What Happened to American conservatism?

Centerpiece

Centerpiece

Iconic Member
Messages
2,321
David Brooks weighs in:

“When I look at the Trump administration I see a massive attempt to return us to dog eat dog… nasty, brutish and short.”
 
It was always a lie. Every bit of it. The hypocrisy and the incoherence and the inconsistency has always been the point. It’s about power for power’s sake. It has no other aim, no other goal, no other desire, no other ambition other than power for power’s sake, to benefit a select few at the expense of many. It does not want progress. It wants hierarchy. It does not want equal opportunity. It does not seek common good. It is a movement built inherently upon fear and insecurity.

Sincerely,

A Former American Conservative
 
Was there a time when conservatism in the USA matched up with Edmund Burke and if so when?
 
CFordUNC said:
It was always a lie. Every bit of it. The hypocrisy and the incoherence and the inconsistency has always been the point. It’s about power for power’s sake. It has no other aim, no other goal, no other desire, no other ambition other than power for power’s sake, to benefit a select few at the expense of many.

Sincerely,

A Former American Conservative
Click to expand...
Eh. I don't think I'd agree it was always a lie. Conservatism, if morally grounded, serves an important role in the political order. That has been much more the case in times past than it is now. In my view, American conservatism sold its soul when these two things happened:

1. The party of individual liberties was coopted by the dominant (albeit much less influential now) Southern Baptist Convention to become the party of religious "moralism."
2. Under the guidance of Feldstein and Laffer, the 1980s era GOP decided fiscal responsibility was irrelevant.

Once those two tendencies took root, American conservatism was functionally dead. And nothing occupies a fallow field better than the cultural and social weed that is grievance-based populism.
 
Last edited:
lawtig02 said:
Eh. I don't think I'd agree it was always a lie. Conservatism, if morally grounded, serves an important role in the political order. That has been much more the case in time past than it is now. In my view, American conservatism sold its soul when these two things happened:

1. The party of individual liberties was coopted by the dominant (albeit much less influential now) Southern Baptist Convention to become the party of religious "moralism."
2. Under the guidance of Feldstein and Laffer, the 1980s era GOP decided fiscal responsibility was irrelevant.

Once those two tendencies took root, American conservatism was functionally dead. And nothing occupies a fallow field better than the cultural and social weed that is grievance-based populism.
Click to expand...
3. The rise of fascism and consolidation of executive power under the guise of the MAGA movement, which co-opted said grievance-based populism through a prolonged campaign of propaganda and misinformation using AI driven messaging to polarize its base.
 
lawtig02 said:
2. Under the guidance of Feldstein and Laffer, the 1980s era GOP decided fiscal responsibility was irrelevant
Click to expand...
Neither of those economists thought fiscal responsibility was irrelevant. I don't think the GOP did either. They just liked tax cuts more.
 
lawtig02 said:
Eh. I don't think I'd agree it was always a lie. Conservatism, if morally grounded, serves an important role in the political order. That has been much more the case in time past than it is now. In my view, American conservatism sold its soul when these two things happened:

1. The party of individual liberties was coopted by the dominant (albeit much less influential now) Southern Baptist Convention to become the party of religious "moralism."
2. Under the guidance of Feldstein and Laffer, the 1980s era GOP decided fiscal responsibility was irrelevant.

Once those two tendencies took root, American conservatism was functionally dead. And nothing occupies a fallow field better than the cultural and social weed that is grievance-based populism.
Click to expand...
The only thing I would criticize about your post is that you did not drop the mic 😞
 
Here's an interesting look at conservatism and how early the media became important to them.

newrepublic.com

The Birth of Conservative Media as We Know It

It all started in a small apartment in Washington, D.C.
newrepublic.com newrepublic.com




Dedication to “the reporting of facts that other newspapers overlook” thus inspired the founders of Human Events. But while touting this fact-based approach, they also promoted a distinct point of view. By the early 1960s, Human Events arrived at this articulation of its mission: “In reporting the news, Human Events is objective; it aims for accurate representation of the facts. But it is not impartial. It looks at events through the eyes that are biased in favor of limited constitutional government, local self-government, private enterprise, and individual freedom.” Distinguishing between objectivity and impartiality, the editors of Human Events created a space where “bias” was an appropriate journalistic value.
 
The online, open access U.S. History textbook The American Yawp doesn't mention conservatism until "Volume II, Chapter 29, titled "The Triumph of the Right." This chapter examines the rise of the conservative movement in the United States during the mid-20th century. It discusses the political mobilization of the American right following World War II, highlighting figures like William F. Buckley Jr., who in 1955 declared that his magazine, National Review, “stands athwart history yelling Stop.” The chapter also addresses the political landscape of the 1960s and 1970s, including the challenges faced by the conservative movement and its eventual resurgence."

I ran that question through ChatGPT, i.e., "What is the first mention of conservatism in The American Yawp? The American Yawp"
 
Paine said:
Lincoln was the embodiment of classical liberalism. Identifying him as a conservative gets to the heart of the tension of American Conservatism. We’ve always had reactionaries. There wasn’t a true ideologically conservative movement until relatively recently. Does being conservative in temperament make someone a capital C Conservative? I don’t think so.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure that's correct. I've always seen Lincoln as someone to the right of classical liberalism. Seward was more of a classical liberal.
 
farce© said:
Laffer invented and sold a fantasy (his Curve) to justify Reagan's recklessness.
Click to expand...
Nah. Laffer drew his curve in the 1970s. The Laffer Curve is correct. There is a tax rate above which tax revenue will fall. The question is where is the turning point.

It was the GOP who took the Laffer curve and assumed we were on the down sloping side.

Not that I have any affection for Laffer whatsoever; it's just that there's no reason to smear him. I mean, maybe I'm wrong and he did have views about fiscal responsibility, but what he's famous for isn't about that.
 
What happened to conservatism is the Civil Rights Act and the resulting realignment.

When Southern Dems were the segregationists, they were reactionary on race but they were New Dealers; believed in government regulation; believed in community; believed in caring for fellow white people. So they were never conservative. Just reactionary on a few issues.

But after the realignment, which really wasn't complete until the 1990s, the racism and the plutocracy was on the same side. There was not too much left that could be the basis for any sort of empathy. It was toxic individualism, atomization, tax cuts, exclusion, and drained pool politics.

And when the educated classes started swinging more to the liberals in the 1990s, it created the perfect storm for Gingrich.

Note also in the 1990s, there was an influx of erstwhile Marxist academics who found themselves newly relevant to American politics. Their engagement with liberalism, as opposed to the previous disparagement of it, also helped (I would suspect; I don't know) with the educational shift to the Dems.

Thus by 2000 did the GOP assemble a coalition of uncaring, racist ignorance. What we've seen this century is the fallout. Nothing good ever comes from letting in the inmates run the asylum. Like, even if you think they are right on the big issues, they are still fucking lunatics
 
StrangePackage said:
The thing about the Laffer curve that always bothered me was the general assumption that we're on the far side of it.

Like... Prove that shit.
Click to expand...
1. Correct. That shit can be proven, or at least measured empirically. Last I checked, probably a decade or so ago, the turning point on the Laffer curve is around 70-75% on a marginal basis.

2. It's funny when conservatives bring up the Laffer Curve only then to deny that it's a curve. They think it's a downward sloping line. LOL.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top