In comparative politics courses, you’re taught about party dynamics in various countries. While there are different electoral processes and government structures which affect how international parties manifest themselves, the broadest overview of the left-to-right political spectrum is largely universal. In this framing, the Right is often conservative, and sometimes reactionary.
Putting this in the context of the United States, conservatives typically champion the preservation of traditional values and practices, often referring to themselves as “constitutionalists.” There’s a deeply held belief on the Right that a country founded on decentralized power should not continue to stray from that design.
As the federal government has invariably grown during the country’s 240 years, the challenge for conservatives has come in threading the needle and avoiding taking a reactionary position. It’s a policy question which asks, “How can we go back, and go forward?”
The answer isn’t easy to come by. President Ronald Reagan had success in championing free market concepts and curtailing federal power, but social conservatives have long struggled to strike this balance. Simply put, it’s hard to pine for the ethos of “Leave It To Beaver” and not fall into the Left’s narrative that the Right really is reactionary.
Conservatives are routinely branded as being on “the wrong side of history” by media and entertainment industries generally opposed to their worldview. More than different, the implication is that conservative principles are wrong, retrograde and even sinister. It’s a pervasive line of thinking that makes controversies like the one surrounding Chip and Joanna Gaines possible.
It’s also a characterization that makes the antagonism of Breitbart and Milo Yiannopoulos less helpful than it seems.
Life has come at the Breitbart editor pretty fast. He went from appearing on Real Time with Bill Maher on Feb. 17, to an invitation to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference over the weekend, to the rescinding of that invitation upon the revelation of past comments regarding sexual activities between men and boys which even Yiannopoulos’ editor-in-chief at Breitbart, Alexander Marlow, called “absolutely indefensible.” Finally, Yiannopoulos’ book deal was canceled amid the blowback.
Whether it’s Breitbart, Yiannopoulos or President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” credo, the widespread “war” against political correctness and an onward march of social progressivism, merits notwithstanding, play into the reactionary charge, that conservatives lack ideas to embrace a changing electorate and are only concerned with a return to a bygone era.
From an ideological perspective, the primary issue with this combativeness is its abdication of the free market and small government’s most enduring principle: The idea that free enterprise and free expression can benefit all people, and that the government is best when it governs least.
There’s a fight for the Right, but it won’t be won through reactionary measures or inflammatory rhetorical counterattacks. Conservative ideas can carry the day, but only if they’re forward-looking and focused on a future that promises every American the freedoms and equal opportunities that have always served to make this country great.
Tamer Abouras (@iamtamerabouras) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a writer and editor from Williamstown, N.J.
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