Conservatism Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Jim Kalb
Posting-Frequency: monthly
--text follows this line--
Conservatism FAQ
November 1, 2008 Version
This FAQ, posted monthly, attempts to deal with questions and
objections regarding conservatism. Additional questions and comments
are welcome. The conservatism discussed is traditionalist American
conservatism; other varieties are touched on in section 6, and their
adherents are urged to draft additional FAQs. For further discussion
and relevant links, see the Traditionalist Conservatism Page,
http://turnabout.ath.cx:8000/node/7.
A current version of this FAQ can be obtained by sending the message
"send usenet/news.answers/conservatism/faq" by email to
mail-...@rtfm.mit.edu. A hypertext version is available at
http://turnabout.ath.cx:8000/node/3.
Questions
1 General principles
1.1 What is distinctive about conservatism as a political view?
1.2 Why is tradition a source of greater wisdom?
1.3 Why isn't it better to reason things out from the beginning?
1.4 What's the difference between following tradition and refusing to
think?
1.5 Why can't tradition be an accumulation of ignorance, error and
vice as easily as of wisdom?
1.6 How can anyone know his own tradition is the right one?
1.7 What about truth?
1.8 There are conflicting traditions even within a single society.
Which gets treated as "ours?"
2 Tradition and change
2.1 Why not just accept change?
2.2 Isn't conservatism simply another way of saying that people who
currently have wealth and power should keep it?
2.3 Wouldn't we still have slavery if conservatives had always been
running the show?
3 Social and cultural issues
3.1 What are family values and what is so great about them?
3.2 Why can't conservatives just accept that people's personal values
differ?
3.3 Why are conservatives such theocrats?
3.4 Why do conservatives always want to force their values on
everybody else?
3.5 What role do conservatives think government should play in
enforcing moral values?
3.6 Aren't conservatives racist sexist homophobes?
3.7 What happens to feminists, homosexuals, racial minorities and
others marginalized in a conservative society?
3.8 What about freedom?
3.9 And justice?
4 Economic issues
4.1 Why do conservatives say they favor virtue and community but
favor laissez-faire capitalism?
4.2 Why don't conservatives care about what happens to the poor,
weak, discouraged, and outcast?
4.3 Shouldn't the government do something for people for whom the
usual support networks don't work?
4.4 What about welfare for the middle classes?
4.5 If conserving is a good thing, why isn't ecology a conservative
issue?
5 Conservatism in an age of established liberalism
5.1 Why do conservatives talk as if the sky is about to fall and all
good things are in the past?
5.2 Isn't conservatism essentially nostalgia for a past that never
was and can't be restored?
5.3 What's all this stuff about community and tradition when the
groups that matter these days are based on interests and perspectives
rather than traditions?
5.4 Why are most people seriously involved in studying and dealing
with social issues liberals?
5.5 How can tradition do anything but endorse the way things happen
to be?
5.6 Shouldn't conservatives favor things that are as well-established
as the welfare state and steady expansion of the scope of the civil
rights laws?
5.7 I was raised a liberal. Doesn't that mean that to be conservative
I should stay true to liberalism?
6 The conservative rainbow
6.1 How do libertarians differ from conservatives?
6.2 What are mainstream conservatives?
6.3 What are neoconservatives?
6.4 What are paleoconservatives?
6.5 What are paleolibertarians?
6.6 What are Frankfurt School Neopaleoconservatives?
6.7 Where do the pro-life movement and Religious Right fit into all
this?
6.8 What are the differences between American conservatism and that
of other countries?
6.9 What do all these things called "conservatism" have in common?
Answers
1 General Principles
1.1 What is distinctive about conservatism as a political view?
Its emphasis on what has been passed down as a source of wisdom that
goes beyond what can be demonstrated or even explicitly stated.
1.2 Why is tradition a source of greater wisdom?
It is a network of commonly accepted attitudes, beliefs and practices
that has grown up through strengthening of things that have worked
and rejection of things that have led to conflict and failure. It
therefore comprises a collection of habits that have proved useful in
a huge variety of practical affairs, and a comprehensive and
generally coherent point of view that reflects very extensive
experience and thought. Through it we know subtle and fundamental
features of the world that would otherwise escape us, and our
understanding of those things takes on concrete and usable form.
The usual alternative to reliance on tradition is reliance on theory.
Taking theory literally can be costly because it achieves clarity by
ignoring things that are difficult to articulate. Such things can be
important; the reason politics and morals are learned mostly by
experience and imitation is that most of what we need to know about
them consists in habits, attitudes and implicit presumptions that we
couldn't begin to put into words. There is no means other than
tradition to accumulate, conserve and hand on such things.
Other considerations also support the wisdom of relying on tradition,
if not specifically the wisdom of tradition itself. For example,
tradition typically exists as the common property of a community
whose members are raised in it. Accordingly, it normally unites more
than divides, and is far more likely than theory to facilitate free
and cooperative life in common.
1.3 Why isn't it better to reason things out from the beginning?
Our knowledge of things like politics and morality is partial and
attained slowly and with difficulty. We can't evaluate political
ideas without accepting far more beliefs, presumptions and attitudes
than we could possibly judge critically. The effects of political
proposals are difficult to predict, and as the proposals become more
ambitious their effects become incalculable. Accordingly, the most
reasonable approach to politics is normally to take the existing
system of society as a given that can't be changed wholesale and try
to ensure that any changes cohere with the principles and practices
that make the existing system work as well as it does.
1.4 What's the difference between following tradition and refusing to
think?
Conservatives do not reject thought but are skeptical of its
autonomy. They believe that tradition guides and corrects thought,
and so brings it closer to truth, which has no special connection
with any private view.
While truth is not altogether out of reach, our access to it is
incomplete and often indirect. It can not be reduced wholly to our
possession, so conservatives are willing to accept it in whatever
form it is available to us. In particular, they recognize the need to
rely on the unarticulated truth implicit in inherited attitudes and
practices. Today this aspect of our connection to truth is
underestimated, and conservatives hope to think better and know more
truly by re-emphasizing it.
1.5 Why can't tradition be an accumulation of ignorance, error and
vice as easily as of wisdom?
Since tradition is a human thing it may reflect human vices as well
as virtues. The same, of course, is true of relying on autonomous
reason. In this century, anti-traditional theories supported by
intelligent men for reasons thought noble have repeatedly led to the
murder of millions of innocents.
The issue therefore is not whether tradition is perfect but its
appropriate place in human life. To the extent our most consistent
aim is toward what is good, and we err more through ignorance,
oversight and conflicting impulse than through coherent and settled
evil, tradition will benefit us by linking our thoughts and actions
to a steady and comprehensive system in which they can correct each
other. It will secure and refine our acquisitions while hampering
antisocial impulses. To the extent we consistently aim at what is
evil, then tradition can not help us much, but neither can anything
else short of divine intervention.
1.6 There are lots of conflicting traditions. How can anyone know his
own is the right one?
Comprehensive certainty is hard to come by. Our own tradition (like
our own reasoning) might lead us astray where another's would not.
However, such concerns can not justify rejecting our own tradition
unless we have a method transcending it for determining when that has
happened, and in most situations we do not. If experience has led us
astray it will most likely be further experience that sets us right.
The same is true of tradition, which is social experience.
Putting issues of truth aside, the various parts of a particular
tradition are adjusted to each other in a way that makes it difficult
to abandon one part and substitute something from another tradition.
A French cook will have trouble if he has to rely on Chinese
ingredients and utensils. Issues of coherence and practicality
accordingly make it likely that we will do better developing the
tradition to which we are accustomed than attempting to adopt large
parts of a different one.
1.7 But what about truth?
Most conservatives are confident comprehensive objective truth
exists, but not in the form of a set of propositions with a single
meaning equally demonstrable to all. The world is too big for us to
grasp as a whole in a clear systematic way. We apprehend truth
largely through tradition and in a way that cannot be fully
articulated. Even if some truths can be known with certainty through
reason or revelation, their social acceptance and their
interpretation and application depend on tradition.
1.8 There are conflicting traditions even within a single society.
Which gets treated as "ours?"
The question is less serious than it appears, since it cannot be
discussed without assuming a community of discourse and therefore an
authoritative tradition.
Any collectivity that deliberates and acts has a tradition--a set of
commonly-held habits, attitudes, beliefs and memories that is
reasonably coherent over time--that enables it to do so. A society
consists of those who at least in general accept the authority of a
common tradition. "Our" tradition is therefore the tradition that
guides and motivates the collective action of the society to which we
belong and give our loyalty, and within which the relevant discussion
is going forward.
It is worth noting that no society is perfectly unified; each has
elites and subordinate societies with their own traditions and
spheres of action. A society may also harbor resident aliens and
dissident or criminal groups. Which groups are treated as subordinate
societies legitimately belonging to the larger one and which are
treated as resident aliens, criminals or foreign oppressors is itself
determined by the traditions that define the society as a whole and
make it what it is.
2 Tradition and Change
2.1 Society has always changed, for the better in some ways and for
the worse in others. Tradition itself is an accumulation of changes.
So why not accept change, especially if everything is so complicated
and hard to figure out?
Changes have always involved resistance as well as acceptance. Those
that have to make their way over opposition will presumably be better
than those that are accepted without serious questioning. Tradition
is reliable because it reflects the overall weight of experience and
reflection. That means that traditions that have long endured, and so
presumptively reflect extended experience, should change only in
response to something equally weighty.
In addition, conservatism is less rejection of change as such than of
intentional change of a peculiarly sweeping sort demanded by
Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment philosophies like liberalism and
Marxism. It is recognition that the world is not our creation, and
there are permanent things we must simply accept. For example, the
family as an institution has changed from time to time in conjunction
with other social changes. However, the current left/liberal demand
that all definite institutional structure for the family be abolished
as an infringement of individual autonomy (typically phrased as a
demand for the elimination of sex roles and heterosexism and the
protection of children's rights) is different in kind from anything
in the past, and conservatives believe it must be fought.
2.2 Isn't conservatism simply another way of saying that people who
currently have wealth and power should keep it?
Every political view promotes the particular advantage of some
people. If political views are to be treated as rationalizations of
the interests of existing or would-be elites, then that treatment
should apply equally to conservatism and all other views. On the
other hand, if arguments that particular political views advance the
public good are to be taken seriously, then the arguments for
conservatism should be considered on their merits.
It's worth noting that liberalism istself furthers the interests of
powerful social classes that support it, and that movements aiming at
social justice typically become radically elitist because the more
comprehensive and abstract a political principle, the smaller the
group that can be relied on to understand and apply it correctly.
2.3 Wouldn't we still have slavery if conservatives had always been
running the show?
Experience suggests otherwise. Slavery disappeared in Western and
Central Europe long ago without need for self-conscious attempts at
social reconstruction. It lasted much longer in the new and less
conservative societies Europeans founded in America.
While conservatism as such doesn't guarantee there will be no
oppression, neither do attempts at autonomous rational thought. It
has been under radical and not conservative regimes that brutal
forced labor and other gross forms of oppression have made a comeback
in recent times. That is no paradox. Radicalism is far more
compatible than conservatism with tyrannical institutions because by
emphasizing theory and downplaying stable consensus it destroys
reciprocity and mutual accommodation between rulers and ruled.
Conservatism arose not from a desire to freeze everything exactly as
it is, but from recognition of the necessity of continuity, the
difficulty of forcing society into a preconceived pattern, and the
importance of things, such as mutual personal obligation and
standards of right and wrong not reducible to power and desire, for
which ideologies of the Left have trouble finding a place. Those
recognitions make conservatives more reliable opponents of tyranny
than progressives.
Conservatism recognizes that moral habits evolve with experience and
changing circumstances, and social arrangements that come to be too
much at odds with the moral feelings of a people change or disappear.
It's not self-contained; recognition of existing practice as a
standard does not mean denial that there is any other standard. It
recognizes that there can be improvements as well as corruptions, and
that there are rational and transcendent standards as well as those
that exist as part of the institutions of particular peoples.
3 Social and Cultural Issues
3.1 What are family values and what is so great about them?
They are habits and attitudes that maintain a society in which
people's most basic loyalties, and the relationships upon which they
rely most fundamentally, are relationships to particular persons
rather than to the state.
Family values are basic to moral life because it is primarily in
relationships with particular persons that are taken with the utmost
seriousness that we find the degree of concrete knowledge and mutual
responsibility that is necessary for our obligations to others to
become realities for us. In addition, the knowledge and habits
necessary for the good life mostly have to do with the day-to-day
activities of ordinary men. Such things lose coherence if everyday
personal relations are unstable and unreliable, as they will be if
law, habits and attitudes do not support stable and functional family
life.
Family values are rejected to the extent the necessity of practical
reliance on particular persons is viewed as something oppressive and
unequal that the state should remedy. Conservatives oppose that
rejection. They view tyranny as the likely outcome of weakening
family values, since reducing personal and local responsibilities is
likely to make state power unbalanced and overly predominant.
3.2 Why can't conservatives just accept that people's personal values
differ?
Liberals, conservatives and others all recognize limits on the degree
to which differing personal values can be accommodated. One reason
such limits arise is that personal values can be realized only by
establishing particular sorts of relations with other people, and no
society can favor all relationships equally. No society, for example,
can favor equally a woman who primarily wants to have a career and
one who primarily wants to be a mother and homemaker. If public
attitudes presume that it is the man who is primarily responsible for
family support they favor the latter at the expense of the former; if
not, they do the reverse.
3.3 Why are conservatives such theocrats?
They aren't, in any sense that doesn't turn most pre-60s Western
states into theocracies. "Theocracy" normally means a state (an
Islamic republic would be an example) in which civil law and
authorities are formally subject to religious law and authorities.
There have been very few such states in the West, and conservatives
aren't interested in breaking new ground on the matter. They do tend
to recognize that government is based in the end on accepted
understandings of what man and the world are, and that strict
secularism, which insists that all social and moral order must be
based on human desire and choice, lacks the resources to sustain free
government or even rationality. They therefore find it quite in order
for government to follow accepted religious understandings in
appropriate cases.
3.4 Why do conservatives always want to force their values on
everybody else?
Conservatives aren't different from other people in that regard.
Anyone with a notion of how society should work will believe that
other people should follow the program he favors. For example, if
Liberal Jack thinks the government should be responsible for the
well-being of children and wants to support the arrangement through a
system of supervision, record-keeping and taxation that sends people
to jail who don't comply, and Conservative Jill thinks there should
be family responsibility supported by a system of sex roles enforced
by informal social sanctions, each will want what the public schools
teach to be consistent with his program.
Both will object to a school textbook entitled "Heather Has Two
Mommies Who Get Away with Paying No Taxes Because They Accept Payment
Only in Cash." Liberal Jack will object to the book "Heather's Mommy
Stays Home and Her Daddy Goes to the Office," while Conservative Jill
will object to other well-known texts. Even Libertarian Jerry might
have some problems with "Heather and Her Whole Family Organize to
Fight for Daycare and against Welfare Reductions." There is no
obvious reason to consider any of the three more tolerant than the
others.
At present, the issue of social tolerance comes up most often in
connection with sexual morality. For a discussion from a conservative
perspective, see the Sexual Morality FAQ,
http://turnabout.ath.cx:8000/node/6.
3.5 What role do conservatives think government should play in
enforcing moral values?
Since conservatives believe moral values should be determined more by
the traditions and feelings of the people and by informal traditional
authorities than by theory and formal decisions of an administrative
elite, they typically prefer to rely on informal social sanctions
rather than enforcement by government. Nonetheless, they believe that
government should recognize the moral institutions on which society
relies and should be run on the assumption that they are good things
that should not be undercut. Thus, conservatives oppose public school
curricula that depict traditional moral values as optional and
programs that fund their rejection, for example by subsidizing unwed
parents or artists who intend their works to outrage accepted
morality. They believe the state should support fundamental moral
institutions like the family, and oppose legislation that forbids
discrimination on moral grounds. How much more the government can or
should do to promote morality is a matter of experience and
circumstance. In this connection, as in others, conservatives
typically do not have very high expectations for what government can
achieve although they do view government as important.
3.6 Aren't conservatives racist sexist homophobes?
That depends on what those words mean. They are often used very
broadly.
"Racist"--Conservatives consider community loyalty important. The
communities people grow up in generally have some connection to
ethnicity. That's no accident, because ethnicity is what develops
when people live together with a common way of life for a long time.
Accordingly, conservatives think some degree of ethnic loyalty and
separateness is OK. Ethnicity is not the same thing as "race" as a
biological category; on the other hand, the two are difficult to
disentangle because both arise out of shared history and common
descent.
"Sexist"--All known societies have engaged in sex-role stereotyping,
with men undertaking more responsibility for public affairs and women
for home, family, and childcare. There are obvious benefits to such
stereotypes, since they make it far more likely that individual men
and women will complement each other and form stable and functional
unions for the rearing of children. Also, some degree of
differentiation seems to fit the presocial tendencies of men and
women better than unisex would. Conservatives see no reason to give
up those benefits, especially in view of the evident bad consequences
of the weakening of stereotypical obligations between the sexes in
recent decades.
"Homophobes"--Finally, sex-role stereotyping implies a tendency to
reject patterns of impulse, attitude and conduct that don't fit the
stereotypes, such as homosexuality.
For extended discussion from a conservative perspective of issues
relating to the liberal demand for "inclusiveness", see the
Anti-Inclusiveness FAQ, http://turnabout.ath.cx:8000/node/5, and the
Anti-Feminist Page, http://turnabout.ath.cx:8000/node/2.
3.7 What happens to feminists, homosexuals, racial minorities and
others marginalized in a conservative society?
The same as happens in a society based on the liberal conception of
inclusiveness to religious and social conservatives and to ethnics
who consider their ethnicity important. They find themselves in a
social order they may not like dominated by people who may look down
on them in which it is made difficult to live as they prefer.
In both kinds of society, people on the outs may be able to persuade
others to their way of thinking, practice the way of life they prefer
among themselves, or break off from the larger society and establish
their own communities. Such possibilities are in general more
realistic in a conservative society that emphasizes local control,
federalism, and minimal bureaucracy than in a society that demands
egalitarian social justice and therefore tries to establish a
universal homogeneous social order. For example, ethnic minorities in
a conservative society may be able to thrive through some combination
of adaptation and niche-finding, while in an "inclusive" society they
will find themselves on the receiving end of policies designed to
eliminate the public importance of their (and every other) ethnic
culture.
One important question is whether alienation from the social order
will be more common in a conservative or a liberal society. It seems
that it will be more common in a social order based on universal
implementation of a bureaucracy's conception of social justice than
in one that accepts the moral feelings and loyalties that arise over
time within particular communities. So it seems likely that a liberal
society will have more citizens than a conservative society who feel
that their deepest values and loyalties are at odds with the values
of the institutions that dominate their lives, and so feel
marginalized.
3.8 What about freedom?
Conservatives are strong supporters of social institutions that
realize and protect freedom, but recognize that such institutions
attain their full value as part of a larger whole. Freedom is fully
realized only when we are held responsible for the choices we make,
and it is most valuable in a setting in which things can readily be
chosen that add up to a good life. Accordingly, conservatives reject
perspectives that view freedom as an absolute, and recognize that the
institutions through which freedom is realized must include
principles of responsibility and must respect other goods without
which freedom would not be worth having.
In addition, conservatives believe there is a close connection
between freedom and participation in public affairs. Since how we
live affects others, freedom includes taking part in making society
what it is. Accordingly, the conservative principles of federalism,
local rule, and private property help realize freedom by devolving
power into many hands and making widespread participation in running
society a reality. Respect for tradition, the "democracy of the
dead," has the same effect.
3.9 And justice?
Justice between man and man is respect for concrete obligations and
individual responsibility. Conservatives take both very seriously.
Social justice involves the ordering of social life toward the good
for man. Social injustice involves systematic destruction of the
conditions for that good. Because the good for man cannot be fully
known, because it includes respect for each of us as a moral agent,
and because human affairs are infinitely complex, social justice can
never be fully achieved, nor achieved at all through imposition of a
preconceived overall design on society. Attempts to do the latter
have led to degradation of social and moral order and, in several
modern instances, horrendous crimes such as the murder of millions of
innocents. Social justice must therefore evolve rather than be
constructed, and its furtherance therefore requires acceptance of the
authority of tradition. The two cannot be separated.
Social justice is sometimes thought to mean promotion of equality
through comprehensive government action. That view cannot be correct
since men differ and what is just for them must also differ. In
addition, the goods which that view is concerned to divide
equally--wealth, power and the like--are not the ultimate human goods
and therefore can not be considered the ultimate concerns of justice.
Finally, a system guided by such a conception must defeat its own
purpose because it puts enormous and uncontrollable power in the
hands of those who control the government. Possession of such power,
of course, makes them radically unequal to those they rule.
4 Economic Issues
4.1 Why do conservatives say they favor virtue and community but in
fact favor laissez-faire capitalism? Doesn't laissez- faire
capitalism promote the opposite?
Conservatives typically are not fans of pure laissez-faire, although
they view economic liberty as one of the traditional liberties of the
American people that has served that people well. Many are skeptical
of free trade and most favor restraints on immigration for the sake
of permitting the existence and development of a reasonably coherent
national community. Nor do they oppose in principle the regulation or
suppression of businesses that affect the moral order of society,
such as prostitution, pornography, and the sale of certain drugs.
Conservatives do favor free markets when the alternative is to expand
bureaucracy to implement liberal goals, a process that clearly has
the effect of damaging virtue and community. Also, they tend to
prefer self-organization to central control because they believe that
overall administration of social life is impossible. They recognize
that like tradition the market reflects men's infinitely various and
often unconscious and inarticulate goals and perceptions far better
than any bureaucratic process could.
In any event, it's not clear that laissez-faire capitalism need
undermine moral community. "Laissez-faire capitalism" has to do with
limitations on what the government does and only indirectly with the
nature of society as a whole. While social statistics are a crude
measure of the state of community and morality, it is noteworthy that
in England crime and illegitimacy rates fell by about half from the
middle to the end of the 19th century, the heyday of untrammelled
capitalism, and that the rejection of laissez-faire has in fact been
accompanied by increasing social atomization.
4.2 Why don't conservatives care about what happens to the poor,
weak, discouraged, and outcast?
Conservatives do care about what happens to such people. That's why
they oppose government programs that multiply the poor, weak,
discouraged, and outcast by undermining and disrupting the network of
habits and social relations that enable people to carry on their
lives without depending on government bureaucracy.
Moral community declines when people rely on government to solve
their problems rather than on themselves and those to whom they have
some particular connection. It is the weak who suffer most from the
resulting moral chaos. Those who think that interventionist
liberalism means that the weak face fewer problems should consider
the effects on women, children, and blacks of trends of the past 40
years. That period has featured large increases in social welfare
expenditures, as well as increased crime, reduced educational
achievement, family instability, and slower progress reducing
poverty.
4.3 What about people for whom the usual support networks don't work?
Shouldn't the government do something for them?
The fundamental question is whether government should have ultimate
responsibility for individual material well-being. Conservatives
believe that it should not; giving it that responsibility means
despotism, since material well-being is a result of a complex of
things that in the end extends to the whole of life, and
responsibility for each individual case requires detailed control of
the whole complex.
Government responsibility for specific cases also means that what
happens to people, and therefore what they do, is the business of no
one in particular. If there's a serious problem, the government will
take care of it. Such an outlook destroys social ties and promotes
antisocial behavior. If an understanding of the role of government
weakens self-reliance and the moral bonds that give rise to
community, and cannot be made to work without an elaborate system of
compulsion, in the long run it will increase suffering and
degradation and so is the wrong understanding.
Conservatives are therefore suspicious of social welfare programs,
and especially demands that the government make sure there's an
answer for every case. Suspicion has rational limits. Some government
social welfare measures (free clinics for mothers and children or
local systems of support for deserving people) may well increase
social welfare even in the long term. However, because of the
obscurity of the issue, the difficulty in a mass democracy of
limiting the expansion of government benefit programs, and the value
of widespread participation in public life, the best resolution is
likely to be keeping central government involvement strictly limited,
and letting individuals, associations and localities support
voluntarily the institutions and programs they think socially
beneficial.
4.4 What about welfare for the middle classes, like social security,
medicare, the home mortgage interest deduction, and so on?
The most consistent conservatives want to get rid of them. Social
security and medicare, they say, are financially unsound, and are
socially harmful because they lead people capable of saving for their
own retirement and supporting their own parents to rely on the
government instead. They could better be replaced by private savings,
prefunded medical insurance, greater emphasis on intergenerational
obligations within families, and other arrangements that would evolve
if the government presence were reduced or eliminated.
Other conservatives distinguish these middle-class benefits from
welfare by the element of reciprocity. People get social security and
medicare only if they have already given a great deal to society, and
the mortgage interest deduction encourages people to become
homeowners, and so aquire a definite concrete stake in the local
society, and in any event the benefit consists only in the right to
keep more of one's earnings. Still others try to split the difference
somehow. As a practical matter, the reluctance of many conservatives
to disturb these arrangements is likely motivated in part by the
electoral power of their supporters.
4.5 If conserving is a good thing, why isn't ecology a conservative
cause?
Conservatism is concerned more with relations among men than those
between man and nature, so ecology is not one of its defining issues.
There is, however, nothing in conservatism intrinsically at odds with
ecological concerns. Some conservatives and conservative schools of
thought take such issues very seriously; others less so. There are,
of course, conservative grounds for criticizing or rejecting
particular aspects of the existing environmental movement, such as
overemphasis on central controls.
5 Conservatism in an Age of Established Liberalism
5.1 Why do conservatives talk as if the sky is about to fall and all
good things are in the past? People have been bemoaning the present
for a long time but things don't seem so bad today.
Conservatives don't predict more disasters than liberals, just
different disasters. Like other people they see both hopeful and
hazardous trends in the current situation. Post-communist societies
display the disastrous social consequences of energetic attempts to
implement post-Enlightenment radicalism. Less energetic attempts,
such as modern American liberalism, do not lead to similar effects as
quickly. Nonetheless, social trends toward breakdown of affiliations
among individuals, centralization of political power in irresponsible
elites, irreconcilable social conflicts, and increasing stupidity,
brutality and triviality in daily life suggest that those
consequences are coming just the same. Liberalism seems to make up in
thoroughness what it lacks in brutality. Why not worry about it?
5.2 Isn't conservatism essentially nostalgia for a past that never
was and can't be restored?
In substance, the objection is that the goals of conservatism are
neither serious nor achievable. That objection fails if in the end
conservatives are likely to get what they want.
Conservatism involves recognition that moral community is required
for the coherence of individual and social life, and that a
reasonably coherent way of life is a practical necessity. Current
trends toward radical individualism, egalitarianism and hedonism
destroy the possibility of moral community. Conservatives are
therefore confident that in some fashion existing trends will be
reversed and in important respects the moral and social future will
resemble the past more than the present. In particular, the future
will see less emphasis on individual autonomy and more on moral
tradition and essentialist ties.
The timing and form of the necessary reversal is of course uncertain.
It plainly can't be achieved through administrative techniques, the
method most readily accepted as serious and realistic today, so
conservatives' main political proposal is that aspects of the modern
state that oppose the reversal be trimmed or abandoned. Those who
consider modern trends beneficial and irreversible therefore accuse
conservatives of simple obstructionism. In contrast, those who see
that current trends lead to catastrophe and that a reversal must take
place expect that if conservatives aren't successful now their goals
will be achieved eventually, but very likely with more conflict and
destruction along the way and quite possibly with a less satisfactory
end result.
5.3 What's all this stuff about community and tradition? The groups
that matter these days are groups like yuppies, gays, and senior
citizens that people join as individuals based on interests and
perspectives rather than tradition.
Can this be true in the long run? When times are good people imagine
that they can define themselves as they choose, but a society will
not long exist if the only thing its members have in common is a
commitment to self-definition. The necessity for something beyond
that becomes clearest when the times require sacrifice. Membership in
a group with an identity developed and inculcated through tradition
becomes far more relevant then than career path, life-style option,
or stage of life. One of Bill Clinton's problems as president was
that people saw him as a yuppie who wouldn't die for anything; at
some point that kind of problem becomes decisive.
5.4 If conservatism is so great, why are most people seriously
involved in studying and dealing with social issues liberals?
Conservatives believe it is impossible to define and control the
considerations relevant to social life accurately enough to make a
technological approach to society possible. They reject efforts to
divide human affairs into compartments to be dealt with by experts as
part of a comprehensive plan for promoting goals like equality and
prosperity. Academic and other policy experts are defined as such by
their participation in such efforts. It would be surprising if they
did not prefer perspectives that give those efforts free rein, such
as welfare-state liberalism, over perspectives that are suspicious of
them.
5.5 How can tradition do anything but endorse the way things happen
to be--which at present means established liberalism?
If traditionalism were a formal rule to be applied literally it could
tell us nothing: the current state of a tradition is simply the
current practices, attitudes, beliefs and so on of the community
whose tradition it is. The point of tradition, however, is that
formal rules are inadequate. Tradition is not self-contained, and not
all parts of it are equally authoritative. It is a way of grasping
things that are neither merely traditional nor knowable apart from
tradition. One who accepts a religious tradition, for example, owes
his ultimate allegiance not to the tradition but to God, who is known
through the tradition. It is that allegiance to something that
exceeds and motivates the tradition that makes it possible to
distinguish what is authentic and living in the tradition from
nonessentials and corruptions.
5.6 Shouldn't modern conservatives at least favor things that are as
well-established as the welfare state and steady expansion of the
scope of the civil rights laws?
Yes, to the extent they are consistent with the older and more
fundamental parts of our social arrangements, such as family,
community, and traditional moral standards, and contribute to the
over-all functioning of the whole. Unfortunately, the things
mentioned fail on both counts. Existing welfare and civil rights
measures make sense only as part of a comprehensive centrally managed
system that is adverse to the connections that make community
possible, and is designed perpetually to reorder society as a whole
through bureaucratic decree. It is impossible for conservatives to
accept anything like such a system.
5.7 I was raised a liberal. Doesn't that mean that to be conservative
I should stay true to liberalism?
How can you be bound to a viewpoint that does not value loyalty and
can therefore survive only if it is not accepted by most people? For
someone raised a liberal, the conservative approach would be to look
for guidance to the things on which the people with whom he grew up
actually relied for coherence and stability, including the traditions
of the larger community upon which their way of life depended. Those
things will always include illiberal elements that enabled the
community to function as such.
6 The Conservative Rainbow
6.1 How do libertarians differ from conservatives?
In general, libertarians emphasize limited government more than
conservatives and believe the sole legitimate purpose of government
is the protection of property rights against force and fraud. Thus,
they usually consider legal restrictions on such things as
immigration, drug use, and prostitution to be illegitimate violations
of personal liberty. Many but not all libertarians hold a position
that might be described as economically Right (anti-socialist) and
culturally Left (opposed to what are called cultural repressiveness,
racism, sexism, homophobia, and so on), and tend to attribute to
state intervention the survival of things the cultural Left dislikes.
Speaking more abstractly, the libertarian perspective assigns to the
market the position conservatives assign to tradition as the great
accumulator and integrator of the implicit knowledge of society. Some
writers, such as F.A. Hayek, attempt to bridge the two perspectives
on that issue. In addition, libertarians tend to believe in strict
methodological individualism and absolute and universally valid human
rights, while conservatives are less likely to have the former
commitment and tend to understand rights by reference to the forms
they take in particular societies.
6.2 What are mainstream conservatives?
People who mix the traditionalist conservatism outlined in this FAQ
with varying proportions of libertarianism and liberalism. Any
conservative who gets elected or otherwise hits the mass market
(e.g., Rush Limbaugh) is likely to be a mainstream conservative.
Mainstream conservatives often speak the language of liberalism,
especially classical liberalism. Their appeal is nonetheless
conservative, at least in the sense that they reject more highly
developed forms of liberalism in favor of earlier forms that retain
more traces of non-liberal traditions.
6.3 What are neoconservatives?
A group of intellectual conservatives most of whom were liberals
until left-wing radicalism went mass-market in the sixties, and whose
main concern on the whole is to preserve and extend what they see as
the accomplishments of older forms of liberalism. Their positions
continue to evolve; some still have positions consistent with New
Deal liberalism, others treat an idealized "America" as a sort of
world-wide evangelistic cause, and still others have moved on to a
more complex and principled conservatism. Many of them have been
associated with the magazines "Commentary" and "The Public Interest,"
and a neopapalist contingent (now at odds with many other
neoconservatives over the relation between religion and politics) is
associated with the magazine "First Things." Their influence has been
out of proportion to their numbers, in part because they include a
number of well-known Northeastern and West Coast journalists and
academics and in part because having once been liberals or leftists
they still can speak the language and retain a certain credibility in
Establishment circles.
6.4 What are paleoconservatives?
Another group of conservatives most of whom were never liberals and
live someplace other than the Northeastern megalopolis or California.
The most prominent paleo publications are "Chronicles" and "Modern Age."
They first arose as a self-conscious group in opposition to
neoconservatives after the success of the neos in establishing
themselves within the Reagan administration, and especially after the
neos helped defeat the nomination of paleo Mel Bradford as head of
the National Endowment for the Humanities in favor of one of their
own, Bill Bennett. The views set forth in this FAQ are broadly
consistent with those of most paleoconservatives.
6.5 What are paleolibertarians?
A group of libertarians, notably Llewellyn Rockwell and the late
Murray Rothbard, who reject mainstream libertarianism as culturally
libertine and often squishy-soft on big government, and on most
issues share common ground with paleoconservatives. Their center on
the web is Mises.org, and a sampling of their views expressed in
popular form can be found at LewRockwell.com
6.6 What are Frankfurt School Neopaleoconservatives?
A group (so named for the first time in this FAQ) that has come by
way of Frankfurt School cultural criticism to a position reminiscent
of paleoconservatism emphasizing federalism, rejection of the
therapeutic managerial state, and (most recently) liturgy. Their
publication is "Telos," which now includes paleocon Paul Gottfried on
its editorial board and publishes Chronicles editor Thomas Fleming as
well as writers such as Alain de Benoist associated with the European
New Right (and for that matter the author of this FAQ.)
6.7 Where do the pro-life movement and religious right fit into all
this?
Like conservatism, both movements reject hedonism and radical
individual autonomy and emphasize the authority of
traditionally-based institutions like the family and religion in
opposition to that of the modern managerial state. Their general
goals can usually be supported on conservative principles, but they
tend to base their claims on principles of natural law or revelation
that are sometimes handled in an antitraditional way. As popular
movements in an antitraditional public order they often adopt
non-conservative styles of reasoning and rhetoric. Thus, these
movements have strong conservative elements but are not purely
conservative. It should be noted, however, that pure conservatism is
rare or nonexistent and may not even be coherent; the point of
conservatism is always some good other than maintenance of tradition
as such.
6.8 What are the differences between American conservatism and that
of other countries?
They correspond to the differences in political tradition. In
general, conservatism in America has a much stronger
capitalist/libertarian and populist streak than in other countries.
European conservatism once emphasized support for throne, altar and
sword as hierarchical bearers of authoritative traditions. When those
things collapsed European conservatism mostly disappeared, while in
America those hierarchies never existed so their collapse had less
effect. The national differences seem to be declining as other
countries become more like America and many American conservatives
become more alienated from their country's actual way of life and
system of government. Especially in recent years conservatism on both
sides of the Atlantic has emphasized opposition to new
antitraditional hierarchies of formal expertise and bureaucratic
position. However, American conservatism continues to have a stronger
religious streak than present-day European conservatism and also has
much broader and deeper support.
6.9 What do all these things called "conservatism" have in common?
Each rejects, through an appeal to something traditionally valued,
the liberal tendency to treat individual impulse and desire as the
final authorities. Differences in the preferred point of reference
give rise to different forms of conservatism. Those who appeal to the
independent and responsible individual become libertarian
conservatives, while those who appeal to a traditional culture or to
God become traditionalist or religious conservatives. Depending on
circumstances, the alliance among different forms of conservatism may
be closer or more tenuous. In America today libertarian,
traditionalist and religious conservatives find common ground in
favoring federalism and constitutional limited government and
opposing the managerial welfare state.
--
Jim Kalb
http://jimkalb.co