Is America Conservative?

As is the case with all such vague and broad-brush questions, the answer will necessarily be complex and complicated, for all that the author wishes to cast it in simplistic terms.

The United States (and Canada) long attracted immigrants because of available land (and in Canada, that long meant that the largest single immigrant group came from the United States). People who had property and/or a prosperous trade in Europe had little or no reason to emigrate. But among those who did not have land, or were unable to establish a prosperous trade (which often involved "knowing" the right people), the lure of cheap or nearly free land (often available for the filing fee of a claim) was a powerful incentive to risk the hazards of an Atlantic crossing to get that land. Furthermore, there was little direct, representative government in Europe, and where there was a limited opportunity for that, it was tied to property qualifications. Participation in the militia and opportunities to hold public office were also usually tied to property qualifications. However, even when in the United States and Canada there were property qualifications for the franchise, militia participation and holding public office, the opportunities to get and own land, even for those with very limited means, was so much greater, so much easier than in Europe, that some of the poorest could expect to become at least modestly prosperous and to participate in the social and political life of their communities in their own lifetimes.

So, owning land, and all the social and political privileges which appertained to that land ownership, were the biggest most consistent lure for immigrants. Running a close second, however, was religious and political freedom (although Canada long had an established church, there was still far more religious freedom than one could have enjoyed in Europe).

So you have two strong forces pulling the new immigrant, and their descendants, between the political "poles." Those who own land, and how have established prosperous trades, are conservative by nature, politically speaking. They don't want things to change. There is ample historical evidence for this effect appearing almost immediately. During the French revolution, the lands of the Church, and the lands of proscribed members of the aristocracy, were put on the block for sale, and the assignats, the paper money floated on government land sales, were the currency of the early National assembly. The currency scheme of floating bills of credit on land sales failed, although that was the product of financial ineptitude on the part of those who ran first the National Assembly, and then the Committee for Public Safety--the assignats were a miserable failure because they could not be used for foreign exchange, and were not tied to the productivity of the nation, which was itself destabilized by the upheaval of revolution and counter-revolution. But the land sales were wildly popular, and despite the dismal failure of the public financing scheme, prosperous peasants and members of the petite bourgeoisie snapped up all the land they could afford. And this gave them a strong impetus to end the revolution, and ratify their new prosperity while protecting it from further social and political upheaval. The counter-revolution began to assert itself, quite apart from counter-revolutionary uprisings, within five years, and by 1795, was firmly in charge. The government of the Directory was bourgeois, and socially and politically conservative, and gladly profited from the elimination of the monarchy and the aristocracy, while assuring their own support by assuring the gains in property by the middle class and the prosperous peasantry. Unlike the parade of more or less efficient but universally doomed governmental schemes which characterize the period 1789-1795, the Directory managed a relatively stable government until the successful coup by Napoleon in 1799.

Essentially the same thing was about to happen in Russia after 1917. Most people don't understand that there were two revolutions--the February (March by our calendar) Russian Revolution, and the October (November by our calendar) Bolshevik Revolution. Before the Bolshevik Revolution, Soviets (means committee, roughly) were set up throughout Russia, and the Bolsheviks were neither the only power, nor the largest power in post-Bolshevik Revolution Russia. The two other large players after the fall of Kerensky's government were the Socialist Revolutionaries and the Peasants Party. The Peasants Party was determined to redistribute land to the peasants (only recently freed from serfdom by Alexander II in 1861, who admired Lincoln), and were supported in that by the Socialist Revolutionaries, who wanted a coalition to oppose the Bolsheviks. Fanya Kaplan shot Lenin in 1918, and although he lived, he lost his grip on the day-to-day operations of the government. Kaplan was shot almost immediately after the assassination attempt, and she was alleged to be a member of the Socialist Revolutionaries, and that was used as ammunition by the Bolsheviks to eliminate the Socialist Revolutionaries. (That was a doubtful claim, Kaplan can certainly have been described as a terrorist, and was sent to Siberia after the failed 1905 uprisings. While there, she met other female terrorists, many of whom were then or later became members of the Socialist Revolutionaries; Kaplan's connection, however, was dubious, and she was, at most, a hanger-on at the fringes). The Bolsheviks conducted their first show trial against the Socialist Revolutionaries in 1922, after the end the civil war. After Lenin died in 1924, Stalin moved to consolidate his power, and his most important and brutal move was the attack on the so-called Kulaks. Kulak comes from the word "fist" in Russian, and means a miser. The name was already being used for prosperous peasants in Tsarist times, but Stalin applied it o all the peasants who had gotten land in the turmoil of the Revolutions and the Civil War. He clearly understood that land-owners have a motive for ending a revolution, and seeking a conservative government. So he eliminated the problem by eliminating the alleged "Kulaks."

These same motives applied to the new land-owning immigrants in North America. They were going to be conservative socially and politically for the good and sufficient reason of "i've got mine, to hell with everyone else." At the same time, a great deal of the immigration to North America was occasioned by real or imagined religious and political repression. The largest number of religious "refugees" came to North America before the Revolution, and most religious "refugees" who came afterward were following to join already established communities. Among the political refugees, however, the immigrants came in very frequent waves. The Irish who fled oppression by the English are a rather obvious group, and the famine of the 1840s turned a constant steady trickle into a flood. Poland was "partitioned" three times--1772, 1783 and 1795. With the last partition, Poland disappeared altogether, snapped up by Prussia, Austria and Russia. Uprisings succeeded one another, from 1788 onward, with the largest and most notorious taking place in 1830. This spurred Polish emigration to France and England, and to North America. The 1848 socialist uprisings overthrew monarchical government in France and lead to the Second Republic (soon overthrown by Louis Bonaparte in 1851, who styled himself "Napoleon III"). There had been yet another failed uprising in Poland in 1846. In England, the Chartists reached the height of their power with their petition to Parliament in 1848, but much of the support was undercut by the repeal of the Corn Laws. In the German principalities, the effect was the most profound. Many Germans rebelled, openly and in arms, and were brutally put down by the Prussians and Austrians, with millions made homeless, tens of thousands murdered, tortured and raped, and thousands killed in the short and bloody wars with the established, reactionary powers. A great many of the "Forty-eighters" came to the United States, including two men who would rise to high rank in Mr. Lincoln's army, Franz Sigel and Louis Blenker (Louis Blenker's men at Bull Run were the only Federal troops who did not run, and in the 1848 uprisings, he was the only commander who succeeded in defeating the Prussians--but the "government" he served and of which he was a member shattered from in-fighting, and he got out to America).

So at the same time that immigrants to North America had a strong impetus to social and political conservatism, a great many of them also brought with them ideas of social reform and a great revolutionary fervor. Among the "Forty-eighters" were a great many German and Austrian immigrants who enthusiastically volunteered to fight for Mr. Lincoln precisely because they wished to free the slaves as commensurate with their political ideals.

You have in North America two strong, conflicting currents. One is the social and political conservatism of immigrants who came here and prospered, and chose conservatism to preserve what they had gained through their tribulations. At the same time, there is a strong current of social reform ideals, which accounts for trades unionism, and social and political reform movements which have been strong in the United States and Canada. If one is to be honest, the United States has a strong streak of social and political conservatism bred in to by generations of immigrants. That is somewhat balanced by the image which the United States long had as a land of political freedom and opportunity, and a refuge for the politically oppressed. On balance, the United States has been more conservative than the revolutionary movements in Europe from which so many of its immigrants came. Those on "the left" in the United States are still largely more conservative than those who are considered to be on the left in Europe.

Frankly, i can see little to argue with in the proposition that the United States is basically conservative. That doesn't mean, however that our people have historically been reactionary, and it is no good reason to identify American conservatism with the grasping and selfish conservatism which is so popular among a decided minority in our history.