Conservative Donnybrook

Mark (Willmoore) wrote an interesting post over at Spinline in which he posed the question of whether there is hope for laissez-faire economics (in particular) and prinicpled opposition to Big Government (generally). As I am wont to do, I left a lengthy (and gloomy) comment. On second thought, I probably should have simply posted my response here (if I was going to be so windy) and left a trackback to Mark’s post. With that in mind, here is the response I left:

Mark,

I would agree with you that if there is hope to be found, it is in the prospect of an “alternative” right rising. Of course, the problem with that presecription is that, if the alternative right is to have any hope of forging a new path, it necessarily has to capture the imaginations of a large number of people. It will, in other words, have to become a new movement conservatism. Perhaps it just a failure of my own imagination, but I cannot conceive of how this will come about practically without this new movement’s descension into the same sort of party politics as led the Republican Party down its path.

Perhaps the nature of all reform is that it is cyclical. A movement rises, captures the imagination of a segment of the population, ascends to power through the formation of bloc alliances with others who share common goals, becomes a major movement, and degrades due to its love of the power that it has seized. If so, even the Paulite movement will inevitably degrade to the point where its primary goal is to enlarge its tent in order to retain power.

It seems as though those of us who wish to retain our Constitutional form of government with its coincident freedoms are doomed to spend a long time in the wilderness crying out and attracting followers. And just when we begin to enjoy the fruits of those labors, we will find ourselves needing to form a new following to counter the excesses of the one we birthed. In the end, the little success that is ultimately achieved by an ascendant “alternative right” will be measured in terms of having slowed the decay of freedom and not in rolling back the abuses.

Sorry to be so gloomy. Huge spending (and ultimately taxing) packages tend to do that to me.