THE QUESTION PEOPLE WHO CALL THEMSELVES “CONSERVATIVES” MUST ANSWER
BY
ALLAN C. BROWNFELD
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In the 19th century, the British Conservative leader Benjamin Disraeli declared that the first thing a conservative must ask himself is, “What is it I seek to conserve.”
The conservatism he advanced emphasized the need of experience as a brake on the forward-driving unrest of hope. Both liberals and conservatives, he pointed out, admit that change is an inevitable part of life. The difference in their attitude is that the liberal tends to regard almost all change as progress toward something better, while the conservative tends to regard change in itself as a discomfort, to be tolerated only if it removes a specific evil.
It was Disraeli’s conviction that it was necessary to make certain that change, when it comes, shall be salutary in its operation rather than subversive of order. Conservatism, he believed, is “an essential element of sound evolution.”
In our contemporary political environment, there are many people calling themselves “conservative” who never heard of Disraeli or Edmund Burke, and seem to have little knowledge of the American political tradition which those who created the modern American conservative movement in the mid-twentieth century———Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley, Jr., Ronald Reagan——sought to advance.
Even a brief look at our current political environment shows us an unusual group of men and women who have appropriated—-really, misappropriated—-the term “conservative.”
The recent featured speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Texas was Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban. Orban is at odds with the European Union for his assaults on Hungarian democracy, including challenges to an independent judiciary and a free press. Two weeks before his visit to Dallas, he gave an address in Romania in which he embraced the white supremacist “replacement theory.” He denounced a “mixed race” world. One of his long-time advisers resigned, describing his speech as “worthy of Goebbels.”
In recent primary elections, in four key swing states, the Republican nominees to oversee state elections deny the legitimacy of the 2020 election. Two of those candidates, Arizona Secretary of State nominee Mark Finchem and Pennsylvania gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano, were outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2020. We have a former president who says the 2020 election was “rigged,” although no evidence of election fraud of any kind has ever been presented. His own attorney general and chief White House counsel say the election was free and fair.
Those who call themselves “conservative” at the present time include Arizona gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake who wants to lock up her opponent for certifying Joe Biden’s election victory. The Republican nominees for Senate in Arizona and Ohio are financed by tech tycoon Peter Thiel who has declared that freedom and democracy are not “compatible.” He cites right-wing blogger Curtis Yarvin who states that we may need an “American Caesar” to take control of the federal government.
I remember the Republican Party which used to exist. When I was a college student and in law school, I was College Secretary of the Young Republican Federation of Virginia. That was a long time ago, in the years of segregation. At that time, the Virginia Republican Party opposed segregation and the Democrats endorsed it. Later, I worked for a number of years in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. One of my positions was with the House Republican Conference where I worked with two members of Congress, Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, who went on to become president. They didn’t view Democrats as “enemies.” They formed coalitions. Together, Republicans and Democrats won the Cold War and advanced civil rights.
I do not recognize today’s Republican Party. I worked with such Republican conservatives as Rep.Phil Crane of Illinois and Jack Kemp of New York. That was an age of civility. Members of both parties became friends and worked together. Think of Ronald Reagan and House Speaker Tip O’Neill. American politics worked. Defeated candidates did not claim they were really the winners. Not only did no one ever storm the U.S. Capitol, we did not even have metal detectors to enter public buildings. I don’t remember any member of Congress receiving a death threat. Now many members of Congress are forced to be accompanied by a security detail.
It is too bad that those who use the term “conservative” today understand so little of our history. The Founding Fathers knew that freedom was not man’s natural state. Their entire political philosophy was based on a fear of government power and the need to limit and control that power very strictly. It was their fear of government which initially caused them to rebel against the arbitrary rule of King George lll. In the Constitution they tried their best to construct a form of government which, through a series of checks and balances and a clear division of powers, would protect the individual.
That government should be clearly limited and that power is a corrupting force was the essential perception of the men who made the nation. In The Federalist Papers, James Madison declared: “It may be a reflection on human nature that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”
The Founding Fathers were not utopians. They understood man’s nature. They attempted to form a government which was consistent with, not contrary to, that nature. Alexander Hamilton pointed out that, “Here we have already seen enough of the fallacy and extravagance of those idle theories which have amused us with promises of an exemption from the imperfections, weaknesses, and evils incident to society in every shape. Is it time to awake from the deceitful dream of a golden age, and to adopt as a practical maxim for the direction of our political conduct that we, as well as the other inhabitants of the globe, are yet remote from the happy empire of perfect wisdom and perfect virtue?”
Rather than viewing man and government in positive terms, the framers of the Constitution had almost precisely the opposite view. John Adams expressed the view that, “Whoever would found a state and make proper laws for the government of it must presume that all men are bad by nature..We may appeal to every page of history we have hitherto turned over, for proofs irrefragable that the people, when they have been unchecked, have been unjust, tyrannical, brutal, barbarous and cruel as any king or senate possessed of uncontrollable power…All projects of government, formed upon a supposition of continued vigilance, sagacity, and virtue, firmness of the people when possessed of the exercise of supreme power, are cheats and delusions…The Fundamental article of my political creed is that despotism, or unlimited sovereignty, or absolute power, is the same in a majority of a popular assembly, an aristocratical council, an oligarchical junto and a single emperor. Equally bloody, arbitrary, cruel, and in every respect diabolical.”
Those who call themselves “conservative” at the present time would do well to study the thinking of America’s founders. It is, after all, the constitutional system they created, that people who have called themselves “conservative” sought to conserve. Making a hero of an authoritarian like Hungary’s Viktor Orban, as people who call themselves conservative, recently did in Dallas, shows us the real need for a re-thinking of what we mean by the term “conservatism.” Sadly, it seems that the conservatism of the Founding Fathers is not what people who use that term at the present time have in mind. A more accurate characterization for many of them may be, “Conservative in name only.”