In “The Conservative Revival” (NY Times) David Brooks observes that having got “their losing in early” (before American voters relegated Republicans to the minority), British Conservatives “rethought modern conservatism” while “their American counterparts were clinging to power.”
(We’ll agree with “clinging” if by it Brooks means “pork barreling and earmarking to death nearly every Conservative principle championed by Conservative icons from Kirk to Buckley to Reagan.”)
Then, agreeing with the quality of the British “rethinking” and thus aligning himself with British voters who have given the Conservative Party “a series of stunning victories in local elections,” he points out that “British conservatives are on the way up, while American conservatives are on the way down.”
Though there’s no arguing about who’s up and who’s down in the current political environment, it is sensible to point out that Brooks needs to distinguish between ordinary American Conservatives and Republican politicians, the former still proudly up and not in need of a dramatic revival, the latter abjectly down and desperately in need not merely of being reinvigorated but resuscitated.
That distinction is crucial; for it is essential to establish that Republican politicians find themselves in dire straits precisely because they have told Conservatives to go to hell — taking their principles with them.
(“Conservatives” — That’s a lot of people, considering the number of Conservative Republicans, Conservative Democrats, as well as Moderates and Independents who live by many important Conservative principles.)
To make the case for this conclusion, let’s examine some details Brooks ascribes to the “British Revival” to see whether it is American Conservatives or post-Gingrich Republican pols who are out of step with what’s brewing in Britain.
Asserting that the “central political debate” of the 20th Century revolved around the Right’s battles for “individual freedom” against the Left’s commitment to “extending the role of the state,” Brooks sensibly aligns himself with a Tory who argues that the key debate of this century is over “the whole way we live our lives.”
Now, let’s see — in America is it ordinary Conservatives or Republican politicians who need a revival to rededicate themselves to the principle that all of politics is not “econo-centric” because “individual freedoms count for little if society is disintegrating”?
(Indeed, isn’t it ordinary Conservatives who can trace their heritage regarding that principle to Ben Franklin, who, in his speech during the last session of the Constitutional Convention, advised his colleagues that the Constitution “can only end in Despotism … when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government”?)
Is it ordinary Conservatives or Republican politicians who refuse even to consider new, 21st Century public policies that, in the words of Tory leader David Cameron, “stand for the family, for the neighborhood — in a word, for society”?
Is it ordinary Conservatives or Republican politicians who have abandoned the notion of the Republican Party as the party of “decentralized organic networks” as distinguished from Democrats, who belong to the party of “top-down mechanistic control”?
Is it ordinary Conservatives or Republican politicians who have given up on the idea that government “should be smaller, decentralized and interactive,” that schools ought to exist in “greater variety” with “local and parental control,” and that “patients should have the power to construct relationships with caretakers, pharmacists and local facilities”?
Is it ordinary Conservatives or Republican politicians who feel uncomfortable talking about how public policy affects “marriage, families and children”?
Is it ordinary Conservatives or Republican politicians who have given up the fight to make the tax code “more family friendly”?
Is it ordinary Conservatives or Republican politicians who are unwilling to join Newt Gingrich in asking Washington to offer “something in tune with the times”?
(In that regard, is it ordinary Conservatives or Republican politicians who have joined Liberals in putting into practice the idea that the New Deal model, replete with its obsessive centralization and shameless wastefulness, is not half a done deal?)
Finally, Brooks lets us know that Mr. Cameron “describes a new global movement, with rising center-right parties in Sweden, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, the Czech Republic, California and New York [City]” rightly observing that “American conservatives won’t simply import [that] model.”
No, American Conservatives won’t accept the model dogmatically. But it is they or Republican politicians who are more likely to refuse to accept that “There’s a lot to learn from it”?
And who, already dedicated to most of the ideas of this “new global movement,” is most likely to learn its lessons sooner rather than later?
With respect to the questions asked above, we know who it is that needs a big-time revival regarding Conservative principles and putting them into action through new, creative approaches to public policy.
As for us ordinary Conservatives who are open to new ideas that comport with the Conservative Outlook because we don’t wish to fall victim to Emerson’s “foolish consistency,” we don’t need a revival to resuscitate or revitalize our principles.
But we can always use a revival that helps reinvigorate our dedication to the notion that the fight for those principles never ends, including the one we’re fighting today against Liberals and Republican politicians about whom the best we can say is that they are just a tad more principled than Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Copyright by AJ DiCintio
