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There was a recent conference in Washington under the theme “National Conservatism.” But for the record, there is no such thing as national conservatism, especially in America. Doing a once-over of its agenda and the speakers, it quickly became clear the conference was nothing more than a vain attempt to gussy up neoconservatism.
They take as their inspiration British politician Edmund Burke which makes sense. He was always sucking up to the elites in London. He defended the divine right of kings as in his defense of the corrupt King Louis XVI during the French Revolution. And his political career often benefited from political connections.
Neoconservatism has travelled a long road from the 1940’s, when they were originally Trotskyites opposed to Joseph Stalin and situated initially in the Democratic Party as they were also attracted to the left’s more libertine social policies and the Democrats more assertive foreign policies.
But the core goal of neoconservatism all along was to supplant American foreign policy with Israel’s foreign policy. They wanted and want Israel’s enemies to also be America’s enemies.
Because of America’s close association with Israel, our common enemies often overlap but not entirely. Case is point was the unnecessary war in Iraq which cost untold lives and billions of dollars. But this Bush 43 foreign policy decision was being pushed by the neocons in his administration because Iraq was Israel’s enemy.
There is no stronger supporter of Isreal than me, but I also think America’s foreign policy should be just that. Support Israel yes, but not adopt Israel’s foreign policy.
American conservatism has its roots in the Scottish Revolution, the Enlightenment and the writings of Descartes, John Locke, Benjamin Disraeli, Montesquieu, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson. It is centered on the freedom of the individual and the belief that the individual is superior to the state while importantly recognizing the passions of the soul.
Jefferson acknowledged the rights of the individual in the Declaration of Independence when he wrote that all people were “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights…to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” and the pursuit of property.
Nowhere in the opening statement of the conference do the organizers mention freedom, liberty, the individual nor most of the founders of the American conservative movement including and especially Ronald Reagan, who championed “maximum freedom consistent with law and order.”
The preamble to this conference does say, “Politics in America, Britain, and other Western nations have taken a sharp turn toward nationalism—a commitment to a world of independent nations. This has been disorienting to many, not least the American conservative movement, which has, since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, grown increasingly attached to a vision of a global ‘rules-based liberal order’ that would bring peace and prosperity to the entire world while attenuating the independence of nations.”
This is a deliberate mischaracterization of American conservatism. Those who understand American conservatism are not disillusioned. They are guided by the notion that the human soul is at the center of the universe with God because God wants it that way and why God made man in his own image.
The organizers of this conference fear the growth of populism in American conservatism. Populism has always been a part of American conservatism. Populism, properly understood, is opposition to bigness. Big government and big corporations. This creates oligarchy, the type of government they have in Communist China.
American conservatism—as opposed to British conservatism---believes that power flows upwards from the individual to the state, power flows upwards from the people to the governing classes. In Great Britian, conservatives there believe power flows downward from the political and monied elites to the people.
They cite Bill Buckley in passing without noting his populist instincts as he once said he would rather be governed by the first one hundred names in the Boston White Pages than by the entire faculty of Harvard.
In uttering this, Buckley articulated the essence of American conservatism.
Historian and Reagan biographer Craig Shirley is the author of Reagan's Revolution: The Untold Story of the Campaign That Started It All; Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign That Changed America; December 1941: 31 Days That Changed America and Saved the World; Last Act: The Final Years and Emerging Legacy of Ronald Reagan; Reagan Rising: The Decisive Years, 1976-1980; Citizen Newt: The Making of a Reagan Conservative; Mary Ball Washington: The Untold Story of George Washington's Mother; April 1945: The Hinge of History, as well as many articles and essays on politics and the conservative movement.
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