Elián González, Trump, and What Happened to “True Conservatism”

Warning: We’re going back to the question of Was conservatism always going to end up at Trumpism?

We touched on this a few times over the summer, and I discussed it with Heather Cox Richardson last month. There’s a reason I keep turning this over in my mind and I want to clarify that it is not because I’m intent on defending the honor of conservatism.

It’s because I want to understand how we got here.

It’s easy to say that you can draw a straight line from Reagan to Trump. It’s also easy to say that Trump represents an aberration, a malignant deviation from True Conservatism.

The reason I keep coming back to this conversation is because I’m pretty sure that both of those answers are somewhat correct. And also, that neither of them is fully correct.

What I’m proposing is a quantum view of political theory, in which ideological transformations are both determined and contingent.

Let’s strap in for some history.

1. Elián

Everyone experiences flashpoints that contribute to their political evolution. Because of my age, the big one for me was the fall of the Berlin Wall.

But there were lots of smaller ones, too.

There was Bill Clinton’s impeachment. The September 11th attacks. The death of Terri Schiavo. And then there was Elián González.¹

The story of Elián González is about immigration, state power, and the use of force. It’s also about conservatism in America. So let’s start with that famous photo at the top.

This is a picture of a militarized American agent forcing his way into a private residence to abduct an illegal immigrant and deport him to his country of origin.

When it was taken, in April 2000, American conservatives were incensed by it. They thought that the government agent was a jackbooted thug and that the child being seized for deportation was a tragic victim.

Today, if you showed that photo to conservatives without context, I suspect most of them would not be outraged at all. I suspect that many of them would get off on it, actually. So let’s walk back in time to talk about Elián González and conservatism and how we got to Donald Trump. ...