Jonah Goldberg: Don't Call This Conservatism

"If you spend any time following the most vocal defenders of Donald Trump or various populist causes generally, some version of this question may have occurred to you. If you find yourself listening to defenders of a supposedly extreme right-wing Republican president’s signature policies, and then wondering aloud, “Wait, I thought conservatives were in favor of free markets?” you have an idea of what I am getting at. If you’re perplexed by the way many on the right celebrate and lionize a rogue’s gallery of libertines, scapegraces, sybarites, caitiffs, roues, abusers, and cads, you might wonder why you didn’t get the memo explaining that the right no longer cares about “moral rearmament,” or “family values.”

In short, if you’re a lifelong conservative, you might be struggling with the question of whether “the right” is where you belong. If being a principled defender of the constitutional order, limited government, free markets, traditional values, and an America-led world still makes you a conservative, are you still on “the right” when the loudest voices on the right reject most or all of those positions?  

I ask these questions full of trepidation about getting sucked into what I call the paradox of labels. It is simultaneously true that labels matter a great deal and that arguments about labels can often be a pointless distraction.  

So let me make a brief case for the importance of labels. Labels matter because we use labels—terms, constructs, categories, words—to understand reality and chart our course through it, both individually and collectively. If you think labels don’t matter, tear off the labels on all of your cleaning supplies, canned goods, insecticides, prescription medicines, etc. Eventually, you’ll change your mind—or die in the pursuit of making a point. 

At the same time, if you invest too much significance in labels, they end up doing your thinking for you. The words become separated from the thing, and arguments about reality become fodder for logical legerdemain and semantic games about terminology. British philosopher Antony Flew popularized the “No True Scotsman” fallacy: If “no Scotsmen put sugar on their porridge,” then a Scotsman’s identity is held hostage to an opinion.  

There’s a long history of this fallacy in politics. Pas d’ennemis a gauche, pas d’amis a droit—no enemies to the left, no friends to the right—was a credo for Popular Fronts (more on those later) in 1930s France and Europe generally. A similar spirit has infused the right in the last decade. Highly partisan Trump supporters will routinely insist that no true conservative would oppose him—and suddenly the definition of conservative (or right-wing) is held hostage to support for him. Or even take Trump out of it: In the 1980s, support for a strong national defense against the Soviets was a point of conservative consensus. So promoters of a particular weapon system would try to argue that members of Congress must fund it or be stripped of their conservative insignia, like a cowardly officer being stripped of his epaulets.

The only reliable way out of the paradox of labels is to define your terms. In Kantian terms, the task is to make the phenomenon—for our purposes, the labels—correspond as closely as possible with the noumenon, the thing-in-itself. Specifically, are right-wingers conservative? Or have the once overlapping circles in the Venn diagram parted from each other, like two celestial bodies following different paths after a long eclipse... 

Source:AEI columnist Jonah Goldberg. Now he's a real "Conservative".

From AEI

I completely agree with Jonah Goldberg here. If you look at The New Democrat's WordPress page, we never tag Donald Trump or anyone is his MAGA movement as "conservative", or that post as "conservative", or having anything to do with "conservatism". Why? 

The only thing that Donald Trump believes in conserving, (which is what Conservatives actually believe in) is himself. And he'll conserve his allies, but only to protect himself. And the only things, or people that his "MAGA" movement believes in conserving, is Donald Trump and themselves. Perhaps their way of life, but to do that they would amputate their hand because their thumb is sore. And what I mean by that is that they would: 

Destroy the Constitution

Destroy the rule of law

Give up their brains, their sense of decency, character, moral values, even their religion, to defend anything that Donald J. Trump, or any of his allies does or says. Nothing "conservative" about any of that. 

So if you really are a "Conservative", you believe in: 

The U.S. Constitution

The rule of law

Tradition

Moral values, decency, character

"Free markets", private enterprise, property rights, individual rights, limited government, fiscal responsibility. 

But if you are 'MAGA";

Free trade destroys jobs and the American way of life. 

All those individual rights that Conservatives talk about, they only belong to the "real Americans". Who are the "real Americans"? "MAGA", according to "MAGA". 

And the Constitution only protects "MAGA" (according to "MAGA") and only restricts what non-"MAGA" people can do when it comes to government. Or deficits don't matter when they're in charge. It's not big government when it's "MAGA" government. 

You could say that "fascist" or "nationalist" is a better way to describe "MAGA". The problem is, Fascists and Nationalists actually believe in things. They don't just make up their beliefs and policies as they go along, or to meet the current political circumstances. 

So what is "MAGA"? Well, it's not "Make America Great Again". They don't believe that. Maybe they want to make their own corner of the store, their own neck of the woods, their own playgrounds, (to use some country cliches that "MAGA" would be familiar with) "great again". 

To me, at this point the Mass Army of Gigantic Assholes, (that The New Democrat calls MAGA) is nothing more than Donald John Trump's personal, political cult, and his latest financial piggybank, that he uses to financially support himself, with all the merchandise and everything else that comes from this movement. It's just his latest Don The Con venture for himself, that 50 million (give or take) Americans have taken a long, national, ride, to support him.

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