WASHINGTON REPORT: Could Conservatives Conserve?

...Actually, the catastrophe was indeed the just punishment of a vengeful God and the crime was indeed infidelity to the principles of conservatism...

...Ford, alas, was being conservative, not dangerously radical, when he proposed to stop the crimes being committed against Americans in the name of national security by legislating that they wouldn't be crimes any more...

...Foreign adventure is all we've been involved in ever since we decided to have a standing army in a very big way, almost 30 years ago...

...It gives you pause to read what these people say and to realize they really do believe Ford was some kind of dangerous radical, soft on Medicaid and wishy-washy on lobbing one down the Kremlin chimney...

...The majority feeling among party regulars seems to be that the catastrophe was the just punishment of a vengeful God, visited upon them for infidelity to their traditional ways...

...Granted their showing in both the popular vote and electoral vote in the catastrophe, the Republicans are entitled to a good chunk of federal welfare payments for the next presidential election, even for the primaries...

...the reason it was a disaster was that the brute display of the delightful absolute power stimulated the Russians into the pursuit of some of those delights for themselves, moving the arms race onto a higher plane, with a corresponding more rapid pace, as you can see in your daily paper...

...The attitude there summed up led the speaker's master directly into the Bay of Pigs, the Missile Crisis and the Vietnam war, three disasters of foreign policy based on the delusion of the delights of absolute power...

...Yet, again, the only conservative voice raised against these intrusions has been that of a conservative Democrat, Senator Sam Erwin...

...This is not going to happen, for the most practical of reasons...

...If you are going to be a conservative, obviously the most fundamental things you want to conserve are the land itself and its varied treasures, the air, the water...

...If a conservative fears the power of the state, a conservative must most keenly fear the armed power of the state, because, under heaven, arms are power and anything else, including elegant argument and passionately held ideology, has power only in its relation to the use of arms, actual or implicit...

...Such intrusion has become a regular feature of life in these United States, carried on by the FBI, the CIA, the Department of Defense and the National Security Agency, to name the leading offenders...

...But he was also a signer of the Declaration and a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, where he advanced an argument against the armed state that put him in a class with Ben Franklin and that's class...

...Take the question of arms...

...Elbridge Gerry is rather unfairly remembered for his substantial feats of partisan redistricting in Massachusetts...

...If the nomenclatural reform movement triumphs in the GOP, either the boodle will be picked up by the Percys and Javits, the Weickers and Schweikers, a fascinating prospect, or an even more fascinating one, a whole new Republican party could come into existence, created solely to get the government handout legally due some organization of that name...

...Even the most cynical radical-liberal would grant that a conservative ought to be legitimately concerned about the welfare of industry because upon it rests the welfare of the economy as a whole, at least in the present and any realistically probable arrangement...

...Yet American industries as varied as trucking, road-building, arms, ca va sans dire, and agriculture have been corrupted by the infusion of enormous sums of government money with never a protest from conservatives concerned about the survival of truly free enterprise in an honestly competitive economy...

...The problem is that these voices of conservatism now shaking the giant ferns that will be top grade anthracite some time are so long out of touch with conservatism, they've forgotten what it is, regularly mistake it for three or four other things, wouldn't know it if it bit them, which it does every now and then...

...It was, we should remind ourselves, a New Frontier academic-politician who tinkled the Georgetown chandeliers with his corruption of Acton: "Power is delightful...

...There is a corresponding opportunity for a truly Conservative party...

...The Republicans, in the wake of the recent catastrophe, are maneuvering and manipulating here and elsewhere for all the world like the stegosaurus taking on the triceratops, each too intent on the total destruction of the other to notice that the funny little two-leggeds, which have been cluttering up the swamp for some time, have now taken to carrying torches, long pointy sticks and throwing-slings...

...Moreover, the new crowd would not even be entitled to the traditional bribes-in-advance from corporations, at least not in the traditional way...

...Similarly, if there is one thing a conservative should really fear from the all-powerful state, it is the intrusion of the state into the private affairs of its citizens through the activities of a national secret police...

...There is no chance whatever that the people using that respectable word in their incantations over the near-corpse of the Republican party can create such a new party...

...The idea and the word first entered into American consciousness on any wide scale in relation to something that sounds like conservative and is in fact the most direct and obvious manifestation of conservative instincts and principles, namely, conservation, as advocated and put into practice by a great Republican leader destroyed by his party, Theodore Roosevelt...

...This analysis may well be correct, but it is mistaken in its focus on just what traditional ways the infidels betrayed...

...Instead, present-day conservatives almost without exception speak and act as if the land, the air and the water were given us for the convenience and profit of giant corporations, as if, indeed, conservation itself is a dangerous, radical idea, to be handled cautiously if at all, more likely better suppressed altogether...

...The Missile Crisis is widely regarded as a triumph of Frontiersmanship, justly commemorated with tie clips all round...

...Incidentally, there has suddenly appeared a widespread willingness among the swamp creatures to change their name, probably to The Conservative Party of America, in order to get out from under the onus they believe the Republicans carry as a result of their dallying with welfare in the shade...

...absolute power is absolutely delightful...

...Some new outfit called The Conservative Party would be entitled to zilch...

...The Reagan-Connally-Helms connection (the latter name referring to the Dogpatch politician, not the international thug and bon vivant recently retired as ambassador to Iran), that connection believes the infidelity consisted in nominating Gerald Ford for the presidency and all the compromising with dread liberalism that implies...

...As you think about the subjects listed above as of special concern to conservatives, it is easy to see that there is a need for politically organized conservatism in the country...

...Gerry turned out to be wrong about domestic tranquillity, which, for that matter, is equally canceled out by foreign adventure in the other side of his comparison...

...Finally, consider the name, "conservative," itself...

...Yet by and large, T. R. was the last significant Republican to lend leadership to that basic effort of conservatism...

...Yet none of the conservative spokesmen now hoping to take over the Republican party has ever said a word about a standing army except let's have more of it, lots more...

...frank getlein...

...A standing Army, Sir," said Gerry, and I quote from memory, "is like a standing member: it promotes domestic tranquillity but tempts profoundly to foreign adventure...

...In Britain, it has been political since about 1830, but its political use is fairly recent here...