The modern American conservative movement is dead; punched-out by pugnacious neo-cons intent on imposing their purified conservative strain on all Americans. There's no recognizable there there remaining in conservatism.
When Senator Barry Goldwater strode to the microphone in San Francisco's Cow Palace to accept the Republican Party's nomination for president in 1964, he effectively struck the death knell for the party's liberal, Northeastern, Rockefeller wing. Although trounced in the general election, Goldwater's principals of limited government, individual liberty and adherence to the Constitution, advocated in the campaign and his groundbreaking book, "The Conscience of the Conservative," ultimately became the mainstream political belief.
The modern American conservative movement is dead; punched-out by pugnacious neo-cons intent on imposing their purified conservative strain on all Americans. There's no recognizable there there remaining in conservatism.
When Senator Barry Goldwater strode to the microphone in San Francisco's Cow Palace to accept the Republican Party's nomination for president in 1964, he effectively struck the death knell for the party's liberal, Northeastern, Rockefeller wing. Although trounced in the general election, Goldwater's principals of limited government, individual liberty and adherence to the Constitution, advocated in the campaign and his groundbreaking book, "The Conscience of the Conservative," ultimately became the mainstream political belief.
That's why it would be terribly disconcerting to Goldwater to see the neo-con usurpation of his principled beliefs. Goldwater argued in his book that the framers knew that "freedom depends on effective restraints against the accumulation of power in a single authority." Goldwater also intuitively understood that it was natural for individuals possessing some power to grab for more power. Conservatives, Goldwater argued, must endeavor to adhere to the Constitution and its "system of restraints against the natural tendency of government to expand in the direction of absolutism." He repeatedly fretted over the tendency to concentrate power in a few individuals and advocated that politicians always place constitutionality over political expediency.
Anyone that's witnessed the unprecedented power grab by the executive branch for the past five and a half years should take pause, not simply out of civil liberties concerns, but for the unchecked concentration of power in one branch of government. The administration's ever expanding actions not only circumvent the notion of checks and balances but are counter-intuitive to the modern conservative principle of limited government. Goldwater would be aghast to learn that self-identified conservatives, holding the majority in the legislative branch and the White House, have presided over federal government spending that has outstripped economic growth in each of the past five years.
But federal government largesse and unchecked spending is only half of the neo-con double whammy. Goldwater also feared a strong religious incursion into politics, rightly believing that the repeated injection of religion into the public debate led to intractable positions from which compromise was impossible. He complained bitterly in 1981 that the conservative movement was being hijacked by religious fundamentalists, individuals that attempted to coerce complete compliance with their version of morality on everyone.
Goldwater vowed to fight individuals that attempted to dictate their version of morality in the name of conservatism. Sadly, that fight has been lost. Issues are now repeatedly cast by neo-cons in moral terms, with democrats starring in a recurring role as the unpatriotic and immoral whipping boys. Anyone not marching in lock step with neo-con views on stem-cell research, abortion and gay marriage are chided as having insufficient "values," which inherently means the narrow neo-con version of values.
Goldwater's 1964 campaign offered the slogan: "A choice, not an echo." Today, deeply ensconced in the neo-con echo chamber, it's all echo and no choice.
