Perhaps I will have finished the book by the time this post goes up. Or I will have finished without making it to the end.
Early on, he writes,
Politics originates in nature, in the constancy of human nature, which impels people to associate in society to avoid violent death and other inconveniences, and then to gain other, positive advantages. If, however, there is no universal human nature, then there can be no universal principles of political organization and action. If what we call human nature is but the distillation of a particular people’s traditions and experiences, then nature, at bottom, has no bottom. It is merely the most durable aspect of something that is ultimately not durable–the sediment of history from transitory cultures.
Will sees the left-right divide in these terms. The right sees human nature as fixed, and we must arrange our institutions to best accommodate this fixed human nature. The left sees human nature as malleable, and we must arrange our institutions to improve human nature.
There is something to this. But I think that Will’s emphasis on human nature, which leads to an emphasis on natural rights, is more libertarian than conservative.
For me, conservatism means a belief that cultural change is better accomplished by evolution than by revolution. There is wisdom in traditions, and we do not grasp that wisdom sufficiently well for it to be safe to impose dramatic changes. I see markets (or decentralized innovation) as a more effective evolutionary mechanism than government. Hence, I come down on the side of libertarianism from that perspective.
> The right sees human nature as fixed, and we must arrange our institutions to best accommodate this fixed human nature. The left sees human nature as malleable, and we must arrange our institutions to improve human nature.
That is a succinct summary of Thomas Sowell’s “A Conflict of Visions”. It feels correct on the surface but it doesn’t seem to apply to common scenarios. Sowell’s own explanation of Marxism as a hybrid of the two visions is convoluted.
Ironically, Kling’s “Three Languages of Politics” instantly resolved my frustrations with Sowell’s framework. Now Kling seems to be redefining conservatism from Pro-Civilization to Pro-Evolutionary-Change. Neither feels right to me but I’m not sure they are wrong either.
What is becoming more and more obvious to me is that Kling nailed the definition of Progressive with his oppressed/exploited axis. It explains Marxism and Social Justice Activism. That was the beautiful core that allowed me to dismiss Sowell without reservation.
It seems that the only consistency in the definition of Conservative and Libertarian is that both are distinctly Not-Progressive but we we seem to be struggling with defining what exactly they are and how they differ from one another.
Now protectionism has reared its ugly head and defies categorization. You might make a case that being anti-immigration is a form of Evolutionary Conservatism but a return to mercantilism certainly is not.
Arnold’s view of libertarianism seems to both distinguish it from conservatism and to link markets to a conservative evolutionary view of change. The older fusionism of libertarianism and conservatism is now in bad odor in many parts. Libertarians are more sympathetic to the politics of recognition while nationalist conservatives blame “pure libertarianism” for electoral decline and general silliness.George Will himself seems both a conservative and (these days) more libertarian. But he, Arnold and I are getting up there in age. Social justice warriors may reject libertarians, but the reverse is not necessarily true.
“Will’s emphasis on human nature, which leads to an emphasis on natural rights, is more libertarian than conservative.”
In a recent interview with Jonah Goldberg about his book, Will stated that what (American) conservatives seek to conserve are the natural rights principles of the nation’s founding. In turn, libertarianism is really nothing more than fidelity to those natural rights principles. The Declaration of Independence is basically a libertarian manifesto, and America is basically the world’s first libertarian nation. So, yes, Will has long self-identified as conservative but now is probably better described as an intellectual libertarian. In fact, many intellectual self-described conservatives seem to have followed a similar path, for example Jonah Goldberg and David French. The more a conservative emphasizes intellectual coherence and consistency, the more they seem to gravitate towards libertarianism.
“The right sees human nature as fixed, and we must arrange our institutions to best accommodate this fixed human nature. The left sees human nature as malleable, and we must arrange our institutions to improve human nature.”
This strikes me as affirming the likes of Bryan Caplan and others who argue that voters are not competent enough to participate in the political process.
Rather than use the political process as established and constrained by the constitution, both left and right, and libertarians, unable to get the voters they would like, prefer to go outside politics and impose extra-constitutional legalistic, administrative state, or supranationalist constraints on the voters.
Neither left, right, or libertarians are interested in the practical notion of appealing to voters via competence and desirable governmental outcomes.
Perhaps this is why populism is so superior to the ideologies of the left, right, and libertarians.
Populism is the simple notion that the government is accountable to the voters.
Rather than scheming up lucrative power plays to “arrange our institutions,” populists want to see results. Populists are generally not interested in how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, or, whether human nature, whatever the heck that might be, as if there is only one, is immutable or malleable. Populists want efficacious, efficient, and economical government and really are not interested at all in whatever moral posing or ideological cant the incompetent are trying to hide their failures behind.
Populism’s first concern is with the relationship between an individual and their local community. Populists vote with their feet and exit communities that fail to offer effective governance. Performance comes first. Politicians who are not competent, but manage to get elected anyway, see the populations of their jurisdictions decline, unless they can hide behind sanctuary city status and attract illegal aliens. Populists mistrust tolerance of illegal aliens because it confuses the order of who is accountable to whom. Populists adore unincorporated areas and home-owner associations and they value the education that their children receive more than any dim-witted principle espoused by grandstanding moralists.
A plurality of US voters identifies as independent and the vast majority of these are populists as defined above. And most of these populists are also “libertarians” in the old-fashioned sense of having values that include minding your own business, not letting government get bigger than it needs to be, mistrusting authority, and playing by the rules such as they are. These voters are increasingly locked out of the political process by electoral corruption, top-down administrative power, interference from federal and state government, and the increasing percent of the population whose interests are in preserving unaccountable institutions.
An Article V constitutional convention will be the revolution that finally releases the populists pent up frustrations.
My culture is signaled all around me, from the neon light bulbs, the shelf of DVD movies, the computer boxes on my desk, me slouching in my chair, and a box of raisin bran. My culture extends from the stone age brick wall to Mores at the 10 power.
I am lost, how you reach me, I have no clue.
For me, conservatism means a belief that cultural change is better accomplished by evolution than by revolution.
It seems worthy of mention that the culture as it is has a rather well-rewarded place for you. Of course you don’t want revolution; you are much too close to the top for the potential benefits to outweigh the risks.
Which isn’t to say I don’t agree with you. It seems to me that the systems that keep us all alive may not be robust enough to survive a revolution. But also I understand why people at the bottom are less inclined to patience.
The term ‘conservative’ in current American parlance is now as hopelessly confused as ‘liberal’. It doesn’t help that there has been a long-standing fight among both left and right-leaning intellectuals about what ‘conservative’ ought to mean and reflexively connote: a fight which has of late amplified tremendously in intensity and variance of claims. (As least the Neoconservatives did everyone the favor of using the Neo when they were doing this to make the distinctions clear. Ironically, the Neoliberals should have just been classic ‘liberals’, at least with the narrow respect to markets, no need for ‘neo’.)
I think Hayek did an ok job of explaining the important distinctions which defined the WWII-era context (though no longer our own) in his essay, “Why I Am Not A Conservative,” (but using a more Continental conception of the term based in the historical fallout of the French Revolution – ‘reactionary’ might have been better), pointing out that a particularly irritating additional terminological problem arises out of the fact that America was born ‘liberal’ (also in the European sense), and so the ‘conservative’ movement here tends to want to seek to preserve that liberal legacy.
In Hayek’s description, a conservative tends to be yesterday’s progressive, and a reactionary tends to be yesterday’s conservative.
But the suite of common ‘conservative’ tendencies that Hayek seemed to lump all together have now definitively come apart into incompatible tribes.
For example, social traditionalists have been conventionally lumped in with conservatives for generations. However, far from being dynamism-averse, the kind of changes many social traditionalists would favor would be genuinely radical and revolutionary in the current context. They aren’t at all the inertialists or statis-lovers of traditional cariacatures of ‘conservatives’.
“At least half the people you’re seeing are ugly. Being ugly–is that one of the human rights too? Do you know what it is to carry your ugliness along through your whole life? With not a moment of relief? Or your sex–you never choose that. Or the color of your eyes. Or your era on earth. Or your country. Or your mother. None of the things that matter.” Milan Kundera
“There are lots of things you can’t justify that are important. Your mother, for example.” Richard Rorty
“People are now planting bombs in the tramways of Algiers. My mother might be on one of those tramways. If that is justice, then I prefer my mother.” Albert Camus
In other words, everyone is conservative about his mother.