It’s a blessing to have smart readers, and I’ve profited from the string of comments about the differences between conservative and liberal mentalities.
Some point out that the Bush administration had its share of ideological blindness, especially with regard to policies after the invasion of Iraq. There seemed to have been an altogether pat and complacent assumption that freedom was like swine flu—it would infect and transform Iraq on its own accord.
To the list I would add the very destructive economic theory that underwrote the so-called Big Bang in Russia after the fall of communism. We’ll be ruing that particular failure of free market ideology for a long while.
Other readers cite the simplistic rhetoric of the Bush administration: Operation Infinite Justice, and so forth. Here we need to be moderately cynical. It’s a simple fact that our media culture forces American politician to oversell their policies. Could you imagine the tut-tutting of the pundits if Bush had said that the invasion of Iraq may have made American marginally safer? We should forswear reference to sound bites as relevant to serious discussions of political philosophy.
In my own thinking I try to distinguish the conservative political coalition in contemporary America from what I take to be the conservative outlook. Milton Freedman was not a conservative. He was a nineteenth century liberal irked by the betrayal of liberty in twentieth-century liberalism. In contrast, a modern conservative has a substantive view of the common good, which includes a presumption in favor of order. Thus the classic phrase of the Right—ordered liberty.
It’s not easy to know when the social mores and establishment power that create order unnecessarily suppress liberty and sustain injustices. As a result, conservatives should always recognize that their array of public policies and political alliances arise out of prudential, all-things-considered judgments, judgments that can be wrong. They were wrong in the 1950s on the question of civil rights. But because most conservatives recognized the intrinsic contingency of their political judgments, they could repent of their errors and still continue as conservatives.
Today, I think that the alliance of social conservatives with libertarian, free market types is sensible. Modern liberalism is both authoritarian and antinomian at the same time: it wants to use the hammer blows of the courts and other instruments of state power to achieve its ideals, which treat the human person as an abstraction.
But I may be wrong. A friend regularly harasses me with the quite plausible observation that free market capitalism also treats the human person as an abstraction, and is thus a great solvent of traditional culture. He may be right, which is why I don’t dismiss his observations.
My point is that conservatism as a disposition toward politics that is based on moral and social principles given concrete form in what one hopes are informed prudential judgments. Conservatism involves muddling along as best one can, which is why entertaining criticism comes naturally to any conservative who understands his situation.
Liberalism tends toward an approach that makes political judgments into the conclusions of ideological formulae, something akin to political algebra. (My free market allies often do the same.) This is one reason why they can be so certain that their views are the only morally serious ones, and it may explain why liberals tend to dismiss conservatives as beneath contempt.
That said, the more persuasive explanation is very likely our pride and sloth, two vices that encourage us to ignore criticism. Both find welcoming homes in conservatives and liberals alike.
December 28th, 2009 | 4:06 pm
Authoritarian and antinomian liberals treat human persons as abstractions. True. Free market capitalists also treat human persons as abstractions. Also true. But the following conclusion from these premises is a non sequitur: “Therefore, free market capitalism is morally equivalent to the ideals of authoritarian and antinomian liberals.”
An economic and political theories do not operate at the level of the individual. Accordingly, all such theories must necessarily treat humans abstractly to some degree. Therefore, the issue is not whether the theory in question treats humans as abstractions (they all do). The issue is toward what end is the theory being used.
Liberals have never been able to unhook themselves from Rousseau’s disastrous understanding of human nature. So they push for radical individual autonomy on matters of moral significance and an ever greater role for the state in economic matters.
Conservatives take their cue from Burke. They understand that men were never perfect in the distant past; nor are they perfectible now. Therefore, the best we can do is, as Reno suggests, muddle along. With our more sober view of human nature, conservatives are more likely to support the state’s role in upholding traditional moral norms. Moreover, we have an inherent distrust of all “leveling” economic systems, which means we believe the free market system is the best system for the promotion of human flourishing. We do not support the free market system dogmatically, but it is true that we believe the proponents of a deviation from that system bear a heavy burden of proof.
I might add that what the conservative view of human nature lacks in optimism about the human condition is more than made up for by the fact that the view is based on evidence instead of wishful thinking. Surely it is better to advance policies based upon the way things actually are than on the way one wishes they were but are not.
December 28th, 2009 | 7:05 pm
A generous and interesting follow up. Thanks for the remarks.
December 28th, 2009 | 7:51 pm
Of course free market capitalism is “a great solvent of traditional culture”, but not because it treats humans as an abstraction. It’s because the market is an amoral force that rewards vice as readily as virtue, or more readily, given humans’ penchant for pursuing immediate pleasures even when they know they are ultimately harmful. There’s no difference between a service that sells term papers to dishonest students and one that offers honest tutoring. If the former outsells the latter so be it. That this corrupts education in the process should be of no concern to a libertarian.
December 28th, 2009 | 9:13 pm
One needs to distinguish conservatism as a temperament from conservativism as a political ideology. There are political liberals who are temperamentally conservative, for example.
One also needs to distinguish capitalism as a descriptive theory (Adam Smith) applying to the tendencies of human interaction under certain conditions of freedom, from capitalism as an ideology. Capitalism as an ideology is very much at odds with conservatism as a temperament.
December 29th, 2009 | 8:50 am
It seems to me that conservatism as a point of view has a moral dimension that is not covered well in the article or the comments so far.
One aspect of conservatives is the tendency to accept orthodox morality based on objective truth, and to (generally) avoid over-emphasizing one or another moral principle to the detriment of others.
This is most evident when comparing the attitudes of those who today are labeled “conservative” and those labeled “liberal.” The liberal tends to take moral guidance from principles of secular humanism, and to follow (or advocate) a “dictatorship of relativism.” They also tend to take “nonjudgmentalism” as the highest good.
What follows are grotesquely misshapen ideas of public policy and private morality, advocating practices such as abortion, certain forms of encouragement for sexual license and perversions such as homosexual practices, all in the name of “tolerance” and “human rights.”
While conservatives are not “clean” in moral attitudes and especially practice, they are far less likely to fall into these deviations. Far more likely to have a more balanced moral sense informed by the Ten Commandments.
In the economic sphere, conservatives, as noted, tend to promote a free-market-under-law approach to political economy which has at least one positive moral dimension. While acknowledging that free markets themselves are in essence amoral as to what is offered for sale, in their essence free markets have this moral advantage: they tend to respect the inherent dignity of each person as created in God’s image, free to make choices according to conscience and rational judgments.
I think Fr. Neuhaus, RIP, would agree!
December 29th, 2009 | 10:02 am
Liberals are more often “intentions” driven and support policies based on what they are supposed to do.
Conservatives tend to be “results” driven and support policies based on likely outcomes.
A liberal will look at something like health care reform and will support it based on the noble intention of universal healthcare without giving serious thought to the nasty little details how it will actually be implemented. They view any resistance to health care reform as resistance to the goal universal healthcare and don’t give a whit as to whether the resistance has any merit.
December 29th, 2009 | 10:42 am
“in their essence free markets have this moral advantage: they tend to respect the inherent dignity of each person as created in God’s image, free to make choices according to conscience and rational judgments.”
I have to disagree with this. Markets per se do nothing to guarantee respect for the dignity of each person. In the 19th century the market distributed slaves as readily as corn, and in some parts of the world this is still true. Markets will also readily distribute organs bought from the desperately poor and exploitive services such as surrogate motherhood. The morality of economic exchange depends entirely on the intentions and choices of those entering into it, not the mechanism employed.
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