The Saving Elephants...Podcast!

I'm excited to announce the Saving Elephants Podcast is well underway and will launch on April 1st!

No Joke.

It will feature engaging conversations about conservative values and how they can be applied to the challenges we face today. Tired of political shock-talk and rank punditry on your radio and TV? Curious about what conservative thinkers of yesteryear had to say but don't have time to read what they wrote? Have a hankering to listen to a host on his journey of overcoming the anxieties of hearing his own voice broadcast? Check back here at the first of the month for the first three episodes:

Welcome to Saving ElephantsWhy Save the Elephants?What Conservatism (Actually) Means

Join me as we re-ignite conservatism for Millennials!

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Bias isn’t Just a Four-Letter Word – Part 2

Original artwork by Marisa Draeger

“The conservative adheres to CUSTOM, CONVENTION, and CONTINUITY.” Russell Kirk – Ten Conservative Principles*

In Part 1 of this series we discussed the image problem conservatives have among a diverse generation of Millennials. Conservatives mean to conserve biases of the past. Unfortunately, bias has become a four-letter word.

If you’ve followed my work before you’ve probably heard me say by now that the conservative views man as both a physical and spiritual being. Our reality is one, but it has a dual-nature. If this is so, it follows that our approach to everything in life should account for this dual-nature. To build one’s life on the accumulation of material things will lead to wanton emptiness as the soul is starved of nourishment in the same way a pious devotee who forsakes food will starve. The materialist views man as matter all the way through. Both worldviews may be wrong, but they most certainly can’t both be correct; at least one of them will consistently produce undesirable results as it runs contrary to reality. If materialism is true, we should expect to be able to find contentment in a life modeled after its teachings. If it is not it will produce discontent, even misery. If conservatism is true then even a subject as mundane as political policy must take into account our transcendental nature.

In our last post I closed with the curious notion that abandoning the institutions, heritage, and culture we were born into is a recipe for unhappiness. The reason for this is that our spiritual being yearns for connection with something beyond the here and now; something this present physical world cannot give. And culture—the continuous linking of one generation to another through shared customs and beliefs—is certainly something that extends far beyond our mere existence.

Perhaps you’re thinking wait a minute, if this guy believes we yearn for things that meet our spiritual needs why is he talking about physical things like culture and earthly institutions to bring that about? Let’s return to the conservative idea that humans have a dual-nature: We engage in the physical reality through physical means; but we engage in the spiritual reality the same way. Think of some of the commonly shared sacraments of Christianity—prayer, reading of the Word, partaking in the Lord’s Supper—in each sacrament the believer is acting in the physical and spiritual realms simultaneously. If we spotted a stranger on his knees with his hands clasped together and his eye’s closed and his head bowed we’d immediately assume—based on his physical posture—that he was in the act of prayer.

I don’t mean to deify culture or the institutions that inhabit culture; I only mean to point out that they are means to connect us to something transcendent. I don’t mean to suggest that all institutions are equally praiseworthy or spiritually nourishing; far more have testified to finding rest for their soul in the house of God than at their local rotary club. Institutions do not replace a relationship with the Creator, but they may facilitate one. The church is not God; it is one of the means by which He reveals Himself. And for that reason it matters very much.

If cultural heritage is arbitrary, then its absence shouldn’t matter. This fits into a materialist’s worldview. But if humans are spiritual animals, then it matters very much that we seek to find our place in something much larger than ourselves. Culture is part of that process. It lets us see ourselves in the unending chain linking humans through time from generations past to generations yet to come. It is the beginning of plugging our minds and hearts into something beyond ourselves. It is the first step towards the transcendental—for which human soul yearns. It does not replace the religious or spiritual experience, but it enriches it by giving us some context for where we fit into the big picture.

And yet much of the culture in Western civilization is under assault from within, accused of being oppressive, homophobic, racist, chauvinistic, or just outdated. “In place of the old beliefs based on godliness, judgement, and historical attachment, young people are given the new beliefs based on equality and inclusion, and are told that the judgement of other lifestyles is a crime,” observes English philosopher Roger Scruton, “If the purpose were merely to substitute one belief system for another it would be open to rational debate. But the purpose is to substitute one community for another…However, there is no such thing as a community based in repudiation. The assault on the old cultural inheritance leads to no new form of membership, but only to a kind of alienation.” I believe much of the discontentment—boredom, loneliness, addictions, nihilism—of this present age can be attributed to the eroding of our cultural heritage and institutions. The soul is deprived of true sustenance and instead searches for meaning in the junk food of various ideological “isms”.

While on book tour of multiple college campuses, New York Times commentator David Brooks observed a certain listlessness in students: “They assume that the culture of expressive individualism is the eternal order of the universe and that meaning comes from being authentic to self. They have a combination of academic and career competitiveness and a lack of a moral romantic vocabulary that has created a culture that is professional and not poetic, pragmatic and not romantic. The head is large, and the heart and soul are backstage...They have an unconscious boredom when they realize they have not achieved the highest level of their own fulfillment.” In our hearts we understand that what we desire most is not stuff or radical individual authenticity, but healthy and vibrant community that offers us acceptance, love, and purpose.

Is there any doubt that the traditional institutions that represent Western culture are in decline? As I argued in an earlier post, there is a tendency to believe that our ancestors were inferior to us in every way. We look at the advancements of science and the amazing strides made in reducing global poverty and begin to believe the myth that all knowledge and wisdom follows a linear, progressive path. It doesn’t. We are novices in cultural heritage compared to our ancestors and the fallout is devastating to the social order. Just as we are superior to our ancestors in scientific achievements, they are superior to us in spiritual aptitude and community cohesion.

Sociologist Robert Nisbet spoke of the need for cultural purpose for social stability: “If, for one reason or another, the individual’s immediate society comes to seem remote, purposeless, and hostile, if a people come to sense that, altogether, they are victims of discrimination and exclusion, not all the food and jobs in the world will prevent them from looking for the kind of surcease that comes with membership in a social and moral order seemingly directed toward their very soul.” Does this not explain, in part, the 21st century populous movements that led to the success of candidates such as Barack Obama and Donald Trump? For, though they may differ radically in policy and rhetoric, they are both peddlers of the same message of inclusion for a “people” who believe themselves to be excluded and forgotten. In fact, inexperience as a politician has increasingly become an asset for hopeful candidates. An absence of finding one’s “place” in society opens the door to eventual demagoguery and authoritarianism.

For society to survive, then, it is imperative individuals are able to visualize where they fit into society as a whole and find purpose and fulfillment from lasting institutions that serve a vital function. “Institutions decay when they are deprived of function,” wrote Russell Kirk, “Thus the family is disintegrating before our eyes not because of ‘sexual maladjustment’ and ‘family tension’…but because it has been deprived of its old economic and educational advantages. So it is with aristocracy, local government, guild, church, and the other elements which bound man to man for many centuries.” Perhaps the idea of finding one’s “place” sounds oppressive. But liberty exists within boundaries, not outside of them. Just as an infant is far “freer” under the care and provision of loving parents, we are freest when we operate within the boundaries of our dual-nature and occupy institutions left to us rather than disavowing allegiance to anyone or thing other than authentic individualism.

Again, it’s not a simple matter of only recognizing the importance of institutions; it’s a profound struggle to have our spiritual needs met in the same manner all of humanity struggles to make provisions for its physical needs. Just as we can deprive the body of good health through a steady diet of junk food, so we can deprive the soul of purpose through allegiance to hollow institutions. “Increasingly, individuals seek escape from the freedom of impersonality, secularism, and individualism,” wrote Nisbet, “They look for community in marriage, thus putting, often, an intolerable strain upon a tie already grown institutionally fragile. They look for it in easy religion, which leads frequently to a vulgarization of Christianity the like of which the world has not seen before. They look for it in the psychiatrist’s office, in the cult, in functionless ritualizations of the past, and in all the other avocations of relief from nervous exhaustion.”

If you’re reading this blog, you’re likely someone who is intrigued by politics. But unless your political philosophy extends beyond political institutions you will consistently come up short. Social media is replete with examples of this—people who have lost the ability to converse with one another in a manner that’s respectful, winsome, or even rational, and have instead been reduced to bursts of misplaced outrage one would ordinarily have to be intoxicated to pontificate. A life fully devoted to a political party or platform is not only a miserable life, it tends to make everyone you encounter miserable.

Brooks noted what a rarity it was to encounter those who weren’t exhausted by this endless search for institutional belonging. While addressing a group of students at a Christian university he said, “You have what everybody else is desperate to have: a way of talking about and educating the human person in a way that integrates faith, emotion, and intellect. You have a recipe to nurture human beings who have a devoted heart, a courageous mind and a purposeful soul. Almost no other set of institutions in American society has that, and everyone wants it. From my point of view, you’re ahead of everybody else and have the potential to influence American culture in a way that could be magnificent.” While conservatism begins with the sentiment that the things we hold dear are fragile and effort must be made to conserve them we must proceed with caution. T. S. Eliot warned, “Conservatism is too often conservation of the wrong thing.” Not all that glitters is gold.

It’s not necessary that every jot and tittle of institutions of old be preserved intact for conservatism to thrive and society to survive. But it will be necessary for Millennials to chart a course that provides for both continuity with the past and speaks to the Millennial soul. Salvation is not to be found on Facebook or in knock-off brands of traditions and institutions.

Healthy nations are composed of healthy individuals. And, since culture is a tool by which individuals attain spiritual purpose, it is often a greater determinant of a nation’s wellbeing than economics, natural resources, or blind luck. As such, the conservative is often a fierce defender of culture. But are all cultures of equal value? Are there times when it makes sense to be a critic more than a defender of your own culture? In Part 3 we’ll turn our attention to the ways in which this powerful tool may be misdirected.

This post originally appeared in The Millennial Review.

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Announcing the Saving Elephants Podcast!

Taking a brief hiatus from the weekly Friday posts to concentrate on the all new Saving Elephants Podcast set to launch April 1st! Details to follow...

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Bias isn’t Just a Four-Letter Word – Part 1

Original artwork by Marisa Draeger

“The conservative adheres to CUSTOM, CONVENTION, and CONTINUITY.” Russell Kirk – Ten Conservative Principles

If we played a word-association game around the word conservative, I’ve little doubt some imaginations would conjure up a crotchety, elderly, balding, Caucasian male spouting derogatory obscenities while complaining about the minorities down the street. Conservatism has an image problem. The intellectual godfathers of the conservative movement were predominantly white males; even to this day the movement is dominated by wrinkly, white men.

To the Millennial generation—the most diverse generation in American history—this creates a significant barrier in adopting conservatism as a worldview. It can be difficult for minorities to fit in with a group that looks so very different from themselves. Generations have always found things to squabble about and occasionally a defining historical advent will highlight the different mindsets between them, such as the election of Donald Trump. The majority of Millennials—conservative or not—were aghast that older generations would elect a candidate who—while not overtly racist—frequently said things that were cringingly bigoted.

Millennials have made laudable strides in ridding political discourse of anything that reeks of racist overtones. For some the mere accusation of racism or bigotry can end a political career. Not satisfied with eliminating overtly racist language from political conversations, Millennials have sought to get to the very root of the problem by banning any speech that is offensive or tinged with bias and prejudice. “Bias” has become a four-letter word. But are all biases and prejudices wrongheaded? Is it right to equate bias and prejudice with overt racism? Is it possible, or even desirable, to insist public discourse must be sanitized so that not even the chronically offended can find cause to take offense?

Against this backdrop, the conservative has an uphill battle in the war for the Millennial soul, for if conservatism is to survive it must defend the conventions, customs, and culture of the past. It must convince the Millennial that, in spite of all that went wrong in Western civilization, it is still worth defending. The challenge of getting the young to recognize the value of what the old have to offer is nothing new; yet the division between Millennials and prior generations presents a unique challenge to conservatism. Conservatism requires a deference to continuity, structure, convention, and tradition—words that grate at the very core of Millennials in their quest for authenticity over allegiance, open-mindedness over prejudice, innovation over tradition, and independence over structure.

The aspirations of the Millennial are curiously paradoxical: we yearn for community while demanding autonomy. We scoff at the rigid cultural structure of the past while desiring something meaningful beyond ourselves. We want the façade of a relationship, but we don’t want the work of a relationship. Technology has made it possible for us to have the illusion of the good life. As a result, communities, organizations, and religious affiliations that once provided a strong sense of purpose and place for the individual have been in sharp decline. In his book Bowling Alone, Robert D. Putman provides overwhelming evidence that American communities of nearly all stripes are in decline. These trends have accelerated over the past decade, as evidenced by the significant decline in religious affiliations. Radical individualism is replacing strong ties to communities, even as we yearn for the sense of belonging found only in communities.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that humans are resistant to change; for though we each have our individual understanding of what constitutes change there will be something we hold so dear that we can’t bear the thought of its alteration. Some are more naturally adverse to change than others. I grew up in the religious tradition of a small offshoot of the Pentecostal and Methodist denominations known as the Holiness Movement. Many within the church had the peculiar stance of being staunchly traditionalist about traditions that were barely older than they were. There was much ado made about whether to replace our wooden pews with padded pews; discontent over the purchase of an offering plate that had a crimson, felt padding; and a generally dim view of modern accessories as sundry as pockets in skirts, neckties, VHS players, Uno cards, carbonated beverages, mustaches, and attempts to update the vernacular of Scripture past the good King’s English.

The underlying principle—that Christians are to be in the world, not of the world—was laudable enough, but the fierce application led to all sorts of prohibitions against things that didn’t much matter. The traditions themselves became outdated not because they were old-fashioned, but because they were based on faulty premises. It was generally understood that owning a TV and going to the movies was taboo. Yet this custom didn’t anticipate the advent of the internet. And so it came to pass that many who wouldn’t think of setting foot in a movie theater watched a great deal online, because there was nothing in the tradition that specifically prohibited it.

The reason I bring all this up is to say that I recognize on a personal level that, while my conservatism carries a certain penchant for things of the past, I am not irrationally married to the past nor am I incapable of criticizing custom. Conservatism isn’t about holding on to the past; it’s about discerning what things of our past held value worth conserving and holding on to them alone.

Stalwart traditionalists can be an odd lot. The godfather of American conservatism, John Adams, was described in Ron Chernow’s definitive biography on Alexander Hamilton as “a man with an encyclopedic memory for slights.” Far from being a unifying leader, Adams became estranged from Washington, managed to make frenemies of Jefferson, became outright enemies of Franklin and Hamilton, quarreled frequently with foreign diplomats, and—perhaps most noteworthy—alienated himself as President from his own cabinet. Perhaps surveying his tendency to stand athwart popular sentiment, Adams quipped, “Thanks to God that he gave me stubbornness when I know I am right.” For all of the immense good Adams accomplished, he was rather unpopular.

It can take an eccentric, stubborn, and naïvely optimistic personality to dare to stand athwart history, yelling “Stop!” Russell Kirk admonished that the conservative “should not struggle vainly to dam the whole stream of alteration, because then he would be opposing Providence; instead, his duty is to reconcile innovation and prescriptive truth, to lead the waters of novelty into the canals of custom. This accomplished, even though he may seem to himself to have failed, the conservative has executed his destined work in the great mysterious incorporation of the human race; and if he has not preserved intact the old ways he loved, still he has modified greatly the ugly aspect of the new ways.” Though stalwart traditionalists of old may be disappointed with the innovations of today, their contributions may very well have left intact a structure to hold civilization together.

Much of life is a tug-o-war between the traditions of the past and the innovations of today. Neither are inherently correct and both may be downright silly. And yet the conservative rightly recognizes that preferential treatment should be afforded to traditions of the past and that innovations should be embraced with much consideration and trepidation. We can conjure up an innovation all by ourselves in a moment, but a tradition is a group effort that’s endured the test of time. G. K. Chesterton put it best when he said, “Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.” That which binds together one generation to the next morally obligates us to reverence that voice.

At its heart, conservatism is the recognition that the things we value are fragile and require vigilance to conserve. Conservatism is not a fixed list of political policies, but a continual effort from one generation to the next to pass on the values, customs, traditions, and conventions that define the culture we cherish. This can’t be done if “the culture” devolves into increasingly autonomous individuals who fail to see where they “fit in.” And it can’t be accomplished if the communities that foster and defend those traditions evaporate. Therefore, conservatives regard our cultural heritage and the institutions that perpetuate them as vulnerable assets to be defended and preserved. Political and cultural commentator David Brooks observed:

“When I’m born, I’m not born into some virgin earth with no institutions; I’m born into a crowded place where people came before and they built all these institutions. And most of what I do in life is I just inhabit an institution. You could go to a certain university, you could work at a certain company, you could follow certain professions. And when you enter institutions you are shaped by the institutions, by the standards, the codes of conduct. And when you try to live up to those codes you’re shaped by it. Many say hey, this thing was here before I was born; it’s going to be here after I’m dead, and I’m just going to try to be a steward of it and pass it along in better shape than I got it. And I think that’s accurate—that’s actually how we live. We don’t totally create our own lives, we inhabit posts and we’re called to different stations. And I do think it’s a calmer, more selfless, and ultimately a more happy way to live. Just because you know what you’re here for, you know what’s expected of you, and you’re connected with other people to a common cause…and the idea that we’re all a bunch of easy riders out on the highway by ourselves is a recipe for unhappiness.”

That idea—the idea that abandoning the institutions, heritage, and culture we were born into is a recipe for unhappiness—is something we’ll explore in Part 2.

This article originally appeared in The Millennial Review.

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How does a Conservative differ from a Populist? – Part 3

Original artwork by Marisa Draeger

In Part 1 I defined a populist as one who believes there exists a common set of core concerns—a moral cause, if you will—held by a large, unaddressed, and marginalized part of the population. I concluded populism isn’t wrong so much as it is insufficient, like the cover of a book without the actual content of a more comprehensive worldview.

While populism can be infused with other worldviews—conservatism among them—ultimately, conservatives are opposed to populism for five reasons: Populism 1) has no discernable end-game, 2) tends to radicalize over time, 3) tends to explain reality through conspiracy theories, 4) doesn’t place limits on political power, and 4) ultimately seeks to divide. I elaborated on 1) and 2) in Part 2, I will now turn our attention to the remaining points:

Populists Often Explain Events Through Conspiracy Theories

Although anyone can fall prey to conspiracy theories, populists are particularly susceptible. Why? Because the populist and the conspiracy theorist share an essential ingredient: the belief that the “right people” are being exploited in some way by a small but powerful group of elites. The populist and the conspiracy theorist are often battling the same cast of characters—the “Man,” the Illuminati, unidentified government officials, the uber wealthy, oil executives, etc. At every turn some powerful group is conspiring to “cover up” the “facts,” to keep the “truth” from “getting out,” to continue their dastardly machinations while laughing maniacally.

Conspiracy theories are seductive because they allow you to hold both a hero and a victim mentality simultaneously. Conspiracy theorists are heroes in that they have been enlightened. The rest of the world may be duped into believing the attacks on 911 were perpetrated by Al-Qaeda, but conspiracy theorists know it was an inside job! Now these caped crusaders are set to expose THE TRUTH to a blind world! And yet, that same conspiracy theorist is a victim in that they are part of the “system” in which powerful government forces murdered their fellow citizens all to declare war on oil-rich Middle Eastern countries. They don’t have to waste time on the nuances of, say, monetary policy when the government is out there killing innocent people.

This powerful appeal to be both a hero and a victim can override an individual’s capacity for reasoning. For reasonable beliefs are falsifiable, yet every conspiracy theory rests on a foundation of unfalsifiable faith. (As a short aside, I’m not against all unfalsifiable beliefs; but I don’t support their use in the applied sciences because they are not “testable.” And politics is very much an applied science, so that an unfalsifiable political doctrine is useless at best and dangerous at worst.)

The point is, no evidence can be presented to discredit a conspiracy theory because all evidence is adapted to strengthen the theory. Play for some 911 Truther the tapes from Americans who died on Flight 93 and they’ll shake their heads in bewilderment at how deep the conspiracy must run if the government went so far as to even produce fake audio tapes. Show some Birther evidence that Barack Obama is a natural born citizen and they’ll chide you for being so naïve as to believe just anything you find on the internet or—worse yet—accuse you of being part of the cover up.

A conspiracy theory isn’t a belief system that’s refined by rigorous scrutiny and critical thinking, but a belief system that exists to provide emotional support for those who are seduced by the hero/victim complex. To the populist steeped in conspiracies there is little difference between arguing against their beliefs and attacking the belief system that allows them to view themselves as the hero and the victim. This makes civil political disagreements all but impossible. Not only is the populist dividing the world into the “right” and “wrong” people—they are insulating themselves from any arguments to the contrary.

What might this look like in practice? There is a curious tendency among Trump’s most aggressive supporters to simultaneously declare that Trump has accomplished more than anyone since FDRand yet has been unable to advance his agenda because of everyone standing in his way. What seems like a startlingly contradictory idea makes perfect sense in the mind of the populist shrouded in conspiracy theories—for the aim is to find an explanation that fits the premise of the conspiracy theory, not to find an explanation that fits reality. The problem is not that the idea is wrong—indeed there is an element of truth there—but that any evidence that has the tiniest potential to suggest it’s not 100% true is vigorously rejected. This view affords us a one-size-fits-all explanation for every accomplishment and every setback.

Populists Don’t Value Limits on Political Power

I described in Part 1 how the conservative and the populist agree on the need to prevent powerful elites from exploiting the little guy. The fact that populism is given to conspiratorial views of a big, intrusive, overbearing, growing government does not mean the government isn’t big, intrusive, overbearing, and growing. Conservatives have long stood against big government and the so-called Deep State.

But here too there is a stark difference between the conservative and the populist. The populist seeks power to the people, the conservative seeks ordered liberty in which power is carefully disbursed across interest groups. The latter protects the natural rights of the citizen, the former redefines those rights based on what happens to be fashionable in the moment. The latter preserves civil society, the former incites mobocracy. The latter seeks to engage in persuasive debate and defeat or convert the opposition, the former seeks to end or obscure debate and the complete elimination of all opposition.

As I described in Part 1, the populist views their cause as a moral struggle. Cas Mudde, a professor at the University of Georgia and author of Populism: A Very Short Introduction, explained, “You can’t compromise in a moral struggle. If the pure compromises with the corrupt, the pure is corrupted…You’re not dealing with an opponent. An opponent has legitimacy. Often in the populist mind and rhetoric, it is an enemy. And you don’t make deals with enemies and you don’t bend to illegitimate pressure.” As Representative John Bennett from my home state of Oklahoma said during debates on whether to raise taxes to continue funding for state agencies, “We don’t negotiate with terrorists”!

If it’s true we’ve elected a political Messiah—the only man who can fix America—and if it’s true those who oppose Trump seek only to destroy this country, then elimination of the enemy seems an appropriate response. Those opposed to the president are not to be negotiated with or persuaded, they are to be destroyed. This explains, in part, talks of dismantling the Senate’s filibuster and running candidates against Republicans who don’t support the president completely.

Some Trump supporters pit Trump and his opponents as a modern-day David versus Goliath. Indeed, the president has powerful opponents—just like every other president had. But few presidents in American history have been in a more enviable political position. Republicans control EVERYTHING. The GOP controls the White House, has majorities in both the House and Senate, enjoys a favorable Supreme Court majority, controls the highest level of state legislatures since Abraham Lincoln, and can claim two out of every three governors as their own.

I’m reminded of when my alma mater, College of the Ozarks, conducted a straw poll and found that nearly 80% of students and faculty favored Republican candidates in the upcoming elections—unsurprising for a college that touts its Christian, conservative mission. And yet the president of our College Republicans at the time was fully convinced C of O was a bastion of leftist propaganda. He even ran for student body senate that year on a platform he’d end the indoctrination in the only place he could find it—two Democrat history professors. He attributed his loss to—wait for it—campus leftists.

What happens when the GOP controls everything and still it’s not enough? What happens if Trumplicans are successful at rooting out all members of the party who don’t support Trump—or don’t support Trump enough? The same thing that happened in the Salem Witch Trials or the McCarthy hearings. When the populist finally succeeds in vanquishing the opposition, new opposition must be created to be destroyed. Populism is partially defined by the enemies it stands against. It can’t survive with them.

Populists are Dividers

Perhaps this is the most obvious problem with populism, but it should not be overlooked for it is the root cause of how populism can ripen into the various problems described above. In an article in The Atlantic entitled What Is a Populist?, staff writer Uri Friedman explains, “The mark of a populist isn’t which specific groups of people he or she includes in ‘the people’ or ‘the establishment.’ It’s the fact that he or she is separating the world into those warring camps in the first place.”

When the world is divided into warring camps—separated by the forces of those pursuing their righteous cause and those who stand in their way—unity can only be achieved through absolute defeat of the other side. As much as populists may call for unity, unity can only mean the other side must shut up and fall in line.

Populism is identity politics at its worse, for it places one’s identity not in the arbitrary criteria of race, gender, or sexual orientation, but in some moral prerogative, which enables the populist to justify behavior they may otherwise find unthinkable. Identity politics is, fundamentally, anti-identity, for it doesn’t recognize the individual for who he or she is as an individual, but for what sub-group he or she supposedly belongs to. In claiming to stand for “the people” the populist invariably destroys what it means to be human.

This post originally appeared in The Millennial Review.

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How does a Conservative differ from a Populist? – Part 2

Original artwork by Marisa Draeger

In Part 1 I defined a populist as one who believes there exists a common set of core concerns—a moral cause, if you will—held by a large, unaddressed, and marginalized part of the population. I concluded populism isn’t wrong so much as it is insufficient. Populism is like the cover of a book. It may look enticing enough from the outside to earn you approving nods by holding it in front of your face at Starbucks, but unless it’s filled with actual content of a more comprehensive worldview, it hasn’t much to say.

Show me a man who is only a populist and I will show you a book with blank pages. We can only truly understand a populist by examining the flavor of the worldview that’s infused with their populism. That’s why two populists can end up supporting radically different causes from communism to fascism to protectionism to socialism to capitalism.

We might assume then that a conservative wouldn’t find much fault with populism so long as it’s infused with conservatism. That would be a faulty assumption, though some conservatives today put much effort in defending president Trump’s rather void political philosophy on these grounds. Trumpism, lacking a set of coherent, consistent policies of its own, has—for the moment—adopted conservative policies. Why fuse over a book cover entitled The Political Rantings of an Uninformed Narcissist if the pages inside plagiarize excerpts from The Conscience of a Conservative? Why judge a book by its cover?

Laying aside the argument that the words we use actually do matter, this view wrongly assumes conservatism can be reduced to a systematic list of policies. Conservatism is rooted in circumstance, not abstract principles. Conservative policies are important, but not nearly as important as the attitudes and convictions and persuasions that led us to those policies. From a distance a conservative and a populist advocating conservative policies may look very much alike. But look past the flashy cover, past the index, the preface, the introduction by that celebrity on the Right who spoke at last year’s CPAC, and delve into the actual meat of the book and the differences begin to emerge in a powerful way.

Conservatism stands against radical ideologies; in fact, it considers them dangerous. And, ultimately, populism is among the most dangerous. That is because populism 1) has no discernable end-game, 2) tends to radicalize over time, 3) tends to explain reality through conspiracy theories, 4) doesn’t place limits on political power, and 4) ultimately seeks to divide. I will elaborate on 1) and 2) below and save the remaining points for Part 3:

Populists Have no Discernible End-Game

Populism is not a solutions-oriented venture, but an attempt to justify one’s biases. Populism has no discernible end-game, no place in which victory has been achieved in any meaningful sense. There’s never a moment in which the populist is satisfied enough of the “right people” or “right policies” have been tried. Elect a populist candidate to office and they become the new establishment the moment an opponent begins to denounce them as such. Consider for a moment that everyone who won an election was—at some point in time—viewed as more a solution to a problem than the problem itself. But soon those who hold power become the new elites. Overthrow the elites and a new class of villains emerges, such as The Directory replacing the monarch in the French Revolution or the Leninists seizing control after the fall of the Russian Czar.

It’s easier to complain about problems when you’re on the outside than when you’re on the inside. An employee can complain about his stagnant wages, but an entrepreneur sees ten thousand reasons why it would be unrealistic to give their employees a raise. An arm-chair-general has never lost a battle. Actual generals who achieve that notoriety become household names. Give a populist candidate a chance to turn things around and they may succeed. What is more likely is they’ll come to realize their rhetoric was far too narrow and their promises far too broad once the reality of holding political power sets in. Thus, they can no longer be a champion to their populist base of supporters, many of whom will look for the next champion.

Populism can have no end game because it’s focused on the wrong end of the problem. You don’t solve problems by electing enough of the “right people.” As economist Milton Friedman brilliantly noted, “the way you solve things is by making it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing.” To the conservative we’re all the “wrong people” and trying to solve society’s ills primarily through the ballot box is like putting your nest egg in a slot machine: the odds of it working in your favor aren’t promising. To the populist—who sees the world as groups of “right” and “wrong” people—there’s no end to the disappointment as each successive election fails to bring about the solutions the populist was promised. There is no end-game because the populist is playing Whac-A-Mole.

Populists Tend to Radicalize Over Time

Just because populism has no natural end doesn’t mean it remains stagnant. But populism tends to regress, not progress. When the French Revolution failed to produce a stable, liberal society, France degenerated into a chaotic bloodbath that led to military dictatorship. However wasteful King Louis XVI may have been, his execution by guillotine did nothing to raise French peasants out of poverty. When the coalminers of Western Virginia slowly discover that electing a protectionist president doesn’t bring their jobs back, populism may persuade them to embrace even more radical protectionist positions. Radicalism begets radicalism; The populist will become increasingly radicalized as the “right people” win elections and their utopic vision doesn’t come to pass.

Some ideologies simply claim to provide for a more utilitarian society—the greatest good for the greatest number. But the populist believes themselves to be engaged in some moral prerogative. It’s not a matter of what’s beneficial and what’s inauspicious, but a struggle of good versus evil. Few are likely to die over a debate on whether Main Street should be widened to four lanes; many have died in the name of some righteous cause. Communist regimes are infamous for exterminating whole people groups to benefit “the people.”

What crimes against humanity may never enter in to the mind of a tyrant becomes agenda item number seven for some radicalized populist ideology. The tyrant seeks only their own welfare; the populist insists they seek the welfare of others, and others are the worse off for it. Some of the kindest people I know—those grandmotherly types who’d never harm a fly—hold some of the vilest political positions simply because they never left the path of populism as it radicalized beneath their feet.

This is the very danger our Founding Fathers sought to counter in devising our system of government. The Federal system makes it challenging for any one group or individual to seize control, most of all mobs of populists hellbent on enforcing their righteous cause by whatever means necessary. And we are not yet finished describing the ways in which populism festers. Those other attributes—the tendency to explain reality through conspiracy theories, the lack of limits on political power, and the ultimate division of society—are attributes we’ll explore in Part 3.

This post originally appeared in The Millennial Review.

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How does a Conservative differ from a Populist? – Part 1

Original artwork by Marisa Draeger

Have you ever heard someone refer to the results of an election as a win for “the people?” In any election there are people on both the winning and losing sides, so what exactly does it mean for “the people” to win? Does it mean that the results of the election will benefit the majority or that it will expand liberties or that it will encourage a certain cultural revival or economic stimulus?

Maybe.

But I think there is something lurking behind this expression—the idea that a win for “the people” means the “right people” have won and the “wrong people” have lost. Couched in those terms the obvious question arises what makes someone the right or wrong person? And it is here we immediately run into difficulty for there is little agreement on the matter. In fact, often those who consider themselves to be the “right people” are the same individuals some other group calls the “wrong people” and vice versa.

Thus, enters the populist: a populist is one who claims to be able to divide individuals into these broad categories. They believe there exists a common set of core concerns—a moral cause, if you will—held by a large, unaddressed, and marginalized part of the population. These “common people” must assert their moral cause against those who would deprive them of what is rightfully theirs. To the populist, the “common people” are the “right people” and a small but powerful group of elitists are the “wrong people.”

And to some extent this idea is compatible with a conservative impulse: the desire to halt the expanding reach of government, to carefully balance competing interests against one another, to ensure fair and equitable treatment for all citizens, and so on. The conservative does not deny that there is some truth to the populist’s rhetoric of the elite few—be they entrenched bureaucrats, the mainstream media, big corporations, too-big-to-fail banks, wall street executives, elected officials, or the like. Those in positions of authority often fail to act in the best interest of the people they are supposed to serve or represent or—worse yet—use their position to exploit the “right people.”

What’s more, the conservative and populist often agree that those in positions of authority seem to be increasingly losing touch with the reality of the average American. President Trump—channeling populist rhetoric—is fond of talking about the Deep State and a need to “drain the swamps.” We have only to look to the fact that the four richest counties in the United States are suburbs of Washington D.C. or that the 2008 financial crisis perpetrated by an atomic bomb of fraud and stupidity led to only one banker going to jail to know that something has gone terribly awry.

It’s easy to see what has populists from Trumplicans to Occupy Wall Street so upset: our elected officials have let us down. They have grown unaccountable to the people they claim to serve and years of elections at the Federal, state, and local levels aimed at dismantling this entrenched “establishment” has yielded unsatisfactory results in the minds of conservatives and populists alike.

Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse described one definition of populism that’s compatible with conservatism: “If populism is anti-elitism—and we live in a time where five of the seven richest counties in America are the suburbs of Washington DC where the political class and the lobbyists live; if Washington is currently existing to serve Washington and national elites—not to provide a framework for ordered liberty for 50 states, then populism has something to recommend it as a reaction against that elitist consolidation of political power.” It is here that populists and conservatives stand side by side. Both desire to eliminate corruption that prevents the “little guy” from getting ahead and the cronyism that has taken hold of many of our institutions and infiltrated our daily lives.

But it is also here that conservatism and populism begin to depart. For the conservative, in an effort to do something about the situation at hand must first endeavor to understand the problem through a lens far more complex than identifying the “right people” and the “wrong people.” It’s one thing to talk about draining the swamp; it’s quite another to begin to unravel how to do so. Doing so requires answers to questions such as what exactly IS the swamp? Is it a specific group of people or a mindset? How did we get here? What are the underlying reasons behind why the problem persists? What would it take to drain it? What are the unintended consequences of draining the swamp?

The populist grows uncomfortable with each layer of complexity. For populism only survives in the mythical world of rhetoric and outrage. It thrives on the notion the powerful elites are to blame and begins to whither at the idea the populist himself may bear some responsibility in the matter. It may be easy enough to stand outside Wall Street railing against the 1% but it’s not so easy to study the complexities of the financial sector enough to learn what reforms would be most beneficial. It doesn’t take as much effort to vote for a candidate promising to bring manufacturing jobs back by whatever means necessary as it does to learn a new set of skills in a more marketable industry.

I don’t at all mean that populists never get around to doing something, but that those who go on to do something depart from conservatism in two ways: 1) they assign blame for the perceived problem to those “wrong people” and, 2) they must, out of necessity, embrace some additional political philosophy the moment they do something. That populist complaining about the wealthiest 1% sounds an awful lot like socialist. And that populist who supports candidates promising to bring manufacturing jobs back probably embraces protectionism.

Conservatism is an all-inclusive worldview; it’s like a telescope—a mechanism for looking at things from a certain perspective. Populism is like a lens from a telescope without the actual telescope. It doesn’t do much until you add parts to it, and those parts may just as likely form a telescope as they are to form a pair of binoculars or a microscope. Why? Populism involves supporting the “right people” in their moral cause and there’s never complete agreement on what that means. The populists can walk away with radically different understandings of what it means to do something. That is, they may all have the same populist “lens” but they may each build their own apparatus that provides radically different perspectives.

The populist who perceives problems with Wall Street may be just as likely to advocate socialism as he is to advocate capitalism. The populist that is concerned with the economic security of the middle class may argue for protectionism or free trade. There are populist traditionalists, socialists, progressives, feminists, moderates, authoritarians—populism gets you through the door, something else has to guide you on which way to turn once you’re on the other side.

The problem with populism then isn’t that it is wrong so much as it is insufficient. The rhetoric and outrage populism thrives on are not vices necessarily; but when they become the cornerstone of your political worldview—when they don’t allow for the possibility of an informed framework of human nature and instead pin all the blame on those “wrong people”—you inevitably end up with a radicalized worldview very much opposed to conservatism. A simplistic populist mindset can easily be corrupted into supporting all kinds of folly from protectionism to genocide. Take a populist charged with venomous rhetoric and outrage, tell him the “right people” are being exploited by some powerful group of elites, offer him a radicalized ideology, and you have a recipe for disaster.

Senator Sasse defines for us another kind of populism: “What populism usually means is majoritarianism. And the America and Constitution that I’m in love with and that all of our Founders would know is a world where everybody is supposed to think of themselves as [individuals], and we want to create a Madisonian-majority of people who all think of ourselves as [individuals], protecting each other’s right to be wrong. Majoritarianism scares me…I don’t want more culture wars and then try to settle them by whose mob is 51% popular at the moment.”

The framing of our Constitution by our Founding Fathers was designed to thwart populist-majoritarianism. Our government was designed to operate slowly, with deliberation to prevent waves of populist sentiment from realizing their radical aims. The Federalist Papers had a great deal more to say about the dangers of this radical majority rule than the dangers of authoritarianism. Just how dangerous is populism? That is something we’ll explore in Part 2.

This post originally appeared in The Millennial Review.

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