The Rise of Right-Wing Progressivism
An epithet has emerged on the post-liberal fringes of the web conservative motion: right-liberal. It is a time period these critics apply to libertarians, old-school Reaganite conservatives, and anybody else who prefers individualism to collectivism or believes that it advantages everybody to maintain markets as free as doable from authorities meddling.
Liberal on this context means classically liberal, the political outlook that emphasizes particular person rights, restricted authorities, and the rule of regulation. However the writers who deploy this supposedly disparaging sobriquet hope that rank-and-file conservatives will hear liberal and assume a leftist orientation.
“America is an concept,” scoffed Newsweek Opinion Editor Josh Hammer in a latest tweet. He attributed that sentiment to “each right-liberal and left-liberal platitude-regurgitator ever.” Word the facile elision of any distinction between the 2 teams: To be a “right-liberal,” in Hammer’s formulation, is not any higher than to be a Democrat.
But right-liberalism and left-liberalism, to borrow the phrases, will not be precisely interchangeable. Old school American conservatives favor deregulation, authorized safety of personal property, free commerce, decentralization of energy, and reliance on a thick stratum of neighborhood establishments (“little platoons”) somewhat than authorities to unravel social issues. Left-liberals—a.ok.a. progressives—favor nationalization, bureaucratization, standardization, regulation, taxation, and redistribution. On the American proper, their place has lengthy been considered as a rejection of core conservative commitments.
The journalist Matthew Continetti put it properly at a convention final November. “The classical liberalism that we’re speaking about, I believe, is the liberalism enshrined within the Declaration of Independence,” he stated. “However there’s one other liberalism. There may be fashionable liberalism, or progressivism, which the conservative motion has historically understood itself in opposition to.”
Submit-liberal scribblers like Hammer “collapse distinctions,” Continetti famous. “It is all one factor. Every little thing that conservative motion figures for many years stated was an issue of contemporary liberalism or progressivism, they are saying, really stems straight from the American founding.”
However the invocation of “right-liberalism” is ironic in addition to facile, as a result of the post-liberals who disparage it are unapologetic proponents of precise left-wing insurance policies, resembling tariffs, industrial subsidies, and aggressive antitrust motion, even in opposition to corporations that do not meet the normal definition of monopolies. It will be no exaggeration to designate this cohort right-progressives. And nearly the one factor that makes them proper is that they hope to make use of their energy, as soon as attained, to implement elements of conventional spiritual morality somewhat than left-wing identification politics.
In a latest American Affairs article, for instance, the College of Dallas political scientist Gladden Pappin chastised old style conservatives for fretting about authorities spending and opposing scholar mortgage forgiveness. As a substitute, he proposed that the GOP undertake “a constructive governing agenda that might use the facility of the state to bolster the nationwide industrial economic system and help the American household”—i.e., company and particular person welfare.
Pappin just isn’t the one one. Just a few years in the past, you might recall, MAGA hero Tucker Carlson praised the “financial patriotism” of a plan from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) on his present. Extra just lately, Sens. Marco Rubio (R–Fla.) and Josh Hawley (R–Mo.) outflanked the Biden administration by siding with a rail staff union that was demanding extra beneficiant advantages. When an observer steered that the post-liberal journalist Sohrab Ahmari and his friends may precisely be referred to as “pro-life New Sellers,” Ahmari welcomed the label. Later, on Twitter, he got here out emphatically “FOR the executive state.”
Conservatives of the “right-liberal” selection have lengthy acknowledged the issues with this method: the risks of empowering unelected bureaucrats; the futility of making an attempt to beat the left on the sport of shopping for voters’ favor by way of federal spending; and the fact that most of the nation’s intractable issues are the results of earlier authorities interventions. In relation to deindustrialization, “one main trigger is America’s regulatory construction, which is a perform of progressivism,” Continetti identified final fall. “One of many causes the industries left America was they can not compete, due to environmental rules, labor pressure rules, the tax burden. Firms ship jobs abroad as a result of America makes it very onerous for them to do enterprise right here.”
Proper-progressives see the left’s errors and name for doubling down on the hubris that produced that wreckage. Let’s hope conservatives decline the invitation.
