The End of Conservatism

All I have to say is that Conservatives need to stop being so narrow minded. They revere Ronald Reagan and want everyone to be like him. There will never be another Ronald Reagan, and the Conservatives don't want to admit this. What they need to realize is that Reagan was president over 20 years ago! Consider how much the world has changed since then. They need to stop living in the past.

Without conservatism, there would be no balance. Too much "moving forward" would drive us off a cliff. Thank God for the old schoolers who ground us and the progressives who keep us moving forward. People, we have to have balance so thank the other person for their point of view.

To Mans64 - you are so correct!!! Why not just come out and say it... it's all the Jews fault right? Wow, being a Jew I wish you were right. I mean we DO control the world. Hmmmm, we control everything that you have a problem with right? I mean if you were to go and get drunk and get into an accident than it was some Jews fault right? I mean afterall we CONTROL everything. Scary thought that you let less than 1% of the population of the world control YOU!! Now lets see, when did I get my last deposit from the evil Zionists??? Hmm last time I checked they didn't help me out any.

Geez give me a break. Some people in this country seriously need help. Oh by the way, this is written from a U.S. Army Disabled Veteran who happens to be of the JEWISH faith.

This is an interesting column by someone whom I respect. Fareed and I met a few years ago in Davos when we were being honored as ???global leaders of tomorrow.??? Much of what is written here I can relate to, if not agree with. It is undeniably true that conservatism is suffering from a sort of fatigue, and it would be nice to find ???new blood??? among its leaders. Frank Rich???s column depicting the GOP as a ???white??? party is exaggerated but still contains kernels of truth.

As a young conservative Latina, this is difficult for me to admit, but the first step to regaining sanity is to end all denial. While the governing maxims of our philosophy ??? low taxes, smaller government, economic competition, free trade, anti-terrorism ??? still remain valid, it is nonetheless true that we have done a poor job of communicating them in recent years. Some of the blame for this falls at the feet of George W. Bush, but it???s all to easy to blame one man when so many of us are equally at fault. Another refrain I continually hear is how the ???media??? is so against us we cannot get our message out. This is less true today than in the past with the presence of Fox News and talk radio, and of course Internet blogging, but even so, our movement is in sore need of a makeover.

Some have said (myself among them) that if we elect Democrats this year, it is only a matter of time before they fall on their faces because the ideas they bring to the table are old-hat and proven failures. Additionally, their naiveté is on full display when dealing with fanatical Muslim organizations such as Al Qaeda, and as such, they would leave us as sitting ducks for the next attack, wherever or whenever it comes.

While this all may be the case, if we do not offer compelling alternatives, it will be difficult to combat the skilled oratory of an Obama (increasingly looking like the next President), particularly if he turns out to be more skilled at governing than we suspect now. Much will depend on the type of advice he gets, and his willingness to adjust his course when things go wrong.

I don't think that people have given up on the idea of freedom, and I don't think Americans are ready for the kind of liberal-fascist totalitarianism represented by The Democrat candidates. Conservative libertarianism is what distinguishes America and Australia from the less-free socialist countries of Europe. The Lib-fascists should hold off on the victory party for a bit. It might be too early to celebrate, unless you are thinking of a wake.

Zakaria is always interesting and I frequently agree with him. Political parties and movements do exhaust themselves for various reasons, usually because their ideas "play themselves out" or because their original coalitions break up. This happened to the Democrats in the 1970s as the New Deal coalition began to dissolve, and it is happening to some extent now to the Republicans.

However, certain principles are timeless. To me, the salient and indisputable fact is that in terms of the broad philosophical principles upon which all other political decisions are based, the Right has decisively won the battle of ideas, and the Left has lost. This is not a "swing of the pendulum" , but a permanent change. Socialism is dead, and it is not going to come back. Capitalism has become so widespread and so much taken for granted on a global scale, and so widely recognized as the only viable organizing principle for economic betterment, it will not be turned back in a significant way.

The free market paradigm rules. No one with any sense advocates big government for the sake of big government. Also, the programs which the Democrats created ( Social Security, Medicare, etc ) will have to be reformed or the cost will destroy our economy. More taxes will not solve these looming entitlement problems, but more taxes WILL harm the economy. So, as I see it, Democrats are trapped. They are partly victims of their own past successes, but they are also victims of economic reality. There will be no new big government programs. We simply CANNOT afford it as a nation. We cannot even afford current and future obligations.

Is conservatism as we have known it dead ? Probably. But there is not going to be a new era of big government liberalism. The solutions of the global age call for decentralized power, flexibility and local empowerment; not big government social engineering from the top down.

The really big arguement about the nature of government and the nature of the free market is over. And the free market won.

There's nothing like good, objective analysis. People are fed up in a lot of ways. It's not about ideology. It's about a calcified elite across the board that has no interest in the will of the people. Why do you think Obama is beating Hillary? McCain is basically being nominated by default. If he had been a little better prepared and a little better funded, Mike Huckabee could very well have won the Republican nomination. There is a problem with the status quo, and there is a problem with the "leadership" style of the baby boom generation. The Democrats took control of Congress, and their approval rating summarily dropped below the previous Republican majorities, and below Bush. This is not about conservatism and liberalism. It's "throw the bums out" on a massive scale.

Great insight as usual Mr. Zakaria. But what is new about McCain's thinking? He compares himself to Reagan every chance he gets, and he supports Bush's foreign policy and this tax cuts, both of which you cite as unpopular. True, he is a conservative apostate as regards immigration and to a lesser extent the environment, but since the war and the economy are the top two issues on voters' minds, I don't think his candidacy represents a significant break from conservatism.

The article and ensuing responses prove that there is no accepted definition of liberalism or conservatism as embodied by politicians today. Is it because they are willing to abandon ideology in order to solve real problems or to vacate their principles in order to be elected?
Also, if Ski's idea of middle class is earning in excess of $200,000, then I guess Obama will raise taxes on the middle class. If an inadequate resume is not pursuing the elite benies President of the Law Review at Harvard gets offered, (supreme court clerkship and on up, etc.) to work with real challenges and of the un-priveleged, learning the value of actually listening (what a concept for a leader) as well as leading, educating, that seems to be a lot of people's, me included, kind of inadequacy.
Our country is in its worst shape ever. The world of which we are a part faces perilous problems while we cannot seem to evolve beyond the greed and small picture thinking that got us here in order to cooperate to stop tipping and achieve balance.

And why is campaign reform a" liberal" idea?

Wow, it sure is interesting how we on the conservative side get hammered in an angry way. I have not read any hate coming from any of us. Kind of reminds me of the global warming debate, somehow that got brought up earlier. The more I talk to people left of me the more I feel sorry for them. There is always some injustice that is keeping them down or someone is to blame for the perceived bad luck. Conservatism is hard, you take responsibility for yourself, blame no one for your situation, work hard to get ahead, give aid in the form of advice and knowledge, and look at yourself when you make a mistake. We live in a great country that even the poorest among can succeed beyond our wildest dreams. I would like to have a liberal explain where in history their ideas have helped. New deal does not count because due to popular belief it made things worse. It took the massive consumption of WWII to get the world out of the depression. Fair and honest debate is all we as conservatives want. This has become a sound bite world and liberalism sounds better because you do not have to dig deep into the concepts behind it.

People like mnjam are confusing liberalism with conservativism. Liberalism is the headliner for a country in excess at the mandate of the population. An undisciplined population can indeed vote themselves the treasury and the politicians will oblige them to get votes. Conservativism does not take flight from science, reality or reason and is the opposite of narcissism (liberalism). Conservativism does have a problem with Democracy that is not checked by constitutional government (usually a Republic). For example, politicians of the Republic cannot disobey the laws of the land based solely on popular opinion. Politicians are obliged to uphold the law such as in immigration policy, for example. But because new immigrants make up an increasing voter block, the laws are disregarded at the Republic's peril because politicians want the voter block. Nor is conservativism to be confused with evangelicalism. Our Republic has a separation of church and state.

Certainly, post boomers are the main victims of the current generation of liberals not conservatives. The biggest error of liberalism is to take from one to give to another which is the basis of the Social Security entitlement program which WILL go bankrupt from loose fiscal responsibility at the hands of the liberal politicians. Left to themselves, the politicians will bankrupt Rome.

What conservativism needs today is to kick out the evangelicals that are wrecking havoc with the Separation of Church and state, kick out the blundering liberal politicians that would turn our country into a third world nation, and install judges that follow the constitution.

It would help if ignorant people like mnjam would also get their facts straight before the dribble begins.