The Expiration Of Traditional Conservatism

     There’s a new conservatism in town. The old one, which feels itself being displaced, doesn’t like it. No surprise there, I suppose. But it’s worthy of a few words of examination on a relatively quiet Thursday morning.

     The old, “traditional” conservatism that feels itself being displaced is probably best characterized by a statement the late William F. Buckley made many years ago about his conception of the role of the conservative:

     A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.

     “Stop,” of course, means “Stop here. Go no further.” It is a slogan against change, rather than for any particular value. It is the outcry of the defeated party anxious for an armistice that will preserve what he still holds against further incursions by his enemy. It is a maxim that implicitly admits failure.

     The pre-Trump GOP, to the extent that it was “conservative” in any sense, was that kind of conservative. It conceded that the enemy – left-liberalism, social democracy, “progressivism,” what have you – had gained much ground. It did not fight for the ground it had lost; rather, it accepted the Left’s gains as irreversible. It merely hoped to thwart any further left-wing gains, especially in economic and fiscal matters.

     But a “hold our ground” position will always be attacked with the enemy’s full force. Without a counter-initiative pressed with vigor and resolve, it will continue to lose ground. So “hold our ground” comes to mean “lose our ground as slowly as possible.”

     Yet that variety of conservatism appeals to many. Humans are extraordinarily adaptable. Given time, we adapt to changes in our environment, including our legal environment, with changes in ourselves and our behavioral patterns that will preserve as much of what we value as possible. But “change is hard, and difficulty makes people impatient.” (Arthur Herzog) Traditional conservatism, with its message of resistance to further change, appeals to our adaptability and our dislike of change itself.

     Once men have adapted to a set of changes, keeping things as they are appears to be “the path of least action.” It seems to require the least thought and effort from us. We’ve adapted; we’re still doing reasonably well; why exert ourselves any further? Especially if in our hearts we believe that the changes forced upon us are “here to stay” — ?

     If history has any enduring message about sociopolitical systems and their dynamics, it’s that the most difficult of all feats is staying in one place.

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     My thoughts this morning were nudged in this direction by this most recent piece from Wes Rhinier:

     [H]istory proves and human nature holds true that the only time people are motivated to change is when the turmoil and pain of change is better than the current state of affairs. Right now I don’t think many people are happy with how our country is at this point in time.

     As long as we continue to vote for the lesser of two evils the best we can ever hope for is the status quo. But evil and the power hungry will never settle for status quo, they will always want even more power. We are losing ground by continuing to play their game, on their terms.

     As long as everyone has remained fat, happy and entertained, people have seemed content to justify voting for the system.

     Now, Wes’s essay is a broadside against simply “voting for the lesser of two evils:” Republicans rather than Democrats. And it has merit – if there is no prospect for converting the GOP from its traditional “Stop here” conservatism to the more modern variety which the policies of Donald Trump have largely expressed. That modern, Trumpian conservatism is founded on a question:

What should we be trying to conserve?

     If we can arrive at coherent answers to that question – answers that would be widely agreed upon – we will simultaneously answer the related questions:

What is not worth conserving?
What must we oppose with all our power?

     My question, to Wes and my other Gentle Readers, is a simple one:

Can we transform the Republican Party:
Away from its “Stop here” legacy,
Into a party that promotes freedom and American sovereignty?

     I hold that this question, which is seldom seriously addressed and almost never seriously answered, is the crux of our contemporary political discourse.

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     William F. Buckley was no fool. Indeed, he possessed a powerful intellect and a great erudition. One of his other statements, which seems to qualify the “stand athwart history yelling Stop” maxim, runs thus:

     Conservatives pride themselves on resisting change, which is as it should be. But intelligent deference to tradition and stability can evolve into intellectual sloth and moral fanaticism, as when conservatives simply decline to look up from dogma because the effort to raise their heads and reconsider is too great....The laws concerning marijuana aren't exactly indefensible, because practically nothing is, and the thunderers who tell us to stay the course can always find one man or woman who, having taken marijuana, moved on to severe mental disorder. But that argument, to quote myself, is on the order of saying that every rapist began by masturbating....General rules based on individual victims are unwise. And although there is a perfectly respectable case against using marijuana, the penalties imposed on those who reject that case, or who give way to weakness of resolution, are very difficult to defend.

     While that addresses a single contentious issue, the general principle to which it alludes – Each of us has the right to go to Hell after his own fashion – is an important one. While Buckley was willing to consider exceptions to that principle, he would not do so lightly, nor without pondering the consequences and alternatives.

     If there must be exceptions to the principle of individual freedom, let them be as few as possible. Never accede to one without soberly contemplating the probable consequences. Traditional conservatism often espoused policies that had grave consequences – far worse than the goals held out for those policies – that could have been foreseen, whether from simple reasoning or from historical precedents. It is from that sort of dogmatic, uncontemplative conservatism that we must retreat.

     President Trump’s thinking and preferences appear to incline in the direction of a new, freedom-centered conservatism. For me, the question of the hour is whether we can swing the rest of the Republican Party into his orbit, or whether he’s fated to be a glitch on the graph of history. If it is still possible to make the GOP into a party of freedom that isn’t overrun by fringe loonies and anti-Americans, then the time for revolution, and the chaos and bloodshed it would entail, is not yet upon us.

     Thoughts?