How the conservative movement and the rise of the hard right created Donald Trump

[marmar]

How the conservative movement and the rise of the hard right created Donald Trump
Author Edmund Fawcett on how the "hard right" — and the conflict within conservatism — led to the Trump calamity

PAUL ROSENBERG
OCTOBER 24, 2020 4:00PM


(Salon) Signs are increasing that Donald Trump is headed toward the devastating electoral loss that experts expected four years ago. But even if they're right this time, what does that tell us about what's ahead? And what if they're wrong yet again? Either way, Trumpism won't be going away on its own, nor will any of the other illiberal eruptions across the West and around the world, which have left conservatives as bewildered as anybody else.

With Election Day looming, you probably don't have time for a 500-page book to help make sense of how we got here. But when it comes to making sense of things afterward, when there's time for deeper reflection, Edmund Fawcett's new book, "Conservatism: The Fight for a Tradition," plays a vital, invaluable role. This new book is a follow-up to Fawcett's 2014 book, "Liberalism: The Life of an Idea," and the contrast in the subtitles is telling. Fawcett is a British political journalist who spent 30 years at the Economist, including stints as chief correspondent in Washington, Paris and Berlin and as the magazine's European and literary editor.

The idea of liberalism he describes as "a search for an ethically acceptable order of human progress among civic equals without recourse to undue power." But fights, by their very nature, are a much messier matter, and all too often involve "undue power." Indeed, there's not just one fight involved within the conservative tradition, but a seemingly endless number. Still, there's one overarching battle between hardcore resisters of liberal modernity — those Fawcett calls the "hard right" — and those seeking accommodation, whom he calls "liberal conservatives."

....(snip)....

The fourth period you describe as "the contest for supremacy between liberal conservatism and the hard right," starting in 1980. Say a bit more about these two terms, both what they mean generally, and specifically in this time period.

It's difficult when writing about politics, for one has to be given at least five seconds to get the canoe into the water. All these labels are very slippery, particularly the labels "liberal conservatism" — that sounds like a contradiction in terms — and the term "hard right," which many conservatives particularly dislike because they feel it's a slander or a slur. But let's say "liberal conservatism," with all those provisos, is a good label for the kind of conservatism I was describing earlier, the kind of mainstream conservatism running from Eisenhower to Nixon and even to a certain extent some of the Reagan years.

That's an OK label for the kind of mainstream conservatism that I was describing, by and large, in government. However much they turned up the gas on the campaign trail, Eisenhower, Nixon and even Reagan were within a recognizable band. It was particularly liberal in economic matters, for the free market, very business-friendly, but also liberal to an extent in the social and ethical sense. Nixon wasn't a great moral or ethical campaigner. Reagan, I don't think, believed it himself personally. He threw bones to the moral right, but it wasn't his thing. ..............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2020/10/24/how-the-conservative-movement-and-the-rise-of-the-hard-right-created-you-know-who/

[Upthevibe]

1. marmar....bookmarking...

Thank you for this post. I'm saving it so I can read it when when I can give it my full attention...

[regnaD kciN]

2. Interesting, but I have problems with anyone describing Reagan as a "liberal conservative"...

Also, since he subtitles his book The Fight for a Tradition, I'd like to emphasize the "a" in that title. Most intellectual conservatives claim that their movement is about "preserving tradition" (or "Western culture" ) but, although a case can be made that it was true that early Tories advocated for preserving some sort of "Western civilization" in terms of the intellectual development and ideas from Ancient Greece through the Enlightenment (but stopping before the "age of revolution" ), I, as an undisputed fan of that Western/European culture, see practically no concern for it in today's hard right. It seems to me the only "Western tradition" modern conservatives wish to preserve is the very primal, non-intellectual one of...white supremacy. That, and a particular form of Protestant Christianity that, to be brutally honest, didn't even exist until the early 20th century.

[czarjak]

3. Sighing snakes make for strange bedfellows?