Conservatism is dead, like God

When Nietzsche pronounced his famous verdict, he didn’t mean it literally. He meant that God had been excommunicated from serious discussion because educated people no longer believed in him.

Conservatism is dead in the same sense and for the same reason. Throughout the West, the same correlation obtains: the likelihood of voting for left-wing parties increases with the educational level.

In Britain some 65 per cent of the poorly educated (under GCSE) vote Tory, while only 20 per cent of university graduates do so. This circle is bound to be vicious for it’s university graduates who control local politics, the media and of course education itself.

They are the ones who create what’s disingenuously called public opinion, and what’s in fact the opinion of the neo-totalitarian establishment. They exerted an inordinate influence for a long time, but only over the past decade or so have such ideologues begun to dominate the public discourse.

They speak in one voice, doing their utmost to mute any polyphony at the grassroots. Hence, the few conservatives working at universities, newspapers or TV stations find it socially and professionally hard to express their views – just like those 19^th century intellectuals who sensed that any reference to God was infra dig.

Such is the face of neo-totalitarianism, the kind that sports a patronising smile rather than a savage scowl. But let’s make no mistake about it: the absence of blood dripping off the fangs doesn’t make it any less totalitarian.

However, a mechanism for forcing, as opposed to brainwashing, people into acquiescence isn’t yet there, although those who think the West is immune to violent totalitarianism are too optimistic. Yet for the time being people may still vote their conscience and reason.

And basic conservatism speaks to both, even if intellectual conservatives no longer do, for the simple reason of being outnumbered and outshouted. Hence Trump’s triumph in this election.

Yes, I know he lost, by a whisker. What makes Trump’s campaign triumphant is that he only lost by a whisker.

He was fighting the election in the midst of one of the worst natural disasters in recent history, and such disasters are always blamed on the incumbent, however irrationally. Presidents and prime ministers have been known to lose office because their countries underperformed in sporting competitions, because of hurricanes, floods – and of course epidemics.

Hence it’s astonishing that Trump managed to run the neo-totalitarian establishment so close at a time when hundreds of thousands (billions, Mr Biden?) of Americans are dying. This testifies to the success of his policies, while his defeat bespeaks a systemic failure of American, and generally Western, conservatism.

Trump lacks many traits I regard as essential for a conservative. Most of these have to do with personality and style, and these, more than any set of ideas and policies, characterise a conservative. Militant vulgarity, ignorance of history (and most other things that matter), narcissism, jingoism, crassness of mind and manner, lack of self-restraint – all these aspects of Trump’s personality disqualify him from being a conservative as surely as Marxist beliefs would.

And it’s not just a president’s policies but also his personality that matters, for he is the face his country presents to the world. However, if we strictly look at Trump’s policies, then I think that, with the possible exception of Reagan, he’s the best president in my lifetime.

Trump struck a mighty blow for democracy by doing during his tenure exactly what he had promised to do during the campaign. Hence the hysterical shrieks about Trump somehow undermining democracy are ludicrous. By electing Trump, American voters got what they had voted for – and I can’t think offhand of any recent president who merited the same accolade to the same extent.

Trump’s commitment to deregulation and lower taxes was at least as staunch as Reagan’s, and probably more successful. Governments in residually free countries can’t take all the credit for the economy’s success, but some policies are known historically to work better than others. Trump’s definitely succeeded, and, but for Covid, he would have won this election at a canter on the strength of the economy alone.

A massive influx of illegal immigrants across the Mexican border has been a problem that every previous president acknowledged yet none even attempted to solve. By the time Trump became president, even talking about this issue had become well-nigh impossible for fear of incurring the neo-totalitarians’ wrath.

Yet Trump not only talked about the problem, but actually tried to solve it as best he knew how. It’s easy to criticise his solutions, but none of the critics has come up with a viable alternative. (Criticism in general is easy in the absence of responsibility and accountability.)

Trump’s foreign policy was by far the best this side of Reagan’s. His playing lickspittle to Putin is a blot, but it’s the only one.

He displayed more firmness than any other recent president towards North Korea and Iran – and his confronting China has been courageous, considering the West’s addiction to the poison of China’s cheap labour. Trump was also firm to his Nato allies, especially when insisting they pull their weight on defence, which doesn’t strike me as unfair.

It is somewhat illogical, since America pays not just for Europe’s defence but also for the lucrative privilege of being the Leader of the Free World. One shudders to think, for example, what would happen to the US economy if the dollar stopped being the world’s reserve currency, one in which America’s suicidal debt is denominated. But, on balance, it’s hard to argue with Trump on this issue.

He is manifestly contemptuous of every verse in the neo-totalitarian scripture, such as the global warming hoax. Unlike Biden, Trump isn’t committed to crippling the economy for the sake of an ill-conceived and anti-scientific ideology based on the Marxist hatred of capitalism. One has to welcome his decision to leave the Paris accords, thoughtfully designed as they are to destroy economic growth in the West and boost it in China.

Trump has made more progress in the Middle East than any other US president I recall. He has left the world in no doubt that it’s the Israelis and not Hamas who are friends and allies to the West. Again, he refused to succumb to the neo-totalitarian worship of the Third World, which is another aspect of hatred for the West.

Trump’s response to EU protectionism with protectionist measures of his own might have upset David Ricardo, but a politician can’t always be guided by theoretical rectitude. ‘They do it to us, we do it to them’ is the language easily understood by those to whom a president is accountable, the people.

Everywhere I look, I see that Trump’s policies are those any sensible conservative would favour, give or take. I am sorry, however, that it takes someone like Trump to champion such policies.

The argument for reason (the word I use interchangeably with conservatism in this context) should be put forth and won not by shrill demagogues, but by serious writers and philosophers. It’s their confident voice that should be distinctly heard in university halls, TV stations and editorial boards. Alas, by their very nature conservatives can’t outshout lefties: the former do all the thinking and the latter all the screaming.

By leapfrogging the neo-totalitarian establishment and emulating its shrillness, someone like Trump may appeal directly to the people’s better instincts. That way he may win a victory for some conservative policies, but, in the absence of an intellectual and cultural victory, conservatism will still lose.

Sooner or later the crude, homespun conservatism of a Trump will be shunted aside by the neo-totalitarian establishment. A tragedy will ensue, and there’s no doubt in my mind that the Biden-Harris victory will score a direct hit on America, and on us by ricochet.

Harris had the honesty to announce that her life’s ambition is to become “the most left-wing president in American history”. One could argue that this ambition has already been fulfilled, for Biden will be president in name only.

Even if only some of the incoming administration’s plans are realised (and one hopes that a Republican majority in the Senate and a largely conservative Supreme Court will be able to apply some brakes), this triumph of the neo-totalitarians may spell America’s downfall.

Everywhere one looks, from the projected trillions to be spent on socialised medicine and the criminally idiotic Green New Deal to the onslaught of the ‘downtrodden’ to a foreign policy more likely to be anti-Western (and specifically anti-British) than anti-tyranny, one can see a disaster looming.

Those Americans who were quick to respond to the neo-totalitarian prodding and call Trump divisive will learn what divisive really means. At least I hope they will – for the alternative is the submissive uniformity of castrated thought so beloved of all totalitarians, neo- or otherwise.