Learned Nothing and Forgotten Nothing

Tallyrand famously said of Louis XVIII of France, restored after Napoleon's reign, that he had "learned nothing and forgotten nothing." There are times when I think that can be said of American conservatives. Being told that the Food and Drug Administration (1906) is unconstitutional and a bad idea, or being asked "why should your illness be my problem?" can do that to somebody. After all, those are not sentiments you'll hear in Europe - at least not from any politician within earshot of a live microphone.

Then it dawned on me - what sticks out is the contrast. It's not that American conservatives became more conservative - it's that European conservatives became less so. The reason, I think, is World War II.

During WWII, Europe was ravaged. Bombs fell on the manor house and the poor house, fighting occurred in the good part of town and the bad part, and pretty much everybody had some taste of what it would be like to be poor and helpless. At the end of the war and during the long rebuilding, saying "your health is not my problem" became socially unacceptable. It had always been un-Christian and of questionable morality, but it became simply beyond the pale.

This was obviously not the case in the USA. Sacrifices were made, but actual fighting was "over there" in sparsely-populated Alaska and one day's bombing in Hawaii. Even then, American conservatives could comfort themselves that "Mister Roosevelt's War" could have been avoided and the sacrifices would not have been needed. In Allied Europe, this was not the case - the war was clearly forced on to them. In Germany and Italy, popular politicians, supported by the traditional conservative power base, had started the war.

After WWII, any attempt to rebuild European conservatism had an additional handicap. In Europe, conservatives looked to kings and the upper classes. We get the classic "conservative equals right" from the Constituent Assembly of the French Revolution - the one that led to Louis XVII's brother loosing his head. WWI had not been good to kings, and WWII was even worse. Federalism wasn't even on the European radar screen. The only ideological base to argue for European conservatism was Christian, and it's hard to call yourself a "Christian Democrat" and not be for somebody's ability to see a doctor.

In America, conservatives could fall back on a different base, the small government federalism of the Constitution. Now, at the time of the American Revolution, this idea was radical in the extreme. It was even too radical for many revolutionary Americans; Thomas Paine, one of the Founding Fathers, was heavily in favor of the French Revolution, and he was considered so radical that only six people attended his funeral in America in 1809.

But after a few centuries, this liberal idea was now "classical liberalism" and could be used to support a conservative movement. Now, don't get me wrong - I like small government and Federalism is a good idea. But carried to extremes, small government can get you a nation that says child labor laws are a violation of the right of contract. Federalism? Well, imagine if you needed a passport to fly from Chicago to Atlanta.

It's also worth noting that the collapse of European conservatism is not without problems - European labor laws lead directly to low economic growth. The trick in this as in all things is moderation.

At any event, understanding how something came to be is always helpful in dealing with it.