I began writing this paper on the anniversary of the first attempted insurrection to overthrow a national election in American history. It is symbolically appropriate that I did so. Conservatives, who have long been outspoken about their devotion to the Constitution and the rule of law have just rejected both when choosing between them and exercising power. But how did such a reversal among people so outspoken about these virtues come about? This is the question this essay answers.

I have a personal perspective on what happened for in many respects (not all any more) I still consider myself this kind of conservative. From early 1991 to early 1993 I was the Resident Scholar on Democracy and Self-Governance at the Institute for Contemporary Studies in California. ICS called itself a neoconservative think tank and focused its attention on civil society: that dimension of social life that includes, but cannot be reduced to, markets and government, what Goldwater termed “voluntary associations.” Civil society includes families, religions, and social, neighborhood, environmental, recreational, and philanthropic organizations, and much else.

During my time at ICS “neoconservative” referred to taking a conservative approach to addressing domestic issues through institutions as local as possible rather than depending on political direction or the logic of the market alone. We focused on empowering civil society as the center for individual freedom and social creativity, rather than markets, as libertarians did, or by government, as Great Society liberals did. Some neoconservatives were disillusioned liberals who had been disappointed (“mugged by reality” was the term often used) by the failure of ambitious technocratic policies such as the Johnson Administration’s “War on Poverty” and its attempt to rebuild cities through “Urban Renewal.”

Much of ICS’ work grew out of pioneering research by Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues at Indiana University on what they referred to as “common pool resources.” They demonstrated the so-called “tragedy of the commons” leading to the overuse of resources, did not happen so long as the communities most involved could govern their use.[1]  The tragedy occurred when resources were not controlled by anyone until they had been appropriated. Coming from a complementary intellectual direction, my own Hayekian approach had a similar focus.

From this perspective, government could be an enabler, but not a controller, and the market a provider of essential services, but profit sometimes subordinated to other values. In addition, we argued government often lacked the capacity to address important problems, and so, alternative avenues needed to be explored. For example, ICS published studies of how the acequias, agricultural watering systems with ancient roots worked through local self-governance by farmers in New Mexico, where I now live. Within this agricultural community, long-term viability trumped maximizing short term profit. There are many such examples of such bottom-up institutions, most ignored by those calling themselves progressives. My focus while there was on neighborhood empowerment possibilities in the San Francisco Bay area: how to enable them to be more self-governing without dissolving into simple NIMBYism.

In its distrust of big government, central planning, and over-arching bureaucracies, ICS was genuinely conservative, but did not accept the usual classical liberal and libertarian alternative that the market alone could best solve all problems involving social and economic resources. Emphasizing the importance of local cultures, like New Mexico’s Hispanic culture, ICS reflected a uniquely American, even multi-cultural conservatism by seeking to empower them within the framework of equality under the law and democratic values.

If any text illustrated what ICS valued in our society, it would probably be Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, the first in-depth study of civil society.

The abandonment of principle

The world I once knew at ICS is long gone, and this was brought into stark relief during a recent encounter with a man I had gotten to know while working there. Even after I no longer was associated with them we had remained friends before gradually losing touch after I took a number of teaching positions far removed from California. Some weeks ago I received an unexpected email from him (I’ll call him ‘Jim’). He had apparently tracked me down online and wanted to reconnect. I was delighted. When I knew him years ago he shared ICS’s approach to conservatism and its relationship to our institutions, and we enjoyed one another’s company.

Thinking Jim still shared ICS’s approach to politics and society, I sent him a copy of a paper I had just given in Washington, DC that further developed my approach to liberalism rooted in Hayek’s core insights. I was disappointed when he replied that we no longer seemed to be on the same page, and that I had somehow abandoned the position I had held back then.

He did not criticize either my reasoning or my examples, he suggested we no longer shared a similar outlook. He wrote “I disagree with the progressives on most everything. I think the mainstream press is awful and I usually agree with the WSJ editorials on most issues, both when they support Trump’s views and when they oppose them. I cannot understand why anyone could vote Democratic based on the past four years plus Obama.  I think the Supreme Court right as it is now is quite good; I am basically with them when it comes to the Constitution. I’m pro-Netanyahu. Peace through strength. Government unions are a plague, especially teacher unions. I was part of the Deep State as a GS-15 and left all that behind me in the ‘70s.”

It seemed to me Jim did not grasp my argument, and read into my paper positions I myself did not support. I replied I agreed with him about the mainstream press, his distrust of bureaucratic authoritarianism, and that teachers’ unions do more harm than good but, “unlike you apparently, I know teachers wanted them initially because of genuine problems they faced in their profession. My own solution is similar to what I remember ICS liking. They liked vouchers. I do as well, with one modification: schools should be run by their faculty and depend on vouchers for their income. This eliminates education-for-profit outfits (Trump University for example) as well as governmental bureaucracies, both of which respond to incentives at odds with the goal of quality education.”

I continued “I am no fan of the Democratic Party. But it does not emphasize divisions in this country as a means for winning elections.” While Jim emphasized he is not a strong Trump supporter, he wrote “Electoral college, good. Constitution almost perfect. Originalism as it is growingly understood by the court conservatives. The Democratic Party is basically corrupt. Nominating Biden was a disaster. Electing Trump may turn out well or badly. The Democratic ticket was absurd. The Capitol riots were awful but forgivable in response to the way Trump and his supporters have been treated. They were not aimed at destroying our system but mistakenly aimed at rescuing it.”  

I was appalled. I had run into a more moderate version of what transformed American conservatism into something quite different. Yes, the Democratic Party is a vehicle for the self-interest of its members, as all political parties are to some degree. But to select out the Democrats as uniquely bad demands some examples.

There are many examples to the contrary. After Joe Biden’s presidency, no U.S. troops are fighting in foreign wars. Murders have plummeted. Deaths from drug overdoses have dropped sharply. Undocumented immigration is below where it was when Trump left office. Stocks have had their best two years since the last century. The economy is growing. Real wages are rising. Inflation has fallen to close to its normal range. Unemployment is at near-historic lows. Energy production is at historic highs. The economy has added more than 700,000 manufacturing jobs among the 16 million created since 2020.[2] I am very critical of many things Biden did or did not do, but to argue his record suggested the nation needed to be saved from Democrats is surreal.

For Jim to say the Capitol riots were “forgivable in response to the way Trump and his supporters have been treated” took me even more by surprise. Jim said they simply wanted to “rescue” the American system. From what? To justify this statement requires describing how Trump and his supporters were treated so badly that launching an insurrection, the first in our 250 year history, was “forgivable.”

Jim gave no examples and hasn’t since.

Republicans dominated FOX television, one of the nation’s most influential media outlets. There is no evidence of electoral fraud swinging the election to Biden instead of Trump. No Trump-appointed judge found any validity in claims the election was stolen. When having to testify under oath, even Trump’s ally Gen. Mike Flynn admitted no such evidence existed after long arguing otherwise when not under oath.[3] The election was fair. Long-time conservative politicians denounced the insurrection in strong terms.

What Trump supporters were treated so horribly as to justify insurrection? Did Democrats erect barriers to make voting more inconvenient and difficult? No. Did any lose their right to vote or have their views suppressed? No. When was FOX silenced? Were any people jailed for being Republicans or Trump supporters? What terrible treatment did Trump's people endure so that creating fake electors, illegal under the law and complete fraud, was something to sympathize with. States like Arizona that still have a tradition of real conservatism in the mold of John McCain are prosecuting these people.

Somehow my friend, who once was a conservative in the genuine sense of honoring the rule of law and supporting piecemeal changes, ideally at the local level, abandoned honoring both in defense of “forgivable” violence and insurrection, even if mistaken, because Trump and his supporters were ‘mistreated.’ He hated Democrats more than he loved the Constitution.

Jim is far from alone among people calling themselves ‘conservatives’ while rejecting conservatism as it had long meant in favor of something else. And drastic as his redefinition is, his change is less extreme than that of many. He still supports NATO, still supports helping Ukraine win against Russian aggression, and is critical of Trump in some ways, though he never explained how. NATO and Ukraine are big issues, potentially affecting the future of the world itself. Democrats support both NATO and Ukraine, while Trump and his Vice President have attacked both, arguing that they are not worth our time or money. Fortunately, some Republicans agree with the Democrats on these issues. In several recent statements and interviews Trump has even suggested he might annex Canada and use force against Denmark to annex Greenland, both of which are NATO allies.[4] Some prominent supporters, such as FOX New host Jesse Waters, even support using force to annex Canada.[5] Trump has also pardoned the insurrectionists who sought to override the vote of the American people through rioting and worse violence.

What on earth could Democrats have done that was so bad as to make these truly important issues of national security and preserving the constitution worth ignoring?

What happened to lead so many claiming the label ‘conservative’ to support driving from office genuine conservatives who opposed the insurrection such as Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger? Cheney’s status as a conservative is well-known, Kinzinger less so. He was a six-term Republican congressman from Illinois who supported Donald Trump's agenda during his first term more than 90 percent of the time. But after Jan. 6, 2021, Kinzinger belonged to a small and dwindling number of GOP members of Congress who turned on Trump’s lawlessness and never recanted, voting to impeach him and then voting to create the select committee that held hearings on the 1/6 crimes throughout 2022. Unlike nearly all elected Republicans,  Kinzinger acted as both a genuine conservative and as a man who took his oath of office seriously.

And ‘conservatives’ punished him for it.

Nor was Trump’s supporting an insurrection against the constitution out of character.

A reporter for The Atlantic wrote "This week, I asked Kelly about [a conversation Trump had with General John Kelly]. Kelly told me that when Trump raised the subject of "German generals" Kelly responded by asking, “‘Do you mean Bismarck’s generals?’” He went on: “I mean, I knew he didn’t know who Bismarck was, or about the Franco-Prussian War. I said, ‘Do you mean the kaiser’s generals? Surely you can’t mean Hitler’s generals? And he said, ‘Yeah, yeah, Hitler’s generals.’” John Bolton, who had served in the Trump administration and is far from being a Democrat, confirmed Kelly’s account.[6]

Under the law, generals declare their loyalty to the constitution, not the president. Trump’s preference was for generals’ loyalty to the man at the top. Today ‘conservatives’ seem to think this is irrelevant compared to disagreeing with Democrats on some policies. Even ‘center right’ figures like Jim.

One can imagine their outrage had a Democrat expressed such views.

What the Hell happened?

The core of the American conservative tradition

Political ideologies are roadmaps for understanding issues people lack the time to master in any depth. Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind was the most important statement of what might be called an American conservatism.[7] Kirk described such a road map, but it was an odd kind of map. Kirk argued a typical ideology could not grasp the realities of social life. Rather than building on core texts, as with Marxism and Anglo-Liberalism, conservatism emerged from a web of complementary insights, each to some degree independent of the others. Kirk argued conservatism shared the following:

First, natural law, truth, and right exist independently of our preferences. Human beings are not simply products of their environment, changing with the times, but live within or rebel against a larger moral order. Moral relativism misunderstands reality.

Second, existence involves dimensions of mystery and variety that cannot be reshaped in any way desired by human planning. Conservatism rejects egalitarian ideals imposed from above.

Third, society requires orders and classes. A classless society is impossible, but within this framework equality before the law should apply universally. For Kirk, American conservatism differed from conservative European outlooks which honored their aristocratic foundations, where different legal principles applied to different social classes.

Fourth, private property is essential for people to secure their rights, act productively for the common good, and resist over-powerful government.

Fifth, relations within a society making it function well are too complex for central planners or powerful bureaucracies to successfully control and efforts to control them will have bad outcomes.

Sixth, social and political changes can be for the worse as well as for the better. They should be advocated with caution.

The bottom line is a cautious attitude towards imposing changes that do not arise spontaneously from a society’s complex cultural ecosystem. Kirk’s perspective emphasizes how complexly interrelated society is, contrasted with “constructivists” arguing we can deliberately construct a world free from the problems of the past. Deliberate changes should be made with great care, to avoid unexpected problems. This is the core insight regarding Edmund Burke’s criticism of the French Revolution, and if modern conservatism has a single intellectual founder, it would be Burke.

By endorsing the liberal ideal of equality under the law Kirk’s conservatism was particularly American. The existence of different classes in society is legitimate, but should not have different legal standing, as was the case in European aristocracies. Kirk emphasized the American Revolution was more a conservative reaction against royal innovation rather than a liberal attempt to create more equality, but equality under the law remained foundational.

Kirk’s framework was roomy and several variants existed, particularly traditionalist, fiscal, fusionist, and classical liberal, all sharing a distrust of lawlessness and centralized schemes to make society resemble some fantasy devised by would-be social architects. All admired the Constitution as the best framework for government for Americans.

Barry Goldwater, long called “Mr. Conservative,” endorsed the same principles put more informally.[8]

I will demonstrate that every one of Kirk’s (and Goldwater’s)  principles have been abandoned by people calling themselves conservatives. American conservatism is largely an intellectual corpse, killed by people like Jim who claim to be conservatives. What happened is a fascinating case of political seppuku.

The GOP’s southern strategy

The problem began with the seemingly politically pragmatic choice by northern conservatives to form an alliance with southern conservatives in the second half of the Twentieth Century. Northern conservatives looked upon southern conservatives as the allies they needed to gain majority control of the nation. They missed two important distinctions. First, southern conservatism looked back fondly on the Confederacy, which was based on principles antithetical to those northern conservatives admired. Northern conservatism embraced the liberal principle that the individual was the fundamental moral unit in society and all were equally so. Southern conservatism was based on a deep rejection of this principle.

Alexander Stephens, the Confederacy’s Vice-President put this distinction bluntly, “Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea [to the Declaration of Independence]; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”[9]

Second, southern conservatives had many years’ experience running basically one-party states whereas northern conservatives existed within a more competitive political environment. The result was the Republican Party ended up being dominated by southern conservatives with long experience ruling through emphasizing divisions between Whites and Blacks. The strategy of divide and conquer came naturally to them.

This alliance started to ripen during the Nixon administration. Pat Buchanan, a major Nixon adviser, advocated splitting the country by emphasizing cultural differences rather than similarities as a means to prevail over their opponents. By deliberately splitting the nation, Buchanan told Nixon, they, the Republicans, would “have the bigger half.” (It would also cement southern ‘conservative’ control of the GOP.)

Buchanan was a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and spoke at the 2001 SCV convention in Lafayette, LA. The Military Order of the Stars and Bars presented him with a battle flag and canteen like the ones his ancestors had carried. David Frum, one of the NeoConservative militarists who initially destroyed traditional American conservatism, found Buchanan too far removed from even his kind of ‘conservatism.’ Frum described how John Ehrlichman, a major Nixon aide, described Buchanan as advocating ”Segregation forever.”[10] Buchanan saw northern Republicans as the south’s natural allies against the pro-civil rights northern Democratic Party.[11]

Kevin Phillips was another important architect of the GOP’s ‘southern strategy.” But ultimately he had second thoughts. Phillips’ later book, “American Theocracy,” documents how Republicans began deliberately emphasizing divisions within the nation as a means to win elections.[12] By no stretch of the imagination could Phillips be called a Democrat- but he later realized the downside of this strategy, which he came to regret.

Another Southern Republican, Newt Gingrich, was equally intent on strengthening the division within the country, subordinating discussion of actual issues with coordinated psy-ops campaign against Democrats including the 'sound bite of the day' all apparatchiks would emit. Representatives were to put the interests of the party’s leadership ahead of the interests of their constituents whenever the two diverged. This is the politics of totalitarianism, of top-down coordination of ‘the party’ to enable it to come to power. Local issues were secondary to the message top leaders demanded of their subordinates.

It was then that the Democratic Party started being identified as the DemocRAT Party. The subtext was deliberate. Many 'never Trumpers' were deeply involved in this transformation of political rhetoric to manipulate ordinary citizens’ thinking without the victims of the scheme ever being aware of what was done to them.

Originalism

This leads me to the issue of 'originalism,’ Jim praised. It led to positions antithetical to the thinking of many of the most important Founders. Its style of thought is more theocratic than secular, focusing on texts while ignoring the Founders' reasoning and the importance of context in grasping how they might translate into a world 250 years later. ‘Originalism’ rejects the Founders’ explicit belief that the people were sovereign. The Constitution explicitly says it is a framework for self-government, not a binding that constrains future Americans from exercising self-government.

For example, James Madison wrote in The Federalist that if a time came when the public believed the national government could better handle a problem than the state government, it was good that it would then do so. Madison followed this logic when president. He had long believed a national bank was unconstitutional.[13] But, when a national bank was voted in a second time, Madison argued that while he would have preferred a constitutional amendment authorizing it, the people had clearly spoken. Precedent and “settled opinion” both legitimated a Second Bank. He signed the legislation.[14]

Nothing in the writings of our founders supports granting a president immunity to the law and plenty suggests otherwise. That Ford pardoned Nixon, an act supported by Republicans, is evidence this has long been considered to be the case. Goldwater supported Nixon’s leaving office.

The ‘originalist’ exoneration of Donald Trump’s lawlessness is in contradiction to the legitimacy of Ford pardoning Nixon, while ignoring the actual reasoning the Founders gave for the constitutional passages they adopted. Like Biblical fundamentalists, they import their conclusions from the outside and then pick and choose from their favored document what supposedly supports them. Originalism is a smokescreen for importing the values of the right ahead of the meaning of self-government.

Richard Nixon would have liked such a principle. Our Founders would not, and neither would genuine conservatives.

But how could American Conservatism have taken such a mistaken path? We had lived with this cultural contradiction for quite some time and not had the basis of democratic government challenged. Two people share disproportionate responsibility for what has transpired.

The end of “neoconservatism”

Words change their meanings over time, and “neoconservative” certainly did.

By midway through the Bush II administration the term was increasingly applied to people arguing the United States could rebuild undemocratic societies after conquering them. Irving Kristol, a founding eminence of this kind of thinking, asked “What's the point of being the greatest, most powerful nation in the world and not having an imperial role? . . . It would be natural for the United States . . . to play a far more dominant role in world affairs. Not what we're doing now but to command and to give orders as to what is to be done. People need that.”[15]

Kristol was not alone. In his The War Against the Terror Masters, neoconservative Michael Ledeen contended “Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our own society and abroad.” The result is war with traditional peoples. “They cannot feel secure so long as we are there, for our very existence—our existence, not our politics—threatens their legitimacy. They must attack us in order to survive, just as we must destroy them to advance our historic mission.”[16] National Review editor Jonah Goldberg approvingly described the “Ledeen Doctrine:” “Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.”[17] The Iraq War was initiated to apply their vision, which was uniquely top-down, imposed from above, with institutions imported from abroad.

Historically American conservatism had been resistant to foreign entanglements. The Cold War challenged this resistance, and most supported a strong defense and NATO as a check against Russian imperialism and Communist revolution, but beyond that remained focused on domestic issues alone. This new doctrine of active involvement around the world was in sharp contrast with positions long held by American conservatives in general.

This new outlook required control from the top.

In 1999, at the height of American economic and military power, Ledeen fretted “[I]f new and more virtuous leaders do not emerge, it is only a matter of time before we are either dominated by our enemies or sink into a more profound crisis.”[18] What does this leadership look like? “Paradoxically, preserving liberty may require the rule of a single leader—a dictator—willing to use those dreaded ‘extraordinary measures, which few know how, or are willing, to employ.”[19] Therefore, “Just as it is sometimes necessary temporarily to resort to evil actions to achieve worthy objectives, so a period of dictatorship is sometimes the only hope for freedom.”[20] Neoconservative Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield also rejected American democratic traditions. “In quiet times” he writes, “the rule of law will come to the fore, and the executive can be weak. In stormy times, the rule of law may seem to require the prudence and force that law, or present law, cannot supply, and the executive must be strong."[21] 

As is rapidly becoming clear in Donald Trump’s speeches, and his threats to Denmark, the neoconservative love of empire and domination remains very much alive in its neofascist form. On this issue, many ‘never-Trumpers’ share, or once shared, a vision in harmony with Trump’s praise of imperial expansion except they had hoped it would promote freedom whereas Trump justifies it purely in terms of American power.

Conservatism, as ICS, Kirk, Goldwater, and many others once used the term, would have predicted failure for such imperial fantasies, and a failure they were, with a very high body count. Despite this failure, American conservatism emerged from the G. W. Bush administration radically changed, with a focus on domination others abroad with increased centralization of power at the very top, rather than serving Americans from within.

This ‘neoconservatism’ was an image of big government technocratic liberalism on steroids, but applied internationally, rather than domestically, and more in the name of domination than from any idealistic vision of building free societies, although the rhetoric of doing so served as a useful pasty covering the real intentions. Many of its original figures had migrated to their position from being Marxists. People like Kristol now rejected Leninist dialectical materialism, but retained its authoritarian view that elites should run the show and that power trumped morality. In keeping with their Communist past, they accepted a high body count as the price for ‘progress.’ Similar attitudes arose with allied authoritarians whose connections were with the European right. Michael Ledeen’s past involved a study of fascism, especially Mussolini, and arrived at a similar conclusion, observing “I think the level of casualties is secondary.”[22]

Love of political authoritarianism, at first a defining feature of this neoconservatism, spread to encompass many calling themselves conservatives. In 2007, Thomas Sowell, a prominent ‘classical liberal’ economist, wrote: “When I see the worsening degeneracy in our politicians, our media, our educators, and our intelligentsia, I can’t help wondering if the day may yet come when the only thing that can save this country is a military coup.”[23] It is little surprise that ‘conservatives’ are no longer much bothered by Trump’s love of autocracy.

Like ‘conservatives’ today, these ‘conservatives’ often projected their flaws onto others. Jonah Goldberg, who advocated occasionally attacking small countries just to show we could, called liberalism “fascism.”[24] Genuine conservatives grasped that this perspective threatened to become fascism.[25] They were largely ignored.

Starting with Reagan’s presidency, these ‘conservatives’ began endorsing the “unitary president.” For example, the Constitution does not give the president the right to make line-item vetoes, rejecting parts of a law constitutionally passed by the legislature. A presidential signing statement is similar to a line-item veto, where a president signs a bill while specifying which parts of the bill he actually intends to enforce. Until Ronald Reagan’s presidency only 75 signing statements had been issued by a US president in nearly 200 years. George W. Bush issued 130.

When Republican Senator John McCain’s anti-torture bill passed, Bush said he would interpret it as he wished. Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo argued torture was legal when used in the “war on terror,” An argument accepted by officially adopted by Attorney General John Ashcroft. In 2005 Yoo said “whether the president could lawfully torture a person’s child depends on “why the President thinks he needs to do that,”[26] The legislature’s intentions were irrelevant.[27]

As conservatism left the core principles of the American Revolution behind, I started calling myself a liberal.

At its core, liberalism is the position that individuals are society’s basic moral unit and all are equally so. The opening sentence of the Declaration of Independence’s second paragraph is a succinct expression of these principles: “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Goldwater and FDR demonstrated one could be a traditional American conservative or traditional American liberal and agree on the basics, but argue about their implications, competing within the rules of a shared liberal ‘game.’

These profound shifts in the meaning of American conservatism emerged long before Trump was a political force, but laid the groundwork for his movement.

Ann Coulter and Pat Buchanan (again)

I think the change in much (not all) conservatism to something not conservative at all was instigated by figures like Ann Coulter and Pat Buchanan.  As respected leaders of American conservatism they said things once heard only among the Birchers and Minutemen. Their doing so legitimated these views in the public sphere. 

Pat Buchanan is the most responsible for mainstreaming the legitimacy of seeing Democrats as enemies, not political opponents. At the 1992 Republican convention Buchanan said “There is a religious war going on in this country. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we shall be as was the Cold War itself, for this war is for the soul of America.”[28]  Buchanan explained later  “…if God is king, men have a duty to try, as best they can, to conform their lives to His will and shape society in accordance with His law. Defection and indifferentism are not options. We are commanded to fight.”[29] He elaborated elsewhere “We no longer inhabit the same moral universe. We are no longer a moral community. We are two countries. One part of America has seceded, and the other has no interest in re-establishing the Union.”[30]

Ann Coulter was more bloodthirsty. In response to the 1995 right wing terrorist attack in Oklahoma City, she said “My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building.” When criticized for it she replied “Of course I regret it. I should have added, ‘after everyone had left the building except the editors and reporters.’” Nor were these sentiments isolated ones.[31]

A political Rubicon was crossed when political opponents once considered a loyal opposition (a concept necessary for a democracy to last) are renamed as enemies in a war. Joking about killing people you disagree with and referring to them as God’s enemies rather than opponents had not entered mainstream politics till these people legitimated it- and it has been downhill since then. January 6, 2021, was the logical outgrowth of this kind of thinking- in wartime, acting as God's soldier, you do what needs to be done to prevent the enemy from winning. Insurrection becomes patriotic.

Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger were left on the other side of the river. As Kinzinger states, “I would consider myself kind of center-right, but what we show is you can be friends with somebody you disagree with. One of the things I say is you don't need to be friends with an insurrectionist. There's a fine line here, but somebody that has a different view of government — honestly, it makes life kind of entertaining if you can have those kinds of spirited discussions.” Kinzinger added “We can have disagreements, and again, disagreements on policy, if done right, can actually be fun. You can have disagreements over a beer. What we can't have a difference on is the rules of the game. When you threaten democracy, you threaten the rules of the game.”[32]

Kinzinger’s views contradict those espoused by Buchanan and Coulter, which support the logic behind the insurrection of 1/6. That Kinzinger and Cheney supported re-electing Joe Biden despite disagreeing with him on many policy issues underlines how they put preserving the rules of the game over winning by cheating. After his most recent statement, no American with any respect for our institutions can support Trump, yet many ‘conservatives’ still do.

My position is genuinely conservative in the Humean, Hayekian, Madisonian sense, and, whatever it is, modern 'movement conservatism' is not. This kind of fraudulent ‘conservative’ holds its CPAC meetings in Hungary honoring Putin’s ally, Viktor Orban. Its Vice-Presidential candidate, JD Vance, says he does not care about Ukraine’s fate and Trump said he would bring peace to Ukraine by rewarding Putin’s aggression. Putin then replied he wants much more.

Trumpism’s roots are in Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, and Newt Gingrich, three of the most destructive people for our country in our lifetimes. The line they crossed has now become standard behavior in Republican circles today. Trump now talks about using military force against Denmark, a long-term ally and NATO member if it does not give him Greenland on his terms. At the same time Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) introduced a bill enabling Trump to acquire Greenland, arguing “it's important for the United States to assert itself and say, 'Look, this is our doorstep; this is our area of operation. And, we are, quite frankly, the dominant predator ' — cop, if you will.”[33]  Trump distilled this logic domestically, announcing Feb. 15, "He who saves his Country does not violate any Law." There could not be a more explicit repudiation of the Constitution.[34]

Conservative Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene said of Democrats “These people would line us up in front of a firing squad and kill us if they could. We know exactly who the Democrats are. Their mask is off.”[35] After interviewing Vladimir Putin and days before Navalny died, Tucker Carlson, a ‘conservative’ hero, said “[I] have concluded the following: that every leader kills people–including my leader. Some kill more than others, . . . Leadership requires killing people, sorry.”[36] I believe there is no evidence any American president ever ordered the killing of a political opponent, and for Carlson to pretend killing in wartime was equivalent to killing domestic political opponents demonstrates the man is a nihilist, not a conservative. Later, after an outcry, he condemned Navalny’s death, but apparently killing other people was just the cost of having leaders.

At the same time violent felons who sought to overthrow an election while desecrating the Capital by shitting inside it and parading a Confederate flag through its halls get a pardon and are described as “hostages.”

The initial victim of this strategy was American conservatism, but they did it to themselves. With Ogle’s endorsement of murder abroad based on power alone, even against a NATO ally, and Greene’s fanciful lies about Democrats leading to legitimating talk of suppressing them violently in ‘self-defense.’ These conservatives are normalizing killing people in other nations. With Trump’s announcement he was above the law, he included any Americans who offered him serious opposition as equally worth of death. What calls itself ‘conservatism’ is neither American nor conservative as it seeks to move the ‘Overton Window’ in the direction of autocracy.

They also cooperate with ‘Christian’ Nationalists despite the constitution’s First Amendment saying Congress shall make NO law regarding establishing religion. In 1796, the Senate unanimously adopted a treaty with Tripoli which explicitly stated that the US is in no way based on Christianity. First crafted by George Washington, the treaty’s final details took form under church-going Congregationalist John Adams, who signed the Treaty of Tripoli affirming to Americans and the world that “the United States is not, in any sense, a Christian nation.”

The puzzle of Jim and many others

Understanding how conservatism became something completely different from what it had been does not explain why so many long-time conservatives did not reject the new direction. Including Jim. He seemed to think he had not changed, but I had. And yet he claimed Democrats seriously threatened America’s future and found Donald Trump the better alternative. His style of argument sheds important light here. He never gave a concrete example of either the Democrats’ bad actions or Trump’s good ones. Instead he described empty abstractions, such as “right” and “left,” Trump’s “common sense,” and the “absurdities” of the Harris campaign.

Jim is an intelligent man. How could this happen?

I think his approach reflects his unwitting immersion in a political strategy deliberately avoiding discussing issues on their merits and emphasizing personal attacks on character and taking the most extreme statements of some people in ‘the left’ to represent the positions of the Democratic Party while discounting extreme statements from Republican leaders as empty exaggerations. Significantly, the Republican platform in 2020 did not even outline policies, simply pledging allegiance to Trump, in an American version of the Fuehrer Prinzip. The 2024 Platform repeatedly emphasized the term Jim used to distinguish Trump from the Democrats, the vacuous “common sense.” He was well-programmed.

Jim now thought in sound bites and memes designed for their ability to provoke self-righteousness, and alienate the listener in advance from anything critics might say. It was a culmination of Newt Gingrich’s efforts to distract from substantive issues, the better to sow divisions in which he hoped he would have the “bigger half.” 

What makes examples so important is they can be discussed using logic and evidence, whereas terms like ‘left’ and ‘right’ cannot, unless they are defined carefully- as I have in the case of conservatism here. If Jim ever did define them, he would find many on the ‘left’ do not support whatever he means by ‘left.’ Kinzinger, who like Jim, describes himself as on the “center-right,’ was light years removed from Jim’s defense of Trump.

Most Republican politicians immediately condemned the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021. Most are now quiet on the subject. Some even argue the felons involved had become ‘hostages,’ shifting attention from their crimes against their country. The president they almost unanimously support pardoned people who assaulted police officers, shit in the capital, defaced its interior, and paraded a Confederate flag through it.

During the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, Miklos Gimes, a leading Hungarian Communist, broke with the Party and supported the revolution. He described the trance from which he and Communists like him, had awakened.

Slowly we had come to believe, at least with the greater, the dominant part of our consciousness, that there are two kinds of truth, that the truth of the Party and the people can be different and can be more important than the objective truth, and that truth and political expediency are in fact identical. . . . [This outlook] penetrated the remotest corners of our thinking, obscured our vision, paralysed our critical faculties and finally rendered many of us incapable of sensing or apprehending truth. That is how it was, it is no use denying it.[37]

Gimes was later executed by the Russians for supporting the Hungarian Revolution.

Today, for many in a similar ideological trance, the “Party’s truth” is defined as “alternative facts” in opposition to “fake news.” When rational thought becomes impossible, raw emotion is the strongest force for many, particularly when alternative views are demonized, as is the case for supporters of modern ‘conservatism.’ Like Miklos Gimes, many “never Trumpers,” have woken up.

As I understood the term, American conservatism took serious ill during the Bush II years, and was fatally poisoned when many of its leading figures incorporated the Buchanan/Coulter view that winning was everything. As Mitch McConnell said in 2010, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”[38] The good of the country, tradition, and the rule of law was ignored. Gaining power was everything. It hasn’t changed since.

American conservatism has been absorbed into nihilism. Donald Trump is its most extreme example yet.

[1] For example, Daniel W. Bromley, ed. 1992. Making the Commons Work: Theory, Practice, and Policy. San Francisco: ICS Press.

[2] Peter Baker. 2025. Trump Sees the U.S. as a ‘Disaster.’ The Numbers Tell a Different Story. NYT, January 5, 2025.

[3] NewsHoundEllen, 2024. Mike Flynn Admits Under Oath: No Evidence Of 2020 Election Fraud. Crooks & Liars. Oct 25, 2024. https://crooksandliars.com/2024/10/mike-flynn-admits-under-oath-no-evidence

[4] Russell Payne, "Would really be something”: Trump muses about annexing Canada and going to war for Greenland. Salon. Jan. 7, 2025. https://www.salon.com/2025/01/07/would-really-be-something-muses-about-annexing-canada-and-going-to-for-greenland/?in_brief=true

[5] Media Matters. 2025. Fox News host calls for an American invasion of Canada: “I want to quench my imperialist thirst” https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-host-calls-military-invasion-canada-i-want-quench-my-imperialist-thirst

[6] Goldberg, Jeffrey. 2024. Trump: ‘I Need The Kind Of Generals Hitler Had,’ The Atlantic. Oct. 22, 2024. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/10/trump-military-generals-hitler/680327/

[7] Russell Kirk. 2001. The Conservative Mind, 7th revised ed. NY: Gateway.

[8] Barry Goldwater. 1962. The Case for Conservatism” The Great Ideas Today, Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Barry-Goldwater-on-conservatism-1989999

[9] Alexander Stephens. 1861. Cornerstone Speech. March 21, 1861. https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornerstone-speech

[10] David Frum. 1991. The Conservative Bully Boy: Pat Buchanan's critique of "neoconservatism," The American Spectator vol. 24, no. 7 / JULY 1991 https://search.opinionarchives.com/Summary/AmericanSpectator/V24I7P12-1.htm

[11] Buchanan, Patrick (December 1, 2003). "Why Do They Hate Dixie?". The American Conservative.

[12] Kevin Phillips, American Theocracy, New York: Viking, 2006

[13] James Madison. 1791. Madison’s Complete Remarks on the Constitutionality of a National Bank. House of Representatives, February 2, 1791. https://edsitement.neh.gov/sites/default/files/2018-08/RemarksOnBankComplete.pdf

[14] James Madison to Charles E. Haynes, Feb. 25, 1831. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/99-02-02-2286; Madison to George McDuffie, May 8, 1830. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/99-02-02-2039.

[15] Quoted in Corey Robin, “Endgame: Conservatives After the Cold War,” Boston Review, https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/corey-robin-endgame/

[16] Michael Ledeen, 2007. “The War Against the Terror Masters: Why It Happened. Where We Are Now. How We'll Win.” NY:  Macmillan. p. 213.

[17] Jonah Goldberg. 2002. Baghdad Delenda Est, Part Two. National Review. April 23, 2002. https://www.nationalreview.com/2002/04/baghdad-delenda-est-part-two-jonah-goldberg/

[18]  Michael Ledeen, Machiavelli on Modern Leadership: Why Machiavelli’s Iron Rules Are as Timely and Important Today as Five Centuries Ago. (Truman Talley Books (St. Martin’s Press), 1999). pp. 187-188.

[19]  Ledeen, Machiavelli, 173.

[20] Ledeen, Machiavelli, 174.

[21] Harvey Mansfield, “The Case for the Strong Executive: Under some circumstances, the rule of law must yield to the need for energy,” The Wall Street Journal, May 2, 2007.

[22] Michael Ledeen, “Iraq, What Lies Ahead,” American Enterprise Institute, 3/25/2003. http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=complete_timeline_of_the_2003_invasion_of_iraq_3167#complete_timeline_of_the_2003_invasion_of_iraq_3167

[23] Thomas Sowell, Don’t Get Weak, National Review Online, May 1, 2007. http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YmU0NGQ0ZTQzZTU4Zjk4MjdjZWMzYTM4Nzk2MzQ0MGI

[24] Jonah Goldberg. 2009. Liberal Fascism. NY: Doubleday.

[25] John Laughland, “Flirting With Fascism,” The American Conservative, June 30, 2003, www.amconmag.com/06_30_03/feature.html. Also Christopher Buckley, Bruce Bartlett, Joe Scarborough, William A. Niskanen, Bruce Fein, Jeffrey Hart, and Richard A. Viguerie,  Time for us to Go, The Washington Monthly, October, 2006.

[26] Stephen Rhode. 2010. John Yoo Renews Claim That President’s Authority to Torture Depends on What is “Necessary”. Truthout. February 5, 2010. https://truthout.org/articles/john-yoo-renews-claim-that-presidents-authority-to-torture-depends-on-what-is-necessary/

[27] Torture Memos. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torture_Memos

[28] Patrick Buchanan. 1992. “Culture War Speech: Address To The Republican National Convention” August 17, 1992. https://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/buchanan-culture-war-speech-speech-text/

[29] Patrick Buchanan. 1999, Why We Can’t Quit The Culture War. http://www.tysknews.com/Depts/Our_Culture/why_we_cant_quit_the_culture_war.htm

[30] Patrick Buchanan. 2004. The Aggressors in the Culture Wars. Patrick J. Buchanan – Official Website. March 8, 2004. https://buchanan.org/blog/pjb-the-aggressors-in-the-culture-wars-583

[31] Bethania Palma. 2019. Did Ann Coulter Say This About the Oklahoma City Bomber? Snopes. Feb. 2, 2019. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ann-coulter-timothy-mcveigh-quote/

[32] Andrew O’Hwhir. 2025. “There is no morality right now”: Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger on Donald Trump's GOP. Salon. Jan. 4, 2025. https://www.salon.com/2025/01/04/salon-talks-adam-kinzinger/

[33] Quoted by Jennifer Bowers Bahney, 2025. ‘We are the dominant predator’: GOP lawmaker justifies US right to take Greenland. RawStory+. Jan. 21, 2025. https://www.rawstory.com/trump-greenland-2670901879/

[34] David McAfee, 2025, 'Quoting Napoleon': Critics rage as Trump makes 'most un-American statement ever uttered' Raw Story, Feb, 15, 2025. https://www.rawstory.com/trump-napoleon-quote-unamerican/

[35] Quoted by John Amato. 2025. Psycho Marge Greene: Dems Want To Put MAGA In Front Of Firing Squads. Crooks and Liars. Jan. 21. https://crooksandliars.com/2025/01/psycho-marjorie-taylor-greene

[36] Quoted in Ben Metzner. 2024. What Tucker Carlson Said About Alexei Navalny and Putin Killing People. The New Republic. Feb. 16, 2024. https://newrepublic.com/post/179085/tucker-carlson-explains-putin-interview-alexei-navalny

[37] Michael Polanyi, The Message of the Hungarian Revolution, Knowing and Being: Essays by Michael Polanyi, Marjorie Grene, ed., (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), 29.

[38] “Mitch McConnell,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitch_McConnell.

Featured Image is Trump Coup 1, by Brett Davis