{"id":63172,"date":"2022-11-02T06:00:59","date_gmt":"2022-11-02T10:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=63172"},"modified":"2022-10-28T19:06:24","modified_gmt":"2022-10-28T23:06:24","slug":"should-the-term-conservative-be-dropped","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2022\/11\/should-the-term-conservative-be-dropped\/","title":{"rendered":"Should the Term “Conservative” Be Dropped?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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Many evangelicals no longer want to be called \u201cevangelical,\u201d due to the negative political connotations of the term, since so many who go by that name support Donald Trump.\u00a0 Now some conservatives no longer want to be called \u201cconservative\u201d because they do<\/em> support Donald Trump and recognize that he is not a conventional conservative.<\/p>\n

John Daniel Davidson, a senior editor of The Federalist<\/em>, has written a provocative article entitled\u00a0 We Need To Stop Calling Ourselves Conservatives<\/a>, with the deck, \u201cThe conservative project has failed, and conservatives need to forge a new political identity that reflects our revolutionary moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

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He argues that conservatism has traditionally been about conserving<\/em> things:\u00a0 the family, religious freedom, individual rights, our American heritage, Western civilization, etc.\u00a0 Those were worthy goals.\u00a0 But conservatism has failed to conserve them.\u00a0 Davidson writes,<\/div>\n
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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.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Today conservatives call for \u201cfamily values\u201d when much of America is giving up on marriage\u2013or, I would add, redefining it\u2013and rejecting parenthood.\u00a0 They call for \u201creligious freedom\u201d when the real problem is irreligion, as more and more Americans reject religion altogether.\u00a0 Western civilization, Davidson says, is essentially dead.\u00a0 He says, \u201cYou 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.\u201d<\/div>\n
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The Left has already destroyed such institutions and\u2013Davidson\u2019s most devastating point\u2013the \u201cconservatives,\u201d fixated as they were on small government and free market capitalism, did nothing to stop that destruction.<\/div>\n
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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\u00a0getting 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\u00a0Obergefell<\/em>\u00a0decision that gay Americans were only asking for toleration, to\u00a0the never-ending persecution of Jack Phillips.<\/p>\n

The left will only stop when conservatives stop them, which means conservatives will have to discard outdated and irrelevant notions about \u201csmall government.\u201d The government will have to become, in the hands of conservatives, an instrument of renewal in American life \u2014 and in some cases, a blunt instrument indeed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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.<\/div>\n
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In place of the earlier strategy of \u201cfusionism,\u201d in which conservatives formed an alliance between libertarians, cultural conservatives, big business, and interventionist neo-conservatives, we need a new strategy.\u00a0 \u201cThe election of Donald Trump in 2016 heralded a populist wave and the end of Republican politics as we knew it.\u201d<\/div>\n
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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<\/em>, whether they embrace those labels or not.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Davidson\u2019s words are compelling, even inspiring, though they have also stirred up criticism.\u00a0 Read the whole piece<\/a>.\u00a0 What do you think of what he says?<\/p>\n

Tomorrow,\u00a0 I want to take a closer look at \u201cbig government conservatism.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Photo:\u00a0 John Daniel Davidson via LinkedIn<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Daniel Davidson argues that conservatism has traditionally been about conserving things:\u00a0 the family, religious freedom, individual rights, our American heritage, Western civilization, etc.\u00a0 Those were worthy goals.\u00a0 But conservatism has failed to conserve them.\u00a0 He proposes a new strategy for the right that rejects the formula of “small government” and “free enterprise” in favor of a government big enough to rein in big corporations and rebuild American institutions. What do you think of this?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":63226,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,13,16,19,36],"tags":[9297,561,3881,6938,12649,1761,8309],"class_list":["post-63172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-economics","category-family","category-government","category-politics","tag-big-government-conservatism","tag-conservatism","tag-donald-trump","tag-integralism","tag-new-right","tag-populism","tag-varieties-of-conservatism"],"yoast_head":"\nShould the Term "Conservative" Be Dropped?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"John Daniel Davidson argues that conservatism has traditionally been about conserving things:\u00a0 the family, religious freedom, individual rights, our American heritage, Western civilization, etc.\u00a0 Those were worthy goals.\u00a0 But conservatism has failed to conserve them.\u00a0 He proposes a new strategy for the right that rejects the formula of "small government" and "free enterprise" in favor of a government big enough to rein in big corporations and rebuild American institutions. 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