State Power: A Most Effective Means to Achieve Important Ends

Exposing Another Fatal Flaw in Mainstream Conservatism

“The obligation of subjects to the sovereign is understood to last as long, and no longer, than the power lasteth by which he is able to protect them.” — Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

“Der Staat ist die Wirklichkeit der sittlichen Idee.” — G.W.F. Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (The state is the actuality of the moral Idea.)

Mainstream conservatism in the United States suffers from many flaws. The election of Donald Trump in 2016 and again in 2024 has remedied only some of these shortcomings. Much of the GOP apparatus, but not all, has been wrestled from neo-cons and certain types of fuddy-duddy conservatives who are merely preoccupied with tax breaks for corporate interests, endless foreign wars, and other misguided, ineffectual policy positions. But there are still many crucial structural flaws in the foundational framework of establishment conservatism. Seen time and time again, these range from dogged resistance to race realism, to shameless pandering to moneyed corporate interests, to mention nothing of various sorts insisting that historical right-wing authoritarian movements were (somehow) left-wing. There is persistent adherence to certain naïve platitudes such as “what consenting adults do is no one’s concern” and that deep-seated problems in the culture can be solved by family and religion alone, even as those institutions are shaped and defined by the cultural milieu that envelops as all; indeed, family and religion are themselves expressions of culture. Another, related flaw is a remarkable aversion to most uses of state power to achieve political and ideological ends, no matter how pressing or important such ends are. Such aversion to state power is expressed millions of times over, and seems to be a defining feature of many contingents of mainstream conservatism, at least in the United States. This grave error is the focus of this essay, exploring how effective the use of state power has proven to be, as the very implementation of policy considerations and ideological ends.