We need to talk about conservatism. What it is and — more importantly — what it isn’t. Leftists believe that more government is the solution to every problem. All you need is another law, another agency, another program, and your problems will be fixed. Conservatism is supposed to be the opposite of this. You become a conservative when you acknowledge that government is the problem, not the solution.
We’ve seen a very unfortunate shift over the last decade, however. Increasingly, self-identified conservatives are embracing an insidious form of statism sometimes called “populism,” which turns this understanding on its head. Instead of embracing free markets, smaller government, reduced spending, and criminal justice reform, these populists view giving government a bigger hammer as the solution to the cultural and demographic trends they find unsettling.
This is, to put it bluntly, a recipe for disaster. It’s no longer leftists trying to grow government and conservatives trying to reduce it. Instead, both sides are trying to make government bigger and stronger so it can more effectively silence and oppress those they view as the enemy. Both sides are agitating for more censorship and prohibition — albeit of somewhat different things — in order to push society toward their preferred vision.
Increasingly absent from today’s political discussions are the deep respect for individual liberty and healthy skepticism of government power that inspired our nation’s founding.
We can see these disturbing trends at the local, state, and federal levels as conservatives push to ban or limit access to everything from websites and flags to the substances and ingredients they blame for society’s ills. You don’t have to spend more than a few minutes on X to find a growing chorus of prominent conservative voices calling for government crackdowns on pornography, rainbow flags, liquor, tobacco, pharmaceuticals, and seed oils (among other things.)
Conservatism isn’t about creating a bigger and more powerful government to impose your preferences on society. That’s statism, and it’s quite literally the opposite of the individualism that built this country. Unless we abandon this authoritarian populism and recommit ourselves to defending personal liberty, real conservatism will continue to fade away. And that will be a tragedy far worse than whatever societal shifts the populists are trying to counter.
“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences of too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.” — Thomas Jefferson
