Wither Conservatism?
Briefing | By Jesse Masai | October 10, 2008
For anyone disillusioned about the current health of the conservative movement, the Heritage Foundation is the place to have been on October 7. There, at its Allison Auditorium, Harvey C. Mansfield delivered a lecture on the movement’s future as well as a constitutional basis for it.
The William R. Kenan Jr. professor of Government at Harvard University delivered the lecture in honor of Russell Kirk,
one of the patron saints of the conservative movement. He said:
“Conservatism is faced with three important dilemmas: Should it be
compassionate, interventionist, international?”
He suggested that the movement also probes whether it would be
sufficient to be merely an alternative to modern liberalism, or whether
it can rescue disturbing trends in contemporary affairs.
Mansfield noted that conservatism has become associated with all things
mediocre and ignoble in American society, and suggested that the
situation fits into another dual challenge for the movement: Shall it
be populist or elitist in its final expression? He said conservatives
must contend for the affections of the liberal middle class, and help
their liberal brethren because the latter “are weak in mind and
spirit.”
The politics of global justice and entitlement, he said, present two
areas in which the conservative movement could help provide leadership.
“Political liberty is best shown in practice, as is indeed virtue over
and against necessity,” he said.
He warned that the movement will have to negotiate a happy middle
ground on whether it wants to be either majority-seeking or
principle-expounding. Yet, he insisted, propriety and morality are
concerns the movement should attempt to recover.
Mansfield has written on a variety of subjects in government and
political philosophy, including Edmund Burke, Machiavelli, and the
discovery and development of the theory of executive power. He has also
translated three books of Machiavelli’s and (with the aid of his late
wife, Delba Winthrop) Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. His book on manliness was published in 2006.
Professor Mansfield has been on the faculty at Harvard since 1962, and
is considered one of today’s most eminent political philosophers.
Jesse Masai is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.
12 Comments | Post a Comment
True political conservatism, in the mold of Barry Goldwater and as he defined it in “The Conscience of the Conservative”, went down the toilet when the supposedly “conservative” Republican Party decided it should pander to the Religious Right, beginning near the end of the Reagan administration and reaching its crescendo around the end of the second Clinton administration and the 2000 campaign of George W. Bush.
A truly overzealous “Religious Right”, the “Neoconservatives” (and there are some Democratic neoconservatives, too) and the Bush II adminstration, over the last eight years, have subverted just about everything that was originally a “conservative” political tenet.
John Kennedy was probably closer to being a true “conservative” than are most people who call themselves “conservatives” today. In fact, today’s Blue Dog Democrats are probably closer to true Conservatism than are a lot of Republicans.
I might have known it was you, TK. Still can’t comprehend that us Conservatives are not all religious wackos? You can distort and try and push your political beliefs all you want, but I am a Conservative and a Traditionalist - and live with it, and I am hardly religious. And the so-called Blue Dog Democrats - most of them are just liberal light like Bush and McCain. You did see in the House vote on the Bailout scam, true Republican and Democrat (Blue Dog?) Conservatives voting against it though - so in a sense, you are party correct that there are true Blue Dogs, though some of them were 2006 elected Democrats and feared the voters this November, so they voted against it when they normally vote along with Pelosi. I know, my new 2006 Rep votes 98% with Pelosi, but voted against the bailout, because he is probably going to be shown the door this year in this normally Conservative district.
Hansen, #3;
My only point is that true political conservatism within the GOP, conservatism more or less in accordance with that espoused by Goldwater, was bastardized by the Religious Right, the NEO conservative movement, and the actions of the Bush II administration. Consequently, the GOP as a whole, and as one of the two major political parties, no longer represents classic political conservatism.
The other side of the coin is that the Democratic Party no longer represents classic liberalism, either! Each party, now, simply represents and is controlled by its respective squeekiest wheel minority; religious rockheaded wackos and oddball lefty loons.
It would seem to me that true Conservatives would have to migrate to the Libertarian Party, while Conservative, moderate, or traditional Democrats don’t seem to have any alternative and will ultimately have to create one.
Todays Conservatism is a metaphore for an Immature Anal Retentive Disorder.
great headline! Hard to believe someone at AIM is clever enough to use such a pun, but credit where it’s due…well done!
And here we have, out of the mouths of babes, some truth:
Jackie boy- “Still can’t comprehend that us Conservatives are not all religious wackos?”
The very next sentence: ”... I am hardly religious. ”
‘nuff said.
An interesting take on what happened to conservatism:
http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2006-fall/decline-fall-american-conservatism.asp
Yes, John Kennedy was more conservative than today’s so-called conservatives. Almost all politicians were more conservative back then.
Today’s Blue Dog’s are not conservative, but those of yesteryear certainly were.
Today’s Blue Dog’s are going to the polls today to vote for Obama. They joined with the media and our so called conservatives to make sure Ron Paul didn’t have a chance and that his message never made it into everyday discussion. If it did, they made sure they had repeated words like ‘isolationist’ and ‘kook’ and ‘he can’t win’ enough times, it was implanted in their minds.
The conservatives, assuming there are any left, don’t need to dilute their message. They need to scrap what they are calling their message these days. They need to search for, find, dust off, and put in practice the true message of conservatism.
It was the religious people who helped elected this last President - at least they thought they did. It was actually the corporations - global corporations - that did it and they make the decisions.
It will be no different with Obama.
Does anyone think these huge, conglomerates who own most of the world, are going to allow someone to be elected that won’t play along with their agenda?
It would take a real awakening of the American people to do that. It would take the American people turning off the media and making decisions for themselves to be able to elect someone not owned by the corporations.
This may very well be the most critical election in the history of this nation - and once again, the American people allowed the media to persuade us to allow these two, totally unsuitable, dangerous, people to be the candidates.
To Lady texan, Post 18;
I agree with much of what you say.
And - the media is now just another group of those “global corporations” of which you speak - so why would anyone expect anything but “profitization” from them? They’ll “market” whatever “sells”. Currently, they made the decision (probably after intense research) that “Democratic”, “liberal”, “Obama” will “sell” more than “Republican”, “conservative”, “McCain”.
When they “hedge their bets” today, we call them “fair and balanced”; when they go all out for one side or the other, we call them “biased”.
But, it’s all about the money and “shareholder” or “stockholder value”. In fact, the worst thing that has happened in the economy (from the perspective of the working middle-class) over the last 30 years: the “customers” of these global corporations are no longer the people who actually buy their goods or services, as used to be the case. Today, the “customers” of Big Business are not consumers but, rather, the “stockholders” or “shareholders” - and, today, MANY of those stockholders aren’t even Americans or even in America!
Today, even old-time American companies (like General Electric) no longer focus on “America” (consumers or shareholders) - and, for the most part, they don’t even manufucature or produce the products they sell. It’s all “outsourced” - and the company that was once the biggest manufacturer of appliances - is simply a holding company or agency that operates a worldwide appliance marketing business, two major radio and TV networks, a giant financial services and lending group, etc., etc.
Globalization has benefitted only the Wall Street fat cats, worldwide stock brokerages and investment banks, and the peasants in the third-world countries where “American business” has located or bought up $1-a-day production facilities.
The American working class has been screwed - and it was all begun by the fat cat neocons in the Reagan administration who parlayed their time in power with a bullshit message to sucker American citizens in order to be able to get away with feathering their own nests and those in the international “monied class” who supported them. Bush I, Clinton and Bush II have all gone along with the program!
(And, make no mistake: illegal immigration has been allowed by the GOP to bring about a nationwide reduction in wages. And, hyper-capitalism will ultimately create “slaves” out of the working class just as communism does. Everyone will “be kept in line” by keeping them financially unstable.)
It’s the Robber Baron’s era “New World Order” almost realized!
TK,
We are in almost complete agreement, maybe some additional thoughts on my part.
I think what the media does is ‘sell’ ideas and people and do what promotes the agenda of other corporations. They are just the propaganda, brainwashing, marketing-if you will - part of the agenda.
When large holding companies own a media outlet - or two - and a dozen corporations, it isn’t a stretch to believe they will promote whatever or whomever will be best for the other corporations.
Even many small town weekly newspapers are corporate owned today. I know one in a very small town. That town just happens to have a local industry that has imported a ton of illegals in the area. This paper had a ‘Man on the Street’ feature and also a ‘Cook of the week’ feature. For the 3 weeks I was there, at least 2, sometimes more, of the people featured in the ‘man on the street’ feature, were illegals. One of the 3 times I read it, the ‘Cook of the Week’ was an illegal. While there are many there, that percentage isn’t relative to their numbers in the town.
You have to think about it before you realize what they are doing is indoctrinating or desensitizing the citizens to the idea that breaking our laws, by the corporation and the illegals is just fine. In other words, they are ‘just one of us’, folks.
Also, yes, the illegals are being used to take American jobs, diminish the wages. They also are being used to destroy the education system, the healthcare system, the legal system, the social welfare system. It also is a hefty financial burden on working Americans.
But I think the biggest reason for their being here is to blur or cheapen citizenship and to blur the sovereignty of the country.
A former President of Mexico made a speech in Texas. He talked to ‘his people in the US’. He told them to ‘vote and when you vote, vote with Mexico in mind’. Now when all these illegals become legal and are allowed to vote, does anyone think they will vote for the best interest of this country and it’s people? How hard will it be to get more trade deals, perhaps even the North American Union in place with that many people loyal to Mexico voting here?
To Ladytexan, Post 10;
I wholly agree with you on this one.
(I have an acquaintance who owns and operates my small, local newspaper, too - - but his corporation also owns about 18 other small town, small newspapers - - with the end result being a rather significant and large business with interests only in profitization. His “newspapers” also operate several small town magazines, an internet provider service, a website development business, a long-distance phone company, a graphic design business, naturally, a printing business and a business services company - - that I know of!)
October 13 at 10:02 am | #1 | Link
Conservativism should not dilute its message. While it is good to be appealing to more and more people, if we dilute the message, we ruin what is good about the movement. And it is not elitist to believe in traditional values. The left has constantly diluted classic liberaliam until they have completely changed one from the other. Liberalism today is so unfocused and goes off into so many directions that one hardly even understands what they are except that they are leftist, and that they seem to be on some kind of race to destroy everything good about what was America.
That is chaos and not a message and Conservatism must not allow itself to be weakened by trying to be more open to the masses. It is our message that IS what Conservativism is all about and why it is appealing in the first place. While society breaks down because liberalism controls everything and destroys it, we will have people attracted to our movement because they will want what was and what made America great. We will never get the far leftists, no surprise, but those that have allowed themselves to be conned by the left, when they see everything going to h*ll will be attracted because we have a consistent message.