Over the last number of years, parts of America’s political Right seem to have forgotten, pushed aside, or just given up on many of the governing principles that defined American conservatism for generations. Though the political circles backing nationalism, populism, industrial planning, Trumpism, or common goodism aren’t coterminous, there is one significant area of overlap: Compared to those on the right a decade ago, they are more open to a more managerial, muscular, free-spending Uncle Sam and less energized about distributing authority to states, localities, and nongovernmental bodies.
Now that the progressives controlling Washington are pushing a New Deal–Great Society–style agenda centralizing power and sporting a jaw-dropping price tag, conservatism finds itself in a bind. It’s hard to be taken seriously as anti-statist after you’ve been flirting with statism. One type of response you might hear is along the lines of, “But our expensive, centralizing, managerial proposals are better than their expensive, centralizing, managerial proposals.” But American conservatism has not been and should not become a different flavor of power consolidation. The key to defeating progressives’ hyper-ambitious plans and crafting an inspiring, politically successful agenda of our own is picking up and dusting off the governing principles we’ve recently neglected.
Conservatism always begins with the beliefs, institutions, and policies that have worked for a particular people in a particular place. So American conservatism is not contemporary Hungarian conservatism or 1979 Iranian conservatism or 17th-century English conservatism or twelfth-century French conservatism. America was founded on concepts such as religious freedom, ordered liberty, egalitarianism, democratic-republicanism, and enumerated governmental powers. Its character was shaped by immigrant courage, the pioneer spirit, the promise of endless opportunity, and a vibrant civil society. It grew to be a continental nation with more diversity than any other on the globe.
This is a unique, complicated combination of factors. A super-computer couldn’t devise the right habits, norms, and organizations to make it function well. Only experience could do that. American conservatives’ commitment to personal virtue, voluntary associations, self-government, localism, federalism, capitalism, and textualism is the consequence not merely of an understanding of human nature. That is, American conservatism doesn’t flow solely from appreciating human fallibility, understanding natural law, and valuing prudence. It results from centuries of trial and error in the real world — understanding the American experience and the American people in America.
American conservatives don’t protect individual liberty, foster civic organizations, and distribute government power just because. We don’t oppose technocracy, socialism, and adventuring judges just because. We aim to conserve such beliefs and practices because they are essential here. American success requires nurturing personal responsibility and civic virtue; fidelity to nonstate action, positive law, and close-to-home governing; and respect for an array of cultures and traditions.
Consolidated power, centralized tinkering, and a bulky, bossy Washington are incompatible with American conservatism because the American character and the American experience teach us that they are incompatible with American success.
About a decade ago, something healthy, even exciting, started percolating on the right. No longer satisfied with the policy agenda that had become popular in the 1980s, some started floating new proposals. “Reform conservatives” were an important part of this movement. This renewal project was important because, as I’ve written before, too many on the right had confused policy and principles. That is, tax cuts and deregulation are certainly one manifestation of American-conservative thinking; in fact, these were policy ideas consistent with our governing principles and perfectly suited to the post–Great Society era.
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