One of the strangest aspects of our current political moment is the degree to which the conservative movement, at least in its most extreme populist form, echoes the disposition of the political left. As Sal Rodriguez explained in his article last month for TheLibertist, “Horseshoe theory is increasingly on display, as the right has come to embrace progressive figures like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. while flirting with the economic policies of Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.” These “conservatives” have made their peace with everything from the Nanny State to tariffs.
But this ideological oddness comes not just from the new right’s newfound embrace of those specific policies that empower the government to meddle in the nation’s economic and cultural affairs, but its attitudes. In the United States, anyway, conservatives have long embraced an optimistic take on human affairs, especially in a free and democratic society. The Constitution referred to a more perfect union. President Ronald Reagan appealed to Americans by comparing the nation to a Shining City on a Hill.
Horseshoe theory postulates that at their extremes both sides of the political spectrum are separated by the relatively small chasm between the ends of a horseshoe — rather than by the long distances at the far ends of a straight line. My view is the right’s recent disposition is an anomaly — an unnatural condition that’s at odds with modern history. There’s always been a sour-tempered, nativist and authoritarian streak on the right, but conservatives in America are charged with conserving the founders’ classical-liberal vision. In the post-war period, they mostly have tried to do so.
That vision, although realistic about the flawed nature of humankind and our nation’s shortcomings, is fundamentally uplifting. It believes that all individuals are created equal, free markets rather than government regulation will create prosperity and an ever-expanding economic pie, and the People will thrive if its governments serve more as referees than interested parties that try to exact specific outcomes based on whatever grievances are in play.
By contrast, the leftist vision is fundamentally dour, pessimistic and apocalyptic. While many of us are concerned about conservatism’s recent detour, the nation still faces an ongoing cultural and political threat from the left. It’s a threat that continues to have an appeal, especially among young people.
Consider the roots of 20th century progressivism, which remains the guiding light for modern-day progressives. That outlook, then and now, is that left to their own devices, the public will be enslaved by corporate wrongdoers, mired in poverty and left with little stake in the system. Not all of the early progressive ideas were bad, as they sought to clean up corrupt political machines and create a professional civil service. But, fundamentally, early progressives shifted power from individuals to experts. They were more interested in unleashing the power of government than enforcing limits on it.
Given that worldview, progressives created a massive administrative state to impose regulations on business and administer various redistributionist and social-service programs. Early progressives at times spoke optimistically about the future, but only to the degree to which the nation embarked on its rebuilding and utopian program. That program stripped away the limits the founders embedded in the Constitution. Here’s famed progressive Woodrow Wilson’s view on that founding document:
Living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and in practice. Society is a living organism and must obey the laws of life, not of mechanics; it must develop. All the progressives ask or desire is permission — in an era when ‘development,’ ‘evolution,’ is the scientific word — to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle.
All they asked was for permission to obliterate the basic nature of the founding. Of course, American socialists took matters much further. Here’s Eugene Debs, the Socialist leader who frequently clashed with Wilson: “I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.” Socialists see the world as a zero-sum game.
Unfortunately, young people on the left are being misled by similarly minded modern prophets of doom who downplay technological progress and our ability to adapt to a changing climate. They fetishize a romanticized idea of nature in a pre-industrial world, descend into identity and grievance politics, and insist the only solution is to turn the current system upside down. They look at the world and see crises and challenges that only an activist government can address.
Global warming, or climate change in its current form, offers a perfect opportunity to impose this vision. As with many progressive fixations, this one is rooted in some reality. The climate may indeed be warming. But modern leftists portray it in cataclysmic terms. They don’t countenance the possibility that warming temperatures might be part of normal fluctuations in the Earth’s weather patterns. They don’t accept that freer markets and increasing prosperity might naturally address the problem as cleaner energy sources replace pollution-spewing industries of yore. They rarely acknowledge that emissions in developing nations such as China and India dwarf anything from wealthy, modern economies, such as the one in California. They never admit that some of their own preferred policies, such as California’s failure to embrace forest-clearance projects that reduce the risk of wildfires, only exacerbate the problem. A University of Chicago report found that one year of intense California wildfires undermines many years of carbon-dioxide reductions.
Most significantly, climate change gives progressives the pretext to manage people’s lives all in the name of an ill-defined greater good. It’s a nearly perfect cause, in that it allows the government to intrude on our personal lives: where we live, what we drive, how we earn a living. The climate-change doomsayers have an almost religious zeal about them as they build their campaign among youth. For instance, Unity Environmental University in Maine highlighted the biographies of young environmental activists who, for instance, promote “youth strikes” to raise climate awareness and “create diversity within the climate justice movement.”
I’m not trying to mock misguided young people who are trying to make life better in this vexing world, but it’s hard to see how strikes, environmental clubs and ethnic/racial diversity within the climate “justice” movement will do anything to combat potential changes in the Earth’s temperatures. This epitomizes modern progressivism’s fixation on performative policy-making and moral posturing. If climate change is a sizable problem, then solutions should center on practical ideas and engineering, not vague platitudes about “social justice.”
Yet this ideology has taken root in government. California state officials have committed to an aggressive climate-change agenda. Aside from its massive price tag — $54 billion over several years, per the latest estimates — it means limits on the use of natural gas in new housing, the construction of a high-speed rail system that by most evaluations is a boondoggle, subsidies for pricey Electric Vehicles (EVs) and endless policies designed to drive the fossil-fuels industry out of the state. The results are higher costs for many items, to slightly reduce emissions in a state that has an infinitesimal impact on the global climate. It’s expensive virtue-signaling.
Climate change isn’t the only progressive bogeyman. The modern left focuses on income inequality and other conditions that have plagued the human race since time immemorial, but as always their “solutions” empower experts in government agencies. These anti-market policies often exacerbate poverty, as market capitalism is the only system that has raised humanity out of misery. Sadly, the left is countering right-wing populism with democratic socialism. Democratic socialist political candidates made serious headway in recent primaries nationwide.
From the Democratic Socialists of America platform: “If we lived in a classless society and governed ourselves, we could freely build a world without war or poverty. We could build a world where no one suffers for their race, gender, or religion, and everyone is free, equal, and cared for. Building this world is the guiding star of our movement. When we labor for our common good instead of private profit, we can all have a secure and dignified life.” This ideology sounds absurd, but recent surveys show that 62% of Americans under age 30 hold a favorable view of socialism.
And just as the right sees its crazy rhetoric on social media and in podcasts, so, too, does the left. Hasan Piker, perhaps the most popular streamer on the left, explained in a New York Times podcast that “I’m pro stealing from big corporations, because they steal quite a bit more from their own workers.” The Times discussion centered on “why petty theft might be the new political protest.”
Those troubling views and survey results are a reminder of the enormous work ahead for believers in our nation’s original classical-liberal principles. “The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy,” wrote economist Milton Friedman. It’s time to remind young progressives that the best way to achieve their lofty stated ideals is to recommit to the foundations of our still free and prosperous society.
Steven Greenhut is director of the Pacific Research Institute’s Free Cities Center.
Read Part 1: America 250: Beyond the Politics of Nostalgia
Read Part 2: America 250: On the right—Are Andrew Tate, Nick Fuentes really the future?