My Political Fortune Cookie

I got it from taking this quiz, which said that the conservative thinker who most fits my views is Russell Kirk.

You are a traditionalist conservative. You emphasize tradition, order, the moral imagination, and the “permanent things.” Although you are alert to the threat of big government, you are also critical of atomistic individualism, as you emphasize man’s spiritual and social nature. As such, you are skeptical of finding much common ground with libertarians.

I prefer to frame things in terms of my three-axes model. I am certainly not a progressive, because I cannot think of a single issue that I view through the lens of the oppressor-oppressed axis. To the extent that I come out libertarian on issues, it is not so much because I frame them in terms of the freedom-coercion axis. More often, it is because I believe that people over-estimate the effectiveness of the political process and under-estimate the effectiveness of the market process.

I admit to thinking often these days in terms of the civilization vs. barbarism axis. I am old enough to be entitled to that as a natural inclination. But how can one not? Are Islamic radicals not barbaric? Does this year’s Presidential election give one confidence that our civilized values are securely in place? Are our college campuses reinforcing our civilized values? Do we believe that if there is a radical direction taken in American politics, that we will be happy with how that turns out?

8 thoughts on “My Political Fortune Cookie

  1. Speaking of the 3 Axes model and this election: Have you noticed that Trump seems to play to an oppressor/oppressed view of the world? Think about it, to him our enemies on the world stage are not dim barbarians, but clever, shifty capitalists swindling us out of our jobs at the price of cheap goods. He’s not so much a conservative as an inverted leftist: same basic outlook, opposite ggod guys and bad guys.

    Interestingly I’ve always identified as conservative but what little I know of Kirk I found repugnant. I identify my worldview as Freedom vs Barbarism, where the only civilization is Capitalism, and Socialism, Fascism, Islamism, etc. are all Babarisms.

  2. I got Kirk too, and you can do a lot worse. However, there are distinct ways of arriving at this kind of ‘conservatism’ at any particular moment and situation of political circumstances. It’s like two ship captains who have both anchored in the same port during a storm, but one is at his home anchorage and the other is only there so long as the seas continue to churn, and would gladly head off to a distant shore at the first opportunity to escape the common danger.

    So, one type of conservatism actually likes where it is, while the other doesn’t and is actually a radicalism that appreciates that the radicalism they are likely to get is not the radicalism they actually desire, and is choosing to stay put and defend the status quo as the least-worst option.

    I think a lot of libertarians are in the second category. In kind of oscillating and punctuated marriages of convenience with both conservatism – to try and stop the progressive radicalisms they don’t like – and progressivism – to achieve the one’s they do.

    Of course, there are lots of ways to be radical. Yesterday’s conservatism is always one of today’s radicalisms. Preferring the rapidly evaporating traditions, culture, and social arrangements of the not-too-distant past is reactionary and, by this point, practically taboo. Defending the wisdom or proposing any revival of that state of affairs can no longer be considered ‘conservatism’ since there is little left to conserve, and so thus constitutes a radicalism likely to be viewed as incredibly extreme.

  3. Result: Frank Meyer

    You are what is often called a fusionist: you believe that libertarians and traditionalists share a lot of common ground, not only politically but also philosophically. Freedom is fundamental, but freedom cannot mean mere license; virtue is the highest goal, but virtue not freely chosen is not really virtue. As Meyer put it, “Truth withers when freedom dies, however righteous the authority that kills it; and free individualism uninformed by moral value rots at its core and soon brings about conditions that pave the way for surrender to tyranny.”

    Analysis: fair.

  4. Kirk too, interestingly as I am not a conservative, but neither do I view things along oppressor oppressed, but powerful powerless. Power wants what power wants. I often think conservatives see themselves as oppressed these days without as much power as they feel they deserve, but power is about power, not deserving.

    Better might be equity inequity since everyone views civilization and freedom positively, but no one views oppression positively. The counter to freedom is duty and justice. The counter to civilization is dignity and fairness. The counter to equity is conscience and order.

    • Support of traditions out of habit seems unsupportable to me. So, aside from a general skepticism and acceptance of human fallibility, shouldn’t one have a philosophy on traditionalism? One of mine is that some traditions are simply bad habits with a high activation energy of change. So, one can (and should) have an equal bias towards and against tradition just to maintain a balance.

  5. To paraphrase: A society that puts the oppressor-oppressed and freedom-coercion axes before the civilisation-barbarism axis will eventually get a great deal of both oppression and coercion. A society that puts the civilisation-barbarism axis before the oppressor-oppressed and freedom-coercion axes will tend to get neither much oppression nor coercion.

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