The Capitol shows why we need Merkel’s conservatism, not Trump’s populism
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The violence this week on Capitol Hill has made all who believe in the liberal democratic system pause and think. To say it was all down to crazy rednecks is a response based on anti-American prejudice rather than insight. To believe what we saw this week in Washington could never happen in Westminster is as foolhardy as it is wrong — as Alistair Burt explained in TheArticle.
To understand the storming of the Capitol, we must understand the politics deployed by Donald Trump. This is hard to fathom as, like any type of populism, it is defined not by what it stands for, but what it stands against.
All types of populism have, at their core, a hatred of “institutions”, be they fictitious or real: the Washington swamp, Enemies of the People, bureaucrats of Brussels, or mainstream media. If an institution is not for kicking down then it is approached with indifference, for example lying to monarchy in Boris Johnson’s case or using the Church for political gain in Trump’s. Populists ride roughshod over the rule of law and they distrust the Civil Service for its political neutrality, which they take as opposition. Democratic norms are jettisoned, with loyal Republican senators described as RINOs or stalwart Tory MPs chucked out of the Conservative Party. Populists rage against the media: simplifying it all down to opposition from “mainstream media” on one side of the Atlantic or a biased BBC on the other.
Populism stands for nothing but pessimism and scepticism. All values are baseless and the movement should really be known as political Nihilism.
Conservatism (not the British political party, but the ideology) stands directly against the political atheism of Populism. This may sound like a ridiculous statement and an argument for the stagnation of society, keeping those with power at the top and those with nothing at the bottom. However, the spiritual father of Conservatism, Edmund Burke (1729 – 1797), was an advocate of freedom for Catholics to worship freely, he criticised British actions in the American colonies and called for the emancipation of slaves. These were what we might term the progressive views of his age.
The Conservatism of Burke advocated, supported and developed institutions such as the Civil Service, Parliament and the judicial system. It sought to protect the individual through rule of law and a belief in the fabric of “good society”, with personal morality at its centre. While liberalism advocates individualism, which has created so much greed and inequality today, Conservatism talks of a society of partnerships: in science, in art and throughout the generations, from history and into the future. As Burke wrote, society “…becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”
If you need to see how this might work successfully, then look no further than Angela Merkel. This is her brand of conservatism and the reason why she will exit the stage as one of the most successful political leaders of her age. It is a politics which is a little bit stodgy and a little bit boring. But it works and society is the winner.
Populism is an agenda of destruction by corrupting or destroying institutions through rage. The evils of populism need to be extinguished by a brand of progressive politics which upholds institutions, the rule of law and protects the individual from the mob. Society needs to be developed through partnerships between individuals, businesses, the state, and institutions. If Angela was in the Anglosphere we would be calling it Merkelism.
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