On Abandoning Conservatism

Or: ‘The Conservative Desire to Moderate’

Most modern rightists view conservatism as a philosophy which ultimately had noble ideas and desires but was unable to achieve its ends. Even those who vocally disassociate themselves from conservatism still cling to this belief, evidenced by any variation of “Conservatism does not conserve,” or appeals to “true conservatism” or “real conservatism,” or by asking, “What are you conserving?” Despite holding this tragic view of conservatism, many in the Modern Right argue that conservatism must be discarded because “they lost.”¹ Instead, I maintain that the Modern Right has totally misunderstood conservatism and why it should be rejected. Conservatism should not be rejected because it “lost”; it must be rejected because it moderates.

Moderation as the Foundation of Conservatism

The one thing that unifies all variants of conservatism is a desire to moderate. It is a philosophy of anti-radicalism. Neoconservatism existed to oppose the increasingly radical American Left of the 1960s and 1970s, trying to maintain the last vestiges of 1940s leftism while moderating both the Modern Left and Right. National Review existed to oppose libertarian radicalism and isolationist Americanism, moderating both sides by singlehandedly redefining the conservative position as being in favor of “sensible” economic, foreign, and social interventions (all of which kept drifting leftward).

The paleoconservatives present an interesting case. Distinct from the neoconservative and National Review types, they provide a unique form of moderation. Paleoconservatism is ultimately an ideology of institutionalism: it is forced to revise American history from being fundamentally founded upon liberty, local autonomy, and other radical ideals into being a history of “ancient” institutions which valiant conservatives sought to protect. Otherwise, the paleoconservatives would have to admit that they are aberrant and ahistorical in the American context, which had radical influences. This anti-radical philosophy would, of course, draw extensively from the works of the famous Whig parliamentarian Edmund Burke and would seek to promote the Enlightenment-era economic policies of Alexander Hamilton. At its origin in the 1950s, when the meaning of “conservative” was transitioned from a slur to a respectable label by Russell Kirk, it was a movement which sought, in very foppish manner, to fight against ugly things and bad manners and vulgarity, distracting from more pressing issues. It placed great emphasis on countering populism (until the paleoconservatives were purged from the wider conservative movement, in which cause the Populus Americanus was suddenly vitally important) while harshly fighting anything deemed ideological, since ideology is a modern concept.

To this point, one may accuse me of confusing paleoconservatism with conservatism, but one must also remember that paleoconservatism has the same origin as the National Review brand of conservatism. The only thing that made a thinker a paleoconservative is that he was excised from the wider conservative movement, usually by National Review for keeping National Review’s unpopular early opinions. After the divergence between the two, paleoconservatism certainly matured and grew more distinct, but its only boundary separating it from other conservative ideologies was that it was excommunicated from conservatism by other conservatives.

The Roman character of the conservative movement has since metastasized into a (negligible) more modern outgrowth from paleoconservatism which denounces as modernist, Protestant subversion, or some other smear, the “ancient” American institutions cherished by the older paleoconservatives. I must admit, it is not quite clear to me why such ardent traditionalists would remain in America to complain about Protestantism, but they do.

Even traditionalism, the more online and modern outgrowth of paleoconservatism, despite its edgy online character, heavily moderates. Every bad policy in history, before being opposed, must have its causes traced back to the dawn of time, lest we merely set back the clock. This endless time sink, an exercise in rightist monasticism, is accompanied by some pretty considerable compromises, though. FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society are both trad, because the state exists to provide welfare. After all, abolishing the welfare state is something that gay libertarians want. Labor movements and unions are also based and trad, because rampant capitalism is evil. Prohibiting mixed marriages, at least as it was done by American Protestants for most of America’s history, is racist and modernist, because the only mixed marriages are those between Roman Catholics and Protestants. Also, since being pro-life is the one and only political issue that matters, the death penalty must be abolished. Finally, contraception, tolerated first by the evil Protestants,² has practically destroyed society, necessitating that any trad husband must submit to his wife under the guise of “non-contraceptive” Natural Family Planning.

I am not one for moderating my beliefs. After all, if something is wrong, it should be opposed and corrected. What benefit is there to recognizing something as wrong but, instead of understanding that it should be opposed and corrected, consciously apologizing for it and acting to ensure that it will only ever partly be solved? Similarly, if something is right, why would one be so coldly malicious as to withhold it and allow error to persist out of fear of rocking the boat too hard? Conservative ethics is the only system of beliefs which calls for only partially opposing evil or doing good purely because the status quo is (or was, for more traditional brands of conservatism) already doing something different.

Radicalism, Not Moderation

Instead of moderation, as conservatism requires, the future of any American Right is one of radicalism, and that is because the only solutions to our problems today are radical. In response to hearing this, one may respond with sarcasm or self-soothing and say, “But I’m not radical. I’m historically normal/centrist/etc.” This is a meaningless response, even though it may be true.³ In fact, you can talk about how historically average your opinions are, but you will still be interpreted as radical not only by your writings, but also by your actions. Moreover, responding to accusations of radicalism with a cowardly plea that you really aren’t is a losing move. Radical solutions are needed to solve the threats of the present, and the winning strategy for any radical is not to disguise rhetorically any and all radicalism. Rhetorical moderation may eventually have a few people holding political office parroting watered-down versions of what you were advocating a few years ago, but it does not lend itself to solving problems; by the time power-holders have adopted some diminished form of a belief once articulated by a radical, the belief has been so moderated to the point that the action taken is only moderate as well.

Instead, the correct strategy is to remain true to radical beliefs by remaining rhetorically radical while normalizing the radicalism by pulling more and more people in the radical direction. This does not mean that the people drifting toward the radical have to accept radicalism entirely — few will. Most will only ever drift in opinion toward the radical and never fully align. However, this approach reverses the issue mentioned above. Instead of voluntarily lessening your rhetorical momentum by moderating, signaling that movement toward the middle is good, remaining rhetorically radical causes the middle to move to you while allowing the radical to move in ever more toward radicalism. Provided that the rhetoric is convincing and accords with reality,⁴ this momentum will persist. Importantly, this strategy will only work if the radicals privately accept victories as they happen and publicly demand that more be done.

To see this trend in action most recently, let’s examine the second Trump administration on the topics of deportations and foreign policy. On deportations, there is a radical in the Trump administration constantly calling for increasing deportations, and he is bolstered by a very powerful and equally radical narrative consensus from the Right. No matter the specifics, the number of deportations is too low, but every deportation is a private victory. The online narrative from the Right parallels this. With increasingly radical rhetoric, even normal people have now heard the questioning of birthright citizenship, and some are developing opinions on it. If I need to be clearer: birthright citizenship, previously taken for granted, is now being openly debated, and its legitimacy is weakening.

Foreign policy is a different story. There is no such radical in the Trump administration pushing for a rightist foreign policy of stopping foreign wars and withdrawing from places that we shouldn’t be.⁵ Further compounding the issue is the fact that there is no radical narrative consensus on the Right. That is, many on the Right are still foreign policy conservatives who muddle the narrative, and there are many who have allowed the Old Right’s view of non-interventionism to be monopolized by libertarians. As a result, the Right lost rhetorical momentum, and the neocons have demonstrated that they have narrative and political power that far exceeds the Online Right’s perception. Those on the Right who have decided upon the strategy of rhetorical moderation have drifted toward the center, and there is far less movement toward radicalism on the subject of foreign policy than on the subject of immigration. This need not be the case.

Of course, being radical is much harder than being conservative. No one wants to be at the lonely edge of a narrative, pushing away from everyone else. Rather, many on the Online Right want to moderate and indulge and call themselves aristocratic or find some other way to cope as they slide toward conservatism, but the urge to moderate must be rejected.

1. However, if neoconservatism and National Review conservatism must be discarded, so too must the paleoconservatives, for all varieties of conservatism have lost in a most brutal totality. I do not find the argument of “anything that lost must be abandoned for the brand new totally based ideology that will win this time” to be compelling. This is a view of history in which any good thing must be entirely discarded if it is touted by a side that “lost,” meaning a temporary loss of political power. With this principle, any eclectic ideal of the ideologically diverse Modern Right, like monarchy, Francoism, traditional Christianity, local autonomy, freedom of association, dictatorship, confederalism, blasphemy laws, immigration restrictions, and natural aristocracy, must be rejected as well, for their political manifestations all lost to modern liberal democracy. This will not do.

2. In 1880, a half-century before the 1930 Lambeth Conference, from the Roman Catholic Sacred Penitentiary on “Whether it is licit to make use of marriage only on those days when it is more difficult for conception to occur”: “Spouses using the aforesaid method are not to be disturbed; and a confessor may, with due caution, suggest this proposal to spouses, if his other attempts to lead them away from the detestable crime of onanism have proved fruitless.”

One may try to litigate whether all attempts to avoid conception are contraception (litigating against even the plain meaning of the word), but that is a pilpul exercise in which I will not engage here. Instead of arguing with me, perhaps the litigator would find more value in stringing a fishline around New York City or prowling the fair city’s sewers.

3. And regardless of whether the statement is true, another thing which the Modern Right must grapple with is that some traditions are wrong or could be improved. There has been such a traditionalist swing against evaluating traditions according to their merits in favor of blindly accepting all traditions as a prescription for our society that one wonders if online traditionalism views any and all traditions as divinely inspired commands on par with Holy Writ. This is not even an argument against traditionalism, but rather the shallow online understanding of the ideology propagated online.

4. Both of these qualities of rhetoric, how convincing it is and how true it is, can substitute for each other, though it is difficult to fight against both at the same time.

5. Perhaps what I should write is that Trump is not allowed to have a foreign policy radical.