Preservation vs. Prosperity
Many American progressives have shifted from their historic interest in economic growth and social mobility to a primary focus on environmental purity, whatever the social or economic cost.
Conservatives often fret that Barack Obama is leading the nation toward socialism. In my mind, that’s an insult to socialism, which, in theory, at least, seeks to uplift the lower classes through greater prosperity. In contrast, the current administration and its core of wealthy supporters are more reminiscent of British Tories, the longtime defenders of hereditary privilege, a hierarchical social order and slow-paced economic change.
The notion that the “progressives” are, in fact, closeted Royalists has been trotted out by a handful of Obama admirers, such as Andrew Sullivan, who calls the president “the conservative reformist of my dreams.” Essentially, Sullivan argues, Obama has been a “Tory president,” with more in common with, say, an aristocratic toff like British Prime Minister David Cameron than a traditional left-liberal reformer.
The fundamental conservativism underlying the modern “progressive” marks the central thesis of an upcoming book by historian Fred Siegel, appropriately titled “Revolt Against the Masses.” Siegel traces the roots of the new-fashioned Toryism to the cultural wars of the 1960s, when the fury of the “Left,” once centered on the corporate elites, shifted increasingly to the middle class, which was widely blamed for everything from a culture of conformity to racism and support for the Vietnam War.
Tory progressivism’s most-unifying theme, Siegel notes, includes the preservation and conservation of the landed order enjoyed by the British ultrawealthy and upper-middle classes. In the 19th century, Siegel notes, Tory Radicals, like William Wordsworth, William Morris and John Ruskin, objected to the ecological devastation of modern capitalism and sought to preserve the glories of the British countryside.
They also opposed the “leveling” effects of a market economy that sometimes allowed the less-educated, less well-bred to supplant the old aristocracies, with their supposedly more enlightened tastes. “Strong supporters of centralized monarchical power, this aristocratic sensibility also saw itself as the defender of the poor - in their place,” writes Siegel. “Its enemies were the middle classes and the aesthetic ugliness they associated with the industrial economy borne of bourgeois energies.”