I do think you have once again pointed out the cultural contradictions of the American Right. I’ve been asking my students for several decades now, if you are progressive (there are no liberals now, and haven’t been for a couple of generations; there are just libertarian ideologues), to what do you want to progress? If you are conservative, what do you wish to conserve? The answers in either case are not easy, nor are they susceptible to programs or platforms. Conservatives in the political arena are now identified pretty much with, as you correctly say, people who are rather libertarian when it comes to domestic policy and rather socialist when it comes to foreign policy–and that is, indeed, a divided mind.

But to clarify, I hope, let’s go to your example of highways. Governments must have a role in the building of highways, just as it had to play a part in the creation of “utilities.” There are just too many properties to cross. What would be a “conservative” approach to highways? Ike’s National Highway Act was probably a very progressive measure, and involved one of the truly massive transfers of real political authority to Washington–maybe bigger than anything the New Deal had actually accomplished. I don’t think one conservative opposed it. It was a “defense” measure, and we all like to get on the road and go. Had we thought about it, it killed villages and cities and built others (mostly on grounds of political maneuvering) and in general paved over farmland for the benefit if city folks. We were in the ecstacy of defense-minded and material-minded euphoria at the time, and didn’t have a good, prudential debate. If those who wanted to preserve farmland or local control had insisted that we be prudent, we might have better highways and less government–or maybe not.

But the point is this: The opposite of conservative is not liberal, it is progressive, or, another way to put it, ideology.

* endless quasi-religious worship of the state’s military power

* endless demands that more and more wealth (and therefore power) be confiscated from American workers and redistributed to the state’s military machine

* blind and passionate advocacy for any and every costly, state-expanding, state-empowering scheme the egghead bureaucrats in Washington cook up – as long as it involves using the state’s military machine

* abiding faith and devotion to the idea that (whenever the government exercises or proposes to exercise its truly awesome and terrible military might) government is noble and beneficent, that it is efficient, that it is peopled with wise men, and that it should be further empowered with confiscated tax money so it can be used as an engine to effect social change all over the world

There is no such thing as a “small government” that can lead, rule over and police the entire world.

Great article. You almost make me sound like a non Schizo except I am a Democrat with conservative values. I also appreciate the comments by D.W. and John M. as they added further insight.

People like Hannity and O’Reilly are not genuine conservatives. Why? They advocate more government intervention in various sectors of the economy (in true neo-con fashion) because they believe that certain people — and government — are best equipped to solve our problems.

Libertarian (small “l”) Republicans advocate consistently limited government, which includes opposition to all undeclared, unnecessary foreign interventions.

Split personalities abound on both sides of our siamese twin political sideshow as evidenced by a little statistic regarding civilians employed for annual salaries greater than $150,000 in the Defense Department. They have apparently increased from 1,868 in 12/07 to an astounding 10,100 in 6/09 (the most recent published statistic). Why no news of this wonderful “stimulus”? Admittedly this sum is but a paltry trifle when compared against the rest of the military budget but it signifies a trend to be sure. Northrup, after years in L.A. is moving their HQ to Foggy Bottom so that they will be where the business is. What, one asks, took them so long?

The greatest “surfeit of repetition” is that of the Sunbeams For Security, hatching dirty little schemes to protect the Dictator of the Moment for years, then cashing in on the back end as the Dictator requires military assistance against terrorism, which in turn fertilizes said terrorism, virtually eliminating “non-desperate” wars as an option. Everything automatically becomes desperate. The Kookyburras of our Cheney Security State Brigades have an easy task in front of them, endlessly squawking about the President for not being tough enough on security and military efforts while he cannot cite his administration’s increases to these diminishing returns because he campaigned on a platform of reducing them. Bait and Switch….Schizophrenia….which shall it be? Perhaps we can dispense with the formalities this coming State of the Union and simply erect a cardboard box so the Chief Executive can present the nation with a little nationally televised Five Card Monty.

And I do like your magnanimous citation of the chap who does not “deny” that the worlds largest military and its global commitments have their costs but , oh well, its “necessary”. How big and sporting, so very white of him. A little hair of the dog that bites you never does any harm. Bottoms up, drinks are on Northrup when they open their new HQ.

Anyone who has not detected at least a little schizophrenia afoot in our current politics has either been off into a little Rip Van Winkle Time of their own or are , simply put, crackpot. You can do a little better Mr. Scott. You know Burke would agree and virtually anyone else who understands how Republics descend into befuddled destruction when they decide military adventurism is a “necessary” path. The Republican Party is a mess because it cannot keep its various personalities in order and the only reason it has any hope in the Mid terms is not because it has rediscovered its bearing s but that its opponent, the Democrat is lost in an extended psychosis of its own.

It is theatrical though, I’ll grant you that.

And so, admit it, Mr. Nelson more or less has you pegged. The “idea” here of “conservative schizophrenia” is intellectual wrapping paper.

And also, for all Porcher-contributors, IMO this essay is evidence that fewer FPR posts will wind up being more, and will spare us all a surfeit of repetition. You know Berry would agree.

If one wants a superb and mystical summary of the trajectory, one need only to watch Werner Herzog’s “Aguirre , Wrath of God” where the daft and sublime Kinski ably plays the part of the Empire Builder, on a mission of conquest where the more sordid realms of the quixotic emerge triumphant. In the last scene, Aguirre and his few near-dead followers are afloat on the Amazon, the deck of their raft littered with scrambling monkeys and Aguirre is babbling away with dreams of conquest (as only Kinski could babble). He looks around his shoulder but refuses to see what his existence has devolved into and exclaims: “Who’s with me”. The monkeys don’t seem to care.

The reason those who harbor an elevated distemper about the current circumstances are so dismissive of government in its entirety is because there are so many who seem to champion a relentless surrender to Bureaucratic Logic, stem to stern. One tends to go “all-in” under such a state, even though with poker face, you know that there are many elements of government which have been and are beneficial. The stakes are high and prognosis not good so Hail-Mary ploys arrive by default, further obscuring a positive outcome.

Historicism is not sentimentalism, it is self-preservation and a demonstration of the chastening effects of humility , an essential bulwark against our depravity.

At a wider take and in line with Mark Mitchell’s pitch we can see the level of denial with regard to the sociopathy of imperial adventurism. Here is the first article I came across when typing in the phrase “creative destruction is sociopathic” into Google. It is a 2003 article charting some of the history of this sociopathy with regard to the United States:-

http://dissidentvoice.org/Articles8/Nimmo_Imperial-Sociopaths.htm

After reading the article it’s hard not to think that the task for the human race is “Shorting the Sociopathic.” Indeed it’s difficult not to see this as the point of FPR, or at least its pithy mission statement.

So, while libertarians will argue that most (if not all) government action is coercive since one cannot ‘opt out’, conservatives can make the case that some State action is obligatory, having its source in a societal imperative. Or, as Aristotle observed, it is in man’s nature to be a social animal; a nature, incidentally, that transcends politics, since its origins lie in the natural law.

The simple, uncomplicated individualism espoused by libertarianism, therefore, becomes more complex–or relational–by conservative standards.

And it is this relational quality that imposes the checks and balances upon the State (and, inevitably, upon individualism) that Professor Mitchell advocates.

What should the gov’t do? I think you have captured the correct answer, which is really another question, “At what level should it do it?” The lower the level, the less the damage. It would be hard to find an organization more intrusive than the average homeowners association, yet they do very little damage and the remedy, if one is necessary, is easy to find.

I do not even know if ‘conservative’ is a historically correct moniker for these individuals, perhaps they are ‘preservative,’ wanting to preserve a particular well-defined although not always honestly reported Regan legacy – I find a lot of good in Regan,but do not allow myself to be defined by any one politician. Politicians, regardless of stripes, are not individuals I value highly. Perhaps Cicero was mistaken in thinking that the philosopher/politician was the end all.

Unfortunately, this Limbaugh strand of conservatism has a stranglehold on the republican party and few other ‘legitimate’ outlets exist for conservative expression.

Peace and Grace,
-jp