Can real conservatism exist without authoritarianism?
Look at Wyoming GOP right now, and you would have to assume that the answer to this question must be "no".1
And frankly, buying off on election theft myths and mutually reinforcing propaganda aside, there's some reason to think that. That's basically what Patrick Deneen of Harvard has warned of. He's the author of Why Liberalism Failed, a major work criticized heavily by the mainstream press, as we've previously noted, and adopted by current conservatives. Yale's snippet on the book states, as we also previously noted:
Has liberalism failed because it has succeeded?
"Why Liberalism Failed offers cogent insights into the loss of meaning and community that many in the West feel, issues that liberal democracies ignore at their own peril."—President Barack Obama
"Deneen's book is valuable because it focuses on today's central issue. The important debates now are not about policy. They are about the basic values and structures of our social order."—David Brooks, New York Times
Of the three dominant ideologies of the twentieth century—fascism, communism, and liberalism—only the last remains. This has created a peculiar situation in which liberalism’s proponents tend to forget that it is an ideology and not the natural end-state of human political evolution. As Patrick Deneen argues in this provocative book, liberalism is built on a foundation of contradictions: it trumpets equal rights while fostering incomparable material inequality; its legitimacy rests on consent, yet it discourages civic commitments in favor of privatism; and in its pursuit of individual autonomy, it has given rise to the most far-reaching, comprehensive state system in human history. Here, Deneen offers an astringent warning that the centripetal forces now at work on our political culture are not superficial flaws but inherent features of a system whose success is generating its own failure.
Now, Deneen did not state that we needed to elect an orange haired Duce whom we "must work towards" in order to impose the proper order upon society.2 At least, I don't think he did, having not read his book. And the essence of what Deneen apparently states here, as summarized by the Yale review, is correct. Political liberalism "trumpets equal rights while fostering incomparable material inequality" It also "discourages civic commitments in favor of privatism; and in its pursuit of individual autonomy, it has given rise to the most far-reaching, comprehensive state system in human history."
All that is true.
Perhaps more disturbing is that liberalism/progressivism has unmoored itself from any sort of external greater force. Depending upon how you view it, it either takes the position, basically, that man can vote on his own private wishes, and God must endorse them, or that individual desires are paramount and nature must bend to and accommodate them. There's no possibility of unity in any of that, and it's deeply anti-nature. There's not even the possibility of a society functioning that way, on a long term basis.
So, given that, is it the case that conservatism must assert itself, by force?
That seems to be the conclusion that Orbán and a host of Eastern European leaders have concluded. They're willing to tolerate democracy, but only if certain things are universally agreed on first. And that sort of top-down directive nature of government, as long as it seems conservative, is the reason so many Americans of the MAGA persuasion, like Tucker Carlson, have been Putin cheerleaders. It's also the reason that CPAC has swooned over Orban and has come very close to adopting his Illiberal Democracy point of view. And it's the sort of point of view, sort of, that lead the Edmund Burke Foundation to adopt a "National Conservatism" manifesto this past June.
But it's also deeply illogical.
The basic core of real conservatism, indeed any political philosophy, is that it's right. And conservatives believe they're right on two things, social issues and economic ones. . . well conservatives who have completely bought the package believe that, there are plenty of people who believe in one of the two tenants of conservatism and not the other.
But ironically, in believe that they are right, real conservatives, have always believed that man is flawed, and it's best to rely on tradition and what we know of science to guide us. Old time conservatives, quite frankly, in the Buckleyite era, tended to be elitist, and proudly so. They were well-educated, at least at the upper levels, and didn't take their beliefs from the masses. Indeed, often they assumed they were a permanent minority that could influence heavily, but was unlikely to rule.
We should note here that populist, at least right now, are fellow travelers of conservatives, but their views aren't really the same at all. Populist tend to believe that the mass of people have some native instinct that's right because they have it. It's thin on education and tends not to trust elites of any kid, because they ain't elite.
Basically, five guys in a corner drinking Budweiser, and lots of it, are presumed to know more about just about anything, to current populists, than five theologians or conservative philosophers.
And of course, in various circumstances, populists can be extreme rightist or leftists. Early Soviet Reds were basically a type of populist.
Note the irony of the illiberal democracy point of view. Conservatives believe they're right, but they also believe, if they are illiberal democrats, that the attractions of progressivism are so strong that they'll overwhelm those truths unless they're enforced by force.
The current right, basically, believes that if offered dessert over dinner, kids will east dessert first every time. Put another way, the current American right believes that given a choice, everyone is going to opt to be transgendered and there's no argument against it. None at all. So people have to be forced to comport with what 99% of humanity already does naturally.
Progressives have believed something similar for decades, which is why they sought to enforce their beliefs through the courts. The basic concept was to enforce their beliefs through liberal courts and either plan on that enforcement indefinitely, or hope that people would get used to the enforced change over time and accept it. Conservatives took the opposite view, at least up until recently.
This is what the recent battle of being "woke" is about. Truth be known, hardly anyone anywhere, as a large demographic, has been in favor of things that may be defined as "woke". But the courts enforced wokism, or at least opened the doors and windows for it. So, for example, you have Obergefel redefining what love means and the ancient concept of marriage, and soon thereafter "accepting" transgenderism is a major societal push.
Illiberal democrats argue that we should simply close the door on these arguments via fiat.
The problem with that is twofold. No bad idea ever goes away in darkness. That's why the goofball economic theory of Communism rose up in autocratic states. Bad ideas, like viruses, die in the sun.
Secondly, it presumes that your own arguments, while right, just can't compete. Arguments that can't compete, however, can't compete ever.
Now, the way that Illiberal Democrats would probably put it is that the truth has been established but corruption, unleashed by evil, is always there to take things down. In some ways, this view is an elitist one, even though populist that have adopted that are anti elites and don't know that (which is part of the reason that currently conservatism and populism may ride on the same bus, but they aren't the same thing). Basically, this view at some level, openly or simply instinctively, takes the position that regular people are like children.3
Enforcing conservative via fiat has never worked.
Footnotes
1. Based upon the most recent proclamations of the Central Committee, you also have to be deeply anti-scientific and an adherent to wacky conspiracy theories. If you ever wondered how a rational German could have believed that the Jews were responsible for all of Germany's ills of the 20s and 30s, well just look at how the Central Committee thinks that Bill Gates and George Soros are messing with the state's energy sector.
2. "Working toward the Führer" was a primary ethos of Nazi Germany. Hitler didn't come up with all the bizarre beliefs and policies of the Third Reich on his own, his acolytes developed many just trying to figure out what Hitler would do if he was working on the topic. The Trumpist wing of the GOP has pretty much picked up on that sort of thing and worked towards Trump, who in turn has worked back towards them.
3. The irony of this is that quite a few members of these movements have already eaten the desert. If their underlying foundation is really meant, and they have, for example, adopted any aspect of the Sexual Revolution, which frankly most Americans have, they're hypocritical.
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