What Is the Future of Conservatism?
This article is from our January symposium issue, in which 53 leading writers and thinkers answer the question: “What is the future of conservatism in the wake of the 2012 election?” Click here to read the entire symposium.
_____________
JONAH GOLDBERG
Like the ancient parable of the blind men describing the same elephant from different perspectives, conservatism can mean many different things to many different people. Indeed, given the relatively straightforward and down-to-earth meaning of the word,conservatism actually lends itself to considerable linguistic legerdemain. One can use the word to refer to a temperament, an ideology (or ideologies), an objective tendency, or simply an unwillingness to heed the forces of progress as fashion dictates.
It seems to me that the future of each of these varieties of conservatism is assured. The conservative temper stems from the crooked timber of humanity and the accumulated scar tissue of experience. The objective tendency, whether imposed by external forces, threadbare budgets, impertinent facts-on-the-ground, or a general lack of popular enthusiasm, also seems baked into the human experience for as far as the eye can see. For related reasons, there will always be realists who counsel the hotheads to slow down, earning at minimum the label “conservative” if not “reactionary.” In this sense, while there may not always be an England, there will always be something called conservatism.
The one with the cloudiest future is ideological conservatism. Will enough Americans remain committed, or at least open, to the bundle of principles that define modern American conservatism to sustain the movement and the Republican Party, which imperfectly carries its banner?
My short answer is an equivocal yes. My hedge stems from the fact that it will be hard, for all the reasons we’ve all heard already: demographics, the changing nature of the economy, etc. But there’s one factor that hasn’t been adequately discussed: the fading of conservatism’s libertarian brand.
I say “brand” because I think the issue has less to do with substance than with marketing. For good and bad reasons, liberalism has managed to cover itself with a patina of libertarianism. Some of this stems from changing attitudes about sexuality. Conservative opposition to gay marriage sends a powerful cultural signal that makes the GOP seem Comstockish and scary, at least to the elites who shape the culture and to younger voters.
That argument is familiar enough. But what allows the Democrats to seem more libertarian isn’t just cultural marketing, but a widespread acceptance of the idea that positive liberty is more important than negative liberty. The former, an idea near to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s heart, is that you can’t be free unless the state gives you the material aid necessary to enjoy life to its fullest. This was the point of his “economic bill of rights.” Negative liberty, an idea dear to the Founders, defines freedom as independence from government intrusion and meddling.
Conservatives have been very successful at arguing separately against positive liberty and against cultural libertinism, but the merger of the two presents new challenges, particularly given the attitudes of young people who seem to believe that you should be free to use birth control (true), but that you’re not free unless someone else pays for it.
The vernacular of conservatism derives from a time when the country was churched and defined liberty as personal sovereignty. It needs to change to engage a country that is increasingly unchurched and incorrectly thinks liberty can and should be subsidized.
_____________
Jonah Goldberg is a contributing editor to National Review and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/goldberg-future-of-conservatism/
Time to stop navel gazing and listen to people worth listening to.
I think the future of conservatism is (small l) libertarianism.
personal liberty, states rights, ever smaller federal government.
period.
heh
I could have ended the war in a month.
I could have made North Vietnam look like a mud puddle.
-Barry Goldwater
coldwarrior wrote:
A foreign policy based on nation interest, not this Wilsonian crap.
“I am frankly sick and tired of the political preachers telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in A, B, C, and D. Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? ”
― Barry Goldwater
MacDuff wrote:
Individualism is what Conservatism should be about. By 2020 Conservatism will be different.
coldwarrior wrote:
I consider myself a Neo-Goldwaterite. We need more Barry Goldwater and less Rick Santorum.
@ coldwarrior:
The GOP should have listen to Goldwater back then.
Rodan wrote:
what makes me sad is that it took me till my mid 40′s to really get goldwater.
wasted years.
@ coldwarrior:
@ Rodan:
Goldwater was “Borked” before Bork. What they did to him was so effective, it has been the main play in their playbook ever since.
@ Rodan:
“It’s wonderful that we have so many religious people in our party, … They need to leave their theologies in their churches.”
Barry Goldwater
@ coldwarrior:
My Grandpa volunteered for Goldwater back in 64, that’s why the Conservatism I was raised on was more Golderwaterite. It’s a shame that Goldwater is no longer acknowledge by many Conservatives.
“If I had inherited the mess that Johnson got into, I would have said to North Vietnam, by dropping leaflets out of B-52s, ‘You quit the war in three days or the next time these babies come over there going to drop some big bombs on you.’ And I’d make a swamp out of North Vietnam … I’d rather kill a hell of a lot of North Vietnamese than one American and we’ve lost enough of them,”
Barry Goldwater
@ Rodan:
“I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass.”
Barry Goldwater
coldwarrior wrote:
I wish more Republicans lived by that idea.
MacDuff wrote:
He was ahead of time.
i AM in touch with my inner barry.
coldwarrior wrote:
That’s the truth right there. I don’t want Government to attack religion, but nor do I want it to promote it. Government should not be involved in religion.
coldwarrior wrote:
There was a time Republicans were against nation building. If you trace the ideological lineage of the Nation Building faction of the GOP, they really were Democrats originally.
MacDuff wrote:
I can only hope so!
@ Speranza:
Goldwater was ahead of his time.
Rodan wrote:
I did not dislike Jerry Falwell but I always felt that he had way too much influence in the GOP.
@ Rodan:
By 2020 it won’t matter. It will be far too late to save the United States by that time. But, again, I don’t think libertarianism sells. The Libertarians haven’t elected one Congressman, ever. Even Ron Paul was technically a Republican. I think you may see a split in the Republican Party, but I don’t think the libertarians will be in a position to capitalize on that.
@ Rodan:
“There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God’s name on one’s behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with the loss of money or votes or both.
I’m frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in A, B, C, and D. Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate.
I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of conservatism.”
-Senator Barry Goldwater
agreed. and i go to liturgy every sunday.
Rodan wrote:
He was and he actually was a very wise man.
MacDuff wrote:
The infamous “Daisy” ad.
They made Goldwater look like a madman.
If he had been elected there would be a lot less names on
the Viet Nam Wall.
“They said that if I voted for Goldwater we would have half a million men fighting and dying in Vietnam. Well I voted for Goldwater and they were right”.
RIX wrote:
gospel.
@ Speranza:
Money quote right here from Luntz.
@ coldwarrior:
Sounds like Marxism, doesn’t it?
Rodan wrote:
Barry Goldwater’s heyday was half a century ago. There are very few people alive today who remember him, even though he remained in public life after his unsuccessful Presidential bid. I’m getting close to “senior citizen” status—am already there as far as the AARP is concerned, given the blizzard of junk mail they send me—and I was a kid when he ran; I remember him more as a figure than as the expounder of a philosophy. And, unlike many Americans, I have a deep interest in politics, have read some history, and have a memory.
Nobody knows who the hell he is—just as almost nobody remembers Milton Friedman. Snooky and Honey Boo Boo and Scarlett Johanseen—there’s the ticket! And ain’t that Barack Obama somethin’?
Barry would have been quick & decisive.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
I think it’s for a different reason. Goldwater’s conservatism was about liberty and individualism. Much of today’s Conservatism is about Authority and nation building.
@ Rodan:
@ coldwarrior:
Agreed.
And everyone celebrates that “Daisy” commercial like it was some kind of message when it was really one of the most horrendous cases of demagoguery ever perpetrated in an election campaign.
unclassifiable wrote:
It was a pure smear job.
@ RIX:
A little antedote I have told before…
A long time ago I worked construction with an African American ex Vietnam Vetran – Larry.
Reagan’s first election was coming up and a Goldwater-like campaign was brewing trying to make Reagan the next Goldwater in terms of upping the nuclear threat (that, of course continued until the end of his presidency).
Anyway other African American co-workers asked Larry who he was voting for and without hesitation he said “I’m voting for Reagan because we go to war again the m*th*rf*ck*r’s gonna drop da bomb and get it over with!”
‘nuf said.
Rodan wrote:
But see there is the rub. When the 4 Baptists went into Iraq and immediately were slain, that was the second turning point where the US Christian civilians said, “Nope, G-d is not calling us to rebuild/help Iraq”. Big mistake Bush did not see freedom of barbarians won’t turn out so well. Just made the innocent of the Mid East lambs for slaughter
@ unclassifiable:
Go Larry!
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
All too true, as is this:
We are raising a generation of deluded narcissists
The more I see of the world around me, the more “iffy” the future looks.
So to avoid “theological” influence Bush rejected/banned the council of men like Franklin Graham and took on muslim advisers. Yea, that worked out charmingly
coldwarrior wrote:
Really! DO tell:D
Our Lord & Savior is holding a presser right now.
In the spirit of bipartisanship he led off blaming the Republicans
for all of the economic mess.
It’s like h3 just got to town.
waldensianspirit wrote:
Bush should have read some history.
Rodan wrote:
Luntz is correct.
@ waldensianspirit:
Bush should have read some history about Islam.
@ Speranza:
I think like all ideological movements, the current version of Conservatism is stale and past and its prime.
unclassifiable wrote:
Yet how easy we forget when faced with Islamic murder of American soldiers in Beirut, what did Pres Reagan do. WITHDRAW
Having lost a cousin there, I feel we should have leveled the place.
In many ways he set worth the thought in the Islamist that we would run in the face of terrorism. And for the most part they are correct! The American people don’t have the stomach for what it takes to win.
I still voted for him again, but lost the hope of him being Great.
Rodan wrote:
I agree. Libertarianism (the ideology, not the friggin’ party) is the future and is precisely what conservatism was supposed to be in the first place.
Were Barry around today, I’m thinking he may well agree.
@ Tanker:
Reagan made a mistake when he let the French occupy the safe
high ground & put our Marines in those barracks.
In His presser the Dear Leader made a selfless offer.
He agreed to allow Congress to authorize him tom raise
the debt ceiling & shift the Burden to him.
That is akin to giving your 17 year old your credit card,
your car keys and the key to the liquor cabinet.
RIX wrote:
His biggest mistake was doing nothing about it! He was a good President but I will not prop him up as some conservative GOD.
Rodan wrote:
I think you have to look at this in the perspective of the Long Coup™ which began with the assassination of JFK and has culminated in the re-election of Barack Obama.
Goldwater conservatism was discredited by his major loss in the 1964 election. Looking back, it is possible to recognize that Goldwater had a major Alinsky job done on him, since Johnson was the Left’s preferable alternative; Johnson, in turn, was Alinskyed by the Left once the antiwar movement had reached full strength, so that the Republicans could carry the can for the loss in Vietnam and be pulled left.
@ Tanker:
Well you were faced with the typical adult choice between two folks who’s philosophy’s do not align with yours. So you chose the one that lined up the best. Some call that chosing the better of two bad choices but the reality in this country is that personal beliefs are like DNA — too many to ever get complete agreement.
RIX wrote:
the guy is flat out crazy…a basket case
@ Tanker:
There are no gods in politics.
It’s weasles all the way down.
Dance with the weasle that brung you I guess.
@ Tanker:
We gotta stop clinging to dead presidents and trying to revive the 80s. It’s 2013, with different challenges and millions of voters who wouldn’t know Reagan if he walked up to them!
unclassifiable wrote:
In the last two elections I’ve voted for men that really didn’t align with many of my believes and I really didn’t care for. Still they were better for the country than what we got.
MacDuff wrote:
it’s 2013, time to learn how to fix an election
OT: OK I am going to test drive this…
Israel is like a good friend that lives in a really crappy neighborhood.
You’re not going to change the place but you think maybe he needs to be well armed with a good alarm system and burglar bars.
listen to the garbage BO spews…what a disgusting piece of shit
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OBAMA?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-01-14-11-57-50
liberals…guess who suffers when the debt ceiling is not raised?…vets and SS folks
@ MacDuff:
I am OK with not clinging to some dead politicians. But there are some dead philosophers with which we need to become familiar with again.
@ heysoos:
That is actually a choice that the Executive Branch makes. If the Republicans didn’t raise the debt ceiling, the Executive Branch would have to run the government on the money that comes in from tax revenue. This is, litterally, trillions of dollars. So the idea that we’ll just go broke if the Republicans don’t raise the debt ceiling is akin to the idea that you’ll go bankrupt personally if Citibank doesn’t raise the credit limit on your Master Card.
In other words, it is nonsense. However, you can rest assured that Obama will make living under spending restrictions of any kind as painful for the American people as he possibly can. That is why vets and SS floks will get it first and foremost. Not because it is neccessary, but because Barack Obama sees political advantage in making it so.
heysoos wrote:
…and my feeling is that at least half of the American people will guzzle that Kool-aid and ask for seconds. To reenforce his point, the Dems will spend the rest of the day chanting “the Republicans want Vets and old people to starve”.
Were it not so damned tragic, it’d be incredibly funny.
Iron Fist wrote:
of course…I don’t expect the very people that created this mess to be penalized for their criminal behavior…next are the school kids…it’s all so predictable and sickening…I hate the feds
unclassifiable wrote:
That would require some manner of proper public education, but that’s no longer a realistic expectation.
@ MacDuff:
That would require getting rid of the Teachers’ Union, and that simply isn’t going to happen. Our schools are broken. Everybody acknowledges that. But we cling to unionized teachers as though they were producing something of worth, when they clearly are not. I don’ tknow how to change that. Until we change the public’s attitude to unionized public school teachers, we have no chance of reviving our school system. If I had a child, he or she would never darken the door of a public school. Public schools were bad when I went through, but they are ever so much worse now.
Sorry, but there is more common sense knowledge in main street America than in all the writers and thinkers who only know how to sell their words within the msm complex.
The Tea Party types are fixing America from within now.
When you watch these elite unelected know nothing so smart writters and thinkers you have to laugh at the sheer fact they have never met a payroll nor had to make the choice of letting people go that did not earn their keep on the job.
It is hard, but in the end it is all that works.
Cut spending. Not that hard if you have a brain.
taxfreekiller wrote:
That’s the problem. Well, that and the fact that the Democrats want to crash the system. Fixing our problem is, indeed, fairly straightforward (if not exactly easy), if you desire to actually fix the problem. The Democrats want no such thing. They intend to borrow and blow every cent they can until the credit markets simply refuse to loan us any more money. Anyone who wants to can look forward into the future and see where that leads. Relatively soon, payents on the debt and to entitlements will consume nearly all of the tax revenue it is possible to squeeze out of our economy. When that happens, America is bankrupt. We may totter on for a year or two from inertia, but we are done for. That is exactly what the Democrats want to happen. They’ve already said that getting rid of the Constitution is their goal. Oh, not all of them, but that spokeshole in the NYT was simply breaking to the country what the long-term plan is, and has been. They want to sweep aside the Constitution to grant themselves unlimited power. They view 1984 as an instruction manual, not a warning.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
i have an MS in economics. i know prof friedman well. i am just know ‘getting’ goldwater
coldwarrior wrote:
You are, however, very much the exception.
@ coldwarrior:
I’ve got a BA in Political Science, and Goldwater was never even presented as an option. Bacunin, yeah. Sandino, yeah. Anything more conservative than Fidel Castro? Only in honors seminars on Social Contract theory, and then only in terms of the writers of the Constitution and those theorists who influenced them. Nothing modern, not even an analysis of Reagan’s beliefs, and Reagan was President. For my college professors, it was as though the Right didn’t exist.
unclassifiable wrote:
oooo effin rah~!
@ buzzsawmonkey:
I have a BS in Mathematics.
I had to learn Frienman on my own.
Now with the internet, electronic readers, tablets, and even smart phones, getting this knowledge SHOULD be easier…
…provided you don’t have your head wedged up your e-ass (i.e. twitter and facebook).
@ Tanker:
.
The Libs have a man-god, we don’t need one.
But I did like the Gipper.
heysoos wrote:
RIX wrote:
Just all self-sacrifice and self-effacement, isn’t he?
@ MacDuff:
Our dear Leader is about to embark on another one his cult of personality history destroying moments by conflating Lincoln’s legacy with his own “greatness”.
Perhaps a few things from this bitter clinger should be mentioned:
1) Lincoln was for the most part self-educated. It probably led him to come to some rather unpopular positions which he then adroitly defended and elevated himself to the highest office in the nation(not exactly a ringing endorsement of public education).
2) Lincoln was vexed to the future of the slaves after the conclusion of the war. One of his proposals that never really got implemented was repatriation back to Africa (not that I support this but if Obama is going to assume the mantle…).
Of course when you have a public who has predominently stopped educating themselves once they are out of the public educated system he can just make crap up — and has.
RIX wrote:
I liked him also, I just understand he was man, one that made mistakes, big ones IMHO! I try to look for the good he did, but remember he was just a man.
Goldwaters loss in 64 was epic. It was pretty much on a
par with Notre Dame in the BCS Championship.
People thought that Goldwater was a war monger.
So they voted in Johnsonwho kept escalating, refusing to invade the North
& had no plan to win.
@ Tanker:
True.
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
He gives too much of himself. We are not worthy.
@ RIX:
Johnson had no strategy for Vietnam. None. And he didn’t give his generals the option of persuing a winning strategy. Somewhat like Obama in Afghanistan, though Johnson didn’t run on losing a war. Obama always said victory was not his goal in Afghanistan. What e didn’t say was that vicory for the Taliban was his goal. I bet before Obama is out of Office Mullah Omar is back in control of Afghanistan.
@ Iron Fist:
When asked why he didn’t sell the Viet Nam War to the American
people, Johnson said “I didn’t want to create prejudice against
Asians.”
That’s a paraphrase, but it is the gist.
@ RIX:
Typical Lib speak. I won’t say that Johnson wanted to lose Vietnam, but he certainly didn’t really want to win in Vietnam, either. What he did in Vietnam was way worse than anything Bush did in Iraq (and Bush’s losses in Afghanistan were tiny compared to the death toll Barack Hussein has racked up), but pewople remember Vietnam as Nixon’s war. That’s what contorl of the media and education industry will do for you. People are ignorant. Part of that is their own fault. Frederick Douglass was able to teach himself to read when it was illegal for a slave to be able to read. True, he was an exceptional man, but information has never been more readily accessible than it is today, nor probably more willfully ignored. People don’t want to learn history, and you aren’t going to make them learn it. They’re too concerned with the Kardashians and Honey Boo Boo…
Iron Fist wrote:
he used McNamara’s strategy…flood the country with GIs and let them get shot at from every direction at once
@ Iron Fist:
LOL! I finally had to google honey boo boo. I had no idea what it was. For all I knew it could have been a spin-off show about Yogi Bear’s side kick.
“We have reached a new low in American foreign policy when France leads international intervention against Al Qaeda to fix a mess partly of American making. It is worth noting that France did not wait for a mandate from the UN, from the Arab League, or even from NATO in order to do what is necessary to prevent a regional collapse from becoming a global menace. Leading from behind is not leading at all--much to the world’s detriment.”
I had no clue of any US involvement in Mali…another failure, unreported
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2013/01/14/Leading-From-Behind-Part-II-France-Intervenes-in-Mali-After-US-Strategy-Collapses
I just bought a new kitten. It is the one named Peach Creek. She is a sweet one! This will be our seventh cat. Cats are like potato chips. You can’t have just one
@ Iron Fist:
Such as this
@ 68 taxfreekiller: One of the ex girlfriend was a good business woman. Her personal hobby was to go to meeting full of phd’s, officials, and lawyers and make them cry when they said something stupid and lacking common sense.
she thought there were a lot of self appointed geniuses making 500k a year there were dumb as a box of dirt. And that the Ivy League generated a lot of them.
@ citizen_q:
Yeah, it is scary that something so purile could become so prevalent. That is what the American people want to see, though. I, myself, rarely watch TV other than Fox News. I don’t see the attraction in these kind of shows, but they pull in the ratings.
@ 52 buzzsawmonkey: it is only going to get worse until such time we have an effective Kindergarten curriculum.
No more recycling clowns. No more coloring outside the lines. learn to tie your shoes and keep your belt buckled.
New Thread.
@ Iron Fist:
I don’t understand the attraction to those type shows either.
You know what, Fox used to be the only newtwork news that I watched. After the election, not so much any more. I don’t watch much of any network news. I get more information surfing the web. It is not very often even when I was watching, unless something was breaking that moment, that I had not read about previously.
I do like listening to Charles Krouthammer, but that usually listening to the likes as juan williams or some other obama-bot for “balance”.
@ citizen_q:
Yeah, I get most of my news from the Web, too. Fox will at least display our side of the arguement, though, and their coverage of the gun control issue has been generally stellar. Chris Wallace was really going after the Democrats on gun control Sunday.
@ Iron Fist:
Johnson just let the body count go up.
We could have brought North Vietnam to its knees in a couple of weeks.
RIX wrote:
He fought the first politically correct war.
LBJ was the worst “war president” ever.
Iron Fist wrote:
Why Romney’s side did not insist that Chris Wallace (or Bret Baier) host one of the presidential debates is incomprehensible. Candy Crowley???
citizen_q wrote:
Charles Krauthammer, Stephen Hayes, Jonah Goldberg, Brit Hume and even Kirsten Powers are reasons to tune in.
Speranza wrote:
Romney didn’t want to win or the GOP and campaign were stupid. Pick one.
AZfederalist wrote:
Romney was running for three years and pf course he wanted to win. The GOP ran a stupid campaign and that is why they are the Stupid Party.
Speranza wrote:
He ran for the nomination for three years, just as McCain ran for the nomination. Seems that to the GOP, being the presidential candidate is the goal, not so sure they have the same hunger for being president. If they did, they would have done a lessons learned from the Bush I, Dole, and McCain campaigns. Instead, they ran the same campaign.
I don’t know if anyone mentioned this before but this guy sounds conservative to me… http://dailycaller.com/2013/01/14/gop-congressman-threatens-impeachment-if-obama-uses-executive-action-for-gun-control/