“Conservatism in America” Event Summary
Tocqueville Center Features Top Conservative Commentators David Brooks, Helen Andrews, Matthew Continetti, and Matthew T. Martens At Two-Day Event, Conservatism In America
American conservative political commentators discuss diverse trends in the conservative movement at Furman University’s Tocqueville Center
Helen Andrews, author of Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster and senior editor and political analyst at The American Conservative, claimed victory for America First, Donald Trump Republicanism, while NY Times columnist and best-selling author, conservative David Brooks, defended his support of Democrat Joe Biden. These divergent views, representative of many conservatives today, along with the views of political commentator Matthew Continetti (director of domestic policy studies, American Enterprise Institute) and Matthew T. Martens (trial lawyer and partner, WilmerHale), were on full display at Furman’s Tocqueville Center for the Study of Democracy and Society event, Conservatism in America, which was held in two parts on Feb. 27 and 28 in Greenville, South Carolina.
The event is one of a series of events that brings to Furman’s campus prominent scholars and public intellectuals who exemplify the Tocquevillean approach to political thought.
The program was designed by the Tocqueville Center to showcase the diversity of American conservatism – including smaller government conservatives, social conservatism, free markets, Ronald Reagan, individual liberty, and the culture wars – and illuminate some of its fundamental divides.
Part 1 featured Andrews and Martens, and Part 2 featured Brooks and Continetti. Both talks were followed by a question and answer period with all four panelists, moderated by Jim Guth, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Furman and a distinguished scholar for the Tocqueville Center.
Conservatism in America Tocqueville Center Event, Pt. 1:
Helen Andrews: Donald Trump won, and the Republican party belongs to him
Andrews, who supports Donald Trump, defended her claim that her side had won the debates within conservatism. Linking her assessment of Trump’s main policy positions to Pat Buchanan, an outsider candidate who challenged the status quo of the Republican party by seeking to replace incumbent president George H. W. Bush as the party’s nominee, Andrews identified three key issues with historical precedent dating from the 1990s that have proven to be successful in her Trumpian strand of American conservatism: foreign policy, immigration, and trade.
Pat Buchanan and the rise of Trump’s populist conservatism in America
For both Trump and Buchanan, foreign policy was not isolationist, according to Andrews, but highly oppositional to miscalculated foreign involvements that were against American interests, as was seen in Trump’s opposition to the Iraq War, for example. Both politicians noticed that despite Republican unity in voicing opposition to illegal immigration, Republicans continually failed to take decisive action against it. And on trade, Buchanan and Trump opposed exposing Americans to competition from 3rd world wages through free trade maximalism, including NAFTA and the offshoring of manufacturing to China.
Trump’s views won, Andrews explained, because they vindicated Buchanan’s warnings decades prior.
The expansion of NATO eastward brought new wars.
Gone was the idea that “nothing can be done” about immigration from Republicans, or that immigration was toxic to election campaigns, as Trump made illegal immigration the centerpiece of his 2016 campaign. During his presidency, not only was his campaign rally cry, “Build that wall!” not toxic, along with his Remain in Mexico policy, but Trump, Andrews pointed out, actually picked up Hispanic voters.
And Trump “woke up the political class” on China, exposing the erroneousness of the idea that pumping up the Chinese economy would lead to increasing democratization.
Trump “woke up the political class” on China, exposing the erroneousness of the idea that pumping up the Chinese economy would lead to increasing democratization.
Andrews boldly concluded that the Republican Party is Trump’s party, and it’s not going back. Its future, she claimed, belongs to people like J.D. Vance. The inevitability of the decimation of the Midwest, which libertarians believe was inevitable, is according to Andrews “absurd”. She also cautioned against heeding advice to pump up war in Ukraine, when those same people were responsible for the mistakes of the Iraq War.
Matthew T. Martens: What is Lawfare to Conservatism Today?
Shifting from Andrews’ emphasis on electoral politics and the executive branch to the American justice system, Martens, author of Reforming Criminal Justice: A Christian Proposal, began by identifying what he sees as a new politicization of criminal law in the Biden administration. The indictments of Trump and the prosecution of those involved in the Capitol takeover on Jan. 6 is evidence, according to Martens, of a “criminal justice system run amok”.
The indictments of Trump and the prosecution of those involved in the Capitol takeover on Jan. 6 is evidence, according to Martens, of a “criminal justice system run amok”.
The Precedents of Unprecedented Lawfare
While Martens sees Biden’s Department of Justice to be taking lawfare, which is the use of law by a country against its enemies, to never before seen levels, these changes do have some precedent.
Citing the Encyclopedia Brittanica definition of conservatism as “political doctrine that emphasizes the value of traditional institutions and practices,” Martens in his talk outlined a case for why developments in the conservative movement in policies on crime, bail, and plea bargaining over the last century have undermined the traditional institutions and practices conservatism seeks to preserve.
…developments in the conservative movement in policies on crime, bail, and plea bargaining over the last century have undermined the traditional institutions and practices conservatism seeks to preserve.
Tough-on-crime policies, for example, have decreased conservatives’ emphasis on limited government, as government expansions go part-and-parcel with enacting these policies.
The practice of pre-trial jailing of the accused flies in the face, Martens recounted, of the American founding, as the Constitution itself prevents excessive bail. In 1987, however, the Supreme Court upheld the Bail Reform Act of 1984, which made pre-trial detention permissible for certain drug offenses and violent crimes.
The right to a speedy trial was abandoned by the Supreme Court in 1972 in Barker v. Wingo, when they ruled that a five-year trial delay did not violate the Sixth Amendment.
An element of coercion has also entered criminal law with the practice of plea bargaining. Prosecutors can get defendants to give up their right to a jury trial and coerce confessions of guilt in exchange for plea deals because of excessive bail and trial delays.
Martens cited a 2022 study that looked at the introduction of consent decrees. The study found that in their absence, pretrial releases increased, pretrial plea deals decreased by 17%, and 24% of those who had pleaded guilty in a plea deal were exonerated.
Is this the end of conservatism in America?
Martens then raised a pointed question to the Tocqueville Center audience: If this is the state of the American justice system, then what are conservatives conserving? In his view, the Founders went to war over the very constitutional rights being violated in today’s system. Today’s conservative movement, he lamented, has largely failed to recognize the severity of the situation.
Martens observed that the Constitution was a result of centuries of American and British experience, whereas the judicial system today is a repudiation of these ideals. The result is both anarchy and tyranny, as the examples of policies on crime, bail reform, and plea bargaining show.
Lawfare as a means of politics, Martens concluded, is a warning, pointing conservatives back towards the constitutional tradition they should be conserving. The alternative may be the end of American conservatism
Conservatism in America Tocqueville Center Pt. 1, Question and Answer Period, with David Brooks and Matthew Continetti
NY Times columnist David Brooks, noting the long “RAP sheet” against the American judicial system detailed by Martens and commiserating on the current state of the conservative movement, asked Martens for his opinion on what conservatives should do to begin to correct it.
Martens called for reforms and a plea to restore truth in the justice system, specifically to the plea bargaining system. Plea bargains threaten overly long or overly short sentences that violate the truth of the matter since people either say they did something they didn’t to get a deal or avoid the overly burdensome process of going to trial, or receive punishments that don’t match the reality of the offense. The plea bargaining system therefore is a kind of lie.
The plea bargaining system … is a kind of lie
Moreover, with plea bargaining, the jury never hears the evidence, and a public process is replaced with private, inscrutable associations, thus decreasing oversight and transparency.
Finally, Martens pointed out that in practice, when put to a jury, criminals with long RAP sheets don’t have a chance to re-offend over and over.
Event attendees reconvened the following day for Pt. 2 of the event.
Conservatism in America Tocqueville Center Event, Pt. 2:
Conservative Commentator David Brooks: A Burkean, Buckleyan Conservatism
Brooks’ Early Life as a Leftist
Brooks, whose latest book is How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen, began by describing his life as a left-wing Jew growing up in New York City.
His leftist tendencies persisted while attending the University of Chicago. Brooks spoke of having written an article in the student newspaper lampooning visiting conservatism speaker, William F. Buckley, which so captivated Buckley that he offered Brooks a job during his talk.
A committed “leftie”, Brooks didn’t become interested in conservatism until reading Edmund Burke, the 19th-century Anglo-Irish political philosopher and statesman who helped spearhead modern conservatism, a few years after he graduated.
When in college, he had hated Burke’s message in Reflections on the Revolution in France to trust tradition over pure reason in politics. But a few years later, he was investigating well-intentioned housing projects that had gone bad, and Burke’s message that, in Brooks’ paraphrase, “we should be modest about how we try to plan society because society is really complicated, and if you try to radically change it you will probably screw up” gained new significance for him.
…we should be modest about how we try to plan society because society is really complicated, and if you try to radically change it you will probably screw up…
Two years later, Brooks took up Buckley’s offer to join The National Review and enthusiastically entered the world of conservatism. He became “smitten” with the depth of the conservative authors he was reading, such as Peter Viereck, Russell Kirk, Willmoore Kendall, and Shirley Letwin.
Though Brooks expressed frustration with conservatism’s movement away in the last ten years away from the conservatism he saw in these books, and has drifted leftward as a result, he still believes in the version of conservatism he initially fell in love with, which he went on to describe in detail.
Burkean Conservatism
In Brooks’ account, conservatism was born out of the Enlightenment, which in turn was an attempt to prevent society from devolving into vicious religious wars. The French Enlightenment rejected religion and elevated reason as the proper basis for building society. The Scottish Enlightenment sought to recognize the powerful influence of interest over reason. Brooks summarized the Burkean approach in the Scottish Enlightenment vein as “epistemological modesty”: “the world is really complicated so we should be modest about what we can know, so change should be cautious and instrumental”.
Conservatives, according to Brooks, have always stood against the “arrogance of those who think they can plan the economy,” such as unelected bureaucrats in Washington and Brussels who think they can manage societies “by fiat from the top”.
If we can’t trust reason, Brooks asked the Tocqueville Center audience, what did the political theorists of the Scottish Enlightenment think we can trust?
Burkean Soulcraft
The Scottish Enlightenment thinkers answered that sentiments should be trusted, especially moral sentiments. Conservatives, Brooks stated, believe that in the right circumstances, emotions can be trusted, but they must be “educated and cultivated correctly”. Traditions and ways of being are accumulations of wisdom and virtues, and through practice and habit, our emotions are cultivated to behave productively in community. Burke’s social vision was not just about laws and institutions, but about “soulcraft”.
Burkean conservatives, Brooks continued, defend the “little platoons” lauded by Burke: local heterogeneous communities with their own customs and norms that are seedbeds of virtue. He then referenced British conservative philosopher Roger Scruton, who stated that if conservatives have contributed anything to intellectual life, is it the idea that we rational beings need customs and institutions that are founded in something other than choice if we’re going to put choice to good effect, such as family, nation, community, local knowledge, and associations.
Conservatism’s great virtue, Brooks summarized, is that it teaches us to be humble in what we think we know; it gets human nature right; and it understands that we are primarily a collection of unconscious processes.
Conservatism’s great virtue is that it teaches us to be humble in what we think we know; it gets human nature right; and it understands that we are primarily a collection of unconscious processes.
Brooks on American Conservatism
Conservatism puts moral philosophy at the center of practical politics, which requires many generations to cultivate. The risks, however, are narrow parochialism, xenophobia, rigid moralism, and antipathy towards all social change. “Blood and soil conservatism” is a European phenomenon Brooks hopes to see American conservatives avoid.
Thankfully, American conservatism is distinct from British or European conservatism, Brooks continued.
First, American conservatism is based on a revolution fought for liberal ideas and orders.
Second, America is a nation of immigrants and pioneers, emphasizing optimism and the idea that you can transform your condition for the better.
Third, America is more unabashedly capitalist, and therefore more entrepreneurial and perpetually dynamic.
Brooks’ analysis culminated in his declaration that he is a Burkean, but also an American: “I want to preserve my Burkean side…but Alexander Hamilton was an orphan immigrant who is the epitome of America as a story of mobility and climbing, not just stasis and respect for tradition”. This tension between Hamilton and Burke, in Brooks’ view, is a fundamental feature of American conservatism.
For Brooks, this view of American conservatism was held together in the era of Buckley, but the populist conservatism of Donald Trump is a departure towards European, “blood and soil” conservatism. In Brooks’ view, Trump is the wrong answer to the right question.
A Conservative Defense of the Democratic Party
The core problem from a conservative perspective today, Brooks concluded, is fragmentation, so what we most need is “someone who will give money to the high school educated who have been left behind”, and “Joe Biden has done a pretty good job of that”. His turn to the Democratic party, in his view, is consistent, in that there is a moderate strand of the party that is defending liberalism and social cohesion, and is respectful of tradition.
Brooks expressed he was “happy to be the most rightward Democrat it is possible to be”.
Conservative Commentator Matthew Continetti: The Fall of Neoconservatism and the Rise of Trump
Becoming Conservative
Continetti, whose lated book is The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism, began with an account of how Washington DC has changed since he first started working there in 2003.
As a student at Columbia, Continetti had received a great books education in their core curriculum program. One day, when reading Plato’s Republic, he was shocked and dismayed to realize that he shared Thrasymachus’ view of “human selfishness and fallenness”. His higher education in great books subsequently impelled him to study political philosophy, including Hobbes, Locke, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke – which in turn led to his budding realization that he was a political conservative.
He started reading conservative commentators and publications, such as Johah Goldberg, the National Review Online, David Brooks, including Bobos in Paradise, and The Weekly Standard.
Continetti read David Brooks’ Weekly Standard article, “Farewell to American Greatness”, on the day it was published: Sept. 10, 2001. He was in New York and had a front row seat to the events of September 11th, which shaped his political views.
The Coherence of Bush-Era Neoconservatism
Continetti, in short, was becoming a neoconservative. Neoconservatism is a political movement that began amongst liberals who opposed the counterculture of the 1960s, favored limited free markets, and promoted American democracy through an interventionist approach to foreign affairs. He started writing as a conservative commentator for The Weekly Standard in 2003, which was a time when there was an apparent coherence to American conservatism.
Notably, The Weekly Standard was not a lone outpost in DC. The Project for the New American Century, the Public Interest, the National Review, the Hoover Institution, and the American Enterprise Institute, among other conservative organizations and think-tanks, were all located in the same few blocks of the nation’s capital.
Obama-Era Disruptions to Neoconservatism and the Rise of MAGA
The “conservative coherence” Continetti had experienced in DC since 2003 has since been completely disrupted. Continetti described the erosion of what has been called the “Right Bank” in light of a 2016 election night fire that had broken out in the rubble of a demolished building that had housed one of many conservative institutes. He said it was a “physical manifestation of that election’s impact on the conservatism that I inherited when I arrived in 2003”.
There are many important causes of the decline of neoconservatism, Continetti acknowledged, but he focused on the roles of contingency and personal autonomy. He went back to the later 2000s, with the rise of the Tea Party during Obama’s presidency.
Rand Paul had led a brief “libertarian moment”, which failed, in Continetti’s view, because of the rise of ISIS. American voters rejected Obama’s policies on foreign affairs, along with Rand Paul’s, in favor of an interventionist foreign policy that would “smash ISIS”. Also, unlike Trump, Rand Paul didn’t have the personal qualities needed to lead a mass movement.
Moreover, Obama’s 2nd term produced three contingencies that changed the American conservative landscape and brought America to the “Trump moment”.
First, the Supreme Court decision Obergafell v Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage, pushed the religious right into an oppositional position that was pessimistic about America’s future. This ruling opened these conservatives to the appeal of Trump, who promised a return to foundational American principles.
Second, the crisis on the southern border, especially Obama’s treatment of the unaccompanied minors who showed up in 2015, made the issue of illegal immigration more important to Republicans. This issue was also conflated with the risk of terrorism, which ISIS’s sudden rise had exacerbated.
Third, the Ferguson unrest and the Tray von Martin shooting, along with accompanying rise of Black Lives Matter, began moving the Republican party towards a leader like Trump.
Having explained some of the historical contingencies favoring Trump’s increase in popularity, Continetti located the decisive factor in Trump’s personality. Trump, he said, is fundamentally a “brilliant performer”. He’s funny, always pushing, and will not stop, until defeated in the polls. In Continetti’s view, conservatives felt they had to appease these new forces, and choices were made not to push back, but to go along with it.
In Continetti’s view, conservatives felt they had to appease these new forces, and choices were made not to push back, but to go along with it.
American Conservatism, Past and Future
Continetti concluded that while there is no coherent conservative movement in America today, conservatives can still reclaim their personal agency and choose what conservatism becomes. The “Right”, a term Continetti used to comprehend conservatives and America First Republicans, agrees on the ends of several political issues, but there is no consensus on how to accomplish these ends. All agree that the ascendency of China, “Wokeness”, and the giant tech monopolies are problems, for example, but no one agrees on how to solve them.
Continetti encouraged a return, amidst such disarray, “to the wisdom of their [conservatism’s] best minds and advocates” to figure out how to solve problems facing conservatives today, such as William F. Buckley. Moreover, a return to America’s Founding documents can ground conservatives in foundational American principles, such as checks and balances, self-government, and liberty.
Though today’s conservatives are confused and uncertain, Continetti assured the Tocqueville Center audience that the story is not over.
The question facing conservatives is whether they can harmonize their principles with the current populist revolt. Continetti is confident that they can, because conservatives in the past have met challenging historical contingencies, and they can do so again.
Conservatism in America Pt. 2, Question and Answer Period, with Helen Andrews and Matthew T. Martens
Helen Andrews began the Tocqueville Center’s Q&A with an observation that when she started at National Review during the Obama years, there was a stasis in the conservative movement that led them to reject, even at a personal level, the dynamism and accomplishments of the Trump movement. Moreover, the magnitude and swiftness of demographic change due to illegal, mass immigration is an important issue that the Democratic party isn’t getting right.
Martens drew out how Brooks’ and Continetti’s comments drew attention to certain policies and social trends, highlighting three examples.
First, Tom Delay’s use of state legislatures to create “safe districts” drove fragmentation and polarization. Politicians become less responsive to the practical demands of real constituents and less prone to compromise if they do not risk losing their seats.
Second, the judicial activism of Anthony Kennedy undermined foundational conservative principles, including the separations of powers.
Third, Martens mentioned that social media, which has created an impersonal, anonymous mass that is in direct opposition to Burke’s “little platoons”, has undermined conservatism. Martens then questioned whether Obergefell still held sway in today’s political environment.
Continetti responded that while Obergefell isn’t as divisive today, the right and the left have become even more divided over the transgender rights movement. He also emphasized the role of contingent events, such as the Great Depression, WWII, and the New Deal, which marginalized conservatives and made them outsiders to political institutions, in the trajectory of the conservative movement. The less of a role conservatives have in social and political institutions, the more they will sacrifice their personal agency in an attempt to gain access.
Brooks emphasized that Anthony Kennedy’s idea of moral liberty is antithetical to the Burkean view that morality is a shared inheritance with beneficial, binding characteristics.
Brooks also rejected Andrews’ idea that mass immigration is antithetical to American interests, citing America’s immigrant past. While he laments the “chaos” at the southern border, Brooks is very supportive of legal immigration at a large scale, to which Andrews responded by identifying the problems of mass demographic change for areas of the country where government services are becoming overburdened.
The Tocqueville Center’s Conservatism in America Event Part 1, featuring Helen Andrews and Matthew T. Martens, and Part 2, featuring David Brooks and Matthew Continetti, can be found in their entirety by visiting the Tocqueville Center’s YouTube channel.