Ronald Reagan’s appeal did not make much sense to me, until recently. Too young to witness him in action, I focused on the facts. The national debt tripled during his two terms. And it’s hard to discern any decrease in total federal regulations resulting from his presidency. How was this era of unprecedented deficit-spending a victory for limited-government conservatism?
Combine the expanding debt and regulatory state with the failed War on Drugs, which he intensified though did not start. And add the fact that Democratic presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton achieved important milestones in deregulation and entitlement reform. Was Reagan’s mystique due more to rhetoric than actual accomplishment? This record made it hard for me to understand how conservatives or libertarians found much to admire in Reagan. Maybe you just had to be there.
It’s in comparison with recent presidencies, which we have had the misfortune to witness, that Reagan’s true accomplishments come into the light. Today, if GDP grows by 2.7 percent, it’s cause for celebration. The economy grew by 7.2 percent in 1984, and Reagan won the popular vote by over 18 percentage points. No president since has come close.
Even progressives are coming around. Noah Smith recently took fire for saying some nice things about Reagan. Smith, of course, had to frame Reagan as a progressive in disguise. This misunderstands, though, the true nature of American conservatism.
Harvey Mansfield once remarked that “the principle task of conservatism is to save liberalism from the liberals.” Mansfield meant something particular by liberalism: America’s constitutional regime. To oppose and seek to radically overhaul this order is to ostracize oneself from American conservatism.
From Mansfield to Friedrich Hayek to Russell Kirk, American conservatism has been defined by the defense of the U.S. Constitution and our consequent liberties. It is not a continental conservatism, reinforcing unequal rights or suppressing religious minorities. It is important that Kirk chose Edmund Burke, a British Whig, as the foundation for his conservatism. Burke rightly opposed the French Revolution, yes. He also supported 1688’s Glorious Revolution, and defended the rights of Catholics, slaves, Indians, and American colonists, as well as the economic liberalism of Adam Smith.
The task of an American conservative is not to vainly attempt to return us to a pre-modern political order, nor is it to immanentize an anarcho-capitalist eschaton. Reagan did not — and did not intend to — do either, of course. Accepting the actual role of the statesman, even in the best scenario, is a sign of political maturity.
Reagan cited both Hayek and Kirk. While sometimes considered opposite poles of the conservative movement (if Hayek is even granted entry), both thinkers deeply admired Burke. It’s natural for fellow Burkeans to draw distinct conclusions from their applications of the Irishman’s principles. Yet to portray the Kirkean wing of conservatism as inherently opposed to the Hayekian wing is to miss their common foundations in both history and thought.
This may seem like airy philosophizing, but Reagan demonstrated the practical application of it. He avoided the reckless despair that necessarily follows putting one’s faith in a narrow, overly abstract ideology. Reagan appealed to so many Americans because he presented his vision not as a break with the Founding or with the actual aspirations of most Americans, but as the fulfillment of both.
Jack Butler wrote recently that “a more-muscular, decidedly not-neutral liberalism can succeed where its predecessor failed.” Well, how about this from Reagan’s 1964 “A Time for Choosing”?
You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin — just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard ’round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn’t die in vain.
The threats may have evolved since Reagan gave that speech, but the “duty” Americans have to defend freedom’s refuge has not. And the fact that we still possess a great deal of freedom to defend is due in part to Reagan’s legacy. He saw America’s problems clearly but also shared the faith “that you and I have the ability and the dignity and the right to make our own decisions and determine our own destiny.” As we contemplate the newer challenges that face us today, we must not throw away faith in individual dignity and rights in the vain hope of forcing political practice to perfectly match theory.