Is Donald Trump More Conservative Than Conservatives?http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/08/is_donald_trump_more_conservative_than_conservatives.htmlAugust 22, 2016
Brett Graham Fawcett
I.
The backlash against Donald Trump from a lot of groups is predictable, but one of the more interesting cases of this reaction is from the conservative intelligentsia.
Trump's sins against conservatism are, they tell us, that he is not pro-liberty enough. His proposals, from the infamous wall to a potential tax on imported goods, all smack of statism, rather than the crystalline purity of the free market and all its attendant liberties.
But what this criticism conceals is the fact that, broadly speaking, there are two major strains, or streams, of tradition within what is commonly called "conservatism." One may be called the "capitalist" strain, which extols liberty as the highest good in and of itself. The other may perhaps be called the "localist" tradition, which views liberty as a means rather than an end, and not always a good in itself. The localist tradition extols the family, the community, and, by extension, the nation as the highest social good, with liberty as its handmaid.
In this article, I will not defend either of these two traditions. Nevertheless, I will argue that, for better or for worse, the localist tradition is the more "original" conservatism, and the Trump phenomenon represents a kind of conservatism within conservatism.
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