The End of Conservativism

The Derb says that conservativism, as a political movement, is fading away into insignificance. He's right.

— Power of the state. Is the federal government more powerful, or less, than it was in January 2001? That, of course, is an ah-but question. Our country was attacked by a terrorist conspiracy well supported by, and well funded from, the wealthy and populous Muslim Middle East. All sorts of things flowed from that, including necessary expansions of government power and expenditure. (Though whether a $300 billion experiment in Wilsonian nation-building was really necessary is a question I shall leave to another time.) Even setting all that aside, though, are the federal authorities less of a presence in our lives, in areas unrelated to national security, than they were four years ago? Sure, you got an itty-bitty tax cut, paid for by dumping a slew of federal debt on your children and grandchildren. But spending? Even non-security spending? The answers are here.

— Liberty vs. equality. There has been no rollback of the tort-spawning, job-killing egalitarianism of the 1990s. Title IX and the Americans with Disabilities Act are still on the books. Norm Mineta is still at Transportation, so presumably your granny is still as much of a threat to air travel as any Saudi flight-school graduate. Not only are both sexes, all physiques, and all air travelers equal by government fiat, so are all kids. The No Child Left Behind Act assures us of that, and pokes the federal government's nose into every classroom.

— Patriotism. Flip on Fox News any night of the week and watch those clips of foreigners streaming across the southern desert into America by the hundreds and thousands. Doesn't patriotism imply some concern for your nation's borders? Some ideas about what people you would like to have come settle in your country — how many, and from where? Some cherishing and privileging of the notion of citizenship? Apparently not. Our president, at any rate, is perfectly insouciant — seems, in fact, to be on board with the idea put forward recently by Mexican foreign minister Luis Ernesto Derbez, that his country and ours will soon be "integrated." Let 'em come!

All of these issues worry me, but particularly the death of the reflexive anti-statism of the American mind, clearly seen in generations past and enshrined in the words of men like George Washington:

Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.

Or Thomas Jefferson:

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.

Or Calvin Coolidge:

Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery

Or Barry Goldwater:

Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have.

From those fiercely anti-statist voices, we now have a nation of Americans crying out their particular entitlement to be paid for by other people, and politicians wisely sensing that electoral success is not to be found in promising to slash government programs, but to expand them.

Although we might see the thankful end of the drug war in a decade, the deep-seated distrust and fear of government -- the image of government as a predatory beast and not a helper -- has vanished from American popular thought. God save us from the consequences.