The conservative movement has come apart, with all sides blaming each other for Obama’s ascendancy and trying to claim the title as true conservative. So chronicles this conservative site: American Thinker Blog: Conservative Civil War well underway.
One problem, I think, is that conservatism for many people has become an identity rather than a belief. Thus, an ostensibly conservative administration has started nationalizing sectors of the economy in flat out defiance of conservative economic theory. Perhaps these conservatives have become convinced that conservative economic theory is not true. Fine, but then they have stopped being conservatives. Instead, these actions were justified for pragmatic reasons. But pragmatism is philosophically opposed to conservatism!
Similarly, evangelizing for Democracy by military force had heretofore been what progressives had done (Wilson, Kennedy, Johnson). Running huge budget deficits had been the mark of liberals. So had increasing the size, power, and reach of government.
Perhaps, in our probable exile, conservatives could use their time to study what their ideology is. That will require reading Edmund Burke and Russell Kirk, to start with.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In