Mr. Moderate

While the modern Republican Party likes to claim the mantle of conservativism for itself, in fact it is about as far away from actual conservativism as it can get while still being absolutely against socialism and communism. As I explain in my earlier essay, this makes the Republicans into the modern fascist movement.

What makes the modern Republicans distinct from the fascists of old is that the fascists of old emphasized street violence to intimidate the body politic into granting them political power while the modern Republican fascists emphasize lies and propaganda in order to gain and retain political power. Another great distinction is that the fascists of old were truly interested in the success of the nation as a whole, while the modern Republican fascists are mostly interested in crookedly enriching the wealthy mob which provides the money to keep the Republican Party viable in American politics.

In his seminal book on conservativism, The Conscience of a Conservative (see the ad to the left), Barry Goldwater defined the essence of conservativism as an adherence to the principle of extremely limited government, particularly at the federal level. And the conservative philosophy, as defined by Goldwater, also contains a very strong streak of libertarianism. Today (2008), the libertarian conservatives, as represented by Bob Barr and Ron Paul, are largely abandoning the modern Republican Party precisely because the modern Republican Party has abandoned its commitment to individual liberty. True conservatives would be aghast at the huge databases of financial and personal information about every American that our government has accumulated as part of the so-called “War on Terror.” When I was part of the Republican movement myself back in the 1970s, personal privacy, particularly financial privacy, was a top concern. While true conservatives are strongly anti-crime, many were also quite upset at what the federal government was doing as part of the War on Drugs to control the health care options available to people. And, in the 1970s and 1980s, I largely agreed with the political and economic views expressed by the extreme conservative right wing as written in publications such as The Spotlight.

Where the Republican Party took a wrong turn is when it abandoned true conservativism and instead married the religious right. This was a pure power play, as true conservativism has never been a popular movement within politics. In fact, the individualism inherent in true conservativism is almost the antithesis of “a movement.” In other words, it is virtually oxymoronic to conceive of a mass political movement made up of truly conservative individuals.

To understand this, we need to first have a baseline for understanding the true philosophy of conservativism. In his book, Goldwater summed up conservative philosophy in five paragraphs (on pages 5 through 7 of the advertised edition linked at the top of this blog post):

Surely the first obligation of a political thinker is to understand the nature of man. The Conservative does not claim special powers of perception on this point, but he does claim a familiarity with the accumulated wisdom and experience of history, and he is not too proud to learn from the great minds of the past.

The first thing he has learned about man is that each member of the species is a unique creature. Man’s most sacred possession is his individual soul — which has an immortal side, but also a mortal one. The mortal side establishes his absolute differentness from every other human being. Only a philosophy that takes into account the essential differences between men, and, accordingly, makes provision for developing the different potentialities of each man can claim to be in accord with Nature. We have learned much in our time about “the common man.” It is a concept that pays little attention to the history of a nation that grew great through the initiative and ambition of uncommon men. The Conservative knows that to regard man as part of an undifferentiated mass is to consign him to ultimate slavery.

Secondly, the Conservative has learned that the economic and spiritual aspects of man’s nature are inextricably intertwined. He cannot be economically free, or even economically efficient, if he is enslaved politically; conversely, man’s political freedom is illusory if he is dependent for his economic needs on the State.

The Conservative realizes, thirdly, that man’s development, in both its spiritual and material aspects, is not something that can be directed by outside forces. Every man, for his individual good and for the good of his society, is responsible for his own development. The choices that govern his life are choices that he must make: they cannot be made by any other human being, or by a collectivity of human beings. If the Conservative is less anxious than his Liberal brethren to increase Social Security “benefits,” it is because he is more anxious than his Liberal brethren that people be free throughout their lives to spend their earnings when and as they see fit.

So it is that Conservativism, throughout history, has regarded man neither as a potential pawn of other men, nor as a part of a general collectivity in which the sacredness and the separate identity of individual human beings are ignored. Throughout history, true Conservativism has been at war equally with autocrats and with “democratic” Jacobins. The true Conservative was sympathetic with the plight of the hapless peasant under the tyranny of the French monarchy. And he was equally revolted at the attempt to solve that problem by a mob tyranny that paraded under the banner of egalitarianism. The conscience of the Conservative is pricked by anyone who would debase the dignity of the individual human being. Today, therefore, he is at odds with dictators who rule by terror, and equally with those gentler collectivists who ask our permission to play God with the human race.

In 2008, the true Conservatives are represented by the likes of Bob Barr and Ron Paul because the modern Republican Party has been taken over by “gentler collectivists who ask our permission to play God with the human race,” and I call those modern Republican collectivists “moderate fascists.” They have claimed God for the Republican Party, and are demanding that all Americans march to the beat of their particular drum. This is such a total antithesis of what Barry Goldwater stood for that Goldwater viewed himself as an outcast from the Republican Party in the years before his own death.

As the political contest between John McCain and Barack Obama descends into a mudslinging contest of epic proportions, we need to remember one thing: true conservatives don’t have a dog in this fight. Both McCain and Obama are advocating visions of a collectivist America. McCain wants to continue and enhance the fascist collectivism of the Reagan-Bush legacy while Obama wants to continue and enhance the socialist collectivism of the Roosevelt-Kennedy-Johnson legacy. Both parties are now strongly anti-individualism and anti-conservatism as they attempt to enlist people into their respective movements for “change.” One thing is certain: there will be change after the 2008 election. But no matter which party wins, liberty as an ideal is going to lose.

So, as usual, I’m stuck with holding my nose and voting for the lesser of two evils. This time around, it is Obama by a landslide. The Republican Party is so infested with liars and crooks that they deserve to be voted into oblivion. In fact, since Carl Rove (also known as “Bush’s Brain”) started managing the political campaigning of the Republican Party, lies and propaganda have become the vehicle of choice for victory. The lies and propaganda won in 2000 and 2004. It remains to be seen if the people of the United States are so dumb that they will fall for the same old scam once again.