Maybe Conservatism is Dead?

It is more and more fun to read the newspaper stories, articles, blog posts, and the rest about the demise of conservatism and/or the Republican Party.

It is no wonder there is so much speculation. Just watch John Boehner or Mitch McConnell or the nightly news or catch a clip of Rush Limbaugh ranting on Morning Joe. The leaders of the Republican Party and the ideologues of conservatism have no answers for any of the problems that our country and our people are trying to deal with.

Recently, I saw an opinion piece by Steven Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute in the Washington Post. His piece was headlined "Is Conservatism Dead?"

Hayward's point was that, of course, conservatism isn't dead, but that the ideology needed a balance between right wing populism and intellectual heft. He noted the success of William F. Buckley as a public intellectual.

Shockingly, Hayward lifted up Fox News' Glenn Beck as a thoughtful conservative who bridges the gap between right wing populism and intellectual heft. To hold Glenn Beck up as either the future or savior of conservatives is laughable on its face. Beck doesn't even take himself seriously. And Beck's open, ugly and visceral hatred for those he disagrees with will hardly draw thoughtful young people or independents to his ideology.

Hayward then criticizes progressives for the "belief in political solutions for everything..." This is one of the right's scariest notions, because politics is how free people in democracies solve social problems.

Conservatism's illness has other symptoms. For one thing, right wing ideologues now call themselves conservatives. Folks like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and Karl Rove are hardly conservatives. They want to continue to transfer power and wealth from the great majority of Americans to those who already have too much and who've brought on the greatest economic crisis in 80 years. Just the other night I was on Fox Business debating these right wing nutcases about health care reform and the public health care plan. One of them admitted that they thought of Canada as a socialist country. I said that is just how bizarre their thinking is.

That kind of bizarre right wing (conservative thinking) has brought us 30 years of declining wages, 15-18% unemployment, 50 million Americans without health care, CEOs making 400 times that of the average worker, increasing poverty, a shrinking and stressed middle class, a falling standard or living, a government that lied to take us into an unnecessary and disastrous war, the worst economic crisis in 80 years, a business-government ethos that produced obscene greed and gluttony at the highest levels, ballooning debt, a coarsening of our culture and political discourse, and a shredding of any notion of our Nation's common good.

Maybe conservatism is dead.

 

 

Comments

[Policon]

Conservatism (or classical liberalism) has been dead for a while. That's why I laugh whenever someone mentions that George Bush was a conservative, and usually in the same sentence, will say he doubled the national debt. Ever since the New Deal, the definition of conservatism has been twisted so that we don't even know what it means anymore.

[Anne Johnson]

I don't even know what conservatism is anymore. Today's right is so fractured it almost feels as though it is divided into three different groups. There are now conservatives who go after republicans for not being conservative enough. They are fighting amongst themselves and have no real ideas about the future of this country. They spent so many years trying to woo the fringes of this country, the most religious just to gain votes in the short term that they never once thought that the evangelical base might want something in return for that vote. The republican party made this bed and they are none to comfortable to lie in it.

[realpolitic]

Stewart Acuff, please try to stay off Fox! Why give tham any legitimacy? Liek the wag said, what if we declared a war and no one showed up? The same goes for Fox. What if they broadcast their so-called "news" and no one showed up but the crazies. It would further isolate them to the right! if I was an opinion maker, i would stay off Fox!

[omeo2013]

This is too good to be true. We're not that lucky. I'll believe it when I see the body.

[Querent]

More accurately, conservatism is UNDEAD. I have the feeling that the Republican party will continue to fester in its coffin for years, waking from time to time for brief bouts of violence and destruction, and ultimately will not die of the incendiary sunlight which exposes its furtive chauvinism, but will wither away to obscure dust for lack of fresh new blood.

[bigfated]

Dead and gone FOREVER....if we are lucky!

[deezus]

Conservatism and Liberalism will remain dead while Democrats and Republicans continue to sell us out.

[Konnie]

i must agree.

[bujudude]

Maybe the question that needs to be asked is: What IS conservatism? Putting aside the shenanigans of the neocons from the last 30 years, traditional conservatism was supposed to be about personal repsonsiblity, lower taxes and less government. To take a look at the folks who supposedly represent modern conservatives, is to reveal a wholesale abondonment of these principals.

Personal responsiblity? Tell that to Karl Rove, Dick Cheney or Rush Limbaugh. Lower taxes? Sure, for the ultra-rich, but no one else. Less government. Fine, if you run a huge corporation, but everyone else got stuck with the greatest intrusion of the federal government into ordinary people's lives possibly in history.

Plus, there has always been a selfish and hypocritcal streak in all forms of conservatism in America, since conservatives have always been on the wrong side of any battle that improved the lives of most Americans, especially if you are a woman, non-white, non-Christian, gay and lesbian, or poor or middle class. Nothing has really changed, it has just gotten worse and far more blatant.

[BlackJAC]

Conservatism is really nothing more than the desire to remain in the nice comfortable rut you're made for yourself over the years. I'll bet that in fifty years there'll be a movement to normalize polygamy, polyandry, and group marriage, and the conservatives will be demanding that marriage be restricted to a maximum of two people.

[RichardU]

Lincoln was a Republican. Protecting the Union was certainly a conservative act. Eisenhower was a more recent Republican, and was a "dynamic conservative." Those two examples cover a pretty wide time period pre-dating the neocons.

Certainly the neocons have been on the wrong side of most issues, but I entirely disagree with your claims that all conservatism in America has been on the wrong side.

[bujudude]

There have been a handful of conservatives that have done right by America (Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower for example), but MOVEMENT conservative has by and large been an epic moral failure, and it just got worse with the advent of the neocons.

[NCIndependant]

History failure. Lincoln's party has little to do with the current party other than the name.
Conservatives have always been on the wrong side.

[jsgaetano]

"Maybe Conservatism is Dead?"

Maybe the Earth is round?
Maybe the sky is blue?

[HeevenSteven]

I personally think the modern conservative intellectual movement was stillborn; it only got life in the institutions funded specifically to present that point of view as intellectually valid. It can never die because it represents the interests of the wealthy, and the people who make their living serving the military-i­ndustrial-­security-m­edia-compl­ex.

There will always be plenty of money to fund Hudson institutes, American Enterprise Institutes, Heartland Institutes, etc, etc, and the big news corporations will always turn to those sophists for "analysis" because it's the kind of propaganda that serves the interests of the people who own and finance those media outlets--the wealthy.

[Booblius]

I agree with you about this plethora of "institutes". I always laugh when they roll out some nobody who has written some giant study, that nobody has ever read, funded by some "conservative" think tank, funded by a bunch of rich bitter old men.

[fpie]

Don't know if "CONservativism" is dead but don't make the mistake of thinking that all those ills you mentioned were failings of the neo-CONS. Those things were exactly the results they wanted. Those guys are cleaning up and nobody has made a move to put a stop to it much less bringing anybody up on charges.

[PlaceboStudman]

The truth is, the idea of a true small government/small business conservative may, in fact, be dead, or dying. It just isn't a practical solution, as the population grows, and the needs of the population grows exponentially with population growth. I believe the new wave of conservativism will take on the form of "responsible" vs "irresponsible" government and business. Holding business and government accountable for doing what it is meant to do without over reaching. I think of it in terms of what President Obama has said about Personal Responsibility, and extending that to the idea of Federal Responsibility. But the checks and balances of the government are not enough to keep the government and businesses responsible. There also needs to be much more real Personal Responsibility by the public to ensure that the government does not further overstep its bounds, and that we do what we have to do to make sure that it isn't necessary for government to overstep its bounds

[ImmanuelGoldstein]

The real intellectual death of conservatism came when they decided catering to christian fundamentalists was the path to power.
"Faith-based everything" is not the pathway to useful solutions or sensible thinking on much of anything.

[dynwit]

It's dead like a zombie, still walking around going through the motions and trying to drag everyone else down with it.

[jsgaetano]

Conservatives are a fringe political movement in it's last, desperate throes.