It Doesn't Even Twitch
Conservatism in America is dead.
To be clear, conservatism as defined by limited-government (small-r) republicans who favor a humble foreign policy and market solutions to every economic issue, is dead. It's corpse doesn't even twitch when you stick it with a pin. It has, to paraphrase the Monty Python sketch, joined the choir invisible, it is an ex-movement. It is deceased and George Bush killed it.
We could go back and forth for hours on whether it was George Bush's intent to kill it. The evidence suggests it was not. The more likely explanation is that he impersonated a conservative out of sheer ignorance, and like a virus, he displaced its DNA with his own. The body conservative simply wasn't strong enough to fight off the Bush virus, and it died. There were a few small attempts to revive it. Some guy who played one on TV attempted to impersonate the real thing, but the body knew he was just another impostor and it rejected him. Lots of so-called conservative pundits tried to point at the pod-person conservative that the neocons had slipped into the demised movement's place, but that too was rejected. Some other guy whose hair looked like Ronald Reagan's made an effort to put up a conservative facade, but his makeup kept running and pieces of his facade kept crumbling off of him like rotting meat.
Over the next 8 months, we will hear the continuous drone of the media's insistence that Americans want change. That's probably true, but the election cycle isn't anything like a bellwether for that change. At a guess, somewhere around 1 in 7 Americans will participate in the election process, making the only truth about the process that Americans, for the most part, don't care. So maybe the real truth is that conservatism has been sick for a long time with the disease of indifference. George Bush was simply the virus that its weakened immune system couldn't fight.
The number of Americans alive today who remember an America free of socialism and fascism is in the handfuls. The number of Americans who were alive at a time when free enterprise existed in this country is probably less than a dozen. The chances that any of them actually remember such conditions are pretty slim. The entire name of the movement is a case of wishful thinking. By the time the conservative movement was born in the early 1960s, that which it sought to conserve had been long gone for over a generation. The last great battle had been fought to a draw when William Jennings Bryan and his ilk stopped Wilson and his fellow Jacobins dead in their tracks on The League of Nations. Even that was only a temporary victory. As well, Bryan was hardly a scion of liberty himself. As a prohibitionist and strident anti-Darwinist, he was the precursor of today's "social conservative" movement.
The confusion between the social conservative movement and the more general conservative movement was likely another factor in the latter's demise. Social conservatives are not concerned with liberty, indeed just the opposite. If anything they are more favorably inclined toward totalitarian methods to achieve their goals. Grant collectivists one thing: there is a precedent in human nature for their system of belief. The herd instinct still runs pretty strong in humanity. Social conservatives must employ coercion at every turn, since asceticism is not a natural state for human beings. This then, was the guise under which the George Bush virus crept in: as a social conservative and full-fledged, bible-toting socialist, the adjective on his conservatism was written in minuscule print. The truth, now understood far too late, is that social conservatives aren't conservative at all. They are no less utopianists than their Marxian counterparts, they simply have a different utopia in mind. They are no less inclined to put us under the yoke of their idealism and to do so "for our own good."
There is no peaceful way to revive conservatism. If the idea is ever to be resuscitated, it will have to pass through the fires of chaos and anarchy. Fascism's only cure is the reward reaped by its progenitors. It can only be exorcised when its naked, bloating corpse hangs upside-down in public, or it seeks the solace of the barrel of a pistol in a dark place somewhere under ground. The only solution to collectivism is to see it trampled to bloody bits under the thundering boots of the mob. The instinct for bread and circuses is too strong in humans. Totalitarianism is not a game from which one may choose to abstain. And if any idea of liberty is to be revived, then Thomas Jefferson's axiom must be remembered: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." Only when you and I both remember that your desire to impose your will on me "for the common good" is sufficient for me to retaliate in whatever means I see fit, will a free America ever hope to exist. Only when those whom we send to govern us fear the gibbet more than they desire power, will the dream of conservatism begin once again to breathe in and breathe out.
To be clear, conservatism as defined by limited-government (small-r) republicans who favor a humble foreign policy and market solutions to every economic issue, is dead. It's corpse doesn't even twitch when you stick it with a pin. It has, to paraphrase the Monty Python sketch, joined the choir invisible, it is an ex-movement. It is deceased and George Bush killed it.
We could go back and forth for hours on whether it was George Bush's intent to kill it. The evidence suggests it was not. The more likely explanation is that he impersonated a conservative out of sheer ignorance, and like a virus, he displaced its DNA with his own. The body conservative simply wasn't strong enough to fight off the Bush virus, and it died. There were a few small attempts to revive it. Some guy who played one on TV attempted to impersonate the real thing, but the body knew he was just another impostor and it rejected him. Lots of so-called conservative pundits tried to point at the pod-person conservative that the neocons had slipped into the demised movement's place, but that too was rejected. Some other guy whose hair looked like Ronald Reagan's made an effort to put up a conservative facade, but his makeup kept running and pieces of his facade kept crumbling off of him like rotting meat.
Over the next 8 months, we will hear the continuous drone of the media's insistence that Americans want change. That's probably true, but the election cycle isn't anything like a bellwether for that change. At a guess, somewhere around 1 in 7 Americans will participate in the election process, making the only truth about the process that Americans, for the most part, don't care. So maybe the real truth is that conservatism has been sick for a long time with the disease of indifference. George Bush was simply the virus that its weakened immune system couldn't fight.
The number of Americans alive today who remember an America free of socialism and fascism is in the handfuls. The number of Americans who were alive at a time when free enterprise existed in this country is probably less than a dozen. The chances that any of them actually remember such conditions are pretty slim. The entire name of the movement is a case of wishful thinking. By the time the conservative movement was born in the early 1960s, that which it sought to conserve had been long gone for over a generation. The last great battle had been fought to a draw when William Jennings Bryan and his ilk stopped Wilson and his fellow Jacobins dead in their tracks on The League of Nations. Even that was only a temporary victory. As well, Bryan was hardly a scion of liberty himself. As a prohibitionist and strident anti-Darwinist, he was the precursor of today's "social conservative" movement.
The confusion between the social conservative movement and the more general conservative movement was likely another factor in the latter's demise. Social conservatives are not concerned with liberty, indeed just the opposite. If anything they are more favorably inclined toward totalitarian methods to achieve their goals. Grant collectivists one thing: there is a precedent in human nature for their system of belief. The herd instinct still runs pretty strong in humanity. Social conservatives must employ coercion at every turn, since asceticism is not a natural state for human beings. This then, was the guise under which the George Bush virus crept in: as a social conservative and full-fledged, bible-toting socialist, the adjective on his conservatism was written in minuscule print. The truth, now understood far too late, is that social conservatives aren't conservative at all. They are no less utopianists than their Marxian counterparts, they simply have a different utopia in mind. They are no less inclined to put us under the yoke of their idealism and to do so "for our own good."
There is no peaceful way to revive conservatism. If the idea is ever to be resuscitated, it will have to pass through the fires of chaos and anarchy. Fascism's only cure is the reward reaped by its progenitors. It can only be exorcised when its naked, bloating corpse hangs upside-down in public, or it seeks the solace of the barrel of a pistol in a dark place somewhere under ground. The only solution to collectivism is to see it trampled to bloody bits under the thundering boots of the mob. The instinct for bread and circuses is too strong in humans. Totalitarianism is not a game from which one may choose to abstain. And if any idea of liberty is to be revived, then Thomas Jefferson's axiom must be remembered: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." Only when you and I both remember that your desire to impose your will on me "for the common good" is sufficient for me to retaliate in whatever means I see fit, will a free America ever hope to exist. Only when those whom we send to govern us fear the gibbet more than they desire power, will the dream of conservatism begin once again to breathe in and breathe out.
posted by Anonymous | 2:29 PM
2 Comments:
Good post, Steve.
This is my favorite part:
The truth, now understood far too late, is that social conservatives aren't conservative at all. They are no less utopianists than their Marxian counterparts, they simply have a different utopia in mind. They are no less inclined to put us under the yoke of their idealism and to do so "for our own good."
By definition, Marxists are driven by a desire for material-based 'fairness' and equality for humanity through governmental influence, while, in my opinion, social conservatives are driven by a desire for quicker fulfillment of ‘divine’ influence or prophecy through the same means: governmental influence. Since you can't have it both ways, and since our government seems to keep growing, it all must go one way or another … if you can’t keep it in the middle. (And from this viewpoint, is ‘the middle’ actually where the real ‘conservatives’ are? Hmm.)
But Steve, if you're going to identify the modern American socialist movement as an extreme — 'Marxism' — then you must also identify the modern American social conservative movement by what it ultimately is, too: 'Fascism.' That is, if you want to be fair here.
The modern American socialist movement is Marxian, but it isn't Marxist. Marxism is a means to an end: Communism. It is not an end in itself, and socialism is simply a Marxian tool used in achieving the ultimate goal of Communism. However, American liberalism is, itself a form of fascism. American social conservatism is simply another face of that fascism, and one with slightly different goals.
Post a Comment
<< Home