What passes as “American Conservatism” since the 20th century is a misnomer at worst and a Jeffersonian creation unworthy of Hamiltonianism. I have offered my own historical evidence across my Treatises, especially The Work-Standard and The Third Place. However, what has yet to be written is a Hamiltonian critique of “American Conservatism” that delivers the necessary philosophical and theoretical tracts for why Hamiltonianism has no place in that Jeffersonian Ideology. Plenty of non-American observers of US political philosophy and political economy have written about “American Conservatism.” They have raised their own criticisms from the standpoints of other Ideologies, including their own nations’ conceptions of Conservatism.
One should ask: “What is Nihilism in a political context? Nihilism in this sense means the absolute negation of an Ideology, thereby resulting in the lack thereof. When an Ideology is revealed to provide no suitable alternatives to the policies of the opposing Ideology, it loses credibility and clout among the State and Totality. Complacency sets in as the result of inertia, setting the stage for other Ideologies with their own proposals to take its place.
But when an Ideology lacks its own Weltanschauung, as is the case with “American Conservatism,” it becomes beholden to the very forces that it claims to oppose. Worse, it loses any sense of dynamism and vigor to the extent that it consequently grows complacent. Complacency yields the inability to create or innovate, which in itself is aggravated by petty dogmatism and factionalism. What has been consistently one of the main motivations surrounding “American Conservatism” since the 1950s?
US History has repeatedly demonstrated that “American Conservatism” is intellectually barren and politically nihilistic in nature. The Ideology did not begin with the Federalists, but with the Progressives, specifically those who opposed the apex of Progressivism in the New Deal. Thus, it has no tradition to defer to, no connection to the distant past because the Ideology is a modern invention. The Ideology has long sought to reverse the advancements of Progressivism without any ideas on what should be replacing Progressivism.
If one could envisage an America where Progressivism ceases to exist in its entirety, “American Conservatism” ceases to exist as well. “American Conservatism” would become purposeless, aimless, directionless. That is because “American Conservatism,” as it is commonly understood by Americans and non-Americans alike, is in final analysis the negation of Progressivism. The analogy is akin to eliminating the Gold Standard as embodied by the Bretton Woods System without ever conceptualizing the Work-Standard or any suitable equivalent at par value.
Does one not realize that many of the positions associated with “American Conservatism” are essentially the negations of positions held by Progressivism?
Categories: Philosophy
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