Hey guys: Substack kind of blew up today. The team is sorting out the problems now, but the end result is that the platform wasn't stable enough for us to do a big live.
I'm crazy disappointed and hoping we can reschedule HCR soon.
What worries me the most about the Trump Domination Regime is the expanding crony capitalism that is growing, in the shadows, behind the law-breaking Cruelty headlines.
As monopolies expand, the free market shrinks. Once we are all reliant upon monopolies for basic food, shelter, and healthcare, we will all be regarded as only as targets for rent extraction. Once we are too old to work, we will be discarded.
I live in Florida. I've watched in horror as our radical Governor works toward ruling every aspect of society, all while showering his wealthy friends (again, in the shadows) with government contracts and carve-outs from the law.
Trump and his buddies are doing the same thing to the entire country. And with the boot-licking Supremes in his corner, I think the next two elections will determine the fate of our country.
Ironically, expanding the crony capitalism could destroy capitalism itself. As Trump steadily hacks away at the rule of law, he puts the legal system that corporations depend on for their existence in jeopardy. Corporations are legal constructs. They exist only on paper and do not occur in nature. The paper they exist on only has value because the state, with its monopoly on the use of legitimate and sanctioned violence, says so. Without a functional rule of law that tells people how to behave and has penalties for not behaving the way the law says, then the charters of all corporations are at risk of not being worth the paper they're printed on.
I mean, sure, there's anarcho-capitalism, but all that is, is a more "edgy" form of feudalism, because without a state with its violence monopoly, the burden of enforcing everything, from contracts with vendors, to its own corporate charter, is shifted onto the corporations themselves.
In high school civics we were told that the states were laboratories of democracy. Those of us living under the DeSantis regime in the "Free State of Florida" have seen our state become the laboratory of 21st Century Nationalist Socialism.
That's great, JVL, I had an important meeting and I don't think I can do Substack Live without a smartphone anyway.
At this point almost all of the movement conservatives have bent the knee to Trump so movement conservatism cannot be anything that isn't in Trump's personality or inclinations even if you have people like Oren Cass that independently believe the things they do. So if Trump wants to focus his presidency on punishing his enemies and all the institutions that were against him because they were loyal to any political or cultural order that has room for minority rights then that is what movement conservatives and certainly right-wing influencers who only care about engagement will do. Also the theme that *liberals* are intent on domination and running especially Christian conservatives out of public life so you have to do it to them first is out there. I was thinking that Rick Perlstein argued that Reagan became popular because he insisted on American innocence but Trump has encouraged his followers to say, "We are guilty but so what?" One right-wing influencer cited by Noah Smith would admit that Booker T. Washington was a real American and this view of the world may be what they want to conserve. You look around at the world and you know that some people are guilty but if everyone is involved in building a world where everyone can prosper you can ignore that. You can even ignore that some people don't have the same political rights as others.
Such a pity! I was very looking forward to the conversation. But then, it's better to postpone if there might have been technical issues. We have a saying in German, "Aufgeschoben ist nicht aufgehoben", which translates to "Postponed is not canceled" :-). I'll read the Triad now.
No, JVL, you are definitely not more disappointed than I am. I was looking forward to listening in while I work. Now I just have to do the work part. I hope you are able to reschedule soon!
Re footnote 3, where you propose that corruption is essentially just an expression of will to domination.
Sometimes corruption is just self protective coloration. For example: a corrupt work environment, where fellow employees are on the take, and the cost of being seen as not going along with the grift is at best ostracism and at worst unemployment or even physical injury-- or were gangs are the defacto government and anyone not under protection of some gang is a target from all quarters-- "going along" and even active participation is the cost of survival. That's not corruption for dominance; that's defensive acquiesence in a hopeless situation.
But you are dead on right about another form. Why, after you have far, far more than enough wealth and power than you can possibly enjoy, do you keep stealing? How on earth can Putin or the Trumps or Elon (or name your malefactor of great wealth) ever spend even a minute fraction of what they have appropriated? They are like male deer in rut season, driven by DNA to keep enlarging their harems and ultimately exhausting themselves against all the other, younger, stronger bucks striving to displace them.
The amazing thing is what the f-- is it for? It's so ultimately pointless-- from any philosophical perspective. Except perhaps it's just the particular displacement behaviour strategy for DNA replicating itself that our species happens to have evolved.
What you wrote about sports is definitely true in music. Anyone who wants to learn a musical instrument and be good at it has to start when they're six, and it's pretty hard to pick up later if you want to achieve any sort of competency. Because of this, many people never even try to learn an instrument later on in junior high (or even as an adult) which is bad for the arts on a societal level as music gradually ceases to be a cultural unifier. Achieving a high level of technical skills is its own reward, but it's a bummer that childhood isn't as fun anymore, and specializing tends to segregate kids.
I’ve been thinking about this my whole life, because my parents were divorced and lived in separate states with very different political realities. My dad was a 1950s suburban Illinois Young Republican who lived in the rural Midwest, my mom was a community development worker for a city in very blue Western Washington. I remember my dad was obsessed with conservative theory, he had me read Man, Economy, and State, Ayn Rand, Glenn Beck, America Alone, all that stuff, and every time we got together it was a lesson in conservative political theory. He would argue for smaller government and individual responsibility and the idea made sense to me, but when he would talk I would almost reflexively feel like I had to argue against him because it just made me feel really uncomfortable and I didn’t have the words for why. I’ve been trying to figure that out for a while, and this is what I’ve come up with: if politics is answering the question of how we all should live - whether that’s broad questions of what kind of government we should have or more specific questions like how should we structure healthcare - I think your political ideology has less to do with the answer itself and more to do with the assumptions you make about the process of answering, if that makes sense. I think before we answer the question, we come to the table with assumptions about who gets to answer the question, how many answers we’re willing to accept, and whether we’re looking for inspiration in the past or the future.
Who gets to answer the question? This is fundamentally asking, is everyone part of the conversation? Who gets to vote? Whose feelings do we need to take into consideration? I feel like this is the Locke/Hobbes debate, or the mudsill vs free labor debate - is everyone capable of engaging in government? Or is it the job of “good” people to temper the impulses of “bad” people? I think of this as authoritarian vs liberal. Extreme authoritarianism is like Egyptian pharaohs, where one person is in charge and everyone else bends the knee. Extreme liberalism would be “true” communism, I think?
How many answers are okay? This is asking, are we a patchwork of peoples with different lifestyles or are we one people with one voice? Do we have different needs and therefore get different help, or does government mean everyone gets the same thing? Are we individuals in a group or are we a group first? Is success measured individually, or is success defined by the quality of life of the group as a whole? Do we prioritize individual responsibility or do we prioritize group efforts? I think of this as individualist vs collectivist. America is generally a very individualist country, I think countries like Japan are very collectivist.
And finally, are you looking for answers in the past, in what has been, what has worked, the institutions we’ve established? Or are you rooted in what could be? In what we could build? Are you looking to the future for ideas? I think of this as conservative vs progressive.
I think the term right wing has usually encompassed (throughout history) authoritarianism, individualism, and conservatism, and left wing is rooted in liberalism, collectivism, and progressivism. But all of these are spectrums, right? And both sides are needed. At least for the last two. It’s good to be grounded in what has worked and not constantly jumping to new things that are unproven and unknown. But it’s also good to be thinking about how we can improve, what improvement looks like, etc. Every choice that an individual makes is a combination of both individual choices and systemic factors, and it depends on which one you emphasize when you’re looking for a solution. Is crime an individual responsibility, punished individually? Or do we look at the way someone got there to stop crime before it happens? I think of the two sides as like yin and yang, energies that pass back and forth and the truth is not a fixed point, it’s the balance between the two sides.
The first question is interesting, though. I really thought we were all Locke people here. I thought we all agreed that everyone got a voice. I thought we all agreed that human life is valuable, that we are all God’s children, that everyone is capable of great evil and immense good and the goal of society, from individual relationships to organizations and institutions to governments, was to try to bring the best out in people and temper the worst. I thought we were arguing about whether to do that by focusing on individuals vs groups or past vs future solutions. I understand that there are places where authoritarianism is necessary, at least for now, like with the criminal justice system. Society has a duty to separate harmful people from the group, and I understand why people have the instinct to make justice a punishment, to take away criminal’s rights and write them off as a underclass. In my opinion, that’s a vestige of the very natural instinct to punch back, to make sure that someone who hurts you doesn’t have the chance to do so again. I think removing the criminal right to vote is inherently illiberal, but I understand that we don’t live in an ideal society.
But I thought we all would at least say we believe in the liberal world order. I didn’t realize how many people genuinely believe in illiberalism.
When you combine individualist and conservatism but temper it with liberalism, I think that’s when you get compassionate conservatism like what I hear from the Bulwark folks. However, when you combine going to the extreme ends of individualism, conservatism, and authoritarianism, you get fascism. Similarly, horseshoe theory, if you push collectivism and progressivism too hard you can actually go back into authoritarianism (we need to make a new world order because we’re Enlightened and you’re Not) and that’s when you get like soviet communism.
So then to JVL’s point, the radicals are the ones who push things to extremes, like radical progressives push things too far until they’re not in keeping with the past. Sometimes that’s a good thing, like how he brought up the abolitionist movement. But radicals can come from breaking from reality on any of the three questions - like how fascists are so focused on the past and “making things great again,” which is radical because the vision of the past that they’re pushing has never existed, so it’s a break from reality.
Domination based on race, wealth and gender has been operating since the beginning of time. Republicans did not invent this. Maybe we've seen 40 - 50 years of racial and gender dominance waning and wealth holding its own while getting a whack with every financial crisis. But if you didn't think that "girl power" or the browning of America would not face push back then you have not been paying attention to this nation's history or a victim to that reality.
I believe that we should stop using the word conservative when describing the MAGA right. Find a new shorthand descriptor. It could be MAGA or right wing or some more “sticky” term. It should carry the same baggage as socialist, communist or anarchist. Using conservative gives diminishes their danger to our constitutional order.
I always thought the basic difference between traditional liberalism and traditional conservatism was: the libs want to make sure the deserving poor get what the deserve from the system; conservs want to make sure that the undeserving poor don’t get what they don’t deserve by gaming the system. This is based on an understanding that we all essentially accept a capitalist system, and we acknowledge that a successful capitalist economy inevitably means that some people will be left out.
I like the way you frame conservatism here, but I’d push back on two points:
1) Valuing slow, considered change isn’t the same as being against change full stop. I agree when systems have been in place a long time, we should try to understand why they work (to the extent they do), and also be cautious about unintended consequences. But quite a lot of the conservatives I grew up with seem to prefer doing things the way they always have been, either for fear of losing their influence or just out of nostalgia
2) A preference for slow change might be more defining of conservatism, but a lot of progressives and liberals do value rule of law, subsidiarity, and civil institutions. Progressives like building up local communities and have historically relied on rule of law and institutions to compel in-power groups to do things they didn’t want to do otherwise (desegregation, for a start). They are incensed that Donald Trump escaped criminal responsibility precisely because they believe no one should be above the law, and they point to our institutions as some of the best ways to make sure society serves the ordinary and even the vulnerable as well as the very powerful. And even on the slow change point, we’re almost exactly 60 years out from LBJ’s Great Society, and even more from the New Deal. Some of those new-fangled liberal ideas have at this point become lode-bearing elements of society, and we strip away Social Security or the Department of Education at our peril.
*****
I do believe some conservative voters still believe in these things. Anecdotally, I know several of them personally. I don’t get how they could vote for not just a president but a national party that seems so pathologically opposed to those values; probably it’s a combination of not being fully woken up to what the current administration is actually doing, disliking what Democrats stood for even more, and that same preference for slow change. The national party has clearly moved on, and I’m not sure how they could turn back to those principles without being hypocritical, even if they wanted to. Local conservative politicians have a bit more leeway there, to the extent they’ve stayed focused on the local, but more and more seem willing to play by Trump’s rules to tap into the power he’s accumulated. I hope that’s just the impression you get from national media covering the most salacious examples in areas of the country I’m less familiar with, but I’m definitely skeptical.
The problem is, while liberals have *historically* valued those three items you ascribed to conservatism, they’re definitely endangered on that side, too. Centrist liberals have convinced themselves it’s only affordability and economic issues that matter. The more extreme wing of the party that still cares about non-economic issues too often treats rule of law and democratic institutions as if they’re quaint relics hopelessly insufficient to combat Trump. Whereas I’ve been screaming to nearly everyone who would listen to me since at least this time last year that our institutions and the rule of law is what made us all safest and most free. Three guesses on how well that’s gone, and the first two don’t count.
At the end of the day I’m less concerned about whether these values are conservative or liberal/progressive. The truly alarming thing for me is how all of their historical advocates on both sides of the political divide have given up hope for them at the same time; or at least, those that like them are really not leading or winning the conversation. It’s bad enough if conservatives have abandoned them (institutionally, yes; individually, more mixed but those that still value them have gone more than a bit quiet). To have their progressive counterparts abandoning them at the same time is a whole other level of danger.
Excellent piece JVL. I did not expect the Republican Party to collapse under Trumpism/MAGA thinkers. But, if you had asked me in the 1980s which party I thought would be captured by fake religious interests, I would definitely say that that was the Republican Party.
I do find it interesting, now that you have made me think of these parallels, that the farcical embrace of evangelicalism by the Republican politicians and administrations since the 1980s had a corrosive, positive feedback effect on not just the republican party but the electorate itself.
The Republican Party, in the aftermath of Nixon, and originally engendered by the 'southern strategy' after the civil rights fight, made a show of embracing the southern 'evangelical Christian' ethos even as they did not believe in those ideals or even care about them; abortion, being gay, etc.
And evangelicals saw that they had gained some power; this dynamic led to an uneasy truce, as the Republicans never held to their promises once in power—resulting in positive feedback on both sides - the party got the voters, lock stock and barrel, asn the voters had at least some say in the party, even though thier goals were never actually realized in policy (until recenetly).
Trump pounced on this dynamic in 2016, because one thing you can say about evangelicals - they don't mind being conned, and Trump is the ultimate con man. From them, they reference David (I think) and how he was not a good man.
In normal parlance, Trump is a bullshitter, but he is a bullshitter for me.
And at the same time, the Republican party got used to lip syncing the talking points of the religious right - gays are bad, abortions should be outlawed - this was the era when the Defense of Marriage Act was passed (which was actually an attack on marriage in my opinion). The entire States' rights act was a talking point from the lost cause, which blamed the Civil War not on slavery but on states' rights (while never mentioning that the states in question wanted the right to keep people in slavery)
This was the era of Grover Norquist, who wanted to get the government just small enough to fit inside a person's bedroom or doctor's office.
This is who the republicans have been the last five decades JVL.
For a long time, enough of them held onto their principles, but the cusp of the wave came when Trump took the 2016 nomination, and since then the Republicans with any honor at all either:
1 Retired
2 Joined the Bulwark or their allies in openly defying Trump and his illiberal agenda
And now the thing is here, and the democratic party is in a shambles. Thanks for highlighting the people who are trying to make a difference, like Heather Cox Richardson - looking forward to the interview.
The small government part is partly based on a mistake. The founders wanted limited government. All that meant was that the powers were limited not unlimited. Confusing that with small allows the well to do to pretend to have constitutional qualms about government programs that cost money and do enlarge the existing federal government. But all the constitution wanted was to ensured that powers to do such and such were granted by Congress.
Listen to Plain English pod w Derek Thompson “why youth sports in America are in decline’. Hits on a lot of the youth sports specialization issues. At some level we need to call out the captive capture of what these youth travel/club teams are… child exploitation for $.
I think a close family member of mine is representative of the modern conservative view of corruption:
1. It’s only corruption if Democrats do it
2. When Republicans or Business leaders who don’t say woke things on Twitter do it, it’s “creativity” and “innovation”
This was always the case, it’s not a recent development. I remember back when I was a kid and I would watch sports with my family, when our team was losing this family member would say things like “Why doesn’t the baserunner just tackle the 2nd baseman to stop the double play?” Or “They should just put in a third string linebacker and tell him to go break the QBs ankle.” When the response came “that’s against the rules.” His response would be, “cheating is innovation, doing whatever it takes to win.” They view politics, business, culture as team sports, and our fellow Americans don’t care if you have to cheat to win, it’s only cheating when the other side does it.
JVL + Heather Cox Richardson is postponed!
Hey guys: Substack kind of blew up today. The team is sorting out the problems now, but the end result is that the platform wasn't stable enough for us to do a big live.
I'm crazy disappointed and hoping we can reschedule HCR soon.
Will watch it whenever it happens
Not good but good because I forgot to set my alarm for 3am! Looking forward to your conversation with HCR whenever it may be :)
Every time I see HCR I think "House Continuing Resolution." I guess that's a DC problem.
YES, "Domination" is the goal.
What worries me the most about the Trump Domination Regime is the expanding crony capitalism that is growing, in the shadows, behind the law-breaking Cruelty headlines.
As monopolies expand, the free market shrinks. Once we are all reliant upon monopolies for basic food, shelter, and healthcare, we will all be regarded as only as targets for rent extraction. Once we are too old to work, we will be discarded.
I live in Florida. I've watched in horror as our radical Governor works toward ruling every aspect of society, all while showering his wealthy friends (again, in the shadows) with government contracts and carve-outs from the law.
Trump and his buddies are doing the same thing to the entire country. And with the boot-licking Supremes in his corner, I think the next two elections will determine the fate of our country.
Ironically, expanding the crony capitalism could destroy capitalism itself. As Trump steadily hacks away at the rule of law, he puts the legal system that corporations depend on for their existence in jeopardy. Corporations are legal constructs. They exist only on paper and do not occur in nature. The paper they exist on only has value because the state, with its monopoly on the use of legitimate and sanctioned violence, says so. Without a functional rule of law that tells people how to behave and has penalties for not behaving the way the law says, then the charters of all corporations are at risk of not being worth the paper they're printed on.
I mean, sure, there's anarcho-capitalism, but all that is, is a more "edgy" form of feudalism, because without a state with its violence monopoly, the burden of enforcing everything, from contracts with vendors, to its own corporate charter, is shifted onto the corporations themselves.
Money + Religion (real or not) + an ambitious politician = the holy trifecta of American politics
Lets hope our fate wasn't already determined by the last election.
I think it was. Why else would Republicans act like they will never face another free and fair election---and trying to take actions so they never do?
I agree with you.
In high school civics we were told that the states were laboratories of democracy. Those of us living under the DeSantis regime in the "Free State of Florida" have seen our state become the laboratory of 21st Century Nationalist Socialism.
Wow! I hope so-- this is a much needed conversation!
on the bright side, I'm glad I didn't miss it?
Thank you for the explanation. I was worried about you and HCR, two of my favorite commentators.
That's great, JVL, I had an important meeting and I don't think I can do Substack Live without a smartphone anyway.
At this point almost all of the movement conservatives have bent the knee to Trump so movement conservatism cannot be anything that isn't in Trump's personality or inclinations even if you have people like Oren Cass that independently believe the things they do. So if Trump wants to focus his presidency on punishing his enemies and all the institutions that were against him because they were loyal to any political or cultural order that has room for minority rights then that is what movement conservatives and certainly right-wing influencers who only care about engagement will do. Also the theme that *liberals* are intent on domination and running especially Christian conservatives out of public life so you have to do it to them first is out there. I was thinking that Rick Perlstein argued that Reagan became popular because he insisted on American innocence but Trump has encouraged his followers to say, "We are guilty but so what?" One right-wing influencer cited by Noah Smith would admit that Booker T. Washington was a real American and this view of the world may be what they want to conserve. You look around at the world and you know that some people are guilty but if everyone is involved in building a world where everyone can prosper you can ignore that. You can even ignore that some people don't have the same political rights as others.
You can watch on your computer! Just paste the link into your browser.
What happened to Substack, JVL? I have noticed that it sometimes struggles with live streams. Was it an app update or something?
I’m glad to hear this will be rescheduled. The topic is fantastic.
Can you just do wrestling talk with Cillizza?
This should be more than a comment in your last post.
I hope they fix all their video issues. The last android update was a step backwards in terms of functionality.
Such a pity! I was very looking forward to the conversation. But then, it's better to postpone if there might have been technical issues. We have a saying in German, "Aufgeschoben ist nicht aufgehoben", which translates to "Postponed is not canceled" :-). I'll read the Triad now.
I wondered if it was just me with Substack problems! So I'm weirdly glad to know it was the platform. I look forward to the reschedule :)
No, JVL, you are definitely not more disappointed than I am. I was looking forward to listening in while I work. Now I just have to do the work part. I hope you are able to reschedule soon!
Re footnote 3, where you propose that corruption is essentially just an expression of will to domination.
Sometimes corruption is just self protective coloration. For example: a corrupt work environment, where fellow employees are on the take, and the cost of being seen as not going along with the grift is at best ostracism and at worst unemployment or even physical injury-- or were gangs are the defacto government and anyone not under protection of some gang is a target from all quarters-- "going along" and even active participation is the cost of survival. That's not corruption for dominance; that's defensive acquiesence in a hopeless situation.
But you are dead on right about another form. Why, after you have far, far more than enough wealth and power than you can possibly enjoy, do you keep stealing? How on earth can Putin or the Trumps or Elon (or name your malefactor of great wealth) ever spend even a minute fraction of what they have appropriated? They are like male deer in rut season, driven by DNA to keep enlarging their harems and ultimately exhausting themselves against all the other, younger, stronger bucks striving to displace them.
The amazing thing is what the f-- is it for? It's so ultimately pointless-- from any philosophical perspective. Except perhaps it's just the particular displacement behaviour strategy for DNA replicating itself that our species happens to have evolved.
It was all a lie.
What you wrote about sports is definitely true in music. Anyone who wants to learn a musical instrument and be good at it has to start when they're six, and it's pretty hard to pick up later if you want to achieve any sort of competency. Because of this, many people never even try to learn an instrument later on in junior high (or even as an adult) which is bad for the arts on a societal level as music gradually ceases to be a cultural unifier. Achieving a high level of technical skills is its own reward, but it's a bummer that childhood isn't as fun anymore, and specializing tends to segregate kids.
I’ve been thinking about this my whole life, because my parents were divorced and lived in separate states with very different political realities. My dad was a 1950s suburban Illinois Young Republican who lived in the rural Midwest, my mom was a community development worker for a city in very blue Western Washington. I remember my dad was obsessed with conservative theory, he had me read Man, Economy, and State, Ayn Rand, Glenn Beck, America Alone, all that stuff, and every time we got together it was a lesson in conservative political theory. He would argue for smaller government and individual responsibility and the idea made sense to me, but when he would talk I would almost reflexively feel like I had to argue against him because it just made me feel really uncomfortable and I didn’t have the words for why. I’ve been trying to figure that out for a while, and this is what I’ve come up with: if politics is answering the question of how we all should live - whether that’s broad questions of what kind of government we should have or more specific questions like how should we structure healthcare - I think your political ideology has less to do with the answer itself and more to do with the assumptions you make about the process of answering, if that makes sense. I think before we answer the question, we come to the table with assumptions about who gets to answer the question, how many answers we’re willing to accept, and whether we’re looking for inspiration in the past or the future.
Who gets to answer the question? This is fundamentally asking, is everyone part of the conversation? Who gets to vote? Whose feelings do we need to take into consideration? I feel like this is the Locke/Hobbes debate, or the mudsill vs free labor debate - is everyone capable of engaging in government? Or is it the job of “good” people to temper the impulses of “bad” people? I think of this as authoritarian vs liberal. Extreme authoritarianism is like Egyptian pharaohs, where one person is in charge and everyone else bends the knee. Extreme liberalism would be “true” communism, I think?
How many answers are okay? This is asking, are we a patchwork of peoples with different lifestyles or are we one people with one voice? Do we have different needs and therefore get different help, or does government mean everyone gets the same thing? Are we individuals in a group or are we a group first? Is success measured individually, or is success defined by the quality of life of the group as a whole? Do we prioritize individual responsibility or do we prioritize group efforts? I think of this as individualist vs collectivist. America is generally a very individualist country, I think countries like Japan are very collectivist.
And finally, are you looking for answers in the past, in what has been, what has worked, the institutions we’ve established? Or are you rooted in what could be? In what we could build? Are you looking to the future for ideas? I think of this as conservative vs progressive.
I think the term right wing has usually encompassed (throughout history) authoritarianism, individualism, and conservatism, and left wing is rooted in liberalism, collectivism, and progressivism. But all of these are spectrums, right? And both sides are needed. At least for the last two. It’s good to be grounded in what has worked and not constantly jumping to new things that are unproven and unknown. But it’s also good to be thinking about how we can improve, what improvement looks like, etc. Every choice that an individual makes is a combination of both individual choices and systemic factors, and it depends on which one you emphasize when you’re looking for a solution. Is crime an individual responsibility, punished individually? Or do we look at the way someone got there to stop crime before it happens? I think of the two sides as like yin and yang, energies that pass back and forth and the truth is not a fixed point, it’s the balance between the two sides.
The first question is interesting, though. I really thought we were all Locke people here. I thought we all agreed that everyone got a voice. I thought we all agreed that human life is valuable, that we are all God’s children, that everyone is capable of great evil and immense good and the goal of society, from individual relationships to organizations and institutions to governments, was to try to bring the best out in people and temper the worst. I thought we were arguing about whether to do that by focusing on individuals vs groups or past vs future solutions. I understand that there are places where authoritarianism is necessary, at least for now, like with the criminal justice system. Society has a duty to separate harmful people from the group, and I understand why people have the instinct to make justice a punishment, to take away criminal’s rights and write them off as a underclass. In my opinion, that’s a vestige of the very natural instinct to punch back, to make sure that someone who hurts you doesn’t have the chance to do so again. I think removing the criminal right to vote is inherently illiberal, but I understand that we don’t live in an ideal society.
But I thought we all would at least say we believe in the liberal world order. I didn’t realize how many people genuinely believe in illiberalism.
When you combine individualist and conservatism but temper it with liberalism, I think that’s when you get compassionate conservatism like what I hear from the Bulwark folks. However, when you combine going to the extreme ends of individualism, conservatism, and authoritarianism, you get fascism. Similarly, horseshoe theory, if you push collectivism and progressivism too hard you can actually go back into authoritarianism (we need to make a new world order because we’re Enlightened and you’re Not) and that’s when you get like soviet communism.
So then to JVL’s point, the radicals are the ones who push things to extremes, like radical progressives push things too far until they’re not in keeping with the past. Sometimes that’s a good thing, like how he brought up the abolitionist movement. But radicals can come from breaking from reality on any of the three questions - like how fascists are so focused on the past and “making things great again,” which is radical because the vision of the past that they’re pushing has never existed, so it’s a break from reality.
Does that make sense to anyone else?
Domination based on race, wealth and gender has been operating since the beginning of time. Republicans did not invent this. Maybe we've seen 40 - 50 years of racial and gender dominance waning and wealth holding its own while getting a whack with every financial crisis. But if you didn't think that "girl power" or the browning of America would not face push back then you have not been paying attention to this nation's history or a victim to that reality.
I believe that we should stop using the word conservative when describing the MAGA right. Find a new shorthand descriptor. It could be MAGA or right wing or some more “sticky” term. It should carry the same baggage as socialist, communist or anarchist. Using conservative gives diminishes their danger to our constitutional order.
I always thought the basic difference between traditional liberalism and traditional conservatism was: the libs want to make sure the deserving poor get what the deserve from the system; conservs want to make sure that the undeserving poor don’t get what they don’t deserve by gaming the system. This is based on an understanding that we all essentially accept a capitalist system, and we acknowledge that a successful capitalist economy inevitably means that some people will be left out.
It may too late for reconciliation. We've already started blaming each other for the stench of the corpses.
I like the way you frame conservatism here, but I’d push back on two points:
1) Valuing slow, considered change isn’t the same as being against change full stop. I agree when systems have been in place a long time, we should try to understand why they work (to the extent they do), and also be cautious about unintended consequences. But quite a lot of the conservatives I grew up with seem to prefer doing things the way they always have been, either for fear of losing their influence or just out of nostalgia
2) A preference for slow change might be more defining of conservatism, but a lot of progressives and liberals do value rule of law, subsidiarity, and civil institutions. Progressives like building up local communities and have historically relied on rule of law and institutions to compel in-power groups to do things they didn’t want to do otherwise (desegregation, for a start). They are incensed that Donald Trump escaped criminal responsibility precisely because they believe no one should be above the law, and they point to our institutions as some of the best ways to make sure society serves the ordinary and even the vulnerable as well as the very powerful. And even on the slow change point, we’re almost exactly 60 years out from LBJ’s Great Society, and even more from the New Deal. Some of those new-fangled liberal ideas have at this point become lode-bearing elements of society, and we strip away Social Security or the Department of Education at our peril.
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I do believe some conservative voters still believe in these things. Anecdotally, I know several of them personally. I don’t get how they could vote for not just a president but a national party that seems so pathologically opposed to those values; probably it’s a combination of not being fully woken up to what the current administration is actually doing, disliking what Democrats stood for even more, and that same preference for slow change. The national party has clearly moved on, and I’m not sure how they could turn back to those principles without being hypocritical, even if they wanted to. Local conservative politicians have a bit more leeway there, to the extent they’ve stayed focused on the local, but more and more seem willing to play by Trump’s rules to tap into the power he’s accumulated. I hope that’s just the impression you get from national media covering the most salacious examples in areas of the country I’m less familiar with, but I’m definitely skeptical.
The problem is, while liberals have *historically* valued those three items you ascribed to conservatism, they’re definitely endangered on that side, too. Centrist liberals have convinced themselves it’s only affordability and economic issues that matter. The more extreme wing of the party that still cares about non-economic issues too often treats rule of law and democratic institutions as if they’re quaint relics hopelessly insufficient to combat Trump. Whereas I’ve been screaming to nearly everyone who would listen to me since at least this time last year that our institutions and the rule of law is what made us all safest and most free. Three guesses on how well that’s gone, and the first two don’t count.
At the end of the day I’m less concerned about whether these values are conservative or liberal/progressive. The truly alarming thing for me is how all of their historical advocates on both sides of the political divide have given up hope for them at the same time; or at least, those that like them are really not leading or winning the conversation. It’s bad enough if conservatives have abandoned them (institutionally, yes; individually, more mixed but those that still value them have gone more than a bit quiet). To have their progressive counterparts abandoning them at the same time is a whole other level of danger.
Great column, JVL. How have we come to this point? Every day there is something to make me despair for our country.
Excellent piece JVL. I did not expect the Republican Party to collapse under Trumpism/MAGA thinkers. But, if you had asked me in the 1980s which party I thought would be captured by fake religious interests, I would definitely say that that was the Republican Party.
I do find it interesting, now that you have made me think of these parallels, that the farcical embrace of evangelicalism by the Republican politicians and administrations since the 1980s had a corrosive, positive feedback effect on not just the republican party but the electorate itself.
The Republican Party, in the aftermath of Nixon, and originally engendered by the 'southern strategy' after the civil rights fight, made a show of embracing the southern 'evangelical Christian' ethos even as they did not believe in those ideals or even care about them; abortion, being gay, etc.
And evangelicals saw that they had gained some power; this dynamic led to an uneasy truce, as the Republicans never held to their promises once in power—resulting in positive feedback on both sides - the party got the voters, lock stock and barrel, asn the voters had at least some say in the party, even though thier goals were never actually realized in policy (until recenetly).
Trump pounced on this dynamic in 2016, because one thing you can say about evangelicals - they don't mind being conned, and Trump is the ultimate con man. From them, they reference David (I think) and how he was not a good man.
In normal parlance, Trump is a bullshitter, but he is a bullshitter for me.
And at the same time, the Republican party got used to lip syncing the talking points of the religious right - gays are bad, abortions should be outlawed - this was the era when the Defense of Marriage Act was passed (which was actually an attack on marriage in my opinion). The entire States' rights act was a talking point from the lost cause, which blamed the Civil War not on slavery but on states' rights (while never mentioning that the states in question wanted the right to keep people in slavery)
This was the era of Grover Norquist, who wanted to get the government just small enough to fit inside a person's bedroom or doctor's office.
This is who the republicans have been the last five decades JVL.
For a long time, enough of them held onto their principles, but the cusp of the wave came when Trump took the 2016 nomination, and since then the Republicans with any honor at all either:
1 Retired
2 Joined the Bulwark or their allies in openly defying Trump and his illiberal agenda
And now the thing is here, and the democratic party is in a shambles. Thanks for highlighting the people who are trying to make a difference, like Heather Cox Richardson - looking forward to the interview.
I agree - this is all about domination. They do not believe they must compromise because god is on their side.
The small government part is partly based on a mistake. The founders wanted limited government. All that meant was that the powers were limited not unlimited. Confusing that with small allows the well to do to pretend to have constitutional qualms about government programs that cost money and do enlarge the existing federal government. But all the constitution wanted was to ensured that powers to do such and such were granted by Congress.
Listen to Plain English pod w Derek Thompson “why youth sports in America are in decline’. Hits on a lot of the youth sports specialization issues. At some level we need to call out the captive capture of what these youth travel/club teams are… child exploitation for $.
I think a close family member of mine is representative of the modern conservative view of corruption:
1. It’s only corruption if Democrats do it
2. When Republicans or Business leaders who don’t say woke things on Twitter do it, it’s “creativity” and “innovation”
This was always the case, it’s not a recent development. I remember back when I was a kid and I would watch sports with my family, when our team was losing this family member would say things like “Why doesn’t the baserunner just tackle the 2nd baseman to stop the double play?” Or “They should just put in a third string linebacker and tell him to go break the QBs ankle.” When the response came “that’s against the rules.” His response would be, “cheating is innovation, doing whatever it takes to win.” They view politics, business, culture as team sports, and our fellow Americans don’t care if you have to cheat to win, it’s only cheating when the other side does it.