|
Mining Affairs Forum January 22, 2009-
“The End of Conservatism?”
By Ken Thornberg
Is this the dawn of a “new liberal order,” such as Peter Beinhart says? Beinhart, Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy for the Council on Foreign Relations is quick to proclaim that the election of Barack Obama is proof that conservatism is dead. However, could it be that the public was voting against the policies of George Bush and John McCain instead of for then President-elect Obama? Both Bush and McCain stood for an activist foreign policy of never-ending commitments of nation building, open borders at home, record deficit spending, circumventing the Constitution, expanding domestic welfare programs, nationalizing the financial sector, and an unpopular war which has taken the lives of thousands of Americans.
Does that sound like “conservatism” to you? My take on it is that if McCain had not chosen Sarah Palin as his Vice Presidential nominee, the bloodbath would have been much greater. Governor Mark Sandford of South Carolina said it well: “Republicans have campaigned on the conservative themes of lower taxes, less government and more freedom—they just haven’t governed that way. America didn’t turn away from conservatism, they turned away from many who faked it.” They did a very poor job of faking it, didn’t they? Even the Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin said, “Barack Obama did not destroy it (conservatism), however. It was George W. Bush and John McCain who destroyed conservatism in America.”
Taking it even further to make a point, David Boaz of the CATO Institute reflected that Bush “delivered massive overspending, the biggest expansion of entitlements in 40 years, centralization of education, a floundering war, an imperial presidency, civil liberties abuses…and finally a $700 billion bailout of Wall Street that just kept on growing the last month of the campaign. Voters who believed in limited government had every reason to reject that record.”
Consider this. The media and press coverage of President Bush kept dwindling month after month since his second term began. We seldom heard the president speaking on our national television news, he seldom stood up publicly for positions and policies he had supported in the campaign, and the only sound bites we heard related to the Iraqi War. Why is that? Did you notice how the press was, by and large, silent about him? If I was a president who campaigned on one set of principles and ended up endorsing an opposite set of principles, when could I publicly speak up? Every time I would open my mouth, I would jeopardize my reputation, prove my abandonment of those stated principles, bring disrepute upon myself and my Party, and let the public know that I had betrayed them. That is exactly what happened and when the GOP primary came around, there were too many true conservatives running against one another, thus allowing a liberal Republican like McCain to step in and take up the gauntlet.
Neoconservatism Sneaks In
How is it that politicians claiming to be conservatives ended up acting like big-government liberals? The answer is in the rise of “neoconservatism,” the definition of modern conservatism within the GOP. The true conservative movement allegedly began in 1953 with the publishing of a book called The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk. He maintained that conservatism was based upon the core principles of “an enduring moral order, the Constitution of the United States, an established American way of life, and a free economy.” He would add in his book that it also included a “mind-your-own-business foreign policy” and a fear of abusive executive power. Kirk would say a true conservative was hesitant to engage in war, seeing war as an enemy of the Constitution, liberty, economic security and custom. Sounds good, doesn’t it?
However, following years saw battles between Rockefeller and Goldwater Republicans, true conservatives and Ripon liberals. Liberals elected Richard Nixon and conservatives elected Ronald Reagan. As time evolved within the beltway, neoconservatives (neocons for short) entered the conservative movement with beliefs that supported a hyper-interventionist foreign policy. The United States saw its image tarnished year after year while it used its financial muscle and military might to intervene in other nations’ affairs.
Neocon Beliefs
Neocons are quite happy to see government grow and to use it to achieve their own “conservative ends,” as author Justin Raimondo maintains. President George W. Bush has exemplified this big-government conservatism more than any American president. “Big government conservatives are favorably disposed toward a conservative welfare state,” says Fred Barnes, author of the pro-Bush Rebel in Chief. He continued, “Bush has never put a name on his political philosophy, though he once joked that it was based on the premise that you could fool some of the people all of the time and he intended to concentrate on those people.” The truth is that Bush was deceived. Never has a president in my memory had a lower “favorable” rating than Bush did when he left office. Could that be that the people were not actually fooled at all? Could it be that the liberals wanted someone more to the left and the conservatives realized that they had been betrayed by “one of their own?” I believe so.
Foreign policy takes center stage in the neocon philosophy. Instead of avoiding entangling alliances and pursuing peace and commerce, it is an aggressive, costly and dangerous policy of America policing the globe in order to establish a new democratic order without regard to U.S. national interest. Warmongering becomes the very essence of neoconservatism. Oddly enough, in America’s past, Democrat administrations were known as the ones who started wars while Republicans finished them. Not so now. It is difficult to believe that an Obama administration will ignore war and seek to only end it. It sounds good now, but the jury is definitely out and I do not believe history will show an about-face in foreign policy. War will continue, but may have a “change” in its focus, that of using war to erode freedoms while establishing an oligarchy. Centralized control within the federal system will increase and erode state laws that currently govern us.
Neocon Leftist Origins
Neocons were former liberal war hawks who distanced themselves often from the peace movement. Rockefeller-type Republicans welcomed them into the GOP and enjoyed their intellectual roots. Their ideology was more in line with Trotskyite communism than traditional American conservatism. Irving Kristol, their “godfather” and admitted Trotskyite, admitted that the movement was made up of disillusioned liberal intellectuals in the 1970s. Pat Buchanan, editorial writer and former presidential candidate himself, has written, “The first generation were ex-Trotskyites, socialists, leftists and liberals who backed FDR, Truman, JFK and LBJ. When McGovern captured the Democratic Party in 1972—on a platform of cutting defense and ‘Come Home America!’-- these Cold War liberals found themselves isolated and ignored in their own party. Adrift, they ran over to the Republican Party and were pulled aboard as conservatism’s long voyage was culminating in the triumph of Reagan.”
The Rise of the Neocons
Reagan accepted some well-known neocon names within his administration, including Jeanne Kirkpatrick, William Bennett, Eugene Rostow, Elliott Abrams, and more. They had differences with Reagan and did not run his administration, but major cracks showed in the foundation. When George H.W. Bush was arising to power, neocons saw their chance. Kirk saw the dangers and expressed that neocons had “been rash in their schemes of action, pursuing a fanciful democratic globalism rather than the national interest of the U.S.” He believed that Bush would not give in to neocon pressure, but history has proven his beliefs wrong. When the elder Bush entered the Gulf War, neocons were elated and Kirk lamented the emergence of a One World president pushing a “new world order.”
Neocons began to move into planning their future by influencing politicians like Newt Gingrich and John McCain. They even found opportunities to influence conservative heroes like Rush Limbaugh. They eventually entered the driver’s seat with the election of George W. Bush. The 9/11 attack gave them the opportunity to push their long-held view of a global democratic revolution to the mainstream. Americans were all too ready to “defeat terrorism” since it had reached their soil. Was the president a neocon? He did a great impression of one if he wasn’t. One issue after another that he had campaigned on was left on the side of the road or run over. The Iraq invasion was the flagship of the neocon plan, along with the enormous debt it incurred.
In the last election campaign, John McCain fully endorsed the neocon positions on one issue after another. Did our readers notice that McCain seldom, if ever, sounded like a true conservative and never seemed to attack liberal and socialist positions of the Obama campaign until it was way too late? When it became obvious that conservatives felt disenfranchised and would stay home from the voting booth, only then did he speak up. They still stayed home. Bush maintained that the huge loss was not because of him, but because of public dissatisfaction with Republican Party. Why were they dissatisfied? Bush did not explain. I will bet that every reader of this column could answer than question for him!
What Now?
This is hard to determine. Neocons are now very entrenched. They have deceived true conservatives and many can’t tell the true from the false. True conservatives need to listen to traditionalists like Ron Paul, Pat Buchanan, and Charles Goyette. When you hear terms like “pragmatic centrists” and “moderates,” run the other direction. Our Founding Fathers would be considered extremists today and on the “fringe.” Those terms should draw us like a magnet because it affirms what made this nation great. We must dedicate ourselves to the Constitution and the principles our forefathers died for. Anything less will not only result in a dead conservative movement, but the death of our nation. To win, it may mean putting up with name-calling for a while and risking our reputations, but can we do anything else? The obituary is being written and the devil has his hand in it. Let’s stomp him under our feet! |
