Damek.

Movement conservatism has failed in practice.

The misguided pretense based on the movement’s historical roots and the label itself that conservatism equates with caution, “muddling through,” and avoidance of unintended consequences is belied by the audacity that produced the Iraq mess, the massive and destructive tax cuts, the politicization of agencies like FEMA, the deeply unpopular proposal to privatize Social Security, plans to erect our own Great Wall, South Dakota’s abortion ban, Colorado’s catastrophic TABOR law, and so on. Modern conservative philosophy and the ideas it promotes are all about upheaval. The “unintended consequences” that the Right’s implemented ideas have produced have been calamitous in ways that people see and hear about every single day…

…conservatism itself — not the political machine, mind you, but the ideology — is heading toward that misty land-over-the-ocean where ideologies go after they’ve shuffled off this mortal coil. Sort of like the way post-Stalinist lefties used to say, “You can’t say Communism’s failed. It’s just never really been tried.”

The big claim now is that President Bush isn’t a conservative because he hasn’t shrunk the size of government and he’s a reckless deficit spender.

Contemporary conservatism is first and foremost about shrinking the size and reach of the federal government. This mission, let us be clear, is an ideological one. It does not emerge out of an attempt to solve real-world problems…

But like all politicians, conservatives, once in office, find themselves under constant pressure from constituents to use government to improve their lives. This puts conservatives in the awkward position of managing government agencies whose missions–indeed, whose very existence–they believe to be illegitimate. Contemporary conservatism is a walking contradiction. Unable to shrink government but unwilling to improve it, conservatives attempt to split the difference, expanding government for political gain, but always in ways that validate their disregard for the very thing they are expanding. The end result is not just bigger government, but more incompetent government.

A conservative in America, in short, is someone who advocates ends that cannot be realized through means that can never be justified, at least not on the terrain of conservatism itself. In the past, the ends sought were the preservation of hierarchy, even if the means included appeals to democratic sentiment. In more recent times, conservatives promised order and stability through means dependent upon the uncertainties and insecurities of the market. Unwilling to accept the fact that government was here to stay, conservatives [throughout history have] stood on the sidelines as conditions kept arising that demanded bigger and more effective national authority.

If government is necessary, bad government, at least for conservatives, is inevitable, and conservatives have been exceptionally good at showing just how bad it can be. Hence the truth revealed by the Bush years: Bad government — indeed, bloated, inefficient, corrupt, and unfair government — is the only kind of conservative government there is. Conservatives cannot govern well for the same reason that vegetarians cannot prepare a world-class boeuf bourguignon: If you believe that what you are called upon to do is wrong, you are not likely to do it very well.

Behind the surge in right-wing criticism of the Bush presidency is the hope that après le deluge, Americans will give conservatism another chance. But even if Americans were inclined to do so, what kind of conservatism could be offered to them?

There are ways out of the conservative dilemma. American conservatives could, for example, take away from the Bush years the lesson that they must change their ideology if they are ever again to make the Republican Party a serious party of governance. This is not beyond the realm of possibility. Conservatives in the American past — not only Hamilton and Marshall, but Daniel Webster and Henry Clay — were in favor of a strong government capable of meeting national objectives. There exists, moreover, a modernizing version of conservatism in contemporary Europe, where conservatives recognize the inevitability of government but try to tailor its objectives and improve its competence…