Two things set me on the path to this post.
The first was noticing how much the news media that I pay attention to still frames things in terms of a divide between liberals and conservatives, and how much those same media sources still conflate conservatism with the Republican party yet have also recalibrated their understanding of conservatism so that it is reduced to agreeing with Trump. Somehow, the media have convinced themselves that the people who want to shred American institutions while also embarking on radical adventures to reshape in the United States into a fascist regime are called conservatives; and the people who want to preserve those same institutions and maintain traditions like democracy are called liberals or progressives.
To give just one example of this, it is amazing to me that the party that is reorienting American alliances away from strong support for democracy and open markets, and toward authoritarian regimes and restrictive trade policies like tariffs, is called conservative. Or, to give a more direct example, it is amazing that the people who want to disband NATO—an alliance that has lasted for sixty-seven years—is called conservative.
The second was a post that a friend of mine made on Facebook that boiled down, basically, to this:
When we were younger, the left and the right—liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats—shared a belief in universal rights. Now, the Make America Great Again crowd seems to have abandoned that belief, to believe only in their own rights, and to be willing to subvert law and tradition to exclude everyone who they dislike.
It seems like the left is motivated by freedom and wellness for everyone; and the right is motivated by grievance and retribution against their perceived enemies.
It also seems self-serving to look at it this way, but isn’t that what’s going on?
So lets talk about the ideas of left and right—of liberals and conservatives—and why those labels don’t really work, anymore.
Before we do that, I should point out that I am not a conservative. I used to describe my politics—in what feels like a lifetime ago—as to the left of Obama and to the right of Jesus, and they have only moved closer to Jesus since then.
I am for massive tax increases on the wealthy, expansive immigration policies, extravagant spending on housing and education, universal healthcare, universal childcare, universal basic income, and more. And that may make what I’m about to say sound a little weird: there is a reasonable version of conservatism that has been overshadowed by a right-wing politics that rejects conservatism in favor of a reactionary plutocratic kleptocratic patriarchal white nationalism.
And I think that conservatives can be good allies in both fighting back against those right-wing politics and building a more inclusive future.
On the one hand…
When talking about reform in his book The Thing: Why I Am a Catholic, G.K. Chesterton asks us to imagine a fence and two reformers:
There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."
…
[T]he truth is that nobody has any business to destroy a social institution until he has really seen it as an historical institution. If he knows how it arose, and what purposes it was supposed to serve, he may really be able to say that they were bad purposes, or that they have since become bad purposes, or that they are purposes which are no longer served.
Chesterton was a complicated conservative—and, admittedly, deeply problematic in so many ways—but what he is describing here is reasonable. Before we repeal laws or destroy institutions, we should understand where they came from and what their purposes are. If those purposes are bad, or if the law or institution is ineffective, or if the law or institution has other bad effects, then it makes sense to reform or abolish it. But the important thing is that, when possible, we understand something before we mess with it.
A good conservative—a conservative with good values—can be helpful in building a better future in two ways.
First, they can keep us from destroying important institutions without having a good replacement for them. For example, there are many progressives who would like to abolish the institutional church, but who haven’t thought through what that would mean for countless local food pantries and overnight shelters, childcare systems and connection points for seniors, music programs and arts programs, and so on. Understanding what needs religious institutions meet for their communities and developing alternatives for those needs that you want to continue meeting is an important thing to do before you abolish the thing that is meeting those needs now.
Second, they can recognize when laws and institutions were created for bad purposes, or for purposes that have become bad purposes, or for purposes that are no longer served. For example, the Department of Homeland Security was founded for a bad purpose (to embody a response to a national trauma) and is not actively engaged in undermining American democracy (by engaging in the harassment, detention, deportation, and murder of more-or-less random people). A conservative with good values could see that and call for the reform or abolition of DHS, while also working to meet purposes related to compassionate immigration policies.
In this sense, conservatism is not about keeping things the same for the sake of keeping them the same, but about making change carefully and intentionally. And while more radical voices pushing for change also need to be in the conversation, there is an important role for that kind of conservatism to play.
On the other hand…
The idea of the left wing and the right wing come from the French Revolution. Members of the National Assembly would sit on the left side of the hall if they supported the revolution and on the right side of the hall if they supported the monarchy. After the Revolution, similar systems continued: members who supported change would sit on the left, members who supported keeping things as they were would sit on the right, and members who were in-between would sit in the middle. But the important thing here is that the original divide only happened to be about change vs. tradition; it was much more about revolution vs. monarchy, about democracy vs. aristocracy, about equality vs. hierarchy.
This is, more or less, how we end up with Wilhoit’s Law:
Conservatism [by which Wilhoit means the ideology of the right] consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
Wilhoit’s Law captures the original understanding of where the right stood, the way that the American right has operated since the founding of the republic, and the direction that the same American right—and the international movement that it is a part of—has been trending ever since. The right seeks a hierarchy where those at the top enjoy all of the protections that the law has to offer while being unconstrained in their own actions, those at the bottom are left utterly unprotected by the law while being completely constrained in their own actions, and those in between live in various gradations of protection and constraint.
We can see this in the right’s sexual politics, where straight cis-gendered men are entitled to sex, companionship, and more from women; where women are bound to provide those things for those men; and where people who don’t fit into their sexual and gender paradigms are excluded from society altogether.
We can see this in the right’s racial politics, where race is treated as real; white people not only enjoy, but are entitled to, a maximum of power, privilege, and prestige relative to other racial groups; and complex racial hierarchies exist among non-white groups.
We can even see it in international affairs, where the world is carved into spheres of influence, certain countries are barred from asserting their national interests, and other nations—including, of course, the United States—are allowed to act with impunity.
And, of course, we can see it in every other are of policy, business, culture, and so on. The key to understanding the right is understanding what hierarchies they are proposing and how those hierarchies intersect with each other: concentric circles from the most centered in-group (who enjoys complete protection and complete freedom) to the most marginalized out-group (who suffers complete vulnerability and complete constraint).
What strikes me here is that, if we look at conservatism and the right in there current iterations and in this way, they aren’t the same thing. If conservatism is about both being open to change and understanding and evaluating laws, institutions, and so on before changing them—if we can be that charitable toward conservatism as an ideological position—them the right is simply not conservative.
While conservatives should want to understand and evaluate long-standing institutions before making drastic changes, the right—especially Donald Trump’s MAGA movement—has been barreling a head with destruction for the sake of destruction. The rampage that Elon Musk and DOGE took through the federal government is the most famous example of this: USAID alone has worked tirelessly, effectively, and largely unnoticed for sixty-five years but was hobbled at the whim of the president and his ketamine-fuled billionaire friend.
But there are countless other examples, as well:
And I could go on.
Again, as I wrote near the beginning of this post, I am not a conservative. I would love to make huge changes to American society and, let’s be honest, the entire global order. But I also agree with Chesterton that we should understand both what we are dismantling and what we are building before we make reforms. And I believe that many progressive proposals—universal healthcare, fifteen-minute neighborhoods, radical policing reform, open-but-secure borders, and more—are well understood and have good evidentiary support.
Even though I am not conservative, I can empathize with those conservatives who want to be cautious reformers. And my point in this post is that the right and its institutions—including the Republican Party under the control of Trump and his allies—are not cautious reformers. They are not even trying to stand athwart history and yell stop. They are reckless reformers who are only concerned with reestablishing hierarchies and enriching themselves, regardless of the damage that their actions might cause to others.
I don’t know if there’s an off-ramp for conservatives here. I think that there is, and I think that I’ve seen some conservatives—even some who agree with some of the right’s objectives—take it.
But I do believe that there are conservatives with good values, who can evaluate the institutions of the past honestly, engage in good-faith debate, and agree with progressives on prudent reforms. And helping those conservatives understand that they are not united with the right, with MAGA, or with Trump might provide a path toward a new coalition that can defeat fascism and work toward a better future for everyone.