This one isn’t for the regular Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch. It’s for the new visitors, the drop-ins who were recently guided here by a link or arrived by surprise, and are wondering what’s beneath our sarcastic-but-serious “schtick.” One such visitor just wrote to me thus: “I like what I’ve read so far, but what are you really all about?”
A goodly number of Americans, disgusted with major-party politics but unable to endure the fringies who dominate the minor parties, have looked around for explanations, specifically: “How the BLEEP! did we get here?” The question is a good one. It doesn’t have a simple answer. The dynamics embedded in politics take a lot of explaining, even at the very highest level of abstraction. Friedrich Hayek tried his best in The Road to Serfdom, yet his insights have gone unappreciated.
But for some, clarity has arrived. It takes a lot of digging to unearth the ideological currents and the major political inflection points. And yes, there’s still some disagreement among us. At least, we know better than to accept that what is is Dr. Pangloss’s “best of all possible worlds.”
(What’s that? You haven’t read Candide? Glory be to God, man, it’s available for free! It’s wildly funny, too. Hie thee hence and download it!)
But I digress. What Gregory Benford called “the rough rub of the real” has ways of compelling us to open our eyes. Negative experiences with what is can disillusion us faster than any amount of argument or abstraction. As has often been observed, many a conservative was a liberal before he was mugged. (I had to be mugged five times before I started going armed whenever I leave the house. How long did it take you?) Such experiences often incite us to intellectual inquiry and exploration, as well.
One of the threads of thought We the Freshly Disillusioned tend to tug begins with the question “Is Republican politics really conservative?” On that subject, have a few words from the late Sam Francis, from his essay “Beautiful Losers:”
Neoconservatism today is usually called simply “conservatism,” though it is sometimes known under other labels as well: Fred Barnes’ “Big Government conservatism”; HUD Secretary Jack Kemp’s “progressive conservatism”; Representative Newt Gingrich’s “opportunity conservatism”; Paul Weyrich’s “cultural conservatism”; or, most recently, “The New Paradigm,” in the phrase coined by White House aide James Pinkerton. Despite the variations among these formulas, all of them envision a far larger and more active central state than the “Old Republicanism” embraced by most conservatives prior to the 1970’s, a state that makes it its business to envision a particular arrangement of institutions and beliefs and to design governmental machinery to create them. In the case of “neoconservatism,” the principal goal is the enhancement of economic opportunity through one kind or another of social engineering (enterprise zones, for example) and the establishment of an ethic that regards equality (usually disguised as “equality of opportunity”), economic mobility, affluence; and-material gratification as the central meaning of what their exponents often call “the American experiment.”
Such goals are not conceptually distinct from those of the Progressivism and liberalism athwart which the American right at one time promised to stand, though the tactics and procedures by which they are to be achieved are somewhat (but not very) different. Indeed, much of what neoconservatives are concerned with is merely process — strategy, tactics, how to win elections, how to broaden the base of the GOP, how to make the government run more effectively, how to achieve “credibility” and exert an “impact” — and not with the ultimate goals themselves, about which there is little debate with those parts of the left that also lie within the permissible range of “pluralistic” dialogue. Given the persistent cultural dominance of the left, a conservatism that limits itself merely to procedural problems tacitly concedes the goals of public action to its enemies and quietly comes to share the premises on which the goals of the left rest. Eventually, having silently and unconsciously accepted the premises and goals, it will also come to accept even the means by which the left has secured its dominance, and the very distinction between “right” and “left” will disappear.
It was this kind of silent acquiescence in the premises of the left that James Burnham identified as a salient characteristic of neoconservatism when it first began to appear in the early 1970’s.
Savor that phrase silent acquiescence in the premises of the left. It’s a whole education in just eight words.
The “Old Republicanism” of which Sam Francis speaks in the above is often referred to as paleoconservatism, or “The Old Right.” It wasn’t congruent with party alignment. The historical figure whom I consider the standard-bearer of the paleoconservative creed was Grover Cleveland, a Democrat. Today, its best-known champion is former Texas Congressman Ron Paul.
Paleoconservatism is experiencing a rebirth, though seldom under that ungainly appellation. If you know someone who calls himself a “constitutionalist,” or a “constitutional conservative,” that fellow is probably a paleoconservative or close to it. As I said above, there are still disagreements among those who style themselves that way, so don’t expect perfect unanimity among those who’ve adopted any of the above labels.
Paleoconservatism’s strategic problem is severe: the ruling elites of both major parties are implacably hostile to it. It limits their opportunities for power, profit, and prestige. Republican office-seekers sometimes mouth platitudes that sound vaguely paleoconservative, but GOP conduct when in power falls so far short of the paleo standard that no comparison is possible. The cleavage is in premises, specifically the answers to this question: What are the legitimate functions and activities of government?
Don’t stop with the questions and observations above. Read Joseph Sobran and Sam Francis. Fold in some Jared Taylor. Sprinkle on a little Pat Buchanan. (Not too much Buchanan; he’s prone to backsliding now and then.) And of course, enjoy your time at Liberty’s Torch. We’ve got a few things to say, too. And keep thinking.
