Why Conservatism Never Existed…and What Should
I just saw a post by Jeffrey A Tucker from conservative/libertarian think tank AIER titled, “How Trumpism Swallowed Conservatism”. It’s a beautiful tale about liberalism and freedom and “western ideals”. Except, it’s bullshit.
My thesis is: “Conservatism” never existed. Not as a political movement. And not outside narrow political or academic circles. What did exist was misdiagnosed (conveniently, willfully or ignorantly).
Survey after survey showed Americans have always held a variety of left, center and right wing views. It’s only recently that our toxicity has driven us into ideological camps.
From Pew:
The overall share of Americans who express consistently conservative or consistently liberal opinions has doubled over the past two decades from 10% to 21%. And ideological thinking is now much more closely aligned with partisanship than in the past. As a result, ideological overlap between the two parties has diminished: Today, 92% of Republicans are to the right of the median Democrat, and 94% of Democrats are to the left of the median Republican.
And even the left, which has seemingly moved more aggressively away from the center is hiding a secret….
Even as the left’s art and rhetoric gets more radical, their actual lives are MORE conservative than those of conservatives.
Here’s @DavidAFrench on California, where the chasm between lived and stated beliefs couldn’t be wider:
Wait. Is California the traditional values state?
Ever since Charles Murray’s indispensable book Coming Apart , we’ve known about an interesting phenomenon-America’s progressive, college-educated communities as a rule live quite conservative, traditional lives. In spite of a high degree of public tolerance for the changing values of the sexual revolution, in their own families they tend to complete their educations, get married, have children, and stay married. Their daily reality is far less “drag queen story hour” and far more Leave It to Beaver .
How entrenched is this reality? Very. Earlier today my friends at the Institute for Family Studies released a fascinating study showing that California is in some key ways more traditional than the average American state:
It is striking, then, that this Institute for Family Studies (IFS) report finds that California-despite being a global force for cultural liberalism-actually has a higher share of stable, married families than the nation as a whole. About 67% of California parents are in intact marriages, compared to 63% of American parents, according to an IFS analysis of the Census data. Likewise, 65% of children ages 0–17 in California reside with their married, biological parents, compared to 62% of children in the United States. In other words, family life in the Golden State is more stable than in the country as a whole.
This remains true even in the culturally progressive strongholds of San Francisco and Hollywood. I found this section of the report fascinating:
In Southern California, three neighborhoods with single parenthood rates of essentially 0% can be found in the heart of Hollywood. Take a trip through Whitley Heights Historic District, below the Hollywood Sign, and nestled among the lavish former residences of Francis X. Bushman and Judy Garland, you will find residents who voted for Clinton by a rate of about 86% in 2016. You will also find virtually no single parents in this Hollywood Hills neighborhood.
What’s going on? California’s college-educated families are just as traditional as college-educated families nationwide, but California has far more immigrants than the average American state, and California’s immigrant population-led by its Asian immigrants-embraces more “familistic” values than its native-born citizens. Education plus immigration means that “California values” are family values at a scale that its cultural products would not suggest.
It’s fair to ask why these culturally traditionalist political progressives do not more loudly preach what they practice. One can certainly be tolerant of dissenting lifestyles while advocating for the enduring value of one’s own choices. As an engine of childhood development, economic advancement, and personal happiness (or, more importantly, virtuous purpose), marriage simply works . It is not judgmental or intolerant to evangelize a lifestyle that is so obviously rich with personal, cultural, and spiritual rewards.
Conservatives, on their part, often look at places like Hollywood as strange and alien. And indeed, the ideas espoused by its inhabitants are often diametrically opposed to the thoughts and ideas expressed in, say, churchgoing Franklin, Tennessee. The daily rhythms of life, by contrast, are often nearly identical.
With few passionate believers in “conservatism”, wealthy power brokers, seeking minimal taxes and regulation, found a wedge: evangelicals. This awkward alliance veiled a deconstructionist economic agenda with a religious smokescreen to gain votes and power.
Over time, “the right” created “think tanks” to legitimize their questionable economic theories (“trickle down”) — all laser-focused on cutting taxes and regulation for their real backers, though rarely presented that way.
The left did the same with its own think tanks, but it was less necessary, as it already controlled over 85% of academia and cultural institutions. For 20+ years, it used divisive social issues in much the same way as the right — for fear-based fundraising, masking an expansionist economic agenda.
So until very recently, few voters bought into “conservative” or “liberal” ideologies. They merely voted for the closest match to their personal cultural views — to their detriment. Because those views were secretly packaged with economic policies that crippled their future and delivered Trump.
So when Trumpism came along, it wasn’t eating “conservatism”, but a sketch of its ghost.
Like Uber upended awful taxi cartels and customers fled abusive cable monopolies for streaming services, “conservative” voters fled those who never served them, the first chance they got.
Of course, we all know Trumpism isn’t going to outlive Trump. Nothing built on ego can. But “conservatism” sure isn’t what will take its place — since it never existed in the first place. So I sketched out six pillars for the future of conservatism, insofar as something fictional can have a future.
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Originally published at https://www.facebook.com.
