Guest Post by The Zman
One of the sad truths about the Trump era is that the Republican Party will return to being the Bush party as soon as Trump leaves office. The 2020 election could be a blowout, giving Trump a mandate to push through all sorts of populist projects, as well as giving the GOP a huge majority. Trumpism could become the default position of the base, but the party will immediately begin selling itself as a the kinder, gentler Trumpism as soon as Trump is in the rear-view mirror.
It is one of the enduring features of post-war America. Pat Buchanan pointed it out way back in the 1980’s, when he observed that the people vote conservatives to Congress, only to see them go native in a few years. It is a remarkable transformation made more obvious in the communication age. You can just follow the person’s social media feed to see the transformation. They go from representing their people in Washington to Washington’s representative to those people.
The question that has vexed the genuine Right is why this seems to be a phenomenon of the Right and not the Left. There are no examples of left-wingers going to Washington and becoming moderates. That only happens when the Overton window shifts Left. Yesterdays’ hair on fire crazies suddenly sound like statesmen. Back in the 1980’s, when Schumer and Pelosi hit town, they were considered embarrassments to the party, but today they are what passes for normal.
This is not just an American phenomenon. The rest of the English-speaking world has the same issue. In Canada it is called Red Toryism, a sort of center-right conservatism that trails along behind their Left. In Britain, of course, it is just called Toryism. There it is the default position of the ruling class, which is always drifting further Left. The Aussies, of course, have an upside-down version of this with a funny name. Weak and timid conservatism is the default all over the English-speaking world.
It’s not just that it is timid or disorganized. As the Canadian political theorist Ben Woodfinden notes, it is a reaction to the collectivist impulses of the Left. The Left seeks to use the state to reorganize society according to their current fads, so the Right opposes the state as a legitimate entity. Not just the state, but institutions in general, instead promoting radical individualism. Conservatism comes to be defined as something just as radical as what’s on offer from the Left.
What English speaking countries need is a conservatism that will transform the state into something that will strengthen and support traditional institutions. Instead they get a force that weakens those institutions. The conservative revolution of the 1980’s in America, unleashed rapacious global privateering in the name of free enterprise and entrepreneurial spirit. Instead of restoring the damage done by the radicals of the 60’s and 70’s, it created new mayhem.
You see that forming up in Britain and America in response to the rise of archaic socialism, in the form of Sanders and Corbyn. Conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic are now working themselves raw about this new red menace. Instead of examining why these collectivist appeals, including the rise of populism, are attractive to the voters, they lurch further into radical individualism. This is every bit as destructive to the culture as the radicalism it claims to oppose.
The culture war is one side using the state to destroy tradition, while the other side makes it impossible to form a collective defense of the culture. The reason for this is that, at least in the Americas, there has never been an authentic conservatism. America has always been a radical bourgeois project. After the Civil War, that radicalism became the default of the political class and remains so today. This reformist impulse is the distinguishing feature of the American empire.
That reformist impulse has its roots in the founding. On the one hand, those people we call Puritans were collectivists reformers. They believed society was judged collectively, which gave them license to police the community for sinners. Advancing society, social progress, meant bringing the bottom up in a spiritual sense. On the other hand, a man’s relationship with God was his alone. Self-sufficiency was a sign of God’s grace, an indication that the person was in good standing with the Lord.
Both sides of this coin are quite radical, relative to Western tradition. In fact, it is fair to say the Puritans were anti-tradition. They stripped their houses of worship of all ornamentation and any reminders of past practice. They saw tradition and ritual as an excuse for not exercising the spirit through the regular study of Scripture. The collective impulse of the founding, as well as its individualism, are the result of a rejection of European traditionalism on spiritual grounds.
This is why reform in America has been impossible. The periods of radicalism in the name of collective reform have been followed by periods where the institutions are weakened in the name of individualism. These weakened institutions become vulnerable to a new round of radical reform. This cycle has locked the ruling class into a dance that always moves Left. No matter the response of the public at the ballot box, the direction is always Left, just with a different lead.
Ironically, this means that the only way a genuine conservatism can emerge, and in the case of Britain, reemerge, is by overthrowing the current order. This Progressive orthodoxy of radical reformers entangled with radical individualist will need to collapse into a single unified ideology, while something new arises to oppose it. That something new is the defense of traditional order, organic institutions and the popular will expressed through natural identity.
That means the way forward is an intermediate step of right-wing radicalism that first seeks to discredit and delegitimize the prevailing orthodoxy. From the rubble can be built new institutions and ideologies that are salient to the demographics age. A genuine conservatism can be intellectually conceived, but the traditions that it should rest upon have been eliminated, so it will require a dismantling of current institutions and the building of new ones, loosely based on the traditions of the West.
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Gobbledygook… Chip
Term limits are needed.
Such mechanistic demands always remind me of
“we need automatic adjustments of social security pension payout, to correct for inflation” in the 1970’s…
How’d that turn out for ya?
“A genuine conservatism can be intellectually conceived, but the traditions that it should rest upon have been eliminated, so it will require a dismantling of current institutions and the building of new ones, loosely based on the traditions of the West.”
Just once I’d like to see this guy say what his vision of “a geniune conservatism” is. He takes shots at socialists, liberals, neoliberals, neoconservatives, libertarians, and radical individualists. What is this geniune conservatism that he thinks is the answer, and is somehow different than the sputtering conservatism that has watched this country slide into statism and collectivism for the last 100+ years. What is this Zman-style conservatism’s philosophical foundation? By all means, intellectually conceive it. It would make a good column or two. We’re waiting.
Agree completely RG. I enjoy Z’s articles immensely, except for when he gets to proselytizing on political identities. No political identity is “pure”, as I myself can identify as conservative, libertarian, and liberal, depending on what the specific topic is. I’m sure most people also have diverse identification when it comes to specific political/social identity.
Neo-con = Neo-feudelism
I have always appreciated your probity, but every once in a while you let go with an incisive critique that must kill the writer to read.
Spot on.
Too many people use the term conservative when speaking about republican politicians and it usually is not the correct term. the republican party has always tended to be socially conservative and fiscally liberal. The Bushies & Mitt are prime examples of old line, northeastern republicans.
For two solid years, Republicans held both houses of Congress, the USSC and the White House. Can anyone name a single “conservative” thing we got out of it? Tax cuts for goliath internet companies? Anything else? The idea that after the election of Trump the GOP was suddenly anything other than the milquetoast bunch of phonies and AIPAC lapdogs they’ve been for decades may be the most laughable thing Zman has ever suggested.
1 trillion indictments, a wall, lowering of the deficit, troops pulled out of shit-hole countries, Ending of the Fed, The end of zionist asskissing. Trust the plan. Woo hoo riding that trump train.
At least Trump is fighting to make sure men in Africa can butt-fuck each other, amirite?
” reform in America has been impossible ” not because collectivism or even radicalism, but because corporatism which is synonymous with “the greater good” or as the criminals in control like to call it “economic development”.
Economic development as it exists on the state and local level transcends party politics. Economic Development Authorities are a power unto themselves. To quash dissent, they devise catchy little marketing gimmicks like One (insert name of city, town or state and ) “We Have To Grow the Jobs To Reduce The Tax Burden”.
If you resist your town, city, county or state to being on the hook for hundreds of billions of dollars in bonds guaranteed by the taxpayers and outright grants to build tech, pharmaceutical or giant distributions centers in your neighborhood then you are against low taxation and jobs for the youth. You not ONE with the hive and will be ostracized and cast out, never to have you voice heard in in how your county should be managed again.
Regardless who’s in control , Republicans or Democrats, they all want your money to attract new industry to your area and as soon as the new jobs are being filled , of which few go to locals, you begin to notice the demographic, culture and local politicians begin to change and not for the better. Taxes are never reduced as promised, but continue to go up. Soon local working class people can no longer can afford the high rents, property tax and living costs, including utilities and are forced to move . New schools ,city/ county government offices, law enforcement jails and parkways have to be built and after a decade you no longer recognize the strip malls and fast food slop shops for the place you once called home.
This is how communities are broken, paved over and become multicultural shitholes that no sane person could ever really call home. Home is a place of shared identity, culture and tradition. Big Corporate/Government is none of that . BCG only cares about how much money can be earned in the area and when the profits dry up, as they inevitable do, BCG is off looking to relocate ( i.e. fleece another community) leaving behind, of what once was a beautiful and caring community, a broken, rotting shell of shit, criminals and drug addled fools.
We call this economic development and it is the enemy of every stable community in America. And, as long as the smiling cutthroats masquerading as Economic Development Authorities have any control over how your tax dollar is spent there can be no Conservative revival. Mammon does not allow it, because we gotta’ grow.
I hope this makes sense to those of you never exposed to EDA using tax dollars to transform communities into something one no longer recognizes . If it doesn’t, then you really need to investigate what your local EDA is up to. You may be surprised.
What you describe is exactly the reason Eric Greitens was taken down in Missouri.
“the Republican Party will return to being the Bush party as soon as Trump leaves office”
you think pence is another rino?
It’s because at this moment in time, evil is stronger than light, on this earth. It won’t always be this way but it must be endured. One must not be apathetic, one must fight. It is the nature of this existence. All things must be won in battle.