Liberation Conservatism

Conservatism, as practiced from above, is a force to be feared and resisted. This is the force that leads to executions for those who dare to assert that the earth revolves around the sun. This is the force that turns the water cannon against citizens demanding their constitutional rights. Conservatism from above is the timeless force that seeks only to conserve its own power. Conservatism from below, however, may be the only hope for America.

Conservatism from below is not aimed at conserving a grip on the levers of power by a few; rather, it is a force of the many, in which they seek to deny powers to the state, with the sober understanding that any power yielded to any government will be jealously conserved and abused by that government. Conservatism from below, in other words, strives to assure that conservatism from above is never possible.

When we speak of liberals and conservatives in our present context, what we are really referring to is where one comes down on the nature versus nurture ratio. Conservatives feel that, wherever this balance may lie, the state has no business in legislating nurture or in manipulating nature. Liberals feel that, nature being cruel and nurture having millions of manifestations, none of which can be "equal", it is the state's job to somehow compensate for the inequalities of both nature and nurture.

Conservatism from the bottom is in fact a liberating ideology because it has the audacity to say, "I Can". It does not pretend that inequalities do not exist, but merely accepts them as inevitable as the wind and the rain. It does not pretend that members of consent-based communities have no responsibility towards each other, but simply says that the state is an illegitimate patron of this process. It recognizes that all state power, however benevolently cloaked, must and will be exercised in perpetuity and for always-expanding reasons and justifications. It understands that the alternative, the only alternative to an omnipotent state, is for the citizen to say to his government, "I Can".

Conservatism has historically been used to maintain a fixed grip on entrenched power. This is conservatism practiced from above. Conservatism from below, liberation conservatism, is used to take power back from the conservatives on high. Power is not returned to the citizen by creating new federal bureaucracies tasked with figuring out how the federal government got so powerful; it is returned to the citizen when the citizen says to the government, "Thanks, but no thanks. I Can".

This is all very simple on paper, of course, and the reason it runs into such legion practical pitfalls is that the hour is getting late. The federal government has created a dependency in the minds, hearts, and wallets of the citizens that may be irreversible. Local governments are starved of revenue and authority. This is no conspiracy theory, of course, but the inevitable result of ceding power, any power, to a centralized and geographically distant bureaucracy.

Here's how it works: the federal government takes most of a citizen's tax monies; the citizen's local and state institutions receive comparably little. Here is the first step in creating dependency; since most of a citizen's taxes go to the federal government rather than more local ones, the citizen relies on the federal government for a corresponding degree of the services provided with tax revenues.

The second step is the ultimate power grab: the federal government can deficit spend and the state governments cannot. So not only does the federal government collect more money than the states, but it isn't even bound to restrict its expenditures to the level of money collected. States have checking accounts; the federal government has a credit card with no spending limit.

The corresponding realization must then be this: American liberals, and all the federal programs and bureaucracies they have authored, are the real on high conservatives. They are the entrenched power. Their power is not manifested by denying citizens their rights, or by excommunicating scientists, or by stationing federal troops in restive cities. Rather their power is entrenched by maintaining the feeling of dependence.

A mentality has been assiduously crafted and promoted, especially among minorities and the working class, that people need the federal government, that without their tax revenues going to Social Security and FEMA, the heartless conservatives would swoop down upon their homes and rob them blind. Then when Hurricane Katrina strikes, and the federal government proves breathtakingly negligent, there is no money or authority at the local level to deal with the needs of the citizens. "You need us, you need us", comes the chant from Washington. "Yes, we do need you", says New Orleans, "we need you to either do your fucking job or get out of the way".

There are two ways that a bloated and voracious federal government can be changed. They are bankruptcy and revolution. We are heading for the former unless we realize the need for the latter. This revolution does not need blood, however, nor does it need hostility between competing segments of civil society. All it needs is a clear and concise belief, an admittedly monumental paradigm shift. All it needs is for citizens to look at what the federal government has provided as opposed to what could have been provided at the same cost by local institutions. When the citizen sees this balance sheet in his mind's eye, he will be left with one conclusion. "I Can".