When Have Conservatives Been on the Right Side of History?

Corey Robin has recently wrote a book called The Reactionary Mind, which seeks to trace the continuities and fundamental attributes of political conservatism throughout the centuries and among a range of prominent people, from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin. One of the major themes to be drawn from his analysis is that the fundamental essence of conservatism, everywhere and in every period, is the defense of privilege.

If this is true, it does much to explain the conservative argument, no matter the context or time period. Defense of privilege equates to defense of the wealthy, defense of businesses, defense of males, defense of whiteness, and so on.

If conservatives have consistently been on the side of the haves and not the have nots, then when have they been on the right side of history?

Currently, mainstream conservatives are against gay marriage, minority rights, and universal healthcare, while they are also skeptical of the merits of climate change, renewable energy, and electoral reform - things that will in the not-too-distant future be looked back upon by bewildered young people as being backwards, obtuse, and reactionary.

But conservatives were also against things that are now perceived as abominable: they went to great lengths to preserve slavery, then later to protect segregation and fought to keep policies that benefited minorites, such as the Voting Rights Act and Affirmative Action, from being implemented; conservatives were against women's suffrage, against most laws that benefited organized labor that we now take for granted (minimum wage laws, over-time pay, the 40-hour work week, paid vacation, etc.), have consistently been against immigration or anything that threatened white, affluent, heterosexual, Protestant males in general.

The major policies in the United States that have benefited the vast majority of society and helped to create a more tolerant, more equal society have in the past 80 years come exclusively from liberals and progressives, such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Even the laws that a Republican president signed into law, such as the Clean Air Act under Richard Nixon, have come about only when the Democratic Party controlled both houses of Congress.

In Europe, conservatives historically were vehemently mobilized against the vast majority of society that was not an aristocratic, white, Christian male and had no qualms about justifying the use of violence to repress movements that sought to promote voting rights, minority rights, and increases in democracy.

If mainstream conservatives, conservative thought, and conservatism as a political movement in general have consistently been on the side of privilege, then they have also consistently been on the wrong side of history. But this does not mean that they have never been on the right side.

Conservatives in Europe were correct about totalitarianism, whether in its fascist or communist variant. Though Neville Chamberlain, as a Conservative Prime Minister, pursued a policy of appeasement in dealing with Adolf Hitler's Third Reich, this was controversial even among his own party. The man who succeeded him, Sir Winston Churchill, was a consistently vocal and aggressive opponent of fascism. Later, when many on the Left had become enamored and apologized for the violent excesses of the Soviet Union, Churchill and conservatives called it what it was - totalitarian. Of course, French and British conservatives both supported the maintenance of imperialism (though they went about its decline in different ways).

Edmund Burke and other conservatives did not just protest against the French Revolution, they believed it to be a terrible idea. Indeed, their warnings in the early stages seemed especially prescient after the country descended into wide-ranging pandemonium, with citizens being indiscriminately murdered and movements such as The Terror and the Committee for Public Safety emerging. Napoleon Bonaparte may have introduced certain "progressive" reforms onto the Continent, but European conservatives decried his reign for what it was - a tyrannical dictatorship.

While those on the Left have had their fair share of poor decisions - supporting Mao's overseeing the starvation of millions in China, for example - conservatism has much more often than not been on the wrong side of history. Even when they have been correct, such as when confronting the French Revolution, the rise of totalitarian communism, and fascism, conservatives have also had a tendency to go overboard in their zeal - see Joseph McCarthy's fanatical rants about communist subversion or the appalling record of imprisoned minorities that have resulted from conservative crime laws.

If, as Dr. Martin Luther King said, the arc of moral universe bends towards justice, then it is not due to conservatism that it is being bent that way.