What must conservatives do to win the future?\u00a0 This is the question with which many on the right have been grappling since Barack Obama won his reelection.<\/p>\n
First and foremost, they must recognize that they are not conservatives.\u00a0 <\/em>Rather, they are neoconservatives.<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n The differences between conservatism and neoconservatism are fundamental.<\/p>\n Conservatives believe that, in reality, human rationality has none of the competence that utopian ideologues of one sort or another insist upon ascribing to it. As Burke said: \u201cWe are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason,\u201d for \u201cthis stock in each man is small [.]\u201d\u00a0 Rather than fall back upon their own meager intellectual resources, individuals should turn toward tradition, <\/em>the distilled wisdom of a thousand generations.\u00a0 They \u201cwould do better,\u201d Burke said, \u201cto avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations and of ages [.]\u201d<\/p>\n Because of the intractable limitations on individual reason and the all-importance of tradition to the cultivation of intellectual and moral virtue, conservatives hold that liberty requires a wide diffusion of authority and power.\u00a0 Translation: that government works best that works\u2014and can only work\u2014least.<\/p>\n Those who are truly conservative support a truly limited government. <\/em><\/p>\n The ideas of reason, morality, and government endorsed by neoconservatives, however, are diametrically the opposite of those affirmed by conservatives.<\/p>\n In proclaiming along with Jefferson that all human beings are possessed of \u201cself-evident\u201d rights, and in insisting that America is the only country in all of human history to have been grounded in this \u201cproposition\u201d alone, neoconservatives reveal their commitment to the same Enlightenment vision of reason and morality against which Burke and legions of other conservatives have been waging war for centuries.\u00a0 This is also the same vision that has underwritten all manner of destructive utopian schemes, from communism abroad to the Welfare State here at home.<\/p>\n And it is the same abstract, one-size-fits-all models of reason and morality that informs the neoconservative\u2019s foreign policy of \u201cinterventionism.\u201d<\/p>\n Next, Republicans must grasp that neoconservatism is wildly unpopular with most Americans, a point that should\u2019ve been driven home in spades with the massive electoral defeats that the neoconservative party suffered in 2006 and 2008.\u00a0 That an ever smaller percentage of self-described Republicans have been showing up at the polls in the last two presidential elections confirms that even its own members have been growing disenchanted with it.<\/p>\n Neoconservatism is but a lighter version of leftism.\u00a0 Hence, Democrats reject it because their own party offers the real deal, and the more conservative and liberty-minded reject it as well because it is <\/em>a version of leftism.<\/p>\n Third, it is time for those of us who really want to clean house within the party to start naming names.\u00a0<\/p>\n For example, Rush Limbaugh is both entertaining and sharp, and there is no doubt that he has done no small measure of good in combating Democrats.\u00a0 Yet Rush seldom identifies by name those Republicans with whom he disagrees. He prefers instead to refer to them by way of the generic, \u201cthe Republican Party establishment,\u201d or maybe \u201cRINO\u2019s.\u201d\u00a0 And what is true for Rush is triply true in the case of Sean Hannity, who it would seem is more concerned with not burning bridges with the cast of GOP characters who he regularly trots out as guests on his television and radio programs.<\/p>\n But this unwillingness on the part of Rush and Sean to name names is a big problem.\u00a0 This is why their names <\/em>must be named.\u00a0<\/p>\n Recall, along with such captains of neoconservative talk radio (doesn\u2019t have quite the same feel as \u201cconservative talk radio,\u201d does it?) like Michael Medved, Laura Ingraham, Mike Gallagher, and a whole lot of others, Rush and Sean were particularly close to George W. Bush.\u00a0 Yet until the election of Barack Obama, Bush II had the distinction of presiding over an expansion of the federal government the likes of which eclipsed even that on display during Lyndon B. Johnson\u2019s \u201cGreat Society.\u201d<\/p>\n No president in our history, until Obama, presided over as much spending as did Bush the junior.<\/p>\n Still, Rush, Sean, and their colleagues said scarcely a word (regardless of what they now <\/em>say they said).\u00a0 Instead, they used their resources to defend Bush against his critics on the left.<\/p>\n A final point: self-proclaimed \u201cconservatives\u201d need to muster the will to sniff out the carnival barkers in their midst. There is no shortage of such showmen in every medium of the so-called \u201calternative media\u201d\u2014from Fox News and talk radio to websites and blogs\u2014mercenaries who have hitched their stars to \u201cthe conservative movement\u201d for no other reasons than fame, money, and power, the sources of motivation that have driven men from all walks of life from time immemorial.\u00a0<\/p>\n That November 6, 2012 was able to occur may be all of the proof we need that there are more such people in the \u201cconservative media\u201d than we care to realize.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What must conservatives do to win the future?\u00a0 This is the question with which many on the right have been grappling since Barack Obama won his reelection. First and foremost, they must recognize that they are not conservatives.\u00a0 Rather, they are neoconservatives.\u00a0 The differences between conservatism and neoconservatism are fundamental. Conservatives believe that, in reality,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n