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Will the Conservative Movement Survive?Paul M. Weyrich Having been around media and politics for four decades now I have seen many declarations of death which turned out to be premature. Twice now I have witnessed the supposed death of the Republican Party and at least once the supposed death of the Democratic Party. They are both still alive, if not well. Conservatism was supposed to be a dead letter after Barry Goldwater's crushing defeat in 1964. But it was only two years later that Ronald Reagan was elected Governor of California and then went on to the White House 14 years later. Still, Kristol's proclamation should be taken seriously. He may turn out to be correct, although the dismal showing of conservative candidates in the Republican race for president may not be the determining factor. For decades the conservative movement operated with-in the framework of opposition to the evil empire. The threat of Communism (and especially of Soviet Communism) united all sorts of people who may not have agreed with each other on some domestic matters but who, by golly, hated the Reds. A decade after the fall of the Berlin wall, the Soviet threat seems to have faded into the background and circumstances beyond her control may prevent Russia from ever again being the threat to world peace and stability that she once was. No matter how much the Communist threat has receded into the background, it was indeed real and it shaped the conservative movement. Activists young and old, in Congress and out of Congress, began each day by asking themselves "what are the 10 things I can do today to defeat the Communists." I had many a serious discussion in my earlier days about what we considered was the very real possibility that we would have to give our lives for freedom. There is no doubt in my mind that my contemporaries were prepared to do so. I know I certainly was. Since the effective end of the Soviet Empire, the conservative movement has lacked that glue which held us together. Efforts to substitute the secular humanist empire for the Soviet Empire have failed. In the secular humanist empire there is no single bad organization or evil leader which can be used to symbolize a system which is a threat to America and which needs to be defeated. The issue cluster that revolves around the secular humanist state is internal rather than external. Many of the same people who believed that the Soviet Union was a threat to the long term survival of the nation do not believe that abortion or homosexuality or absenting God from the public square constitutes a threat to the nation's well being. Moreover, except for those few right-to-lifers who would be viewed as fanatical by the national media and probably by most Americans, there is almost no one who would consider giving his life for the cause. That really determines whether there is a movement or there isn't one. Will people consider giving their life for the cause? There is now a new threat on the horizon that could potentially resurrect a movement, although it would be substantially different from "the Reagan Coalition." The threat stems from the privacy/technology issues that are looming larger all the time, thanks to an unrestrained federal government seeking greater and greater power. Recall the movie "Enemy of the State"? Unfortunately, the plot of that movie is all too real. While some conservatives get tied up over the minimum wage, our constitutional rights are being obliterated. Soon we will have no privacy and no liberties left. That is unless there is again a movement whose participants believe that they would give their lives if necessary to stop the rape of our liberties. The jury is still out. Right now the movement for Constitutional Liberties lacks high-profile, visible national leadership. Moreover, information is just now getting out about the threat. Still, I think there is a possibility that a new anti-establishment movement may emerge on the scene whose real purpose is to fight those who want to kill our constitutional protections altogether. In short, Bill Kristol may be proven right when he says the movement as we know it is dead. The fact is that conservatives failed to unite behind a single candidate in this year's presidential race, but even if they had, it is clear that such a single candidate (if they were from among those who did declare and later withdrew) would also not have prevailed against Bush and McCain by running on issues which worked 20 years ago but about which the public has tired somewhat. What of a candidate who would make the privacy issues his number one priority? What of a candidate who would tell the truth about how close we are to losing everything our Founding Fathers fought for? It remains to be seen. But I am again hearing talk of people who say, at least, that they would give their lives if they could stop what is happening. That is a hopeful sign that a new movement may be in the offing. Whether that movement will have arrived in time remains to be seen. Paul Weyrich is president of the Free Congress Foundation.
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