Historically, there has been no agreed definition of conservatism. Some argue that it is not even an ideology. Consequently, it has been relatively easy to dismiss conservatives as unsophisticated rubes rather than principled citizens. Fortunately, we now have a theory. I spent fifteen years working in Hungary after the fall of communism and so had an opportunity to see how a society changes from one ideology to another. As a consultant, I worked for communist apparatchiks heading bankrupt state-owned companies and saw a morose society transform into something better through nothing more than the power of free market prices. I cheerfully waved at the brownshirts assembling on Budapest's Freedom Square as I went for my daily jogs. I was shocked when a relative suggested that my uncle, a 26-year IMF veteran and member of the equivalent of Hungary's Federal Reserve Board, only understood 'liberal' economics. After all, I was a product of the same liberal tradition, with graduate studies in international economics and public policy at Columbia University. It made me wonder, though, what was motivating these conservatives, and what did they mean by 'liberal economics'? I spent more than a decade contemplating these questions.

Let me skip to the end and tell you the conclusion: Liberal means pertaining to the individual, and conservative means pertaining to the group (and its members). Because we're social animals, we not only live our lives as individuals, but as members of various groups, including our families, businesses, schools, churches and countries. Group members have both rights and obligations, and these will often conflict with personal preferences. For example, Maria may come home at the end of the work day and want nothing more than to sit down with a drink; Maria as Mom has to cook dinner for the kids. That's her duty, and it may conflict with her immediate personal interest in taking a break. Duty versus desire, 'must' versus 'could', normative versus positive, that's the friction point between conservatives and liberals.

Once we establish that conservatism is about the group, a whole series of issues follow. For example, groups involve questions of membership; of group mission and strategy; rules, norms and values; and group hierarchy, that is, who gets to decide what. If you're a conservative, you are probably recognizing some issues that matter to you.

For today, let's discuss membership. Of course, illegal immigration is the biggest membership issue in the US. It means that people without permission, qualifications or documentation can enter the US and become part of the group with many of the rights, but few of the obligations. For many members of the group -- US citizens in this case -- that's absolutely galling, not only as a practical matter, but as both an intellectual and visceral matter of principle. A fundamental obligation of leadership is to set and enforce standards for membership, in this case, to protect the country by enforcing the borders. It's about keeping non-members out.

But what do we want from new members? I bring this up because conservatives are likely to have a decisive say in US government from the midterms through 2032 or so. How we treat the issue of us-versus-them, how we think about group membership, will prove decisive for the future of the US, indeed, possibly the global community.

If you have a background in sociology, you've probably come across Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Maslow was a psychologist who, in the 1940s, posited that people have a hierarchy of needs, from food to safety, sex and love, esteem and on to self-actualization. It's fairly obvious, but helpful in thinking about motivation.

We can construct an analog, a conservative hierarchy of needs, and ask what a group wants from a new member. If we are to let people come over the border, what characteristics should they have? As it turns out, these characteristics split into conservative and fascist components.

The conservative needs boil down to safety, propriety, conformity and compensation.

Safety is the foundation of all groups. If the group cannot assure the safety of its members, the group is in big trouble.

Propriety means formal permissions, for example, a work visa, and meeting other legal and bureaucratic requirements. Conformity means adapting to local customs and unwritten rules. It's about appropriate behavior in a given setting. You can wear pajamas, but not at the mall.

Compensation is about paying one's way. Strictly speaking, this is a liberal objective, but no one ever complained if their neighbor was paying their taxes.

That largely exhausts the list of ordinary conservative objectives, what I call 'Little League conservatism'. Anyone who meets these requirements is in good standing in the group. Note that we have said nothing about race, religion or ethnic origin. The standards are based purely on behavior, but they are not liberal. "Take your feet off the couch!" Nothing liberal about that, but anyone can comply with the requirement.

We define fascism as "discriminating for or against an individual by a group or its members based on unalterable characteristics, typically race and religion." Fascism is about who you are, not what you do. I use it as an umbrella for all kinds of 'isms': racism, sexism, anti-semitism, ageism, nepotism, cronyism, and good-looks-ism, among others. In all these cases, an individual is either favored or disfavored because of some inherent characteristic: their race, religion, age, sex, appearance or family or business connections, for example. Either you have what it takes, or you don't, and if you don't, there's nothing you can do about it. That's fascism at the conceptual level.

Fascism is related to self-determination and the rise of democracy. Although self-determination was for most of the 20th century framed as an egalitarian concept, it tends to be fascist in practice. When India became a democracy, the Muslims were expelled to Pakistan. When Iraq became a democracy, the Kurds immediately left and the Sunnis and Shiites started fighting each other. When the Muslim brotherhood won democratic elections in Egypt, they promptly went about purging the Coptic Christians who had lived there for 2000 years. When democracy came to Yugoslavia, the country immediately disintegrated into its religious and national components, with plenty of ethic cleansing in otherwise democratic states. The bottom line is this: Given a choice, most people prefer to live with and be governed by people like themselves, which in practice means the same nationality, religion, race or tribe. This is not an endorsement of such behavior, but rather the sober assessment that the public's choices are often influenced by unalterable social characteristics. It's that birds-of-a-feather thing.

In homogenous countries, the distinction between conservatism and fascism may be all but imperceptible. In Japan, 98% of the population is Japanese, so discrimination against non-Japanese is a niche issue. It may be bad if you're, say, Korean, but it is not going to be a major theme for the society as a whole. By contrast, in the United States, 40% of the population identifies as either non-white or non-Christian. The distinction between conservatism and fascism is not a trivial matter in this context. How the right evolves, whether it becomes conservative or fascist, will prove decisive in our society and the world that is to come.

Here is the associated article: A Conservative Hierarchy of Needs