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(This article originally appeared in The Wanderer and is reprinted with permission. To subscribe call 651-224-5733.)
They remind us that the victories at the polls of Reagan and the two Bushes should not be taken as unqualified signs of success; that many of the important principles of the conservative movement are being neglected these days.
Sobran: “Just what are today’s conservatives trying to conserve? The older conservatives had thoughtful conceptions of the nature of politics, constitutional order, Western civilization.” He cites as examples the stable of writers for National Review, men such as “James Burnham, Whitaker Chambers, Willmoore Kendall, Robert Nisbet, Richard Weaver, Russell Kirk, Frank Meyer, and Thomas Molnar,” noting that these were thinkers who had “had fiery debates over first principles. The trouble with the new conservatives is that they always agree with each other. They equate conservatism with militarism. They are apologists for American military power and the Bush administration. They’ve made their peace with the New Deal and the welfare state…First principles? Constitutional law? Limited government? Christian civilization? Forget it.”
Francis is equally displeased by the current state of affairs: “Anti-communism, abortion, racial politics and big government were the four-part framework” of the conservatism of old. He concedes that the conservative movement “can make a plausible case of having won the Cold War,” but that “abortion shows no sign of returning to the alleys, and the Supreme Court case that legalized it, Roe vs. Wade, is unlikely to be reversed. Republicans themselves now slobber over racial pandering even more than the Democrats, and the GOP and its big brains have all but abandoned affirmative action and immigration. Small government and strict construction constitutionalism are largely moribund; the most conservatives today will fight for has to do with spending and taxes, not the actual scope of state power.”
Then Francis throws a haymaker: “American conservatism, as it flourished between the New Deal and the end of the Cold War, was pretty much of a flop, and now it’s essentially dead.”
Do I disagree? Well, as much as I admire Sobran and Francis, yes. Maybe it is a case of the glass being half-full or half-empty, but things do not seem this bleak to me. And many leftists agree. They complain that the Democrats have sold out to Bush on Iraq and corporate America on the economy. Why is it important to make this point? Because the last thing we should want is for the American right to become dispirited and defeatist. All is not lost. This struggle between the left and the right has been going on since the days of the French Revolution, probably longer. We should not expect to see a total victory in our lifetimes. We have to keep pushing and tugging at society to turn it around. And our side has won some important battles by doing that. It is not the time to give up.
For example, I think it lacks perspective for Francis to shrug that conservatives can only “make a plausible case of having won the Cold War.” I can’t be the only one who remembers the days when we were told by the chattering classes that the Soviet Union was on the winning side in that struggle; when academics, journalists and politicians thought the best we could hope for was an ongoing period of détente; when a “red tide” of Soviet client states was spreading through Africa and Asia, and seemed on its way to Latin America; when demonstrators chanted “Better Red than Dead” and rock stars warned that a “hard rain” of nuclear fallout was our destiny if we did not appease the Soviet menace. It is not small change that those days are over.
Sobran and Francis are right about Roe v. Wade, of course. There seems to be little chance that it will be reversed. Even so, the battle is not lost. A number of television ads in recent years, especially those promoting the use of ultrasound imaging of the baby in the womb for pre-natal care, represent a significant victory for our side. The tide has been turned against those who pushed the fiction that the unborn child is nothing more than “fetal tissue.” Everyone knows that is not true. That is a foundation to work from.
We should also not overlook the extent to which the “society is to blame” frame of mind has become an object of derision these days, except in the worst academic fever swamps. Raised eyebrows and groans will are likely to greet those who try to make the case that criminals are “victims too.” Movement conservatism more than held its own with the Hollywood and academic liberals who tried to sell the country that bill of goods.
Equally important is the success the right has had in turning the tide against the “creeping socialism” that was once seen as a fact of life. Nowadays the liberals moan about “creeping conservatism.” There are few politicians willing to openly call for increased taxation to fund vast new federal programs. Even federal financing for prescription drugs for seniors – which would seem to have great voter appeal – is approached gingerly. Those who back the idea are faced with the impossible task of explaining how it can be accomplished without raising taxes in the process. Few voters buy the proposition that we are “undertaxed” and should follow the model of the European welfare state.
Consider too the new respect the country displays for the military and the police. Most modern Americans under the age of 30 would not know what to make of a scruffy demonstrator shouting “Pigs!” at the police or soldiers on leave. We are now accustomed to television programs that glamorize the police and the military. If someone told me back in the 1970s that the day would come when shows like JAG and NYPD Blue would be at the top of the ratings, I wouldn’t have believed them. (I know these shows promote a share of politically correct notions, but they are not the kinds of shows Jane Fonda and Susan Sontag would have chosen for the country. That’s for sure.)
And we cannot overlook how Democratic politicians these days run from the label “liberal” as if it is a term of disgrace. This is why “progressive” is now favored by the Democratic Party’s spokesmen, except in certain areas of Massachusetts and New York. To mainstream Americans “liberal” denotes a high-tax, soft-on-crime, anti-military view of the world. They were taught to see things that way during the Reagan years, by politicians and journalists whose thinking was formed by the intellectual pioneers of the conservative movement, the writers Joseph Sobran fondly remembers from the pages of National Review. Ronald Reagan was an avid reader of National Review from the time he was a Hollywood actor.
