Dead Right.

• Jurisdiction: Australia
• Author: Alderton, Steven
• Date: 01 January 1997

David Frum, Dead Right, (New York, Basic Books, 1995)

For those wishing to understand the recent policy shifts undertaken during the American presidential campaign by the Republican nominee, Senator Bob Dole, David Frum's Dead Right is a very useful place to start. Dole has united the various strands of conservatism in the United States, and Frum provides an excellent analysis of the current state of American conservatism. The book is part history, part analysis and part polemic. Frum examines how conservatism has developed and mutated to reach the position it currently occupies, analyses where it is likely to move in the future, and issues a passionate cry about where it should go.

Conservatism, according to Frum, emerged in the 1960s from its subservient place to supplant liberalism as the governing philosophy in America because conservatives were willing to reform, or from his perspective abandon, its ideological foundations. The driving force of traditional conservatism was to reduce the size of government. Conservatives believed that government assistance in its many forms eliminated the risks of life and withdrew the incentive that drove people to proper behaviour. Thus, not only is large government bad because it draws money from where it can be most efficiently used, the market, but it contributes to the social ills that afflict America. Government spending, Frum writes "is a colossal lure tempting citizens to reckless behaviour. Remove those alluring heaps of money, and the risks of personal misconduct would again deter almost everyone.... Social Security, student loans and other government programs make it far less catastrophic than it used to be for middle class people to dissolve their families. Without welfare and food stamps, poor people would cling harder to working-class respectability than they do now."

Focusing on eliminating waste in government or using government to cure social ills is therefore counterproductive because the problem is government itself. However this is the path that conservatism embarked upon in the 1960s and implemented during the Reagan years.

Conservatives took this new route because their original vision was not a winning formula. Conservatism was burdened with a message that average Americans did not want to hear. Americans had become attached to government largesse, and were not willing to give it up. Faced with this impasse, conservatives blinked. During the Reagan era conservatives were...