What happened to conservatism in America?

Happy Saturday everyone, it is the weekend, you remember what we all use to live for in the good ole days of about two months ago.

Yet there are more important matters afoot right now and priority one is working towards a vaccine so we can all breathe a bit more. Until then there is time to reflect on numerous topics.

As many of you already know I consider myself an independent conservative and have since 1980. And it has become more pronounced over time. To understand what happened to something it is a good idea to discuss what we are looking for, so I will start with some background and then work towards what happened or where conservatism went. And as many regular readers know I can wander around quite a bit, yet this time I will try to benefit you and stay on track, but be aware the track will bend some. And remember this is an opinion blog, so most of this is a combination of recent history, what I have read over the years, and a bit of the argument what is conservatism in America.

I will start with the notion that American Conservatism reached a zenith in the 1950′s and 1960′s. Some people may argue the civil rights movements, the women’s movements, the anti-war movement, and hippies, etc of the 60′s say we were more of a liberal country in the 60′s. I differ by saying the national dialogue incorporated rash social change in America and there were some great strides in these areas, but more or less most Americans were still moderately conservative and infamously defined by Richard Nixon as the silent majority. The election of 1972 spoke volumes to this point. Most Americans had too much change and were wanting something more stable which is a significant trait of moderately conservative people. If the social change dynamic of the people had changed the fabric of most people’s ideology then McGovern would have flipped the switch. If you know the results of that election you know where America stood and it was painfully obvious the switch had not been flipped and the nostalgia of the Eisenhower years were already present. 

And even in 1964 and 1968 hard conservatism to nationalism to right-wing ideology was pervasive in America. Yes, LBJ won in 64 and ushered in one of the greatest social changes to occur in modern history. I did not say the most successful social change, I said greatest and there is a reason for the difference. We did change laws, we did not change many people’s perspectives yet large swaths of this country still held beliefs that were not appreciative of this change, hence the rise of the George Wallace and the American party in 1968 and the eventual success of Nixon over Humphrey. 

So lets back up a minute and discuss what is conservatism in America. It is not the American Party of 1968, it is barely the Republican Party of Goldwater in 1964, and definitely not the current Republican Party of Trump. It is not the Robber barons of the late 1800s, it is not the infamous military-industrial complex of Eisenhower’s farewell speech, it is not the military-industrial complex of Reagan’s era, and it is definitely not the current oligarchs, one-percenters or whatever you want to call a large portion of the billionaire and their stooges class of the current day. Now this latter group of industrialists or Wall Street greed will wrap themselves up in a Conservative flag to convince the portion of America that is truly conservative that their agenda is the conservative agenda to continue to their long path to creating a fiefdom for themselves in our country. And I will come back to discuss this in a bit.

This country is made up of immigrants either escaping a wide variety of persecution, poverty, or some historic form of totalitarianism to people truly looking for the promise of a better life. This is our history starting even before our forefathers wrote the Constitution. This document encapsulated the original escape from previous oppression into a new experiment of representative government that allowed the people to explore what the meanings of rights and freedoms could give to ordinary citizens. We now have a whole country whose primary belief put into writing was everyone was equal. We know in practice we are still working on that concept, yet we began with this belief. 

And these immigrants found out something else about this country and it was an interesting word for millions of people around the world: opportunity. Our Country said opportunity belonged to everyone. That word is not in the Constitution yet it has become every bit a part of our heritage as our Constitution.

So two factors begin to define who we are as Americans. We have the rights to determine our own lives and with those rights, we can improve our lives. And these became core values to who we are as a people. So being a conservative would mean you would want to preserve these values.

And these values grew throughout the 1800s as more people came from all over the world. Many experienced hardship, prejudices, success, failures, saw dreams wiped out, or became leaders of a new land. Others took advantage of a wide-open country, not just in space but in opportunity. Through it all certain values began to take shape. Some people call it the protestant work ethic, yet more than protestants worked hard to be successful. Immigrants from all around the world came and started businesses or became successful. They brought with them their cultures which over time created the “melting pot” theory behind who we are as Americans. Yet many of these immigrants originally suffered discrimination then eventually their descendants would discriminate against other newcomers. Our history is filled with horror and mistakes, but we moved forward slowly. And needless to say, the ongoing discrimination of the original forced immigrants, African Americans, continues to this day.  And they have become the scapegoat for right-wing hate groups throughout our history. The growing pains continue.

So we have a belief that hard work is important and we deserve the fruits of those labors. We also brought our cultures and in those cultures were families and the importance of family carried into our culture as immigrants relied on family to help them get started, or their children to help them run their business or farm. These children would grow up and experience a better life than their parents through either the growth of the family business or the eventual development of a public education system that allowed people new opportunities to become professionals. 

This led to the beliefs that people in the 1950′s cherished. We believed that any person has a right to work hard, they have a right to an education, they have a right to protect and cherish their family. And this wasn’t just for white people, but unfortunately, some groups began the destruction of our newfound values by saying other groups were trying to take away what they cherished most. Most people in this country weren’t trying to take away what White America had, but the fear-mongering grew just as fast as the economy so the divides we rail against as anti to our values were just as prevalent as our values. Yet all Americans of backgrounds from all over the world held our values. They all wanted to work hard to be successful and offer better opportunities to their children. And America was about to show the world it could be done. And part of that showing the world was our civil rights and women’s movements of the 1960′s. A society cannot make these leaps without having established a high self-worth. And we were creeping towards it.

In the 1960′s we were a predominantly moderately conservative country that was making some of the largest social changes in the history of the world. Simultaneously two factors were working against us taking our values and moving forward to even greater heights. They are the underlying current of nationalists attacking the social changes and the consolidation of power by the economic elite. And both these groups flew the conservative flag to build their hold on America. And many Americans were just beginning to receive public education across the board. One of the factors playing against our country was the economic elite preventing the growth of a stronger public education system along with other policies under the guise of fiscal conservatism. And conservatives can tend to be fiscally conservative also. Yet the verbiage of controlling spending that developed over the next couple of decades was disguised as conservative policy was instead the elitists working to control the rise of a large strong middle class that they saw in the 1950s and 1960s. Elitists aren’t fools and they want to maintain power so they realized a strong middle class was detrimental to their goals of absolute economic power. Their control began in earnest during the 1980s. Reagan became the standard-bearer of modern conservatism under the guise of harking back to a time when America was strong. America was still strong, he just had the luxury of us surviving a crisis and a minor in retrospect of our history. 

We had survived a world war, a depression, another world war so by the 1950s many Americans were glad to relax a bit and enjoy the success our country built. Reagan created a we want to return to that feeling environment and talked about rebuilding our great wealth. Well, he built some wealth alright, but for whom as the wealth gap we see now began to grow significantly. And all the while communicating that our values of family and opportunity for all were our core values. They are our core values, but the actual implementation of heightening them was not happening in our society. This disconnect of what was being said by the leaders of our country and the Republican party and what people actually started feeling in their lives began. Cognizant dissonance doesn’t work well inside a person’s brain and somewhere in the 1980′s going into the 90′s, some people were starting to feel it.

And in the 1990′s what Republican leadership was saying versus what they were doing really started to divide. And along with this difference came their new toy, Fox News. Fox News had one purpose and that was for corporate America to instill in Americans that Conservatism began with what the elitists wanted. They instilled anger, angst, fear into Americans that people were taking away their values, their beliefs and leaving open for others to fill in the gaps on who that might be. What some of us call the alt-right now began to fill in that gap. And yes this message was targeted to white middle and upper-middle class and retired white working-class people. And all the while Americans were beginning to hear much about their rights and their livelihoods being taken away by all sorts of groups when in reality, their lives and livelihoods were being taken away by corporate elitists as they moved jobs overseas for cheaper labor and continued to consolidate their wealth grab. Sure we had the technological revolution and we have a few new billionaires, but the good ole boy club of Wall Street and others consolidated more and more power through the wealth grab and lobbying in D. C.. And the message large swaths of Americans began to hear through Fox was conservatives were under fire and they needed to act. This began the left versus Fox media war. And the left was the enemy. On a side note, the media is pretentious and the Democrats are clueless, but they are not the enemy for those of you that need to be reminded. Yet the idea that conservatives were under attack began and they needed to make sure they elected Republicans to fight their battle for them. And this fight was actually being played against them and the rest of our country and all the while the flag of conservatism was being hijacked so much so that too many Americans equated elitism with conservatism and the underlying cognizant dissonance continued to grow. Many Americans now viewed Fox as a reliable source of news when what they were being told was true to a point; their livelihoods were under attack, but the actual culprit was the fox in the hen house. 

And yet the core values of Americans are still the same even today. We still believe in family, working hard, better education for better opportunity for our children, people should be responsible for themselves, yet society can help people. This is how we grew in the 1800s, how we survived two world wars and a depression, and what came to define American politics in the 1950s. Granted none of it was perfect, we still have a long way to go to make sure all Americans experience the good from these values, but they still exist in most Americans. And here is one irony, by most Americans, I mean most Americans, not just white middle class, but Black middle class, Asian middle class, Hispanic middle class, and more. Americans by and large to this day still want better and think we can accomplish this in our society. Obviously, some groups still have a higher hill to climb, but overall Americans do want to help others so eventually that hill can be climbed. So to be conservative in America you conserve these values. And most Americans conserve these values. So what happened?

Nothing and everything. Conservatism, real conservatism is alive and well in America. Its’ voice has been totally taken away. Fox News never represented their audience, the pretentious left media turned them away when they raised their nose up on them, the Democrats became a hodgepodge of various social groups and lost track of the original backbone of the party, the worker and yet their hodgepodge of social groups make up most of the labor in this country. They seem to have forgotten how they can help. The elitists are always for the elitists so their values have never coincided with true conservatism. True conservatism goes against what the elitists want, which is absolute economic power. Yet, our values say opportunity should truly exist for all, including the opportunity to be rich and successful. And if the elitists want us for their use and abuse; our families, our cultures, our heritages mean nothing to them. And yet this is who we are as Americans. Why don’t we hear this, again conservatism has lost its voice.

And that leaves us in the present. Most of this country is still moderately conservative and cherish the values that made this country great such as the hard work, the reliance on family and church, our shared experience, our desire to be cognizant of others and their needs, this is the fabric of the American people of all shapes sizes and colors. We are great because we are a unique blend of the world, that came together to build something wonderful. That something wonderful is still building, maybe right now we have taken a far turn away, but if you really observe Americans all the aforementioned values are exhibited day in and day out. There is no voice.

Right now multiple groups claim to have the conservative mantle. They are lies. The Corporate and elitists aren’t conservative, just greedy. Fox News has devolved into something that is hard to put a finger on but only gives lip service to the words of conservatism, our government spends money like nothing to appease the masses (and I am not counting the stimulus for Covid19, that is something, I wish better, but something that needed to be done) hard-right fanatic groups are not conservative and are working expeditiously to destroy our country, yet they too say they wave the conservative flag. Way too many Trump supporters are not conservative, they are historically apolitical people who have managed to jump on his bandwagon instead of being attached to true political thinking, not all mind you, but way too many. 

So what happened to conservatism in America? Nothing, other than it got lost. 

And this is why I say we need new parties because a groundswell of people rising up to stand up for their rights are going to stand up for their families, their children, their opportunities, their rights, their freedoms, their beliefs (freedom of religion, it is not freedom from religion) and their shared understanding that we are a people that want and need each other in the good times and the bad times together and it is our government when representing the people that achieves these ends for all. The government is not the entire solution (another conservative value), just one of many tools to help society achieve even greater heights than before.