Something's Happening To The Concept Of "Conservatism"

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Something's stirring in the belly of the Trumpist beast.

Click here for an article at The Washington Post by John Burtka entitled "Under Trump, a very different agenda for conservatives emerges." And if reading that article doesn't make you sufficiently afraid, click here for another article, again at The Washington Post, by Max Boot, entitled "What comes after Trump may be even worse." "President Tucker Carlson"? Now there's a phrase that ought to reduce you to a terrified, quivering lump of jelly.

On July 22, there was a gathering in D.C. called the National Conservativism Conference. It marked the beginning of a movement calling itself "national conservatism," an effort to explain the phenomenon of Trumpism within the conservative movement and the Republican party:

When Fox News host Tucker Carlson took the stage at the National Conservatism Conference last Monday in Washington, his tone was self-deprecating yet triumphant. Former deputy national security adviser Michael Anton has deemed Carlson the “de facto leader of the conservative movement,” and the audience wanted a coronation.

For the next hour, Carlson laid waste to the pieties of a thousand white papers and endless summer seminars promoting the dogmas of radical individualism, unfettered free markets and global hegemony — in short, all the things that made up American conservatism for the last generation. It was time, he said, to climb up into the attic and start tossing out the junk. And down it came: Speech after speech declared independence from neoconservatism, neoliberalism, libertarianism and classical liberalism. In substance and in tone, this was not the conservatism of National Review, the Weekly Standard or the Conservative Political Action Conference, but something consciously distinct and admittedly superior.

There has been much intellectual ferment on the right since the 2016 election but never a public gathering of this scale explaining what Donald Trump’s victory means for the future of the Republican Party. Under the auspices of the Edmund Burke Foundation, a new group of self-described “national conservatives” gathered to proclaim that big business is a greater threat to liberty than big government, that identity politics is a Freudian fraud and nation building is a chimera. In short, the aim of this new conservative politics is not more freedom but strong families, resilient faith communities and a thriving middle class. If the influence of Russell Kirk, American conservatism’s founding father, provided the intellectual framework for the conference, Pat Buchanan’s pitchfork populism replaced William F. Buckley’s Northeastern elitism as its animating spirit.

Here is Burtka's assessment of national conservative policy:

In economics, it would aim to strengthen the middle class, reduce income inequality and develop an industrial policy to ensure economic independence from China for essential military supplies. Policy proposals could include incentivizing investment in capital equipment and research and development; ending tax advantages for shareholder buybacks; federal spending on infrastructure; promoting skilled trades and vocational programs; busting up inefficient monopolies through antitrust enforcement; slowing immigration rates to tighten labor markets and raise wages for the working class; holding universities liable for student loan debt in cases of bankruptcy; and raising tariffs across the board while slashing taxes on the middle class.

As relates to culture, national conservatives would aim to support families by being pro-life for the whole life. Policy ideas might include paid family leave, increasing the child tax credit, federally funded prenatal and maternal care, reducing or eliminating income tax on families with three or more children, and working toward a society in which a mother or father can support a family on a single income. America’s Judeo-Christian roots would be celebrated, and churches and charitable organizations would be given preference in caring for the poor.

In foreign affairs, national conservatives’ goal is to protect the safety, sovereignty and independence of the American people. America’s regime-change wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Yemen would be recognized as imperial hubris, and anyone involved in their promotion exiled from future positions in Republican administrations. Presidents who ignore congressional authorization for war would be impeached, and members of Congress who eschew their constitutional duties would be stripped of committee assignments and “primaried” in the next election. We would command the seas and space, bring the remaining troops home, secure our own borders and rebuild America.

All that rings a lot of the right bells: Who in the Democratic party could argue against any of the ideas I've put in bold above? Fine-sounding proposals, but how would they look in practice? Max Boot's article gives us an idea of what national conservatism might look like under President Tucker Carlson:

I fear that President Trump may not be an aberration but a prelude to something even uglier under a demagogue who really is a “stable genius.” (Trump is neither.)

A who’s who of Trumpian intellectuals (an oxymoron?) gathered at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington last week to propound an ominous ideology: “national conservatism.” As Reason reported, the conferees want to ditch the old conservative aversion to having the government micromanage the economy. Many speakers argued for an industrial policy based on tariffs and tax credits to reverse what “Hillbilly Elegy” author J.D. Vance described as “family decline, childhood trauma, opioid abuse, community decline, decline of the manufacturing sector.” In response, Rep. Justin Amash (I-Mich.) tweeted: “ ‘National conservatism’ is just collectivism rebranded for the right. It’s a form of socialism built upon fear of the new and different.” (Maybe it should be called “national socialism” instead? If only that term weren’t already taken.)

Boot concludes:

But the real star of the “national conservatism” conference, reports Jacob Heilbrunn in the New York Review of Books, was Fox host Tucker Carlson. An isolationist and nativist, he has called Iraqis “semiliterate primitive monkeys” and said immigrants make “our own country poor and dirtier and more divided.” At the Ritz-Carlton, which is a subsidiary of the largest hotel company in the world, Carlson’s theme was, “Big Business Hates Your Family.” (Maybe not Carlson’s family: His stepmother is an heir to the Swanson frozen-food fortune.)

There has already been talk of Carlson running for president, and, Heilbrunn wrote, “Carlson’s own coy disavowal on the podium was hardly a denial.” Tucker in ’24? Don’t laugh. Weep. The Fox host is more intelligent and disciplined than Trump. He could well be the new leader of authoritarianism in America. If that were to happen, we may look back nostalgically on our present craziness as the calm before the storm.

Click here for a third article at The Washington Post, entitled ""Conservatives want to revive a one-time trick from more than 100 years ago," by Megan McArdle, a discussion of national conservatism's "industrial policy":

Industrial policy was last hot in the 1980s, as an ascendant Japan seemed about to displace us at the apex of the global economy. Center-left policy wonks spent a decade urging us to copy them. By the time they’d convinced everyone, however, Japan was mired in its 20-year “lost decade,” and the United States was entering an unplanned economic boom courtesy of Silicon Valley. Industrial policy abruptly vanished from the national conversation.

She goes on:

The first thing opponents of industrial policy should note is that it can work. But there are some other things we should note, too: that while it can work, it usually doesn’t; that it didn’t cause most of the growth it gets credit for in Asian countries; and that the limited benefits it offers probably can’t be realized by modern-day America.

But first, the concession. Done smartly, strategic trade policy and targeted subsidies can boost a country’s competitive position in growth-promoting industries. And because those industries often cluster, successful national champions can be quite hard to dislodge — just think of Detroit’s decades-long dominance of the global auto market. Once a cluster is established, spillover effects can foster further growth in related sectors.

Unfortunately, industrial policy is rarely particularly smart. Even brilliant planners can’t actually predict the future, and if they guess wrong, they can squander a great deal of taxpayer money while actually making the economy less competitive.

McArdle points out times in history when other countries have adopted similar industrial policies, and gives reasons why she feels these policies would not be successful if applied to the present-day U.S. economy. She concludes:

The problem is, we can’t replicate it because we practically invented it — more than 100 years ago. And it’s a one-time trick that no country ever gets to repeat, no matter how carefully it plans.