https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/american-conservatism-is-fiddling-while-rome-burns/I've certainly been reluctant to take on the label of "conservative" for a number of reasons, some of which are articulated in this article:
Conservatism is the seven cheers for capitalism and the deafening silence on demographic change, feminism, and corporate malfeasance. It’s the same tired cast of speakers blathering about limited government almost a century after the New Deal. It’s the platitudinous Reagan quotes and the worn-out Buckley anecdotes. It’s the mindless optimism and the childish exhortations—if something can’t go on forever, it won’t!
This was the state of the GOP when I joined the Forum here in 2012. I was a registered Republican and an ancestral Democrat who was in a phase of voting for mostly Democrats, but holding socially conservative views, hoping that the Democratic Party would change to the place where social conservatives could have their place in the party. This was naive on my part; with every 1994 and 2010 landslide, it was the more socially conservative and reasonable Democrats that either lost or retired, to be replaced by Republicans. Often, many of the Republicans replacing those Democrats were the kind of Republican Mr. Azzerad describes in the article I cite, but that type of Republican did not serve well the kind of Democrats that were the swing voters that changed those districts.
But conservatism is also the endless wars, the nation-building, and the outdated alliances. It’s the free trade fetish. It’s the foolish libertarianism that hates the government more than it loves America. It’s the unconscionable refusal to clamp down on immigration.
Worst of all, conservatism is the cowardice and accommodation in the face of leftist hegemony. It’s the long list of enemies to the Right. It’s the court eunuchs and other members of the controlled opposition who offer an echo, but never a choice. It’s the faux grandstanding while living in fear of being called a racist.
This is the "conservatism" that has been complicit in the construction of the American Oligarchy; a coalition of Democrats and Never-Trumpers. The conservatism that has produced record income inequality and demolished upward social mobility, something that conservatism once viewed as important. Note that this was the coalition (neo-liberal Democrats and establishment Never Trumpers) that supported the great bailouts of the financial industry in 2008-2009. The conservatism that "damaged the brand". It was around 2009 that being called a "conservative" was no longer something people tried to do, and when Democrats stopped pretending they were "conservative" on much of anything. (Democrats no longer try to insist they are really conservatives, and that's good, because they're not conservative in any way nowadays.)
And yet conservatism, in its dotage, cannot shake the nagging suspicion that it no longer speaks to the country it loves, in particular to those who have no living memory of the Cold War. This dawning realization could be amplified through probing questions: is America today more conservative than it was when the conservative movement began 70 or so years ago? Is conservatism itself as conservative as it was then? On the off chance that the conservative agenda were to be implemented, would it fundamentally transform the United States of America and lead to conservative hegemony (or would it simply save us money and buy us time)?
Consider the above. What political figures of today does that paragraph describe? George W. Bush.
Mitch McConnell? Mitt Romney? Lindsey Graham? Paul Ryan? Pretty much. These conservatives DON'T speak to the Country they purport to love, and that's because they failed to conserve what was important for them. It was important for them to be protected from the damage to their livelihoods that free trade and unfettered immigration have wrought, but the people funding them make money off of those.
Ours is obviously a non-libertarian Right. The common enemy that justified an alliance with the free market fundamentalists is long gone. Today, libertarians actively side with our enemies: they promote open borders and empty prisons, and strengthen China’s hand through their consumer-focused economic policies. Ours is primarily a conservatism of countries and borders, citizens and families, none of which can take root in the barren libertarian soil of atomized individuals and global markets.
In reading this, I now see why I have such disagreements with the Libertarian Yellow avatars here. Libertarians here seem fine with our dependence on China in the name of Free Trade, while blind to the idea that China's Rise has profited America's economic elite while damaging the American nation as a whole.
Regardless of where I've been at, politically, in my life, I have always rooted for America to succeed. I have rooted for America to win our wars, even as I have not advocated for most of the wars we have fought. I have always believed that America is a GOOD Nation, and one that needs no apology; it is a nation that has had a greater capacity to right its own wrongs than any other, and one that has been a force for Good in the World on balance. The position of others is one which essentially asserts that America must be perfect, or else it is Scum, but it's fine for China and South Africa and Iran to be just as they are, and that we need to be more like the EU. I reject all of that. I once thought these sort of issues could be worked out within the Democratic Party, but this is no longer the case. We have a Democratic Party who hates the American Nation, while we have a Republican Party where there is at least a fight on these issues here.
More than a century and a half ago Alexis de Tocqueville made the striking observation that an individualistic society depends on a communitarian institution like the family for its continued existence. The family cannot be constituted like the liberal state, nor can it be governed entirely by that state's principles. Yet the family serves as the seedbed for the virtues required by a liberal state. The family is responsible for teaching lessons of independence, self-restraint, responsibility, and right conduct, which are essential to a free, democratic society. If the family fails in these tasks, then the entire experiment in democratic self-rule is jeopardized.
Azerrad emphasizes these points. Immigration levels ARE unsustainable; they put the most stress on our least skilled workers and their families. Demographic change, as it is done now, is done without regard as to whether or not the new immigrants are truly amenable to the ideas of liberal democracy. The decline of the nuclear family is, indeed, very much the biggest threat to democracy. Indeed, the mobs in the streets since May, 2020 are anti-family mobs; BLM specifically opposes the concept of the Traditional Nuclear Family and Antifa are a group of those who simply "don't do family". The seedbed for democracy preserving virtue is being trashed. The joke is when the Pelosi's and such view Donald Trump and his supporters as threats to "Our Democracy". One writer recently pointed out that when they say "Our Democracy" they really mean "Their Oligarchy". That is something that Americans understand instinctively, and "our Republic" (with democratic features) is something our conservatives ought to be actively seeing to conserve - or restore.
We must develop policies commensurate with these problems, identify plausible ways to implement them in a hostile landscape, and ensure they are enforced once enacted. Since the entirety of America’s rotten ruling class will oppose us, this bold undertaking requires both prudence and courage.
Indeed. What a great idea that government policy reflects the wishes of those that elect them.
