A View on the Right

BY Hank Thayer

[This is piece comes courtesy of founding member Hank Thayer. Views expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Institute or its members.]

In 1955 William F. Buckley founded the National Review. One of the first issues he addressed was the relationship between conservatism and the political Right. It may come as a surprise to some, but while these two entities share many ideas and positions, they are not identical. 

One great service Buckley performed at the time was to draw a sharp distinction between the worldviews of the conservative center-right and the radical far-right. It’s a distinction which has held true, and served us well, for about half a century. But now the distinction seems to be breaking down. 

Conservatism is in crisis. 

Writers have traced the roots of the problem back to different events: the rise of the Tea Party, talk radio, the Internet, the ascendance of the religious right, the Laffer Curve, the disappearance of a unifying enemy at the end of the Cold War, or even Nixon’s Southern Strategy. There is surely some truth to each of these ideas. The debate over which elements are most important can take place elsewhere. And the true cause of the crisis may never be clear. 

For me, as one of those center-right conservatives, what is clear is we need a way forward. The purpose of this piece is to enumerate a set of principles I believe we must embrace, assert and reassert.

Opposition to Racism. Conservatives must explicitly reject, and not simply eschew, racism. Silence on the issue of race has led to several bad results. First, it has allowed the Left to label conservatives as soft on racism at best, and active racists at worst. And the label has stuck: for instance, the fact that both Bush 41 and Bush 43 had more ethnically diverse cabinets than anything the Democrats had had to that point had little impact on public perception. 

Second, silence on racism has had the effect of attracting racists to the GOP and conservatism. We now see the Republican Party essentially overrun by what were once called Dixiecrats, much to its detriment. 

Third, it has made it much harder to attract voters from minority groups, voters who might hold conservative views on the issues but stay away from conservative politics because of a perceived hostility towards them. Conservatives need to explicitly and forcefully assert that racism is antithetical to American principles, as properly understood -- an assertion which happens to be true.

Support for Enlightenment Principles. The Enlightenment has been under attack from the Left for decades. These attacks have taken the form of postmodernism, identity politics, and a general distrust of science and the scientific method. The far Right has now joined the attack with its own identity politics and attacks on science in the form of religion or sheer orneriness. 

But the principles of the Enlightenment are central to our civilization. Human rights, Liberty, and Science are what make our civilization work. If we lose them, we lose everything.

"Before the Counter-Enlightenment" by zachstern is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Support for Science. Science is central to modern civilization; we reject it at our peril. Science is not, or at least need not be, in conflict with religion. Social or political dogma, however, is in conflict with both science and properly understood religious faith. We must support science as a way of understanding the world and as a way of advancing our civilization, and we must resist the people who use dogma to oppose it.

Caution About Unintended Consequences. To be conservative is not simply to oppose change; a STOP sign can do that. Conservatives consider what could go wrong before agreeing to change. 

For example, many on the Left have proposed making college free. But we can, and should, recognize that something must be done about the cost of education without signing onto this magical thinking. It should be obvious, but I will lay it out anyway: Nothing is free. What it would really mean is that more of the cost would be borne by the taxpayers. 

All else being equal, this would not be a real problem. But all else is never equal. Federal tuition assistance, however well intentioned, and however otherwise beneficial, has led to a rapid increase in college costs. Since the early 1980s college cost has grown at three times the rate of inflation. This additional money has mostly gone to expanding staff, even as more and more teaching is done by TAs and adjuncts. 

Adding another trough of federal money to feed the monster is unlikely to rein in the growing cost of college. On the other hand, there was some legitimate concern about expanding the definition of marriage to include same sex couples; there was a fear that the polygamists would be next. But the actual results have been mostly, or entirely, beneficial. So, not all change is bad.

Fiscal Restraint. History is littered with civilizations that came to grief through out-of-control debt. We need not embrace a dogmatic insistence on a balanced budget each year to recognize that we need to get the deficit under control. And all options must be considered. 

There are many on the Right who insist we can get the budget under control by cutting wasteful government spending. We should listen to them and see exactly which wasteful programs they intend to cut. But we should also recognize that people have been insisting that budget cuts alone can reduce the deficit since the 1980s, and it has not happened yet.

Internationalism. There has been a debate in recent years between dogmatic proponents of globalization and dogmatic opponents. We need to recognize that international cooperation, trade, and competition is usually, but not always, beneficial. 

For example, international trade has benefited most people. But the dogmatic insistence on open markets in the name of free trade, even as our trading partners in Asia and Europe protect their domestic markets, has had two serious consequences. First, it has allowed foreign companies an unfair advantage which has put many Americans out of work. 

Second, it has allowed isolationists a hard data point to hang their polemics on as they rail against globalization. We need international agreements, from NATO to NAFTA to Open Skies. But we have to balance the benefits of these agreements with a reasoned concern for the welfare of our own people and the health of our country.

There Are Real Threats and Enemies. It used to be the liberals who insisted we could get along with the Soviets, and the Far Left that insisted any concern about Communist malfeasance was paranoia or McCarthyism or xenophobia. Now the Far Right has joined the chorus insisting that we have nothing to fear from Russia. 

The fact is that we have real enemies. Russia, the Peoples Republic of China, and various Islamist groups would like nothing more than to tear down the United States of America. We are, or at least traditionally have tried to be, the foremost proponents of Enlightenment principles: Human Rights, Liberty, and Science. These principles are a direct threat to authoritarian rule. Our very existence, as an exemplar of these principles, makes us a target. So we must guard against both overt and covert attacks by authoritarian states and movements.

Rust Never Sleeps. There is no ultimate solution to any of the challenges facing us. The world is improve-able but not perfectible. People, either through folly, evil intent, or simple corruption, will undermine even the finest laws and principles. So we must consistently advance the principles of good government and Enlightenment civilization and guard them against corruption. There is no utopia to build, only a civilization to maintain.

Some people will surely wonder why these seemingly obvious notions need to be enumerated and upheld. The answer is in the sorry state of American discourse in general and the degenerated state of American conservatism in particular. 

Others may view the Far Right as a balance to the Far Left and figure we will be okay as long as a reasonable balance is maintained. But thinkers throughout history have warned about the calamity that follows when the center fails to hold. Every civilization needs a conservative movement, a center-right if you will, to act as an anchor, to keep Left and Right from tearing society apart with their passions.

For that reason alone we should all hope for a recovery in the conservative movement and a return to the fundamental principles which attracted so many in the first place.

Hank Thayer received his Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Massachusetts, and holds both a B.S. and a Masters in Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. After serving as a U.S. Army Infantry Officer in the late 1980s, he has spent most of his professional life working in manufacturing. In addition to being an amateur historian he is a fair-to-middling shade tree mechanic.

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The Modern Whig Institute is a 501(c)(3) civic research and education foundation dedicated to the fundamental American principles of representative government, ordered liberty, capitalism, due process and the rule of law.

Opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Institute or its members.