Conservative Movement

From Hobson's Choice

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A far right political movement in the United States. The movement seems to have coalesced into one in the wake of the Vietnam War, and recognizes Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan as its founding architects. By the end of the 20th century the Conservative Movement (CM) had taken almost complete control over the Republican Party.

1 Context
2 Components
3 Merger and Power
4 Notes
5 See Also
6 External Links

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Context

In the USA, political parties have historically been sectional, rather than ideological or class-based. The Democratic and Republican parties were diffused over numerous state party committees, each with widely differing positions on the major issues of the day. Each party had a left wing and a left wing; and the influence of ideological currents in the parties was the result of successful individual politicians. Hence, US politics tended to be personal, charismatic, sparing in ideological content, and business-oriented.

The Great Depression polarized the major political parties on the basis of ideology, with the Democratic Party taking a moderately social democratic stand on many issues (See the New Deal), and the Republican Party defined by its opposition to them. During the revivified Cold War with the USSR (1947-1989), the Republican Party attempted to turn this oppositionist stance into a winning strategy, by identifying social democracy and the left generally with alien Communism. The Democratic Party pushed back by taking a position of maximum preparation against the Soviets in foreign policy, in contrast to the Republican's position of containment. In practice, the two parties were remarkably harmonious about US foreign policy aims. This harmony persisted through most of the period of the Vietnam War, but broke over it.

The rupture between the parties over foreign policy was not a clean fracture; it split parts of both parties from each other, as did the Civil Rights Movement. While Usonians were divided about the wisdom of the war itself, their political representatives were divided about how to prosecute the same policies more successfully. At the same time, a crucial shift was taking place in the struggle over race in the United States. Prior to the US Supreme Court ruling on Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education (1954), racist politics in the USA was split between neoliberal conservatives (for whom racism was simply part of the larger caste structure), and populists (who espoused a semi-socialist White nationalism). In the Southeast, the two formed the right and left wings of the southeastern Democratic Party, respectively.^[1] After the legal challenges to segregation ran their course, and de jure segregation was outlawed, racist politics began to lose its populist base. Racial nationalism could no longer act as an alternative to post-racist social democracy. Racist language was morally discredited and scandalous; it was associated, after the 1960's, with the lower strata of the white proletariat. As a consequence, racial politics now took up neoliberal economic arguments: while it accepted defeat on segregation, it now objected to further mandates to dismantle institutional racism as "government intervention."

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Components

The Conservative Movement (CM) was initially a coalition of three movements:

the religious right ("theocons");
business conservatives ("money cons");
neoconservatives ("neocons").

The religious right was heavily larded with former White power populists such as Senator Jesse Helms and Jerry Falwell, who were initially isolated politically when the mainstream political establishment turned against segregation.^[2]

Traditionally, the religious right has been acutely embarrassed by its political marriage to business conservatives; this has always been the case. However, like ministers secretly chasing skirts, it is timeless and inevitable. Clerical hierarchies are fairly easily corrupted, regardless of the putative belief system; part of the problem is that ministers, priests, and others for whom religion is a full time job, are actually fairly vulnerable. They require the protection of a powerful, affluent organization because of the impractical moral code they profess, and this requires both political and economic patronage. In living memory, that has meant aligning with the bourgeoisie, or (more recently) business conservatives. In the contemporary USA, business conservatives and Protestant churches share similar ideological traits: perfectionist philosophy is something implemented by giving capitalism full rein to punish the incompetent, the weak, the lazy, or the improvident. It also catches up in its claws the unlucky, the sick, and the whistleblower—but the religious right is reliably cavalier about them.

Business conservatives have traditionally been indifferent to the religious right, because the latter has political baggage. For example, the religious right tends to be hostile to religious minorities, while the business conservative usually is one. The religious right has disparages material pursuits; the business conservative is hampered by otherworldly employees, even if they are unlikely to wage a revolution. The religious right is hostile to gratuitous smut; the business conservative uses it to sell things. In the Conservative Movement, the business conservative trumps the religious right on all matters, but this is not a source of friction. In all cases, this appears to be because the business conservative abets the growth of the church as a preferred provider of urgent social services, from parochial schools to child care and career counseling.

Neoconservatives were welded onto the Conservative Movement in the 1970's. Initially, they consisted of writers and philosophers who were able to engage mainstream liberalism. They included Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Gertrude Himmelfarb, and Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan (D-NY). The concept of an intellectually engaged conservativism was intriguing to the press; however, it was in foreign policy analysis that the neoconservatives became the most influential. Because of the extreme diffusion of domestic policy debate, neoconservatives had an impact only on other intellectuals; but in foreign policy, neoconservatives offered a facsimile of global sophistication. Paleoconservatives like William F. Buckley were hopeless when it came to foreign policy; they believed their own, Birchite, rhetoric. Neoconservatives were increasingly drawn from the ranks of international business, corporate management, and universities. They participated in thinktanks that could actually follow through in the formulation of public policy. They understood the reality of multilateral organizations like the United Nations and the World Bank Group, viz., that such organizations were effective implements of US influence worldwide. Yet their ideas meshed surprisingly well with those of business conservatives and, consequently, the religious right.

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Merger and Power

Contrary to the hopes of the CM's opponents, rumors of tension among its components is greatly exaggerated. Religious leaders are wholly comfortable with the late Oriana Fallaci (neocon saint), even if she was rabidly anti-religion; they are likewise wholly comfortable with the late Ayn Rand, a moneycon saint who was also rabidly anti-religion. Journalists made much of a supposed anti-Huckabee wing of the Republican Party, when the Baptist minister ran for the GOP nomination in 2008 on a putatively populist platform. Both the populism and the antagonism were ghosts.

If anything, careful scrutiny shows that the three constituent groups of the CM have merged with an unusual and inconceivable harmony. There is quite simply no real conflict among these groups. The CM is in fact as monolithic as all other movements in history have wanted to be. The CM is so cohesive, its boosters have actually had to invent conflicts to soften its image.^[3] An isotropic sea of the like-minded is a scary thing for non-adherents, but the Conservative Movement is precisely that.

Partly this is because there is precisely one accepted organizational format for all three groups, and that is Usonian business enterprise. The corporation, with its divisional structure of professional managers, is openly mimicked by most Usonian Protestant religious denominations. Since neoconservatives are increasingly drawn from business rather than universities, and were corporate consultants before, almost no institutional cleavage whatever exists with them. Since the divisional corporate structure has a reliable methodology of resolving conflicts among different business units, it follows that the different constituents of the CM expect some tension, and don't take the conflicts that arise very seriously.

In other words, when the banking industry consolidated in the period 1990-2002, no one expected—and no one observed—acrimony within the divisions. Citigroup has not suffered fissures within its operating divisions, and regulators have not expected to find any. Yet this is an entity that manages $2.4 trillion in assets. Similarly, Verizon includes at least 19 merged companies, yet political dissension among its ranks has been the least of its concerns—if, indeed, it is a concern at all. The CM has replicated corporate managerial structure, but also mastered the technique of raising and distributing funds; this system of interlocking monetary control is wholly professional and free of antagonism. However, like any vast corporate entity, it suffers the risk of becoming a corporate dinosaur.

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Notes

↑ Contrary to modern CM talking points, however, the Democratic Party in major urban areas (including those of the Southeast) was probably no worse than the Republican Party. Nationally, open confrontations over race never took place between the parties during the period 1881-1979.
↑ Jesse Helms is a fairly straightforward example of a politically adroit pro-segregation activist who made the jump to the religious right. The National Review (itself a rightwing journal) includes this mostly-laudatory account of his career: Michael Graham, "Goodbye, Senator No: Where are we going to find a principled conservative after Helms is gone?" (23 Aug 2001). For a brief account of Falwell's political odyssey from white supremacist to theocon, see Max Blumenthal, "Agent of Intolerance," The Nation (28 May 2007). Documenting the connection between the theocons and the old segregationists is naturally difficult, since it would today be considered defamatory.
↑ David Frum, "Turning the Triple Play," New York Times (25 Jan 2008).