Many Conflate the “Conservative”/ “Right Wing” Label - Granite Grok

Many Conflate the “Conservative”/ “Right Wing” Label

lockSteve, indeed Adolf Hitler was Not A Conservative. This is one of my favorite subjects.  I find it immensely fascinating and amusing, when tangling with a hirsute, pony-tailed, pseudo-intellectual lefty at parties. It’s one topic that has been captured in older works by Hayek, Kirk, and Voegelin among others, and more recently by Mark Levin and, of course, Jonah Goldberg. Yet, it remains contorted. Many still believe if you’re called “conservative” or “right wing” in one country, then you are conservative in all. And that on its face is absurd to any person that has put a modicum of thought into it. But many people buy it precisely because they couldn’t part with that modicum. Plainly stated: not all “right wing” or “conservatives” labels are the same. The American conservative is the American revolutionary centuries on.

Before WWII burst onto the planet, American progressives and leftists (read: Democrats) loved the powers in Europe. They were enamored by Mussolini and Stalin so much so that FDR had his brain trusters make the trek across the sea to find out about the “third way”. What they found was so engaging they wet themselves (for a great account, read The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes). But when leftism lead where it inevitably does and the bombs started falling, progressives quickly had to rebrand/recast the enemy as right wing and counter revolutionary.

It’s bunk.

Any honest reading of history illustrates that the -isms of the 20’s and 30’s (Fabian Socialism, Socialism, Communism, Nazism, Fascism etc) were revolutionary in nature and were not “conserving” anything. They were trying to reset their society, and the world in some cases, around central authorities.

Saying that type of thing is conservative or right wing may or may not be true depending on the ism. However, it’s a trick and factually incorrect to say that it applies to the American conservative. Although, the deception is something we can recognize as a leftist tactic throughout the centuries and still in use today. They seek to control the language and change a word’s meaning when it’s convenient and benefits them. The term liberal is a classic example– I’ll get to that in a bit.

What many do either out of complete ignorance or just deception, is to lump all “conservatives” and “right wing” together. If you’re a conservative or right wing faction in China, Russia, Germany, then you’re also right wing and conservative in America.

FAHayekMany European “conservatives” want to conserve the crown or aristocracy, but we fought a revolutionary war to remove ourselves from that tradition. American conservatives are vastly different. Its core tenants and characteristics are different from pretty much every thing else out there. We want to conserve the Lockean principles of our founding, our belief in individual liberty, belief in limited government, that our rights come from God, the right to pursuit of happiness, free markets, free minds etc. The American conservatives are the American revolutionaries 200 plus years later seeking to preserve that tradition. This is what is meant by many conservatives when we mention “American Exceptionalism”. As F.A. Hayek said, America is the only place in the world where people can live as a Classical Liberal. Although it feels as if that is waning, America remains the only place. That is clearly not the case for any other “conservative”.

Now for the “liberal” bastardization.

The founders were Classical Liberals for the most part which is more like what libertarianism or small government conservatives are today. It’s difficult to classify those terms today because the terms are so overloaded, that they mean different things to different people. Let’s just stipulate what I mean, by conservative and libertarian, I mean that we revere the Lockean and Hume principles over those of Rousseau and Hobbes. The individual above the collective. The individual above the state, crown, central authority. That individual rights come directly from God.

The term liberal has been hijacked and come to mean the exact opposite. One reason of course is the term “progressive” became so toxic that the left had to re-brand itself–that’s what happens when you go gushy with the likes of Mussolini, Stalin, and Hitler and it blows up in your face.

However, if you read the founders and what they wrote, they were classical liberals and not collectivists. Read Locke’s Second Treatise on Government and then read the Declaration of Independence. You’ll conclude that if Locke were alive when the latter was written, he’d probably sue Jefferson for plagiarism.

The modern day American liberals are essentially more of the European type conservatives. They want the state involved. They want a social welfare state, an aristocracy (read governing class), want to expand the state and centralize power.

Which is why I laugh when buffoon ignoramuses label libertarian’s like Rand Paul as fascist. The last thing a conservative or libertarian want is to expand the state. The isms cannot exist without expanding the state, and libertarianism can’t exist with that expansion, so these two terms are mutually exclusive. However, the term fascist aligns pretty closely with the rebranded progressive, meaning today’s Liberal.

>