Continuing now my campaign to stir progressives and liberals into challenging conservatives on their principles - because their principles are contradictory.
Many younger conservatives - and possibly younger progressives - may not be acquainted with the endeavor by Frank S. Meyer to cobble together the disparate principles of conservatives into an integrated system, which he called "fusionism," and which Ronald Reagan embraced and saluted. This was basically an attempt to meld the "Traditionalist" wing of the movement with the "Libertarian" wing of the movement; and attempt to bring together morality and the secular free market.
Meyer's synthesis was bound to fail because the contradictions between the two wings is insurmountable. Yet, most of today's conservatives don't yet know that fusionism is a failure and continue laud his mantra of smaller government, stout defense and individual responsibility.
I've put together a comparisons of many of the contradictions within the conservative synthesis and this follows in the body of this diary.
It will come as a surprise for many conservatives to learn that the good of major institutions, including the State, is more important to conservatives than the good of individual human beings.
In the United States individuals are expected to become good capitalists and good Christians. We are expected to submit to the established rules of the institutions, i.e., the "boots on the ground." In our opinion the purpose of human life is not to be found in conforming to institutional standards and being good citizens of the State.
Surely the mystery of life is far greater than hoary institutional wisdom. Too many people have told us that life is an individual journey of discovery of self. Too many people have told us that it’s the journey which is important, not the destination. Too many people have told us of the courage that is needed for the journey, of the need to be daring in choosing our way forward.
Faced with this competing vision of life conservatives will shift subjects. "Hold on," they’ll say. "Hold on." This sounds like naïve liberal speak. It sounds like you’re talking about progress and perfecting human nature. It sounds like you’re saying that human nature is essentially good. The truth, they’ll say, is that human beings are fundamentally low, base and evil. Human nature is immutably sinful; progress is impossible to achieve. Human beings need to be restrained by the police power of the State and our selfish human nature needs to be channeled by our hoary institutions into mysterious processes which will produce the best possible world for every one. Rather than being free to explore and develop our unique individuality we must be hemmed in. For our own good, limits must be placed on what we can try to be.
But now there is a problem. If human nature is unchangeable then life experiences are devoid of meaning and consequence. We find this narrative thread in many conservative writings. Human beings are written about as abstractions. There is no need for babies or old people because there is no difference in their immutable nature. Everyone is an adult and interchangeable.
On the other hand conservatives also spin a competing narrative. In this narrative they believe that babies are born without moral understanding; that the institutions of church, family and work teach babies and children orthodox morality and the character necessary to prosper in a capitalist economy. In this narrative view individuals do change over time, since it takes education and time to acquire these characteristics. Also, some people can fail to change in the desired way from babyhood to adulthood. In this view human nature is mutable; individual growth can occur; nations and societies can learn and grow. Change occurs.
What is the correct description about what happens in our lives? Do our lives consist of the channeling of our sinful human nature into socially beneficial activities or do we grow, mature and realize our inherent humanness?
Conservatives have a problem with the unfolding of an individual human life over time and with the unfolding of history over time. For most Christian conservatives in the United States individual salvation is the only purpose to their lives. This raises a question about whether events in our secular world have any consequence whatsoever. Most conservatives believe that secular history will come to an end (the eschaton) and some people will go to heaven and most will go to hell. This is the only meaningful thing to our existence.
How, then, and why are events in our secular world caused? How does the world come to be as it is? Conservatives try, unsuccessfully in our opinion, to keep two parallel narratives. One involves Adam and Eve and the Fall, which causes man’s sinful nature, the possibility of redemption through Jesus Christ and, finally, the end of days, the end of secular history. This narrative invokes the idea that secular history is something of an illusion; that there is a more basic, Transcendental realm that exists side by side with, but superior to, secular reality. An individual’s highest achievement is to live in virtuous consonance with that Transcendental realm. When secular history ends only the Transcendental realm will remain. This is a narrative about individual lives.
At the same time conservatives support a dual narrative of secular history. In this narrative God has purposes for secular history and works within secular history to accomplish His objectives. This is a narrative about cause and effect within our secular history. There is a clash between good and evil in the unfolding secular events of history, with Satan working within secular history as well as God. We are left wondering whether secular history has any meaning other than as a vehicle for the drama between God and Satan. Can secular history really matter?
And this narrative leaves unclear whether there is any purely secular cause and effect. Do apples fall from trees because of purely secular causes? Do nations make war, do people fall in love, do the Yankees win the pennant, do artists paint pictures, do rivers cut through rock only as part of the clash between God and Satan or is there a third narrative that is divorced from the eschaton?
Conservatives actually have two third way narratives to account for cause and effect in the social and economic aspects of our secular lives. One is a variant of the utilitarian theory about institutions. This narrative theorizes that social and economic interactions among people constitutes a competitive process which mysteriously operates to bring about the best possible secular life for everyone. The other narrative says that the purpose of life is to work hard. Those who do not work hard end up at the bottom of the secular ladder. This contradicts the utilitarian theory by acknowledging that everything doesn’t automatically turn out for the best and that hard work rather than a process of competitive interactions is responsible for secular cause and effect.
There are also two different narratives regarding the institutional wisdom we spoke of at the beginning. One narrative says that God reveals his Transcendental Moral Code to us through scripture and through our ability to reason. This moral code is immutable, eternal and objective and is the basis of our institutional wisdom.
The other narrative says that institutional wisdom is developed through experience over thousands of years. Various ideas compete with each other to meet human needs and over time the more effective ideas have won out over the less effective and have become embodied in the institutions we know today. This is the utilitarian theory of history and it is divorced from the eschaton.
This narrative does have a problem, however. Conservatives imply that this process of competition among ideas is over and our institutions now embody the ultimate wisdom of our species. We think it more likely that all institutional wisdom is provisional; that changes in institutional wisdom will continue to occur.
Consequently, this narrative is in conflict with the other narrative which says that wisdom is the perception of an immutable and eternal objective order.
Conservatives fail to synthesize these many conflicting narratives into one, believable narrative that explains our secular lives. The conservative vision is static and closed. For conservatives the important things, the Transcendental realm, the eschaton are already known. So, they have trouble explaining why the secular world unfolds in surprising and unanticipated ways. Conservatives have a conflict over what to do with the experience of mankind since the fall. Can mankind learn anything as a species? Can we learn about ourselves? Can experience make us better? What if what we learn from experience conflicts with what we learn from revelation?
By their reliance on the Fall and our sinful nature and the end of time, conservatives have put themselves in a position where they cannot recognize what everyone knows. We all know that we can do bad things, particularly in bad situations. But we know that ordinarily and consistently people are kind, thoughtful and caring. Altruism occurs all the time and we know that it can’t be reduced by economic or psychological explanations.
Conservatives make many mistakes. Not the least is their certainty that they know better than other folks.