Brandon McGinley: In South Park, two visions of conservatism: traditionalism and Trumpism

Brandon McGinley / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The Oliver Miller Homestead is one of the great hidden gems of the Pittsburgh region. Located just off Corrigan Drive within South Park, the living-history museum presents the lifestyle of one of the first European families to cross the Alleghenies.

It’s a conservative enterprise, not in the sense that it represents right-wing politics, but in the sense that it conserves the history of this place and its people. My eldest daughter loves history, and especially learning about the everyday lives of people of the past, so last Sunday we drove down there. After only a couple hours, she declared she wanted to work there as one of the interpreters.

On the way, however, a couple of the little kids fell asleep in their car seats. Not wanting to interrupt necessary naps, I dropped off my wife and older kids, then drove around the park for a little while. It was then, only a quarter-mile away, I stumbled across a much more raucous scene — and a very different evocation of American history: a large rally of Trump supporters.

Conservative chimera

What we call “conservatism” in the United States is complicated by the fact that one of the American traditions people desire to conserve is the spirit of revolution. Which means that the mandate to preserve is always threatened by the urge to tear down — leading to some very weird political movements and moments.

At the Trump picnic last weekend, there were dozens of flags, from basic American flags and Trump/​Vance flags to Gadsden flags (“Don’t Tread on Me”) and bloody Trump “fight!” flags. There was a variety of signs, including one featuring the face of President Joe Biden — interestingly not Vice President Kamala Harris — imploring passersby that only idiots would tolerate another four years of “bulls—.”

And there were multiple references to early America, precisely the historical moment being interpreted for visitors just up the road. These included images of Donald Trump in a tri-corner hat, and a person dressed apparently as George Washington riding around on a bicycle.

It would be very hard for an outsider to American politics to identify this as an expression of conservatism. Yes, it invokes certain images and heroes from American history, but it does so in a cartoonish way. And in its liberal use of profanity — in a family-oriented park — it clearly represents social transgression, not courtesy or propriety.

Indeed, the entire message of the movement is one of tearing down the established order. It’s hard to imagine a greater contrast with the quiet historical site — demonstrated by the honking and shouting audible from the homestead.

And yet there were more resonances — and more ironies — between the museum and the Trump rally than first met the eye.

An absurd avatar

Besides being a colonial living-history museum, the homestead is also a Whiskey Rebellion site. In fact, it’s said that the first shots of the abortive revolt occurred after a confrontation between one of Oliver Miller’s sons and a federal tax agent.

The Whiskey Rebellion is a reminder that bombastic displays of contempt for, even curdling into violence against, the established authorities has been a feature of American life from the very beginning. In fact, it’s the very foundation of the American Republic.

In other words, nurturing the revolutionary spirit — anti-establishment, anti-authority, anti-convention — is part of what it means to conserve American traditions. It’s one of the great ironies and tensions in American political history, and it flows back and forth across the generations.

To Trump enthusiasts, therefore, the man represents the foundational stick-it-to-the-man spirit of the Revolution. The spirit that motivated people like the Millers to set out across the mountains. The spirit that flared into violence in the Whiskey Rebellion, and that has never — and will never — be extinguished from the American character.

Is it absurd that a periodically bankrupt Queens real estate magnate has become the avatar of this spirit? Of course it is. But absurdity has never been a barrier for this kind of politics, which prizes histrionics over platforms and policies.

In fact, it helps. The Know-Nothings were absurd. Huey Long was absurd. Father Coughlin was absurd. Ross Perot was absurd.

The Whiskey Rebellion, in retrospect, was absurd.

What endures

But absurdity does not equal irrelevance — and in the moment the revolt didn’t seem absurd at all. Which brings us to the great irony of Trump supporters evoking George Washington next to a Whiskey Rebellion site: It was Washington who crushed it.

Among the great man’s virtues was his intuitive understanding of something that later events would make plain: Revolutions have a habit of spiraling out of control. The uprooting of an established order unleashes passions that are difficult to contain, but must be reined in if a new order is to be constructed. This is a fundamentally conservative insight, one that cuts sharply against America’s weird revolutionary conservatism.

If Washington signaled that his government could be treated as he had just treated the British government, it might well meet the same fate. So he marched across the Alleghenies and quickly put the rebellion down.

This is the great tension at the heart of the American character, and of American conservatism in particular: the drive to build up and maintain institutions constantly threatened by the drive to tear them down. The Trump movement represents the modern high-water-mark for the latter.

But there is one thing I know for sure: The Oliver Miller Homestead will still be there long after Donald Trump, and his movement, is gone.

Brandon McGinley’s previous column was “The mediocre Pirates are a perfect franchise for a mediocre city.”