Ted Cruz: Future of conservatism is populist and libertarian

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

You guys are using "Populism" to mean "authoritarian" hence posts like "they are contradictory". This is not the case because they are not the same thing. Yes, authoritarianism can have populist support and we have seen that in many cases throughout history and populism can be very dangerous for that reason obviously. However, it is must also be stated that all populism is, is a mirror reflection of the views of the establishment or the perceived establishment of course and I would thus note that to be the case and as such the authoritarian aspect comes from the perceived libertine aspect of the establishment.

That being said in terms of opposition to the establishment, libertarianism is very populist simply because it is opposes the establishment and its preference for empowering government. The problem comes when what populism is reflecting in the current time based on that establishment and this is where you get the urge by the likes of the Trumpist and also from well meaning folks like LfromNJ when he says he wants to go to the opposite extreme to oppose the extremism of the left.

The problem with that approach is that it is easy to lose sight of what you are trying to achieve and why you are opposing the left and the establishment to begin with. If you are a libertarian aghast by the erosion of liberty, it makes no sense to throw away the liberty that compelled you to take up the fight in the first place, to carry on that fight. It is no different then the old saying, "Giving up liberty for security" but here it is "giving up liberty for the sake of opposing the other side".

I have cited Edmund Burke a lot in the context of these discussions, but what I have forgotten is that the media and the narrative have bastardized him just as much as anyone else to the point where the first thing that pops in people's heads at that point is John Robert's (seriously, F John Roberts, he is a tool for special interests. Burke didn't give a free pass to establishment/money players, trial of Hastings all that etc). The reason why I refer to Burke is because he tried to reconcile the enlightenment with an understanding that said liberty can become a threat to itself because of human nature. This is a reconciling of traditional conservative beliefs regarding human nature with the gains of the enlightenment and thus taking Ted Cruz at superficial value here, he is thinking much more along the lines of "what I consider to be Burkean Conservatism" (the emphasis matters), how do you preserve liberty from human excess. The exact prescriptions matter less.

That said, there are many thinkers who are now going outside of the Burkean concept, from which (again as I have have defined above, not any dumbass talking head's definition) virtually all of American Conservatism has typically had at least some basis in and exploring a more traditional version that rejects the enlightenment. If you throw in the religious angle, one that often also rejects the glorification of the Glorious Revolution. Michael Barone some ten years ago wrote a book calling the Glorious Revolution, "Our First Revolution", so that event has typically had a rather dominant place in American Conservatism. It is worth peeling back to consider the religious aspect as American Conservatism has typically been defined by protestantism and a more Catholic view of things would certainly cast that whole period in a different light.

Once you reject the enlightenment, the small gov't and individualist angle goes out the window and suddenly you are in communitarian territory or Christian Democracy or even archaic distributist right models that seek inspiration from the days of Medieval Europe.

I don't think that it is possible to go that far as they undermines critical concepts of American traditions stemming from the Revolution. But I do think that the right is certainly headed for a greater degree of economic populism (read as nationalism) for better or for worse simply based on the demographics and it is always probably becoming more and more Catholic over time as well, which could have likewise similar influences pushing in this direction.


You have two demographic forces that means that the right has to balance libertarian and populist urges and that is the increasing non-college nature of the said right's base, which means it is going to be more down market and even less establishment oriented over time. At the same time, younger conservatives and younger Republicans are far, far less authoritarian on issues like war, drugs and other traditional libertarian wheel houses. It seems to me that Ted Cruz is just reading the writing on the wall here.