Many evangelicals no longer want to be called “evangelical,” due to the negative political connotations of the term, since so many who go by that name support Donald Trump. Now some conservatives no longer want to be called “conservative” because they do support Donald Trump and recognize that he is not a conventional conservative.
John Daniel Davidson, a senior editor of The Federalist, has written a provocative article entitled We Need To Stop Calling Ourselves Conservatives, with the deck, “The conservative project has failed, and conservatives need to forge a new political identity that reflects our revolutionary moment.”
He argues that conservatism has traditionally been about conserving things: the family, religious freedom, individual rights, our American heritage, Western civilization, etc. Those were worthy goals. But conservatism has failed to conserve them. Davidson writes,
In an earlier era, this made sense. There was much to conserve. But any honest appraisal of our situation today renders such a definition absurd. After all, what have conservatives succeeded in conserving? In just my lifetime, they have lost much: marriage as it has been understood for thousands of years, the First Amendment, any semblance of control over our borders, a fundamental distinction between men and women, and, especially of late, the basic rule of law.
Today conservatives call for “family values” when much of America is giving up on marriage–or, I would add, redefining it–and rejecting parenthood. They call for “religious freedom” when the real problem is irreligion, as more and more Americans reject religion altogether. Western civilization, Davidson says, is essentially dead. He says, “You cannot preserve or defend something that is dead. Perhaps you can retain a memory of it or knowledge of it. But that is not what conservatism was purportedly about. It was about maintaining traditions and preserving Western civilization as a living and vibrant thing.”
The Left has already destroyed such institutions and–Davidson’s most devastating point–the “conservatives,” fixated as they were on small government and free market capitalism, did nothing to stop that destruction.
Put bluntly, if conservatives want to save the country they are going to have to rebuild and in a sense re-found it, and that means getting used to the idea of wielding power, not despising it. Why? Because accommodation or compromise with the left is impossible. One need only consider the speed with which the discourse shifted on gay marriage, from assuring conservatives ahead of the 2015 Obergefell decision that gay Americans were only asking for toleration, to the never-ending persecution of Jack Phillips.
The left will only stop when conservatives stop them, which means conservatives will have to discard outdated and irrelevant notions about “small government.” The government will have to become, in the hands of conservatives, an instrument of renewal in American life — and in some cases, a blunt instrument indeed.
It will take big government to right the wrongs of our society, including reining in woke corporations and all-controlling tech companies, which will mean supporting workers and their unions, applying anti-trust law, and adopting protectionist economic policies.
In place of the earlier strategy of “fusionism,” in which conservatives formed an alliance between libertarians, cultural conservatives, big business, and interventionist neo-conservatives, we need a new strategy. “The election of Donald Trump in 2016 heralded a populist wave and the end of Republican politics as we knew it.”
So what kind of politics should conservatives today, as inheritors of a failed movement, adopt? For starters, they should stop thinking of themselves as conservatives (much less as Republicans) and start thinking of themselves as radicals, restorationists, and counterrevolutionaries. Indeed, that is what they are, whether they embrace those labels or not.
Davidson’s words are compelling, even inspiring, though they have also stirred up criticism. Read the whole piece. What do you think of what he says?
Tomorrow, I want to take a closer look at “big government conservatism.”
Photo: John Daniel Davidson via LinkedIn
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