Liberals Don't Understand Conservatives & It's Why They Can't Fight Back
Conservatives aren't hypocrites, you just don't understand their views.
A lot can be said of the past year and a half of Trump’s second term, but one thing that seems to be ringing off the inside of my skull as of late is the degree to which American Liberals completely misunderstand their conservative peers.
A lot has happened that should have triggered a crisis of conscience on the political right such as masked men grabbing people off the street, attempts by the government to strip LGBTQ+ Americans of their guns, widespread domestic surveillance of liberals, and the mass pardoning of the January 6th insurrectionists. The liberal response has been to call conservatives hypocrites and blind sheep, and while I don’t inherently disagree with that characterization, I do think it comes from a place of complete misunderstanding.
There is, from the outside looking in, an inherent contradiction in American conservative ideology, and it’s most obvious with their two most popular slogans being “Don’t Tread On Me” and “Back the Blue”. It is true that police are members of our communities and families, but they are also agents of the state. The police enforce the laws and orders of the government, and they are - more than any other part of government - the most likely to tread on you. So how can it be that conservatives can believe both of these and not feel embarrassed by the contradiction? How can conservatives believe in law and order while also supporting a President who is objectively the biggest crook to ever reach the White House?
In short, there is no contradiction to be embarrassed by, because these principles were never symmetric to them. Frank Wilhoit wrote that the backbone of conservatism is that “there must be in-groups the law protects but does not bind, and out-groups the law binds but does not protect”. Why must there be in-groups and out-groups in the conservative view though? Conservatism at its core is about believing in a strict hierarchical society. Corey Robin wrote in The Reactionary Mind that conservatism across two centuries is fundamentally the defense of established hierarchy against threats from below. Rather than a philosophy of liberty or tradition, the right is actually a reactionary movement defending power, privilege, and inequality.
This can be best understood by looking at our own history. The loyalists, the enslavers, and the segregationists in American history were conservatives. The loyalists would have maintained their power and status had the colonists not revolted against the crown. The enslavers and then later the segregationists were defending their power and privilege by continuing the subjugation of an entire race for 200 years. The same political sect that supports ICE grabbing random people off the street, also supported slave catchers. The law bound Black Americans while offering them no protection whatsoever. The law also protected White Americans but did not bind them when they waged violence on Black Americans.
Fundamentally, America’s liberals and conservatives are not born from a dispute in the country’s founding ideology, but they are born from the dispute over whether to even have a revolution. Liberals and their ideology are descended from the Declaration of Independence which lays out an egalitarian universalist vision for the country while also aiming to kill preexisting hierarchies. Its core rests on three revolutionary principles: human equality, unalienable rights, and the consent of the governed. By declaring that “all men are created equal,” it directly abolishes monarchical rule because if everyone is equal then no individual is born with a divine right to rule over others. It also directly takes aim at strict hierarchical societies because if everyone is equal then no one has the right to oppress others. Furthermore, it argues that essential rights - specifically life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - are granted by a higher power rather than the government, meaning it’s impossible to legally strip them away. Under this framing, the government’s only legitimate purpose is to protect these rights and to ensure that the law binds and protects everyone because it derives its power and legitimacy directly from the people it serves.
America’s conservatives and their ideology are descended from Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha or The Natural Power of Kings from 1680. Filmer says that human society is not a collection of equal individuals bound by a social contract, but a divinely ordained, rigid hierarchy where some are born to rule and others are born to serve. In this framework, the state is an extension of the patriarchal family: the leader holds absolute, unquestionable authority, and subjects owe total obedience. I am not making the claim that your average MAGA voter has read 17th-century political theory, but rather that Filmer’s ideas have mutated into a potent blend of cultural populism and Christian Nationalism. While Donald Trump uses anti-establishment rhetoric to attack a perceived "technocratic and progressive elite" hierarchy, his base supports him because they believe he is tearing down a false hierarchy to restore the natural one: one where white, Christian, traditional family structures sit at the top. Trump is willing to meet their demand to stop elevating the "out-group" above the "in-group." When a conservative demands “Law and Order,” they are not calling for an impartial application of the rule of law to all citizens equally; they are calling for the enforcement of this social hierarchy. The Filmerian philosophy completely resolves the apparent contradiction between “Don’t Tread On Me” and “Back the Blue.” To them, the “Me” in the “Don’t Tread On Me” phrase represents the divinely or naturally ordained in-group - those who, by virtue of their position in the hierarchy, are entitled to total liberty and protection from the state. In this worldview, liberty itself is an asymmetrical concept. To a liberal, liberty is a universal right that must be shared equally to exist. To the hierarchical conservative, liberty is a privilege of status. If everyone possesses it equally, it loses its value.
The “Blue,” conversely, is a specialized arm of hierarchical enforcement tasked with treading heavily on the out-groups who dare to disrupt that hierarchy from below. The police do not exist to enforce abstract, neutral statutes; they exist to maintain the boundary line between the protected rulers and the bound subjects. Therefore, a conservative feels no shame when the state targets marginalized groups, liberals, or immigrants, because the law is performing its proper, asymmetrical function: binding the out-group while offering them no protection. This also explains why Trump’s overt criminality does not alienate his base, but rather reinforces his appeal as the ultimate patriarch. The ruler is completely above human law and answerable only to God or the preservation of the hierarchy itself. To his followers, Trump is not a crook breaking the law; he is an absolute sovereign exercising his natural prerogative to protect the in-group and punish the out-group. He is the modern embodiment of the monarch who is protected but not bound by the rules.
Over the past year, liberals have futilely appealed to the universalist, egalitarian ideals of the Declaration of Independence in hopes that conservatives will see the error of their ways, but they are missing the fundamental reality that their conservative peers are operating on an entirely different, pre-Enlightenment wavelength. American conservatism is a fundamental rejection of the Declaration in favor of natural hierarchy.
John C. Calhoun stood on the Senate floor and called the proposition that all men are created equal “the most dangerous of all political errors.” George Fitzhugh’s Cannibals All! Or, Slaves Without Masters from 1857 did this explicitly, attacking Jeffersonian free-society liberalism while defending slavery as the natural order. He declared that the foundational phrases of the Declaration of Independence were "exceedingly mischievous" and fundamentally false, arguing instead that a healthy society requires the strong to rule over and paternalistically "protect" the weak. In his view, the competitive, egalitarian market of the North was a cruel system of economic cannibalism, whereas the absolute, racial hierarchy of the plantation was a benevolent domestic family structure. This antebellum defense of human bondage is just the American version of Patriarcha. Just as Filmer argued that children are born into natural subjection to their fathers, Fitzhugh and Calhoun argued that certain groups of human beings are born into natural subjection to their masters. If this doesn’t prove that American conservative thought has long maintained a deeply rooted, parallel lineage that consciously repudiates 1776, then I’m not sure what will.
Critics might argue that this thesis ignores the mid-20th-century conservative movement - the era of William F. Buckley and small-government libertarian economics. They will claim that conservatism was, for decades, defined by its opposition to state power, but this is historical amnesia. The conservative-libertarian alliance was always a marriage of convenience. Small-government rhetoric was weaponized primarily when the federal government began using its power to enforce integration and civil rights - in other words, when the federal government began dismantling traditional racial and economic hierarchies. The moment conservatives regained control of the state apparatus under the MAGA banner, the illusion of anti-statism vanished.
The modern conservative defense of authoritarian state action, border crackdowns, and a leader who acts above the law is not a sudden deviation from their principles; it’s the manifestation of them. Conservatives do not share the liberal distress over a collapsing republic because their ultimate loyalty is not to a democratic republic of equals; it is to a hierarchical order where power flows downward from a strong executive to a protected class. When Donald Trump acts as a lawless sovereign, or when institutions of state violence tread heavily on the left, the modern conservative does not see a failure of American values. They see a natural order restored.
The fundamental error of the modern liberal and the Democratic party is the belief that exposure to structural contradiction will trigger a crisis of conscience on the right, but there is no shame in a contradiction that does not exist. By continuing to appeal to a universalist, egalitarian playbook that their peers have consciously and historically repudiated, liberals are becoming the kids in Air Bud who are yelling “Hey, a dog can’t play basketball” while the dog continues to dunk on them. The crisis of American democracy is not that one side is breaking the rules of the republic, but that they are operating on an entirely different lineage of power, one where the law is meant to weaponize privilege, not guarantee equality. Until the left understands that the right is not failing to live up to 1776, but is actively fighting for the hierarchy of 1680 and responds to it appropriately, conservatives will continue to consolidate power.
Very well written piece. I say this as someone who lives with two trump supporters tho, no one who still backs trump in June 2026 is thinking about politics this deeply or would ever click on an article like, let alone be in Substack. Since there isn’t a viable conservative movement that is distinct from trump, I’m tossing any and all American conservatives under the MAGA banner here.
Since they’re not thinking deeply, today’s MAGA supporters are just ignorant racists who know they don’t fully understand the picture and/or don’t care to understand more. They may also be pedophiles, the modern american conservative movement really seems to attract those. Anyone who actually thinks on the American right has already abandoned the trump ship. All that is left are just the xenophobic, racist, pedophile-protecting facists.
How am I not understanding conservatives if they can’t articulate their own ideas? Maybe you understand them better than they do, but no one in that movement deserves sympathy, understanding, or patience. I am not talking about people who voted for him and have become disillusioned since his second term. I am talking about the people who, after Renee and alex, after Iran, after his name being the Epstein files more than anyone else, after all the insider trading, after all the trump coins and grifts, still back this guy and see him as a champion. If you are still in that camp, idiot is the only word that can describe you and nothing can save you.
The “in-group out-group” thing in the context of our history is violent racism against the decedents of slaves, followed by an anti-democratic apartheid regime in the half the country for another 100 years. Not every political movement is some well thought out, principled thing, and I’m not gonna both-sides this issue. Modern conservatives stand for absolutely nothing and is just a means of extracting wealth for billionaires and venting pent up racism/social anxiety for the average rank and file.
TL;DR you’re being way too generous here with what inspires the contemporary American conservative. It has nothing to do with 17th century political theory. If you want to understand them, you’re better off watching UFC than reading Calhoun. If your entire political movement is built on the notion of a permanent underclass of people (the social hierarchy/in group not bound by law) it deserves to be obliterated and treated with contempt.
EDIT: this sounds like I hate your piece and it’s quite the opposite! It was very good and interesting, which is why I have such an opinion on it.
Very well articulated. I thought of much the same, but you articulate it very well. Thanks for putting in the efforts.
Yes, it permeates their thinking. You see it also in how they believe a family must have a man as the superior. They do not see it as possible for man and woman to be in an equal relationship. To them there must always be a hierarchy. They cannot imagine anything else.