Gatekeeping Conservatism

Real conservatism has never been tried.

It's not the aspect of Trump's rise to power and the MAGA movement that irks me the most, but it certainly is an aspect that irks me: the nearly-constant description of Trump supporters, Republicans, and Trump himself as "conservative". It's everywhere, everyone does it, left and right, Democrat and Republican. And I get it, of course. The GOP certainly used to be the more conservative of the two parties. Its legacy contains great conservative presidents, such as Lincoln and Reagan, and was the consensus home of conservative thinkers including Russell Kirk, Thomas Sowell, Milton Friedman, and William Buckley's National Review. Even now, Republican politicians often hearken back (at least verbally) to traditional conservative policies such as limited government, the rule of law, and the free market. But that Republican party has perished at the wake of Trump's ascension. The Republican party of today is not conservative. 

Before we can safely say what conservatism is not, it behooves us to spend a few moments discussing what exactly conservatism is. Conservatism has been defined at great length, by wiser men than I. It's a discussion well worth having, and at length, but not here. In short, it's a strong appreciation for what the past generations of society have built, along with the realization that these foundations cannot be taken for granted and must be defended (conserved), accompanied by the acknowledgments of objective reality, a moral order, and (importantly) that all men are fundamentally flawed. Sowell and Kirk have both pointed out that the fundamental conflict in political thought is whether man is naturally good or capable of becoming good or man is fundamentally, irredeemably flawed. Conservatism flows from the understanding that the latter is the case; hence, limited government as opposed to the welfare state's attempt to create a (deemed impossible) social utopia. Particularly, the conservatism threatened today (the conservatism we must conserve) is uniquely American, commonly referred to as Constitutional conservatism: the recognization that our status as the greatest experiment in democracy is reliant upon the rule of Constitutional law and the rights it grants to all of us (free speech, free assembly, bearing arms, etc) as well as the governmental framework it lays out (especially the separation of powers between the three branches). 

Perhaps no administration has shown as little regard for the law and the Constitution as the current one. Such instances are (truly) too many to list, but consider Trump's every effort to overthrow the 2020 election (capped by telling the Georgia Secretary of State to "find" thousands of votes), wilfully retaining classified documents, and open defiance of the Supreme Court and Congress (including, but not limited to, the TikTok ban, illegal deportations, and illegal tariffs) as obvious examples. Even recently, Trump's FCC has pressured different media networks to remove programming critical of the president. Trump's defense in all these instances has never been that he "may" do these things. It is that he "could". Or, "should". But if we are to retain the Constitutional republic it's our privilege to enjoy, one man's (even several men's) agenda cannot take precedence over the law. Although MAGA can be called many things, "conservative" should certainly not be one of them. 

The common distinction between 'political conservatism' and 'moral' or 'social conservatism' isn't helpful either. If you mean the Christian moral order (or Judeo-Christian, or whatever flavor you prefer), that's a result of personal religious conviction (ideally, of saving faith and the indwelling of the Spirit). The works themselves are meaningless without faith, and the faith isn't something we can conserve, or pass down through generations. If you mean enforcing that morality on others who don't share those beliefs, that's hardly conservative at all. (There are some, I am sure, who decry the American Founding itself as inordinately liberal and who would prefer a return to such a state, but that hardly adheres to any sort of American or Constitutional conservatism.) Venezuela is not somehow more conservative just because it doesn't allow same-sex marriage. Regardless, MAGA is disqualified from having this discussion at all, since their figurehead is a twice-divorced serial adulterer who is on tape revelling in his sexual abuses of young women and swindles his constituents into buying Bibles with his name on them. In other words, MAGA can't claim to still be conservative, despite their Peronist and Schmittian tendencies, just because they lean "right" on hot-button moral issues such as gay marriage or transgenderism. That's not what makes someone conservative.

We're seeing this shift in real time. Progressives, concerned (justifiably) by the abuses of the Trump administration, have stumbled on the realization that unchecked governmental power might sometimes be bad (a conservative reaction!); all this with their support of gay rights unchanged. Conversely, the broader MAGA movement, while thumping the Bible just as much as ever, has left its claimed adherence to limited Constitutional governance far in the rearview mirror. If anything, MAGA has served as the final rebuttal to J.S. Mill's epigram, "Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives." People (stupid or not) are not born conservatives, but they are born populist. They like to be flattered. Praised. Coddled. They like their heads scratched; they like watching the keys jingled. Because people (stupid and otherwise) are flawed. Inherently and irreparably. No one defaults to a principled, conservative ideology. Like so many things, conservatism is a privilege, not a right. 

Hence the frustration with the broader culture's use of the term 'conservatism'. The MAGA movement is not conservative. The current Republican administration, with its protectionist economics and openly authoritarian rhetoric, is not conservative. Conservatism, rightly understood, is a label worth claiming and a philosophy worth defending. Let's not dignify the MAGA crowd by calling them "conservative."