New Conservatism Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

New conservatism—sometimes called the “new right”—is an ideological perspective characterized by a collection of “fusion” or “neoconservative” ideas within the larger context of conservative movements and parties generally, and it represents a departure from the conservatism that developed from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. Though the specific arrangement of fusion or neoconservative ideas varies depending upon particular popular or academic expressions of new conservatism, these terms have come to be widely used throughout North America and western Europe over the past thirty years to distinguish self-described “conservative” parties and political movements from the traditionalist conservatism of Edmund Burke and other eighteenth-century critics of emergent liberalism.

Most of new conservatism can be broken down into two basic types. The first is characterized by a fusion of socially conservative beliefs (usually grounded in explicitly religious— mostly Western Christian—assumptions) with fiscal conservative beliefs that emphasize individual economic opportunity and property rights. This combination of ideas has never been very stable, as many social conservatives are willing to conceive of the state as a promoter or defender of customary social and religious mores, whereas fiscal conservatives are generally suspicious of any kind of explicit cultural regulation or promotion. This dispute thus pits more traditional-minded, communitarian conservatives against those who have embraced the “creative destruction” of free market capitalism. Nonetheless, this fusion has resulted in a very successful conservative movement in electoral terms in the United States (and, to a lesser degree, in some other democratic states such as Great Britain and Canada), primarily because during the cold war, both sides of this combination saw the Soviet Union, and communist ideology generally, as a threat to both religious belief and economic liberty.

The second grouping of new conservative thought is that associated explicitly with neoconservatism in the United States. Neoconservatism began as a response by certain disenchanted liberal thinkers in the 1960s and 1970s to the social damage they felt was being wrought by many liberal egalitarian programs of the day. Of particular concern to the neoconservatives was the negative cultural impact that they believed extensive state involvement in the economy was having on the work ethic and family structure of the most at-risk members of the population: racial minorities and the poor. They also worried about the international consequences of the pacifism of the new left and other liberal movements at the time of the Vietnam War (1959–1975). (While neoconservatives were not always strong defenders of the war, they were highly dismayed at the criticism of the United States that opposition to the war frequently involved.) As these thinkers began to align themselves with conservative movements more thoroughly, a new line of argument emerged. This argument was characterized by an openness to liberal programs but also a suspicion of them: a suspicion not driven by a libertarian commitment to fiscal responsibility but rather by sociological concerns about the collapsing of patriotism, civic bonds, and family stability. Their emphasis on strength and discipline in both domestic and international matters, and their belief that the experimentation and innovation of liberal social and economic policies was helping to undermine the state’s cultural strength, fit very well with the other, aforementioned form of fusion conservatism. This affinity led to some neoconservatives in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain going so far as to embrace elements of the socially conservative Christian perspective, though new conservatism or the new right in some other states is notable, on the contrary, for its eschewing of any social or Christian conservatism.

Fusion conservatism has been a successful enough ideology that social and fiscal conservatives have mostly made their peace with it and embraced the movements and parties that have carried the ideology forward. Similarly, the arguments of neoconservatives along with those of social conservatives have evolved into a variety of civic-minded, “compassionate conservative” policies, such as faith-based initiatives that make use of churches and other religious organizations to administer social welfare programs. Most new conservatives bring to conservatism generally a greater concern for pursuing egalitarian goals, so long as this can be done without doing damage to the cultural virtues and foundations that a capitalist society requires. At the same time, their belief in the importance and integrity of the nation has led them to embrace an ideological commitment to the appropriateness of using one’s national strength to promote certain values around the world.

Bibliography:

Buckley,William F. Up From Liberalism. New York: Stein and Day, 1984
. Gray, John. Beyond the new right. London: Routledge, 1993.
Kristol, Irving. Neo-Conservatism:The Autobiography of an Idea. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1999.
Lienesch, Michael. Redeeming America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993.
McGirr, Lisa. Suburban Warriors: The Origin of the New American Right. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002.
Moynihan, Daniel Patrick. A Personal History of Social Policy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997.
Murray, Charles. Losing Ground. New York: Basic Books, 1994.
Schumpeter, Joseph. Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. New York: Harper and Row, 1975.

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