{"id":2230716,"date":"2024-04-26T06:50:02","date_gmt":"2024-04-26T10:50:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/conservatisms-three-legged-stool-has-no-legs-left\/"},"modified":"2024-04-26T06:54:53","modified_gmt":"2024-04-26T10:54:53","slug":"conservatisms-three-legged-stool-has-no-legs-left","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/conservatisms-three-legged-stool-has-no-legs-left\/","title":{"rendered":"Conservatism&#8217;s Foundation Crumbles"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">6<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fconservatisms-three-legged-stool-has-no-legs-left%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2230716&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The article discusses Erick Erickson&#8217;s critique of\u200c a shift in conservatism away from traditional principles\u200b like limited government and free\u200d markets. \u2063He argues that abandoning these principles undermines the core \u2063of Reaganite conservatism. The piece highlights the failures of the conservative \u2063movement in preserving fiscal conservatism, traditional values, and peace-through-strength foreign policy. It concludes that conservatism has lost its grounding\u2062 and\u200c effectiveness in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/actress-sarah-paulson-talks-finding-the-humanity-in-clinton-whistleblower-linda-tripp\/\" title=\"Actress Sarah Paulson Talks \u2018Finding The Humanity\u2019 In Clinton Whistleblower Linda Tripp\">current political landscape<\/a>.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<p><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><\/p>\n<div class=\"article-content\">\n<p>Maybe you saw a recent clip on X from conservative talk radio personality Erick Erickson criticizing what he calls a \u201cweird movement within conservatism\u201d that questions things like \u201climited government\u201d and \u201cfree markets,\u201d principles long associated with the conservative movement.<\/p>\n<p>If you haven\u2019t seen the clip, <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/EWErickson\/status\/1782847806090146234\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">take a look<\/a>. It\u2019s like watching someone talk about the state of conservatism halfway through Obama\u2019s first term, when Republican leaders were vowing to repeal Obamacare and inveighing against Democrats for violating the Constitution with a \u201csocialist\u201d health care scheme. (Obamacare was of course never repealed and is now, all these years later, a permanent feature of America\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/l-a-county-health-officials-urge-residents-to-wear-masks-at-home-to-protect-vulnerable-one-america-news-network\/\" title=\"L.A. County health officials urge residents to wear masks at home to protect vulnerable | One America News Network\">health care system<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-2-long d-flex justify-content-center\" style=\"margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center; \" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-295286915\">\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-1379703300879-0\" class=\"mb-30\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-9465b6a0891de6ecc5e8d5646838fafb fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-2\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-9465b6a0891de6ecc5e8d5646838fafb\"><\/div>\n<p>Erickson\u2019s point, which he also made in <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/bXOIKv3HTE\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">a post for National Review<\/a>, is that the Republican coalition for decades was built on the \u201cthree-legged stool\u201d of fiscal conservatism, traditional values, and a peace-through-strength foreign policy. This is what won the Cold War and unleashed prosperity at home. I\u2019m sure you\u2019ve heard the story.<\/p>\n<p>The problem now, he says, is that some people on the right (whom he doesn\u2019t name) are calling into question these orthodoxies, especially free markets and limited government. They aren\u2019t fighting to cut the size of the government but are instead working to gain control of it and wield power to achieve their preferred outcomes.<\/p>\n<p>Erickson thinks this is bad, a betrayal of the old three-legged stool of Reaganite conservatism. After all, he says, if you use government power when your side is in control, the opposing side will use it against you when they\u2019re in control. And we don\u2019t want that, do we?<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s hard to overstate how out-of-touch this way of thinking is, as if the past 15 years simply never happened, to say nothing of the past 50. <\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-aae4cc903f494b20bf7f3820a14ac432 fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-6\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-aae4cc903f494b20bf7f3820a14ac432\"><\/div>\n<p>Consider the three legs of the stool. On fiscal conservatism, we\u2019re swimming in an ocean of debt that grows no matter which party controls Congress, while inflation is killing middle- and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/bidens-commerce-secretary-is-a-former-venture-capitalist-but-some-gopers-warn-shell-be-soft-on-china\/\" title=\"Biden\u2019s Commerce Secretary Is A Former Venture Capitalist, But Some GOPers Warn She\u2019ll Be \u2018Soft On China\u2019\">working-class families<\/a>. On traditional values, we legalized gay marriage and then quickly moved on to normalizing transgenderism and acquiescing to so-called \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/08\/19\/gender-affirming-care-is-the-opposite-of-gender-affirming-and-caring\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">gender-affirming care<\/a>,\u201d even for minors. On peace-through-strength foreign policy, we lost the War on Terror and are now funding multiple wars all over the world as part of a crumbling global imperium. The stool has no legs left.<\/p>\n<p>As for limited government and free markets, we saw how much the right cared about the former during Covid (to say nothing of revelations that our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/sen-johnson-impeachment-appears-to-be-distraction-from-what-democrat-leadership-knew-about-jan-6\/\" title=\"Sen. Johnson: Impeachment Appears to Be Distraction From What Democrat Leadership Knew About Jan. 6\">intelligence agencies<\/a> routinely spy on us and censor disfavored speech online), while the latter has allowed massive corporations to hollow out America\u2019s industrial base and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/9-viral-forgetful-joe-moments-names-dates-and-the-pledge-of-allegiance\/\" title=\"9 Viral \u2018Forgetful Joe\u2019 Moments: Names, Dates And The Pledge Of Allegiance\">ship jobs overseas<\/a>, enriching the upper and managerial classes while everyone else struggles.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, the conservative movement has failed to conserve anything. It has stood athwart history yelling stop, and history has ignored it. Conservatism as Erickson understands it has turned out to be a shell game. Republicans would raise money on promises to repeal Obamacare or restrict abortion or secure the border, but never follow through once in power. They would rail against fiscal profligacy but always end up passing massive budgets with no real reforms or cuts. A strong foreign policy now looks more like a corporate welfare program for Pentagon contractors in a world that\u2019s anything but peaceful.<\/p>\n<p>Now, you could look at all this and dismiss it by saying a failure of Republican politicians to stand up for conservative principles doesn\u2019t mean the principles are bad, it just means we have bad politicians. And that\u2019s true, up to a point. But such a critique fails to acknowledge two crucial things.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-f90d8498ce75eab8ad716cab19add01c fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-10\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-f90d8498ce75eab8ad716cab19add01c\"><\/div>\n<p>First is the incompatibility of an American global empire with the notion of \u201climited government.\u201d After the Allied victory in World War II, and especially after the Cold War, America was never going to have a limited government. Or rather, our ability to limit the government was going to be rather limited. We have seen this play out with our intelligence agencies and the vast surveillance apparatus they wield. That apparatus, sometimes used to topple foreign governments by staging coups and manipulating public opinion overseas, is now being used against American citizens.<\/p>\n<p>Second is the plain reality that we are in a life-or-death struggle against the left, and the left is playing by a different set of rules. If the right agrees\u00a0as a matter of principle that it will not wield government power to achieve its preferred outcomes, but the left vows to use the government whenever and however it can, then the left is going to win every time. And that is exactly what has happened.<\/p>\n<p>So what to do about this? Erickson\u2019s admonition amounts to a posture of permanent defeat. If conservatives can\u2019t wield power to bring about their vision of the good, of a rightly ordered public square and a prosperous society, then the leftist radicals will seize power and press forward with their permanent revolution, as they have been for decades.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, we need to recognize that the conservative movement has failed. It is dead; we have seen it die. The fusionism of the Cold War era, when libertarians and social conservatives made common cause against communism, is finished. So too is the GOP establishment whose first priority was always corporate welfare \u2014 at the expense of everything else.<\/p>\n<p>As <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/10\/20\/we-need-to-stop-calling-ourselves-conservatives\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">I wrote in these pages<\/a> nearly two years ago, we have to stop thinking of ourselves as conservatives and start thinking of ourselves, and our movement, as restorationist and counterrevolutionary. In a very real sense, we have to re-found our country, and to do that we will have to seize power from the left and use it to take back our country.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s understandable if that makes some conservatives uneasy. After decades of repeating the phrases \u201climited government\u201d and \u201cfree markets,\u201d it\u2019s a sobering thing to realize they were just empty slogans, and at best they were just means to some other, higher end.<\/p>\n<p>But the situation is what it is. Following Erickson\u2019s advice, eschewing power because of allegiance to a political fantasy, means certain defeat. It means permanent dhimmitude for conservatives in a country run by people who hate them and are determined to destroy them. The other option is to fight back, establish a beachhead, and use whatever power we can marshal to push back the left in hopes that future generations of Americans can live in true peace and prosperity. <\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-9d8b02313abdb83aaa49acba8f4b5677 fdrlst__b89e9-after-post-content\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-9d8b02313abdb83aaa49acba8f4b5677\"><\/div>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\">    \t\t\t\t\t   \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Did you catch Erick Erickson from conservative talk radio criticizing a new trend in conservatism? He questions traditional principles like &#8220;limited government&#8221; and &#8220;free markets.&#8221; If you missed it, check out the clip. It&#8217;s quite intriguing<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":518,"featured_media":2230717,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Erick-Erickson.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2230716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Erick-Erickson.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2230716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/518"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2230716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2230716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2230717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2230716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2230716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2230716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}