When the label “conservative” comes up in political
discourse, we have been conditioned to think in terms of individual psychological
characteristics such as resistance to change and intolerance for new ideas. Corey Robin has provided a startlingly
different view of political conservatism in his book The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump. In Robin’s view, political conservatives are
quite willing to embrace change provided change is used to maintain an
inequality in which the majority is kept subjugated to a presumably meritorious
elite. Robin explains.
“….many of the characteristics
we have come to associate with contemporary conservatism—racism, populism,
violence, and a pervasive contempt for custom, convention, law, institutions,
and established elites—are not recent or eccentric developments of the American
right. They are instead constitutive
elements of conservatism, dating back to its origins in the European reaction
against the French Revolution. From its
inception, conservatism has relied upon some mix of these elements to build a
broad-based movement of elites and masses against the emancipation of the lower
orders.”
From this perspective, conservatism is all about
maintaining power for elites. The
political history of the past two centuries can be thought of as a sequence of
revolutions as the poor and dispossessed attempted to lessen their subjugation by
those in the higher classes, while conservatives plotted counterrevolutions
that would maintain the subjugation.
Conservatives are quite willing to change as needed to maintain the
notion that the better man will always be superior to the lessor man. The definition of who was superior could
change as conditions changed, but the ideal society for a conservative was one
in which there was a hierarchy of subordination where each person could view
himself as superior to those below him and inferior to those above him.
Conservatism works as a political philosophy by
convincing large numbers of people that they are, in fact, members of the elite
even though they know that not all elites are equal. The most formidable conservative political
appeal is to convince a voter that he is in danger of losing his position of superiority
over another person. Since the Nixon
era, Republicans have focused on race as a means of creating fear of loss of
status in white voters. Over the years
they have dealt in misogyny as they encouraged men to continue to feel superior
to women both in the economy and in family life. They have also captured evangelical white
Christians by providing them refuge from secular and scientific ridicule. Patriotism is another ploy used to convince
those with little else to provide them comfort that they are members of the
greatest nation on earth, and therefore they are superior to all those from
lesser nations. A slogan such as “Make
America Great Again” would resonate with many.
The success of Donald Trump in taking over the Republican
Party was, in Robin’s view, not an aberration, but a logical next step in the
evolution of conservatism in the United States.
People were so startled by Republicans’ acceptance of Trump as a viable
candidate that they began associating his popularity with that of Hitler. A much more valuable comparison would have
been with George Wallace and his candidacies. Wallace brought a southern
cultural message of white dominance and god-fearing religion coupled with a
populist economic thrust that was welcomed then by the same people in the North
who would rush to support Trump. Middle
to lower class whites welcomed both Wallace and Trump and would explain Trump’s
ultimate victory.
It might be difficult for some to comprehend the degree
to which the Republican Party has changed since the time of Nixon. Nixon was a master of race baiting and his
quest to capture southern whites was so successful that more moderate members
had to look elsewhere for a home, leaving the party to be dominated by the
racist southern democrats who soon became racist southern Republicans.
It is not possible to comprehend politics in the United
States without focusing on racial issues.
Consider Robin’s statement on Nixon’s strategy.
“Pioneers of the Southern
Strategy in the Nixon administration….understood that after the rights
revolutions of the sixties they could no longer make simple appeals to white
racism. From now on, they would have to
speak in code, preferably to one palatable to the new dispensation of color
blindness. As White House chief of staff
H. R. Haldeman noted in his diary, Nixon ‘emphasized that you have to face the
fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognized
this while not appearing to.’ Looking
back on this strategy in 1981, Republican strategist Lee Atwater spelled out
its elements more clearly:
“You start out in 1954 by saying
‘Nigger, nigger, nigger.’ By 1968 you
can’t say ‘nigger’—that hurts you.
Backfires. So you say stuff like
forced busing, states rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now you’re talking
about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally
economic things and a by-product of them is blacks get hurt worse than
whites. And subconsciously maybe that is
part of it.”
The issue of race has driven our culture for over 400
years, particularly in the South, where elites developed the master plan that
would keep the masses of poor whites faithful to the “Southern Way,” now the
Republican Way.
“The genius of the slaveholders,
wrote Daniel Hundley in his Social Relations
in Our Southern States, is that they are ‘not an exclusive aristocracy. Every
free white man in the whole Union has just as much right to become an Oligarch.’ This was not just propaganda: by 1860, there
were 400,000 slaveholders in the South, making the American master class one of
the most democratic in the world. The
slaveholders repeatedly attempted to pass laws encouraging whites to own at
least one slave and even considered granting tax breaks to facilitate such
ownership.”
“In the words of Calhoun: ‘With
us the two great divisions of society are not the rich and poor, but white and
black; and all the former, the poor as well as the rich, belong to the upper
class, and are respected and treated as equals.”
Slavery was not kind economically to poor whites. Yet when the Civil War came, they were
willing to die to preserve a system that provided them only the privilege of
believing they were superior to blacks.
One might argue that this was only a southern thing and
has no relevance for the nation as a whole, but southern attitudes did not stay
localized in the South. There came a
vast dispersion of southern whites—and their culture— throughout the remainder
of the nation. James N. Gregory, a history professor at the University of
Washington, presents relevant data and conclusions in The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of Black and White Southerners Transformed America (2005).
“In the Great Migration era of
the early twentieth century, when African Americans moved north for the first
time in large numbers and established much-noticed communities in the major
cities, less-noticed white southerners actually outnumbered them roughly two to
one. The margins became larger after
1950 and still larger as the century drew to a close. Over the course of the twentieth century,
more than 28 million southerners left their home region—28 percent were African
Americans, 68 percent were non-Hispanic whites, and 4 percent southern-born
Latinos, Tejanos mostly, who had been joining the flow north and west since
World War II.”
“In doing so, they changed
America. They transformed American
religion, spreading Baptist and Pentecostal churches and reinvigorating
evangelical Protestantism, both black and white versions. They transformed American popular culture,
especially music. The development of
blues, jazz, gospel, R&B, and hillbilly and country music all depended on
the southern migrants. The Southern
Diaspora transformed American racial hierarchies, as black migrants in the
great cities of the North and West developed institutions and political
practices that enabled the modern civil rights movement. The Southern Diaspora also helped reshape
American conservatism, contributing to new forms of white working-class and
suburban politics. Indeed, most of the
great political realignments of the second half of the twentieth century had
something to do with the population movements out of the South.”
Southerners did not create racism in other parts of the
country, but their attitudes made racism more politically correct and encouraged
open expressions of racial bias. One can
track migration paths from former slave states and correlate conservative
politics with the number of southerners who settled in a given location. The Central Valley of California supports
political attitudes not too different from those of the many immigrants from
Oklahoma and Arkansas that settled there during the Depression.
When the Ku Klux Klan came organizing it found fertile
ground among whites in the North and West. When George Wallace later came with his southern
politics he was welcomed by many whites.
When Donald Trump came campaigning with a similar message to Wallace it
should have been no surprise that he was welcomed by the same class of people.
Robin provides an explanation for why Trump was so much
more successful than believed possible.
He believes Trump’s success derived from a disappointment on the part of
whites in the promises not kept by the Republican Party, and from the outrage
associated with living with a black man as president for eight years.
“Trump’s ascendency suggests
that the lower orders are no longer satisfied with the racial and imperial
privileges the [conservative] movement has offered them. The right has reversed many of the gains of
the Civil Rights movement: the schools that African Americans in the South
attend today are more segregated than they were under Richard Nixon; the racial
wealth gap has tripled since 1984; and in several states, voting rights for
African Americans are under attack. Yet
a combination of stagnating wages, rising personal and household debt, and
increasing precarity—coupled with the tormenting symbolism of a black president
and the greater visibility of black and brown faces in the culture
industries—has made the traditional conservative offering seem scant to its
white constituents. The future of the
United States as a minority-majority nation exacerbates this anxiety. Racial dog whistles no longer suffice; a more
brazen sound is required.”
“Trump is that sound.”
Just as hundreds of thousands of poor whites were willing
to die during the Civil War for a system that abused them economically but
provided them with racial superiority, Trump’s supporters seem willing to
follow him anywhere. There appears to be
no crime, no act of malfeasance, that will weaken their support for him.
Of particular interest is the degree to which evangelical
Christians support this most unchristian of politicians. Robin attributes this again to racial
issues. It is only white evangelicals
that support Trump. Michael Gerson
provides a deeper look at the relationship between Trump and evangelicals in an article in The Atlantic: The Last Temptation: How evangelicals, once culturally confident, became an anxious minority seeking political protection from the least traditionally religious president in living memory.
Gerson is a white Christian who has considered himself to be proud of
the evangelical label although he is struggling to maintain that pride given the
behavior of evangelical leaders with respect to Trump. He also recognizes the primacy of race in the
religious response.
“….consider the contrasting
voting behaviors of white and African American evangelicals in last year’s
Senate race in Alabama. According to exit polls, 80 percent of white
evangelicals voted for Roy Moore, while 95 percent of black evangelicals
supported his Democratic opponent, Doug Jones. The two groups inhabit two
entirely different political worlds.”
He fears that evangelicals are risking their Christian
reputation by supporting Trump.
“For some of Trump’s political
allies, racist language and arguments are part of his appeal. For evangelical
leaders, they should be sources of anguish. Given America’s history of slavery
and segregation, racial prejudice is a special category of moral wrong.
Fighting racism galvanized the religious conscience of 19th-century
evangelicals and 20th-century African American civil-rights activists.
Perpetuating racism indicted many white Christians in the South and elsewhere
as hypocrites. Americans who are wrong on this issue do not understand the
nature of their country. Christians who are wrong on this issue do not
understand the most-basic requirements of their faith.”
“Here is the uncomfortable
reality: I do not believe that most evangelicals are racist. But every strong
Trump supporter has decided that racism is not a moral disqualification in the
president of the United States. And that is something more than a political
compromise. It is a revelation of moral priorities.”
Why are white evangelicals so grateful to Trump for his
political shelter? Gerson suggests that
evangelicals lost there way when they doubled down on the rejection of
evolution after the Scopes trial. They
emerged from that conflict as a national joke.
Rather than change, they assumed the posture of a “besieged and
disrespected minority.” Trump decided to
treat them with respect, something they found hard to come by.
“It is true that insofar as
Christian hospitals or colleges have their religious liberty threatened by
hostile litigation or government agencies, they have every right to defend
their institutional identities—to advocate for a principled pluralism. But this
is different from evangelicals regarding themselves, hysterically and with
self-pity, as an oppressed minority that requires a strongman to rescue it.
This is how Trump has invited evangelicals to view themselves. He has treated
evangelicalism as an interest group in need of protection and preferences.”
“Having given politics pride of
place, these evangelical leaders have ceased to be moral leaders in any
meaningful sense.”
“If utilitarian calculations are
to be applied, they need to be fully applied. For a package of political
benefits, these evangelical leaders have associated the Christian faith with
racism and nativism. They have associated the Christian faith with misogyny and
the mocking of the disabled. They have associated the Christian faith with
lawlessness, corruption, and routine deception. They have associated the
Christian faith with moral confusion about the surpassing evils of white
supremacy and neo-Nazism.”
And they seem willing to stick with Trump to the bitter
end.
We are at a very dangerous—but perhaps inevitable—juncture
in our history. A violent Civil War and
a violent Civil Rights revolution failed to resolve our racial issues. What will it take?
The interested reader might find the following articles
informative:
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