Next Generation Conservatives

Jay Nordlinger's "Impromptus" (which he has been producing at a delightfully rapid pace this week so far) included (scroll down a bit) a letter today from "someone with a close knowledge of Harvard Law School." This paragraph in the letter struck me:

One thing that really bothers me is that the brightest students seem to really want to have a cause to pursue. The Left gives them many causes, but the Right offers little — very few alternatives. I guess conservatives generally just go to the business world (or big law firms, in the case of law-school graduates). Maybe this works out in the end, but it still feels like this generation of college students is being lost even more to the left-wingers than before.

There is a stereotype out there that has some small truth to it: Last generation's conservatives just wanted the government to leave them alone while they worked at their jobs and raised their families. This generation, as a whole--conservatives and liberals--want a sense of wider community. And rightly so. But I don't think modern conservatism--which, of all "political philosophies," ought to be the most about community--has done a good job of offering that. And conservatism, of all "political philosophies," is the least about ideology, the most about lifestyle and relationships.

We younger generation of conservatives need to find ways to be involved in our communities, find causes that are about people. We've all seen how many people the Left is willing to hurt in their crusade for abstractions--equality, liberty, fraternity, as it were. How is it that they are the ones who are seen as having a monopoly on compassion? It's time to stop blaming society for seeing liberals as the compassionate ones, and ask ourselves what we can do to change a perception that we know to be false.

Liberals And Conservatives Just Have Different Moral Values...?

A friend, who has become increasingly liberal as he has progressed through college, recently sent me an article that purports to shed light on why conservatives and liberals have honest misunderstands that lead to name-calling. I wish I still had it--and I may be able to coax it out of him again--but its title was something like, "'Are Conservatives Stupid, Or Evil?" The article's surprising (to its readers) conclusion: Neither! Liberals are simply more concerned with how proposed policies will affect everyone involved, while conservatives are more concerned with in-group loyalty, purity, and respect for authority.

Now, I'm a strange conservative because I'm a strange person. By that, I mean that I have made political philosophy a much deeper area of study and thought than the vast majority of Americans. My liberalism--that is, American conservatism--is grounded in a conception of the proper scope of government that also happened to be the major contributor to the United States Constitution. It has its roots in John Locke, the Baron de Montesquieu, and several others. This conception was transmitted to me partially through my father, and partially through a man I consider to be an intellectual hero nearly unparalleled in American history: William F. Buckley. It is not based on feelings or good intentions; it is a intellectual belief.

Doubtless, the political views of some conservatives stems from a respect for authority, purity, and the in-group. But my classical liberalism, and those of many of my friends, is based specifically on government non-intervention, and none of those moral values from which conservatives' views supposedly stem. But it is easy to see how a liberal, like those whose research is used to support the article's argument, would perceive conservatives' values in this way.

When progressives look at policy, they do indeed look at its effects on various groups. In fact, this is their main viewpoint for policy. Their intent is to make groups equal; thus, affirmative action counteracts the corrupt power relationships between race and gender groups, progressive income taxation counteracts the corrupt power relationships between rich and poor, etc. From this standpoint, it is easy to see how conservative views could be seen as deliberately unequalizing. In some cases, particularly the issue of gay marriage, this might possibly be a fair characterization. But in the case of flat taxation, lowered government spending, and decreases in government services, conservative concerns are not about power relationships between citizen groups, but simply between the government and the citizenry.

This concept is so foreign to most modern liberals' minds--and to the minds of people in general, often--that it usually does not even occur to them. When it is made explicit, it is more often an object of wonder than a position seriously to be debated. More harmfully, history has been often written by Progressives--whose devotion to cartoonish images of reality that constitute a sort of modern Big Lie is legendary and continues to this day--who have forgotten many important details of that important time in our nation's history when progressivism overtook classical liberalism as the nation's most influential political philosophy. (This is the reason that I consider Jonah Goldberg's book to be so crucial to a real understanding of America's political history, as well as modern liberalism in general.)

Are conservatives evil? Dumb? Morally different? Not at all; they are the out-group of an elite cultural liberalism that, contrary to conventional wisdom, favors above all things purity, the in-group, and respect for the authority of government.

I Am A Heretic

My friend "ThinkCarpeDiem" has posted an objection to this post about the competition between liberalism (i.e. modern conservatism) and progressivism (i.e. modern liberalism). Unless there is an outcry for it, I shall not post that objection--you can look at the link yourself--but I think the counter-comment I wrote clarifies my position on this issue. Read on:

TCD:
Thanks for the comments. I think you may have misunderstood
what I wrote, because I'm not entirely sure what relation your comment has on my
post. But I shall attempt a response.

1. I think your impression is that I mean that liberals are not smart. That's not what I said at all, and in fact there are many quite intelligent progressives both in the past and now. What I said was that progressivism is not an intellectual movement;
it isn't about philosophy, it's about action. It has certain underlying
assumptions, primarily that government has the authority to take action in any
area of life if it may improve people's lives. It assumes that all those
opposed to the sort of government action they desire are either immoral,
ignorant, or insane. These facts can be traced throughout the history of
progressivism.

2. I don't believe progressives are inferiors. I do believe they are incredibly wrong about the role of government, and dangerously so. I do not flinch from speaking the truth that communism, fascism, syndicalism, and many other utopian dreams were--and are--motivated by the same or similar ideals expressed in the modern progressivist movement. Finally, I do not respect those who, having reflected upon the situation, would unhesitatingly choose to take away my freedoms for their view of a better society. There are many who would choose to take away my freedoms without inspecting where such a choice takes them or what motivates it. But the
sort of person who has thought about it and still chooses to enslave me to their
utopian vision is the sort of "well-intentioned busybody" that C.S. Lewis
decried and who is worthy of no respect or admiration, only contempt and
defiance.

3. I know that your dream is that good-natured debate and
reflective thought will bring everyone to a consensus about what should be done,
or at least amicable disagreement. The problem is that there is no debate
between classical liberalism and progressivism. There is no intellectual
defense of progressivism that has been presented for many years, because
progressives for many years have not considered themselves in need of
defense. Their good intentions, reverence for "science," and impulse to
action are all the evidence they need that they are right and their opponents
are wrong. This is the reason that progressivism has become a secular
religion. Classical liberalism is then not simply a competing view to be
debated, but a heresy to be demonized.

Whither The GOP: Positives and Negatives

Yuval Levin wrote a piece for Commentary recently, entitled, "Not Quite Dead," in response to an obituary written by George Packer of The New Yorker for a political philosophy--you can guess which one. Here's an interesting bit:

Let me suggest two things he might have noted. First of all, the kind of
intellectual turmoil and self-searching he cites would be almost unimaginable on
the left, today or at most points in the past half century. Conservatism is an
intellectual movement in a way that American liberalism generally hasn’t been.
For a long time, American liberals could draw their ideas from the European
Left, and from the socialist experiment. The fall of communism—which certainly
ended an era for the Right, and left many conservatives searching for a clear
purpose—was far more of a challenge to the Left, and one the left has yet to
recover from, or even fully engage. Clintonian triangulation helped pass the
time for a while in the 90’s, and anti-Bushism has helped since, but what is the
worldview underlying Obama’s and Clinton’s platforms today? The relative absence
of heated arguments about that question on the left is not a sign of strength.

As Jonah Goldberg would point out--what? I'm reading his book, alright?--modern liberals (i.e. progressives) would rather not probe their philosophical foundations, since it has a genealogy that goes back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the French Revolution, and more recently Karl Marx, with the discomfiting philosophical off-shoots of fascism and communism. Moreover, progressivism is all about improving mankind, both in its external environment and internal character. Thus, they have no need for a political philosophy beyond this; there is need only for science to tell us what government ought to do, and do it. Fascism, Communism, and the Wilsonian experiment, the New Deal, and the Great Society are all experiments toward this goal.

Conservatism--that is, classical liberalism--on the other hand, is uniquely an intellectual and philosophical entity. Unlike progressivism, it has always been fed through discourse and argumentation rather than action. This is undoubtedly a time in which progressives see the door open for bold new experimentation in government problem-solving, but with the continuation of conservative stalwarts such as National Review, Commentary, and The Weekly Standard, as well as the burgeoning blogosphere and new and important thinkers, it is also a time of intellectual rebirth for classical liberalism.

Take heart; here are a few past presidential elections that featured only progressives, after which liberalism lived on:

1912 (Progressive Party endorsed Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson ran as the progressive hero of Princeton)
1916 (Charles Evans Hughes had a progressive track record, Wilson was Wilson)
1928 (revered progressive Herbert Hoover won this, no politcal conservative he)
1932 (Hoover wasn't going fast enough for progressives anymore)
1936 (Republican Alf Landon supported much of the New Deal)
1944 (Thomas Dewey accepted most of the New Deal)
1948 (Thomas Dewey vs Truman)
1952 (Eisenhower continued the New Deal, and Adlai Stevenson was a famed progressive leader)
1956 (see before)
1960 (leftist Nixon vs militarist Kennedy)
1968 (Nixon vs revered progressive Humphrey)
1972 (McGovern. Nuff said.)
1976
1988
1992
1996
2000
2004

Okay, that leaves 1920's Harding, 1924's Coolidge, 1940's Wendell Wilkie, 1964's Barry Goldwater, and 1980's and 1984's Ronald Reagan. Harding was philosophically better than Wilson and certainly left the country in better shape, but hardly distinguished himself. Coolidge basically represented the American resentment toward progressivism that lingered after Wilson's suppression of domestic dissent. Thereafter, Wendell Wilkie managed to win nomination only because of Republicans' distrust of its party's more distinguished but dovish aspirants. 1964 was a watershed moment, as the first truly classical liberal nominee in forty years managed to become the Republican nominee. The New Conservatism, by now the intellectually robust movement it is today, then gave us Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Some leading lights have faded, but new ones are coming. Until then, keep standing up to those who would take away your freedoms.

Why I Am Not A Conservative

That great book by F. A. Hayek was brought to my mind the other day while musing about a discussion I had with one of my friends about universal health care. In it, the great classical liberal thinker explained that the people Americans call "conservatives" are actually in the liberal tradition, since they believe in voluntary associations and lack of government coercion. Modern "liberals," meanwhile, are really in the socialist tradition, since they favor government coercion for the purpose of enhancing equality; they consider themselves liberals because they believe that freedoms can only be delivered through social and economic equality.

This is an excellent Wikipedia article on the subject, from which I learned much to write this post.

The main distinctions are, as I see it, that the classical liberal believes that rights are inherent in man and negative in nature; that is, that one has the right not to be coerced through violence. (The right not to be coerced through violence is a tricky one, and I shall probably take it up in another post.) By contrast, the modern liberal believes that rights are delivered to man by government and are positive in nature; in other words, that a government can guarantee many different rights, including the right to health care, the right to food, the right to housing, the right to free speech, etc.

Much like the Utilitarianism and Social Contract Theory we're studying in my Ethics class, I find modern liberalism to be too compatible with social engineering for my taste. In my view, classical liberalism respects the dignity of each individual human being--after all, we are made in imagine Dei--and thus is far the more liberal view.

I'm not really a conservative--I'm a classical liberal. But it's probably too late to reclaim that word, tarnished by long association with an illiberal American left wing.