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Thread: Is There a Conservative Tradition in America?

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    Is There a Conservative Tradition in America?

    Is There a Conservative Tradition in America? is an essay by Patrick J. Deneen. It can be found at the link or in his collection Conserving America?: Essays on Present Discontents.

    ...contemporary American conservatism seems to be shaped by a certain set of core commitments. While not exhaustive, among those characteristics one could confidently list: 1. Commitment to limited government as laid out by the Founders in the Constitution; 2. Support for Free Markets; 3. Strong National defense; 4. Individual responsibility and a suspicion toward collectivism; and 5. Defense of traditional values, particularly support for family....

    ...with the likely exception of #5 on my list – “defense of traditional values, particularly support of the family” – every characteristic that I’ve listed is actually a species of liberalism. ...I mean liberal in its classical conception, that political philosophy that arose in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with its deepest origins in the Social Contract theory of Thomas Hobbes, further refined by John Locke, amended by Adam Smith and Montesquieu, and put into effect by our Founders...

    ...We have come to accept that Conservatism in America means fidelity to the founding principles of America.... Yet, thinkers from Edmund Burke to Russell Kirk have shown the deeply anti-conservative bases of the social contract theory of Lockean (and Hobbesian) origin, one that is premised upon a conception of human beings as naturally “free and independent,” as autonomous individuals who are thought to exist by nature detached from a web of relationships that include family, community, Church, region, and so on....

    This explanation overlooks a substantial body of writing that argued that the Constitution was a document that sought a centralizing “consolidation” from the very outset. I speak of the extensive writings of the varied authors called “Anti-federalists,” – that group of men who Herbert Storing categorized as the “conservatives” in the ratification debate....

    ...There’s a further problem in the contemporary narrative that has been developed by conservatives regarding the course of the Constitution. ...it has largely been developed by scholars who study in the tradition established by the German émigré scholar, Leo Strauss. They largely rely on a significant essay written by Strauss entitled “The Three Waves of Modernity.” ...This “first wave” of modernity recognized the inherent imperfectability of human beings – thus, that we have a nature, and that a successful politics can be built upon that nature – and served as the philosophical basis for the American founding.

    The “second wave” of modernity is called by Strauss “historicism.” ...The “second wave” of modernity took the basic insight of the philosophers of the first wave – that nature was subject to human control – and extended this insight to human nature itself. If external nature were subject to human dominion, why not human nature itself? Thinkers like Rousseau, Condorcet, Comte, and later, John Stuart Mill, developed the idea of human perfectibility, of the human ability to master not only external nature, but to improve human nature as well. ...The concept of moral progress became a central feature in second wave philosophy, a progress in historical time that was believed to culminate in man’s perfection, even ascent to a godlike condition. In America, thinkers like Dewey, Croly and later, Richard Rorty adopted the basic insights of this “second wave” of modernity.

    ...Strauss discerned that it is from the very individualistic basis of liberalism that arose the collectivist impulse of “progressivism,” initially in communism and fascism, but today in what we might call “progressive liberalism.”...

    ...it could be argued that conservative commitments 1-4 – that end by favoring consolidation (in spite of the claim to favor “limited” government), advancing imperial power and capitalism (i.e., why consolidation is finally necessary), and stressing individual liberty, are all actively hostile to commitment number 5 – the support for family and community. It is a rump commitment without a politics to support it, and one that daily undergoes attack by the two faces of contemporary liberalism, through the promotion of the Market by the so-called Right and the promotion of lifestyle autonomy by the Left. A true conservatism has few friends in today’s America.
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

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    Quote Originally Posted by Chris View Post
    Is There a Conservative Tradition in America? is an essay by Patrick J. Deneen. It can be found at the link or in his collection Conserving America?: Essays on Present Discontents.
    There is a conservative tradition among the American people but not, more recently, among their politicians,

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    Quote Originally Posted by Carl Young View Post
    There is a conservative tradition among the American people but not, more recently, among their politicians,
    In, as the OP says, conserving the founding principles, true, but that is a form of liberalism, and was until FDR absconded the label liberal what people who did that were called.
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

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    Quote Originally Posted by Chris View Post
    In, as the OP says, conserving the founding principles, true, but that is a form of liberalism, and was until FDR absconded the label liberal what people who did that were called.
    Yes, the Left has a history of changing the meaning of words for propaganda purposes, 'liberal' among them, or misuse words, such as 'progressive'. And it works.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Chris View Post
    In, as the OP says, conserving the founding principles, true, but that is a form of liberalism, and was until FDR absconded the label liberal what people who did that were called.
    Kudos for knowing that.

    Todays true liberals are the libertarians.

    Todays D, and to a bit lesser degree the R, parties leadership are more akin to fascists on economics and Stalinist-lite on social issues.
    "Buy a man eat fish, the day, teach a man to a life time! "
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    you're on the train and they say 'PORTAL BRIDGE' you know you better make other plans."
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    Quote Originally Posted by LWW View Post
    Kudos for knowing that.

    Todays true liberals are the libertarians.

    Todays D, and to a bit lesser degree the R, parties leadership are more akin to fascists on economics and Stalinist-lite on social issues.

    I wouldn't go so far as to call anyone fascist or Stalinist. I do believe democracy is on the road to totalitarianism.
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

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    Quote Originally Posted by Chris View Post
    I wouldn't go so far as to call anyone fascist or Stalinist. I do believe democracy is on the road to totalitarianism.
    Good thing I didn't call anyone that.

    Economic fascism is the merger of state and corporate power, where winners and losers are decided in advance, where corporations are paid to do the will of the state, where true free markets are demonized.

    When the gubmint decides that some businesses need bailouts because they are deemed to be 'TOO LARGE TO FAIL!' ... they have also decided that the entrepreneur is too small to matter.

    As to Stalin-lite, how many agitprop theater show trials before you notice?
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    Quote Originally Posted by LWW View Post
    Good thing I didn't call anyone that.

    Economic fascism is the merger of state and corporate power, where winners and losers are decided in advance, where corporations are paid to do the will of the state, where true free markets are demonized.

    When the gubmint decides that some businesses need bailouts because they are deemed to be 'TOO LARGE TO FAIL!' ... they have also decided that the entrepreneur is too small to matter.

    As to Stalin-lite, how many agitprop theater show trials before you notice?

    That's why I avoid those labels. Fascism worked via corporatism, that is, organizing the governing bodies were composed of representatives from workers and from management in major sectors from agriculture, industry, military, etc. Corporatism then wasn't at all what people call corporatism today. Businesses like everything and everyone else did what was best for the state or nation.
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

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    Fascism is a misused word, I agree.

    In a nutshell its Marxism under a different name.

    Hitler and Mussolini were both Marxists.
    "Buy a man eat fish, the day, teach a man to a life time! "
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    Quote Originally Posted by LWW View Post
    Fascism is a misused word, I agree.

    In a nutshell its Marxism under a different name.

    Hitler and Mussolini were both Marxists.

    Mussolini was actually a Marxist early on. And it can be argued both were socialist as they came to power but shifted toward totalitarianism just as Staln did.
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

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