American conservatism is not traditionally "conservative"

Ezra Klein makes much the same point has has been made by Rick Perlestein. American's problems today stem primarily from the so-called "conservative" movement which is pushing its failed, very radical ideology. Ezra's point is:

Today's Republican party is plutocratic, authoritarian, theocratic, racist, nativist, militarist, and imperialist, but hardly conservative except in the sense of being reluctant to reform entrenched abuses. You could throw rocks at random at the ten clowns who line up at the podia for a Republican Presidential debate and never risk hitting an actual conservative, though you couldn't avoid hitting a Reagan-worshipper. It's American conservatism that is no longer conservative, not merely George W. Bush.

That's too bad: the conservative impulse is just as necessary to a properly balanced political system as the progressive one.

[Underlining is mine - Editor, WTF-o]

This is a good point to add to my earlier article What's wrong with conservatism and why are so many of us angry at Bush and the Republicans?.

If American conservatism is no longer "conservative," then what is it? This is the direct outgrowth of the failed Republican faux aristocracy which brought America into the Depression through its ignorance, greed and failure to act for the good of the nation if it cost them a dime. That group never forgave FDR for replacing them with a government more in line with the needs of a modern industrial nation when their greed brought us into the Depression and could not get us back out. Many of them flirted with and did business with their ideological kin, the Nazis, in the 30's. They resisted entry into WW II, but were happy to benefit when the U.S. remained the only industrially intact nation in the world after the War.

But they were not happy at being removed from power, and used the Cold War and the so-called Communist Threat as a club to frighten the nation and regain power in 1952. They hadn't taken over the Republican Party yet, so they got Eisenhower rather than one of their own as President in 1952. The racist Democrats of the South and the extreme conservatives such as the John Birchers and the McCarthyites were not enough, so they began putting together a so-called "conservative" ideology to justify their predations on society. The result was National Review, "Conscience of a Conservative" and the Goldwater movement, followed by Nixon, Reagan, Bush 41 and a whole host of so-called think tanks designed to build an ideology that justified their takeover of American government. The Southern Democrats were brought in by helping them to fight against Civil Rights, and formally were incorporated into the Republican party in 1972.

The purpose was not to be "conservative" in the sense of returning to better things in the past. The purpose was to return the natural American aristocracy - of which George W. Bush is a charter member - to power where they felt they belonged.

Conservatism is an unworkable ideology, useful only to bamboozle American voters into thinking that they don't need to pay taxes. The Reagan-Bush years were an effort to put their ideology into practice, but it was failing. Ross Perot called them on it, and since the right-wing propaganda machine was designed to attack Democrats, they were unable to get him in 1992, effectively electing Bill Clinton.

This infuriated the right-wing millionaire club, leading to the many manufactured attacks on Clinton. It wasn't members of the ideological conservative movement who went after Clinton. It was members of the American right-wing self-appointed aristocracy like Richard Mellon Scaife who want an American playground where they can become even more wealthy and powerful.

Real conservatives are suspicious of the danger in making radical changes, and provide a brake on implementing overly radical social and governmental changes. American movement conservatives want to install the extremely radical conservative ideology, and like the Marxist-Leninist Communists in the USSR, will ride roughshod over anyone who tries to get them to slow down, to consider the effects of their attempts to install their radical proposals, and in fact will not accept people who are not true-believers.

Oddly enough, when compared with the radicals of the American conservative movement going back well before Goldwater, it is me who is the true conservative.