Which Tradition Is to Be Conserved?

Three rival visions of what America should conserve

It’s common to complain, “What has conservatism ever conserved?” But a better question is to ask what it even wants to conserve.

Postwar American conservatism has been described as a “three-legged stool” consisting of anti-communism (or a strong foreign-military policy), libertarianism (or classical liberalism), and traditionalism.

The contents of traditionalism have changed a lot over the years, as I detailed in my recent essay for Fusion. I want to expand on that today to discuss three rival visions of what tradition is to be conserved: social conservatism, cultural conservatism, and bourgeois values.

I put together this chart comparing these approaches.

All American conservatives support a common layer of what we might call the American Political Tradition. This includes a largely positive view of the Founding and American history, reverence for the Constitution and our constitutional system of government (even if many people believe we’ve strayed far away from that), a strong belief in free speech, and respect for the flag and other traditional American symbols.

To this, three different approaches are added by three different groups.

Social conservatism is promoted by the religious right. It draws from the idea of America as a Christian nation or its “Judeo-Christian inheritance.” It emphasizes moral matters around things like abortion or pornography or traditional marriage. In a previous era this might have included no drinking or no dancing. This vision has a lot of “thou shalt nots.”

Cultural conservatism is the ideology of MAGA, or the Trump voting base. It draw from the idea of America as a melting pot from the mid-century, seeing an American people made up of the Anglo settler populations, Ellis Island era and prior generations of immigrants, blacks, and American Indians. It emphasizes the defense of this historic core demographic and its interests against the left’s “BIPOC” coalition of outsiders. This group wants to build a wall and halt or at least radically reduce immigration. It prefers protectionist economics and draws from the prewar American tradition that is skeptical of “foreign entanglements.” Its motto is “America First.”

Bourgeois values are promoted by neoconservatives. They are an updated version of WASP values, or the old Weberian Protestant values. This updating drains them of their ethno-religious association as well as their moral and cultural content. Instead, they are positioned as the best path to personal and societal success. They serve a purely functional role as a part of a healthy culture. This especially includes only having children in wedlock, as well as a strong but not absolute commitment to marriage. It rejects sexual promiscuity but does not promote sexual continence. Its motto might be “no sex outside of love,” or don’t have sex unless you are in a real relationship with someone. It stresses hard work and thrift (aka the Protestant work ethic), and wants people to be civically engaged and building up “social capital.”

There are overlaps between these groups, especially between social conservatism and cultural conservatism. Some, though by no means all religious supporters of Trump might support both, for example. But fundamentally they are distinct things.

Each of them also has a severe problem that challenges them being put into effect.

Social conservatism’s problem is that while there is a large constituent base for it, it is a minority position rejected by a solid majority of society. We see this most clearly in the electoral fortunes of abortion, in which the pro-abortion position has won every single time it has been on the ballot, even in deep red states like Kentucky.

Cultural conservatism, or at least elements of it, does plausibly command majority support. The majority of Americans are on board with reducing immigration - certainly with ending illegal immigration. Protectionist trade policies would probably also garner a lot of support. The problem here is that cultural conservatives face the united opposition of essentially the entire elite, including of the Republican party. Open borders is the hill the Wall Street Journal editorial page would die on, for example.

Bourgeois values are an essentially boutique position that does not exist outside of the conservative think tank world. Plus a few other social science outposts such as the work of Robert Putnam, Melissa Kearney, and Richard Reeves, who don’t directly endorse bourgeois values but document the personal and social consequences of their lack. The bourgeois values are the implicit moral code of the upper middle class, but to the frustration of neoconservatives like Charles Murray, they don’t “preach what they practice.” Bourgeois values have no mass constituency in the country whose culture has proletarianized and badly degraded.

These problems create major difficulties for conservatives and Republicans in rallying around a coherent agenda, or seeing that agenda implemented should they win elections. This is a major challenge for the future of the American right.

It’s a challenge that can’t be resolved without some form of new synthesis or adaptation, such as a cultural conservatism that managed to incorporate a broader demographic appeal (such as to Hispanics) along with some modifications that would draw at least a material segment of the elites.

In the meantime, these rival visions of what it is to be conserved will continue to lead to intra-conservative conflict and political turmoil.