Cracks in Conservatism
In America, conservatism has long been synonymous with fiscal hawks, brazen military interventions, and strident cultural traditionalism. Famously characterized by Reagan’s three-legged stool analogy (with each of the three legs for the social conservative, the fiscal conservatives, and the foreign hawks), even its recent past betrays such a configuration. George W. Bush’s (or as some may say, Dick Cheney’s) invasion of Iraq and Paul Ryan’s tax cuts, for instance, reveal a political elite steeped in a Reaganite conception of conservatism, dating back to the late days of the cold war. But cracks are forming, and the stool is collapsing.
Even in the 1990s, the alliance was not without its fissures. Pat Buchanan, an influential voice in the Christian right and a two-time presidential candidate, was an early voice calling for tariffs and American non-interventionism. Almost prophetically, Buchanan would write in his 1998 novel,“The Great Betrayal” about how working-class jobs were being exported overseas as a professional elite prospered. Viciously striking at the dire consequences of free trade, Buchanan proposed a “humane economy” in its stead that provided for all. Of course, Buchanan never abandoned his conservative creed. His novel, in fact, contains many warnings of the impending hordes of illegal immigrants and allegations of anti-semitism over his criticisms of Israel dogged his later days. Still, it was a realization: laissez-faire and social conservatism were fundamentally at odds.
Nearly three decades later, in the shadowy corners of Washington, almost by accident, Pat Buchanan’s criticisms have begun to resonate. The meteoric rise of Donald Trump was defined in large part by a vulgar but populist sentiment that channeled protectionist and non-interventionist energies. Trump openly flouted the GOP norm during his presidential campaign, championing “Trumpcare” at one point and embodying the cultural and economic resentment of a working-class left behind by globalization. In spite of his oft-crass speech, or perhaps due to the honesty of it, non-white working-class voters shifted to the GOP by a stunning 18% from 2012 to 2020 while college-educated voters defected to the Democrats by 16% from 2012 to 2020.
The shifts within the GOP are so subtle that one could’ve missed them if they were not carefully paying attention. The Republican Party of Bush and McCain once stood firmly for interventionism, championing America’s duty as the global policeman. But the new Republican Party does not have room for friends on the world stage. The Kurds in northern Syria had fought valiantly alongside US forces against ISIS and were in the process of building a fragile democracy. Yet Trump abandoned them, pulling American troops out and leaving them vulnerable to attack by Erdogan. Trump further dismissed NATO, a European military alliance, as “obsolete.” Even now, in an ironic twist of fate, prominent members of the right have questioned America’s commitment to Ukraine, while the left leads a strident defense of American support.
But more crucially, the Republican Party’s commitment to fiscal conservatism is disappearing. Beyond merely the pages of The American Conservative, Buccahan’s paleoconservative publication, disillusionment grows with laissez-faire. As they look at a post-Reaganomics America and see broken families, declining religious attendance, and the complete and utter annihilation of conservative power culturally, they ask, “What went wrong?” and accusingly point the finger towards the invisible market and the libertine culture that has emerged from it. Senator Josh Hawley, addressing the Heritage Foundation, articulates: “In the 1990s, the Soviet Union collapsed… freedom appeared to be on the march and authoritarianism in retreat. And a good part of the American intelligentsia decided that this was the… victory of a global market… They wanted to break down the borders between nations. They wanted the free flow of goods and capital… It meant major changes to our trade policy. Major changes to our monetary policy. And that’s what they gave us with NAFTA. Then GATT. Then the WTO and Most Favored Nation status for China. No more protection of American manufacturing. No more fostering American industry. No, the priority now was the free movement of capital. Globalism… Thirty years on, the verdict is in. The New World Order has failed. The pursuit of economic globalism has failed. The pursuit of empire has failed.”
Some may laud the newfound insights by some within the GOP, but that would be a mistake. The newfound skepticism of markets is not due to enlightenment on the virtues of a more egalitarian America, but because they have come to blame the unrestrained market for unleashing what they view as decedent and hedonistic within America and the disappearing relevance of conservatism culturally. It’s a realization that stretches beyond mere economics, and into the complete or partial banning of pornography, the severe restriction of divorce, and more. Ron DeSantis’ attack on Disney, a private corporation, for its political statements, is a perfect example. Such incursions by the government onto the hallowed grounds of American enterprise and private life would have had no place in Mitt Romney’s GOP, but it is now Romney who is an outcast and DeSantis who captures the party’s excitement.
These up-and-comers style themselves as “National Conservatives,” and they don’t have a rosy view of American society today. It would be erroneous to label them conservatives, given that they see little in modern society that’s worth preserving. For them, it’s one ridden with the ills of degeneracy and unrecognizable when compared to the America of their forefathers or their youth. They have abandoned the optimism of Reagan and rejected the liberal democracy handed upon them, deriding it instead as elite-infested tyranny. But their version of an illiberal democracy, be it in Hungary or elsewhere, is, by this humble writer’s reckoning, far worse.
Inyoo Jee is a high school Sophomore from Allen, Texas.