Twilight Of Conservatism?

[NATO AIR]

Important reading has rarely been so well argued and written.

http://www.nationalreview.com/derbyshire/derbyshire200505100802.asp

Twilight of Conservatism
We are living in false hope.

The people of Britain have spoken, and the Labor party is back in power with a comfortable, if much diminished, majority of seats in parliament. The leader of the Conservative party has said he will step down, forcing the Tories to their fourth leadership election in eight years.* The victorious Labor party got 36 percent of the vote, the Conservatives 33 percent, the Liberal Democrats (a Naderite Green-Left party) 22.5 percent, and "other" (Scottish, Welsh, and Irish parties) 9.5 percent.

The real victory here is Margaret Thatcher's. By annihilating the old statist ideological Left in the 1980s, she forced the Labor party to bourgeoisify itself. The class warriors and Soviet stoolies, the nationalizers and America-haters, the Bomb-banners and tree-huggers, the Scargills and Benns, the Foots and Kinnocks, were hustled off the Labor-party stage, replaced by mild-spoken middle-class types in business suits, murmuring unthreateningly about "opportunity" and "investment." They are colorless by comparison with the old crowd — I can never remember which of Blair's people is which — but much less dangerous to Britain's prosperity and security.

The price of victory, however, was extinction. In accomplishing this transformation of her enemies, Mrs. Thatcher left the Conservative party with nothing to define itself against. Since the fall of the USSR, there is not even an external enemy to concentrate minds. (Hardly anyone in Britain thinks that the war on terror is any of their business.)

If your national economy consists of a large private sector and a large public sector, and if neither big political party is nakedly hostile to either, or looks like doing serious harm to either, then politics comes down to a dull, wonkish tussle between those who think that the private sector is over-regulated and those who think the public sector is under-funded. Right now in Britain the economy is humming along nicely; the welfare state is in reasonable working order; and the public-private mix in life services like health, education, and pensions seems to offer about as much choice as people want.** Center-left or center-right? A state that occupies 40 percent of the national economy, or one that occupies 38 percent? Why change?

There isn't much room in there for a strong, principled conservatism. Nor do the British seem to want such a thing. Look at those voting figures. Since the Lib-Dems are to the left of Labor, and most of the little nationalist parties are even further left than that, the vote breaks down as one third for conservatism — the much diluted conservatism of the post-Thatcher Tories — and two thirds for everything further left. Apparently our cousins across the pond are pretty happy in their Old-Europe-trending welfarist consensus. Real conservatism is dead in Britain.

Is it any better off here in the USA? Hardly. Executive, legislature, judiciary — where can we look for strong promotion of, and adherence to, conservative principles? We think of our president as a conservative, but in what respects can he be said to have advanced conservatism? John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, in The Right Nation , tick off the six fundamentals of classical, Burkean, Anglo-Saxon conservatism:

a deep suspicion of the power of the state.

a preference for liberty over equality.

patriotism.

a belief in established institutions and hierarchies.

skepticism about the idea of progress.

elitism.

"The exceptionalism of modern American conservatism" (the authors go on to say) "lies in its exaggeration of the first three of Burke's principles and contradiction of the last three." All right, let's ignore the last three of those principles and mark George W. Bush on the first three.
Continue Article @ link

 

[William Joyce]

John Derbyshire is a strong, thoughtful and (actually) conservative writer. So it's always surprising to see him appear in National Review.

Ha! But seriously, folks. What, exactly, do we lose if "conservatism" dies? I have always thought of conservatism as an oppositional stance: opposed to the growing state, to the loss of individual rights, the loss of moral values, etc. But it's proven an utter failure on almost all these points. The government in the U.S. is at Soviet proportions. We have lost the most important freedom: the freedom to associate. The "rights" we have now are not so much rights as indulgences: we have the "right" to drive honking SUV's, watch porn, and gorge ourselves on processed foods. Big deal. We've got interracial pornography for our halftime shows --- on national TV. Gee, so much for that "religious right" controlling everything. It's been a long time since the labels "conservative" and "liberal" meant anything. On some of the issues, nobody gives a crap. Nobody really cares that taxes are so high. They just accept it. So the welfare state is not a rallying point.

We do have open borders. People are pissed about that, but the political class just ignores it.

In Derbyshire's native UK, the BNP is filling that gap:

http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2005/05/labour_opens_in.php

http://vdare.com/fulford/050510_fulford_file.htm#b1

I admire the BNP - they openly advocate for the interests of white Britons (using the word "white"). And, they are gaining in popularity.

 

[archangel]

John Derbyshire is a strong, thoughtful and (actually) conservative writer. So it's always surprising to see him appear in National Review.

Ha! But seriously, folks. What, exactly, do we lose if "conservatism" dies? I have always thought of conservatism as an oppositional stance: opposed to the growing state, to the loss of individual rights, the loss of moral values, etc. But it's proven an utter failure on almost all these points. The government in the U.S. is at Soviet proportions. We have lost the most important freedom: the freedom to associate. The "rights" we have now are not so much rights as indulgences: we have the "right" to drive honking SUV's, watch porn, and gorge ourselves on processed foods. Big deal. We've got interracial pornography for our halftime shows --- on national TV. Gee, so much for that "religious right" controlling everything. It's been a long time since the labels "conservative" and "liberal" meant anything. On some of the issues, nobody gives a crap. Nobody really cares that taxes are so high. They just accept it. So the welfare state is not a rallying point.

We do have open borders. People are pissed about that, but the political class just ignores it.

In Derbyshire's native UK, the BNP is filling that gap:

http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2005/05/labour_opens_in.php

http://vdare.com/fulford/050510_fulford_file.htm#b1

I admire the BNP - they openly advocate for the interests of white Britons (using the word "white"). And, they are gaining in popularity.

You are on the right track to becomming a Independent Conservative..The GOP and DNC have become one and the same..If you just stay away from radical philosophy as noticed in some of your posts..."David Duke" you will find your way and make a difference in your future....