Conservatism, Defined and Debated

My stab at a definition prompted criticism from John Holbo and Brad DeLong. I'll take the latter first:

I think John is a little too easy on Ross Douthat, because I do not believe that conservatism is a political philosophy. Conservatism is the practical principle that the pieces of furniture you have that suit and are comfortable should not be thrown away. And conservatism is a rhetorical mode of justification--effective on those who respect authority. But it isn't a philosophy.

DeLong presents this point as a criticism of what I wrote, but I'm afraid don't see it that way, since I don't think of conservatism as a philosophy either. It's a practical principle, yes, but I think a better way of putting it would be to call it an approach to political and social controversies, under which the fact that a given piece of furniture (i.e. a policy or institution) has suited in the past - and the fact that it is your piece of furniture, which belonged to your father and grandfather as well - gives the case for keeping it greater weight that it might enjoy if you simply tallied the chair or sofa's good qualities and compared them to the really fabulous, amazing, but still-hypothetical qualities of the fancy new one that might replace it. Now certain political philosophies may be effectively conservative in certain times and places, because they function as defenses of the existing furniture - thus Lockean liberalism is an effectively conservative philosophy in contemporary America in a way that it wasn't in the 17th century, and thus many contemporary American conservatives consider the Enlightenment, at least in its the Scottish and English manifestations, to be the patrimony that they're charged with defending. But conservatism itself (again, under my admittedly idiosyncratic definition) is not a philosophy or an ideology; it's an approach, a bias, or a political style.

DeLong goes on to quote an earlier post of his on the subject of Edmund Burke, whose conservatism he presents as essentially opportunistic and content-free:

Edmund Burke does not believe that Tradition is to be Respected. He believes that good traditions are to be respected. When Edmund Burke in his Reflections on the Revolution in France makes the argument that Britons should respect the organic political tradition of English liberty that has been inherited from the past, he whispers under his breath that the only reason we should respect the Wisdom of the Ancestors is that in this particular case Burke thinks that the Ancestors--not his personal ancestors, note--were wise.

Whenever Burke thought that the inherited political traditions were not wise, the fact that they were the inherited Wisdom of the Ancestors cut no ice with him at all. It was one of the traditions and institutions of Englishmen that they would conquer, torture, and rob wogs whenever and wherever they were strong enough to do so. That tradition cut no ice with Edmund Burke when he was trying to prosecute Warren Hastings. It was one of the traditions and institutions of Englishmen that all power flowed to Westminster. That tradition cut no ice with Burke when he was arguing for conciliation with and a devolution of power to the American colonists. It was one of the traditions and institutions of Englishmen that Ireland was to be plundered and looted for the benefit of upwardly-mobile English peers-to-be. That tradition, too, cut no ice with Burke.

But again, it's precisely because conservatism isn't a rigorous philosophy that it makes sense for conservatives to take a man like Burke as their hero - a practical politician who left behind no Second Treatise on Civil Government or Social Contract or similarly programmatic exposition of his views (in this vein, it isn't a coincidence that Russell Kirk's conservative canon includes very few programmatic thinkers), and whose conservatism manifested itself not in an ideologically-consistent resistance to change of any kind, but in an famously eloquent revolt against a particular noxious form of change, which threatened not only to replace a few pieces of furniture but to burn down the entire house in order to build a new one in its place. Similarly, two centuries later, many of my favorite conservative intellectuals - I mean the original neoconservatives, Jewish and Catholic alike - are figures who only began identifying as conservatives midway through their lives, when, as with Burke, changes they had supported gave way to changes that they didn't. The broader point is that DeLong's right, in a sense, to suggest that conservatism lacks "contents," though a more accurate way of putting it would be that there's no Platonic Conservatism in the way that thinkers from Locke to Rawls have attempted to describe a Platonic Liberalism, and there never will be. By definition, who is and who is not a conservative will vary from time to time and place to place, and what conservatives defend will vary as well.

But I confess to being a little baffled by how DeLong gets from here to the following all-caps outburst: "THERE ARE NO ATTRACTIVE MODERN CONSERVATIVES BECAUSE CONSERVATISM SIMPLY IS NOT ATTRACTIVE. DEAL WITH IT!!" I mean, fair enough, he doesn't like the contemporary GOP, which is where self-described conservatives tend to cluster in America these days, but surely his own definition - to repeat, "conservatism is the practical principle that the pieces of furniture you have that suit and are comfortable should not be thrown away" - implies that so long as at least some of our existing furniture is worth defending, at least some conservatives will be worth paying heed to.

Comments

This is why, however much I might agree with conservatives on a particular issue - such as opposing abortion or opposing creeping Islamism- I would _never_ call myself a conservative. My temperament is basically revolutionary and leftist- it just so happens that the house that I would like to build on the ruins of the old one would also give a fairly important place to protection of the unborn, heterosexual marriage, and religious faith. This isn't because these things are traditional, but because I think they happen to be true, on the basis of first principles. Abortion (or infanticide) are after all "traditional" practices in countries like India and China. That doesn't mean I think they should be legal there anymore than they should be in the United States.

Posted by Hector | June 16, 2008 4:35 PM

Another way to say this is that conservatism is a stance rather than a political philosophy. Bas van Fraassen fleshes this out in the context of the philosophy of science in his _The Empirical Stance_.

Posted by anon prof | June 16, 2008 5:43 PM

If I were Ross, I'm not sure I'd be so willing to concede the point that conservatism is not a philosophy.

Or, put it this way: I think conservatism, as a mindset or a set of inclinations, is a perfectly sound basis for constructing a coherent, viable philosophy around.

For instance, I as a libertarian would, in place of Ross's inclination, posit that we will be more successful as a society, both individually and collectively, the more we minimize coercion in our society, as it breeds resentment and ultimately conflict. There is thus an extensive political philosophy built around the simple concept that we should keep to an absolute minimum the number of activities we engage in (or allow our government to engage in) which rely on coercion.

Replace the bit about coercion there with Ross's earlier post defining conservatism, and I think you could, if so inclined, construct a very coherent and detailed political philosophy around it.

Posted by Jeff | June 16, 2008 6:23 PM

"I mean, fair enough, he doesn't like the contemporary GOP, which is where self-described conservatives tend to cluster in America these days, but surely his own definition - to repeat, 'conservatism is the practical principle that the pieces of furniture you have that suit and are comfortable should not be thrown away' - implies that so long as at least some of our existing furniture is worth defending, at least some conservatives will be worth paying heed to."

Delong says there are no attractive modern conservatives because conservatism itself is not attractive. You seem to be making a play with the contrapositive: (Some) Conservatives must be attractive because (some) conservatism is attractive. But neither conclusion is necessitated by its premise.

It is perfectly possible that conservatism might be attractive in some cases while conservatives themselves will appall because they seek to conserve the wrong things-- the frayed and musty couch and creaky rocking chair that will fall to pieces any day now instead of the luminous antique vase. Indeed, by and large, this is the biggest problem with the conservative movement today: Not that its members self-identify as conservatives, but that their aesthetic, which is to say moral and cultural, sensibilities have gone hopelessly, tragically wrong.

I do, however, think conservatives such as yourself and (most of) the idiosyncratic bunch at The American Conservative are more than capable of making insightful contributions to public policy debates and therefore qualify as quite attractive, so Delong is wrong on that score.

Posted by Ashish | June 16, 2008 6:30 PM

"THERE ARE NO ATTRACTIVE MODERN CONSERVATIVES BECAUSE CONSERVATISM SIMPLY IS NOT ATTRACTIVE. DEAL WITH IT!!"

Does Prof. Delong really regard this judgment as something like an empirical fact? What are the students at Berekely getting for their money?

Posted by Art Deco | June 16, 2008 6:48 PM

"But conservatism itself (again, under my admittedly idiosyncratic definition) is not a philosophy or an ideology; it's an approach, a bias, or a political style."

I think the word you are searching for, Ross, is that conservatism is a political disposition:

"The general characterisitics of this disposition are not difficult to discern, although they have often been mistaken. They centre upon a propensity to use and to enjoy what is available rather than to wish for or to look for something else; to delight in what is present rather than what was or what may be. Reflection may bring to light an appropriate gratefulness for what is available, and consequently the acknowledgment of a gift or an inheritance from the past; but there is no mere idolizing of what is past and gone. What is esteemed is the present; and it is esteemed not on account of its connections with a remote antiquity, nor because it is recognized to be more admirable than any possible alternative, but on account of its familiarity: not, Verweile doch, du bist so schon, but Stay with me because I am attached to you.

If the present is arid, offering little or nothing to be used or enjoyed, then this inclination will be weak or absent; if the present is remarkably unsettled, it will display itself in a search for a firmer foothold and consequently in a recourse to and an exploration of the past; but it asserts itself characteristically when there is much to be enjoyed, and it will be strongest when this is combined with evident risk of loss. In short, it is a disposition appropriate to a man who is acutely aware of having something to lose which he has learned to care for; a man in some degree rich in opportunities for enjoyment, but not so rich that he can afford to be indifferent to loss. It will appear more naturally in the old than in the young, not because the old are more sensitive to loss but because they are apt to be more fully aware of the resources of their world and therefore less likely to find them inadequate. In some people this disposition is weak merely because they are ignorant of what their world has to offer them: the present appears to them only as a reside of inopportunities.

To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss. Familiar relationships and loyalties will be preferred to the allure of more profitable attachments; to acquire and to enlarge will be less important than to keep, to cultivate and to enjoy; the grief of loss will be more acute than the excitement of novelty or promise. It is to be equal to one's own fortune, to live at the level of one's own means, to be content with the want of greater perfection which belongs alike to oneself and one's circumstances. With some people this is itself a choice; in others it is a disposition which appears, frequently or less frequently, in their preferences and aversions, and is ont itself chosen or specifically cultivated."

http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/4887/conservative.html

Posted by Sam | June 16, 2008 7:04 PM

I think it's this "attitudinal" idea of conservatism that partly explains why conservatives are always wrong -- for instance:

> In the 16th century, medical pioneers set out to chart the workings of the human body. Where the old doctrines relied on sacred symbols and mystical “spirits” and “humours,” the new science mapped internal organs, watched blood circulate and began to uncover the physical causes of disease. These first steps toward modern medicine filled conservatives with horror, and they tried hard to bring the whole enterprise to a stop. They opposed the use of autopsies to learn how the body worked. They insisted that disease was caused by Satan’s influence, epidemics by collective sin, and mental illness by demonic possession. And even as the scientific facts were becoming known, later conservatives kept up the fight against further new developments, like vaccines and anesthetics – which, they said, violated “nature” and usurped God’s right to decide who should suffer and die.

> In the 17th century, while Galileo was fighting his battles against conservative ideas about nature, other debates were getting underway over the sources of government power – whether it lay within families and was rightly conferred by birth, or whether it rose from the people and should rest on the consent of the governed. Against proposals for electing rulers and other novel “democratical” ideas, conservative opinion came down firmly on the side of aristocratic privilege and the so-called divine right of kings.

> In the 18th century, movements developed with the aim of reforming the system of criminal justice. Liberal thinkers argued for speedy and public trials, rejected the “cruel and unusual” in favor of penalties that fit the crimes, and supported modest efforts to see that even prisoners were treated humanely. Why did these arguments need to be made? Because at a time when dozens of minor offenses carried the death sentence, when political and religious dissent was criminalized and when legal penalties included literally cutting people to bits, conservatives thought the laws were, if anything, too soft.

> In the 19th century, women were still unable to vote, own property or practice professions. When reformers called for giving them these rights, conservatives invoked both nature and the Bible to prove that women were created subservient to men, belonged in the home, and didn’t need to participate in public decision-making because men knew their interests better than women themselves did.

> In the 20th century, another movement declared that people should be treated equally regardless of race. Progressive reformers like Martin Luther King Jr. called on America to live up to its founding promise, and to honor Scripture’s true meaning, by guaranteeing civil rights for all. Conservatives – including some still alive today – replied that King was distorting both the Constitution, which left it up to each state to decide how racist to be, and the Bible, which licensed white supremacy based on some tale of an ancient curse. Defiantly standing in the schoolhouse door (literally and figuratively), conservatives darkly warned that “unnatural” mixing of the races would lead to all manner of social evils.

Bottom line: Why should we listen to anything conservatives ever say? They're always wrong. (For more on this, click on my name below.)

Posted by Jefferson Smith | June 16, 2008 7:21 PM

I don't understand arguing with someone who deletes comments that disagree with him. Just delete DeLong from your brain, and the University of California from your alumni contributions, as I have, and move on to something more interesting.

Posted by y81 | June 16, 2008 8:25 PM

Conservatism is the practical principle that the pieces of furniture you have that suit and are comfortable should not be thrown away

Who the hell has a comfortable suit made out of furniture? Suck it, DeLong; I wear clothes.

Posted by Wrongshore | June 16, 2008 9:12 PM

"approach" "stance" and "disposition" all look serviceable to me. My question to those sympathetic to it: What *kind* of disposition is it--the kind with reasons that justify it or the kind without? I have non-rational dispositions (which sex I'm attracted to) and rational dispositions (which method I use when multiplying large numbers) and mixed dispositions (what I find funny).

Oakeshot's take (linked to by Sam above) seems to pull in different directions. On the one hand, he points out the value in the actual and familiar, value that conservatives are particularly sensitive to and which are reason-giving. But implicit in this is a certain insensitivity to its disvalue and the value of the possible and novel--an insensitivity that reveals itself in his sometimes caricatured description of the liberal alternatives ("utopian bliss"). Shouldn't we all, conservatives and liberals, with our different sensitivities, be trying to critically interrogate the accuracy of those (partial) sensitivities, open to reaching a point where we might concede that though some change or continuity rubs us the wrong way, it really does have the best arguments going for it?

Ross's statement of the conservative disposition is fine, and so would a statement of the liberal disposition be fine, as far as it goes. But are we to take either of those statements--largely a psychological description--and cast it as a basis for action, as not merely descriptive but normative? For wielding the power of the state?

Posted by DKE | June 16, 2008 11:15 PM

In the 16th century: Revolutionary John of Lieden legalized polygamy and set up communalism in Munster. His efforts failed and polygamy is still not approved of. Meanwhile Richard Hooker encouraged a conservative course of moderation and tolerance.

In the 17th century: Galileo said some nonsense about the movement of the Earth causing tides and made claims he could not really prove. Meanwhile Cardinal Bellarmine, who tells Galileo not to defend Copernicus, opposes the "divine right of kings. "

In the 18th century: Revolutionary movements to liberate people led to terror. Counter-revolutions were crushed leading to the deaths of thousands of women and children. The "liberal" movements ultimately waivered on women's rights. It ended in imperial domination by Napoleon.

In the 19th century: Conservatives attack Marxism, Eugenics, and unfettered capitalism. Liberals largely defend imperialism, burning churches, and sterilizing the "unfit."

In the 20th c: Revolutions in many lands lead to torment and bloodshed. In the US radicalization leads to an increased murder rate from 1964 to sometime in the 1980s. Conservative hostility to Communism, and other radical movements, arguably leads to the most peaceful era in human history. (Don't laugh, this is a relatively peaceful era. You see any Biafras, Cultural Revolutions, or Khmer Rouges?)

Posted by Thomas R | June 17, 2008 5:21 AM

"In the US radicalization leads to an increased murder rate from 1964 to sometime in the 1980s."

TR: This should be "coincides" not leads.

Some of it was intentionally over-the-top as yours was as well. The point is conservatism has been an important part of what kept societies like the US from being proned to the kind of harmful experimention you see in Latin America or sometimes Europe. This occasionally means it stifles necessary experimentation, but I don't conservatism should exist alone without any counterbalance.

Posted by Thomas R | June 17, 2008 5:26 AM

I do not agree that it is exclusive patrimony of conservatives the idea to defend "the existing furniture". I think the left has some very good reasons to defend the furniture too. The problem is that conservatives, as time go, appropiate stuff they´ve rejected, not cause they like them by their own intrinsical value (say lockean conception of rights or the enligthment), but cause it serves them as an ideological masquared. That is why you see conservatives defending the "great values of western civilization", values that they reject in the ultimate philosophical analisis (think for example in the neocon defense of democracy or secularism for Iraq, when it is so clear they reject those at home). Conservatives have been very effective in appropiating the legacy of the west, in part cause the left by temper and circunstances, has been unable to do (even if most of that legacy BELONGS to the left by right)

Posted by Sergio Méndez | June 17, 2008 6:34 AM

Thomas:

You have some very twisted, and wrong knowledge of history, if you can claim with a straight face that conservatives opposed imperialism or capitalism in the XIX and XX century, or that conservatives conter revolutions were any more benefical than the french revolution

Posted by Sergio Méndez | June 17, 2008 6:39 AM

Thomas R.,

Naturally I disagree with much of your interpretation of history, but I will just quibble with a few points of information.

1) Robespierre killed _many_ fewer people than Thiers' counter-revolutionary suppression of the Paris Commune in 1871. Somewhat more people were killed in the entirety of the Reign of Terror than in 1871 (about 40,000 as opposed to 30,000) but of course that was over a much longer period of time.
2) What harmful experimentation are you really referring to in Latin America? That's a part of the world that has suffered more from the depredations of the right than anything the left has done- I can't really see how you can argue otherwise. If you were talking about the evils of radical Left in China, Russia or Cambodia you might have a point.
3) Ah, John of Leyden....yes the polygamy was a bit nutty and creepy but I can't help but have some sympathy for his dreams of equality and brotherhood.

You seem to be accusing the Left of having inspired Red Terrors while completely ignoring the White Terrors that in some cases (France, Latin America) were substantially bloodier.

Sergio Mendez,

I really don't agree with you much more than with Thomas R. It is true as a point of fact that when capitalism was introduced it was introduced by liberals. It was opposed by conservatives because it violated Christian teachings about exaction of interest and the dignity of liberals. We should have listened to the conservatives back then.

Posted by Hector | June 17, 2008 7:44 AM

anon_prof

Another way to say this is that conservatism is a stance rather than a political philosophy. Bas van Fraassen fleshes this out in the context of the philosophy of science in his The Empirical Stance.

Van Fraassen:

A stance consists of a cluster of attitudes, including propositional attitudes (which may include some factual beliefs) as well as others, and especially certain intentions, commitments, and values.

In this case, the point of the cluster of attitudes is to determine which how to generate beliefs, and which ones to adopt. Presumably, conservatism is a stance regarding politics: which beliefs, practices etc regarding politics shall we adopt and act upon?

Stances are rationally assessable; if conservatism is a stance, it is rationally assessable. The point of conservatism-as-stance is to form beliefs about politics; the test of the stance is the quality of the beliefs formed. Rusell Kirk is widely thought a good example of a conservative: he thought that segregation was not just tolerable but desirable; that apartheid was both good and necessary; that blacks were not fit to govern themselves; that black enfranchisement would 'bring anarchy and the collapse of civilization'; and that interracial sex contravened the will of God. The beliefs are odious; they have led to very great suffering for rather a lot of people these last three centuries. If a stance consistently drives intelligent people to adopt disastrously immoral beliefs, maintaining it is irrational.

Posted by emmanuelgoldstein | June 17, 2008 8:37 AM

It's a practical principle, yes, but I think a better way of putting it would be to call it an approach to political and social controversies, under which the fact that a given piece of furniture (i.e. a policy or institution) has suited in the past - and the fact that it is your piece of furniture, which belonged to your father and grandfather as well - gives the case for keeping it greater weight that it might enjoy if you simply tallied the chair or sofa's good qualities and compared them to the really fabulous, amazing, but still-hypothetical qualities of the fancy new one that might replace it.

What I find somewhat odd about modern conservatives is that they take this approach to social and political matters (and they aren't even consistent about the latter--the Unitary Executive would represent a radical upending of both the status quo and rule of law), but they don't take this approach at all to economic or ecological matters. In those fields, conservatives are all about "creative destruction". This is self-defeating, because social and cultural stability is dependent on economic and ecological stability. If you disperse a community because its economic or ecological niche collapses, it's traditions and social capital will be mostly lost.

Posted by Consumatopia | June 17, 2008 8:47 AM

It seems to me that there are a set of (often quite different) philosophies that can be broadly lumped, in this time and place, together and called "conservative." Similarly, there is a "liberal" constellation of philosophies, a "radical" set, a "reactionary" set, etc.

Ultimately, though, this is just taxonomy. All liberals/conservatives/whatever don't need to have the same philosophy, they just need to be pulling the oars in the same basic direction.

The Jon Chaits of the world first assume that all liberals are basically identical to them in worldview -- this allows them to conclude that all liberals are post-new-deal Clintonians and call it a day. But all liberals do not hold the same philosophy as Jon Chait, and it's a fool's errand to try to identify a single philosophy of liberalism or conservatism.

If you *must* identify a philosophy of conservatism, though, you probably can't do better than Chesterton's gate.

http://stuartbuck.blogspot.com/2004/05/chesterton_14.html

Posted by J Mann | June 17, 2008 9:21 AM

Personally I think that society, right now, is imperfect. The function of a Liberal is to push society to change. The function of a Conservative is to keep society the same. The interplay of the two factions is important in moving society along to a better outcome. If either side were unopposed, either society would never change beneficially (if Conservatives had their way unopposed), or it would change unchecked, leading to many negative consequences along with the positive consequences (if Liberals had their way unopposed). Basically, Liberals: two steps forward, Conservatives: one step back. The check they have on each other leads to a better society in general.

Posted by Tel | June 17, 2008 10:10 AM

"You have some very twisted, and wrong knowledge of history" SM

TR: I was exaggerating and said as much. Jefferson Smith exaggerated in one direction, I did so in another.

"can claim with a straight face that conservatives opposed imperialism or capitalism in the XIX and XX century" SM

TR: I can do it with a straight face, because in many cases that's what happened. In the US imperialism was seen as against American tradition. The liberalized capitalism of the nineteenth century was seen as a threat to conservative Christians, aristocrats, and slaveowners. I didn't say opposing laissez-faire capitalism necessarily made you a nice guy. I just meant that some of the conservative criticisms of the newly rampant capitalism were valid or at least defensible.

"or that conservatives conter revolutions were any more benefical than the french revolution" SM

TR: I'm mostly against all revolutions both original and counter. In fact part of the problem with revolutions is they create counter-revolutions. In almost all cases I believe in gradual change through legal or rational means. If France could've evolved into a constiutional monarchy many lives could've been spared. Likewise if the colonials could've found some kind of compromise many lives would've been spared from the violence of the American Revolution. Granted ultimately the American Revolution has done more good than harm, but that wasn't the inevitable or most obvious result.

"1) Robespierre killed _many_ fewer people than Thiers' counter-revolutionary suppression of the Paris Commune in 1871." Hector

TR: I didn't specify Robespierre alone. Besides the Paris Commune is something from decades later and a different set of circumstances. Perhaps we can say counter-revolutionaries are no better than revolutionaries, but I was defending conservatism not all reactionaries everywhere.

"2) What harmful experimentation are you really referring to in Latin America?"

TR: I'm talking Revolutionaries, this isn't a solely Left or Right issue. All revolutionaries bent on a better world, as they define it, are inherently unconservative. It doesn't matter if they're a Revolution of the Right or Left. Revolutions and coups has plausibly brought more misery to Latin America than even the oligarchs.

"You seem to be accusing the Left of having inspired Red Terrors while completely ignoring the White Terrors that in some cases (France, Latin America) were substantially bloodier." Hector

TR: This is about revolutions that are against the established order, they don't have to be Leftist in the standard or non-standard sense. I'm not saying counter-revolution is good either. Counter-revolution is, in essence, just another kind of revolutionary change against existing order.

However that in certain instance White Terrors were worse than Red doesn't change the fact that in general Red Terrors have been worse. Nazism was not Red, but it was not a return to the Kaiser either. It was a revolutionary social change toward a new way of society. As was the Communist and Maoist revolutions. These did kill more people, even in per capita terms, than Thiers or the Bourbon restoration or Franco or even the Spanish Inquisition. This is NOT a defense of Franco or the Spanish Inquisition, it's simply a context. I prefer gradual non-violent change in the mode of Canada, Britain, and to an extent Iceland.

Posted by Thomas R | June 17, 2008 11:08 AM

"If either side were unopposed, either society would never change beneficially (if Conservatives had their way unopposed), or it would change unchecked, leading to many negative consequences along with the positive consequences (if Liberals had their way unopposed)." Tel

TR: Yes, this is what I meant. Above I meant the statement to be "This occasionally means it stifles necessary experimentation, but I don't think conservatism should exist alone without any counterbalance," I just omitted a word.

Posted by Thomas R | June 17, 2008 11:14 AM

Hector writes: "t is true as a point of fact that when capitalism was introduced it was introduced by liberals. It was opposed by conservatives because it violated Christian teachings about exaction of interest and the dignity of liberals. We should have listened to the conservatives back then."

You think feudalism was a better way, Hector? You must be joking.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | June 17, 2008 11:27 AM

Hector:

Since when calvinist-evangelical white christians opposed capitalism? Have you read your Max Weber? It may heve being the case conservatives in other countries (mostly catholic hispanic/latin countries) opposed capitalism. But not anglo saxon protestants.

Now, else I have to say, conservatives in general opposed LIBERALISM, not capitalism. They opposed a set of philosophical propositions that defended freedom as an ultimate value of human existence. That freedom included religious freedom, free speech, more tolerance toward life styles that differed from the norm, cultural openess, etc...and also too, economic freedom. But in the moment conservatives saw they could use liberal rethoric to defend the status quo, they changed their tone and attitude toward liberalism (and at least started to "defend" economic liberalism; but yet, one thing was what they preached and another the practized, which was more a form of mercantilism and not laissez faire).

Posted by Sergio Méndez | June 17, 2008 11:38 AM

Sergio Mendez,

Thomas Muentzer was what we would call today an evangelical Protestant, and he opposed capitalism. The British Labor Party was in its origin largely the political expression of Nonconformist (=evangelical Protestant) social theory. The Labor Party isn't a socialist party any more, but it was a socialist party up until the Blair era.

Moe,

I didn't say "feudalism". I think that we would have been better off with a society based on peasant and workers' cooperatives. And I think that the prohibition of usury, while it was too sweeping and literal, nevertheless sprang from a concern about the dignity of labor and the natural connection between labor and reward, that are thoroughly correct and healthy. Modern capitalist society has completely denied that connection and we are all worse off for it.

As a general rule I think the attitudinal definition of liberalism, radicalism or conservatism are rather silly. I define myself as a leftist today but that doesn't mean I would be on the left in every possible circumstance out of temperament. If I had lived in 1920s Russia I suppose I would be a Right-wing dissenter in the mode of Bukharin or perhaps Berdyaev.

Posted by Hector | June 17, 2008 12:14 PM

"I was defending conservatism not all reactionaries everywhere."

"I prefer gradual non-violent change in the mode of Canada, Britain, and to an extent Iceland." (Thomas R)

OK, Thomas, but my list of conservative errors was offered in defense of the progressive tradition that gave us democracy, modern science and medicine, votes and civil rights for women and minorities, etc. It was not an endorsement of every radical everywhere who ever called for any kind of change.

We seem to agree on preferring "gradual non-violent change." My point was that all such change, no matter how necessary and beneficial everyone today agrees it was, was ALWAYS opposed by conservatives of the time -- usually using the same kinds of arguments deployed by today's conservatives against progressive proposals of today. (For more on that, see the essay you get to by clicking on my name below.)

So, what people like Ross Douthat who want to define conservatism need to explain is how their definition produces a conservatism that is not simply a repetition of the same errors we've seen so often in the past. For instance, when Scripture is invoked today against evolution or gay marriage, how is that different from invoking Scripture against interracial marriage, or rights for women, or the idea that the earth revolves around the sun? Because it WAS invoked against all those progressive notions. What way of reading Scripture into comtemporary policy disputes -- if conservatives are going to insist on doing that -- would have avoided those earlier errors while still "correctly" opposing gay marriage?

The same goes for every other conservative precept. Ross himself acknowledged this when he noted that conservatives "in 1958 Alabama" (and not only there and then, of course) defended segregation. He has said that he hopes he would not have been among them, but he hasn't explained how his "old sofa" conservatism (as I will call it using his own image) is conceptually different from theirs -- what reason there is to think that his way of favoring received and familiar practices isn't just leading us into comparable errors today.

Posted by Jefferson Smith | June 17, 2008 12:15 PM

Jefferson -- but by the same token, what possible guarantee do we have that (say) gay marriage isn't a disastrous social experiment? The disintegration of family stability among the black urban underclasse was, to some extent, an outcome of the "liberal project"'s view of humanity and sexual morality, and it was and is a disaster.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | June 17, 2008 12:25 PM

Jefferson, I think you are begging the question by assuming that "progressive" ideas are generally beneficial and that "conservatives" need to apologize for opposing them.

1) People who opposed Robspierre's purges, Mao's great leap forward, Stalin's flirtation with lysenkoism, the quasi-eugenic movements of the early 20th century, Canada's and Australia's efforts to forcibly assimilate their indigenous populations in the name of progress, etc., were presumably "conservative." A given innovation may end up being good or bad, notwithstanding its motives.

2) Generally, the dispute between conservatives and liberals is about the *pace* of change and the amount of proof necessary to enact change, not about whether there will be any change at all. Happily, conservatives were proved wrong about a bunch of things that they failed to prevent. Less happily, conservatives were proved right about a bunch of other things that they also failed to oppose and had to roll back later.

Posted by J Mann | June 17, 2008 12:27 PM

Also, I doubt Ross is any more interested in invoking Scripture against evolution than I am. If I've had a few too many drinks I might start thinking about Jerry Fodor or Stephen Jay Gould's critiques of the more purist natural selection only approaches, but even that mostly looks silly.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | June 17, 2008 12:30 PM

Marquis and J Mann,

Thanks for your replies. If Ross himself is not among those who invokes Scripture, good for him, but plenty of American conservatives do, and any definition of "conservatism" that didn't include them would obviously not be describing conservatism as it actually is (in this country, anyway). And there are other conceptual errors besides relying on Scripture that you can trace from conservative errors of the past into conservative arguments of today. See my longer discussion of this (link via my name below) if you're interested.

Conservatives have for some time, and with some success, played the game of stigmatizing progressive ideas by lumping them with Robespierre and the Jacobins (and their heirs). We can debate how fair that is, but at minimum, if contemporary progressives are expected to answer for Robespierre -- by which I mean, if they have to explain how their political approach is conceptually different from his -- then contemporary conservatives should in fairness have to answer for Torquemada and any number of other reactionaries who brought force, violence or coercion to bear on minorities, unwelcome opinions, scientific inquiry or beneficial political change. Ross's "old sofa" approach just begs all those questions.

Posted by Jefferson Smith | June 17, 2008 1:17 PM

I personally have no problems with invoking Scripture from time to time, actually. Surely it's at least as useful as the fake Jefferson "dissent is the highest form of patriotism" or the like. I rather like Scripture -- though it isn't primarily a political document.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | June 17, 2008 1:29 PM

Ok, Jefferson, that's a pretty long-winded and tedious essay. Sorry, but it is -- and to anyone who (A) finds your notion of "progress" absurd and (B) thinks that only a fool or a demon denies that "some things are natural and others are not" -- it is a very long piece of begging the question.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | June 17, 2008 1:38 PM

Marquis,

Thanks for reading. I did add the caveat "if you're interested" -- I don't expect that particular exposition to appeal to everyone. I do think, though, that the errors I'm discussing there are widespread and not often explicated or answered. If someone else would do that, and do it with more pizzazz than I can, great, then I'd shut up about it.

I'm not sure I understand your last sentence, but there is an immense amount of conservative thought that rests on the notion, sometimes implied and sometimes openly stated, that the particular ways of doing things that conservatives happen to favor are "natural," while the things they oppose are unnatural. As I've noted, these same claims in the past have repeatedly been proven wrong -- random illness was natural and vaccination wasn't, aristocracy was natural and democracy wasn't, segregation was natural and interracial marriage wasn't, etc. etc. When similar arguments recur in political debate today, I don't see how it's begging anything to point out that they've been tried and proven wrong in the past. Pointing out the error in an opponent's underlying assumptions or logic is ENGAGING the question, not beggging it.

Posted by Jefferson Smith | June 17, 2008 2:16 PM

Yes, but you seem to assume (at least some of the essay) that because some have been wrong about what is or is not "natural" then there is nothing that can be properly categorized that way, and that in fact it is a useless category. Which is as problematic as asserting that all claims about the natural world are useless because scientists and engineers have often been mistaken in the past.

You also conflate some Protestant fundamentalists with all of conservatism, when the intellectual force of social/religious conservatism has mostly come from more traditionalist and less emotional strains of Christianity.

I suppose my chief problem is that this isn't very detailed in a "nuts and bolts, practical consequences" way -- the history is mostly bird's eye summaries, often a bit misleading or ignoring subtle points (the Galileo bits are straight out of "I read a bit in a pop history book at some point"), but that it doesn't address the deeper "big picture" stuff either, like why we would imagine progress has a direction, or how we know what is progress. For a conservative who is at heart deeply critical of the entire Enlightenment program, if not of all practical consequences of it, it just seems very long to say something as simple as "conservatives are always wrong."

Not to mention that it's hard to take seriously an argument that ANY group (except perhaps Scientology) is always wrong.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | June 17, 2008 2:27 PM

"conservative thought that rests on the notion, sometimes implied and sometimes openly stated, that the particular ways of doing things that conservatives happen to favor are "natural," while the things they oppose are unnatural. As I've noted, these same claims in the past have repeatedly been proven wrong -- random illness was natural and vaccination wasn't, aristocracy was natural and democracy wasn't, segregation was natural and interracial marriage wasn't, etc. etc."

This, and the potted intellectual history it's planted in, make no sense to me.

What conservative ever said "aristocracy was natural"? A god-and-throne conservative would say aristocracy, like the monarchy it's a part of, is based on divine right. Jefferson's natural aristocracy was an element of democracy and a liberal (classical liberalism) innovation.

While we're on the topic of Jefferson, Jefferson, that other Jefferson appealed to nature in declaring that all men are equal. Does that make him a conservative? Has he also proven wrong (presumably by the new and improved Jefferson)?

Posted by jmw | June 17, 2008 2:53 PM

jmw, the argument that aristocracy is natural -- that there are naturally various "orders" of humanity -- is one of the oldest political arguments there is. See Plato, or the Renaissance theory of the Great Chain of Being, or the British theory of the "ancient Constitution" (and its justifications for a House of Lords), or the attacks on "Levellers" and rising democrats in the 17th and 18th centuries, or the romantic myths associated with the old South and its plantation class. If you're not aware of all this, that just proves one of the other points in my essay -- that conservatives perversely benefit from their arguments being so completely discredited that it's forgotten they were ever made.

On your question and the Marquis' about whether I would deny that anything is natural, no, I wouldn't. I believe that it's very important, morally and otherwise, to found social policy on what really is natural. And I think it's the glory of the scientific approach (which finally prevailed -- mostly -- over centuries of conservative opposition) that it attempts, in a careful and painstaking way, to determine what this is, instead of just looking around and supposing that existing social arrangements and the privileges attached to them must be nature's way (or God's). In fact, these are arguments I've made elsewhere, at even greater and more tedious (book-) length.

Posted by Jefferson Smith | June 17, 2008 3:56 PM

Marquis and Jefferson,

Here's the problem with denying the claim that some ways of life are more natural, better, and more fulfilling of our highest aspirations and deepest desires than others. To deny that claim is ultimately to undermine all moral claims, and it is ultimately to demolish the idea of progress itself. This is the problem with a certain kind of vulgar Marxism, as it is with liberal capitalism, with feminism, and with a whole slew of other ideologies.

Take socialism as an example (I am a socialist btw). One can argue that the means of property should be owned in common, and defend this on the basis of certain theses about human nature. That there is a "natural" connection between work and reward, that there is a "natural" tendency to cooperate and share, that food "naturally" belongs to the hungry and leisure "naturally" to the hardworking, and so forth. One can defend these theses using teleological reasoning and by pointing to the history of primitive communal societies, etc. But one cannot do this while denying that human nature or morality exist as fixed and absolute things. Because if we can shape humanity into whatever we want, then we could shape it into a world of television-addicted wage slaves as well (and probably easier) then shaping it into a society of selfless, community-minded Heroes of Labor. With the abundance of goods in the modern world and with what we know about social conditioning we could no doubt make the wage-slaves as "happy" as the Heroes of Labor. And once we have abandoned the idea of nature and absolute moral good, we have no longer any grounds for preferring one to the other.

Take feminism for another example. Feminism draws its strength from the truth that men and women, while they differ in many essential aspects of physiology and psychology, have the most essential aspects of their soul in common. Men and women are both capable of much the same feelings, aspirations, sorrows and joys, and for much the same reasons. If we were a species more like the fur seals then feminism would make no sense. Male and female fur seals are much more _different_ than men and women are. If we can define human nature, good and bad however we want, then we have no grounds to say that anti-feminism is any worse than feminism.

Posted by Hector | June 17, 2008 4:06 PM

Hector, I completely agree, and I believe the left has gone wrong when it has tried to suggest that "human beings are infinitely malleable," as the evil Party guy puts it in 1984. But the right has tended to argue, to the contrary, that NOTHING is malleable, that the precise arrangements that happen to benefit certain people at any given moment in history are the only arrangements consistent with "nature," if not indeed commanded by God.

jmw, if you want to pursue this issue further, look for terms like "rank," "orders" and "estates," and of talk about "the gentle" or "better sort" or people "of name" -- historically, this has been the language that aristocrats (in English) have used in referring to the privileges and arrangements they're defending. A list of particular arguments along those lines would be one very, very long bibliography.

Posted by Jefferson Smith | June 17, 2008 4:18 PM

Jefferson -- You're really having it all ways over there. My point is that the Right Wing, as a modern political phenomenon, sought to defend king and alter, and with them aristocracy, based on divine right. Classical liberals like Locke and Jefferson opposed them by looking to nature --think of Jefferson's famous comment that no man is booted and spurred to ride another, nor any fitted with a saddle to be ridden, by nature.

This shift from the divine right of kings to natural rights based democracy was epochal. To the extent that you try to elide that, your history is potted and you're missing the point. It also ignores that it was classical liberals, not conservatives, who initiated the modern turn to nature. It was that turn to a universal and rationally apprended nature in the French Revolution that drove Burke nuts.

Yes, I know some latter-day aristocrats have invoked natural differences as a basis for rank. But they are as anachronistic as Christians who speak of their beliefs in terms borrowed from modern philosophy, such as values. The Southern Planters you mention are a perfect example - their efforts to defend slavery were doomed and based on brute force rather than right.

You only dig the hole deeper by referring to Plato and Southern Planters. To the extent that you would lump together aristocrats and Plato and Southern planters, you again elide enormous differences in an effort to support your sweeping categorical judgments. If your definition of conservative is elastic enough to comprehend ancients, pre-moderns, and Christian fundamentalists -- that Jerry Falwell and Plato somehow share the same poltical philosophy in any meaningful -- it is meaningless and, frankly, silly.

Posted by jmw | June 17, 2008 5:22 PM

My point is that the Right Wing, as a modern political phenomenon, sought to defend king and alter, and with them aristocracy, based on divine right.

I may be in error on this point, but if I am not mistaken, 'the divine right of kings' as a political theory was a 17th century innovation rather at odds with medieval political practice.

Posted by Art Deco | June 17, 2008 5:59 PM

neocon defense of democracy or secularism for Iraq, when it is so clear they reject those at home).

Sergio,
Could you educate us by providing a reference which would indicate that Dr. Kristol or Dr. Krauthammer, or any of their associates:

1. favored the erection of a bureaucratic authoritarian state in this country; or

2. were more than minimally religiously observant.

?

Posted by Art Deco | June 17, 2008 6:06 PM

jmw, we must be using the word "nature" in different ways. I understand that certain kinds of appeals to nature have also had progressive political aims and results, but in virtually every age there have been apologists for the status quo who argued that the privileges of the privileged class of the day were just the way things are -- inevitable, unavoidable, fundamental to the order of the world, or however you prefer to put it. I believe these arguments more often appealed to nature than to "divine right," which was a late-16th-century development that had only about a 200-year run, and which, in part, was invoked on behalf of kings precisely over AGAINST traditionalist claims on behalf of old aristocracies. (Unless you want to argue, at least as anachronistically as anything you're accusing me of, that Pharaoh's or Caesar's claims to quasi-godhood, or the "Son of Heaven" claims of the old emperors of China, were instances of "divine right.")

This all started with Ross's post suggesting that conservatism is an attitude that has no particular content. But in fact, we find nature and divine sanction both appealed to repeatedly throughout the centuries as reasons to oppose the reforms that have given us democracy, modern science and medicine, political rights for minorities and the unpropertied, and so on. I believe that arguing that "things are the way they are because they're supposed to be that way, and therefore shouldn't be changed" is an argument with specific content, because it inevitably rests on claims about where and how we can discover how things are supposed to be. In the West, nature and Scripture have both been frequently cited as sources of insight into the inevitable rightness of present arrangements. It's not distorting history to point out what such appeals have had in common from one era to the next -- or, more importantly, what they have in common with conservative arguments of today.

Posted by Jefferson Smith | June 17, 2008 6:06 PM

(even if most of that legacy BELONGS to the left by right)

Which left and how so?

Posted by Art Deco | June 17, 2008 6:11 PM

"I believe these arguments more often appealed to nature than to "divine right".....

To be clear, I should have said that I believe such arguments are inherently appeals to nature -- "nature" meaning "how the cosmos fundamentally is and works" -- and that they more often explicitly invoked nature, the actual word, than "divine right" (although the two appeals overlap a lot in Judeo-Christian tradition, since nature is held to be the willed creation of God).

Posted by Jefferson Smith | June 17, 2008 6:16 PM

1) Robespierre killed _many_ fewer people than Thiers' counter-revolutionary suppression of the Paris Commune in 1871. Somewhat more people were killed in the entirety of the Reign of Terror than in 1871 (about 40,000 as opposed to 30,000) but of course that was over a much longer period of time.

Leaving aside your precision with regard to these two discrete episodes, I note you are neglecting to add the death toll of the Vendee to the totals attributable to the French revolutionaries. (The question of the legitimacy of the uprising in Paris in 1871 is also unaddressed).

Posted by Art Deco | June 17, 2008 6:17 PM

You seem to be accusing the Left of having inspired Red Terrors while completely ignoring the White Terrors that in some cases (France, Latin America) were substantially bloodier.

If I am not mistaken, the bloodiest 'white terror' in Latin America was the suppression of the Communist insurrection in Guatemala during the years running from 1978-84. I think 140,000 deaths were attributed to the Guatemalan military and police during this period. Lower-bound estimates of the death toll in Cambodia in 1975-78 start at three times that.

Posted by Art Deco | June 17, 2008 6:27 PM

But in fact, we find nature and divine sanction both appealed to repeatedly throughout the centuries as reasons to oppose the reforms that have given us democracy, modern science and medicine, political rights for minorities and the unpropertied, and so on. I believe that arguing that "things are the way they are because they're supposed to be that way, and therefore shouldn't be changed" is an argument with specific content, because it inevitably rests on claims about where and how we can discover how things are supposed to be.

If I understand your method, you pick of selection of past political or cultural disputes, decide which you prefer, and refer to a daisy chain of dissenting parties on the other side by the appellation 'conservative'. This seems like neither a productive nor illuminating exercise.

Political 'Reforms' did not give you 'modern science' or medicine. Particular methodologies were the outgrowth of the work of practioners. Please note that academic institutions in Europe were of medieval origin.

One might also recall that the governance of open-field villages in medieval and early modern Europe was commonly in the hands of the peasants who lived there and worked those fields (within the limits of the customary prerogatives of the local seigneur, to be sure). Conventional conciliar institutions typically governed walled towns. Political rights for the broad mass of the population in Europe were no more due to the inspiration of the 18th century philosophes than were the universities.

Posted by Art Deco | June 17, 2008 6:45 PM

If I understand your method, you pick of selection of past political or cultural disputes, decide which you prefer, and refer to a daisy chain of dissenting parties on the other side by the appellation 'conservative'

Yes, this whole essay seems like a classic "Whig Approach to History" thing, without Macaulay's felicity of style or breadth of knowledge. Even the Marxists aren't always wrong -- and "science" can't tell us what morals are "natural" in the way you seem to want it to, as old fuddy-duddy right-winger Hume (among others) pointed out.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | June 17, 2008 7:34 PM

Art Deco,

More like 200,000 deaths in Guatemala, over 90% of them attributable to the military and police. I wasn't comparing the death toll in Guatemala to the death toll in Cambodia (about 2 million). That would be dumb. I was saying that _within Latin America_ Red Terror was less of a problem than White Terror, and the same was true of France. There are other parts of the world for which such a claim would not be true, of course. But when one is trying to decide, say, whether a country like Bolivia would be better off ruled by an authoritarianism of the Left or of the Right, it doesn't seem to be that the experience of a country on the other side of the world is of the most direct relevant. I wouldn't compare the Santa Cruz oligarchs to the Nazis, and I wouldn't compare Morales and his men to the Bolshevists.

I don't think it's incumbent on me, as a socialist, to defend every regime that called itself socialist. Even Brezhnev himself called Mao's Cultural Revolution a "most barbaric feudal-fascist terror". One might add Leopold's "Congo Free State" was hardly a Leftist regime, but he managed to kill a greater portion of his subjects than the Cambodians did. As did the Kaiser's Army in German Southwest Africa.

Posted by Hector | June 17, 2008 7:36 PM

Jefferson -- I just don't see your trans-historical definition of conservatism. In fact, your definition of a conservative as someone resisting reform and change -- demanding that things just stay the same -- is a caricature.

There's a world of difference between the old right that sought to bring back the throne and the altar and the right of today. In fact, it's because the throne and altar are lost that the whole notion of a political right today is even problematic.

We're pretty much all classical liberals now, and our quarrels are in-house disputes that usually do not engender civil strife. Setting aside the extremists, our disagreements are for the most part about how to realize shared notions of freedom and equality -- not as in the past, about whether they should be the basis of society. For conservatives, as for liberals, that often means change.

In other words, we're fundamentally all on the same side of history. That's why I can't buy your argument that only one side is on the right side of history. That's also why I think you have to make dubious trans-historical comparisons.

Posted by jmw | June 17, 2008 8:04 PM

Political 'Reforms' did not give you 'modern science' or medicine. You misquote me, Art Deco. I didn't attribute science to political reform, nor did I say it has no medieval roots. Whatever history we adduce to explain modern science and medicine, though, it is inescapable that there was conservative opposition to key developments in these areas (as "unnatural," against Scripture, etc.).

.....and "science" can't tell us what morals are "natural" in the way you seem to want it to.... Marquis, is that aimed at me? Because I don't know what "way [I] want it to" you mean.

jmw, if I'm caricaturing conservatism, then so is Ross in the post that started all this, which defined conservatism as a disposition to resist change (or to err on that side) even as the particular changes to be resisted, themselves, change from era to another. What I'm pointing to is a similarity in arguments used over the years in support of that disposition.

And this throne-and-altar concept you keep referring to was not the historic justification for aristocracy. As I mentioned, the "throne" and its divine-right apologists were opponents of aristocratic privilege at key points; divine-right arguments were used to elevate the king into an "absolute" monarch, as opposed to the primus inter pares of feudal theory. Regardless, virtually every ruling class, at least in the Western tradition, has asserted that its privileged position was somehow the natural way of things, and that calls to end or limit those privileges were therefore attacks on the natural order. Isn't it obvious why those with power would make such arguments?

Posted by Jefferson Smith | June 17, 2008 9:33 PM

"My point was that all such change, no matter how necessary and beneficial everyone today agrees it was, was ALWAYS opposed by conservatives of the time" JS

TR: My point was that they also opposed changes we all agree were not necessary or beneficial. That's sort of their job. Buckley put it as "standing across history and yelling stop", but I'd think of it more as yelling "pause."

A society that only listened to conservatives would become stagnant, but there's a value in being a conservative even when you recognize the limitations of the position.

Besides that I think we're both being too monolithic on the matter. I know of conservatives from that era who did support integration. From the perspective of many states in the US integration was relatively established. Even Goldwater didn't really oppose states being integrated he just believed states could stay segregated if they desired. (Not that that's right, but it's not like he was Wallace) Likewise the Enlightenment included many outright racists who favored an almost worse racism than before. Especially with Antisemitism as traditional Antisemitism meant Jews were redeemable through Baptism so, outside of Spain, didn't result in anything like the Holocaust.

Posted by Thomas R | June 17, 2008 10:13 PM

I was saying that _within Latin America_ Red Terror was less of a problem than White Terror

The extant regimes managed to contain the Communist parties until such time as they could be domesticated. The notable exception was in Cuba.

Posted by Art Deco | June 17, 2008 10:53 PM

Whatever history we adduce to explain modern science and medicine, though, it is inescapable that there was conservative opposition to key developments in these areas

"Jefferson Smith",

The task you have set for yourself

1. Requires you to successfully to identify essences or principles so abiding that they would form a valid binary accross five centuries of social thought and natural philosophy; and

2. Demonstrate logically that one set of propositions was invariably invalid.

In lieu of that, you seem to be attempting (terms left insufficiently defined) to show that all historical examples of one set of principles demonstrate their falsity. I believe the term for this may be 'enumerative inductivism', and I do not think it is considered a valid way of demonstrating a point (but philosophy is not my subject, at all). That aside, to do so would require encyclopaedic knowledge in the philosophical, historical, and sociological realms. Somehow I do not think you are there yet.

You might set yourself an achievable goal.

Posted by Art Deco | June 17, 2008 11:11 PM

Besides that I think we're both being too monolithic on the matter. I know of conservatives from that era who did support integration. From the perspective of many states in the US integration was relatively established. Even Goldwater didn't really oppose states being integrated he just believed states could stay segregated if they desired. (Not that that's right, but it's not like he was Wallace).

I think Goldwater's precise position turned on positive law: that the commerce clause of the Constitution did not delegate to the federal legislature the power to enact the sort of commercial and labor law that was passed in the summer of 1964. I am not sure, but he may have also said that compelling by statute certain transactions in the market and in the workplace was inadvisable (a common position at the time). Jim Crow was in 1964 a less venerable institution than people (including Russell Kirk) often fancy, and not universal. Freedom-of-contract had a much longer pedigree.

George Wallace's career as a firebrand lasted from 1959 to 1973. Prior to that, he was a protege of Big Jim Folsom and had a reputation as a 'racial moderate'. Much of what he had to say during those years was just shtick.

Posted by Art Deco | June 17, 2008 11:28 PM

Art,

I've attempted to enumerate and elaborate the principles you refer to in the essay linked to via my name here. As explained in that piece, I think there are six basic fallacies or wrong assumptions that link the conservative arguments of different periods: "spurning scientific evidence in favor of biblical revelation, insisting that certain social arrangements are natural or God-given and mustn’t be changed, putting their faith in the powers-that-be of the moment and assuming that these would and should continue in power, reacting with hostility to efforts to extend rights to groups that previously lacked them, and warning with utter confidence that reform efforts would wreck society instead of making it better." I make a case in (tedious) detail for my claim that these are conservatism' essential and recurring mistakes, and yes, I believe they can be found underpinning conservative arguments over at least five centuries.

But to get back to the definition of conservatism that Ross presented up at the start of this thread: I would say that those who want to claim that conservatism is merely prudent caution toward possibly rash proposals for reform are also setting a difficult task for themselves. As Ross himself acknowledges, it's not clear how applying this "contentless" definition keeps you from aligning yourself with, for example, the segregationists of the Old South. Some change is essential, and resistance to it unjust. Are conservatives like Ross going to argue that, well, it's not for them to sort good change from bad; it's OK if they just resist everything, and trust that progressive pressure will overcome their resistance in cases where change is really needed? Is that where the defense of conservatism is going here? Because that strikes me as really, really weak.

Posted by Jefferson Smith | June 17, 2008 11:41 PM

BTW, that's six conservative fallacies (not the five it looks like) because I count appeals to nature and to God or Scripture as two fallacies (although they overlap a lot, as I noted earlier).

Posted by Jefferson Smith | June 17, 2008 11:48 PM

Art Deco:

"Sergio,
Could you educate us by providing a reference which would indicate that Dr. Kristol or Dr. Krauthammer, or any of their associates:
1. favored the erection of a bureaucratic authoritarian state in this country
2. were more than minimally religiously observant."

No reference about Kristol supporting a totalitarian goverment, to be mor precise. But Kristol, who was heavely influenced by Leo Strauss and who deeply regreted his initial commitment to the people as a trotskyste, after the II world war, certainly favored more of an aristrocratic based form of goverment than a democratic one. Democracy for him was only a compromise by the founding fathers, who according to him, did not have anyways faith "in the common man". The populace was to be kept in chek by religion (and so couriously, a non observant jew like Kristol, defended religion as a cornerstone of society and defended the religious right - a very authoritarian movement- as "good populism", which is to say, pathetic). Here some quotes on the issue:

Commenting on Leo Strauss

"He was an intellectual aristocrat who thought that the truth co