, economic and national security conservatives has been shaken by dominant neoconservatism, plain and simple.  Whenever one wing of the triumvirate gains too much power, the entire group weakens. 

The GOP didn't really implode in '08.  Let's not forget that the Republican Party barely won the White House in 2000 and probably would have lost in 2004 had it not been for the Global War on Terrorism and the awful candidate John "I wish I was the real JFK" Kerry.  The midterm defeat in 2006 shouldn't make 2008 a big surprise, especially considering the perfect storm the GOP faced this past November.

For these reasons (the wilderness and discovering our deepest roots are two of them) and many more, we have much to look forward to in 2009.  We also have much to do.

Reading books with boring covers published before 1990 is as good a place as any to get started.

Erick Erickson says we need to do more than rebuild the party. We need to fix the movement.

One of the greatest failures of the conservative movement in the past decade was to join itself to the Republican hip. By necessity, conservatives and Republicans are linked, but they are not nor must they be the same thing.

Politicians are about politicians. Conservatives are about the advancement of freedom. There are too few politicians out there who would, when faced with the choice, put the advancement of the movement ahead of their personal advancement. Those that do put the movement ahead of themselves are often marginalized or ignored inside the party. And too often, the movement latches on to those who talk the talk, but do not walk the walk.

Being out of power will give conservatives to emerge from under the shadow of the Republican Party. A big reason why the right has stagnated online is that being in power has given the right little of substance to do. All the decisions were being made for us in Washington -- everything from where the GOP should stand on immigration to campaign strategy. When everything you need to know about candidate recruitment and how the GOP targets races is written down in a binder at the RNC, there's little for volunteers to do other than follow orders. That's not very inspiring to grassroots activists. To appropriate something Soren told me over email once, more stuff for volunteers to do equals more volunteers.

This top-down approach is the curse of the party in power -- though Obama is smart enough to try and at least pretend otherwise. Yes, people will still help. And yes, we need everyone marching in basically the same direction. But with no sense that conservative activists own the party (or the movement) or have room to create their own parallel recruitment and fundraising apparatus to augment or even challenge the party, there is little incentive for smart and creative people to get involved except in official roles.

The conservative movement does not need to be the party, but it needs to influence and drive it. This is essentially the argument I've had with Rick Moran and others who don't think activism is worth it until the Beltway GOP reforms itself from within. To presuppose a Chinese wall between party and movement and wait for the party to fix itself is a mistake. The movement needs to take an active role in reforming the party. Party and movement need to be equal partners, with a free flow of people and ideas between them. When the party is moving in the right direction, the movement needs to have its hand on the steering wheel. When it's gone off the cliff, the movement needs to step back and offer a vigorous challenge to the current direction of the party.

Whether the movement as currently constituted is capable of playing this role is a question up for debate. Erick's point about the danger of organizations being known for their leaders rather than their work product is spot on. I also think we've descended into the single issue interest group mentality that plauged the left up to the '80s and '90s. Don't get me wrong -- we need single issue groups to focus on the niche issues no one else will. Only groups like National Right to Work are going to go out and file suit against real life examples of labor union abuse and intimidation. But if I could wave a magic wand, I'd call a moratorium on new single issue groups and think tanks (let's keep the great ones we have) and focus on building movement-wide activist infrastructure.

Right now, the balance of power in the conservative movement when it comes to grassroots muscle rests with the economic (AFP, FreedomWorks, Club for Growth, etc.) and social (AFA, Focus, etc.) wings. You also have the NRA.

The balance of power in the progressive movement rests with MoveOn and the netroots that are consistently liberal on all issues weighted equally. Lots of energy has been expended on coordinating all the moving parts of the conservative movement, and that's good, but progressives solved their own interest group paralysis by creating a movement with just one moving part.

We need new institutions that help us rally around the unifying issues, not more coordination and meetings.