Posted by
KWG on Thursday, May 01, 2008 3:02:02 PM
The American Prospect has a piece on how George W. Bush and modern conservatism is bankrupt, entitled "
Obama Praises the Wrong Conservatives." Stay tuned as I destroy every notion that they have.
The Prospect piece opens with a condemnation of the "modern right wing's deep-seated hostility toward government," and implies that this is a recent development in American politics. This is either ignorant or dishonest, but wrong nonetheless. The author's struggle with dishonesty and ignorance only grows throughout this piece.
It was Thomas Jefferson, after all, who said "as government grows, liberty decreases." As I unfortunately do not have my collected works of Jefferson with me here, I cannot further expound on other things he said, but suffice to say he was a fierce advocate of liberty and quite hostile toward government. (Sure, he reversed course when he was President, but that doesn't say anything about the fact that a)hostility to government has been around for more than 20 years and b)power corrupts.)
He then talks about 'movement conservatism' without defining it. I've read enough lefties to know that they seem to think/define movement conservatism as the policies and ideology of George W. Bush. It's fine if you want to do that, but W. Bush is simply a straight-up Neoconservative. He's in no way an heir to Reagan (who this guy claims started 'movement conservatism').
For example, he says that Bush has desired to "weaken government, regardless of consequences." Wrong. That's not even what libertarians want to do (and we'll get to them later), but Bush has presided over massive expansions of government that he desires to work just fine. In fact, the guy says that progressivism is based on "building on past successes and avoiding the repetition of failure." Putting aside the fact that that's an awful attempt to hijack conservatism for progressives, that's exactly what you see when you look at Medicare Part D. Additionally and perhaps a more progressive attempted idea is No Child Left Behind, a huge government program intended to revive and help our nation's lagging public schools. (We all know the problems with NCLB, and for once lefties can see what conservatives are always saying: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.)
His list of "extremist" right-wing objectives is ludicrous. If you actually look at Bush's social security privatization plan, you see how small and incremental it was. Sure, more ideological libertarians would destroy social security with one fell swoop, but the Bush-privatization plan was a very partial privatization. Only a maximum of four percent of the FICA tax could have been diverted and privatized (and even then, only into government-approved programs). In fact, this was one of Bush's most Burkean proposals (if any national program ever COULD be Burkean): recognition of a problem that's not working and an incremental change in order to start to fix it.
Other "Bush" ideas he cites are the philosophy of a unitary executive and staffing the high levels of government with your own idealogues. I guess this guy's study of history doesn't go any further back than thirty years. The pioneer of this style of governance was none other than progressive icon Franklin D. Roosevelt. And he cites school vouchers as something that's an extremist right-wing program. Ludicrous. They've got a huge broad base of support amongst education advocates and inner-city activists alike.
Bush is a Neoconservative, through and through. The modern Republican party is, as has often been said, a three-legged stool that can be summed up in three statements: "What's mine is mine" (economic conservatives), "God is great" (religious conservatives), and "It's a dangerous world" (foreign policy hawks). Bush can only accurately be said to have represented the interests of one and a half of those legs (foreign policy hawks and a quarter-leg of religious and econ). It was Irving Kristol who coined the term "two cheers for capitalism." This represents the caution and skepticism with which neocons observe the market system. They believe in the good of regulation and government intervention, as opposed to libertarians, who believe in these as necessary evils. He is not a Republican in the Reagan mould, he's a Republican in the Nixon mould.
Conclusion of my comments on this article: it's a godawful piece. It shows a stunning lack of historical knowledge and modern political analysis. Whether this is intentional, in order to portray Bush in a bad light, or ignorant is unknown. It is wrong.
Conservatism in America in an incredibly unique philosophy. Considering that the left-right spectrum was initially formulated as Jefferson v. Hamilton, both of whom were radicals in their time, we never really had a Burkean option. Though of those two, Jefferson was definitely an anti-central power, wisdom-of-localities guy. Conservatism today is not Burkean conservatism, it's far closer to classical liberalism. While the Tories in England can more accurately be described as Burkeans, Burke exists merely as a disposition within politics in America. There are incremental-reformists in both parties.
However, in terms of the defending of local wisdom and knowledge, the Republican party/conservative movement in America has the leg up. Distrust of central government power is a theme running through the GOP. Indeed, even my own radical libertarianism is tempered in this way. If I had a choice between my freedom-utopia and a nation dominated by local institutions and rule, I'll take the latter every time. It's just my job to try and convince all those localities that my freedom-utopia is awesome. This is why I'm a Republican and a conservative, not a libertarian.
It's true that President Bush doesn't represent this strain of conservatism very well at all. He's a compassionate (big-government) conservative. He is not, by any stretch of the imagination, someone interested in government not working. He wants it to work and wants it to work very well, but for different ends than most progressives do.