The Sins of Conservatism

In my ongoing rants against -Isms, I came across a tweet back in May 2022, realized I was due to rant about this, then got distracted by other news cycles, and kept referring back to this while expanding my -Isms outrage into a book project:

 

I need to fcking tag this quote. https://t.co/Xvl5LXlxx1

— Witty Librarian For Ukraine (@PaulWartenberg) May 5, 2022

There is only conservatism. No other political philosophy actually exists; by the political analogue of Gresham's Law, conservatism has driven every other idea out of circulation.

There might be, and should be, anti-conservatism; but it does not yet exist. What would it be? In order to answer that question, it is necessary and sufficient to characterize conservatism. Fortunately, this can be done very concisely.

Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect...

That interpretation of Conservatism by Frank Wilhoit was pretty much spot on, but confusion rose up as to which Frank Wilhoit it was. Early interpretation was that it was (Francis) Wilhoit the political sciences professor, but instead it turned out to be Wilhoit the musical composer (who also posts comments on a lot of blogs including this one, hi Frank!).

Wilhoit the Composer may not be a certified expert on politics like Wilhoit the Professor, but his insight on Conservatism fits absolutely everything we've seen out of Conservatives since... well, the dawn of American politics.

If I'm bringing this back up now, a year later in 2023, it's because we're at yet another moment where American Conservatives - represented today by the Republican Party - are poised to wreak economic and social cruelty across every corner of the nation.

Right now, a lot of Republican-controlled states are passing anti-abortion laws that would punish women and doctors for even natural miscarriages, and forcing women to suffer through medical crises that could kill them. The Republicans are passing gender laws to punish trans teens (and even adults) as well as force gay/lesbian teens to hide from public view, all to uphold their conservative "gender role" bullshit. Republicans are ensuring easier access to firearms and easier public displays of guns especially around children, ensuring more gun violence and fear in our streets. 

At the federal level, the Far Right factions controlling the House GOP are making demands on Biden's administration to gut his own infrastructure and spending bills passed last year, putting chainsaws to Social Security and Medicare, and insisting on making the massive deficit-inducing tax cuts for the rich the GOP passed in 2017 are made permanent (they're set to expire in 2025 I believe). Otherwise they'll use the Debt Ceiling hostage AGAIN to force the U.S. government to default (causing a global economic meltdown).

And I'm not even getting into the viciousness the Conservatives aim at immigrants.

None of these things, by the way, are popular with the majority of Americans. Most Americans are okay with women having the right to choose. Most Americans are okay with gays and lesbians nowadays - having shifted to acceptance under Obama - and don't want to see trans teens abused by the states. Most Americans want gun reforms like universal background checks, safety locks to protect kids, and bans of military-grade assault rifles. Most Americans don't want tax cuts for the rich, Most Americans do want the social safety net working, and Most Americans don't want a public default to kill the global economy. 

Which is the problem with modern Conservatism. As Wilhoit noted, conservatives don't care what the majority wants, they care what they want at the expense of that majority.

Jamelle Boule at the New York Times spelled it out as the Four (Anti-)Freedoms (link provided as a gift, this may be temporary):

...All across the country, Republicans have passed laws to do exactly that wherever they have the power to do so, regardless of public opinion in their states or anywhere else. The war on bodily autonomy is a critical project for nearly the entire G.O.P., pursued with dedication by Republicans from the lowliest state legislator to the party’s powerful functionaries on the Supreme Court.

You might even say that in the absence of a national leader with a coherent ideology and agenda, the actions of Republican-led states and legislatures provide the best guide to what the Republican Party wants to do and the best insight into the society it hopes to build...

There is the push to free business from the suffocating grasp of child labor laws. Republican lawmakers in Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri and Ohio have advanced legislation to make it easier for children as young as 14 to work more hours, work without a permit and be subjected to more dangerous working conditions...

Elsewhere in the country, Republican-led legislatures are placing harsh limits on what teachers and other educators can say in the classroom about American history or the existence of L.G.B.T.Q. people. This week in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill that bans discussion in general education courses at public institutions of “theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and were created to maintain social, political and economic inequities.” He also signed a bill that prohibits state colleges and universities from spending on diversity, equity and inclusion programs beyond what is necessary to retain accreditation as educational institutions...

Last but certainly not least is the Republican effort to make civil society a shooting gallery. Since 2003, Republicans in 25 states have introduced and passed so-called constitutional carry laws, which allow residents to have concealed weapons in public without a permit. In most of those states, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, it is also legal to openly carry a firearm in public without a permit...

What should we make of all this? In his 1941 State of the Union address, Franklin Roosevelt said there was “nothing mysterious about the foundations of a healthy and strong democracy” and that he, along with the nation, looked forward to “a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.” Famously, those freedoms were the “freedom of speech and expression,” the “freedom of every person to worship God in his own way,” the “freedom from want” and the “freedom from fear.” Those freedoms were the guiding lights of his New Deal, and they remained the guiding lights of his administration through the trials of World War II.

There are, I think, four freedoms we can glean from the Republican program.

There is the freedom to control — to restrict the bodily autonomy of women and repress the existence of anyone who does not conform to traditional gender roles.

There is the freedom to exploit — to allow the owners of business and capital to weaken labor and take advantage of workers as they see fit.

There is the freedom to censor — to suppress ideas that challenge and threaten the ideologies of the ruling class.

And there is the freedom to menace — to carry weapons wherever you please, to brandish them in public, to turn the right of self-defense into a right to threaten other people.

Roosevelt’s four freedoms were the building blocks of a humane society — a social democratic aspiration for egalitarians then and now. These Republican freedoms are also building blocks not of a humane society but of a rigid and hierarchical one, in which you can either dominate or be dominated...

Again, fitting Wilhoit's original observation: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect...

How did America's Conservativism even reach this point? Through long hard work, that's how. Decades of building up an agenda to achieve political power and then keep it at the expense of those they oppose. 

I've noted this before, when Conservatism in the United States early on bent to the whims and needs of the upper-class slaveowners of the South, who as a major faction in the Democratic Party pushed and fought against the more liberal ideologies - like the newly formed Republicans in the 1850s that called for abolition of slavery - to where they ruled and ruined the federal government into Civil War. 

For a time post-War conservativism was split between economic and social beliefs, uniting to maintain Jim Crow segregation but otherwise without a coherent banner to rally around. However, the dynamics of the liberal New Deal during the Great Depression of the 1930s, the rise and strength of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and international pressures of the Cold War forced the conservatives to gain a foothold in the 1960s to the Republican Party as reimagined by Barry Goldwater, and brought to power by 1980 by Ronald Reagan. A radical shift within the parties by the 2000s - pushed by the first stage of the Culture War in 1992 - made Republicans into hard conservatives with almost no true Moderate or Liberal left among their ranks, making it so much easier for the modern Republican Party to fulfill Wilhoit's definition.

Making it worse in all this was how Reagan brought to the Conservative movement the religious evangelicals - something even Goldwater refused to do - empowering the Republicans into an absolutist, God-given belief structure that doubles down on the "We are the TRUE Americans and all power should be OURS" world-view turning this into a power struggle between the "righteous" and the "dread Other" who must be purged from the (Christian) national body like a disease. Never mind the corruption and violence that comes with such a world-view.

If Conservatism is so corrupting, so prone to self-empowering to the point of self-destruction, so intent on denying any power-sharing (or wealth-sharing) with others to where it never holds a true majority of people, how can it still be popular enough to hold any semblance of power in the first place?

Well obviously, Conservativism appeals to those who seek power and influence and wealth. They will buy into such an -Ism in the hopes they will profit from being in the elite few. This is why you will see women, Blacks, Latinos, other ethnic and gender minorities align themselves to a conservative movement that would deny basic human rights to their own. Because they believe they are in - or can conform to - the upper class - an elite made of money, of celebrity - protected by other conservatives.

But how can such Conservatism - defined by that elitist world-view - appeal to those still outside of that upper elite class? Why are there a vast number of those in poverty - such as the rural regions of the Midwest or the Deep South - in the lower classes still willing to vote for something against their own economic and legal interests?

Because that Conservatism still tells those among the lower classes that their social status - defined by racial ethnicity - grants them higher standing over others in the same economic levels. Yes, the low-income voters making up the Republican Conservative base are driven by racism, and that's what empowers the Culture War cruelty that the Republican leaders are inflicting on their own states.

The shortest, most polite way to describe Conservatism in America: It is a sociological, economic, and political philosophy that insists on maintaining a racist Status Quo that benefits those on the "right" side of the racist dividing line (White, Male, and/or Rich, preferably all three).

There's a lot more to be said about Conservatism - for one, I would argue against Wilhoit's point that there are no other philosophies, because I believe Conservatism is a reaction against Liberalism - but that's where my book project comes into play. More on that hopefully later when I find time to effing write it past the outline stage (the research is mostly done).

One of the things I argue about -Isms is how they are competing and oft-times conflicting ideologies, burdened by the reality that all of them can be wrong about the Human Condition in any given moment but will insist on being absolutely right. Conservatism is no different: It will insist on its own philosophical purity while ignoring the damage it does even to its own adherents.

The problem with modern Conservatism - at least here in the United States - is that conservatives are fully aware of the damage they can do and still push their agenda. The whole argument of "The Cruelty Is The Point", and what Boulle details as the Republican agenda to grant only themselves the Freedoms for their own power, proves how dangerous this -Ism has become.