Conservatism is a Failure

Like the now discredited ideologies of Facism and Marxism, Conservatism Unbound as it has been implemented by the Bush Administration has been shown to be an abject and total failure.

As Hunter discribes in his and quite brillliant Dkos Diary on The Great Conservative Walkback, Conservatives such as Jonah Goldberg have tried to deny the failure of conservatism when implemented by claiming that Bush is somehow - Not - a conservative.

The defining premise usually used (in these days of tanking and now near-thirty-percent approval ratings) to disassociate the failures of Bush, the House, the Senate, all their advisors, all their supporters, and the cats they loved as children from so-called true conservatism is primarily that true fiscal/governmental conservatives suppose themselves to value "restrained federal power", aka small government, which Bush allegedly does not. This, though, is a load of horsehockey. Fiscal and other conservatives may say that they value small government, but it is a fact of the movement that when in a position to actually implement those policies, they do not. And that is not a unique phenomenon: it is a traceable pattern of the movement.

Though it's true that conservatism favors small government when it comes to actually helping people - providing police and fire protection, environmental protection, worker safety, consumer protection - as opposed to helping big business, they certainly opposing "smaller" government when it comes to foreign policy as a projection of American military might and civil liberties protections from American military power used domestically (via the NSA and DIA).

There is this luminescently self-serving notion floating around, on the right, that conservatism was "failed" by Bush through general incompetence, and that we can hardly blame conservatism for that. It is noteworthy that, in fact, no conservative has yet been able to fulfill the supposed success of conservative ideals.

The incompetence is true enough, but from the days of Cal Thomas onward, I'd say that incompetence is part-and-parcel with the conservative movement in general, in that "competence" is not high on the rating scale when it comes to "conservative science", or "conservative policy implementation", or "conservative staffing". It is an ideological movement so utterly and religiously convinced of its own brilliance that actually implementing brilliance has always been an exercise left to the imagination of the observer.

The attempt here is a sever the relationship between the conservative movement and it's stated goals vs the demonstrable results of the Bush Administration when it actually puts Conservatism into practice. However part of the incompetence we've seen repeatedly in the Bush Administration, from their planning of the Iraq War, the handling of it's aftermath to similar lack of planning prior to Katrina and it's aftermath - are the result of Conservative ideology, not an unforeseen bi-product of it.

Part of modern conservatism is the assertion that conservatism is being "oppressed" or "discriminated against" by the rest of the world -- academia, science, government, media, music & Hollywood, etc., etc., am I leaving anyone out? -- which is not only liberal, but unwilling to "tolerate" conservative ideas. Therefore, "forcing" ideological conservatives into positions of power in each of these areas (often through the gawdawful power of childlike whining) is a prime conservative goal.

In other words, purity of ideology quite specifically trumps substance or experience, in "conservative" staffing efforts from academia to the White House; incompetence follows soon after as expertise is cast aside in favor of loyalty to the movement. Porter Goss may be out on his ear, but his rabid partisanship at the expense of actual intelligence and investigation efforts was legendary even before he was nominated for his latest clusterfuck -- and in fact, his rabidity and willingness to "purge" those seen as unfriendly to the conservative administration was the reason he was selected for the job, as all parties acknowledge.

Why was General Shinseki ignored? His view that we needed more troops for the aftermath of the Iraq War - a view that was tempered by the practical experience and success of our efforts in Bosnia - didn't fit within the Uber-Conservative ideology of Wolfowitz, Feith, Cheney or Rumsfeld. He was ignored and so where long-standing State Department and NSA plans which had been crafted during the Clinton administration by Richard Clarke's counter-terrorism organization (De Lenda Plans) to address both the political and military issues presented by Iraq, Afghanistan and various terrorist friendly nations around the world.

This is the core of the Incompetence of Conservatism - ideological faith and loyalty is placed far in front of fact and practical ability to get the job done.

The failure of these movement ideals when put into actual practice, and their subsequent reshuffling and rebranding, is itself an ongoing and cyclical phenomenon. I'm still waiting for the next "iteration" of the discredited conservative label to appear, the rebranding that tacitly admits the failures of the last aborted iteration, and recasts the whole thing to seem vaguely plausible again. We've had neoconservatism and the creaturelike Compassionate conservatism, and both of their heads seem quite decidedly to have been lopped off, at this point. "Crunchy Con" is a hilarious new entry, attempting to latch onto the immensely popular environmental and other liberal concerns in the same faux, ultraBranded way that Compassionate attempted to attach Reagan-era conservatism to basic premises of human decency. Crunchy Conservatism is essentially environmentalism as overscripted reality show: now, you can eat branded, agribusiness-produced "organic", and save the planet through bumper stickers.

What will be next? Likely, some play on the notion of coupling Conservative to some actually-competent foreign policy... "Competent Conservatism" or "Responsible Conservatism" come to mind, as methods for distancing the movement from their latest dungpile of world-butchering empire gone awry, or the stink of a strictly conservative-based deficit not likely to be closed for a generation. If the fundamentalist right gets even the slightest actual progress in anti-Roe or pro-prejudiced legislative success, on the other hand, I expect "Tolerant Conservatism" or "Progressive Conservatism" to mount a counter-challenge, to assure the wider public that no, all that religious nonsense really wasn't what we meant all this time, don't be silly. Vote for us again, and it'll be entirely different this time: we've got a new name for it. Same policies, same think tanks, same advisors, same pundits, same coded messages, and same political machines, but it's different this time, damn it.

Yes, when the current version of Conservatism fails miserably, it will simply be repackaged - it's proponents claiming "Oh, that wasn't Real Conservatism, this this is - see?" But how could it not fail? Conservatism is a ideology for governing that first and foremost depends on the idea that government is a failure, so how could any truly conservative led government ever be a success - it's a given that those implementing policy don't believe in the effectiveness of their own efforts.

We really shouldn't be surprised by the massive fuck-ups in Iraq and the Gulf Coast. We really shouldn't be surprised that EPA has become toothless, that we can't seem to get the FDA to ensure even basic flu protections with a looming global pandemic on the horizon.

People who proclaim to hate government ("Government is the problem" - Ronald Reagan) - are the last people who should be in charge of it. In their effort to implement their concept of "More Freedom" they ultimately aim to dismantle the primary method of protecting individuals from abuse and exploitation from each other and industry, including the oversight role of government as protector of the common good (regulation) and arbiter of disputes (tort reform).

They seek a toothless ineffectual stunted government - and that is exactly what they have wrought, despite all their protestations that this is an aberation and not what true conservatism is about -- the truth is that this is exactly what Conservatism is about.

Deliberate, willfull incompetence and failure.

And this will remain true no matter what shiny new packaging and rebranding modern conservatives attempt to use to resell thier snake-oil, they attempts at actual governing will always result... in failure.

Vyan