What Does It Mean To Be A "Conservative?"

President Reagan and the Triumph of the Conservative Movement

In 1947, the liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. proclaimed: "There seems no inherent obstacle to the gradual advance of socialism in the United States through a series of New Deals." There is no doubt that champions of big, activist government dominated the first half of the twentieth century. But historians like Schlesinger are better at looking back than predicting the future. The pendulum had indeed swung far to the left but, imperceptibly at first, it had begun to turn by the century’s midpoint.

In 1952, Dwight Eisenhower was so accepting of New Deal principles that both parties sought to make this celebrated war hero their nominee. When he ultimately decided to seek the Republican nomination, he easily beat a conservative challenge from the highly respected Senator Robert Taft. Nevertheless, the relatively serene Eisenhower years were a time when conservative thinkers like Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley, and Milton Friedman were laying the intellectual foundation for a new conservative movement that would be built with the timbers of a renewed commitment to small government, individual liberty, faith, family, and economic opportunity.

The Kennedy-Johnson years were a triumph of big government liberalism with greatly expanded roles for the federal government. The so called “war on poverty” began with $3 billion and spawned numerous new agencies such as the Office of Economic Opportunity, the Jobs Corps, Neighborhood Youth Corps, Model Cities Program, Upward Bound, and many others. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the Higher Education Act of 1965, and the National Teachers Corps marked a new and constitutionally questionable role for the federal government in education. Medicare and Medicaid were established, along with the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. There were greatly expanded roles for the federal government in public broadcasting, consumer protection, environmental protection, transportation, and civil rights, with scores of new departments and agencies serving various targeted constituencies.

Finally, many in America, later known as “the silent majority,” had had enough. In 1964, they flocked to the candidacy of libertarian Barry Goldwater. But a nation so recently rocked by the Kennedy assassination was in no mood for a second change in Presidents in little more than a year. Goldwater strategist John Sears observed, however, that Goldwater “changed the rhetoric of politics” by challenging the principles of the New Deal, “something no Democrat or Republican before him had dared to do.”

Although Goldwater lost in a landslide, his bold philosophies inspired a new grassroots conservative movement that produced the entry of thousands of young people in American politics and policymaking. Goldwater’s campaign also spawned a new political star, Ronald Reagan, whose clarity of principle and persuasive speaking captured attention when, late in the campaign, Reagan delivered a speech entitled “A Time for Choosing.” That speech contains the essence of Ronald Reagan – a hopeful, optimistic vision of a better, free and prosperous America, where the foundational principles of our republic and its founding fathers guide America’s ship of state to its “rendezvous with destiny.” The memory of that powerful speech helped him two years later to defeat the incumbent Governor of California by one million votes.

In the fourteen years between Ronald Reagan’s election as Governor of California and as President of the United States, there was little philosophically that separated Democrat and Republican presidents. Federal spending continued to grow at record rates, inflation was frequently out of control, and a Republican president went so far as to impose wage and price controls. By the end of the Carter administration, with unrelenting inflation, soaring interest rates, fuel shortages, and the humiliation of the Iranian hostage crisis, Americans were finally ready to break with the political culture of nearly a half century.

President Reagan acted quickly and boldly to cut income taxes 25%. He reduced the top income tax rate from 70% to 50% and indexed all rates to blunt inflation’s hidden impact on those rates. These measures resulted in 60 straight months of growth, the longest uninterrupted period of expansion since government began keeping statistics in 1854. There were 15 million new jobs created and just under $20 trillion worth of goods and services. Policies belittled then and now as “Reaganomics” fired America’s economic engine in ways unseen before or since, and led to the defeat without even firing a shot of one of the most dangerous regimes the world has known.

Great as America’s economic renewal was under President Reagan, his buoyant, optimistic belief in the power of freedom, individual initiative, America’s Constitution, free-market principles, and the idea that America’s greatest days lay ahead, provided spiritual renewal to an America beaten down by twenty years of political assassinations, scandals, advancing socialism, inflation, war and defeat.

The name Ronald Reagan has become the gold standard for conservatives -- his name still is invoked in every debate -- and yet the great movement that he ultimately led to victory now seems fractured and leaderless compared to the conservative movement that emerged as a result of his efforts.

In the past decade, the size of the federal government has exploded, our economy is in extreme distress, and the federal budget deficit has soared to record levels. Yet many in their desperation look for still more government to solve problems that all too often are the result of already too much government.

It has been said that Franklin D. Roosevelt turned to government to solve the problems of the people, while President Reagan turned to the people to solve the problems of government. Perhaps that is the key to what it really means to be a conservative -- an abiding belief in the dignity and power of free individuals, unshackled from government interference to create lives for themselves, their families, and their communities.

Concluding his first Inaugural Address, President Reagan told the story of Martin Treptow who gave his life for our country in the First World War. The President concluded by saying:

“The crisis we are facing today does not require of us the kind of sacrifice that Martin Treptow and so many thousands of others were called upon to make. It does require, however, our best effort, and our willingness to believe in ourselves and to believe in our capacity to perform great deeds; to believe that together, with God's help, we can and will resolve the problems which now confront us.

And, after all, why shouldn't we believe that? We are Americans.”

Reagan’s words were so true then. They are so true still.


(This is the fifth and concluding installment in a series on What Does It Mean To Be A "Conservative?”)

What Does It Mean To Be A "Conservative?"

The Emergence of "Progressivism"

The “Progressive Era” in American history conjures up for many people memories of Teddy Roosevelt’s trust-busting efforts, the enactment of child-labor laws, and reforms to ensure food and workplace safety. Yet along with reforms like those, which most Americans supported, was a vastly expanded role for government and a loss of individual liberties. In his best-selling book, "Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning," author and columnist Jonah Goldberg has described excessive and unconstitutional measures taken by the Wilson Administration. Using the emergency of wartime, the Wilson Administration fired the opening salvo in a campaign that is still being waged for large, powerful and centralized government.

Many influential “progressive” thinkers in that era of American history saw World War I as an opportunity for fundamental political change. The human suffering and economic destruction caused by the Great War in Europe and the world-wide economic crisis that became known as the Great Depression would soon sweep away most eighteenth and nineteenth century notions about the sovereignty of the individual and a government that is of, by, and for the people. Seizing the opportunity provided by the Great Depression, the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt quickly made permanent, and dramatically built upon, the big-government excesses of the Wilson years.

Among American progressives it became not only acceptable but fashionable to admire what Lenin was imposing in Russia and Mussolini’s Fascists were experimenting with in Italy. Here at home, the great number of new government agencies and programs advanced by the Roosevelt Administration intruded into every aspect of American life and commerce. We ask today how 100,000 Japanese-Americans could have been forcibly housed by our government in internment camps during World War II. President Gerald Ford answered that question best with his observation that “a government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.”

Government at all levels continued to grow throughout the twentieth century in the United States, and at mid-century there was little that fundamentally separated our two major political parties. Indeed, some critics ridiculed the Republican Party by accusing it of promising “less of the same.”

The flame of classical liberalism, which was the foundation of modern-day conservatism, had been bestowed across the ages through the five historic cities chronicled earlier in this series. Yet while seriously jeopardized in the twentieth century by the advancing winds of progressivism, the flickering flame was not completely extinguished. At mid-twentieth century, progressivism or modern-day liberalism was at its peak, but the tide was turning.

Senator Robert Taft made an unsuccessful attempt in 1952 to challenge the big-government orthodoxy of the Republican Party and return it to the ideals of limited government respecting freedom and individual rights. National Review Magazine, which catered to the philosophies of many influential conservatives, was launched by young William F. Buckley, a resident of Camden, SC. And a former Democrat and union official named Ronald Reagan began giving speeches about the important need to restore Constitutional government in the United States. Indeed, the tide was turning.