The Conscience of a Conservative summary

“Government,” by definition, means placing power in the hands of some men to control others. Throughout history, it has been the chief instrument by which people have been deprived of liberty. The reason for this is that power corrupts, and – as the English historian Lord Acton put it in the nineteenth century – “absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Fortunately, the Founding Fathers developed a solution to this all-too-human problem. 

The key message here is: The United States Constitution enshrines the principle of limited government – although both parties began ignoring it in the twentieth century. 

Public utilities, banks, agriculture, education, and welfare – these are just some of the issues that the Constitution delegates to states rather than the federal government. States’ rights are at the heart of the constitutional framework designed by the Founding Fathers, who believed it was better that political questions be settled locally rather than federally. This framework survived into the twentieth century, but it no longer holds today. 

The key message here is: The erosion of states’ rights also erodes liberty. 

There is a common misconception that the assault on states’ rights is often justified in the name of civil rights. To uphold the rights of African Americans, for example, this argument asserts that it’s necessary for the federal government to interfere in the way states are run on a day-to-day basis. This is misleading. In reality, states’ rights and civil rights are fully compatible. 

The key message here is: When properly defined, there is no conflict between states’ rights and civil rights. 

As America turned from an agricultural nation into an industrial one, businesses expanded and became more and more powerful. By the late nineteenth century, bosses had the upper hand and workers were forced to accept whatever wages they were offered. Attempting to increase their bargaining power, these workers banded together to create a common negotiating agent: the trade union. 

But unions didn’t just solve the age-old quarrel of wages – they created a new problem of their own. 

Big government has changed the way American voters think about key issues. For instance, these days, taxation is regarded as a matter of public financing, with the most important question being, “How much money does the government need?” This obscures a more fundamental issue: freedom. Excessive taxation doesn’t just bloat the federal government – it also undermines individual liberty. 

The key message here is: Governments do not have an unlimited claim on our individual earnings.

For many years, the most dangerous threat to American freedom came from Marxists who wanted to socialize the means of production. In practice, this would have meant a state-owned and operated economy based on the Soviet model. After the Second World War, as Marxism lost its appeal in an increasingly affluent society, a new danger emerged: welfarism.

The key message here is: The welfare state is a new form of collectivism, and it’s a menace to freedom.