Recovering the Spirit of Reag

by: tim dunkin | published: 12 19, 2011

As many astute, and perhaps many not so astute, observers have witnessed over the past few years, the Right – as a broad coalition of compatible movements and ideological subsets – has been floundering in its efforts to make any sort of substantial impact on our political system. This, despite the fact that polling year after year continues to show that self-described “conservatives” (and who knows how many more libertarians, a position that doesn’t get polled typically) make up a fairly substantial plurality among the electorate. We’ve seen popular movements like the Tea Parties explode onto the scene, representing the spontaneous will of the productive people of this nation, and we have seen them have a great deal of success in getting their candidates nominated and elected. Supposedly conservative Republicans regained the Congress which they had lost just four short years before, and appear poised to make further gains in 2012, especially against a widely distrusted and disliked President leading a broken and corrupt Party.

Yet, the Right – Republicans, conservatives, libertarians, liberty-minded individuals of all stripes – just can’t seem to get it together. They can’t seem to find the traction needed to actually start making a difference in our public policies, even when receiving majorities. While at the state level, liberty lovers have managed to make a lot of positive changes, at the national level it seems that the Right is just thrashing around in a rut, unable to get the grip needed to start getting things done. We’ve held the Congress for two years with a whole slate of fresh-faced Tea Party outsiders who promised to “shake up” the system and start rolling back the fiscal irresponsibility we’ve seen for too long in this country. Yet, it hasn’t happened. This Congress has seen its budgets and its shortfalls increase as much as those previous. The Republican slate of candidates is likewise hopeless – filled either with RINOs of various sorts or with conservative candidates who nevertheless seem determined to shoot themselves in the foot every time they turn around. Our leaders are completely dropping the ball when it comes to actually making the case for our ideology and policies. It almost seems like no liberty-oriented candidate or elected official out there has either the knowledge or the courage to speak out loudly against the lies of the Left and to clearly articulate the merits and rightness of our cause. The Right in America – a giant filled with so much potential ability to roll back government excess and to restore liberty – is not living up to its potential in any way, shape, or form.

So what is missing? Why does it seem like the Right – conservatives, libertarians, liberty-lovers all – reached the pinnacle of success, only to fail so miserably at making a lasting impact? Why do we find our country, in many ways, back where it was in the 1970s – broke, socialistic, and looking to the government for the solution?

I would say that a lot of the reason is because the Right has lost the spirit of Reagan – that animating drive to really see this country become a better place for all Americans, even if it meant taking often unpopular steps that went against the short-sighted impulses of his opponents and their constituencies. As many have remarked, and surely it is true, Ronald Reagan was not perfect. There were times when he didn’t follow a strictly “pure” line on some issue or another. There were points at which his policy choices pleased one part of the Reagan coalition, but not the others. He couldn’t make everyone happy all the time, so he had to make hard choices about what he felt was right. Yes, Reagan gave us the amnesty of 1986. Yes, he prosecuted the War on (Some) Drugs vigorously. Nevertheless, Reagan was an oak of a man and a President who helped to bring prosperity at home and freedom abroad. We on the Right today profess to hold the same set of ideological and political beliefs as Reagan, yet we do not see the power and force of Reagan at work for us today. What was it that Reagan understood and embodied that we have failed to emulate today?

I believe we can see four areas where contemporary liberty-lovers have failed to follow in the footsteps of the Gipper.

Reagan understood that government was the problem, not the solution: At the core of Ronald Reagan’s mature ideology of liberty was the conviction that the citizens of the United States would be their best, happiest, and most free when they were liberated to the greatest extent practicable from the intrusions and regulations of the government. When Reagan spoke famous sound bites like, “Government is the not the solution to our problems. It IS the problem,” or “Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty,” he was not just angling for a five minute lead-in on the nightly news. He said these because he actually believed them. He meant them. This understanding was what guided his decision-making, his attitudes, his political being.

Unfortunately, too many so-called conservatives seem to have gotten to the point where they look to the government to solve their problems almost as much as those who have been befuddled by the Left do. Further, too many have gotten into the habit of wanting everything in the budget to be cut…except for the program that benefits them personally. It’s disheartening to hear even Tea Partiers rail against debt and government spending, but then turn around and in the next breath warn politicians that they dare not even think about touching their Social Security or Medicare. Which is it, folks? Do we really want the government smaller, less intrusive, and less expensive, or not? It’s to the point where we don’t have the “luxury” of economic hypocrisy anymore.

Likewise, there are a lot of conservatives who say they want liberty, but then continue to support government intervention into all kinds of areas in our personal lives where it doesn’t belong. They never consider that the damage being done to the Constitution and to the framework of liberty by their desire to codify their personal moralities in areas where the participant is not harming someone else is greater than supposed harm caused by the “problem” they’re wanting the government to fix.

Further, too many of our “conservative” politicians are really technocrats whose main goal is to simply “streamline” government to make it more efficient and cost-effective. They’d rather work to make the EPA more proficient at what it does, rather than restraining it from what it shouldn’t be doing, or better, eliminating it completely. Too many Republicans and professed conservatives are of the Newt Gingrich mold, more committed to government efficiency than they are government reduction.

Until conservatives and other liberty-lovers internalize the idea that government is not your friend, but is a fearful master and a dangerous servant, nothing will ever really get changed in our system. Until we decide to take the hit and stop being part of the socialist beneficiary network, we won’t see that network go away. The problem with government is not that it’s inefficient, but that it’s almost always incompatible with natural human liberty.

Reagan clearly articulated the rationale and rightness of the cause: One of the nicknames for Ronald Reagan that almost everyone is familiar with is “the Great Communicator.” The reason for this is that he was, in fact, a great communicator. Reagan had a gift for being able to convey complex or controversial ideas to his audiences so that they would be understandable and acceptable. There’s a reason Reagan is one of the most quotable Presidents in modern history – he had a way with words that put the lie to the accusations of mental disacuity with which his detractors tried to slander him. Reagan was able to speak well, and could speak and reason persuasively. This is much of the reason why he won two landslide elections in 1980 and 1984 – he brought into his sphere of influence and support working class and unionized voters, broadly known as “Reagan Democrats,” who were convinced by his explanations and presentation that conservatism was better for them than the economic socialism and continually expanding government that had prevailed for so many decades previous.

This, however, is one of the great failures of the contemporary Right in America. Too many of us no longer feel like we need to educate our fellow Americans about liberty. We seem to assume that they should know about it – that the rationale for liberty and the means by which to attain and retain it are self-evident – and we get frustrated, angry, and even insulting with them when they don’t. We also tend to confuse political victories in elections with real, long-term changes in the culture, hearts, and minds of our fellow Americans. When we win a few elections, like we did in 1994 or in 2000, we sit back on our laurels and go back to sleep – which is when the wolves in sheep’s clothing within our own side of aisle come to the fore and take us right back into the mire of socialism-lite. We forget what Reagan said,

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”

We on the Right know how sorely lacking the education system in America really is. We know that our children are not learning about what made America great. They aren’t learning civics, or economics, or history, in such a way as to actually square with reality. And yet, we somehow assume that the up-and-coming generations should be able to understand the Constitution and the liberty ideology that cradled it. This is a grave and dangerous error on our part. If we do not fight the propaganda from the government schools and the news media, the cause of liberty will be lost. If we don’t get back the Reaganesque desire and capacity to articulate our beliefs to the undecided and the educable, we have nobody to blame but ourselves. Education is the fight we face – so let us grab our Locke and Federalist Papers and Bastiat and Hayek and make the case for liberty.

Liberty-lovers must be willing to have patience and engage our fellow Americans who don’t have the understanding about liberty that we have. They have been served poorly by the teachers’ unions and ABCNNBCBS, and it is our duty to help them. Sitting back smugly and looking down our noses at people for not being as “wise” or as “pure” as we are will do nothing but end liberty with our generation.

Reagan had the courage of his convictions to stand firm against his opponents, instead of an instinct to “find common ground” with the enemy: One of the patterns of Ronald Reagan’s leadership during his administration was that he never lost sight of the “big picture.” While there were times when he might have to make concessions to the Democrats who controlled Congress to get some component of the liberty agenda advanced, he nevertheless kept in view the overall goal of trying to reduce the size and scope of government. Was Reagan successful? I believe he was, to the extent that the actual powers and scope of his office allowed. After all, under Reagan (and with the opposition of a strongly Democrat-controlled Congress throughout) we saw the tax burden on productive Americans reduced by two-thirds, he began the process of breaking the power of government unions, and many regulations that were strangling the American business climate were rolled back or eliminated. Reagan ended the price controls on petroleum that the Nixon administration had put into place. He opposed efforts by Democrats in Congress to impose even more politically-correct regulations on private organizations while hiding these regulations behind the façade of “civil rights.” He worked to reduce fraud and waste by those who were misusing the Social Security and other “safety net” programs. He also affected real cuts in many government agencies, including a 22% cut in funding for the EPA. He was able to effect across the board cuts in various welfare programs.

The result of all of this was one of the longest sustained periods of economic growth in modern American history. Businesses grew, more businesses were started, millions of jobs were added to the economy, and the middle class expanded. The economy expanded at a tremendous rate, and the policies which Ronald Reagan enacted to remove shackles from the American economy and American entrepreneurship resulted in sustained economic prosperity that weathered the tiny recession in 1992 and fueled prosperity throughout the 1990s as well.

Reagan was able to do these because he knew the difference between tactics and strategy. Making concessions for the sake of obtaining some of what he wanted was a tactic. Consistently pushing forward on a liberty agenda of deregulation, economic freedom, and smaller government was a strategy. A lot of folks on the Right today fail to make the distinction.

Granted, there are some who can’t seem to understand the need for tactics. They want our agenda passed, they want it passed right now, and if they can’t have it, then they’re going to tune out and drop out – never mind all that “incrementalism” nonsense. Even more problematic, however, are those, such as the large portion of the Republican “leadership” and establishment, who are great at giving concessions to the Marxists, but not so great at pushing for greater freedom and less government. They have no grand vision of a strategy for restoring greater freedom to the people of this country. Their first instinct is always and in all circumstances to “reach across the aisle” and “find common ground” with the haters of liberty. Further, they’re embarrassed by those who do want to keep pressing for greater freedom and less government. We’re “radical,” we’re “dangerous,” we’re fanatics.” Liberty lovers threaten to overturn their apple cart of government goodies and power, and they don’t like it. So while these folks may, ostensibly, be “on the Right,” they most definitely are not fellow travelers. Instead, like termites, they try to weaken and destroy the efforts of liberty lovers to make real changes in this country.

Reagan had to deal with them too, of course. He had a Republican establishment, inherited from two decades of Rockefeller Republicans like Nixon and Ford, who were embarrassed by him as well. He dealt with it by simply persevering and pressing forward. He was not wrapped up in caring what other politicians thought about him. He knew what needed to be done, and he tried to do it. This is what we need to do – even if it means taking drastic steps to depose our current “conservative” ruling class, and replacing them with leaders who will lead in the cause of liberty.

Reagan understood that the broad Right needed to be united, not divided: Ronald Reagan wisely understood the benefits of true coalition building, when he formalized the growing “fusionist” movement that sought to bond three broadly related strands of American conservatism together into a stable alliance of those on the Right. These three strands, the “three legs of the stool of conservatism,” were the Goldwaterite economic libertarians, the growing social conservative movement known colloquially as “the religious Right,” and the “strong America” defense hawks. This was Reagan’s idea of the “big tent” approach, not the later perversion of this approach where liberty-lovers “reach across the aisle” to those who are often diametrically opposed to the general tenets of pro-liberty, small-government fusionism. Using his powers of persuasion and communication, he was able to bring all three of these movements together in such a way that they ended up complementing each other and forming an integrated message of American liberty and strength. He realized that if we wanted to have a free America, then we needed to listen to those who wanted a prosperous America, to those who wanted a strong America, and to those who wanted a good America.

At the same time, Reagan didn’t tip too far one way or the other toward any of the three corners. He exemplified the type of “movement” conservatism that balanced the concerns of all three “legs” without ignoring any one or more of them. Yes, this meant that each movement had to be willing to compromise, at least tactically, or at least temporarily, on some of its particular aims and desires. Nevertheless, he blended these three movements in his own governing character and personal ideology. The same Ronald Reagan who was libertarian enough to say,

“Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.”

Was yet enough of a Religious Righter to also say,

“Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged.”

And he did not find anything at all contradictory in those statements. This is because he knew that liberty depends on self-control, and cannot exist where this is lacking and where “other-control” takes its place. He was also wise enough to avoid some of the excesses of rhetoric and caricature that others on the Right never were able to get over. He knew enough to know that the “Religious Right” wasn’t really trying to install a morality policeman in every bedroom. He understood that libertarians weren’t pot-smoking hippies trying to destroy traditional American civilization. He didn’t agree that defense hawks just wanted to invade everybody who didn’t swear allegiance to the American flag. His temperance in dealing with people helped to cool down a lot of hotter heads and bring them to the table.

Contrast this with the state of America’s Right today. Everybody wants to push their agenda to the exclusion of the rest of the broad rightist coalition, and condemns everyone else as “RINOs” (a term which doesn’t even make sense when used against those who aren’t registered Republicans) for not lining up 100% with their particular group’s program. In short, we’re seeing a fragmentation of the Right at just the time when we need to be emphasizing our common ground and working together on that 80% or so of issues where we’re all in perfect accord. Libertarians think “the time is right” to finally push out of the picture the social conservatives with whom they personally disagree, and social conservatives say that if this happens, they’re going to sit out elections from now on. Everybody thumps their chests, but nobody seems willing to figure out how to actually start winning elections with leaders who want to advance liberty on all fronts.

All this can do is continue to ensure that hard-core socialists keep getting elected, laughing all the way to Congress or the Oval Office while we cut each other off at the knees with infantile caricatures and adolescent behavior. The Right needs to exhibit some political maturity; we don’t need to pitch a fit and go home because our favored agenda items aren’t being addressed right this minute. This applies across the board – social conservatives, don’t stomp off in a huff because abortion isn’t the topic du jour; and libertarians, don’t stomp off because somebody mentions abortion. It’s that simple. We can multitask.

In conclusion, we see many on the Right today who long for a second Reagan, someone who will take his mantle, pick up the standard, and press forward in the struggle for liberty that we seem to be losing so sorely at the present time. Yet, while there are politicians out there who could fit the bill, and perhaps would if they had the chance, we do not see them rising to the occasion. Why? I would judge that it is because of the systematic flaws within the liberty movement itself, as outlined above. Many potential leaders are dismissed because one faction or another isn’t willing to accept an 80% friend against a 100% enemy. Others perhaps despair at the seeming incapacity for conservatives and libertarians to ever get it back on track. Ultimately, however, the responsibility lies with us – liberty lovers ourselves – to make it happen. WE need to take the mantle of leadership and start guiding this country back to where it should be. WE need to make the case for our cause, WE need to work smarter and harder to get every advancement of our agenda that we can get, WE need to unite instead of fragmenting into mutually recriminating factions.

When we do this, we’ll have recaptured the spirit of Reagan, and may well recapture the success of Reagan as well, and go beyond them.

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