Can real conservatism exist without authoritarianism?

By SanchoPanzaXXI - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3415994.  Francoist Span's coat of arms.   The motto means "One, great, and free".

Look at Wyoming GOP right now, and you would have to assume that the answer to this question must be "no".¹

And frankly, buying off on election theft myths and mutually reinforcing propaganda aside, there's some reason to think that.  That's basically what Patrick Deneen of Harvard has warned of.  He's the author of Why Liberalism Failed, a major work criticized heavily by the mainstream press, as we've previously noted, and adopted by current conservatives.  Yale's snippet on the book states, as we also previously noted:

Has liberalism failed because it has succeeded?

"Why Liberalism Failed offers cogent insights into the loss of meaning and community that many in the West feel, issues that liberal democracies ignore at their own peril."—President Barack Obama

"Deneen's book is valuable because it focuses on today's central issue. The important debates now are not about policy. They are about the basic values and structures of our social order."—David Brooks, New York Times

Of the three dominant ideologies of the twentieth century—fascism, communism, and liberalism—only the last remains. This has created a peculiar situation in which liberalism’s proponents tend to forget that it is an ideology and not the natural end-state of human political evolution. As Patrick Deneen argues in this provocative book, liberalism is built on a foundation of contradictions: it trumpets equal rights while fostering incomparable material inequality; its legitimacy rests on consent, yet it discourages civic commitments in favor of privatism; and in its pursuit of individual autonomy, it has given rise to the most far-reaching, comprehensive state system in human history. Here, Deneen offers an astringent warning that the centripetal forces now at work on our political culture are not superficial flaws but inherent features of a system whose success is generating its own failure.

Now, Deneen did not state that we needed to elect an orange haired Duce  whom we "must work towards" in order to impose the proper order upon society.²  At least, I don't think he did, having not read his book.  And the essence of what Deneen apparently states here, as summarized by the Yale review, is correct.  Political liberalism "trumpets equal rights while fostering incomparable material inequality"  It also "discourages civic commitments in favor of privatism; and in its pursuit of individual autonomy, it has given rise to the most far-reaching, comprehensive state system in human history."

All that is true.

Perhaps more disturbing is that liberalism/progressivism has unmoored itself from any sort of external greater force.  Depending upon how you view it, it either takes the position, basically, that man can vote on his own private wishes, and God must endorse them, or that individual desires are paramount and nature must bend to and accommodate them.  There's no possibility of unity in any of that, and it's deeply anti-nature. There's not even the possibility of a society functioning that way, on a long term basis.

So, given that, is it the case that conservatism must assert itself, by force?

That seems to be the conclusion that Orbán and a host of Eastern European leaders have concluded.  They're willing to tolerate democracy, but only if certain things are universally agreed on first.  And that sort of top-down directive nature of government, as long as it seems conservative, is the reason so many Americans of the MAGA persuasion, like Tucker Carlson, have been Putin cheerleaders.  It's also the reason that CPAC has swooned over Orban and has come very close to adopting his Illiberal Democracy point of view.  And it's the sort of point of view, sort of, that lead the Edmund Burke Foundation to adopt a "National Conservatism" manifesto this past June.

But it's also deeply illogical.

The basic core of real conservatism, indeed any political philosophy, is that it's right.  And conservatives believe they're right on two things, social issues and economic ones. . . well conservatives who have completely bought the package believe that, there are plenty of people who believe in one of the two tenants of conservatism and not the other.

But ironically, in believe that they are right, real conservatives, have always believed that man is flawed, and it's best to rely on tradition and what we know of science to guide us.  Old time conservatives, quite frankly, in the Buckleyite era, tended to be elitist, and proudly so. They were well-educated, at least at the upper levels, and didn't take their beliefs from the masses.  Indeed, often they assumed they were a permanent minority that could influence heavily, but was unlikely to rule.

We should note here that populist, at least right now, are fellow travelers of conservatives, but their views aren't really the same at all.  Populist tend to believe that the mass of people have some native instinct that's right because they have it.  It's thin on education and tends not to trust elites of any kid, because they ain't elite.

Basically, five guys in a corner drinking Budweiser, and lots of it, are presumed to know more about just about anything, to current populists, than five theologians or conservative philosophers.

And of course, in various circumstances, populists can be extreme rightist or leftists.  Early Soviet Reds were basically a  type of populist.

Note the irony of the illiberal democracy point of view.  Conservatives believe they're right, but they also believe, if they are illiberal democrats, that the attractions of progressivism are so strong that they'll overwhelm those truths unless they're enforced by force.

The current right, basically, believes that if offered dessert over dinner, kids will east dessert first every time.  Put another way, the current American right believes that given a choice, everyone is going to opt to be transgendered and there's no argument against it.  None at all. So people have to be forced to comport with what 99% of humanity already does naturally.

Progressives have believed something similar for decades, which is why they sought to enforce their beliefs through the courts. The basic concept was to enforce their beliefs through liberal courts and either plan on that enforcement indefinitely, or hope that people would get used to the enforced change over time and accept it.  Conservatives took the opposite view, at least up until recently.

This is what the recent battle of being "woke" is about.  Truth be known, hardly anyone anywhere, as a large demographic, has been in favor of things that may be defined as "woke".  But the courts enforced wokism, or at least opened the doors and windows for it. So, for example, you have Obergefel redefining what love means and the ancient concept of marriage, and soon thereafter "accepting" transgenderism is a major societal push.

Illiberal democrats argue that we should simply close the door on these arguments via fiat.

The problem with that is twofold.  No bad idea ever goes away in darkness. That's why the goofball economic theory of Communism rose up in autocratic states.  Bad ideas, like viruses, die in the sun.

Secondly, it presumes that your own arguments, while right, just can't compete.  Arguments that can't compete, however, can't compete ever.

Now, the way that Illiberal Democrats would probably put it is that the truth has been established but corruption, unleashed by evil, is always there to take things down.  In some ways, this view is an elitist one, even though populist that have adopted that are anti elites and don't know that (which is part of the reason that currently conservatism and populism may ride on the same bus, but they aren't the same thing).  Basically, this view at some level, openly or simply instinctively, takes the position that regular people are like children.³

Enforcing conservative via fiat has never worked.

Ask Marshal Petain.

The French political right has never recovered from Vichy, and it basically lost its ability to really influence anything.  

The Trumpist wing of the GOP is taking the Republican Party in that exact same directly.  If it keeps going this way, you can guaranty that Gender Queer is coming to a school library near you, pretty freaking soon.

There's a much better way to go about this.

And what that is, is this.

Conservatives should make their argument, and in making it, take a page from their Buckleyite past.  When accused of being elitist, embrace it.  Football players in the NFL are elites.  The Green Berets are elites.  Accused of being an "elite", lucky you.  Say you are, and as an elite, you know better.

Adopt Western Society, but its great thinkers and lights.  Donald Trump isn't one of them.

Don't try to be populists, populists can come to you.

Don't eschew science. Science is science and it aims at the truth.  If you reject it, your chances are better than not that you are favoring myth over reality, and dangerously so.

Realize that cultural conservatism doesn't equate with capitalism.  Capitalist are after the money.  You are after the culture.  Confusing the two sews the seeds of destruction.  Things that are deeply conservative, in real terms, are often anti-capitalist.

Embrace democracy.  You aren't always going to win, but you can always argue your point.  Arguing your point is trying to convince.  Forcing your point via fiat is a concession that you can't win through persuasion, as your argument is weak.

For a few minutes there, before Trump' narcissism spawned his coup, and the Supreme Court returned to the rule of law, you really had something.

You're blowing it.

Footnotes

1.  Based upon the most recent proclamations of the Central Committee, you also have to be deeply anti-scientific and an adherent to wacky conspiracy theories.  If you ever wondered how a rational German could have believed that the Jews were responsible for all of Germany's ills of the 20s and 30s, well just look at how the Central Committee thinks that Bill Gates and George Soros are messing with the state's energy sector.

2.  "Working toward the Führer" was a primary ethos of Nazi Germany.  Hitler didn't come up with all the bizarre beliefs and policies of the Third Reich on his own, his acolytes developed many just trying to figure out what Hitler would do if he was working on the topic. The Trumpist wing of the GOP has pretty much picked up on that sort of thing and worked towards Trump, who in turn has worked back towards them.

3.  The irony of this is that quite a few members of these movements have already eaten the desert.  If their underlying foundation is really meant, and they have, for example, adopted any aspect of the Sexual Revolution, which frankly most Americans have, they're hypocritical.

Related Threads.

Illiberal Democracy. A Manifesto?

How did things get so messed up?

By Di (they-them) - This SVG flag includes elements that have been taken or adapted from this flag:, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=114863039

American democracy is in real trouble right now, there's no doubt.  The evidence is everywhere.

From 2016 to 2020 the President was a boorish multimillionaire whose early history was that of a New York Democrat.  Picking up on the anger in the country, he converted himself into a populist Republican and ran the nation in a semi unhinged manner restrained only by as set of advisors that reigned him in, or simply just didn't do what he wanted right up until when he tried to retain control through a coup.  On the plus side, however, Mitch McConnell basically ran the judicial nomination system, and after decades of Democratic picks who regarded the Constitution as more of a loose set of guidelines than a law, and weak kneed Republican nominees who turned out to be disappointments, some real jurists were finally elected.  

Now we've reached the point where in Arizona there's a serious chance the next Governor will be an election denier, in Pennsylvania a quack doctor may be their next Senator, and in Wyoming we're going to elect a Congressional candidate who stabbed her predecessor in the back and claims to believe, although I very much doubt she does, that the election was stolen.  Indeed, if she doesn't believe it was stolen, that makes her all the worse for promoting lies.  In the Secretary of State's office the current interim occupant is another election denier, and in January Chuck Gray, who based his campaign on nothing else, is going to be elected to an office he shouldn't be holding.  The state's GOP, meanwhile, is led by an extreme right wing Trumpite.

Democracy, truly, is in peril.

How did this happen?

We've dealt with this before, but if we really look deeply at this election, what we're seeing is 1) a hardcore group of Americans who feel their culture is being attacked, and not without merit for that belief, and 2) a group of fellow travelers who would probably, quite frankly, join in any political movement as they either don't think their claimed beliefs through or they want to be on what seems to be the winning side.

Note that I didn't say that it was because people believe the election was stolen. Some do, but what is really the case for most of those people is that they want to believe the election was stolen.  

And they want to believe that, as they want to believe their nation was stolen.

Was it?

The culture wars have been going on in the US for a lot longer than pundits would have it.  Indeed, the United States has always had some sort of culture war going on, and It's always had more than one culture.  But by and large, its culture as a whole has been a Western European Christian one.

And by and large, it still is.

Attacks on that go back quite some time as well.  Indeed, one way it is sometimes dated is to go October 31, 1517, when Monk Martin Luther ostensibly nailed his 95 Theses to the Wittenberg Cathedral door.  In doing that Luther, who temperamentally should really never have been a cleric, unintentionally ushered in the age of individualism, which is always an attack on a culture as it ultimately must mean that an individual can define a culture himself, and sooner or later that leads to a sort of rampaging societal narcissism.

Which we have now.

Which means the 1517 date isn't a bad one from which to track the decay of Western European society, of which we are part.

Whether that's correct or not, we see larger, more radical attacks coming about in the late 18th Century. The celebrated French Revolution, a massive failure, was one such example.  The following of Communism and Communist Revolutions, which were ideologically and historically children of the French Revolution, are more recent examples which did real damage.

But through it all, the basic tenants of society remained.  Two genders.  Conventional relationships.  Marriage. A broad Christian concept of society, held even by non Christians. All of this was part of Western European, and more particularly, American, life.

That's been under attack since at least the 1920s, and very much under attack since the 1950s.

And that's what people are reacting to, albeit, much too late, and often on an instinctive level that ignores their own hypocrisy.

We just ran an item entitled Cis. That doesn't explain it all, but in the conversion of the GOP into a sort of Populist-Fascist Party, we see part of the reaction to that.  When people say the 2020 election was stolen, what they really mean, on an instinctive level, is that they want their culture back as the cultural norm, and any result contrary to that is a species of theft, as it's illegitimate.

Put another way, they don't accept that homosexuality is normal. They aren't accepting the damage done to marriage. They don't want a multicultural society of any kind.  

They also want Detroit of the 1950s back, and American industry back. They want Dayton Ohio back before it was modern Dayton. They want blue collar jobs that you work at all day long without a lot of thought, and when you knock off at 5, you go to the bar with your buddies, hit on the bar maid, and then go home to your wife.

They want to set the dial back.

But they don't want to set it all the way back, and that's what's so ironic.  Only parts. They probably just want to set it back to maybe 1985.  Not 1885, or 1485.

And they don't want to impose the societal rules that apply to themselves personally.  That is, other people should not be openly acting on self identified sexual concepts, but the disgruntled voters, assuming their inclinations are conventional, doesn't really want to return to a day when Playboy was still capable of being banned in some places, divorce required fault, and living in sin was heavily frowned upon.  Going back, in other words, is fine for me, where I like it, but shouldn't have to bind me otherwise.

And, in setting things back, you have to really honestly ask what you are setting them back to.

This isn't going on just in the United States.  It's going on elsewhere in the Western World.  Hungary and Poland provide two such examples, and they're not alone.  Just the other day, Sweden elevated to power a party that has its roots as a recent Neo Nazi movement.

So do they really believe the election was stolen?

I don't think they care.  And if they do mean that, they probably really mean that the election was stolen when Teddy Kennedy's immigration reforms became law in the early 1970s, and when the results of the Stonehill Riot didn't come out as expected.

Getting here was a long road.  Part of it was an American inability to really restrain the negative implications of technology that started to come in during the early 20th Century.  Film, in particular, brought a leveling impact on society nationwide, but it also brought in a depressing one.  Prior to the initial introduction of movies, a person might be able to indulge in their prurient interests, but it wasn't a very safe thing to do, and it'd become widely known, or risk becoming widely known, and condemned.  After movies came in, it was at first easy to indulge in that just by going to them. There were no laws that precluded anything from being shown on film, and some early silent movies were outright pornographic.  That brought in the Hayes Production Code, but the influence of money meant that was only able to hold back the tide.

Even while the production code was in effect, the improvements in film of all kinds, and in medial production, meant that leaps and bounds were taken in regard to the portrayal of women in society, and not in a good way, by the 40s and 50s.  Playboy broke the door down, and the Sexual Revolution of the 60s and 70s did what all wars do, destroy.

The Great Depression of the 30s played its role by bringing in the Federal Government in ways it had never operated before, and by effectively destroying the American System of economics, which had always blending government assistance with private, and often localized, economics.  Even by the mid 30s some were complaining about the impact of The New Deal on localized economies and cultures, such as "The Southern Agrarians" in I'll Take My Stand.  It was a losing battle, however, due to the great crisis, which was followed by a second great crisis; World War Two, and a third great crisis; The Cold War.  A nation that had to engage in that sort of struggle, or rather ongoing struggles, for a period of sixty years was one that was going to be geared towards economic magnitude and emphasize it above all else.  

It had to.

This was also the glory years, truly, for American industry and therefore for American blue collar workers.  European industry had been destroyed by the Second World War.  The British and French Empires collapsed.  The Soviet Union was our only contender in the world, but it wasn't that much of an economic contender.

So no harm in relaxing the standards a bit, eh?

Legal standards certainly relaxed.  A Supreme Court which had taken the Lochner view prior to Franklin Roosevelt's threat to pack it relented and then, during the long Democratic period in power, followed by Republicans who were economic conservatives but were in the middle of the road, became effectively a third branch of government in the way it never had been before.  And again, at first this was necessary, as the Supreme Court smashed through the vestiges of legal color barriers and forced the country to live up to its founding documents of the Revolutionary and Civil War period for the first time since the 1870s.

All that was necessary, but like most things, if the first helping is good, a second or third is warranted.  The large size of the government did not abate at any point. The Court, having addressed concerns that it really needed to, went on to things which it neither had a need to nor really had any legal ability to address.  The ever expansion outward of the economy was never reigned in, and Americans were converted from people into consumers.  And, finally, a Democratic Party that had struggled between liberalism and reaction, freed itself of its reactionary wing but launched into first its New Deal wing, and then following Watergate, it's very liberal wing.  While the latter occurred, the Republican Party largely stood by the wayside until the mid 1970s, when the reaction started.

The party reaction started then, but there had been reactions all along, and they spread and changed during the 1960s.  It was also during the 1960s that the Baby Boomer generation, all over the Western World, enjoying economic largess on an unprecedented scale, began to adopt in a large way the more radicalized, in every sense, features of the 1950s.  This eroded social institutions from below while the Courts eroded them, in the US, from above.  Governments in the West attempted to address this, but largely post 1968 by accommodations.  Social institutions of all types began to try to react during the 1960s as well, with many that had traditionally been very conservative in their outlook moving towards the left.

The reaction didn't begin to develop until the mid 1970s, but by that point so much had changed that finding a point on the compass was difficult.  In the United States, Reagan came in and moved the needle back towards the right.  In the United Kingdom, Margaret Thatcher did the same.  But even as that occurred, most of the progress, if viewed that way, was fairly limited in real terms to economic matters on a large scale, with very little on the small scale.  Social conservatism rose in the late 70s and early 80s, but not enough to really disrupt the overall direction of things, and the Court moved only from left to left center.

Given this, real systemic and social problems that set in soon after the end of the Vietnam War never ended up being addressed.  Industry began to flood overseas without any effort to arrest it.  Social changes brought about by the courts continued on.  Social change at the local level was adopted wholesale by certain "elites" and the entertainment industry, to some degree in ways that would be regarded as shocking today.  Damage to social structure was ongoing.  Immigration reform brought in by Ted Kennedy and his fellow Democrats that reflected a concept of global social justice and 1950s style unabated economic opportunity set in so much that it's never been capable of being addressed.

While this occurred, the hard hat class lost their jobs.  Men who had provided incomes for their families no longer could.  Man and women had to go to work to support their families. The concept of simply abandoning women and children to the support of the government fixed in.  Institutions long held sacrosanct were attacked.

So, in essence, Baby Boomers who grew up in their parent's 1950s and early 1960s (with the early 1960s really being part, culturally, of the 1950s) and then attacked it, looked back to that past and hoped to live in it, finding they could not.  But not just that, the "Greatest Generation" that fought World War Two, looked back at the glory of the 40s and 50s, and the social support of the 1930s, and couldn't figure out how this had happened.

The World War Two Generation, once condemned by the Boomers and now universally praised by them, has largely passed away. But the Boomers, elderly though they now are, has not, and many of them are irate.  And their children, who grew up in the broken world the Boomers created struggle as well, kept down in various real ways by the Boomers, but also looking for a raft in the flood.

And then entered Donald Trump.

Like Adolph Hitler of the late 1920s and early 1930s, Trump has a message to deliver to his followers and it is that you can go back, and that this is not your fault.  Hitler told the Germans that losing World War One was not their fault, even though it certainly was, and that they'd been betrayed by the Jews.  He would take them back, and not back to Imperial Germany, but to a Germany far beyond that which existed only in myth, when the Germans were rising out of the forest to conquer the world by right.

Trump promises to take Americans back, to Make America Great Again, and to take it back as well. Back to an era when we were the only power on the globe, the only one making things, and when all was right in the neighborhood.  And, implicitly, just as Hitler promised to restore German greatness to the exclusion of all others whom the Volk had to deal with, Trump implicitly does the same.  Trump's America is a white, male, Protestant one.

This narrow view of the United States doesn't reflect a country that actually ever existed, but it does completely buy off on two foundational myths of the country, one being the country was founded in much the same way betrayed in The Patriot, and the other being the less Puritan one of the 1950s.  As odd as it may seem, Trumpist Americans see the country as a combination of strongly endowed with Puritan heritage while enjoying the pinups on the wall at a working class bar.

You cannot, of course, have both, which is the further irony.  Every Trumpite who wants to "make America great again" and sees the country, as many strongly do, as a result of Manifest Destiny, would need to first consider that those early forebearors would be horrified by much personal conduct exhibited by average Americans today. Trump himself is basically a serial polygamist, something that up until recently was regarded as beyond the Pale for public figures outside of the entertainment industry.  Divorced and remarried Americans who are populist standard-bearers are bearing a standard which, at its core, would not sanction that.  We could go on.

Much of this is, we'd note, a failure of Conservatism. This all should have been something that Conservatives addressed, but they failed to effectively do so.  Perhaps at least through Reagan they simply lacked the power to do so.  They do lack the power to do so now, which explains the abandonment of democracy by a surprising number. But make no mistake, Conservatism and populist, let alone espousing Illiberal Democracy or fascism, are not at all the same thing.  Conservatives are failing right now, as they have not taken on the illiberalism of the Trump forces that have stolen their banner.

We should hope they recover the courage to do so.  Otherwise, large sections of the American public are falling into delusion, and the fate of the country rides on them being awakened from it.

Conservatives have good and valid points about the antidemocratic nature of the left that got us here.  Only recently, it seems, have American progressives woken up to the need to support democracy. Before that, rule by a legal aristocracy was fine with them.  But resorting to exclusion and denial of the vote, and the will of the voters, will not be the long term answer to anything. Rather, it sews the seeds of ultimate destruction, first to the true Conservative cause, and secondly to democracy itself.

The Agony of being a Catholic Voter in 2022

Catholics, according to the Church, are obligated to vote, and to do so in an informed manner.

And, I'll add to that, those who like to say that religion should stay out of politics are grossly misinformed, at least to the extent they mean that religion should be held personally and not influence a person's vote.  A truly held set of religious beliefs ought to inform everything a person does.

This year is simply agonizing for the well-informed, thoughtful, Catholic voter.

In my area, where I will vote, two women contest for the position of Congressman.

The Republican expresses pro-life views, and views which suggest that she holds traditional views on the definition of marriage, two positions which are taken very seriously, even definitively so, by serious Catholics.

She also holds a mix of conservative views on various other issues, some of which I agree with, and some of which I do not, but none of which are moral issues, or at least not closely so.

The Democrat holds pro abortion and "progressive"  views on the definition of marriage, and a host of other liberal views, some of which I agree with, and some of which I do not, but none of which are moral issues, or at least not closely so.

So, no dilemma, in weighing the voting scale, eh?

Well, the Republican has also expressed the view that the election was stolen, and her entire campaign was basically a stab in the back on the incumbent who stood by principals.  In order to advance her campaign, she went from doubts, to being certain of election theft, and is now expressing views regarding the current administration which might charitably be described as nutty, even going so far as to suggest that inflation is a Democratic plot designed to bring about a liberal "Utopia".  If I'm to take her asserted positions as actually held, it would mean she's believing in wild flights of dangerous fantasy, thereby making her a scary potential office holder.  If I am to assume that they're taken for the purpose of being elected, she's lying and an enemy of democracy.

And there are no viable third party choices, really.  One is from the far right, and the other from the Libertarian Party.

The far right candidate, running on the Constitutional Party ticket, is probably every bit as far right as the Republican, but with a very obvious Protestant Evangelical bent to her campaign.  She doesn't say the vile things that the Republican does, and to the extent that her positions sound nutty, they sound nutty in the way that a position expressed by a person with little experience in the world and little education might voice them.  Innocently, in other words.

Maybe I haven't listened enough to her, however.  Frankly, I've disregarded her all along as a candidate that will obviously make no impact in the current election. (I subsequently listed to the debate she was in, and it's relatively clear that she's in the "coup didn't happen camp", although as noted, she probably genuinely feels that way, as opposed to Hageman, whom may not).

The Libertarian is a Libertarian, and there's no point in even going there.

A person could protest vote for the Constitutional Party candidate, but that's all it would be, a protest.  But then, in order to make that protest, a person ought to know what she really believes.  Perhaps I should go back and listed to her in the recent debate, which the GOP candidate skipped out on.

The only realistic hope of defeating the candidate that's either lying or coming off the rails is to vote for the Democrat, which is voting for a position which is normally gravely morally objectionable.

And then we have the Secretary of State's office, where a co-religious is running unopposed based on a stolen election theory along and is otherwise not a candidate which I'd prefer to consider.  A protest is surely mandated there, but it'll have to be a write-in protest.

And so the state's politics have come to this.  It feels like being a German going to the polls in 1932.

Defining the terms 1. Yes, we're a democracy (and a republic as well).

The American system of government is democratic. We are a democracy

There's an odd objection in some quarters that arises from time to time to calling the US a democracy. At other times, we're proud of it.  During World War One we became, for instance, the Arsenal of Democracy.  Not the Arsenal of Republics.

Here's the deal.

Let's define democracy.

Merriam-Webster states the following:

Definition of democracy

1a: government by the peopleespecially : rule of the majority

b: a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections

2: a political unit that has a democratic government

3capitalized : the principles and policies of the Democratic party in the U.S.from emancipation Republicanism to New Deal Democracy— C. M. Roberts

4: the common people especially when constituting the source of political authority

5: the absence of hereditary or arbitrary class distinctions or privileges

Some might say, well so what, but that's about as good of set of definitions as any.

Given as we're discussing, principally, the means of choosing our leaders, we can probably exclude topics 3, 4, and 5, for the most part.

That leaves categories 1 and 2.

Some people, on this topic, like to say "we're a republic, not a democracy".  That displays, however, an erroneous understanding of what a republic is.

Let's go to the same source.  It states:

Definition of republic

1a(1): a government having a chief of state who is not a monarch and who in modern times is usually a president

(2): a political unit (such as a nation) having such a form of government

b(1): a government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law

(2): a political unit (such as a nation) having such a form of government

c: a usually specified republican government of a political unitthe French Fourth Republic

2: a body of persons freely engaged in a specified activitythe republic of letters

3: a constituent political and territorial unit of the former nations of Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, or Yugoslavia

We can obviously exclude 2 and 3 here.

Categories 1(a)(b) and (c) apply to the United States.

We choose our national legislature through democratic means.  We vote for them.  That makes us a democratic republic.

We're a democracy and a republic, just as the United Kingdom is a parliamentary democracy.

The United States has always been a democracy, but over time, its democratic nature has expanded enormously.  Only men could vote originally.  Indeed, in some colonies only propertied men could vote.  Native Americans and the enslaved couldn't vote, no matter where they were born, either.  Now all of this is in the past, and the voting age is 18, which it was not originally.

Also, we directly elect Senators, which was at one time not the case.  They were originally chosen by State Legislatures, although some case can be made that this might have worked better than the current system.

Operating against this, as the government has expanded enormously, certain legislative functions have been turned over to regulatory bodies, which do not function democratically, although they are required to take public input for their decisions.  And the Court started acting extra judicially in the 20th Century, which isn't democratic.  Both of these things have recently been scaled back, which has been a subject of controversy.

And we're not a "pure democracy".  No modern nation is.  A pure democracy is one in which the citizens vote on everything.  Examples of that are rare, with only ancient Athens coming to mind.  A pure democracy wouldn't work, for obvious reasons, for any sizable nation, or perhaps any modern nation of any type.

Before closing, we should note that we're a federal republic.  I.e, a system that brings in regions into the larger government.  So, once again, our national legislature is based upon regions, i.e., states.  We're not the only nation to have such an arrangement, by any means. Many do, and the varieties of that vary enormously.

Before we depart, the United States has traditionally been a "Liberal Democracy", which doesn't mean what it might at first seem to mean.  The Collins Dictionary defines a Liberal Democracy as follows:

a democracy based on the recognition of individual rights and freedoms, in which decisions from direct or representative processes prevail in many policy areas

Pretty broad, but other definitions get quite lengthy.

Recently we wrote on Illiberal Democracy.  Wikipedia defines Illiberal democracy as the following:

An illiberal democracy describes a governing system in which, although elections take place, citizens are cut off from knowledge about the activities of those who exercise real power because of the lack of civil liberties; thus it does not constitute an open society.

Proponents of illiberal democracy, and it does have proponents, would not define it that way. They'd probably define it as a system of government in which leaders are chosen democratically, but within an overarching set of agreed to principals and values which supersede and override democratic impulses, and control what can legitimately be debated.

Helpful?  Probably not much, but keeping in mind the deeper meaning of the terms is useful.

Basically, if people get to vote, and the vote determines the government, it's a democracy.  If people get to vote, but that doesn't matter, it isn't.

Illiberal Democracy. A Manifesto?

There's something really scary going on in American politics.

The left doesn't seem to grasp it, and most of the rank and file on the populist right that are advancing it are only dimply aware of it.

Relatively recently, we ran an item on illiberal democracy.  Illiberal democracy is something that most Americans have never heard of, including those who are supporting it right now.  But it's not only being advanced, it's coalescing into a defined movement, and it seems clear that there's plenty of people in it who aren't worried about democracy at all, as they look at democracy as liberal democracy and regard it as illegitimate.

And just recently, some of those backing this view, issued a manifesto.

It states:

National Conservatism: A Statement Of Principles

A world of independent nations is the only alternative to universalist ideologies seeking to impose a homogenizing, locality-destroying imperium over the entire globe.

JUNE 15, 2022

12:01 AM

THE EDMUND BURKE FOUNDATION

NOTE: The following statement was drafted by Will Chamberlain, Christopher DeMuth, Rod Dreher, Yoram Hazony, Daniel McCarthy, Joshua Mitchell, N.S. Lyons, John O’Sullivan, and R.R. Reno on behalf of the Edmund Burke Foundation. The statement reflects a distinctly Western point of view. However, we look forward to future discourse and collaboration with movements akin to our own in India, Japan, and other non-Western nations. Signatories’ institutional affiliations are included for identification purposes only, and do not imply an endorsement on the part of any institution other than the Edmund Burke Foundation.

We are citizens of Western nations who have watched with alarm as the traditional beliefs, institutions, and liberties underpinning life in the countries we love have been progressively undermined and overthrown.

We see the tradition of independent, self-governed nations as the foundation for restoring a proper public orientation toward patriotism and courage, honor and loyalty, religion and wisdom, congregation and family, man and woman, the sabbath and the sacred, and reason and justice. We are conservatives because we see such virtues as essential to sustaining our civilization. We see such a restoration as the prerequisite for recovering and maintaining our freedom, security, and prosperity.

We emphasize the idea of the nation because we see a world of independent nations—each pursuing its own national interests and upholding national traditions that are its own—as the only genuine alternative to universalist ideologies now seeking to impose a homogenizing, locality-destroying imperium over the entire globe.

Drawing on this heritage, we therefore affirm the following principles:

1. National Independence. We wish to see a world of independent nations. Each nation capable of self-government should chart its own course in accordance with its own particular constitutional, linguistic, and religious inheritance. Each has a right to maintain its own borders and conduct policies that will benefit its own people. We endorse a policy of rearmament by independent self-governing nations and of defensive alliances whose purpose is to deter imperialist aggression.

2. Rejection of Imperialism and Globalism. We support a system of free cooperation and competition among nation-states, working together through trade treaties, defensive alliances, and other common projects that respect the independence of their members. But we oppose transferring the authority of elected governments to transnational or supranational bodies—a trend that pretends to high moral legitimacy even as it weakens representative government, sows public alienation and distrust, and strengthens the influence of autocratic regimes. Accordingly, we reject imperialism in its various contemporary forms: We condemn the imperialism of China, Russia, and other authoritarian powers. But we also oppose the liberal imperialism of the last generation, which sought to gain power, influence, and wealth by dominating other nations and trying to remake them in its own image.

3. National Government. The independent nation-state is instituted to establish a more perfect union among the diverse communities, parties, and regions of a given nation, to provide for their common defense and justice among them, and to secure the general welfare and the blessings of liberty for this time and for future generations. We believe in a strong but limited state, subject to constitutional restraints and a division of powers. We recommend a drastic reduction in the scope of the administrative state and the policy-making judiciary that displace legislatures representing the full range of a nation’s interests and values. We recommend the federalist principle, which prescribes a delegation of power to the respective states or subdivisions of the nation so as to allow greater variation, experimentation, and freedom. However, in those states or subdivisions in which law and justice have been manifestly corrupted, or in which lawlessness, immorality, and dissolution reign, national government must intervene energetically to restore order.

4. God and Public Religion. No nation can long endure without humility and gratitude before God and fear of his judgment that are found in authentic religious tradition. For millennia, the Bible has been our surest guide, nourishing a fitting orientation toward God, to the political traditions of the nation, to public morals, to the defense of the weak, and to the recognition of things rightly regarded as sacred. The Bible should be read as the first among the sources of a shared Western civilization in schools and universities, and as the rightful inheritance of believers and non-believers alike. Where a Christian majority exists, public life should be rooted in Christianity and its moral vision, which should be honored by the state and other institutions both public and private. At the same time, Jews and other religious minorities are to be protected in the observance of their own traditions, in the free governance of their communal institutions, and in all matters pertaining to the rearing and education of their children. Adult individuals should be protected from religious or ideological coercion in their private lives and in their homes.

5. The Rule of Law. We believe in the rule of law. By this we mean that citizens and foreigners alike, and both the government and the people, must accept and abide by the laws of the nation. In America, this means accepting and living in accordance with the Constitution of 1787, the amendments to it, duly enacted statutory law, and the great common law inheritance. All agree that the repair and improvement of national legal traditions and institutions is at times necessary. But necessary change must take place through the law. This is how we preserve our national traditions and our nation itself. Rioting, looting, and other unacceptable public disorder should be swiftly put to an end.

6. Free Enterprise. We believe that an economy based on private property and free enterprise is best suited to promoting the prosperity of the nation and accords with traditions of individual liberty that are central to the Anglo-American political tradition. We reject the socialist principle, which supposes that the economic activity of the nation can be conducted in accordance with a rational plan dictated by the state. But the free market cannot be absolute. Economic policy must serve the general welfare of the nation. Today, globalized markets allow hostile foreign powers to despoil America and other countries of their manufacturing capacity, weakening them economically and dividing them internally. At the same time, trans-national corporations showing little loyalty to any nation damage public life by censoring political speech, flooding the country with dangerous and addictive substances and pornography, and promoting obsessive, destructive personal habits. A prudent national economic policy should promote free enterprise, but it must also mitigate threats to the national interest, aggressively pursue economic independence from hostile powers, nurture industries crucial for national defense, and restore and upgrade manufacturing capabilities critical to the public welfare. Crony capitalism, the selective promotion of corporate profit-making by organs of state power, should be energetically exposed and opposed.

7. Public Research. At a time when China is rapidly overtaking America and the Western nations in fields crucial for security and defense, a Cold War-type program modeled on DARPA, the “moon-shot,” and SDI is needed to focus large-scale public resources on scientific and technological research with military applications, on restoring and upgrading national manufacturing capacity, and on education in the physical sciences and engineering. On the other hand, we recognize that most universities are at this point partisan and globalist in orientation and vehemently opposed to nationalist and conservative ideas. Such institutions do not deserve taxpayer support unless they rededicate themselves to the national interest. Education policy should serve manifest national needs.

8. Family and Children. We believe the traditional family is the source of society’s virtues and deserves greater support from public policy. The traditional family, built around a lifelong bond between a man and a woman, and on a lifelong bond between parents and children, is the foundation of all other achievements of our civilization. The disintegration of the family, including a marked decline in marriage and childbirth, gravely threatens the wellbeing and sustainability of democratic nations. Among the causes are an unconstrained individualism that regards children as a burden, while encouraging ever more radical forms of sexual license and experimentation as an alternative to the responsibilities of family and congregational life. Economic and cultural conditions that foster stable family and congregational life and child-raising are priorities of the highest order.

9. Immigration. Immigration has made immense contributions to the strength and prosperity of Western nations. But today’s penchant for uncontrolled and unassimilated immigration has become a source of weakness and instability, not strength and dynamism, threatening internal dissension and ultimately dissolution of the political community. We note that Western nations have benefited from both liberal and restrictive immigration policies at various times. We call for much more restrictive policies until these countries summon the wit to establish more balanced, productive, and assimilationist policies. Restrictive policies may sometimes include a moratorium on immigration.

10. Race. We believe that all men are created in the image of God and that public policy should reflect that fact. No person’s worth or loyalties can be judged by the shape of his features, the color of his skin, or the results of a lab test. The history of racialist ideology and oppression and its ongoing consequences require us to emphasize this truth. We condemn the use of state and private institutions to discriminate and divide us against one another on the basis of race. The cultural sympathies encouraged by a decent nationalism offer a sound basis for conciliation and unity among diverse communities. The nationalism we espouse respects, and indeed combines, the unique needs of particular minority communities and the common good of the nation as a whole.

Okay, first we'll note, what the heck are we doing linking this entire thing in this way and quoting it. Shouldn't we just link this in.

Well, we intend to comment on this at length, quite frankly.  This is important in the context of our times.

Let's start first with the back end, who the singers are.  I don't know most of them, rude peasant than I am, but I do some.  Here's the complete list:

Signed:

Michael Anton

Hillsdale College Kirby Center
Hillsdale College
Spectator
Hillsdale College Van Andel Graduate School of Government
Center for the Renewal of Culture (Croatia)
Daily Wire
Conservative Partnership Institute
National Review
Edmund Burke Foundation
Internet Accountability Project
Modern Reformation
Conservative Partnership Institute
Election Transparency Initiative
Hoover Institution
Conservative Partnership Institute
Hudson Institute
New York Post
American Conservative
American Conservative
American Reformer
European Conservative (Austria)
Hudson Institute
Merion West (United Kingdom)
Nazione Futura (Italy)
Asia Times
Project 21
Edmund Burke Foundation (Israel)
Newsweek
Trinity Western University (Canada)
Edmund Burke Foundation (Israel)
National Review
Troy University
Federalist
American Greatness
Nasarean.org
New Criterion
Turning Point USA
Claremont Institute
Daily Wire
Center for Immigration Studies
Jagiellonian University (Poland)
Ethics and Public Policy Center
Upheaval
Intercollegiate Studies Institute
Washington Times
Conservative Partnership Institute
Claremont Institute Center for the American Way of Life
AMDC Films
UnHerd
Georgetown University
Mathias Corvinus Collegium (Hungary)
Danube Institute (United Kingdom)
Danube Institute
New Founding
Zephyr Institute
Futuro Presente (Portugal)
New Direction (Poland)
European Centre for Law and Justice (France)
Claremont Institute
First Things
Townhall
Manhattan Institute
Center for Family and Human Rights
American Moment
Common Sense Society
American Moment
Regnery Publishing
Air War College
Be The People News
Founders Fund
Center for Renewing America
Edmund Burke Foundation
Liz Wheeler Show
Claremont Institute
Boise State University

Larry Arnn

Amber Athey

David Azerrad

Stephen Bartulica

Megan Basham

Rachel Bovard

Michael Brendan Dougherty

David Brog

Will Chamberlain

Timon Cline

Edward Corrigan

Ken Cuccinelli

Victor Davis Hanson

Sen. Jim DeMint

Christopher DeMuth

Miranda Devine

Emile Doak

Rod Dreher

Ben Dunson

Alvino-Mario Fantini

John Fonte

Henry George

Francesco Giubilei

David Goldman

Derryck Green

Ofir Haivry

Josh Hammer

Grant Havers

Yoram Hazony

Nate Hochman

Clifford Humphrey

Emily Jashinsky

Julie Kelly

Fr. Benedict Kiely

Roger Kimball

Charlie Kirk

Tom Klingenstein

Michael Knowles

Mark Krikorian

Ryszard Legutko

Brad Littlejohn

N.S. Lyons

Daniel McCarthy

Michael McKenna

Mark Meadows

Arthur Milikh

Amanda Milius

Curt Mills

Joshua Mitchell

Balázs Orban

John O’Sullivan, CBE

Melissa O’Sullivan

Matthew Peterson

Nathan Pinkoski

Jaime Nogueira Pinto

Tomasz Poręba

Grégor Puppinck

David Reaboi

R.R. Reno

Julio Rosas

Christopher Rufo

Austin Ruse

Saurabh Sharma

Marion Smith

Nick Solheim

Thomas Spence

Daniel Strand

Carol Swain

Peter Thiel

Russ Vought

Anna Wellisz

Liz Wheeler

Ryan Williams

Scott Yenor

Now, if you are like me, most of those names you don't recognize, but some you probably do, if you are  follower politics, in any event.

And that's interesting in and of itself.

Note some of the names.

Mark Meadows, the former advisor to Trump whom we now know, unless you refuse to believe the testimony of his aid, sat largely on his hands during the recent coup attempt, and who at first cooperated, and then ceased cooperating, with the January 6 Committee.  According to at least one report, his aid was the recipient of one of the "you know what to do" texts, and that Meadows was the source of the instruction, received second hand.

And then there's Rod Dreher, crabby columnist and author of The Benedict Option, who at one time was regarding Western Society as basically a nearly lost cause, and therefore advocating for the aforementioned option. He's known to be fascinated with Illiberal Democracy, and featured prominently in the attention conservatives are now giving to Viktor Orbán.

And we have Victor Davis Hanson, the historian, farmer, and conservative columnist. I love his historical works, but as a columnist he's been hardcore in the Trump camp in an unyielding fashion.

And there's also R. R. Reno, the editor of the excellent journal First Things, but who recently gave an interview that was mildly sympathetic with the views of Patrick Dineen, who regards Liberal Democracy as a failure.

Now, not all of these people are ones that I'd put in this interesting group.  A lot of them are just conservatives.  But that some are in this group, and are prominent in it, is interesting, and telling.

Let's switch to another name for a second, that of Lauren Boebert

Now, nobody is going to believe that Boebert is an intellectual heavyweight.  Far from it.  But she is a well known populist figure right now, and she accordingly shows up in populist shows, like the recent Hageman rally in Casper, Wyoming.  Boebert recently stated:

The reason we had so many overreaching regulations in our nation is because the church complied. The Church is supposed to direct the government, the government is not supposed to direct the church.

That is not how our Founding Fathers intended it. And I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk. That’s not in the Constitution, it was in a stinking letter, and it means nothing like what they say it does.

Boebert, because she's in the news, got a lot of attention for saying this, but she's not unique in having said something like this recently.  A Southern women candidate recently declared that in her state, the church was the state, which is quite a bit more radical than what Boebert stated.

How does this related to "National Conservatism"?

Well, maybe it doesn't.

But maybe it does.

What can be said is this. For the first time since the 1850s we've reached a point in our political discourse where there's one, maybe two, political views that regard the other as wholly illegitimate.  Those espousing illiberal democracy hold that view. All democracy, they argue, must take place within a set of shared, and dictated, beliefs and philosophies.  The drafters of the statement on "National Conservatism" come close to saying that.  Some of them pretty clearly believe that.  Only in that context can you admire Viktor Orbán (or Putin) and only in that context does an effort to overturn a legitimate election make sense.

In that context, we'd note, at the rank and file level, much less justification of the underlying tenants is even necessary.  The political opposition simply became the enemy, whose views are not to be taken seriously, and whose votes don't really count.

Lots of current underlying politics, moreover, makes more sense in this context.  The loss of jobs and the constant ongoing influx of immigrants, for example, takes on another aspect if jobs have been exported to nations that don't share our culture and if the incoming immigrants, in at least some cases, do not share that culture either.  The danger of a reaction to immigration was always present in the post Ted Kennedy immigration regime, as prior to that nearly all immigrants in fact did share the same European based culture.  "Diversity is our strength" has been stated a zillion times, but there's really no evidence whatsoever that this is true and to a large degree average people never believed it.  As the blue collar world has undergone massive change, that was bound to develop into a crisis point.

So too are all of the recent left-wing assaults on ancient institutions.  Radically changed official views on gender, very little of which is based on science, was bound to upset at a street level, and people who have a fundamentally much more traditional view cannot help but react to it.

All of this is consistent with traditional conservatism, we'd note.  But one thing that conservatives in office were always prone to do was compromise, which the populist feel is betrayal.  Compromise does mean that things have continued to move, and largely leftward, up until very recently.

So now we have not only a split in the Republican Party, but there's something deeper going on.  Part of the party does not so much believe that Trump won the election as it does that Democratic votes, coming from the left, were illegitimate by their very nature.  They're looking for a different kind of country.

When Robyn Belinsky stated, in the recent Wyoming Congressional debate, in a muddled babbling way, that "we're not a democracy we're a republic", and then went on to some nonsensical statement about the states, she was trying to seemingly articulate, at the street level, this view.  The states, some now hold, can overrule a national election in the ultimate example of state nullification, in those instances in which an election isn't true to an overarching set of agreed cultural principles.

No doubt, not all of the signators to the document trying to usher in a National Conservative movement hold this view.  Many are probably just deeply conservative, and most conservatives would agree with most of the principals.

But underlying the times there's something else going on.

Related Threads:

Illiberal Democracy.