The Right Hasn’t Changed — It Was Always Like This
The old conservatism and the new conservatism are about the same thing: defending the more powerful against the less so
To hear some tell it, something inexplicable has happened to the GOP, conservatism, and, more broadly, the American right.
A party and movement once tethered to principles like smaller government, free trade, and deregulation has become a party of quasi-authoritarianism (meaning, big government), tariffs on imported goods, and regulation (at least of those industries that upset them, like media or the tech sector).
But in truth, nothing is surprising about the right’s latest iteration. The MAGA forces, unleashed by Trumpism, were always there, waiting to be loosed upon the rest of us.
Unfortunately, we misunderstood the nature of the beast.
We trusted them when they said they believed in pseudo-libertarian principles, the likes of which someone like Paul Ryan might have espoused. But Ryan was always an outlier. He never represented the soul of the American right.
The dirty little secret of American conservatism is this: it was always and only about the desire to maintain traditional lines of authority.
