More On Name Calling

In politics, everyone tries to control naming themselves and naming their opponents. So in our Wisconsin senate race Mandela calls Ron rich and out of touch while Ron wears plaid shirts. Well, as we often say, memory is suspect and it might be that the Lady deGloves is buying plaid shirts but we are sure Ron is not in a suit. And, dang, we just saw an ad for Ron in a suit. Who is in charge of his messaging out there?

Anyways, over at InstaPundit (motto: lots of links with some that are actually good), we got a link to an excellent post: Defining Terms by professor Ornery Dragon. It is an excellent post because it gives you the gist of the issue in a few hundred words rather than a few hundred pages. You should really read it all but here is a succinct history of Fascism rather than the one that everyone want to paint their opponents with:

Fascism didn’t really come into play as a functioning ideology until Giovanni Gentile and Benito Mussolini, defined it as the state as an organic being, controlling everything. “Everything in the state, nothing against the state, nothing outside the state” became the definition of a totalitarian state (total control over the economy, society, and culture). Where Marx envisioned the “withering away” of the state (totally skipping over human nature and the drive for power and control, whether over other people or just your own life), Mussolini and Gentile envisioned the state as the sole arbiter of life, the universe, and everything.

We hope that the end of the quote is intention homage to the great Douglas Adams. As you can see Fascism has nothing to do with American conservatism. We would agree with you if you were to say that it sounds very much like the American left but were not willing to call them that name.

Defining the term conservative is very much an argument on the right. While Fascist is a pejorative term, to folks on the right conservative is a very desirable name to be called. That’s why Liz Truss Has Betrayed Conservatism is a great headline. Supporters of The Donald want to describe him as a conservative. He is not, at least for a GOP candidate.

That brings us to conservatives and the GOP. We know the people that are part of GOP because they identify themselves as such. Lots of GOP folks have conservative leanings but the nature of the GOP is that they are vitally interested in winning elections so they build a coalition of folks with common interests. Politicians should also vitally interested in accomplishments. Everyone (do we need an almost?) would agree that Ronald Reagan was both a conservative and a member of the GOP, at least later in life. Yet, as this post reminds us, he worked at having a good relationship with Democratic leader Tip O’Neill that was instrumental to the Reagan Revolution. Yes, Ron gets more credit than Tip.

We don’t have a membership list for conservatives. It wasn’t true when we were born but now the Venn diagram for conservatives and GOP would show almost all conservatives within GOP. Yes, a number of conservatives did not support The Donald but they supported other GOP candidates and few, if any, supported Democrat candidates.

Sidebar: Yes we are convinced the folks at The Dispatch effectively supported our current president, The Frontrunner, because they were dead set against The Donald. We don’t think they agree with us but we have never seen a serious attempt at convincing anyone. End Sidebar

The issue is the nature of the Venn diagram for the GOP and conservatives. Most conservatives are connected to the GOP but are most GOP members conservatives? As Ornery brought up it is a question of defining terms and “conservative” is a term in dispute. Here is how we see it. There are lots of people that lean conservative but conservatives are a small group that are support conservative ends for conservative reasons. The Donald got the Federalist Society to nominate originalist judges because it would get conservatives to support him not because he understood anything about the Constitution. It was a brilliant political move but it didn’t make The Donald a conservative. He is best categorized as part of the angry middle.

On the other hand, our current senator, Ron Johnson, is about a close as any elected official comes to being a conservative. Those few conservatives and those many with conservative leanings ought to strongly support him. We can continue to argue about who is a conservative and nobody needs to be called a Fascist.