Why I Call Myself a Conservative
The gist of it is that reading, thinking and experience have brought me to some conclusions, and these seem best classified as conservative in the present social and political climate. Among my conclusions are the ones listed below. I will mainly just state them. I see my conservatism as I see my life, as subject to continual examination and reexamination, as more project and program than fixed result.
1. The individual is the locus of being and value. As important as groups and institutions are, they exist for the sake of the individual and his flourishing and not vice versa. We need groups and institutions to socialize us, thereby lifting us from the plane of the merely animal; but the true task is one of self-individuation. Collective entities interfere with this process of self-individuation and so must be kept in check. This implies a commitment to limited government, constitutionally based, with enumerated powers.
2. Accept #1, and you cannot be a liberal in the current acceptation of this term. Contemporary liberalism is scarcely distinguishable from socialism, which of course implies the subordination of the individual to the collective and the curtailment of the individual’s liberty. And of course accepting #1 rules out accepting more extreme forms of collectivism and totalitarianism such as communism and such combined political-religious ideologies as Islamo-totalitarianism.
3. An economic corollary of #1 is that the money people earn belongs to them and not to the government. The individual does not have to justify his keeping of his money; the government has to justify its taking of it. Inequalities of wealth are inevitable because people have different levels of ability and make different uses of the abilities they possess in accordance with their free choices. There is nothing wrong with inequality as such. As a matter of fact, economic inequalities benefit the worst off, making them better off than they would have been without the inequality. But this is not the justification for inequality. It needs no justification since there is nothing wrong with inequality as such. This is a key difference between conservatives and liberals/leftists.
4. Government is necessary for human flourishing and so is morally justifiable as a necessary means to this end. We need government to do jobs we cannot do ourselves. But government is a mere means, not an end in itself. This is why asking how to ‘save Social Security’ is to ask the wrong question. The right question to ask is how to arrange for individuals to have secure retirements. There is no rational presumption in favor of the maintenance of existing government programs since they are merely means to ends, not ends in themselves. It would be better to have no government if that were possible. But it is not possible. If anarchism is the doctrine that no government is morally justifiable, then a conservative cannot be an anarchist.
5. The justification for #4 is in the theory of human nature. Conservatives take a sober and realistic view of human nature. They maintain that the world is a dangerous place, that it always has been and always will be, and that that these are not contingent facts but necessary consequences of human nature. This conviction distinguishes conservatives from liberals and leftists on the one hand and anarchists and libertarians on the other. For the conservative, his political brethren to the Right and Left of him cherish too sangine a view of the world and the people in it. They dream of possibilitities that are not genuine (realizable) possibilities, possibilities which are such that, if one tried to realize them, would make things worse. For example, the notion of a classless society does not not correspond to a realizable possibility, and 20th century attempts to achieve it led to mass murder on an unprecedented scale.
The essential point is that conservatives believe that there is such a thing as human nature. Human beings are not indefinitely malleable, and they are certainly not perfectible by human effort whether individually or collectively. Improvable yes, perfectible no. Conservatives understand that human beings are capable of good but also of great evil, and that the propensity for evil is fixed and ineradicable. A conservative may seek to provide a metaphysical or theological underpinning to this observed fact of the human inclination to evil behavior, or he might just accept it as a fact that the study of history reveals. Conservatism and theism fit together nicely, but there is no logical necessity that a conservative be a theist any more than there is a logical necessity that a liberal be an atheist. There is a Religious Left just as there is an Irreligious Right.
6. A consequence of #5 is that the conservative sees the need not only for various checks on the power of government, but also the need for various checks on the power of individuals and corporations. Conservatives thus avoid the equal but opposite errors of liberals and libertarians. Whereas the liberal tendency is to look to government for the solution of problems, the libertarian tendency is to see government as incapable of doing anything right. This leads to such absurd libertarian proposals as the selling of the National Parks. The libertarian in his naivete thinks that the people who would acquire them would, motivated by their own self-interest, manage them wisely, forgetting that greed is a powerful force in human life, a force that must be kept in check. The libertarian, like the anarchist, thinks that human beings are better than they are, that they know their self-interest and will act in accordance with it. The evidence is otherwise. Many people do not know their true, long-term, self-interest and even if they did would not act in accordance with it. One simply has to have one’s eyes open to see that this is true.
7. It is sometimes superficially maintained that while conservatives want to conserve the old, liberals want to progress to the new. This is superficial because there is nothing in the nature of conservatism to require opposition to change as such. It is also obvious that when
liberals/socialists/progressives gain power they aim to consolidate it and maintain their status quo. Here their progressivism meets a severe limit. The Soviet state did not ‘wither away’ in the approved manner, but simply collapsed und the weight of its own ‘internal contradictions’ with the aid of some well-placed kicks from Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II. It is easy to show that on specific issues such as Social Security reform, it is conservatives who play the reformers and progressives the reactionaries.
It would be better to say that for conservatives, there is a defeasible presumption in favor of traditional ways of doing things, and a certain scepticism about the application to human affairs of a reason unchecked by traditional judgments. The very fact that a policy, institution, mode of comportment works is prima facie evidence that it ought to be treated with some respect. Given their realistic (neither optimistic nor pessimistic) view of human nature – see #5 above – conservatives do not hanker after ‘pie in the future.’ They work for a better future without denigrating the past or the present.
The gist of it is that reading, thinking and experience have brought me to some conclusions, and these seem best classified as conservative in the present social and political climate. Among my conclusions are the ones listed below. I will mainly just state them. I see my conservatism as I see my life, as subject to continual examination and reexamination, as more project and program than fixed result.
(show)
1. The individual is the locus of being and value. As important as groups and institutions are, they exist for the sake of the individual and his flourishing and not vice versa. We need groups and institutions to socialize us, thereby lifting us from the plane of the merely animal; but the true task is one of self-individuation. Collective entities interfere with this process of self-individuation and so must be kept in check. This implies a commitment to limited government, constitutionally based, with enumerated powers.
2. Accept #1, and you cannot be a liberal in the current acceptation of this term. Contemporary liberalism is scarcely distinguishable from socialism, which of course implies the subordination of the individual to the collective and the curtailment of the individual’s liberty. And of course accepting #1 rules out accepting more extreme forms of collectivism and totalitarianism such as communism and such combined political-religious ideologies as Islamo-totalitarianism.
3. An economic corollary of #1 is that the money people earn belongs to them and not to the government. The individual does not have to justify his keeping of his money; the government has to justify its taking of it. Inequalities of wealth are inevitable because people have different levels of ability and make different uses of the abilities they possess in accordance with their free choices. There is nothing wrong with inequality as such. As a matter of fact, economic inequalities benefit the worst off, making them better off than they would have been without the inequality. But this is not the justification for inequality. It needs no justification since there is nothing wrong with inequality as such. This is a key difference between conservatives and liberals/leftists.
4. Government is necessary for human flourishing and so is morally justifiable as a necessary means to this end. We need government to do jobs we cannot do ourselves. But government is a mere means, not an end in itself. This is why asking how to ‘save Social Security’ is to ask the wrong question. The right question to ask is how to arrange for individuals to have secure retirements. There is no rational presumption in favor of the maintenance of existing government programs since they are merely means to ends, not ends in themselves. It would be better to have no government if that were possible. But it is not possible. If anarchism is the doctrine that no government is morally justifiable, then a conservative cannot be an anarchist.
5. The justification for #4 is in the theory of human nature. Conservatives take a sober and realistic view of human nature. They maintain that the world is a dangerous place, that it always has been and always will be, and that that these are not contingent facts but necessary consequences of human nature. This conviction distinguishes conservatives from liberals and leftists on the one hand and anarchists and libertarians on the other. For the conservative, his political brethren to the Right and Left of him cherish too sangine a view of the world and the people in it. They dream of possibilitities that are not genuine (realizable) possibilities, possibilities which are such that, if one tried to realize them, would make things worse. For example, the notion of a classless society does not not correspond to a realizable possibility, and 20th century attempts to achieve it led to mass murder on an unprecedented scale.
The essential point is that conservatives believe that there is such a thing as human nature. Human beings are not indefinitely malleable, and they are certainly not perfectible by human effort whether individually or collectively. Improvable yes, perfectible no. Conservatives understand that human beings are capable of good but also of great evil, and that the propensity for evil is fixed and ineradicable. A conservative may seek to provide a metaphysical or theological underpinning to this observed fact of the human inclination to evil behavior, or he might just accept it as a fact that the study of history reveals. Conservatism and theism fit together nicely, but there is no logical necessity that a conservative be a theist any more than there is a logical necessity that a liberal be an atheist. There is a Religious Left just as there is an Irreligious Right.
6. A consequence of #5 is that the conservative sees the need not only for various checks on the power of government, but also the need for various checks on the power of individuals and corporations. Conservatives thus avoid the equal but opposite errors of liberals and libertarians. Whereas the liberal tendency is to look to government for the solution of problems, the libertarian tendency is to see government as incapable of doing anything right. This leads to such absurd libertarian proposals as the selling of the National Parks. The libertarian in his naivete thinks that the people who would acquire them would, motivated by their own self-interest, manage them wisely, forgetting that greed is a powerful force in human life, a force that must be kept in check. The libertarian, like the anarchist, thinks that human beings are better than they are, that they know their self-interest and will act in accordance with it. The evidence is otherwise. Many people do not know their true, long-term, self-interest and even if they did would not act in accordance with it. One simply has to have one’s eyes open to see that this is true.
7. It is sometimes superficially maintained that while conservatives want to conserve the old, liberals want to progress to the new. This is superficial because there is nothing in the nature of conservatism to require opposition to change as such. It is also obvious that when
liberals/socialists/progressives gain power they aim to consolidate it and maintain their status quo. Here their progressivism meets a severe limit. The Soviet state did not ‘wither away’ in the approved manner, but simply collapsed und the weight of its own ‘internal contradictions’ with the aid of some well-placed kicks from Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II. It is easy to show that on specific issues such as Social Security reform, it is conservatives who play the reformers and progressives the reactionaries.
It would be better to say that for conservatives, there is a defeasible presumption in favor of traditional ways of doing things, and a certain scepticism about the application to human affairs of a reason unchecked by traditional judgments. The very fact that a policy, institution, mode of comportment works is prima facie evidence that it ought to be treated with some respect. Given their realistic (neither optimistic nor pessimistic) view of human nature – see #5 above – conservatives do not hanker after ‘pie in the future.’ They work for a better future without denigrating the past or the present.
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Posted by William F. Vallicella on
Monday April 4, 2005 at 2:47pm
My preliminary reply (to our previous discussion and to this entry which is an extension of it to some degree) is that I am (and was) thinking in terms of tendencies of people, not in terms of tendencies of categories. My previous claim, that the conservative tendency is to (positively and negatively) do thus-n-such, and the liberal ('progressive') tendency is to (positively and negatively) do this-n-that, was meant to be tied eventually to (and by) the obvious observation that (for instance) categorical 'progressives' find it just as necessary to hold and defend truths they believe they have found, as any categorical 'conservative'.
Since it seems to me that intellectual morbidity is avoided at the level of the individual by a recognition that these two tendencies complement one another, and so should be encouraged in service to each other; I am concluding that at the level of interpersonal relationships, we should be striving for the same complementary cooperation between individuals who by temperament tend to emphasize one tendency more than the other.
Yet, since I know better than to think this state of cooperation already exists (often it doesn't even at the intrapersonal level), and since I recognize that this failure arises from corruptions (intentional and otherwise) of the tendencies in individuals, then I find it practical to ask: how should I, as an individual, be working toward reconciling these tendencies in myself, and in my relationships with other people--including people who (by ideology and/or temperament) may reasonably be considered to be my opponents (even my outright enemies)?
That doesn't mean I'm against the use of polemos; but it does mean that my polemic ought to be constrained by my recognition of the ideal to be striven for--including by whatever I ought to be doing to be legitimately trustworthy for my opponents.
The challenge with conservatism is that it leads to great discussions on where to draw a line, as opposed to the liberals and libertarians that would have no line, being at either end of the continuum. As a consequence there will always be a flow back and forth as the discussions are held and first one then another opinion holds sway. I see great value in this, as static environments tend not to be able to react as well as fluid ones, and they also prevent adaptability over time.
If you are denying that there is a spectrum of libertarian and liberal positions, then I would disagree. One way to order the positions is: anarchism-libertarianism-conservatism-liberalism-hard leftism, with each representing a spectrum of subpositions. This ordering is based on the individualism vs. collectivism opposition.
Jason,
I am not sure much is to be gained by thinking of conservatives as wanting to 'conserve' or liberals as wanting to 'progress' since both want both. It is better to explain the differences in terms of specific issues such as that of the size and scope of gov't. In the economic sphere, for example, conservatives want less gov't interference while liberals want more.
Yes, I know quite well that both want both; I essentially said that both not only want both but _need_ both.
Yes, I know it is better to explain the differences in terms of specific issues. I also know that the level of issues such as size and scope of gov't, is _not_ the most useful level at describing any difference which does justice to the monikers they prefer (conservative on one hand and liberal or progressive on the other); the economic sphere being a perfect example: 'conservatives' are not wanting to 'conserve' current levels of government.
This is why I went (in my reply to your earlier post) to the level of metaphysics, and sought to find a worthwhile definition of conservative and progressive _tendencies_, which I discover complement and reinforce one another, and which are also reflected at less fundamental levels of identification (such as the religious, economic and political)--whether within an individual or in interpersonal cooperation.
The specific issue I used, was truth.
So, when I (for istance) am trying to preserve truths I believe have been discovered, and/or trying to oppose a change into what I believe is error (which would certainly not be progress), then I am behaving in what may without gross abuse of language be called a 'conservative' way; and inclinations I have to do this may be called a 'conservative' tendency. When I am trying to discover truth to believe, and/or trying to oppose what I believe to be errors that are being retained, then I am behaving in what may without gross abuse of language be called a 'progressive' way; and inclinations I have to do this may be called a 'progressive' tendency.
When I look toward less fundamental levels of issues, I find that broadly speaking the people identifying themselves as conservatives, and the ones identifying themselves as progressives, are basing their identifications as such, including their actions as such, on this principle, either tacitly or explicitly. This (along with the observation that any given individual tends to have _both_ tendencies, upon which he or she acts) helps explain why they (we) act in ways that might on the face of it seem opposite to our preferred labels of self-description; without reducing those labels to mere vapor. If 'conservativism' means only what people who call themselves 'conservatives' happen to do, then at best we're sidestepping why they would bother to call themselves 'conservative' at all.
I also recognize that there are corruptions (willful and otherwise) of these tendencies (inventing rather than discovering truth being a typical corruption of the progressive tendency, for instance; equating the status quo with the truth itself being a typical corruption of the conservative tendency as another example), which again helps account for actual (not only apparently) divergent behavior. And I recognize that a particular person may lean more toward one type of tendency rather than the other, and that this can (and often does) change throughout the life of the person.
I will emphasize again (since apparently basing my whole point on recognizing this, was not enough to exonerate me from the claim that I'm not recognizing this {wry g}), that a given person exhibits and needs _both_ these tendencies (in non-corrupted fashions). Which means that interpersonal relationships need both these tendencies, too, working with and trusting one another. (Maybe this is the sticking point?--that I am concluding there is some proper good to be sought, protected, and ideally even submitted to, represented even among and by persons who are our opponents?)
The practical question, then, is how to achieve this cooperation and trust--the intensity and intimacy, and dangers, of which I related in conjugal imagery.
(In any case, since I'm describing a highly complex situation in complex ways, and taking account of the complexities, at length {g}, may we at least agree that I am not superficially maintaining that "conservatives [simply or merely] want to conserve the old, and liberals want to progress to the new"? Even at the extreme reductio of my position, I certainly did _NOT_ use oldness and newness as the criteria.)
Jason