"In the past I’ve hammered the
neoconservatives for denaturing the American conservative movement by
pushing it leftward. After reflecting on the ease with which this was
done, it is hard to pretend that too many innocents were led down the
primrose path. I’ve now come to realize that there were exceedingly few
“conservatives” who held out against the takeover, and even if the
neoconservatives never imposed their will, the movement would have
drifted in any case in the direction in which it went, toward becoming a
GOP accessory. Contrary to what I hear from the liberal press, it was not
the Republican Party that swallowed the Right but exactly the opposite
that occurred. The conservative movement went into the business of
working for the GOP and decorating its politics with slogans.
...
"Once the Democrats do something that the Republicans take over,
such as Medicare or offering in-state tuitions to illegal residents, that
policy becomes “conservative” and finally set in stone."
Thursday, December 8, 2011
How the GOP swallowed the
Conservative Movement
by Paul Gottfried
The state of “American conservatism” can be fully appreciated by turning
on FOX News and then listening to Karl Rove, Sean Hannity, or Bill
Kristol present their customary civics lesson. One supposedly becomes a
conservative by embracing such exponents of the faith and then by
denouncing Obama and the Democrats for their deficit spending and for not
standing tall for human rights. If there is another definition of
“conservatism” that is widely accepted in this country, I have yet to
hear of it. It is also possible to manifest ones conservatism by voting
Republican in elections and by talking up GOP pols and railing against
their Democratic opponents. Although there are other examples that are
held up for honor, three paradigmatic conservatives who enjoy incessant
praise from the official Right are George W. Bush, Martin Luther King,
Jr., and (Human Events’ Man of the Year) Dick Cheney. I’m not sure what
makes such people “conservative,” but then who am I to question what tens
of millions of Americans hear every night about true
conservatives?
One might think that I’m being sarcastic but I’m only trying to
illustrate my contention that the term conservatism has become so
free-floating that it means whatever journalists and politicians want it
to mean. “Conservative,” as it is now being used to describe Republican
ward-heelers and neo-Wilsonian social democrats, is an arbitrary
designation. Equally ridiculous is the attempt to describe as
conservative someone who opposes the institutionalization of sodomy or
who recoils at the idea of having someone marry his Great Dane.
Political personalities receive rightwing accreditation by being
associated with a party that is thought to be further to the right than
the Democrats. Although that linkage may please media types, it has only
a very limited historic basis. The persistence of this association allows
Republicans to sound and act like Democrats without losing their assigned
right-of-center location. For example, Republican presidential candidate
Rick Perry favors giving the children of illegal residents the advantage
of instatetuition to attend Texas state universities. Despite his embrace
of this now established leftist position, Perry is certainly not being
scolded by FOX for taking it. His position becomes toxic for the
Murdoch-media Empire, and commendable for the rival media complex, only
when a Democrat takes the same stand. Moreover, it was not Obama but Bush
who in July 2003 went to West Africa and apologized before some local
tyrant for the practice of slavery in this country. Yet it is not he but
Obama and the Democrats who get attacked or defended for speaking
deferentially to the leaders of non-Western countries.
I recently heard from a neighbor that, unlike Obama, Bush was “tough” on
illegal immigrants. When I asked my obviously Republican neighbor why she
believes this to be the case, she explained that it was natural that Bush
should be “tough” on illegal immigration. After all, he’s a Republican
and Republican means conservative. Apparently by registering with the
Republican Party, one acquires a certain perhaps irreversible
conservative grace. One can then exhibit one’s grace by putting
Republican bumper stickers on to one’s Republican car and by listening to
authorized GOP loudmouths. I’m not sure what any of this has to do with
traditional hierarchies, an agrarian culture or whatever in the past
people like me, who are European social historians, understood to be
conservatism. But I suppose this stuff fills someone’s leisure time or
golden years and supplies respectable labels to those who might otherwise
be considered shock-jocks or placeholders.
In the past I’ve hammered the neoconservatives for denaturing the
American conservative movement by pushing it leftward. After reflecting
on the ease with which this was done, it is hard to pretend that too many
innocents were led down the primrose path. I’ve now come to realize that
there were exceedingly few “conservatives” who held out against the
takeover, and even if the neoconservatives never imposed their will, the
movement would have drifted in any case in the direction in which it
went, toward becoming a GOP accessory. Contrary to what I hear from the
liberal press, it was not the Republican Party that swallowed the Right
but exactly the opposite that occurred. The conservative movement went
into the business of working for the GOP and decorating its politics with
slogans.
This happened because there was not much “conservatism” in the movement
to begin with, outside of small circles of Southern agrarians, rightwing
Catholics, and traditional humanists. And even in these cases we are
dealing not with European restorationist or antebellum Southern politics
but with an aesthetic and cultural force. Those who have been associated
with this body of dissenters deserve our praise for their battle against
progressivist illusionswaged largely in isolation. But this isolation
witnesses to the fact that even what is called “cultural conservatism”
(and which unfortunately confuses humanistic culture with a now archaic
social-political movement) does not have much resonance in our larger
conservative movement. “Cultural conservatives,” to the extent they
exist, have a long row to hoe; and it is unlikely that their fate will
improve in the foreseeable future.
For the record, I do not vote for “conservatives” in elections but for
latter-day disciples of eighteenth century radicals, who call themselves
libertarians. I support such candidates defensively, because they offer
an alternative to the two parasitic major parties. If the libertarians
can push back the scope and social control of the welfare state at the
federal and state levels, I’m on their side, no matter how silly I find
their individualist posturing and views on the family. Give or take a few
Tea Party governors, neither of the two national nuisances seems likely
to roll back anything, although the Republicans are likely to make
themselves even more obnoxious than the Democrats by launching expensive
wars to spread “democratic values” and human rights. Both of our parties
are committed at the end of the day to an entrenched public
administration, as a source of patronage, and to the accommodation in
varying degrees of anti-racists, feminists, and gay rights advocates. The
fact that the GOP receives less credit for these positions does not make
their dedication to them any less real.
No doubt Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity could make our parties appear more
distinct than they are, by classifying Democrats as baby-killing atheists
and Republicans as pious patriots. But this is merely partisan noise
designed to mask certain disturbing facts. Republican politicians add to
their support of expanding big government and their abject but largely
ineffective appeals to minority interests the further unpleasantness of
lying about their politics. Once the Democrats do something that the
Republicans take over, such as Medicare or offering in-state tuitions to
illegal residents, that policy becomes “conservative” and finally set in
stone.
Oh yes I know the “people,” or whoever makes up the electorate at this
moment, crave more social programs, stronger anti-discrimination laws and
other goodies from the state. But that is precisely why the liberal
constitutionalists who founded this country wanted limited government and
dual sovereignty and balked at too much immigration and at the
abomination of national parties. They wanted restraints on what
politicians would be able to do to satisfy popular appetites, especially
those ravenous hungers that politicians incite to advance their careers.
Although these founders could not possibly have foreseen the degree of
our social decadence, they knew that there were preconditions without
which their republicanism wouldn’t work. Our present regime (for those
who measure the merits of a government by this numerical, “diversitarian”
standard) is electorally more inclusive than it used to be; and both
parties predictably praise our improved pluralistic democracy. Why this
feature makes the entity in question “conservative” may seem difficult to
explain. But it really isn’t. “Conservative” means what the GOP media and
their colleagues in the other party decide it should mean. These
celebrities, after all, determine political reality, no matter how at
odds it is with anything that may historically have been known under the
same name.
Paul Gottfried is the Raffensberger Professor of Humanities at
Elizabethtown College and author of, among other works, Conservatism in
America: Making Sense of the American Right (2007). This essay originally
appeared in the
University Bookman and is published here with their
permission.
http://www.imaginativeconservative.org/2011/12/how-gop-swallowed-conservative-movement.html
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