Conservative groups today are splintering into sects squabbling over what true conservatism is. The last Republican president to unite these sects was Ronald Reagan. He won election and then reelection by wide margins, turned over the White House to his own party, and restored America’s self-confidence, prosperity and global appeal. The only other president to do that in the 20th century was a Democrat, Franklin Roosevelt.
Conservatives today are not only ignoring Reagan’s legacy, they are attacking it. They blame him for too much globalism, too much trade and too much immigration. They say he won the Cold War abroad but lost the culture war at home. They claim he put excessive emphasis on individualism rather than the common good, free market solutions rather than using the leverage of government, and equal opportunity under the law while liberals “marched through the institutions” to “cancel” equal treatment. (READ MORE: Make Biden Own His Weaknesses)
Reagan deserves a voice in this debate. He united the warring branches of conservatism — from traditionalists who believe faith holds America to a higher standard, to libertarians who champion individual rights and freedom of choice, to globalists who believe freedom is universal, and to nationalists who insist on America First. He understood that winning in politics requires an energized partisan base, an outreach to independents and conservative Democrats, and a political coalition on the Hill to implement conservative priorities. “You do not get to be a majority party,” Reagan warned, “by searching for groups you won’t associate or work with.” In short, you don’t win by excluding groups — or by ignoring the Reagan’s legacy.
How did Reagan define conservatism and lead it to a majority status in American politics? He thought about most of these issues long before he entered public life. Based on voluminous materials written “in his own hand,” he can speak for himself. Let’s take a look at what he thought, wrote and said about conservatism and the relationship between the individual and the group, civil society and public life, and national interests and world politics.
Reagan identified conservatism with the freedom and dignity of individual choice. The ultimate source of authority was not some privileged group (race, class, experts) or institution (church) but individuals acting as “we the people” under the checks and balances of the constitution of a republic. In 1947, when conservatives were mired in the postwar debate between communism and liberalism, Reagan was already declaring: “Our highest aim should be the cultivation of freedom of the individual, for therein lies the highest dignity of man.”
But this individualism was not license, nor was it individualism without groups or without interest for the common good. It was individualism relatively free to “choose” the community or common good individuals preferred. This freedom to choose gave individuals dignity. They were not branded by race or religion to join or remain in groups they did not choose.
They exercised self-government in the context of civil society, the numerous private associations of family, neighborhood, schools, markets and church that mediate between state and citizens. It was individualism marinated in learning and reason, tradition and faith — a “deliberative and moral individualism” that united traditional conservatives who valued religion and virtue with libertarian conservatives who valued reason and meritocracy. Religion and reason were not separate wings of conservatism, they were integral components of the philosophy of conservatism. “What I envision,” Reagan said, “is not simply a melding together of the two branches of American conservatism into a temporary uneasy alliance, but the creation of a new, lasting majority.” (READ MORE: The Enduring Ronald Reagan)
How do individual freedom, learning and faith go together? “At its full flowering,” Reagan continued, “freedom is the first principle of society … yet freedom cannot exist alone. “For what is wrought by freedom unaccompanied by learning and faith?” Reagan answered: “human behavior untempered by a sense of moral, spiritual, or intellectual limits.”
In short, human freedom unmoored in learning and faith is simply individual vanity. “That’s why,” Reagan concluded, “the theme of … learning, faith, and freedom is so apt … Each reinforces the others, each makes the others possible. For what are they without each other?” “America is what she is because she is guided by all three: learning, faith, and freedom.”
Why is learning necessary? Because it empowers reason and enables the individual to think critically, to contemplate different alternatives, undermine dogma, even religious dogma, and create choice. For, without alternatives, there is no choice and hence no freedom. “True freedom of choice,” Reagan wrote to the editor of Pegasus, a Eureka College student newspaper in 1971, “is impossible until we are sufficiently self-disciplined to know what the results of our choices will be.” “God gave us … freedom,” Reagan said at the Vatican in June 1987, “when he gave us free will,” reason to evaluate outcomes and choose between right and wrong, good and evil — all in an open public square in which Reagan believed, citing Thomas Jefferson, “error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.”
But what is learning without faith? “Despotism,” Reagan opined, “may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. Religion is more needed in democratic societies than in any other.” Why? Because “learning,” Reagan observed, “does not — not by the longest measure — bring wisdom.” “Unless it’s tempered by faith and a love of freedom, it can be very dangerous indeed … It can also bring evil.” Think, Reagan said, of “the names of many intellectuals … recorded on the rolls of infamy — from Robespierre to Lenin to Ho Chi Minh to Pol Pot.”
Now Reagan reveals the depth and subtlety of his thinking. For faith, too, he acknowledges, can run amuck and must be tempered. “What will faith without a respect for learning and an understanding of freedom bring?” he asks. “We’ve seen the tragedy of untempered faith in the hellish deaths of 14-year-old boys — small hands still wrapped around machine guns, on the front lines in Iran.” He was referring, of course, to religious wars, raging between Iran and Iraq at the time and across nations throughout human history.
Faith disciplines learning and holds human beings accountable to a higher law. It compels us to treat one another as children of God not just members of the same higher biological species. In one of his most thoughtful aphorisms, Reagan summed up the role of religion in a free or republican society: “I recognize we must be cautious in claiming God is on our side, but I think it’s all right to keep asking if we’re on His side.” Think about that for a minute — religion is indispensable in a republic but no specific religion can be imposed in the public square. And individuals inspired by religion in the public square cannot claim to have God on their side; they must humbly ask instead if they are on God’s side.
Self-restraint by learning and faith is a perquisite of self-government. As Jefferson wrote in his first inaugural and Reagan paraphrased in his first inaugural, “if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?”
The three pillars of conservatism — freedom, learning and faith — stand together or they fail separately. As Reagan warned, alone they are “very dangerous.” If secular libertarians expel their faith-based colleagues from the conservative public square, they are themselves playing God. For godlessness, secularism, too is a faith. “To make man stand alone without God,” Reagan warned, “is actually the second oldest faith, the first proclaimed in the Garden of Eden with the words of temptation, ‘Ye shall be as gods.’” Thus, libertarians, standing alone as gods or without gods, corrupt the public square. But the same holds for traditionalists. If they expel secular libertarians from the conservative fold, they cancel their own freedom. For without reason and learning, there is no way to imagine alternatives and hence no freedom of choice. Now religion dictates in the public square, not inspires, and the question becomes “whose religion?” The wall between church and state collapses and the prospects of self-government vanish. (READ MORE: By Echoing Newsom, Biden Risks Becoming Carter)
It is the integration, the blending together of the classical (tradition) and the liberal (reason) that defines modern conservatism. Reagan startled his guests at a White House dinner late in his presidency when he said: “Well, you know, it is possible that we conservatives are the real liberals and the liberals are the real conservatives.”
What did he mean? One thing is sure. He had been thinking about it for a long time. In the original 1965 edition of his first autobiography, Reagan writes: “the classical liberal used to be the man who was, and should be forever, the master of his destiny. That is now the conservative position … The liberal used to believe in freedom under law. Now he believes in a stronger and stronger central government.” In an interview with Reason in 1975, Reagan reiterated: “I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals—if we were back in the days of the [American] Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the liberals and the liberals would be the Tories.” In a letter written before his presidency, he summed it up: “Today’s conservative is … the true liberal — in the classic meaning of the word. But it is today’s so-called liberal who … affixed the title conservative on those who opposed his affinity for centralized authority and a big government.”
Reagan detested this attempt to define conservatism as simply an opposition to liberalism. For him, conservatism, “in the classical meaning of the word,” was all about freeing the individual from the authoritarian clutches of Tory aristocrats, papal authorities and social-engineering bureaucrats. Classical conservatism relocated choice at the level of the individual, the ordinary human being, not the group, the church or the state. Fallible as that individual might be, he or she was capable, equipped by learning (education) and faith, to pass judgment on human affairs in the public square.
Conservatives will endlessly debate whether the Enlightenment delivered or destroyed true freedom, but in doing so they acknowledge that “classical conservatism” did not overthrow but “conserved” principles from the past (religion, the classics). It did so precisely in order to discipline the choices of free individuals in the future (liberty). Reagan, again, said it best: “The principles of conservatism are sound because they are based on what men and women have discovered through experience in not just one generation or a dozen, but in all the combined experience of mankind.”
On the home front, Reagan exhorted Republicans to declare this positive vision of conservatism in “bold, unmistakable colors with no pale pastel shades.” Conservatives do not just stand in the way of liberals, he believed, they stand for a different way. They stand for freedom of the individual, limited central government, and equality of opportunities. Liberals, by contrast, stand for groups — race, tribe, class, collective, gender, village, etc. — activist central government, and equality of outcomes not just opportunities.
Liberals fear tyranny most in the private sector (corrupt corporations, racial discrimination, inequality, and the like) and urge central government to intervene. Conservatives fear tyranny most in the public sector (administrative state, attacks on constitutional checks and balances, arrests without due process, political weaponization of federal agencies, and the like) and urge solutions by local government and private sector actors. Both threats are real and need to be addressed.
In a healthy national public square, liberals and conservatives check and balance one another. They constitute the guardrails of the American Republic, protecting unalienable individual rights through institutional checks and balances. In this context the two-party system works well. Robust, albeit peaceful, partisanship highlights the content (principles) as well as the process (compromise) of politics. It protects the existence of substantive alternatives and free choice. Too many alternatives, on the other hand, confound choice. Reagan rejected a “third party” and called instead for “a new first party made up of people who share our principles.”
Choice and compromise vanish, however, when the political parties try to expel one another from the public square. Liberals do so when they insist on only one legitimate point of view and cancel opposing views as “evil.” They play god in the public square. Conservatives do it when they insist on no common point of view and sanction individual license and anarchy. They reject the public square altogether. Both extremes betray the fundamental premise of self-government, a willingness to trust the people to govern themselves.
To sum it up, Reagan insisted on differences within the guard rails: “Our party must be the party of the individual. It must not sell out the individual to cater to the group…. Freedom rests, and it always has, on individual responsibility, individual integrity, individual effort, individual courage, and yes, individual faith … No greater challenge faces our society today than ensuring that each one of us can maintain his dignity and his identity in an increasingly complex, centralized society.”
In foreign policy Reagan applied conservative principles to political affairs abroad. Global politics, just like domestic politics, was about the struggle for individual freedom and dignity. Reagan divided the world into domestic political systems that were free and those that were not. The Cold War, he said at Eureka College in 1957, “wasn’t really a new struggle at all. It was the oldest struggle of humankind, as old as man himself.” It is the “irreconcilable conflict…. between those who believe in the sanctity of individual freedom and those who believe in the supremacy of the state.”
The conflict was spiritual not material. At Westminster, Reagan declared: “the ultimate determinant in the struggle that is now going on in the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve.” Such a conflict could only be won or lost; it could not end by moral equivalence. He called the Soviet Union an “evil empire” and declared: “we win; they lose.”
Just as he started with individualism in the national public square, he started with nationalism in the global public square. He was first and foremost an American nationalist; and conservative nationalists in his day, the so-called paleoconservatives, supported him.
Anchored in nationalism, Reagan’s foreign policy was thoroughly conservative not liberal. It called for a world of strong nation-states not universal global institutions, independent national defenses not collective security, competitive markets not expert-driven globalization, defense of freedom where it exists not ending tranny everywhere at once, more equal-burden sharing by allies not free-riding, and negotiations to encourage peaceful democratic reforms not morally equivalent coexistence.
Reagan defined national interests in terms of concentric circles. The health of America came first. He rebuilt its military and economic power and self-confidence. America’s neighborhood came second. He called for a North America Accord and Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI), and the Cancun Summit, an inaugural meeting of what later became the Group of 20. Reagan endorsed the Monroe Doctrine. There was no going abroad without a secure and prosperous western hemisphere.
Beyond this hemisphere, Reagan rallied the free nations and allies of Europe and Asia, not just because free nations share basic values of individual freedom and choice but also because they were needed to contain and eventually defeat authoritarian powers such as the former Soviet Union.
America was involved in world affairs, Reagan believed, not by choice or geopolitics but by who we are. We are the beachhead of “republican self-government” in the world. As Reagan once mused, our role in the world was “thrust upon us some two centuries ago in that little hall in Philadelphia.” At that time we were weak, not strong. Yet we threatened monarchs in Europe and Asia.
America was exceptional because it was experimental not because it was powerful. It was the first large nation to pursue self-government by individuals of all backgrounds with the freedom to choose. America had no monarch, state church or even common history. Yet, as Reagan said, if we succeed, “we are proof that all mankind can live together in peace.” And “if we lose freedom here,” Reagan pointed out, “there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.”
Reagan’s concentric nationalism was inspiring and forward looking. It united nationalists and globalists. It reassured nationalists that America respected borders, sovereignty, the homeland and patriotism. Without the nationalists, America would have no anchor and would dissolve into a world of globalist grifters and the unaccountable global institutions they promote. On the other hand, globalists reminded America that freedom is in the imagination of human beings everywhere. If not, where then did freedom in America come from? Except for a few native Americans, Americans are immigrants. If the United States is just another country like every other, what is the American project — race (1619 Project), populism (soil), blood (patriotism)? Where does that lead us. Back to the world of 1914 or 1945?
Would Reagan modify this conservative vision today? Of course. Circumstances change. But the concentric circles would remain. They are the building blocks of global conservatism. Reagan might insist on three caveats: First, trade with free allies must be conducted on a reciprocal basis. That means, no more subsidies or special access to U.S. markets. American products get the same treatment in free countries’ markets as free countries have in the America market. Period! And the free allied nations have to man up on defense spending. America accounts for roughly 1/3 of free nations’ GDP. It should bear no more than 1/3 of NATO’s defense expenditures. The ratio is improving in Ukraine, currently about 50-50, and the addition of Finland (bordering Russia) and Sweden to NATO is pivotal. But burden sharing is still not proportionate.
Second, inviting China to participate in global markets was well-meaning but naïve. Economic progress does not automatically lead to political reform. Reagan never assumed that. Domestic reform came first. He opposed détente and significant economic ties with the Soviet Union until Moscow introduced domestic political reforms. He would do the same today with respect to China.
Third, China and Russia have clearly decided on a course of militant conflict with the western-led international order. The “oldest struggle of humankind” persists. However, the United States has no need to prioritize one of these conflicts over the other or withdraw entirely to the western hemisphere. The conflict is ideological and transcends regions. Reagan would clearly see it that way. If the United States prioritizes China, free nations in Europe must take the lead in defense of Ukraine.
Fourth, although Reagan gave amnesty in 1986 to some 3 million illegal immigrants, thereby encouraging millions more illegal immigrants, he would have never condoned the obliteration of America’s borders that exists today. Even at a time when the issue was less critical, Reagan approved a wall, albeit one with doors, for legal immigration. In his farewell address to the American people in 1989, he said: “if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and heart to get here.” That’s an endorsement of a wall if we can’t find any other solution, and so far we haven’t. A wall to keep people out, moreover, is not the same as one to keep people in (the Berlin Wall). It is a badge of success not failure. So, if it comes to that, America can still hold its head high.
Reagan’s accomplishments are still with us — a more prosperous and democratic world than ever before; a Republican Party that seized power in Congress in 1995 for the first time since 1933 (except for four years) and remains competitive today (sharing since 1995 roughly the same number of years in control of Congress and the White House as Democrats); numerous conservative think tanks that did not exist in 1970; a conservative Supreme Court for the first time in 60 years and hundreds of new conservative judges on lower courts; an explosion of school choice and charter schools and now a growing push back against woke-ism in grade schools and higher education; and welfare reforms that restored individual dignity and responsibility by providing jobs and moving the poor permanently off the dole into the free economy.
Nothing is guaranteed but, at the margins, conservatives are winning the culture war with liberalism, if they can only see it. Reagan contributed to that turn-around more than anyone else. Isn’t his view of conservatism worth another look?
