Can Conservativism be Maintained in a Democracy?

American conservative media pundits argue that in order to restore liberty and conservative ideas: all the citizens need to do is defeat the Democrats and replace establishment Republicans with true conservatives. We are never told how this is to be achieved when the overwhelming majority of voters are raised by a government teaching them to hate conservative ideas while our culture promotes progressivism. But their unwavering democratic faith in “we the people” makes them believe the silent majority is around each corner, seemingly just out of reach. Just wait for the next election; you will see.

Years ago, it was believed you could not deceive the majority for long, but this was when people had a higher law than the government, and the state had not yet controlled education to aid in eradicating and demonizing obstacles to its authority. Further, since political activity itself corrupts, we merely ensure their degeneration. Even he will break against the tides of the immoral, corrupt herd about to crash down on and trample him. Centralized democracy will always be an uphill battle for liberty, and you will find betrayal within your ranks.

The Bible tells us not to mix good with evil; evil corrupts good morals.^[1] It’s like Christians who sacrificed their kids to government schools expecting them to convert their pupils to Christianity. In reality, their kids are far more likely to be converted to the state’s way of thinking, as Jesus told us would happen.^[2] Conservatives and libertarians who put their hope in a national Republican Party will never find the liberty they seek. To reclaim liberty, democracy must go; they do not mix, you can’t have both.

Even the times under the Articles of Confederation, and later under the Constitution were not the libertarian paradise it is portrayed as. On the contrary, just as the Tories warned replacing a king with politicians would do, it quickly became far more tyrannical under local and federal representatives than under King George. As a result, many of the longer-lived Founders regretted the Revolution and were disappointed by the results. The Revolution had failed to achieve the liberty they believed it would, and the new government was far more authoritarian than the old.^[3]

American Christians celebrate our perceived conservative and Christian form of governance, but compared to the Middle Ages we would be viewed as secular and progressive. The Constitution has an amendment process adapting the law to the majority who vote for various campaigning politicians and political parties. Our judges decipher and interpret the law to say what they desire it to. We allow for a professional legislature to gather and create laws, having placed authority at the national level and allowing no outside check to its sovereignty.

By their nature, democracy, representatives, and legislative branches are progressive. Under medieval kingship, the law and government have no professional legislative branch. Law did not “evolve” or grow; it remained intact and protected. There was no mechanism to bring about progressive ideas, and lords, vassals, and peasants would harshly reject any attempt at doing so. They based their ideas of law on morality derived from God and nature, right and wrong, and justice; these things do not change with man’s opinion or with elections. The king reigns to provide justice to the realm. He provides a service regulated by ancient law; in other words, it is conservative.

One way to evaluate the differences between the modern state and medieval kingship is one has a centralized power base with paid professionals (politicians) and various interested groups pushing to pass legislation for their advantage. In contrast, the other had no legislative body and so had an unchanging law and a king who is often gone for long periods and moves from place to place. Law and tradition restrict the king, but a majority has no limits; it can abolish, ignore, or reinterpret any existing limitations or create any new law it desires so long as “king numbers” is on its side. If law and custom are not the rulers as they were under kingship, you never know what laws will be created or how they will get around or reinterpret existing written laws and limitations.

Democratic states maintain a professional class of people whose job is to implement legislation. They are constantly changing and manipulating the existing order. When a centralized bureaucracy is allowed to exist in a progressive legislation system, conservatives, reactionaries, traditionalists, anarchists, and libertarians will always be fighting a losing battle. The system was designed to be progressive; over time it will only go in one direction, toward totalitarianism.

Democracy places all areas of life under the majority’s will; it ensures the potential for progressive ideas. What was the role of the church or the family, such as governing behavior and forming children’s worldviews, the state now handles. Everything eventually becomes the domain of legislators. You might find minor, short-term slowdowns and slight reversals in trend, but the system is progressive to the core. Attempting to fight within it is a lost cause. You’re fighting on their ground under their rules and with a method they are most adept, best apt, and well prepared for. You might win small victories, but you will lose the war.

So long as the democratic state exists, liberty and property rights need diligent protection. Even if you play great defense and win 95% of the time, the other 5% will drastically transform society and constitutional law over time. Further, those who seek to give more power to the central authority have the time, power, and backing to find clever new ways to influence laws and society. They will also begin to manipulate how voters think to decrease resistance to new expansions of power. Democracy and legislation are cancers eating away at liberty. Those in power push for everything to become a political issue, making people puppets to various causes and easily controlled/swayed in any desired direction. Conservatism will always be one step behind in trying to plug the holes; thus, in any democracy, liberty is slowly bled to death.

Rule by the majority has no concern for liberty, constitutions, or individual rights. On the contrary, these get in the way and slow down the mob’s progress. Further, progressivism seems to offer hope, and people are hopeful. They want to believe things will work out and get better. On the other hand, conservatism offers no salvation via politics, just more of the same. Therefore, the more people become discontented, and the more issues failing – (policy makers will ensure they are in great numbers) – the more people will flock to progressive ideas.

The Secular Right

The Republican Party is a prime example of how little Christianity actually influenced our nation. This secular party needs to do very little to receive Christian votes. Republican politicians say they believe in “inalienable rights” coming from a deistic god (amounting to almost nothing politically); they use the word “god” in the pledge of allegiance (which is of socialist origin. It aimed to eliminate any remaining attachment to the pre-Civil War Union and instead promote a centralized “one nation.”^[4]) and claim to be Christian. This is all needing to be done to receive millions of Christian votes as Christians desperately try to find someone who might represent them or at least not harm them.

In my years of ignorance when I was a Republican, I used to watch conservative, “Catholic” Bill O’Reilly’s show The O’Reilly Factor on Fox News (today he represents everything I despise about Republicans). He interviewed a young priest to try and rile up Christian voters over abortion. He was portraying himself as accepting of “religion” in contrast to the baby-murdering Democrats. Near the end of the interview, O’Reilly told the priest, “If you tell us how to vote, we have a problem.” Like a secular master, he was telling his serf, the priest, and thereby Catholic viewers, where and what their proper role was. They were allowed to speak out against abortion so long as it helped Republican turnout, but politics is the domain of the secular capitalist and their national media conglomerate. We will call you the next time abortion comes up, but in the meantime, sit down, shut up, and vote Republican.

Another “conservative” Christian, Candace Owens of the Daily Wire, was interviewed on The Joe Rogan Experience. Rogan asked her about her “faith” and her “controversial” opinion that Christianity is good for society. Her conservative Christianity amounted to some vague deistic “faith,” and her belief that family and some moral “structure” was good for society. I would submit this is not Christianity but secularized democratic idolatry. And this is what the “Christian” conservative Right has been reduced to in America. They are tamed, domesticated, neutered house cats compared to the Lions of the Middle Ages. It’s like comparing C. S. Lewis’s Aslan to Garfield.

Conservatives?

The Republican Party is not an actual conservative party, nor are they reactionary. They refuse to restore what is lost and therefore are not only on the defensive, but worse, end up defending what they initially repelled. The late and great G. K. Chesterton rightly summed up conservatives in the Illustrated London News on April 19, 1924, when he wrote, “The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition.”^[5]

Conservatives must be aware that the progressive ideas of the past are now being embraced and advocated by their own leaders and politicians. They reject only sections of the current progressive agenda. But they must realize that in time, their party leaders and platform will accept whatever this new agenda item is. The resistance will not last long. In a way, conservatives are at war with themselves as they oppose what they know they will eventually accept. They are fighting a losing battle against history’s forward march, which they will inevitably embrace.

Republicans are like a cloud coming in after the more progressive agenda occurs and molds to whatever popular opinion is (where the people’s most ardent objection is to the new progressive implementation). They then ask for votes and donations and counter only the most extreme actions of the opposition, pretending they are a genuine alternative. The Republican establishment often allows the leftist agenda to be implemented because it drives people out of the Democratic Party and motivates their own base, giving them political momentum for the next election. They constantly fight to win the next battle, so intensely locked into winning each issue they don’t see the more significant long-term perspective, which is why they always lose the war. Progressives often strategize long-term, which is why they win over time.

For some reason, Republicans believe because something was the way it was throughout their life, it will also be in the future. As a result, they fail to evaluate progressive notions long-term; in part, because they worship the Founding Fathers and focus on American history devoid of world history; I know because I was once one of them. In this way, they cannot see democracy itself as the problem but CNN or some current policy or politician. If they can win the next election, all will be okay; victory is always near but never achieved.

Republicans transform every few elections because, outside of funding military action and opposing legalized abortion, they lack convictions. They are so focused on winning the current argument they are willing to change who they are. They desire the Democrats to look absurd and out of step with typical Americans, so they will transform as needed. During COVID-19, conservatives who otherwise complained about liberal indoctrination in schools pushed the hardest for kids to return because they found most voters wanted it. They could use it to their political advantage. They will spout talking points like “lower taxes” and “school choice” but never specify just what they really mean, and certainly would not implement such ideas. “Lower taxes” only means reducing some of the Left’s newest programs, not their own.

In my experience with conservative media, I have noticed when a well-known liberal agrees with them, they become ecstatic; they cannot contain their excitement, they believe it validates their position when an enemy turns his coat. They grovel before this person and try to co-opt them (and their followers) to their team. They then “compromise” in other areas to be more acceptable to the newcomers so they can defeat their adversary with the new alliance. In their quest to destroy the enemy, they become more like him.

The party is on a slow burn to progressivism; over time, they become something they were not. I believe this explains much of why republicanism becomes liberal over time, by adopting disgruntled Democrats and expanding what is acceptable to conservatism to allow new recruits into the fold. They accommodate these more “moderate” types and begin to turn their backs on the traditionalists who hold outdated opinions, those who refuse to budge on their principles to win a political war. “It is time,” Republicans will say, dismissing some unfashionable morality or way of life still held by some within their own party, knowing full well they would never turn their coats and vote Democrat. After all, they tell their voters the Democrats are worse.

I always wondered why it is time now but not before. Is it because the conservative politicians never believed in their own proclaimed views, and thus were just using the voters to get elected? Or they are now attempting to control their voters by altering these views? Neither seems very honorable to me. Success is the Republican Party’s goal, not principles. Principles can be adapted and ignored, promises unkept, but winning is always essential.

As public opinion sways toward progressive socialism, conservatives will adopt what they had previously fought. They will tell their voters it is “not a hill to die on,” focusing on another issue they promise to “stand strong on.” Until we are told once more, a couple of decades down the road, for the party’s political prosperity, “it is time” to let go of it, too, but don’t worry, they again will “fight for” some new issue under attack. They offer no counter, only a slow-down button. They might complain, disagree, and give speeches to potential voters on why the progressives are a threat to society, but when it comes to action, they are better at collecting donations than representing their backers.

Conservative commentator Tucker Carlson interviewed Jeremy Boreing of the Daily Wire. What caught my eye was what surprised Carlson; he said, “I just love it because you’re not just complaining, you’re providing an alternative.”^[6] In other words, Carlson and other Republicans are used to their side whining about the Left but doing absolutely nothing. So, when someone offers an alternative, they are stunned.

Republicans have difficulties admitting the majority of their candidates are opportunists, just like Democrats. They are politicians first and foremost, saying what is needed in a “conservative” area to get elected. If they ran in a Democrat zone, they would run as a vastly different candidate. They might vote for the Republican agenda to maintain power, but they cannot be trusted on principles, only on what will keep them in power. When the Washington D.C. establishment decides to go a new direction, like sheep, they will follow.

At best, Republicans might slow down and stop much of the advance of the progressive party, but wait four more years, when they are no longer a majority, and we will progress some more. Although some might think these Republican politicians are a disgrace to democracy, I think they are part of its natural outcome. Donald Trump (who I never voted for and never will) upset the system by being an offensive-minded Republican. At least in his speech, he often attacks or counter-attacks. You could tell the panic among the establishment because they did not know what to do with him. Trump was an outsider; he did not climb the ladder as tradition required, he did not need bureaucrats’ support, and he was unwilling to play the traditional defensive role of the conservative.

Conservative media pundits are experts at pointing out the hypocrisy of the Left. With the strongest condemnation, they will ridicule and object to the more progressive tenets of their agenda. Seemingly offering an alternative they ensure the conservative wing of their audience will pledge fealty to the national Republican Party. The media outlets provide an excellent forum for conservatives to complain, making them feel they have some friends in D.C. They will interview the same dozen conservative national politicians giving the impression the Republican Party is for them. They urge conservative listeners to keep donating and voting for the party to stop the surge from the Left. They critically evaluate the absurdities of the Democrats but ignore the Republican Party at large for fear of the disquieting image it would reveal.

Meanwhile, the culture is always moving leftwards, ensuring the next generation of voters will promote even more progressive actions. To stay relevant, the Republicans will also move to the Left as they swallow up disgruntled citizens. Thus, Republicans are at the back of the train, always pulled uphill by the progressives dragging them along. And though they slow them down, the two-party system ensures both parties and most people go for the slow but inevitable ride in a single direction. If progressives were unhindered, government expansion and social engineering would occur at such a rapid rate local push-back, secession, and rebellion would occur. Republicans ensure the rate of progress is slow enough that all of society is kept under control yet directed progressively forward.

Another reason Republicans lose long-term is because they don’t see politics as stemming from culture and worldview. They believe political ideas are based on interests; for Marxists and many Republicans, this means the economy. Progressives understand humanity much better than conservatives. They understand education controls the worldview, which determines culture and politics. Thus, Republicans don’t understand the “radicals” in their party; those actually believing in something, those unwilling to “compromise.” If Republicans lose, it’s not a big deal to the establishment; the system remains in place, and once the other side’s ideas are tried and have failed, the people will “wake up” and return to Republican rule. Further, national party members, media allies, and anyone who depends on the party for relevance desire the status quo, since they gain from it. One party directs the herd in one political cycle, and the next, the other does; they can wait four years. In other words, voters do not really have two options. They actually have no options at all.

American Conservatism

Before every election, conservatives in the media tell their audience it is the most important election ever; if they lose, the other side will transform the country, implementing socialism and Marxism. They even sometimes mention secession because if they lose this election “America” will be lost. The purpose is to ignite fear and drive Republicans to the voting booths. Interestingly, the day after the lost election, the same pundits say to never give up on America, to win the next battle in two years, donate to the cause, listen to our media, elect who we tell you to, and so on. Evangelize your friends to the Republican gospel, and we can take the country back. 

The truth is they do not want to admit to their audience that conservatism in America has already lost and the voters are there to maintain the party, not the party to represent the voters. Instead, they want listeners to think there is still a war where the United States, as envisioned by the Founders, is represented by the Republican Party. However, if voters understood how far from the Founders they have fallen, they would realize there is no progressive vs. conservative or American vs. Marxist political war; there are only two progressive parties at war, one slightly more progressive than the other.

The American “Right” are really socialists of a different, less potent variety. Republican voters don’t realize if “conservative” Republicans controlled every area of governance, we would still live under a more powerful, authoritarian, controlling, and oppressive government than that of King George III. American voters think they are free only because they don’t know what freedom is; they have never experienced it. The Republican Party under Abraham Lincoln defeated the libertarians and reactionaries of the South and destroyed the last remnants of the Founder’s Republic.^[7] Republicans are the originators and implementers of industrialization, capitalism, democracy, soft socialism, American Marxism and centralization. They are slightly less so than those on the modern Left and can seem “conservative” to a non-informed modern audience hypnotized by Left vs. Right political warfare.

Since their first president Abraham Lincoln, Republicans have retained an unfounded trust in an imaginary “silent majority” and the righteousness of a group of sinful masses we call “we the people.” Republican media types are continually surprised when they find corruption at various places of governance because they, despite all evidence, believe they can achieve liberty utilizing Sean Hannity’s democratic version of “we the people.” What the Founders meant by “we the people” differed significantly from Lincoln’s or the modern Republicans’ belief in urban masses and voter expansion. The former meant the large landowning aristocratic representatives of sovereign states.

If you think the Republican Party is conservative, you have been drinking spiked Kool-Aid. You also likely believe the U.S. still resembles the Union created by the Founding Fathers, America is the land of the free, and every war we fight in some third-world country somehow protects our rights at home. All the while ignoring totalitarianism and our greatest threat found in Washington, D.C., among judges and elected officials. The dishonest Republicans claim to be for tradition, portraying themselves as an alternative to the progressives and deluding millions of conservative voters. Similarly, millions of Christians vote Republican because Christians oppose legalized abortion. The Republican media outlets convince Christians to think Republicans are “Christian” because they also oppose it. It is revealing that when Republicans are orating to potential Christian voters, they always use this one issue to portray themselves as solidly Christian (transgender ideology has provided a recent new talking point). In the same way the Democratic media will call everything related to the Republican Party as racism to keep their viewers from straying. So, the Republicans use abortion to stir up the Christian vote, working to insure they vote for the “proper” party. At election time at a conservative church I used to attend, the pastor contrasted the two parties over just one issue, abortion! Thus, the one area Christians are told to vote “their values” coincides with the one area Republicans can use to claim to be Christian.

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^[1] 1 Corinthians 15:33

^[2] Luke 6:40

^[3] (Ferrara 2012)

^[4] (Dilorenzo 2007)

^[5] (Chesterton 2016)

^[6] (Meads 2022)

^[7] (Bishop 2023)