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Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War!
THE DEATH OF CONSERVATISM
by
Andrew Russo - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Political scholars generally trace the advent of the modern
conservative movement in America to the late 1940s and 1950s
when growing discomfort with the regimentation of the New
Deal State was emerging and the shadow of a Cold War with
Soviet Communism was falling across the planet.
Names such as Whittaker Chambers, Alger Hiss, the
Rosenbergs, and Sen. Joseph McCarthy began to splash
across the papers as Communist subversion was revealed at
the highest levels of the U.S. Government. Tomes such as
Hayek’s Road to Serfdom and Russell Kirk’s The Conservative
Mind began to appear on bookshelves and publications such
as Human Events and William F. Buckley’s National Review
emerged to challenge the prevailing status quo of the liberal
welfare state designed by FDR.
By the early 1960s, the incipient conservative movement was
rallying behind a libertarian Senator from the Southwest, Barry
Goldwater. His book, Conscience of a Conservative, became
the Bible of the new movement and Goldwater its John the
Baptist.
In re-reading Conscience today, one recognizes clearly the
adage “How the mighty have fallen” when referring to the state
of conservatism in America today.
Goldwater’s philosophy of the early 1960s is almost as far
removed from the policies of George W. Bush and the
Republican Congress as it was from LBJ’s Great Society
which the Arizonan took on in the 1964 presidential campaign.
Goldwater conservatism advocated the rollback of federal
power, the elimination of federal programs and regulations not
authorized by the Constitution, and the abolition of mandatory
Social Security and the progressive income tax. It sought the
dismantling of the entire New Deal-Fair Deal-New Frontier-
Great Society architecture of Big Government. It did not seek
to reduce the “rate of growth” of government or promise to run
more efficiently the existing programs of the welfare state. It
sought to abolish them.
The growing conservative movement of the 1960s was assisted
mightily by a renegade federal judiciary which, under the
leadership of Supreme Politician Earl Warren, began to impose
liberal social policies from the bench. The Supreme Court’s
rulings on school prayer, criminal rights, busing, and abortion
led to a massive reaction that helped contribute to Richard
Nixon’s elevation to the Presidency in 1968 and 1972.
The conservative movement had now expanded from the anti-
Communism of Chambers and McCarthy to the small
government philosophy of Barry Goldwater to a new cultural
conservatism sparked by an arrogant, usurping federal court
system determined to destroy America’s religious heritage
through judicial fiat.
By 1980, the conservative movement, resting on the three
pillars of anti-Communism, limited government, and cultural
restoration succeeded in electing Ronald Reagan to the White
House, the most rhetorically ( if not ideologically ) conservative
president in the 20th Century.
While Reagan failed miserably in bringing the Leviathan state
under control and America’s cultural meltdown continued and
accelerated under his reign, his foreign and defense policies
did succeed in accomplishing the task of bankrupting and
burying Soviet Communism. With the Cold War over, one of
the three pillars of modern conservatism ( anti-Communism )
seemed no longer relevant.
A new decade was dawning, a decade devoid of the
overarching threat of Soviet imperialism that had dominated
American politics since 1945. Was the conservative movement
ready to adapt to the changes sweeping the globe?
With Communism vanquished, would conservatism reinforce its
commitment to limited government and retaking American
culture? Would it replace anti-Communism with a new cause,
an enlightened American nationalism rooted in the foreign
policy of George Washington and the trade policy of Henry
Clay?
Or would it remain wedded to the policies of the past and seek
to pour the same wine into new bottles? Would conservatism
even remain a political force in post-Cold War America or
would it flounder in search of a mission, eventually just folding
its tent and stealing silently away? Would it fracture and
fissure into a dozen subgroups, making it a weakened and
marginal player in U.S. politics? Would it surrender its basic
tenets and sign a separate peace with the Welfare/Warfare
State so as to keep its positions of influence in Washington
and keep its mailing lists churning?
The Republican takeover of Congress in 1994 was the defining
moment for the conservative movement in this decade. The
accomplishments, or lack thereof, would determine whether
the movement even survived into the new millennium.
The fruits of six years of Republican congressional control are
obvious: the size of the federal government is bigger,
Washington’s tax take is the highest in the postwar era,
federal spending approaches $2 trillion, and not one major
federal agency has been abolished. Republicans in Congress
endorse the Clinton Administration’s massive expansion of
federal interference in health care and education and sign off on
ill-advised foreign adventures from Haiti to Bosnia to Kosovo.
Favorable trade deals are given to our enemies and our
sovereignty is progressively surrendered to the international
agencies of the New World Order. Our southern border is
allowed to bleed and the lives of American citizens put in
danger as illegal immigration goes unchecked. Massive
corruption in the Justice Department goes unchallenged. And,
blame for the fact that the most criminal president in U.S.
history remains in office rests squarely on the shoulders of a
craven and cowardly GOP leadership in the Senate.
This is conservatism? It might be conservatism in the confused
mind of Trent Lott, but it is not the conservatism of Russell
Kirk. Or Barry Goldwater. Or even Ronald Reagan. Perhaps it
is the “compassionate conservatism” that George W. Bush
proclaims as he unveils a new federal spending program every
other day or fights to have the Department of Education
preserved to indoctrinate our schoolchildren in the wonders of
Big Government and globalism.
The Republican ticket of Bush and Cheney is probably the final
nail in the coffin of modern conservatism. This is a ticket of the
business and political establishment. It is a ticket of status
quo governance, meaning accommodation to Big Government
at home and world government abroad. This is a ticket of the
Corporate State, the unholy alliance of Big Business and Big
Government that was called Fascism when it was practiced in
Italy in the 1930s. This ticket represents a commitment to the
ever-expanding role of Washington in our daily lives and to
reckless interventionism around the globe. It is Dewey-Willkie-
Eisenhower Republicanism, not Goldwater-Reagan
conservatism.
The fact that so many so-called conservatives have signed on
to George W’s candidacy indicates that they have completely
abandoned the founding tenets of their cause and have
surrendered principle for a warm place by the fire. They now
accept the governing philosophy of the New Deal and the Great
Society. And, they accept global governance as inevitable. In
the cultural war, they have raised the white flag, accepting
Dubya’s vague assurances over abortion and the Supreme
Court when they know, in their hearts, he has no real interest
in the Christian Right agenda.
The Christian Right is perhaps the most pitiful bloc within the
now moribund conservative movement. Betrayed time after time
by the GOP, it repeatedly comes back, like the victimized
spouse, for more abuse. It is the Kept Woman of the
Republican Party. This once powerful alliance of evangelical
Christians and conservative Catholics that made the Christian
Coalition the most feared constituency in the Republican
Party, now settles for a few crumbs in a party platform the
nominees don’t even bother to read.
Robertson, Falwell and company now find satisfaction in an
occasional photo op with Dubya than fighting for the beliefs
they once championed. The Christian Right has been
neutralized. More precisely, it has been neutered.
All politics is cyclical. Political movements rise and fall. They
are born and they die and new movements emerge to take their
place. So too with modern American conservatism. Its fifty-
year cycle is over. As in Europe, it will be replaced by a new
nationalist cause that puts the interests of national, cultural,
and religious identity first.
It is only natural that this nationalist party will be born. The
overriding issue of the 21st Century isn’t defeating
Communism, but stopping globalism, which is merely an
extension of the battle against Big Government at home. It is a
globalism that seeks to abolish the nation-state, erase all
cultural, ethnic, and religious traditions and absorb all mankind
into a world government. In Italy, France, Britain, Denmark, and
Austria, these nationalist parties are giving the global
bureaucrats in Geneva fits.
And, so it must also happen in the United States of America.
Conservatism is the past.
Nationalism is the future. And, that party is struggling to be
born today. Come to the Reform Party National Convention in
Long Beach on August 9-13 to witness the birth.
It may not necessarily be a pretty sight, but childbirth never is.
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A vote for Bush or Gore is a vote to continue Clinton policies!
A vote for Buchanan is a vote to continue America!
Therefore a vote for Gore or Bush is a wasted vote for America!
Don't waste your vote! Vote for Patrick Buchanan!
Today, candor compels us to admit that our vaunted two-party system is a
snare and a delusion, a fraud upon the nation. Our two parties have become
nothing but two wings of the same bird of prey...
Patrick Buchanan
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