Can We Have the Old Conservatism Back Now?

Now that the Tea Party/talk radio crowd has all but killed American conservatism, can we get try to revive it?

The Nevada standoff led by Deadbeat Bundy and His Rowdy Cowgirls shows just how morally and intellectually screwed up conservatism has become. Now, there are some genuine human rights abuses in our nation, some genuine big-government problems.  Attacking such abuses is one of claimed goals of the Tea Party types.

But the Tea Party lives in a different reality, a world defined by the imaginations of radio entertainers and the sales pitches of politicians. They're oblivious to real examples of out of control government, like the massively expensive, rights-crushing failure of the war on drugs. Instead, they pick a different victim.  At least, he looked like a victim to the talk-radio conservatives. How'd it turn out?


First, he's not really such a victim. He's a rancher who doesn't want to pay his grazing fees, and his excuse is that he doesn't "recognize" the federal government. Second, at least some of the Rowdy Cowgirls were "strategizing" about throwing women into the line of fire if shooting broke out. Third, the guy turns out to be a classic hick patriarch, who doesn't have a clue what's going on outside his wallet or his fiefdom, yet still thinks he's wise.

Not only did the talk radio crowd's heroes in this case turn out to be just low-grade outlaws who disgraced our flag, but the shared Tea Party fantasy that Obama is a tyrant who's out to kill them fell apart. Under a tyranny, Bundy and the Cowgirls would be dead, and nobody would care.

The Republicans' flip-flopping on Bundy is symptom of the problem. The party isn't a defender of a set of principled positions. It's a marketing effort. Instead of demonstrating that conservative ideas are better, the GOP keeps inventing phony problems so it can keep selling its product. They're like a health-food company that keeps inventing new health problems that only their herbal remedies can cure.

Conservatism can't work that way.

Conservatism is supposed to be an ideology informed by facts, common sense, and history. Its fundamental message is that we should be cautious about the unintended consequences of our actions, which is perfectly sensible, since we live in a universe in which ideas that sounded good at the time don't always pan out.

Sorting out the good ideas from the bad takes a rational, empirical approach. I'm an old-fashioned conservative. I don't care how someone feels or what they believe about an idea. I just want to know if it works or not and what the costs and side effects will be.

That kind of conservatism, the kind that works, knows that a rational approach to problem solving requires that you correctly identify the problem. Yet the GOP/TP, which I thought was the organized political expression of American conservatism,  won't look at real problems. Anthropogenic global warming is the big example of that. To a genuine conservative, the idea of changing the composition of our atmosphere trips every alarm. No sane conservative would roll the dice on America's future like that.

To the GOP/TP, the idea that changing the composition of the atmosphere could have unintended consequences is LOL-worthy.

Then there's the war on drugs. This is exactly the kind of expensive, government failure the Tea Party types claim to oppose. Despite having decades to try, a trillion dollars to spend, the right to override the Fourth Amendment, the right to lock up millions of Americans, and the right to accidentally kill a few innocent citizens in the process, the drug war is literally worse than a failure. All it's done is enrich criminals and corrupt our police.

To the GOP/TP, the war on drugs is still a pretty good idea.

What do the talk-radio conservatives focus on instead? Changing the voting laws. Even though you can't prove there's a problem, and even though every one in America knows what you're doing, you still keep pretending that you're just protecting the integrity of the voting process. Then there's the Republican support for even more drug testing, even if it violates the Fourth Amendment. Even when the results of your own programs prove there's no problem worth getting extra-Constitutional about, you still push those drug war programs.

And now comes the biggest phony problem of all, the imaginary victimization of Cliven Bundy. Yes, big government is a problem. No, Bundy's debts are not an example thereof.

Real conservatism doesn't live in that kind of fantasy world. It can't. The Tea Party/talk radio approach to conservatism is nothing but fantasy, and the unraveling of Bundy's story is proof.

Can we get back to genuine conservatism now? Can we get back to the real world?