"Progressive Conservatism"

“Progressive Conservatism”

By: J. Hunter

You hear it all the time: someone claims that we are living in a doomed era. “The 1940s or 1950s were a much better time in America than today.” Often, this nostalgic speaker is a conservative—pining for the good old days. After all, the acronym GOP stands for “Grand Old Party,” and the Tea Party itself is named after a rebellion that took place way back in 1773. Today’s Tea Partiers sometimes even dress in old colonial garb—an outward display of this nostalgic yearning. When one thinks of conservatism, the sepia-colored image of a time long-past comes to mind. Such yearning for the past is not as powerful an influence on the political left.

Liberals’ heyday was the 1960s—a time when America, like Enlightenment Europe, was forced to rethink its society and to decide what the future would look like from that point on. Clearly, liberals had this in mind when they sought to improve their marketability and reintroduce the word “progressive” (a word popularized in the 1920s) to replace the “liberal” label. Hillary Clinton, herself, famously claimed that the word “liberal” had been hijacked, and that she, herself, prefers the term progressive to liberal.[1] The very label “progressive” implies innovation, improvement, and evolution.

Ironically, though, the labels’ connotations could not be more mis-matched.

As it happens, progressive ideas serve only to place modern people into antiquated social arrangements. Most of their policies, at least in the abstract, are old ideas. Completely jettisoning modern marvels of the 20^th century—petroleum and the combustion engine—in favor of windmills, trains and bicycles is an example of this rearward thinking. (Windmills were developed in the 1^st century A.D. Bicycles and trains are technologies from the early 19^th century.) Free market capitalism is an idea that is slightly older than the late 1700s. Progressives, though, reject free market capitalism for something that more closely resembles a command economy, much like that which existed in the medieval days of European monarchy before the merchant class burgeoned—Yet another example of progressivism’s yearning to preserve tradition. Progressives are also more accommodating to the notion of borderless countries—idealizing a time before the nation-state—most recently illustrated by President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign stop in Berlin, Germany as “a fellow citizen of the world.”[2] The list of old progressive ideas is almost as long as any list of their policy positions.

Surely, there are some policies of progressivism that are brand new—introducing homosexual marriage for the first time in human history, for example—but in general, progressives traffic in ancient wares.

For conservatives, the nostalgic yearning for yesteryear is a symptom of benign romanticism more than it is an actual policy aim. Indeed, a balanced budget amendment is a novel idea—newer than state-run healthcare by decades. So, too, are the consumption tax and the flat tax.

Promoting clean nuclear power is a much newer idea than windmill. School vouchers programs are innovative, whereas continuously pouring more money into failing schools is not. In fact, the very effort of rejecting the natural trajectory of increasing government intrusion—a trend that is seen throughout history and all over the world—in favor of individual liberty and more localized governance is more radical than any plausible political theory in existence today.

Clearly, it is conservatism, not progressivism, that boldly looks beyond the past. Conservatives should embrace this fact—looking to the past with appropriate admiration, while using its lessons to forge an even brighter future.

Article Sources:

[1] http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2007/7/24/125521.shtml?s=lh

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/us/politics/24text-obama.html

Photo Sources:

"Windmill" from http://digitalart.org/images/artwork/0062000-62283/fantasy/old-windmill.jpg; "Nuclear Power Plant" from http://www.w2agz.com/Library/Nuclear/How%20Nuclear%20Power%20Works/printable_files/nuclear-power-a.jpg