Conservatism Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Jim Kalb
Posting-Frequency: monthly
--text follows this line--
Conservatism FAQ
July 1, 2009 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://jimkalb.com/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://jimkalb.com/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://jimkalb.com/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://jimkalb.com/node/5, and the
Anti-Feminist Page, http://jimkalb.com/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.com