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Self-described conservatives are the largest ideological group in the nation

“We Few, We Happy Few”



Since 1992, Gallup has released an annual analysis of American political preferences, culled from numerous polls taken over the course of the year. The 2011 results show, for the third consecutive year, that self-described conservatives are the largest ideological group in the nation (40%), followed closely by moderates (35%), while those identifying themselves as liberals finish a distant last (21%). Conservative commentators of various stripes have warmed to these reports over the years, citing them early and often as evidence of America's broad rejection of liberalism, and of a significant conservative plurality.
There is something disturbing in this conservative rush to embrace The Gallup Organization, and polling in general, as though, in this one instance, all of our proper reserve about – not to say disdain for – political polling can be tossed out the window. For all those inclined to take Gallup's analysis to their next water cooler debate: think again. The obvious question to ask anyone who cites this analysis to support their belief that America is, at present, a "center-right" nation, is why, if this is so, the country has been sliding inexorably towards the socialist ash heap for so many decades without abatement. The typical, and most attractive, answer – that the liberal Washington Establishment stands against the people – is too convenient by half. It is absolutely true that the Establishment, in both its Democrat and Republican wings, is fundamentally opposed to constitutional republicanism, and takes active steps to undermine it at every turn, as I have described in detail on many previous occasions. To end the answer there, however, is to lull oneself into a false sense of security.

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Worse yet, it is to tempt oneself into the dangerous and self-defeating vortex of paranoid conspiracy theory – akin to the one that has already sucked much of Ron Paul's base out of the sunlight of reality, and into that dark world of imaginary demons. This mentality, though causing fear and unhappiness, actually has its own comforting logic. By squeezing all the subtle and complex errors, missteps, and weaknesses of entire populations and generations into a little box labelled "The Manipulators," one absolves oneself, and most of the rest of the real world, of any responsibility for the mess we see around us. Isn't it heartening to think we could just remove a little cabal from some hidden basement strategy room somewhere, and thereby bring about peace, freedom, and justice for all? Sadly, life is not so simple. There is no "matrix," or at least not of a sort that can be turned off with a switch.

Washington Establishment

Yes, there is a Washington Establishment, and yes, it means you harm, though primarily out of a quest for its own self-preservation, which happens to conflict with your freedom, and even, at its extremes, with the Establishment-limiting nature of national sovereignty. It also conflicts with the intentions of that much earlier “Washington Establishment” comprised of world-historical statesmen who founded a nation on the shocking premise that such an Establishment was precisely the greatest danger to a society, and therefore that the main purpose of a nation's constitution ought to be to limit the scope of that Establishment's authority. All of this, however, does nothing to address the deeper question which is avoided by falling into the trap of imagining that the basic problem is reducible to "The Establishment vs. The People." There have been many elections, both presidential and congressional, over the past several decades of constitutional decay. Unless one wishes to regress into la-la land and presume that all of those elections were rigged, in the literal sense of producing vote counts that do not correspond to the actual votes cast, then it must be conceded that the American people have consistently chosen representatives who do not believe in the American republic as founded. They have done so with their eyes open – voting for candidates who clearly represented the big government status quo; candidates who had government-based solutions for every societal problem (real or imaginary); candidates who believed that the expanding welfare state and its correspondingly diminished free market were not catastrophic betrayals of liberty, but rather irreversible realities to be managed and negotiated; and candidates who, in a nutshell, would brazenly take their oath of office with crossed fingers and a wink – while fully (and correctly) expecting most of the population simply to wink back at them.

Liberals and moderates who have repeatedly voted for the slow-motion socialist revolution

And conservatives cannot blithely blame the problem on "them," meaning the self-described liberals and moderates who have repeatedly voted for the slow-motion socialist revolution. If Gallup's 40% figure is even remotely accurate, then, given the voter registration statistics, it would seem likely that most Republicans fall into Gallup's "Very conservative" or "Conservative" categories. Indeed, when broken down by party affiliation, the Gallup report indicates that 51% of Republicans describe themselves as "Conservative," and 21% as "Very conservative." More than two-thirds of Republicans, then, see themselves as conservatives. So why is Mitt Romney on his way to the Republican nomination? Why was the moronic bloviator Donald Trump regarded as a Tea Partier by so many? Why was Newt Gingrich embraced as "the conservative alternative" during the weeks leading up to Iowa? And why was Michele Bachmann the first candidate forced to drop out of the race for lack of support? The Establishment machine worked hard to bring about all four of those conditions, to be sure. But in the end, voters (and even poll-respondents) were, and are, still free to ignore the obviously anti-conservative Establishment, and to choose someone more aligned with their own ideological preference, which, supposedly, is overwhelmingly conservative. Why haven't they done so, as so many of us hoped they would? Are they dupes? Are they sheep? Have they been completely snookered by Romney's hair, or Gingrich's interminable sentences? Sadly, I think the answer is more straightforward: Most Republicans are not conservatives. So why does the Gallup analysis show that 71% of Republicans, and 40% of the general population, are self-identified conservatives? Because that many people think they are conservatives. Words like conservative, liberal, and moderate, regardless of how they are defined – and we all know that "conservative" and "liberal" have, to some degree, exchanged basic meanings over the past two hundred years – are necessarily nebulous. They are also somewhat relative. Someone who would have been regarded as a moderate or liberal in the 1920s might very likely be seen as a conservative today. (For example, how would the ingenious lyricists Cole Porter and Gus Kahn, who composed the cheeky classics "Let's Do It" and "Makin' Whoopee", respectively – both in 1928 – feel today, entering any coffee shop or hardware store, and being serenaded by any one of a thousand interchangeable writhing divas begging the listener, in a deliberately childlike voice, to "touch," "do," or "feel" her, and promising to be "naughty" for him "tonight," while asking for nothing more in the morning. No “trip to the Moon on gossamer wings” here – to quote another Porter tune – just a tawdry tumble with a cheap harlot.)

The cultural drift towards replacing the American model of self-reliance with an anti-individualist ethic

The cultural drift towards replacing the American model of self-reliance with an anti-individualist ethic; towards replacing the adult principle of taking care of one's own with a presumption in favor of government protection from life's vicissitudes; and towards supplanting genuine tolerance as Milton and Locke conceived of it in favor of a general moral laxity, has naturally shifted the political spectrum as well. After all, that "spectrum" is, of course, merely an abstract theoretical construct. In its specifics, it means whatever the interpreters of the moment take it to mean. Thus, when people in a leftward-drifting society are asked whether they see themselves as liberal, moderate, or conservative, the results will be fairly predictable – and the Gallup analysis bears this out. The youngest demographic will be likely to converge on the moderate position, with a strong liberal contingent, because the latest "vanguard" of progressivism in politics and culture will seem most "normal" to them, as it is all most of them have ever known. With each succeeding demographic group, self-declared conservatism will increase with age, and self-described liberalism will decrease. Older people will typically feel that the latest vanguard of leftism is "just going too far," and will therefore wish to "slow down" a little. In other words, they will see themselves as more conservative than their juniors. And as we proceed to the oldest groups, those with children old enough to startle and offend with their tastes, attitudes, or behavior will feel even more conservative – because, relative to the popular culture of the moment, they are regarded, and regard themselves, as downright old-fashioned and "out of touch." For a long time, Americans of a certain age hearkened back to the 1950s as a golden era, and lamented that lost, innocent time. And yet, the only Republican president of that era was Eisenhower – a hero, of course, but by no means a constitutionalist. In other words, America twenty years into the New Deal has long been thought of as the archetype of the conservative good old days – or bad old days, depending on one's political leanings. "It's all relative" is a silly expression, and generally false; in the matter of political self-assessment, however, it is largely correct. A train is hurtling westward. Those in the first car are further west than those in the other cars, but all the cars are moving west just the same. If asked to describe their position on the train as west, central, or east, those in the last car would indeed be correct to describe themselves as "east." And if suddenly everyone on the train felt that east was better than west, and moved to the last car, it would be correct, in a way, to say that on this train, the passengers were moving east. Yet that would do nothing to alter the direction of the train itself. And if the tracks lead this train right off the west coast and into the ocean, everyone will drown, regardless of their relative location on the train – and they will drown off the west coast. Those who recognize this, and wish to save themselves – who realize that being in the last, easternmost car will be of no avail – will have to devise some way of stopping that hurtling train, rather than stupidly jockeying for position on the doomsday express. A few Americans have seen this train's fate. Their conservatism, unlike that of most others who use that label, is not of the merely relative variety. They have a stable position to which they have secured themselves, namely the U.S. Constitution. They fool themselves, however, if they imagine that every self-described conservative is equally moored to the Founders. That is to say, other people's personal self-identification with a relative conservatism is no evidence of the proper constitutional conservatism that might save America from disaster. For the tiny group of true constitutionalists, the genuine Tea Partiers, there is no consolation to be found in the Gallup analysis with its supposed 40% conservative plurality – regardless of how often popular conservative commentators will trot out these numbers to create false optimism. Does this mean all is lost, and that constitutionalists should be despondent? No, but it does mean they must stop seeking safety in numbers – they do not have the numbers on their side – and try to rouse their spirits, and the spirits of their compatriots, in another, more realistic way. Perhaps Shakespeare (Henry V, Act 4, Scene 3) can be of some help:
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition: And gentlemen in England now a-bed Shall think themselves accursed they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Time is not on the Tea Party's side; but truth is

For American conservatives, the situation is different, not least because many of the most ardent and serious of today’s “band of brothers” happen to be women. Furthermore, Saint Crispin's day is now every day, and the "gentlemen" now a-bed are not merely oblivious – some of them are sleeping with the enemy – and most of them already hold their manhoods cheap, so they are immune to shame. Thus, the task facing Tea Partiers today is even more seemingly impossible than the one facing the British at Agincourt. But the stakes are also greater. With French victory, Britain would have been lost, at least for a while, but Western civilization would have continued, in some recognizable form. Not necessarily so, if American constitutionalists lose their battle. The battle will be long and brutal, and the outcome far from assured. But these warriors have a hope that King Henry's little band did not have – namely that others might slowly be recruited into the fight. Indeed, that recruitment, the intellectual and cultural war, is the most important task now. Time is not on the Tea Party's side; but truth is.


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Daren Jonescu -- Bio and Archives

Daren Jonescu has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He currently teaches English language and philosophy at Changwon National University in South Korea.


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