Authoritarian Conservatism

by Bill Barnwell
by Bill Barnwell

The traditional American Right likes to bill itself as a movement which calls for smaller government and more freedom. They usually identify with the Republican Party, and claim to be the only alternative to the big government tendencies of the Left. If their policies and beliefs are implemented, America would be a much more free and just society. Or so they claim.

It must be asked, does conservatism (mainly the Republican Party) really stand for these lofty ideals? Does the mainstream conservative movement really offer more freedom and liberty than the Left, or is it just authoritarianism of a different stripe? When the policy proposals and intellectual beliefs of the mainstream Right are examined, it is hard to conclude that, while they are better in some respects to the cause of liberty than the Left, they are not much better and in some cases are much worse.

For the purposes of this essay, let us examine just several areas, (1) The conservative’s attitude towards government, (2) The conservative’s attitude towards the "justice" system and (3) The conservative’s attitude towards issues of war and peace. A casual examination of each of these areas will show that the mainstream conservative movement in general, and the GOP in particular, are hardly allies in the struggle for freedom, peace, and liberty.

Conservatives and the Government

Conservatives are fond of bashing the government. In just about every Republican campaign you hear of the desire to cut spending and government and restore power back to "the people." Yet a closer look will show that the conservative movement has no problem with the government. They just have a problem with the other side (the Democrats) running the government. As long as it’s a Republican running the show everything will be OK, but if it’s the Democrats then our freedom – no, our very way of life – is threatened by these wasteful spending moral reprobates.

Except for a brief year-and-a-half period after Jim Jefford’s GOP defection in 2001, the Republican Party has controlled both houses of Congress since the "Republican Revolution" occurred after the 1994 midterm elections. For all their lofty talk about reforming and cutting government nothing real significant happened. After rallying up the troops talking about how they were going to eliminate the Department of Education, cut funding for National Endowment for the Arts, and cut wasteful spending in general, the most significant thing they could show for their "revolution" was a term limit on Congressional committee chairs.

Wow.

For most of the Bush administration, Republicans have controlled the Presidency and both houses of Congress. Instead of seeing spending decrease, we have seen it increase. Instead of seeing programs eliminated we have seen programs expanded (in education, Medicare, the arts, and a host of other areas). Instead of seeing government agencies scrapped, we have seen new government agencies erected. We’ve seen a war waged on deceptive grounds, irresponsible spending, large deficits, and a staggering overall growth of government. The fact that government has grown at a larger rate under Bush than it has under Carter and Clinton appears not to matter much to the conservative movement. After all, Bush is a Republican. And he’s a Christian. No big deal.

Aside from the duplicity and hypocrisy of conservatives on their alleged dislike for big government, the Right has no problem trying to use the government to impose their way of life upon others and enact their own social agenda. While the Left seeks to use the government to impose their secular, utopian morality to eradicate hunger or "end hate" (or whatever other dreamy proposal they come up with), the Right believes that government power and taxpayer money can and should be used for such objectives as "strengthening marriage."

While it would be wonderful to have stronger marriages instead of sky-high divorce rates, the Right seems to believe that the government can just fix everything with a few new laws or a few new taxpayer funded programs, none of which are supported by the constitution. The fact is the government has little to show for their social engineering programs and that such matters are better left to private entities and the Church.

Yet many conservative organizations will withhold their endorsements for candidates who do not believe tax dollars should be doled out to ineffective "conservative" programs that seek to "strengthen marriage" or "teach abstinence" or whatever else. Bottom line is this: Government has no business playing marriage counselor and such matters are better left to the clergy rather than some know-it-all state bureaucrat.

Many religious conservatives would also like to create a Superstate for Jesus, to help make America a more "Christian nation." How else do you support bizarre laws against sodomy and smoking, as many religionists do? As a pastor, I’m firmly opposed to homosexual behavior, and I do not see an inherent right in the constitution to engage in gay sex, but I’m hardly supportive of some state-sponsored Bedroom Patrol and fail to see how such laws promote freedom.

Christians err when they seek to take sin and social ills and turn them into government crusades. The logic of the conservative support for the drug war goes like this: (1) Drugs are bad and sinful (2) Since they are bad and sinful there must be laws against it (3) The government must enforce these laws at any cost. Now I agree that drugs are bad and sinful, but I also see how the State has used the Drug War to engage in all sorts of tyranny and authoritarianism. To most conservatives though, the tyranny can be justified because drugs are bad.

The Drug War has been a colossal failure and has brutally destroyed many innocent people. Yet it receives some of its strongest support from mainstream conservatives and well-meaning Christians. They unfortunately do not understand the nature of government and believe authoritarian conservatism is the best way to make America a more "Christian nation."

In sum, both secular and religious conservatives are opposed to government only when it’s the other team that is running the government. Deep down inside they actually believe that the government is really their ally and can be used for great good if only they were the ones in control of it. As has been seen by this Republican administration and Congress, the mainstream conservative movement loves government and has no desire to see to see it reduced. They want it just as involved in our lives as the Left does.

Conservatives and the "Justice" System

Why have so many conservatives cheered on the legal persecution of Martha Stewart? It’s partly because most do not understand the federal system and what Stewart was even being charged with and partly because they just simply support an unfair legal system. Its part of their image of being "touch on crime" when in reality they are tough on freedom. While many conservatives are (allegedly) suspicious of government power, they are more than willing to support it unconditionally when it comes to matters of law. Thus the victim of police brutality always had it coming, the big corporate CEO on charges is always guilty, and the police, the feds and the prosecutors are always right.

Conservatives love the law. They rigidly adhere to it and see any deviation from the law as worthy of a beheading. Therefore, they are much more likely than leftists to support rigid maximum fines and penalties for even the slightest of transgressions. It is conservatives who support the outrageous fines and penalties for drug offenders. It is conservatives who pushed for the unfair and unjust "federal sentencing guidelines" (which make sure that small time federal offenders are punished in disproportionate amounts to the severity of the crimes they actually or supposedly committed) and it is conservatives who support many Police State measures such as the Patriot Act.

In the eyes of most conservatives, Martha broke the law. Cased closed. No questions asked. But those of us with a more libertarian disposition go even further than that. We want to know whether or not the law was just to begin with. Also, how do the enforcers of the law go about nabbing their target? Conservatives, by and large, are not willing to challenge whether or not the law is morally just. Nor do they care to spend a lot of time looking at some of the corrupt and deceitful practices of the police, feds, judges and prosecutors. In the beloved Police State of the mainstream Right, the bad guys are always the accused and the good guys are always the State. The State can do no wrong.

Each time a person stands accused, the conservative asks in a stone-faced and serious manner, "Is he guilty?" They instinctively believe that whenever the government brings an indictment or a charge, they must be correct. In their eyes a man or woman is guilty until proven innocent, not the other way around. Nor do they really want to consider that even if the accused person is guilty of what he or she is being accused of that the law itself may be unjust. That’s because they believe law and the system is never unjust. Power hungry cops and federal prosecutors along with phony legal offenses apparently are our friend and help keep us safe.

You also won’t find a whole lot of conservative sympathy for those who have been wrongly imprisoned or wrongly put to death by the State. These "law and order" types will just rationalize this problem away, either by denying that such cases exist, or by simply asserting some innocent people will have to suffer for the greater good. How this is conducive to the cause of freedom and liberty is questionable to say the least.

On matters of civil liberties, it is the Left that is more reliable than the Right (except on matters of religious liberties, where the Left wants to purge religion from society). In the eyes of the Right, only crazed hippies are opposed to the Patriot Act. Conservatives, who seem to love militarism, use war as an excuse to suck up all kinds of personal liberties. Besides, they reason, sometimes when you are fighting a war, you have to surrender some of your freedom. If you don’t agree, then you don’t care about national security, you are ignorant, and you can just leave the country. This brings me to my final point, the conservative love for war.

Conservatives and War

The Right loves war. Right-wing foreign policy "realists" believe that negotiation, diplomacy and containment are for wimps and simply does not work. War is not a last option, but a first priority for the Frum-Perle-Wolfowitz Axis of Aggression. The Right lied and deceived its way into getting a war with Iraq, a war against a nation that posed no real threat to the United States. Instead of admitting their error, the authoritarians have instead been giving each other high-fives and hoping they can soon create another conflict with Damascus or Tehran.

How many people on the right have called out their masters on their lying and deception with this war? Not many. It’s because they don’t really a problem with it (unless it’s a Democrat doing the lying). In their eyes the lies and distortions were justifiable means to a noble end. They got their war and they got their occupation. Tough luck for anyone who doesn’t like it.

Conservatives also show themselves to be incredibly calloused to the suffering of foreigners caused by their beloved wars. I’ve heard not a few conservatives make remarks like, "We ought to just make the entire Middle East a parking lot." Most of these people saying this were only half-serious. But I fail to see how it is funny to joke about causing the mass killing of millions of people because you don’t like them.

To fight all the conservatives’ desired wars you need more manpower. Who is more likely to support the draft? The Left or the Right? The Right, which supposedly hates government, loves the military. They believe in enormous wasteful spending to keep the bloated military machine obese. Not only that, many have no problem with the anti-freedom concept of the draft. Not only are you obligated through the force of law to fund the military machine through your taxes, you also owe the State your body and possibly your life.

Many on the Authoritarian Right have prattled on about how the draft is great for American because it teaches young people "responsibility" and contributes to the safety of America. What it really does is teaches young people that they are slaves of the State and that their hopes, dreams and freedoms take a back seat to the wishes of government thugs who want to use them to do their dirty work.

Speaking of the government’s dirty work, again conservatives assume that the government can do no wrong with nations that it is ticked off at. Thus all the conservatives stumbling and bumbling while they try to come up with excuses for the government’s deception for the latest Iraq war. The government would never, ever lie to us about why it’s going to war! The government simply can’t be wrong that Country A is bad and that we need to bomb them. Just as in the legal system, when it comes to foreign policy, the government is never ever wrong – especially if it’s a conservative running the show.

In the eyes of the Authoritarian Right, America is always right, everyone else is always wrong. If you question this, then you are a liberal, or even worse you are a subversive that doesn’t support our country! The final recourse for any frustrated conservative discussing foreign policy with a non-aggressor is telling them to leave the country if they don’t like it. When all else fails, the authoritarian attacks the person’s patriotism, intelligence, personal morality, and allegiance to their homeland. This is rather fitting for the authoritarian conservative, who would prefer dissenters get out of the way and physically leave the country rather than have their statist agenda challenged.

Conclusion

When one really takes a look at mainstream conservative thought, it becomes quite clear that they are not really supporters of freedom and liberty. In fact, they can support some of the worst forms of tyranny and repression possible. As has been stated in the body of this essay, they have no problem with the government so long as they are the ones running it. They seek not to shrink, but to expand the government into our daily lives. They put a blind and dangerous faith in the legal system and support injustice in the name of being "tough on crime." Most dangerously, they believe in using the U.S. military to impose their authoritarianism around the world, no matter what the cost is to human life and personal freedom.

Those of us who have awakened to this fact have said goodbye to the mainstream conservative movement. While not liberals or leftists by any means, we seek not to associate ourselves with the Republican Party. We have in fact realized something that most Republicans and conservatives have not noticed: that the government is not our friend and that statism and authoritarianism can only be used for harm and not good.

Today’s conservative movement is boiling down to this: You can either support the watered down statism of the mainstream Right and their troubling authoritarianism, or you can subscribe to a more logically consistent and freedom-loving philosophy of those of us dissenters who reject both traditional Left and Right paradigms.

Basically, if you call yourself a conservative, you can support one of two political and social philosophies. One supports statism, authoritarianism, and war, and the other represents what LRC stands for, "property, freedom, and peace." For me, it’s not that difficult to choose.

March 11, 2004

Bill Barnwell [send him mail] is a pastor in Swartz Creek, Michigan and a Master’s of ministry student at Bethel College.

Copyright © 2004 LewRockwell.com

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