Position Paper (3) - Conservatism
Kim du Toit
June 5, 2006
10:15 AM CDT
As most of my regular Readers know, there are a few issues that we do not debate on this website, because they are settled. The data is in. There is no discussion possible. The evidence is overwhelming and irrefutable. Some obvious examples:
- Capitalism is better than communism.
- Western society is better than any other society.
- An armed society is better-off than a disarmed society.
- Republicans manage U.S. foreign policy better than Democrats do.
And so on.
What we discuss on this website are the details, such as which Browning model is prettier, whether we prefer revolvers or semi-auto pistols, or whether Democrats should be tarred and feathered before or after they’re hung from lamp posts.
We don’t discuss if individuals should be allowed to possess nuclear weapons. We don’t debate the unconstitutionality of gun bans in the United States. (They are unconstitutional--no debate is necessary.)
More recently, we don’t discuss if the border with Mexico should be secured; we discuss how it should be secured, and which politicians need to be voted out of office for their failure to recognize their responsibilities.
Even more recently, however, in the various Slippery Slope discussions, some people have actually suggested that polygamy is an acceptable alternative that should be considered, or allowed.
That is not a negotiable point.
The topic of homosexual marriage is rapidly approaching that status. I can’t believe that I even have to explain why redefining and undermining the institution of marriage would be a Bad Thing for our society.
So it’s time for another Position Paper. (#1 and #2 came earlier)
While I’ve said it numerous times, I believe that some people are still not getting it. I am a conservative. Libertarians serve an interesting purpose as a kind of benchmark, in that they reveal that what lies at the “freedom” end of the slippery slope of libertarianism is libertinism and ultimately, chaos. (Only libertarians, for example, ever debate whether an individual should be allowed to own a nuclear weapon. Morons.)
I am not a libertarian.
Libertarianism is contrary to conservatism, not its first cousin. There are issues that overlap, there might even be some common issues (and much fewer than most libertarians believe withal), but the way in which one determines the right or wrong side of an issue also determines whether one is a libertarian or a conservative.
Libertarians decide issues using the criterion: “Will it increase or decrease individual freedom?”
If it decreases individual freedom, they are against it, almost regardless of the consequences to society as a whole.
Conservatives decide on matters using the criterion: “Will it improve or damage our society?”
If it damages or threatens society, conservatives are against it, but that doesn’t mean we always come down on the side of the collective—anything but. We conservatives are always striving for the balance between individual liberties (which if taken to extremes will result in libertinism) and the social compact (which if taken to an extreme ends in socialism and/or totalitarianism).
We’ve gotten into some fairly heated debates on this website, mostly on the issue of the Social Compact. The Social Compact, the agreement between individuals who share/reside in the nation-state, is superior and paramount to the actions of the state. The Compact is outside the law, as it focuses primarily on issues of morality, taste, and manners, which history has shown cannot be managed by law. Laws which attempt to legislate morality, taste, or manners exacerbate the problems (Prohibition supporters, call your office).
But conservatives recognize that Man is a tribal animal, and needs various rules and structures to keep him (if my Christian Readers will forgive me for borrowing the phrase) on the straight and narrow. We aren’t Howard Roark-style loner types—well, most of us aren’t, anyway—and while the rules pertaining to our social wellbeing are fairly lenient (as long as we can keep nutcases like Pat Robertson away from the levers of power), we believe that transgression of those rules deserves punishment. No structure for punishment: Lord of the Flies. Too much punishment: Stalinist labor camps.
If you want to see a sample checklist of what conservatives want, you can start here.
Conservatives want to restore the fundamental societal institutions, such as marriage, that have been weakened. We’ve tried all the social experiments, and they’ve failed. Failed miserably. We want to undo those changes, not discuss the pros and cons of further tinkering. There are no pros.
Conservatives want to end the artificial institutions, such as the social welfare system, which have been imposed on society and have failed. No one denies the need for a helping hand for the truly needy (such as the mentally retarded, the maimed, or severely disabled). But charity should have a limit—and we’re way past that limit right now, when the able-bodied can receive welfare checks simply because they are poor or have given birth to yet another extramarital infant.
Conservatives want to take morality and manners away from lawyers and politicians, and return them to the traditional arbiters of such: parents and their churches. It is because we’ve allowed such delicate issues to be managed by the battering ram of law that we have politically-correct speech codes—indeed, the very term “politically-correct” is an Orwellian nightmare which has no place in the maintenance of manners and morality. In the not-too distant past, regulation and the law only got involved when breaches of the above were egregious: murder, rape, assault, and so on. But it is an abhorrent concept that assault, bad as it is, can somehow be made worse by the thought behind its committal—calling someone a “dirty Jew” while beating him senseless is somehow worse than just beating him senseless because he was available.
Conservatives want to strengthen the nation-state against other nation-states or malevolent entities. In the old days, of course, we only had to worry about other nation-states; more recently, since the arrival of Marxism, we’ve had to do battle with the socialists (who would tear down our society’s structure and replace it with one which doesn’t work) and with radical Islamists (who would tear down our society’s structure and replace it with one which we abhor and which doesn’t work). Nowadays, we have no serious competition among other nation-states. What we have are competitive (and inimical) world-views whose adherents wear no uniforms, and who strive to end our society and culture by means of undermining it (eg. through the public education system) or by weakening our resolve (through terrorism and its ally, defeatism).
Other malevolent entities include the New York Times, the United Nations, most of academia, and a major percentage of the Democrat Party base, but so far, none of these have flown airliners into our skyscrapers, so they get a pass while we deal with Al Qa’eda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and France. (This paragraph was a joke. So far.)
Conservatives want government to be less intrusive, and just less, period. Keen observers will note that at this point, there is a wide divergence between conservatives and Republicans (who were once the standard-bearer for conservatism, but who now resemble nothing as much as Trumanesque Democrats). This, by the way, is where there is an overlap between conservatism and libertarianism, but only a little one. Conservatives like having around the place things like carrier groups, dams, interstate highways and the electrical grid system, none of which could ever realistically be financed, built or maintained by “the market” without costing the populace a great deal more. When activities are performed on a large scale, a controlling authority, even an inefficient one like most governments are, is better than none.
Conservatives have a somewhat jaundiced view of human nature. We don’t have a high opinion of the individual, although we believe that, over time, most people will do the right thing. We have an even lower opinion of crowds (and most especially, of the formalized mob known as “government"), for all the best of reasons. Thus we are scornful of the socialist philosophy which espouses the belief (note: belief) that people will always work only for the greater good ("from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"), and are only slightly less scornful of a philosophy which mandates that all (note: all) social decisions are best left to the individual. Most especially, we do not feel this scorn gratuitously or capriciously: like the rest of our weltanschauung, this cynicism has been formed by a careful study of history, which is replete with all-too many examples of the failures of each end of the socio-political spectrum as outlined above.
It has often been said that conservatives fear change. We don’t, but could be excused for feeling that way. When it comes to societal issues, not much is new under the sun; and most changes to long-standing institutions have screwed things up horribly.
Enough already: it’s about time that pendulum started its opposite swing. And if this little piece does anything to get the process started, it will be the best thing ever to have come from this blog.
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