Rethinking Conservatism

I grew up believing that in a sense, Conservatism is about "power to the people:" protecting people's rights and freedoms from encroachment by the state (civil liberty) and protecting people's earnings from being taken from them and used for inefficient, ineffective government programs. Conservatism was about empowering the common man to work, create, and give freely.

Midway through college I became more than a little confused. Everywhere people were screaming about curtailing government power—and none of them were conservative. It seemed universally accepted that the Republican party was in favor of government power and control, while the Democratic party fought (ineffectually) for personal liberty. Republicans, the arguments went, support policing the world, spying on citizens who might be terrorists, torturing and indefinitely detaining prisoners of war, and spending our budget surplus into oblivion and beyond, to name a few. Democrats wanted to limit the power of the executive and protect freedom.

Now a certain amount of these convictions can be chalked up to whether or not your guy is in charge. Now that Bush is out and Obama is in, suddenly Republicans care about limiting the power of the executive again. They found their concern about deficits in the shoebox they kept on the top shelf of the closet for eight years. And for some reason Democrats have fallen silent about military commissions, habeas corpus, wiretaps, and Guantanamo still being open for business. Dwelling on this will embitter you in a hurry.

But there is more going on here.

The truth is that for several decades, Conservatives have been unconcerned about the power of the executive, something I fundamentally misunderstood about Conservatism. As outlined in this excellent article from The New Republic, the Republican party once emphasized the constitutional power of Congress over the power of the executive. Conservatives like Barry Goldwater spoke out against acts of executive power such as Kennedy's Bay of Pigs invasion. Throughout their administrations, other Conservatives criticized the steady increase of presidential power carried out by Democratic presidents Wilson, FDR, Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson. But following Watergate there was a dramatic shift, epitomized in the election of Ronald Reagan. Faced with the Soviet threat and with a charismatic leader as their guide, Conservatives became comfortable with the idea of a more imperial presidency. Reeling over the quagmire of Vietnam (a war they began and perpetuated), Democrats turned to isolationism.

This was not the only shift in the party. Conservatives also began to retreat from progressivism and fiscal responsibility. While Richard Nixon called for affordable health care for every American, Reagan warned about the dangers of "socialized medicine." Nixon created the EPA, Reagan tried to deconstruct it. Nixon advocated Keynesianism, Reagan's "trickle-down" economics were patently classical. Nixon introduced a balanced budget, cut defense spending, and more or less wound down the war in Vietnam, Reagan brought the national debt to record highs with arguably justifiable Cold War defense spending.

This trend has continued since the Reagan era. Newsweek published this poignant article in May outlining how not a single Republican president since the 60's (though it could easily be expanded to include Eisenhower) would pass muster with today's Republican party's rigid standard of what is Conservative and what is not. As its witty headline reads, not even Reagan was a Reagan Republican in the eyes of today's party, in light of his tax hikes, support for immigration reform that included a pathway to citizenship, and support for more gun control, among others. Even George W. Bush, another prime example of new Conservatism who left office only a year and a half ago, would fail the test with his expansion of Medicare benefits, immigration reform, and sky-rocketing deficits.

This new brand of Conservatism, or "Neoconservatism" as it has been called, which emphasizes America's need to support the spread of democracy over its need to refrain from involving itself in foreign conflicts, its need to protect its military interests over its need to protect civil liberties, and its emphasis on cutting taxes and increasing benefits over its need to balance budgets, has increasingly become something I resist aligning myself with. The more I read the more I identify with the pre-80's Republican party, which associated itself more with isolationism, fiscal responsibility, free trade, and civil liberty than interventionism, unfunded tax cuts, big defense, and the Christian Right. It is disingenuous to me to speak the language of "small government" while charging trillions in defense on the government's charge card. It's hypocritical to speak of valuing liberty while torturing prisoners to procure testimony which justifies your foreign policy actions.

This explains why in the age of Neoconservativism I often find myself siding with the so-called liberal justices of the Supreme Court. I deplored the Court's decision to allow the government to take private property and give it to private interest. I railed against the Court's decision to allow corporations to campaign for politicians. Recently I was disgusted by the Court's decision that we have a right to free speech, unless of course we're talking to a terrorist. Were these cases before the Court in 1970, I'm not sure the opposition would have been completely liberal. 

And so I hereby declare myself a Nixon-era Republican. Does that mean I love Nixon? Of course not, clearly Watergate, his racist comments, and his statements such as "if the President does it, it is legal" deserve reproach. Does it mean I hate Reagan? Of course not, I love the value he placed in the American family, his hawkish approach to cutting bloated government social programs, and his valiant leadership in facing down the Soviet Union. But the more I see the moderate voice being run out of the Republican Party and the more I hear Obama ridiculed for policies Republican presidents before him probably would have supported, the more I wish to align myself with a more complex and thoughtful brand of Conservatism we set aside forty years ago. I think our country needs it back.

Image: LA Progressive