Conservative until proven guilty
The burden of proof for political change lies on the left
If American politics were on trial, conservatives would be the defendants and liberals the prosecution. This means the burden of proof would fall on liberals. Why? Because, at its core, the American experiment is conservative. Yet despite the profound poverty, sickness, and violence we suffer in this country, conservatism persists without arrest, conviction, and sentencing. Unburdened by the requirement of proof, conservativism continues to endure because it must only fulfill the simple task of raising a reasonable doubt about any proposed changes to society.
Imagine the US political right as a murderer on trial. Their defense may appear weak and riddled with inconsistencies as evidence of their crime abounds, but they don’t have to defend it, they must only poke holes in the opposing case for liberal interventions. Republicans are never expected to articulate a coherent story of conservative politics, let alone a theory of political change; all they must do is point to the flaws in the liberal prosecution’s case.
And liberals help them. Liberals seem way less interested in prosecuting the crimes of conservatism than in trying to reclaim from Republicans the conservative project for themselves. Instead of putting conservatism on trial, liberals desperately try to remake conservatism in their own likeness, a compassionate conservatism. The same individualist, laissez-faire policies promoted on the right are supported on the left — they’re just rebranded, or at best means-tested. Yet the basic conservative dynamic remains: in America, you are on your own, the shareholder reigns supreme, taxes are theft, and the market mechanism is infallible.
What do liberal politics do, then, if not prosecute the crimes of conservatism? For many in the Democratic Party, politics consists of obsessing over the character flaws of unpopular personalities on the right. But unpopular politicians are a matter of course in this country. Pointing out the brutish spirit of individual politicians is pointless, in the same way that pointing out the wickedness of someone on trial for murder is pointless.
Democrats also try to prosecute conservative hypocrisy, another matter of course on the right, as figures like Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio publicly contradict themselves weekly. Perhaps more than anyone, billionaire Donald Trump and his “populist” presidency embodied the shameless hypocrisies of the American right. While it’s true most Republicans are shameless hypocrites, the source of the hypocrisy is not found in personalities but in the political asymmetry described above: conservatives aren’t burdened by proof, which immunizes them against charges of hypocrisy.
The double standard is frustrating and unfair, but it is reality, and identifying Republican hypocrisy does little to advance the positive case for liberal change. Sometimes in criminal cases character assassination works, or at least the defense is smeared enough to obtain a guilty verdict on an unrelated charge. But that tactic doesn’t work in politics when the defendant is an entire party and any indictment of American conservatism functions ultimately as an indictment of oneself. The basic structure of the deeply conservative American experiment has always been replete with contradictions, which people have internalized and calculated as necessary to enjoy the so-called exceptional American lifestyle. That makes us complicit. Accessories to the crime of conservatism.
The New Deal briefly swapped the relative positions of the US political left and right, forcing the right to go on the offensive and prosecute the case for change away from a new default — the welfare state. This put liberals on defense; a virtue of defending universalist programs like the New Deal means that you defend everybody. Unfortunately, liberals proved more interested in scaling back the New Deal than expanding it. Now liberals are left to defend outdated New Deal provisions that fail to protect Americans from an emergent gig economy, rendering them milquetoast in the public’s eye.
I don’t bring up this observation to celebrate conservatism. On the contrary, I believe conservative policies are among the worst aspects of life in America. But I also believe Americans don’t see the status quo for how conservative it really is; it’s a fish and water dynamic. If we are to change these policies, we must first recognize them as such and admit that we don’t have to live this way, if we don’t want to.
If you have ever wondered why the left is the only side ever trying to reach out and persuade the other, it is because they are burdened by proof. Republicans are uninterested in winning over new voters, and instead resort to voter suppression, because they have already won. America is already a conservative’s dream. America is conservative until proven guilty.
