Conservatism in the 20th Century – Did it Really Exist?
November 02,2009 
Laura Ingraham makes the following assertion about Conservatism:
It's now obvious the country didn't move left alongside Obama's
ascendancy. The pundits and intellectuals who delivered election night
eulogies to conservatism owe the public, and their own credibility, one
big mea culpa. Conservatism is the most influential political
philosophy of the past 100 years because it's built upon essential
truths.
Ingraham of course, is talking nonsense. Whether or not Conservatism is built on 'essential truths' is besides the point, because we haven't really seen it. True Conservatism is built on the philosophy of small government, free markets and personal freedoms. The Republican party has been the party of big business, huge state interference in the market (just look at the military industrial complex), and the security state (the Patriot Act).
Andrew Sullivan writes:
The past 100 years? I don't know any Hooverites who think the last
century was a triumph for small government and individual liberty. Look
at the size of government since 1909. Look at the level of taxation.
Look at the welfare state. Look at racial civil rights. Look at the
role of women. The West is immeasurably more statist than it was a
hundred years ago, and even the most dramatic counter-revolutionaries,
such as Reagan and Thatcher, did very little to alter the contours of
the state. The Bush Republicans implemented the biggest expansion of
government power, debt and spending since LBJ.
Ingraham isn't exactly the go-to girl for intellectual Conservatism, but she uses a lot of clever words and seems to generally speak for the majority of Republicans in the U.S. It just goes to show that party politics is about cheer leading rather than policy.
Laura Ingraham makes the following assertion about Conservatism:
It's now obvious the country didn't move left alongside Obama's
ascendancy. The pundits and intellectuals who delivered election night
eulogies to conservatism owe the public, and their own credibility, one
big mea culpa. Conservatism is the most influential political
philosophy of the past 100 years because it's built upon essential
truths.
Ingraham of course, is talking nonsense. Whether or not Conservatism is built on 'essential truths' is besides the point, because we haven't really seen it. True Conservatism is built on the philosophy of small government, free markets and personal freedoms. The Republican party has been the party of big business, huge state interference in the market (just look at the military industrial complex), and the security state (the Patriot Act).
Andrew Sullivan writes:
The past 100 years? I don't know any Hooverites who think the last
century was a triumph for small government and individual liberty. Look
at the size of government since 1909. Look at the level of taxation.
Look at the welfare state. Look at racial civil rights. Look at the
role of women. The West is immeasurably more statist than it was a
hundred years ago, and even the most dramatic counter-revolutionaries,
such as Reagan and Thatcher, did very little to alter the contours of
the state. The Bush Republicans implemented the biggest expansion of
government power, debt and spending since LBJ.
Ingraham isn't exactly the go-to girl for intellectual Conservatism, but she uses a lot of clever words and seems to generally speak for the majority of Republicans in the U.S. It just goes to show that party politics is about cheer leading rather than policy.
Ben,
I’m making it a point to comment more frequently, because frankly your dedication to your blog is commendable, and as you say, this is about getting a banter going…
That said, I like the write up you’ve done here. I, too, question what Ingraham means by Conservatism. To begin with, let’s be honest, the US on a whole global scale of all the countries of every period in history is a moderate to liberal country. As to her specific argument, I look back to the presidencies, and thus American policy, of the last 100 years, and I wonder how Ingraham drew her conclusion. I think the movement had wisps of success in various periods, only to see it blow up in conservative’s faces. A decade of what I’d called true conservatism in the 20′s lead to the Great Depression and a 20 year hold by liberals. A little social program which came out during that period was called the New Deal. The 50′s, led by Eisenhower, had a few flashes of progressivism, such as the start of desegregation. The economic prosperity of the time was also due in large part to the recovering global economy started under Truman’s watch. The 60′s? I give you LBJ’s Great Society, another spurt of far-reaching social changes.
Sure the 70′s brought a new call for conservatism, and Barry Goldwater, who ran against LBJ in 1964, was its poster child. But how did Goldwater, aka Mr. Conservative, react when the religious right moved in to the GOP? He and other conservatives distanced themselves from the emerging movement.
I would thus make the argument that Ingraham got only part of her thought process right. Religious Conservatism has been the prevalent political ideology of the last thirty years. The reason it still has an impact today is largely because, as Sullivan hinted, they spent us into the economic situation today.
In a similar vain… I recall a conversation with my grandfather, during Clinton’s presidency, reminiscing about the good ol’ days in the 50′s, “when things were easier, a man could support his family and conservatives ran the country.” He’s right that conservatives had something to offer, because there’s certainly room for good ideas from both sides. However, I remember a scene from ‘Mad Men’, which takes place in that period, where a main character shakes out her blanket along a highway after a picnic, leaving the family’s garbage behind, something that certainly wouldn’t be tolerated today (Note: highway beautification was the pet project of First Lady Lady Bird Johnson). Maybe the analogy could be made that liberals/progressives have had such a strong impact in the last century because conservative screw ups have been so bad, the nation demanded the other side come along to clean up the mess. With that clean-up job though, came the opportunity to enact amazing social changes. With a little luck, the country can continue its progressive trend.
Okay, so that became a little long but what can I say? You bring up interesting topics. Oh and Ari’s posting of Obama at Dover AFB was a fine tribute to such a solemn and poignant photo.
Best,
Robert