GOP is not a conservative party. It’s a reactionary party. Let’s stop calling it “conservative.”
True conservatives, according to NYU prof. @Jonhaidt, form a kind of yin-yang balance with liberals (or progressives).
Liberals embrace forward-looking change.
Conservatives value order. The conservative insight is that order is precious, hard to achieve, and easy to lose. (From @JonHaidt)
Reactionaries, on the other hand seek rapid change—backwards to a bygone era.
Political psychologists Capelos and Katsanidou define reactionism as “a forceful desire to return to the past.”
Underlying reactionism is “anger, fear, nostalgic hope, betrayal, and perceived injustice.”
The word “again” in “Make America Great Again” signals reactionist politics.
Liberals/ progressives and reactionaries have entirely different views of American history. The liberal view goes like this: America started out with some good ideas. Unfortunately, they only applied to a small group: well-educated white men.
Then, over 250 years—through the heroic efforts of great men and women like Susan B. Anthony, Thurgood Marshall, MLK Jr, and others—“we the people” expanded to include more and more people.
As more people were included, America came closer to its founding ideals.
Top: Congressmen in the 1950s.
Bottom: 2018 entering House of Representatives
For reactionaries, America in 1789 offered promise of personal liberty.
As the federal government grew and regulations increased, they felt that something vital was being taken from them. They look back with nostalgia to the good old days.
For reactionaries, 250 years of American history is the story of something being lost, something vital being taken away from them.
They look back with nostalgia to the good old days.
In fact, bygone America offered much liberty—for white men. When the frontier was open, they could grab land. Before 1863, they could grab people and enslve them. Before modern rape and sexual harassment laws, they could grab women. (See this post on the history of rape and sexual assault laws.)
There weren’t regulatory agencies or many regulations, so (white) men could cheat. They could manipulate markets, fix prices, and launder money.
How do you think the Trump’s got rich?
Liberals applaud the New Deal and regulatory agencies that brought us minimum wage, social security, and the VA bill, Voting Rights Act, and the Civil Rights Act.
They understand that these regulations even the playing field and allow all people to to participate.
To return to the “good old days”—reactionaries need to destroy all of those laws and agencies. When David Koch was the Libertarian Party 1980 VP candidate, he advocated abolishing (among other things) the FBI, CIA, and IRS.
The drive to destroy explains Trump, his administration, and his followers. The desire to destroy agencies and institutions was the point of this tweet:
Destroying institutions (like the FBI) by undermining them is textbook reactionary politics.
The reactionary desire to destroy explains why Trump’s followers crave chaos. From the New York Times: “. . . a preliminary examination of the data shows ‘that the ‘need for chaos’ correlates positively with sympathy for Trump. . . .”
Why? Because chaos destroys.
Timothy Snyder calls it governing by crisis and spectacle.
Lies also destroy. See my Slate article.
True conservatives don’t want to destroy. They want to preserve the status quo.
True conservatives looked hard at Trump, understood the GOP was not actually conservative, and jumped ship.
Many who call themselves conservatives remain.
Some from moral cowardice.
Some because they think they will benefit personally. Some because they think conservatives will benefit.
Hofstadter explains that many who think of themselves as conservatives aren’t: They “employ the rhetoric of conservatism” but instead of wishing to conserve, they unconsciously wish to destroy.
Words and names matter. Let’s call the GOP what it is: A reactionary party.
