Ronald
Reagan wanted the Republican Party to be a big tent. If Glenn Beck had
his way, the Republican Party would be a straitjacket, open only to
drones who adhere to his narrow ideology.
Not even Reagan
himself, the most highly regarded Republican president within living
memory, would be welcome in a party reconfigured to Beck's
specifications. As he told USA
Today Weekend
this past week: "I’ve always said I was a Reagan-style conservative.
But I don't think Reagan was a real Republican. He just maintained some
shared values."
Theodore Roosevelt wouldn't be welcome either.
At last week's Conservative Political Action Conference, Beck scorned
the Rough Rider as the spear carrier of a "socialist utopia."
Actually,
if Beck cracked open a history textbook, he would find that TR loathed
socialism. Roosevelt fought to smooth the rough edges of industrial
capitalism, in order to head off what he feared would be a socialist
revolution.
As Washington Post
conservative columnist Michael Gerson wrote February 26: "(Roosevelt)
sought to preserve the market system by regulating its health, safety
and fairness. This is not laissez faire, but it is an authentic
conservative tradition - the use of incremental reform to diffuse
radicalism."
Would Beck and his brigades accept Barry Goldwater?
Not likely. After all, Mr. Conservative once said: "While I am a great
believer in the free enterprise system and all that it entails, I am an
even stronger believer in the right of our people to live in a clean
and pollution-free environment."
One can only imagine how hard Beck's temple would throb at that notion.
Even
Abraham Lincoln's bona fides might be called into question. Among
Lincoln's vast contributions to America, he protected Yosemite Valley,
setting a precedent for establishing national parks owned in common and
open to everyone, rich or poor, to enjoy. No room for that sort of
communitarian vision in Beck's world.
In Beck's world of
circular firing squad litmus tests, there is no room for anything that
resembles traditional conservatism – the pairing of rights to duties,
of freedom to responsibility, or of individual liberties to communal
obligations.
Traditional conservatism is guided by prudence,
respectful of custom and continuity, mindful of man's imperfectability,
and deeply skeptical of the utopian chimeras peddled by Beck and
like-minded radicals.
The Republican Party would be wise to stop
listening to them and offer America wise alternatives grounded in the
reform conservatism of Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan.
