Everything you'd like to know about conservatives
I was asked a while back as to why it is I'm a conservative. The question was so broad I wasn't sure how to address it. My follow-through being what it is, I still haven't after months. Then I remembered the following.
Depending on how much or little you wish to read, herein is a link to everything you could ask about conservatism.
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/conservatism/faq/
Conservatism FAQ
May 1, 2004 Version
This FAQ, posted monthly, attempts to deal with common 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.
A current version of this FAQ can also be obtained by sending the
message "send usenet/news.answers/conservatism/faq" by email to
mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu. A hypertext version is available at
http://jkalb.freeshell.org/web/consfaq.html. For further discussion and
relevant links, see the Traditionalist Conservatism Page at
http://jkalb.freeshell.org/web/trad.html.
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 What's the difference between following tradition and refusing to
think?
1.4 Why isn't it better to reason things out from the beginning?
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 do conservatives always want to force their values on everybody
else?
3.4 What role do conservatives think government should play in enforcing
moral values?
3.5 Aren't conservatives racist sexist homophobes?
3.6 What happens to feminists, homosexuals, racial minorities and others
marginalized in a conservative society?
3.7 What about freedom?
3.8 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 tradition 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 evolves through strengthening of things that work
and rejection of things that lead 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 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.
Truth is not altogether out of reach, but our access to it is
incomplete and often indirect. Since it can not be reduced wholly
to our possession, 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.
1.4 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.
1.5 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
has guided and motivated 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. 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.
In addition, conservatism is not rejection of all change as such,
but of intentional change of a peculiarly sweeping sort
characteristic of the period beginning with the French Revolution
and guided by Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment philosophies
such as liberalism and Marxism. It is recognition that the world is
not our creation, and that there are permanent things that 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 contemporary liberalism furthers the
interests of the powerful social classes that support it, and that
movements aiming at social justice typically become intensely
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 overemphasizing the role of theory in politics it
destroys reciprocity and mutual accommodation between rulers and
ruled.
In addition, conservatism is not self-contained; its recognition of
existing practice as a standard does not mean denial that there is
any other standard. It recognizes that moral habits evolve with
experience and changing circumstances, that social arrangements
that come to be too much at odds with the moral feelings of a
people change or disappear, and that there are transcendent
standards as well as those that exist as part of the institutions
of a particular people. It recognizes that there can be
improvements as well as corruptions.
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.
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.
To the extent the necessity of practical reliance on particular
persons is viewed as something oppressive and unequal that the
state should remedy, family values are rejected. Conservatives
oppose that rejection.
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. Such
limits often arise because 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 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 tax system 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://jkalb.freeshell.org/web/sex.html.
3.4 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 than by theory and
formal decisions, they typically prefer to rely on informal social
sanctions rather than enforcement by government. Nonetheless, they
believe that government should recognize the moral values 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 such 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 high expectations for what government can
achieve.
3.5 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 a more extended discussion from a conservative perspective of
issues relating to the liberal demand for "inclusiveness", see the
Anti-Inclusiveness FAQ, http://jkalb.freeshell.org/web/inclus.html.
3.6 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 may be 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, to practice the way of
life they prefer among themselves, or to 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 well be able to
thrive or at least maintain themselves 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 peripheral to the concerns of the institutions that
dominate their lives, and so feel marginalized.
3.7 What about freedom?
Conservatives are strong supporters of social institutions that
realize and protect freedom, but believe 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
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.
3.8 And justice?
Justice between man and man is respect for concrete obligations and
individual responsibility. Conservatives take both very seriously.
Social justice is the ordering of social life toward the good for
man. Social injustice is systematic destruction of the conditions
for existence of that good. Because the good for man can not 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 horrendous crimes including, in several
modern instances, the murder of millions of innocents. Since social
justice must evolve rather than be constructed its furtherance
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 can not be
correct since men differ and what is just for them must therefore
also differ. In addition, the goods which that view is concerned to
divide equally--wealth, power and the like--do not appear to be
the ultimate human goods and therefore can not appropriately 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 strongly 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
only 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 they live with.
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 an end to progress in 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.
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 government does things that weaken
self-reliance and the moral bonds that give rise to community, and
that can not be made to work without an elaborate system of
compulsion, in the long run it will increase suffering and
degradation.
Conservatives are therefore suspicious of social welfare programs,
especially attempts at categorical solutions. 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 all 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 in the case of the mortgage interest deduction 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. Why not
worry about them?
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.
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. Accordingly, they
reject efforts to divide human affairs into compartments to be
dealt with by experts as part of an overall plan for promoting
comprehensive 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 free rein to them, 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 it could of course tell us
very little; 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 knowable apart from it nor merely
traditional. 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 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 points. Existing welfare and civil rights
measures make sense only as part of a comprehensive centrally
managed system that is adverse to the connections among men that
make community possible, and is designed to reorder society as a
whole through bureaucratic decree. It is very difficult 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 feel bound to a viewpoint that does not value loyalty
and can therefore survive only if it is fundamentally 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
fundamental 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. Some 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; typically, 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 conservatives most of whom were liberals until left-wing
radicalism went mass-market in the sixties. Their positions
continue to evolve; some still have positions consistent with New
Deal liberalism, while others have moved on to a more full-blown
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 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 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 consistent with those of most paleoconservatives as
well as many neoconservatives.
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.
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. (It has also published 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 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 ultimately 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. In
America those hierarchies never existed, and especially in recent
years conservatism has emphasized opposition to new antitraditional
hierarchies of formal expertise and bureaucratic position. These
differences seem to be declining as other countries become more
like America and as many American conservatives become more
alienated from their country's actual way of life and system of
government.
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.
--
Depending on how much or little you wish to read, herein is a link to everything you could ask about conservatism.
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/conservatism/faq/
Conservatism FAQ
May 1, 2004 Version
This FAQ, posted monthly, attempts to deal with common 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.
A current version of this FAQ can also be obtained by sending the
message "send usenet/news.answers/conservatism/faq" by email to
mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu. A hypertext version is available at
http://jkalb.freeshell.org/web/consfaq.html. For further discussion and
relevant links, see the Traditionalist Conservatism Page at
http://jkalb.freeshell.org/web/trad.html.
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 What's the difference between following tradition and refusing to
think?
1.4 Why isn't it better to reason things out from the beginning?
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 do conservatives always want to force their values on everybody
else?
3.4 What role do conservatives think government should play in enforcing
moral values?
3.5 Aren't conservatives racist sexist homophobes?
3.6 What happens to feminists, homosexuals, racial minorities and others
marginalized in a conservative society?
3.7 What about freedom?
3.8 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 tradition 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 evolves through strengthening of things that work
and rejection of things that lead 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 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.
Truth is not altogether out of reach, but our access to it is
incomplete and often indirect. Since it can not be reduced wholly
to our possession, 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.
1.4 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.
1.5 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
has guided and motivated 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. 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.
In addition, conservatism is not rejection of all change as such,
but of intentional change of a peculiarly sweeping sort
characteristic of the period beginning with the French Revolution
and guided by Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment philosophies
such as liberalism and Marxism. It is recognition that the world is
not our creation, and that there are permanent things that 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 contemporary liberalism furthers the
interests of the powerful social classes that support it, and that
movements aiming at social justice typically become intensely
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 overemphasizing the role of theory in politics it
destroys reciprocity and mutual accommodation between rulers and
ruled.
In addition, conservatism is not self-contained; its recognition of
existing practice as a standard does not mean denial that there is
any other standard. It recognizes that moral habits evolve with
experience and changing circumstances, that social arrangements
that come to be too much at odds with the moral feelings of a
people change or disappear, and that there are transcendent
standards as well as those that exist as part of the institutions
of a particular people. It recognizes that there can be
improvements as well as corruptions.
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.
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.
To the extent the necessity of practical reliance on particular
persons is viewed as something oppressive and unequal that the
state should remedy, family values are rejected. Conservatives
oppose that rejection.
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. Such
limits often arise because 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 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 tax system 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://jkalb.freeshell.org/web/sex.html.
3.4 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 than by theory and
formal decisions, they typically prefer to rely on informal social
sanctions rather than enforcement by government. Nonetheless, they
believe that government should recognize the moral values 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 such 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 high expectations for what government can
achieve.
3.5 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 a more extended discussion from a conservative perspective of
issues relating to the liberal demand for "inclusiveness", see the
Anti-Inclusiveness FAQ, http://jkalb.freeshell.org/web/inclus.html.
3.6 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 may be 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, to practice the way of
life they prefer among themselves, or to 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 well be able to
thrive or at least maintain themselves 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 peripheral to the concerns of the institutions that
dominate their lives, and so feel marginalized.
3.7 What about freedom?
Conservatives are strong supporters of social institutions that
realize and protect freedom, but believe 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
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.
3.8 And justice?
Justice between man and man is respect for concrete obligations and
individual responsibility. Conservatives take both very seriously.
Social justice is the ordering of social life toward the good for
man. Social injustice is systematic destruction of the conditions
for existence of that good. Because the good for man can not 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 horrendous crimes including, in several
modern instances, the murder of millions of innocents. Since social
justice must evolve rather than be constructed its furtherance
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 can not be
correct since men differ and what is just for them must therefore
also differ. In addition, the goods which that view is concerned to
divide equally--wealth, power and the like--do not appear to be
the ultimate human goods and therefore can not appropriately 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 strongly 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
only 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 they live with.
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 an end to progress in 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.
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 government does things that weaken
self-reliance and the moral bonds that give rise to community, and
that can not be made to work without an elaborate system of
compulsion, in the long run it will increase suffering and
degradation.
Conservatives are therefore suspicious of social welfare programs,
especially attempts at categorical solutions. 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 all 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 in the case of the mortgage interest deduction 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. Why not
worry about them?
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.
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. Accordingly, they
reject efforts to divide human affairs into compartments to be
dealt with by experts as part of an overall plan for promoting
comprehensive 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 free rein to them, 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 it could of course tell us
very little; 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 knowable apart from it nor merely
traditional. 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 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 points. Existing welfare and civil rights
measures make sense only as part of a comprehensive centrally
managed system that is adverse to the connections among men that
make community possible, and is designed to reorder society as a
whole through bureaucratic decree. It is very difficult 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 feel bound to a viewpoint that does not value loyalty
and can therefore survive only if it is fundamentally 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
fundamental 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. Some 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; typically, 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 conservatives most of whom were liberals until left-wing
radicalism went mass-market in the sixties. Their positions
continue to evolve; some still have positions consistent with New
Deal liberalism, while others have moved on to a more full-blown
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 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 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 consistent with those of most paleoconservatives as
well as many neoconservatives.
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.
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. (It has also published 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 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 ultimately 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. In
America those hierarchies never existed, and especially in recent
years conservatism has emphasized opposition to new antitraditional
hierarchies of formal expertise and bureaucratic position. These
differences seem to be declining as other countries become more
like America and as many American conservatives become more
alienated from their country's actual way of life and system of
government.
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.
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