I’ve got a review in today’s New York Post of Andrew Sullivan’s new book, The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How To Get It Back. A brief excerpt:
The “conservatism I grew up with,” notes Sullivan, stood for “lower taxes, less government spending, freer trade, freer markets, individual liberty, personal responsibility and a strong anti-communist foreign policy.” Defining figures such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher spoke regularly of human freedom as the great aim of political life. “It has long been a fundamental conviction of the Republican Party,” declared the 1980 GOP platform, “that government should foster in our society a climate of maximum individual liberty and freedom of choice.”
Somehow from there we arrived at the presidency of George W. Bush, whose pronouncement on the state’s proper role – “When someone hurts, government has got to move” – owes more to LBJ than to Barry Goldwater.
Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum brusquely waves aside “this whole idea of personal autonomy,” this “idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do.” Ex-Democrats of the McGovern-Dukakis era once popularized the line “I didn’t leave the party, the party left me”; if the Santorums prosper, plenty of old-line Republicans will be ready to sing the same refrain.
(Walter Olson, “Reforming the Right”, Nov. 5). Andrew Sullivan responds here.
3 Comments
I’m not sure that personal autonomy/freedom was ever really a plank in the platform of conservatism. It seems to me that as long as western conservatives appeared to be more freedom-loving than the communists in the east, then their Purtainism went largely unnoticed or was at least given a pass. But, I was rather young during the Reagan and Thatcher years, so I could be wrong about the history. Still it seems that the War on (Some) Drugs got going in true earnest during that time. Perhaps the repressive tendencies of conservatives were actually held in check as long as there was somebody huge to fight who was off-the-charts repressive.
For all the supposed influence of the “religious right,” I don’t see much implemented as policy. Abortion is legal. You can participate in a wide variety of appetite-feedings, excluding now-illegal drugs. Pornography is widely available. Andrew Sullivan is free to indulge himself with anyone but the underaged. Really, the only fundamentalist religion I see being practiced in American culture and politics is political correctness. Simply say the wrong thing about the right ethnic, racial or religious groups, and you will quickly discover what awaits the heretics of this state religion.
I think that making the “religious right” a boogeyman is a way of deflecting attention from the true New Masters of the GOP, the neocons who seek to make Israel the sole beneficiary of our foreign policy and leave America’s borders open to an invasion of illegals. Both of those policy goals, you’ll notice, have been achieved.
OK, I was going to say that David Wilson nailed things… then I read his second paragraph. Um, yikes. Well, the open borders thing is still fairly accurate…
And I’ve already been saying “I didn’t leave the party, the party left me” about the Republicans for some time now….
One of the weaknesses of a 2-party system (which ours is inherently) is that if one party is weak, many of it’s ideas actually get implemented more and better than if they were in power! To understand why this is, look at the current Republican party. If I want limited government, etc, am I going to vote for Democrats? NO, of course not, so the Republicans can take my vote for granted, just by being less bad than the Democrats, yet still violating all their supposd principles to reach out “across the aisle” to the voters on the other side, thus holding a stronger majority.
It’s not pretty, but it does seem to be happening right now.