Reagan Was Wrong
Sorry, I can’t claim credit for that title. It comes from a Newsweek article about the writings of an influential British conservative, Henry Fairlie. He predicted the state of today’s GOP presciently in the 1980s.
Fairlie’s critique of American conservatism began with a GOP heresy: that by embracing the free market so completely, the party had gone calamitously awry. “The conservative can all too easily drift into a morally bankrupt and intellectually shallow defense of those who have it made and those who are on the make,” he wrote. Without a humanizing tory influence, conservatives were apt to forget “the ugly face of capitalism”—the way that the market tends to coarsen and destabilize society, making the gross national product fodder for our “gross national appetite.” Republicans, he argued, could never succeed in uniting the country as long as they supported business interests so completely with both their policy choices and their rhetoric: “The nation cannot be brought to you, as if it were Masterpiece Theatre, by a grant from Mobil Oil,” he wrote.
Fairlie had a more conservative populist view of conservatism. The writer of the article describes Fairlie’s beliefs this way:
Fairlie’s views of toryism, like his views of most things (America, women, Parliament, Scotch), were deeply romantic. He described his kind of conservative as one who stands alongside “the King and the People, against the barons and the capitalists.” In other words, government’s role was to preserve tradition and social order, not to speed the accumulation of great power and wealth among the elites or to enact sudden or overreaching reforms. He warmed to this view as a boy, when summers on a family farm in Scotland taught him that “nothing very much changes, and then changes only slowly.” He refined it as an adult, coming to revere the leadership of Winston Churchill, whom he called “the greatest tory of them all,” and absorb the writings of Michael Oakeshott, “the most formative conservative political thinker of his generation.” When he arrived in America, he expected to find conservatives with similar beliefs. Instead he found the Republicans.
Fairlie was dismayed at the direction of the GOP under Reagan. He warned Republicans about free market worship, hyperindividualism and social conservatism (pretty much what we’ve been telling conservatives as well). Fairlie believed that conservatism needed a “soul.”
I think this is an article well worth your time to read. I was a bit skeptical of the premise because I thought that it fit into the new genre of “conservatism can’t fail, it can only be failed.” In a way it is that type of article, but it doesn’t trace the failure solely to George W. Bush. The article acknowledges that today’s GOP failures are directly attributable to the course they chose under Reagan.
Tags: Reagan worship, Republican Party
And the sky is blue.
Good reminder. And we can’t say it enough: Reagan and Bush illegally sold arms to the Iranians at the same time the streets of Iran were flooded with calls of “Death to America” led by Ayatollah Khomeini. Poppy Bush then pardoned all the indicted co-conspirators and Baby W sealed his Dad’s records.
If selling arms to the enemies of America isn’t treason, what is?
laughable
Yet Reagan will remain the Republican icon, while true conservatives continue to fade away, as judged by the large number of sycophants on the GOP scene today. We need better than this from today’s Republican Party!
St Ronnie was a fraud.
Hell, the Econ heads in Cali are blaming him for policies and shortfalls implemented while he was gov back in the 70s….
Laughable? More like laughingstock, like his worshippers.
This was a great article, UI — I definitely want to read this anthology of Fairlie’s essays. It is amazng how much he nails this business:
Tax-cutting regulation-haters weren’t the only false conservatives in the Reagan coalition, Fairlie argued: the bedroom-snooping, morality–legislating social conservatives were just as misguided. He was no libertarian, but he thought that much of the social agenda of the American political right (then and now) consisted of things that were nobody’s business: “Let one homosexual, coke-snorting student bum get hold of two food stamps, and the whole apparatus of government is brought into play,” he wrote.
There’s lots more there, but it is very impressive that he could see down the road far enough to know where Reaganism ends.
Oh, I agree Cassandra. It’s amazing how well his predictions have stood up over time. I wonder if some Republicans will start taking his advice? I really do think there’s an opening for Republicans in economic populism if it’s done correctly.
Interesting stuff. By substituting a phony, public chest beating piety and claiming that they were defenders of a “Christian” American heritage – they let themselves off the hook of having any kind of real ethical substance to their politics.
They paid morality lip service by bashing gays and gnashing their teeth over abortion. They therefor felt (feel in David’s case) exempt from considering the moral hideousness of “conservative” economic policies.
UI,
Ha! Don’t hold your breath.
“They therefor (sic) felt (feel in David’s case) exempt from considering the moral hideousness of “conservative” economic policies.”
Good point. And “conservative” foreign policies, I might add.
Was the (sic) really needed there?
Jason,
“therefore”
Good point, Jason. I doubt the Republicans will take any advice. Just look at how David A. reacted. The current GOP is perfectly happy as they are and the disaffected are either spittin’ in the wind (Smitty), becoming independents or joining the Democratic party.
I have to think that somewhere out there, the conservative star of 20 years from now is reading this article and at least thinking about what Fairlie’s trying to say.
Was the (sic) really needed there?
No, but I felt like it.