| LM: | This is obviously a sad day for me and a terrific day for you as Donald Trump is crowned the presumptive nominee by the GOP establishment. Last night, while we were talking with each other, we were discussing the nature of conservatism.
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| To me, my duty as a conservative is to oppose Donald Trump because he’s not a conservative. I said that, to me, conservatism stands for equality of opportunity. You said in your view, it never had done. How do you define conservatism?
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| Vox: | I define conservatism as an attitude more than a coherent ideology. If you look at the history of conservatism, which you as a British individual will be aware, it really is something different to the ideas that underlie the British Conservative Party or the Tory Party.
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| Russell Kirk attempted to turn that inherited tradition into a more coherent ideology, and he came up with the 10 foundational points of what he terms conservatism. So it’s less an ideology than an attitude – and a relative posture.
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| Equality of opportunity is merely something that fits that attitude, more than it is a founding point of the ideology, in the way that the “labor theory of value” is something that underlies the ideology of socialism.
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| LM | You think that leftism is ideological, but conservatism is only an attitude?
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| Vox: | To a certain extent. Socialism is clearly a distinctive set of ideologies. There are of course different socialisms, from Fabianism to Marxism. Progressivism – today’s liberalism – is also a coherent ideology.
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| Conservatism is intrinsically a reaction to other ideologies rather than an ideology of its own.
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| LM: | You don’t think Conservatism stands for anything apart from opposing Liberalism, to use that umbrella term for the left?
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| Vox | Exactly correct. There’s a common saying that today’s conservative is yesterday’s liberal. Conservatism, if we look at the positions that it holds, is usually 20-25 years behind what yesterday’s liberals were. Today, John F. Kennedy would be regarded not only as a Republican – but one who was a little bit to the right.
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| LM: | To me, that seems defeatist for a guy that I see, though I may differ with you on many things, at the very least as an alpha male go-getter. You’re not behind any particular set of principles. You just want to oppose somebody else! Doesn’t that put all the power in their hands?
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| Vox: | It does, but it’s not defeatist for me because, as I have repeatedly told people for well over a decade, I am not a Conservative. I am an extremist and I’m a radical.
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| That’s why I don’t identify with this “conservatism” that never conserves anything, that goes from one noble defeat to the next, and has completely failed to conserve anything, even the United States of America.
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| LM: | Well, the United States seems to be doing okay from where I’m sitting. Go on. I’ve got loads more, but your turn. .
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| Vox: | No problem. You talk about the need for equality and you talk about the problems of racism and sexism and you seem to oppose them to civilization. How is that possible considering that Western civilization has been, by any reasonable standard, the most racist and sexist and unequal for pretty much the entirety of its existence?
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| LM: | That is true. All societies have been so, however, I would argue that with a little imagination, we’re just at the start of history, not the end of it. We progressed the more we’ve allowed equality of opportunity – and from my mind, this is what distinguishes conservatism and socialism.
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| I was once ambushed when I went to stand as an MP, at a selection committee, that benignly tricked candidates by saying they wouldn’t have any questions. When I sat down the Chairman said, “Thank you for coming. Can you tell us the difference between conservatism and socialism?”
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| I replied “Conservatives believe in equality of opportunity, socialists believe in equality of outcome.” Equality of opportunity has been our lodestar on a temporal scale – the GOP is the party of Lincoln; Lincoln freed the slaves. It’s the party of Hamilton, who was for emancipation. It’s the party of Harriet Tubman. The reason that I am a Republican and a conservative, is that the more we’ve edged towards equality of opportunity, the better Western civilization has done.
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| Back in the days when society was 100% fully racist, we weren’t doing so well. Now, as we find all talents, we’re doing a lot better. We’ve progressed a lot faster in science, we have fewer wars with fewer numbers.
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| Compare us to World War II. What we call a war today would’ve been, in terms of amount of people killed, as desperate as it still is, a battle compared to the disasters of World War II. I think the more civilization gets equality of opportunity, the better we do.
I think racism and sexism are anti-free market, to put it in language you might understand.
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| Vox: | I understand what you’re saying, but isn’t what you are talking about intrinsically precisely what we discussed in the previous question? You’re talking about a form of progressivism. You’re talking about a concept of civilization advancement that is, in itself, intrinsically Marxist.
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| It sounds to me like you’re describing some old progressive Marxist ideas that are now part of the current conservative ideology that were not part of it when Russell Kirk was writing about it 50 years ago, that were not part of it when Edmund Burke was writing about it in the previous century.
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| LM: | I prefer actors to commentators, so I don’t really care what some guy said in some book. I look at the history of the conservative movement and I see, yes, it’s progressive. Now, I would argue too, you said Marxism, but the difference between Marxism and Conservatism is Marx said, “From each, according to his ability, to each, according to his needs.”
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| In other words, take things from people that are working, give them to people that “need” it – without any definition. Just give them stuff. Marx, in other words, is for equality of outcome. Now, we conservatives, we’re for equality of opportunity. Marx vs Adam Smith, if you want to go to a commentator – believed in ‘enlightened self-interest’. Conservatism works and liberalism doesn’t, but are we progressive? Yes.
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| I realize that is a dirty word to you, but conservatives will often use the term “regressive left”, for example, so-called liberals that praise Islamist ideology because they wish to be seen to be multi-cultural and in so doing, excuse the enslavement of the Yazidi girls and women, for example.
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| Liberals that refuse to criticize ISIS. I will call that the regressive left, going backwards, whereas my belief, is that conservatism is progressive, absolutely, because we believe in the free market. We want open competition and we want to support the weakest who really need it. For example, people that are genuinely disabled, veterans that are combat-wounded from the war, that kind of thing.
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| We believe that people should have an equal chance at life, not have stuff handed to them on a plate because of their racial or sexual identity. Is progressive bad? I don’t think so.
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| Vox: | You’re saying that conservatism is the truly progressive movement that is on the right side of history, whereas the left is essentially regressive and on the wrong side of history?
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| LM: | Yes, sir. That’s exactly what I’m saying. I think that the free market bears it out. You can say conservatives have lost, but I’d argue to use that the Overton envelope, which is the term for the overall political spectrum- in some ways, yes, it’s moving to the left, but economically it’s moving quite hard to the right.
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| The democrats are about to elect as president, because she is going to be the president, a woman that speaks to Goldman-Sachs regularly and takes money for it. As a conservative, I say more power to her elbow. You go get that money girl. I like to see an entrepreneur. I can understand the Democrats do not like to see it, but I firmly believe that it is the free market that drives progress because I’m a conservative and I don’t think we can have a free market without equality of opportunity.
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| Taking morality out of it, for a second, morality aside, I am a Catholic, so I have a moral framework, but take that aside. From an economic point of view, racism and sexism interferes with a free market.
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| Vox: | Let’s get back to your prediction of Hillary Clinton being the next president. I understand that the polls, currently, would tend to predict that Hillary is going to beat Donald Trump, but I would also point out that the polls have predicted that Donald Trump was not going to do very well back when the nomination campaign started.
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| Obviously, both candidates are going to be acting, both top candidates are going to be speaking in public, and I think that Donald Trump is going to considerably change what the polls say through the course of the general election campaign.
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| I’m curious, what are you willing to bet? I’m willing to bet that Donald Trump is going to defeat Hillary Clinton.
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| LM: | Okay. I am currently 0-1 on my predictions! Because I believed rows of polls that you and I have both seen that show Donald Trump at the moment losing to Hillary in a landslide would sway the GOP. I confess that I thought the Republican party was more conservative than just blanket Republican.
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| I remain a conservative. I am never Trump. The GOP didn’t look at the polls – and I also thought they’d act in “enlightened self-interest”. We saw a red wave last November. We’re about to see a blue wave as Donald Trump sweeps that away and puts in Democratic majorities in the House and Senate.
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| Vox: | Wow, so you’re predicting that as well?
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| LM | Yeah, for sure. I say to the GOP, you made your bed, you lie in it. You made your bed, you lie in it. However, let’s have a bet. Since my predictions, admittedly, thus far suck.
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| Vox | I have a better idea. Have you published a book?
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| LM: | Yes, lots.
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| Vox: | Okay. If you are correct and Hillary Clinton is the next president, I will read the book of your choosing.
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| You will do the same for one of mine if I am correct and Donald Trump wins the election.
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| LM: | Okay great. That’s a deal. I would love to read one of your books anyway, by the way. The interesting thing is, if you lost you would be forced to read a pretty feminist book – although I’m a conservative feminist – which is a great debate we can save for another time.
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| Vox:: | I’ve got something much more dangerous for you.
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| LM: | Go on.
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| Vox: | I have an 854-page epic fantasy novel.
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| LM: | Whoa. Okay, well, you know what, I’m a big fan. I’m going to admit in this interview, I’m going to come out of the closet and admit that I’m a huge fan of the Gor novels by John Norman.
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| I’m not scared of your 800-page fantasy novel because I have waded through multiples of fantasy novels, so I would look forward to reading it anyway.
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| Okay, Vox, on this triumphant day for Trump supporters, do you have any message for conservatives like me who are pretty much determined to either vote third party, stay home, or go out and literally work for Hillary Clinton? Why should they not do that? If they believe that Trump is racist and sexist and they’re against racism and sexism, is your advice to them to stay at home because she doesn’t care about that stuff or do you want to make a pitch for Trump in the general?
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| Vox: | I’ll make a pitch. I think that it’s important to separate what makes a civilization and what makes a culture versus what we want to see out of that civilization and out of that culture. I think that we are at a critical point in the history of the United States and that the very existence of the United States as a coherent nation is at risk.
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| Regardless of what we think of how we want that nation to be, the nation has to exist in order for it to be improved, in order for it to be anything. Donald Trump is an existential candidate and he is addressing existential risk. There are many things about Donald Trump that I’m not crazy about from the ideological perspective, but I don’t care about the fact that he is going to enact policies that I will absolutely disagree with because I believe that he is necessary in order to keep the United States together as a functional and coherent nation.
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| LM: | Last question then. What precisely do you think of the existential threat that you see to the world’s most powerful and richest nation, the United States, at the moment, and why do you think that a Hillary Clinton presidency, the reason I can grit my teeth and vote for her, or luckily I don’t have a vote, but support her, work for her, volunteer for her, is that she is a centrist Democrat, unlike the highly left one Obama, so what do you see that she would do that would somehow existentially threaten the United States’ very existence in the way that you just described? It was not threatened after eight years of Bill, was it?
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| Vox: | No, it wasn’t, but let me answer the question in the reverse order. The reason that Hillary is dangerous in a way that Donald Trump is not, is because Hillary is a full-fledged globalist. She is going to continue the Obama policy and the Bush policy of continuing the 61 million invasion of immigrants that’s taken place since 1965. The largest migration in human history, and we know from history that such migrations almost always lead to war. They almost always lead to political dissension and the eventual crack-up of the political organization of the nation.
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| My concern is that we’re close to a critical point in the USA, we’re close to a critical point in a number of European countries and I am very much concerned that this 50 or 60 year period of mass migration and multi-culturalism is about to lead us into a period of war throughout the globe.
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| LM: | I presume that’s what you see as the threat to the USA? You are going to be so disappointed, dude, when the very globalist Donald Trump begets all this stuff made in Bangladesh, implements his touch-back amnesty policy. He’s the most pro-immigration candidate the GOP has ever elected, as you are about to find out.
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| By the way, that’s just about the only thing I like about him.
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| Vox: | You may well be right. There’s only one way to find out.
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| LM | There’s only one way to find out, that’s true. Thank you very much for interviewing me. I greatly enjoyed it and we will do ten rounds again sometime, and the bet is on.
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| Vox: | Sounds great.
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