We began our research on self-referencing conservative thought and theory thinking we knew the achilles heel of conservatism; the way in to unravel conservatism's convoluted theories and demonstrate its contradictions.
The conservative notion of "cause and effect" we thought was the way in.(Having jousted with conservative talk radio hosts I've experienced first hand their ability to defend their first false premise with a second false premise and the second with a third.) Expose their false notion of cause and effect and everything unravels.
But as we went along we found that although cause and effect was a major error in conservative theory other premises were just as fundamental if not more so.
One of these stems from Eric Voegelin's concept of Gnosticism. He claims that trying to make any improvements or progress in our secular history takes us farther away from God, and is an attempt an immanentizing heaven here on earth.
Logically, this leads to a belief that we should do nothing. While this extreme view is not often espoused the attitude appears consistently in conservative theory.
NOTHING CAN BE DONE, BUT DO IT CONSERVATIVELY
_[Liberalism and radicalism] deny legitimacy to laws, governments,
or ways of life which accept the ancient evils of mankind,
such as poverty, inequality, and war, as necessary
- and therefore permanent - attributes of the human condition._
Harry Jaffa
Perhaps the strongest common thread among conservatives is that "nothing can be done," which supports the idea that "nothing should be done." We should simply let things happen. We saw this in Burke’s comfort in accepting whatever happens.
Conservative caution toward change and innovation is rooted in pessimism about human nature.
Here are some conservative thoughts on the nature of human beings.
Russell Kirk says that Edmund Burke knew that under the skin of modern man stirs the "savage, the brute, the demon." [Kirk, page 39]
Eliseo Vivas wrote about the brutality...passions and lusts that exist in everyone.
[Nash, page 48]
C.E.M Joad wrote: I see now that evil is endemic in man, and that the Christian doctrine of original sin expresses a deep and essential insight into human nature.
[Nash, page 54]
Dinesh D’Douza: Conservatives recognize that there are two principles in human nature - good and evil - and these are in constant conflict. Given the warped timber of humanity, conservatives seek to...suppress man’s lower or base impulses. [page 9]
Thomas Sowell: To those [conservatives]whose reasoning begins with the tragedy of the human condition evil is diffused throughout humanity....barbarism is not some distant stage of evolution, but an ever-present threat when the civilizing institutions are weakened or undermined. [Sowell, pages 117 & 118]
Will and Ariel Durant: If the transmission [of civilization] should be interrupted for one century; civilization would die, and we should be savages again. [Quoted in Sowell’s "The Vision of the Anointed," page 118]
If Change We Must, Then Change Slowly
Of course not every conservative will say "do nothing." Some openly advocate slow change.
man who truly understands the past does not detest all change; on the contrary, he welcomes change, as the means of renewing society; but he knows how to keep change in a continuous train, so that we will not lose that sense of gratitude....As Burke puts it, "We must all obey the great law of change. All we can do, and that human wisdom can do, is to provide that the change shall proceed by insensible degrees.[Russell Kirk]
Here, as in all things, conservatives put social order above doing the right thing, i.e., morality.
...no social system, however unjust and deformed, justifies the abrogation of the natural law as a means to reforming or replacing it. Human society is by its nature organic and hierarchical....It may not licitly be leveled....Prescriptions for various social ills [are] more often than not more pestilential still than the diseases they were intended to alleviate or cure....
Here Chilton Williamson, Jr., discussing the Rerum Novarum, by Pope Leo XIII, articulates the consistent conservative fear that change will make things worse than they already are.
Trying To Escape The Pessimism
...we get in trouble when we underestimate, when we are not sufficiently pessimistic. There is a pessimistic strain to conservatism. There’s nothing wrong with pessimism; it has its pleasures. Pessimists are right 90% of the time and are delighted when they are wrong. [George Will]
George Will struggles to explain how human beings can be both malleable and unchanging. His solution is to postulate that human nature is unchanging but human behavior can be molded by time, place and circumstance.
Society is a crucible of character formation....virtue must be acquired....The Founders] understood that to promote a way of life is to promote a kind of person....
Here Will is saying that human behavior is molded by society and culture. But on the other hand he says:
[To say that] human beings only have a nature contingent on time and place - is the idea that has animated modern tyrannies...[From The Woven Figure]
Here he is saying that human nature is a given, which time and place may channel but not change.
The equivocation stems from the libertarians’ more positive view of human nature. Tibor Machan critiques the traditional pessimism thusly:
The reason [the] conservative outlook has serious problems is that human nature is not, pace [with deference to] Burke, Kirk, and Will, undermined by innate viciousness. Yes, people can live lives that are solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short, just as Hobbes believed we do in the state of nature, but this capacity is not the same thing as an innate propensity. There is nothing inherently wrong with us that would thwart our achieving and functioning well in a truly just free society. We have the choice to do well or badly on all fronts.
Machan says that humans can do well in the libertarian utopia of a Stateless society. Perhaps we won’t do so well living in a society in which a State is one of the institutions.