Why I Am a Conservative

May 21, 2009 at 5:21 AM

By Kelse Moen

In The American Conservative, Bill Kauffman has a typically engaging piece, along the lines of Hayek's "Why I Am Not a Conservative." Unfortunately, you have to be a subscriber to read it, but here is the heart of his argument:

[F]or half a century, “conservative” has been a synonym of — a slave to — militarism, proﬂigacy, the invasion of other nations, contempt for personal liberties, and an ignorance of and hostility toward provincial America that is Philip Rothian in its scope. The conservative movement, like the empire whose adjunct and cheerleader it is, is a daisy chain of epicene dissemblers and vampiric chickenhawks who feast on the carrion of our Republic. The c-word is quite simply beyond reclamation.

While I agree with Kauffman's analysis of the modern militarist Right, I think, nevertheless, that he is making a mistake in throwing away the term "conservative." Quite simply, the people he describes -- the Bushies, the Buckleyites, the neocons -- are not, nor ever have been, conservatives. Real conservatives, the ones Russell Kirk described in The Conservative Mind and Bill Kauffman has described elsewhere, are worlds away from contemporary Republicans. They intend, like their name says, to conserve, and stand for tradition, culture, and community, which are naturally opposed to war and the state. Thus, conservatives are the natural allies of libertarians: To be free, we must learn to be like the true conservatives, to understand the virtues of limitation and tradition. That is why, despite everything so-called "conservatives" have done, I still consider myself a conservative. I would be interested, however, to hear what other YALers think of the term.

Posted in:

Blog Policy
Login or register to post comments

I oppose the term for several reasons. 1. The term has been degraded by the neocons. The mainstream definition of conservatism has been changed by Bush, Cheney, et al. to mean bigger government, less civil liberties, religious zealotry, and imperialism. When people hear the word conservative, those are the views associated with it, and I don't want to be associated witht hose views. 2. The word itself is displeasurable. Conservative implies satisfaction with the status quo. There is no aspect of public policy that I don't want to reform, no bureaucracy that I dont want to shrink, no regulations that I dont want to be repealed. I dont want to conserve the government institutions we have, I want to reform and abolition them. The word conservative possesses a connotation that implies that you want to keep things the way they are, which I dont. 3. I live in a very liberal area, and identifying myself as a conservative is enough to turn people off to what I'm saying without even listening to my perspective. If I want to get my point of view across I can't let people think I'm a conservative, I must identify myself as a libertarian, constitutionalist, or classical liberal so they give my ideas an open mind.

Submitted by John Morrone (not verified) on May 21, 2009.

Historically speaking the conservatives were the ones favoring monarchy, feudalism, mercantilism, and big government, while the liberals favored constitutional government and free enterprise. It seems like, if anything, we should be trying to reclaim the word "liberal".

Submitted by Hugh Jass (not verified) on May 22, 2009.