American conservatives must understand the truth about European ‘conservatism’

The American political system is unique: a system built in pursuit of deadlock rather than “progress,” a system that fully understands human nature and proactively defends against it, and a system that holds itself accountable (at least when it works as designed).

But at its heart, American politics is unique because the United States of America is unique: a miracle of human ideological experimentation that — thanks to the genius of the Founding Fathers — has almost single-handedly provided the country and the world with levels of peace and prosperity that would have seemed unimaginable at any other point in human history.

Despite these marvelous attributes, however, there is a persistent and dangerous flaw in the American psyche: an assumption that the rest of the world is just like us.

You see it when people make the laughably absurd argument that all cultures are equal — if you think that’s the case, please explain how life in modern day Nashville, Tennessee (for example) is equally good compared to, say, the Mayans who routinely performed child sacrifices to satisfy the hunger of supernatural beings.

There’s another side to this misguided coin: an insistence on seeing all other nations and cultures through an American lens, as if Disney’s image of multiculturalism provided in Orlando’s Epcot Center is a window into global reality.

And how does this manifest in the context of politics? One clear example is the projection of American politics onto other political movements in Europe.

How many times have British conservative politicians or figures been celebrated by American conservatives as their ideological counterparts, with even Donald Trump praising Boris Johnson as the British Trump?

How often do American conservatives celebrate nations like Hungary for their supposed commitment to conservative principles?

How often do American conservative throw their weight behind foreign political campaigns after skimming the blurb and picking the self-professed conservative choice, such as Elon Musk’s recent rush to cheer on the German AfD party?

But at the center of these misguided alignments — and so many others — is a fundamental misunderstanding: the assumption that foreign conservatism bears any meaningful resemblance to American conservatism.

Newsflash: It doesn’t. In fact, it’s about as similar as chalk and cheese.

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