The Difference Between Populism and Conservatism

In a recent interview with Ezra Klein of the New York Times, Yuval Levin of the American Enterprise Institute offered a useful way to understand the difference between conservatism and populism.

One way to think about the difference is about whether your politics begins from what you care about most — what you love — or whether it begins from what you fear and what you hate. To me, as a young person, conservatism was appealing, and has remained appealing, because it’s fundamentally rooted and begins from what we love in the world. It is a defense of what I take to be best about the world.

What is best about the world is always threatened. It’s always challenged. It’s challenged just by the realities of human nature. Sustaining it requires work. It requires moral formation and political action. And that’s the work that conservatives at their best do — we conserve the preconditions for a flourishing life in a free society.

But if the reason you have for entering politics, first and foremost, is to combat the left, to oppose what you don’t like, then your politics are going to be different than that.

Now, look, to defend what you love means fighting people who oppose it. And politics is argument, and it’s always contestation.

But I think it matters a lot whether fundamentally the reason that drew you in is itself the fight or whether the reason that drew you in is a commitment to something you love, is fundamentally conservative, is about wanting to preserve the good.

Unfortunately, as Levin notes, populism seems more dominant on the political Right than conservatism at the moment.

The larger issue, exploring the extent to which Donald Trump has accomplished anything lasting during his second term, is worth a listen or a read. As is usual, Levin is filled with valuable insights.