The Rationism Project has barely just begun. I can already tell that a major hurdle to implementation will be conservatives and libertarians who attack every form of government intervention as socialism or communism.

America was born middle class. The purpose of the rationism project is to restore our middle class. I commenced my political life as a conservative and retain many such sympathies. It thus pains me to predict that conservatives and libertarians may prove the greatest roadblock to saving the American middle class. This post is the first step in destroying this obstacle so that America can return to the egalitarian spirit of the Revolution.

When it comes to government intervention, I’ve generally found conservatives to be reflexive, not reflective. They tend to automatically reject all such schemes. Without any thought or justification they often declare every effort to intervene in the economy or impose guardrails on economic activity as socialism. 

I think this knee-jerk reaction to government intervention ultimately derives from an uncritical obedience to prevailing conservative tradition. Particularly to the pro-globalist neoliberalism of Ronald Reagan. I don’t think conservatives are opposed to intervention because they have actually studied Reagan’s policies and determined that they are better for America’s middle class than any other policy. For many conservatives, Reagan’s policies are actually harmful for them. I think conservatives and libertarians are so staunchly opposed to intervention simply because Ronald Reagan is so beloved, and Ronald Reagan said government should be small. But aside from a few soundbites, I don’t think conservatives truly understand Ronald Reagan; he was a globalist par excellence.

Deference to our traditions and pantheon of heroes has great social utility when such deference is conducive to worthy political values, i.e., the middling virtues of modesty, honesty, fidelity, industry, fairness, temperance, ruggedness, trust, skepticism, bravery, respect, and honor. The defense of these middling values represents not only what is best in conservativism, but in America itself.  

But not all ideas are appropriate for all times. For instance, the New Deal would hardly have resonated with Charlemagne. Aquinas’ argument for universal world monarchy would not have inspired George Washington. So it is for us today with the globalist neoliberalism of Ronald Reagan. But the weight of authority, accumulating under decades of custom and usage, tends to create in the conservative and traditionalist mind cherished dogmas of anything old, and radical doctrines of anything new.

Conservatives thus sometimes have difficulty recognizing when their beliefs have become anachronistic. Indeed they may declare long-established beliefs – especially those emanating from great political or military leaders such as Ronald Reagan – to be universal values on account of their longevity or the affection of their source. This moral certainty bestowed by tradition and legitimacy relieves some conservatives of the burden of challenging their assumptions. The product of this: intellectual laziness.

Excessive devotion to political heroes also tends to produce cult followings. These cults elevate men far above the level warranted by their accomplishments. This trait is of course not unique to conservatives. Progressives have rallied around the personalities of Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy. Conservatives have likewise rallied around the personalities of Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump. Indeed, I was once a proud member of the Reagan cult. As my classmates at The Citadel can attest, I used to force freshman cadets to salute a portrait of Ronald Reagan in my barracks room. Ironically, my younger self is the person against whom I will have the greatest ideological struggle as I advance ratoinism.

As I continue to roll out Vitruvian Capitalism, I will expend much energy combating the contemporary conservative’s recalcitrance to all forms of intervention. But the mission is clear. The albatross that today most weighs down the neck of America’s middle class is the ghost of Ronald Reagan. America’s conservatives must awaken from the free market, anti-government, anti-regulation rhetoric that, whatever its merit may have been in the 1980s, has since been expropriated by globalist business interests to plunder America’s middle class.

The famous line from President Reagan’s first inaugural address: “government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem” is a slogan so captivating that, combined with the authority of its utterer and his triumph against the Soviet Union, now leaves modern conservatives utterly unable and unwilling to distinguish any lawful, legitimate, an proper intervention of government from socialism and communism.

Add to that a thousand quips about how big government can never be trusted (completely ignoring the abuses of big business) and we’ve thus implanted in the modern conservative and libertarian mind this one insidious quasi-religious falsehood: that the free market is infallible. Consequently, to the modern conservative, every variety of intervention or limitation on the freedom of business enterprise to engage in any activity – no matter how harmful to our workers and abusive to our middle class – looks like socialism.

To my surprise, the conservative’s disdain for all perceived forms of economic intervention runs even deeper than the conservative’s rage at the death of America’s middle class and the extraction of its wealth by foreign business interests. But to allow anyone or anything to harm America’s middle class is to give aid and comfort to the forces which dishonor America. When the elevation of any precept or person is destructive of our middle class, it’s time for that thing to go. 

Conservatives by nature submit to hierarchy. Fortunately, in America, there are even to conservatives one group of American leaders which outrank even Ronald Reagan: the Founding Fathers. And as we witness the disintegration of our Republic and the dissolution of our middling virtues and political civility, it is to their wisdom, to our founding heritage, that we must turn. We can honor President Reagan for many things, including his leadership, character, patriotism, and devotion to tradition. But his economic policies have far outlived their usefulness.

It is the Founding Fathers which has let me break free from the immense gravitational pull which attracts me to that orthodox conservativism of which I boast an almost perfect pedigree: Citadel alumnus, Republican club, Federalist Society. Now, this doesn’t make me into the opposite of a conservative. No one who knows me well would ever consider me liberal, progressive, socialist, or communist. Scarcely a politically correct word comes out of my mouth. It does mean, however, that I reject all things which I believe are harmful to our middle class and inconsistent with our worthy founding principles.

In the end it means that it is the wisdom and warnings of the Founding Fathers which command me. In the final analysis restoring America’s birthright as a middle class Republic must far outweigh our devotion to any inconsistent political or economic consideration, no matter how right we may think they are, no matter how long we’ve held these beliefs, no matter who expounded them, no matter how affectionately remembered. 

America was born middle class, and our Founding Fathers admonish us to keep it that way. To do that, America must reacquaint itself with the truth that our Founding Fathers intimately understood and that Ronald Reagan did not in his time appreciate: that some form of government intervention is necessary from time to time.

As this entire website testifies, that form of intervention is not socialism, but rationism. It is not Progressive Capitalism, but Vitruvian Capitalism. Intervene, we must, as America’s Prime Mover and Author of Independence both counsel: