The Rise of Common-Good Conservatism

The concerns of common-good conservatives about the harms caused by globalism and corporate wokeness are real. And to the extent that their calls for reform in the conservative outlook reflect those real concerns, then such calls are to be taken seriously.

A spirited debate is occurring within American conservatism. The debate generally involves traditional conservatives against adherents to what is called national-conservatism or common-good conservatism or common-good originalism. These national or common-good conservatives, although each stressing different values and theories, generally believe that individual rights and free market concerns rank too high within traditional conservatism, and that goals like the national interest and public good should rise in importance. To achieve these goals, the national-conservatives express less opposition to government activism than do traditional conservatives, and in fact advocate a more expanded government role than traditional conservatism generally endorses. Traditional conservatives respond by pointing out that a thin line separates the collectivism of the Right from the common-good concerns of national-conservatives.

Internal debates are nothing new to conservatism. They prominently occurred during the 1950s, when conservatives debated their longstanding reaction to the New Deal. These debates returned in the 1970s, as conservatives pondered a response to the cultural revolution and Great Society of the 1960s. Later, during the 1990s, conservative self-examination focused on the role and extent of government in society. After the election of Barack Obama, and in the face of a seemingly overpowering liberal wave, conservatives once again debated the relevance and application of their ideology. Therefore, it Is not surprising that with a Biden presidency and a Congress under Democratic control, and with a progressive “wokeism” pervading the media and higher education, conservatives have once again returned to an internal debate over their focus and priorities.

While internal debates seem strikingly absent from the ranks of the Left, such debates have kept conservatism vibrant and fresh. The debates of the 1970s produced the Reagan revolution of the 1980s. The debates of the 1990s gave Republicans control of the House of Representatives for the first time in forty years and coincided with the federalism revolution taking place within the Supreme Court, as the Court revived the doctrines of federalism and limited government that had lain dormant since the New Deal. And the debates in the early years of the Obama administration produced a conservatism more focused on the needs of the common and working person. Consequently, when seen in this historical light, the current debate within conservatism should be welcomed and encouraged.

For a better understanding of its terms, the debate will be broken down into two general areas: constitutional and political. Adherents of these new schools of conservatism, for instance, make two general arguments: first, that the U.S. Constitution should be interpreted according to notions of common good; and second, that political conservatism should focus more on notions of community interests than on individual rights.

The constitutional argument seems the easier argument to dissect because it is clearly the more unprecedented of the two. In this argument, national-conservatives take a sharp departure from traditional understandings of the U.S. Constitution. They argue for a Burkean, rather than Lockean, constitutional interpretation. Although John Locke has historically been seen as a major influence on the constitutional framers, national conservatives argue that the framers were in fact more influenced by Edmund Burke’s ideas about social order and the public good. While one may legitimately argue about the degree of Locke’s influence on American constitutional development, it is very difficult to see how one can argue that Burke was the greater influence than Locke.

Aside from the fact that the most influential of Burke’s writings occurred after the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, the national conservatives err insofar as they portray the Constitution as primarily concerned with achieving a certain common good and reflecting substantive values relating to the common good. The Constitution was indeed concerned with strengthening the national government in the wake of the disastrous Articles of Confederation, but the Constitution was not a document focused on the common good or various substantive values reflective of that common good. To the contrary, the Constitution created a structure focused as much on controlling the new federal government, restricting it and preventing majoritarian abuse, as on empowering the new national government to act on behalf of the public interest. Moreover, even though the framers obviously believed in pursuing the common good, they did not wish to enforce that common good through top-down federal government mandates on the social order.

In arguing for a Burkean constitution, and in trying to depict traditional conservatives as akin to libertarians, national-conservatives downplay the importance of natural rights theories held by the framers. But even if the Constitution incorporates natural rights, that does not mean the Constitution is libertarian. Under the doctrine of natural rights, there are no absolute rights – and one’s rights are limited by any harm their exercise might cause to another or to the public.  And ironically, in arguing that the Constitution is not values-neutral, thereby allowing it to contain visions of the common good, national-conservatives dismiss one of the primary sources of values within the Constitution – e.g., natural rights.

If the Constitution was not Burkean inspired — and it was not — then the national-conservatives are seeking to remake the Founding. They are doing what many conservatives, including this author in An Entrenched Legacy: How the New Deal Constitutional Revolution Continues to Shape the Role of the Supreme Court, have long argued that the Left did during the New Deal constitutional revolution and again during the Warren Court era. The Left has been trying to remake the Constitution for nearly a century, and conservatives have defended it throughout those attempts. It does not seem prudent for conservatives to now join progressives in the battle to redo the Constitution. Progressive have a lot more experience in that department. And even if conservatives did succeed at incorporating a common good interpretation into the Constitution, who is to say that a liberal Court would not insert its own view of common good? Indeed, progressives now use a common good argument to impose speech zones on college campuses and promulgate a “cancel culture” that restricts free speech.

The national-conservatives suggest that our constitutional ills have occurred because conservatives have pushed an individual rights agenda too aggressively in the courts. This is not true. It was not conservatives who convinced the Court to use a dubious substantive due process approach to create a constitutional right of privacy. It was not conservatives who crafted a Miranda rule out of the Fifth Amendment. Nor was it conservatives who argued that the First Amendment’s protections should apply equally to pornography as to political speech.

The second problem with the national-conservative rights-argument is that the individual liberty interpretations of the Constitution have not been the cause of the social and political woes that national conservatives now worry about. The 1960s cultural revolution and an aggressive contemporary progressivism has been the true cause. And from a constitutional sense, community decline and loss of civic engagement stems more from the Court’s abandonment of the limited government provisions of the Constitution than its individual liberty jurisprudence. This abandonment has allowed government to crowd out many other social forms of community that have historically characterized American society. A revived American community needs breathing space from a domineering government, but national-conservatives do not seem to focus on the framers’ wisdom in creating a constitution meant to create just that space.

Aside from these constitutional arguments, common-good conservatives seem also to be advancing an argument focused on political conservatism. Scholars like Ryan Anderson argue that conservatism, in its political identity and agenda, should focus more on the health of social communities and perhaps less on individual rights. This, it seems, is not only a productive suggestion, but one in which many traditional conservatives already believe.

Anderson, who presents a prudent criticism of traditional conservatism, recognizes that the common good must arise from each community and not be mandated by the federal government. He also sees that our social institutions have not eroded because of lack of government power, but rather because government power has weakened them.

To repeat, conservatives are not libertarians, which Anderson recognizes. They share with libertarians a mistrust of an unlimited government but differ with libertarians in the degree to which they might sacrifice individual liberty for the preservation of vital social institutions. All those forms of community – the family, neighborhood, voluntary associations, religion, etc. – have been the traditional focus of conservatives. Indeed, the Left often accuses the Right of being more interested in social order than in individual rights. In my book, Conservatism Redefined: A Creed for the Poor and Disadvantaged, I outline all the ways in which conservatism tries to strengthen the kind of communities that give individuals meaning and opportunity in their lives. Without the guardrail of communities, individuals, and particularly individuals with fewer material resources, have great difficulty in navigating the obstacles of life and overcoming the challenges to opportunity.

But perhaps the common-good conservatives are distinguished not so much by what they advocate as by what they find objectionable in the modern era. The destruction that “wokeism” inflicts on social harmony and individual freedom; the devastation on local communities caused by globalism; the degradation brought on by the modern media; widespread corporate celebration of hedonism and nihilism – all these are seen by common-good conservatives to be what they are: near insurmountable challenges to families and communities seeking to live healthy lives of their own choosing. For this reason, common-good conservatives rebel against what they perceive as too much emphasis on individual rights and economic free market values by traditional conservatives.

Again, the conservative focus on liberty has never been an absolute focus. In my book, Rediscovering an American Freedom, I try to articulate a First Amendment theory that gives protection to all those recipients of unwanted and degrading media entertainment. However, it must also be stressed that not all individual rights are equally protected. Religious liberty finds itself under great assault in modern culture, and conservatives must continue to defend that freedom with unbridled energy.

The common-good conservative argument that the conservative focus on laissez faire theory may foster a globalism and corporate oligarchy that threatens local communities is a serious and constructive argument. In the past, conservatism has aggressively defended free market policies, which often include the ability of corporations to conduct business without the constant intrusion of government regulation. In the past, corporate freedom has often been linked with conservative policies – and corporations have been seen as “conservative” agents. This was a gravely mistaken perception that common-good conservatives succeed in exposing.

Common-good conservatives like Ryan Anderson are correct that “wokeism” is being aggressively asserted in the corporate world. Indeed, one need only look at all the “woke” rules being applied in the corporate workforce, as well as all the culturally liberal messages being promulgated through corporate advertising, to conclude that corporate America has generally abandoned any concern for conservative values. Indeed, twenty-five years ago I published a piece in American Experiment Quarterly predicting that corporate America would become a harbinger of leftist cultural values.

The concerns of common-good conservatives about the harms caused by globalism and corporate wokeness are real. And to the extent that their calls for reform in the conservative outlook reflect those real concerns, then such calls are to be taken seriously. However, nowhere in conservative theory do large corporations occupy some special protected status. Not only do large corporations seek to destroy competition, which is a conservative value, but they often exist in a kind of parasitic relationship with big government, with each feeding off each other, as I demonstrate in False Promise of Big Government. Furthermore, globalism does not reflect a kind of pinnacle of free market economics. It is, instead, often the workings of large exporting corporations and governments working together to further their own self-interests.

Clearly, conservative theory gives communities the right to democratically determine their own survival and living conditions. Communities are not consigned by conservatism to some kind of suicide pact, in which they must allow distant corporations and governments to destroy the economic foundations of those communities. The nagging question, however—and where traditional conservatives have some discomfort with the agenda of the common-good conservatives—involves the degree of authority given to government to “protect” community. As has so often occurred in the past, the remedy of government intervention may be worse than the disease it seeks to cure.

Traditional conservatives worry that national-conservatives seek to establish some kind of statist ideology, which in turn will simply play into progressive collectivism. National-conservative Josh Hammer claims the enemy is no longer big government, but rather a “woke” ideology and a ruling class oligarchy. Traditional conservatives do not disagree with the latter claim but point out that big government is the tool used by a ruling class oligarchy to impose a woke ideology.

Nonetheless, despite the differences in this debate over the future of conservatism, the national or common-good conservatives have made a valuable contribution by highlighting the challenges to conservatism by globalism, corporate monopolism, a decadent and destructive media, and the imposition of cultural wokeism by corporate bureaucrats.

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The featured image, uploaded by Gibbystuart, is a photograph of Gilbert Stuart’s birthplace (southern exposure), taken on 14 June 2009. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.