January 6 was an abandonment of conservative principles. There was an attempted coup inside the Capitol as some members of Congress tried perverting the Constitution to install their guy as the winner, an effort fueled by fantasies of widespread voter fraud and other conspiracy theories. Remember, January 6 was not just the violence of people storming the Capitol. Buckley would have surely agreed with Trump on some issues, but would have loathed Trump’s isolationism, lack of commitment to free markets, imposition of big government, authoritarianism, immorality and boorishness.īut back to Nehring’s point: January 6 was a populist uprising and stood in direct opposition to the Buckleyite view of the world. Conservatives are for free trade, populists for tariffs. Where conservatives sought to expand America’s role in the world, populists have grown increasingly isolationist. Whereas conservatives sought to stomp out Big Government, populists seem willing to accept it when it’s popular (foregoing entitlement reform, passing tax cuts combined with massive spending and supporting government intrusion into private lives that fits their worldview). Populism rose, led by Pat Buchanan, who received 23% of the vote in the 1992 Republican primary, and slowly but surely grew into today’s Republican Party, which is ideologically Trumpian - a form of right-wing populism. But when the Berlin Wall fell, the Republican Party’s constituencies had less in common. In the face of the growing threat of communism, conservative publications such as National Review sought to “stand athwart history, yelling Stop.” Through Buckley’s brilliance and persuasion and that of countless others, conservatives took over the Republican Party, culminating in Ronald Reagan’s presidency. The blossoming conservatives sought to conserve that which they held dear, such as nature, liberty and societal institutions, including religion, the Constitution, a post-World War II order and free thought. The movement was founded on classical liberal ideas such as free markets, civil liberties, limited government and individualism. As such, there was always jockeying about who is the real conservative, but true conservatives seem to me to be anyone most focused on individual liberty and opposed to expansive government. The movement was largely made up of small-government libertarians, foreign-policy hawks and social conservatives, all united against communism.
Barry Goldwater’s book “The Conscience of a Conservative” up to the end of the Ronald Reagan era.
Buckley’s run as a conservative for New York mayor in 1965 through former Arizona Sen.
While the movement’s roots trace back to British MP Edmund Burke in the mid-1700s, I’m writing of the period starting with National Review founder William F. The American conservative movement over the last six or seven decades formed and grew largely in opposition to communism.
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