Conservatism is not the GOP!

Philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe describes conservatism as the "want to preserve the family and the social hierarchies and layers of material as well as spiritual-intellectual authority based on and growing out of family bonds and kinship relations" (Democracy: The God That Failed, 188). It was during "the transformation of the U.S. and Europe into mass democracies from World War I" that "conservatism...transformed fro an antiegalitarian, aristocratic, antistatist ideological force into a movement of culturally conservative statists" (189-190). While conservatism is correct to focus against the moral degeneration and cultural rot of society, modern day conservatism has found itself in a politically partisan movement that has hijacked it and utilized conservatism in an effort to destroy it from within.

So it is no surprise in modern discourse of competing ideologies when one runs across a person they know to be conservative to assume their political appreciations. Especially in America where the GOP is insisted as being the chief conservative party. Well with the Democrats embracing head-on the cultural rot of society as they openly seek to kill the unborn, pretend that men are women and women are men, and insist that gay marriage is a sacrament, it's no wonder why so many conservatives in America vote for the GOP. But the GOP really hates its own constituents even more than the U.K. Tories! The Tories at least do a better job pretending to be subservient to the English monarchy and the Church of England but the GOP actively despises its constituents. GOP politicians will weep and mourn when Democrats accuse them of things such as "racism!" and "homophobia!" and being "anti-women" and they attempt to apologize for their behavior and correct themselves hoping to win over constituents. Yet the charges still come. But that is not what a conservative party or an ideologically conservative movement looks like. That is what a political party attempting to win over voters looks like.

I used to mock this idea very recently that the GOP had anything to do with conservatism by pinning a bumper magnet to the back of my car saying "My Cat is a Republican!" People gave me wonderful feedback about it until I explained to them, he is a Republican! He is a rampaging neo-con and wants to bomb Manitoba, Switzerland and I have to tell him that place doesn't exist. Crazy Church Lady even asked me if my cat was a Satanist, how then did he become a Republican? My answer was the individualist mentality that GOP leaders maintain, especially when it comes towards big business. I told my godfather how the cat has recently changed parties. He is now a "Democat" (that's kitten for Democrat). My godfather hates the current two-party system we have. On the one side, you have the Democrats who Crazy Church Lady will ask of, "Can Democrats be saved?" and on the other side, the GOP which is mostly infatuated with their neo-con warfare state.

Going back to Hoppe, who argues for the antistatist position of conservatism, "most contemporary conservatives...either do not recognize that their goal of restoring normalcy requires the most drastic, even revolutionary, antistatist social changes, or (if they know about this) they are members of the "fifth column" engaged in destroying conservatism from the inside (and hence, must be regarded as evil)" (190). It is no surprise to find then that Hans-Hermann Hoppe supports and defends secessionist movements. Let me be clear, violent revolutionaries are morally reprehensible. Peaceful secessionist movements though, are non-violent revolutions that should be supported. So Hoppe defends the Confederates' secession. The problem is that their way to fight back the government that ended up attacking them was they tried to fight in orthodox military format. So their defeat to the Union was inevitable.

The modern statist movement of the 20th century has forced conservatism into a highly rampant decline. That is not the fault of conservatism. That is the fault of democracy. Democracy has held captive the entirety of western civilization for over 100 years. It has led to the Great Wars of the 20th century, it has led to deaths, abuses of power, military force. Murray N. Rothbard talks about the 20th century as this, "Who would want to repeal the twentieth century, the century of horror, the century of collectivism, the century of mass destruction and genocide, who would want to repeal that! Well, we propose to do just that." (The Irrepressible Rothbard, 20).

Rothbard lays out the "8 points of conservatism". Slash taxes, slash welfare, abolish racial or group privileges (affirmative action), take back the streets and crush criminals, abolish the Fed and attack the banksters, America first, and defend family values (40-41). Let's face it, if they think it helps them win constituents, the GOP will never do any of that. They would fall on their swords for their top donors before they scolded the banks for ripping people off. They would prefer to collect money from the vulture capitalists because the state will leave them richer. Fall on their swords to defend crony capitalist companies in China and then make a mockery of libertarian economics by insisting that not doing so is to defend capitalism. They are sell-outs to bug business and corporate industries. They will do the bidding of the state first and foremost. Their interest is in expanding state power, first and foremost. The GOP has an agenda to destroy conservatism from the inside out. They care nothing for religious values. They care nothing for family values. They don't mind abortion, just ask Kim Reynolds.

But they're also the party flying the conservative plane right now. What must conservatives do right now to reassess the situation? Clearly the Democrats hate us. We can't go and walk over toward them. But should we perhaps put up with Democratic rulership for a while until we can radically reform the GOP? That's one possibility. Or secession is another option. Rod Dreher details one of the most thorough strategies for a Christianity facing this crisis. The solution may mean that we withdraw ourselves from society. Not from acting in it but rather isolate ourselves from the rest of the world that we live in as we make the necessary reforms from underneath and build upward. He details this in The Benedict Option. He does not insist we should be a-political but rather political in a much different meaning of the word. Being political in the sense that we are changing the culture from the ground up. He leads us away from our prostatist mentality into a mentality that acknowledges that the state is the enemy of our values. Only doing this can we first begin to reform society.

The GOP is infatuated with the state. They are not for the conservatives. I can disagree with any and every Republican politician I choose. It does not take away my membership in the conservative movement. That's because the GOP doesn't care about conservatism. It cares about the state. Nikki Haley said she'd leave the Confederate flag up when she became the Governor of South Carolina. Then she took it down. Then she used her power as U.N. Ambassador to fuel a war with Bashar Al-Assad, spreading fictional lies about his regime as she sought to do what every single GOP leader did. We don't want leaders like that in society. And she's not the first morally reprehensible figure like that either. The GOP rejects conservatives. What will conservatives do to stop it?