Classical conservatives

Two or three centuries ago, while the Enlightenment was undweray in Europe, and revolution was afoot in America and France, there were some people called "liberals" and others called "conservatives." Basically, the liberals believed in liberty - social, economic, and legal. Their central premise was that rights of human individuals to live their lives as they see fit took precedence over the rights of the state to dictate the patterns of people's lives. Democracy, as they saw it, was the governmental system that best ensured people's ability to exercise and protect those liberties.

The conservatives took the opposite view. They believed that dictatorship was a naturally stronger form of government, as it allowed countries to act quickly and decisively. Democracy, they believed, would cause nations to become divided, indecisive, and weak. A strong king, they argued, was necessary to defend the state.

More recently, the divide between liberals and conservatives has become a bit muddied. As it became clear that economic liberty, interpreted in certain ways, could lead to massive economic inequality, many liberals embraced socialist ideas. Government control over the economy, once seen as a tool of the aristocracy, came to be seen by many liberals as the only weapon strong enough to bludgeon society back to relative equality. This, of course, allowed conservatives to paint themselves as libertarians, a tactic that continued right through Reagan and Gingrich.

But there are signs that, as socialism has (mostly) faded from the global ideological landscape, conservatism is returning to its classical roots as the champion of autocratic effectiveness over democratic liberty.

One big factor is the rise of China. Conservatives, looking wide-eyed at China's breakneck economic growth, wonder if it was the unity of purpose and will offered by China's one-party system that made it happen. Writing in the conservative magazine The American, Kevin Hassett notes that, for the past 10 years, dictatorships have been growing faster than democracies. Hassett writes: "[B]eing unfree may be an economic advantage. Dictatorships are not hamstrung by the preferences of voters for, say, a pervasive welfare state."

(Economics note: Hassett invokes the Arrow Impossibility Theorem, which states that democracies can't distribute resources efficiently. But the same theorem also applies to dictatorships, if you assume that dictators have preferences too. Which is in fact what you see from real dictatorships: whoever's on top will dole out quite a lot of money to their buddies.)

And Aparna Mathur, writing in the same magazine, notes that foreign investment is also flowing more and more to dictatorships. Unlike Hassett, she thinks that autocracy will be ultimately self-defeating in the long run. But run, she can understand why so many countries are looking to the China model.

(Note: TNR's Jonathan Chait easily rebuts the idea that dictatorship leads to growth, pointing out that autocracies tend to be poorer in the first place, and poorer countries can grow faster for a limited time.)

Meanwhile, the other factor pushing conservatives back toward their authoritarian roots is the threat of terrorism. Already, we've seen full support from America's conservative contingent for the Bush administration's attempts to detain citizens without trial, wiretap phones without authorization, etc. Bush himself has shown some sympathy for the idea that elections should be cancelled during wartime.

But now some conservatives are going even farther. Take Thomas Sowell, who wrote in the National Review: "I can’t help wondering if the day may yet come when the only thing that can save this country is a military coup." He later reiterated the statement on Fox's Hannity and Colmes.

Some observers may wonder if this anti-democratic talk is an about-face for conservatives, who just a few months ago were pushing democracy promotion as justification for the Iraq war. But it's worth noting that the so-called "neocons" have always been in favor of democracy abroad but have said little about democracy in America itself. One can't help but suspect that neocons, too, subscribe to the "democracy = weakness" theory - good for our enemies, bad for us.

In any case, the trend is clear. After a brief flirtation with libertarianism, conservatism is reverting to type. The only question is: What are liberals going to do about it?

One option for liberals is to go with the autocratic trend, but with a more socialist bent. That would take us back to the socialism-vs-fasicsm that ruled post-WWI Europe (remember what came after World War I?). If that happens, liberalism as we know it is dead.

The better strategy, in my opinion, would be to shed our fear of "individual liberty," and return to the Enlightenment values that put "civil liberties" and "human rights" in the world's vocabulary. Far too many liberals tremble or sneer when they hear the word "individual," interpreting it as a proxy for "greedy rich individuals" (as indeed it was when Gingrich used the term; tellingly, he's now reverted to fascism too). This attitude has to go.

Conservatives have returned to classical conservatism, so liberals should return to classical liberalism. Individual liberty, democratic choice, and equality of opportunity must be our watchwords. Otherwise we'll just be helping the conservatives as they resume their march back toward the 17th century.