This is part two of my essay on conservative principles. Aloysha, after reading part one, refered me to a 2004 essay by Philip Agre on the same subject and I recommend this as another thoughtful approach that uses most of the same background.
An interesting thing happened as I did my research on conservative principles: George Will came up as being the most reasonable of the bunch and in many places I use excerpts from his essays as a foil to the more extreme conservaives. It is Will who stagtes plainly that Captialism Destroys Tradition.
As the reader will see, conservativism is actually an unstable alliance between conflicting principles, which we should be able to easily shred in debate over first principles.
CAPITALISM DESTROYS TRADITION
The conservatives’ overall problem is that they have an impossible time creating a credible narrative about how the secular world is, how it gets to be the way it is and, not inconsequentially, how the secular world and the Transcendental Realm can interact with each other. Follow one conservative belief to its logical conclusion and it inevitably contradicts another conservative belief.
The Republican platform of 1980 stresses two themes that are not as harmonious as Republicans suppose. One is cultural conservatism. The other is capitalist dynamism. The latter dissolves the former. Capitalism undermines traditional social structures and values. Republicans see no connection between the cultural phenomena they deplore and the capitalist culture they promise to intensify. [George Will]
The subtext of Will’s observation is that conservatism is actually not composed of one integrated philosophy but is an amalgam of Libertarianism - which is devoted to capitalism - and Traditionalism, which is devoted to cultural conservatism.
I’ll say it now, and will probably say again, the genius of 21st century conservatism is its ability to avoid acknowledging how truly incompatible these two pieces are.
The "Errors" of Secular History
The errors that Weaver and Voegelin have in mind include the Reformation, which created the Protestant religion; the Enlightenment, which conservatives credit with wanting to replace God with man; the French Revolution, which emphasized equality over liberty, and; the Welfare State, which conservatives credit with eroding personal responsibility.
Catholic And Protestant Conflicts
Medieval Christianity was Catholic Christianity. Catholicism emphasized certain values, such as authority, order, inequality, hierarchy, duty and obligation. Individualism and thinking for oneself is not a value of Catholicism. The "New Conservatives" refers to those conservatives who became prominent writers about conservative theory following World War Two.
The new conservatives’ brand of Christianity was often of a decidedly Catholic, even medieval cast. Hallowell urged that we go back to the Middle Ages only in the sense that we go back in spirit to a society that intellectually and spiritually, was God-centered rather than man-centered. [George Nash]
Protestantism was created as a revolt against the authority of Catholicism. Protestantism emphasized that people should think for themselves. Liberty is a Protestant idea.
The Human Nature Problem
A snowball rolling downhill would be envious of the accumulating problems of conservative beliefs. The problem of human nature is chief among them.
Medieval Christianity emphasized that mankind inherited Adam and Eve’s sin and, so human nature is intrinsically depraved. M. Stanton Evans captures the tension in this major problem for conservatives.
The fundamental problem for conservatives is man and his nature: specifically, whether the imperatives of individual freedom can be reconciled with the Christian conception of the individual as flawed in mind and will, who must subordinate himself to an objective, non-secular order. [M. Stanton Evans]
Conservatives recognize that there are two principles in human nature - good and evil - and these are in constant conflict. [Dinesh D’Souza]
Libertarians, on the other hand, those who emphasize liberty and the free market have a different view of human nature, as they must.
The reason the conservative outlook has serious problems is that human nature is not (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 in a truly just free society. We have the choice to do well or badly on all fronts. [Tabor Machan]
The Problem With Human Nature, Government And Capitalism
Conservatives favor small government because they believe that human nature is essentially depraved and that being in government invariably brings out the worst of our depraved human nature. But what conservatives most always ignore is that those same human beings running government also run corporations, churches and families. M. Stanton Evans hits the nail again.
If men are naturally good, whence comes the evil of government? If men are fundamentally evil, how does government become a force of virtue? [M. Stanton Evans]
The same can be asked of corporations, churches and families. Self-interest is not the same as depravity.
Capitalism Affects Human Nature
Liberty is a secular idea, is, in fact, a Gnostic Heresy. But as time went on conservatives began to assert that liberty is a God-given right that exists independently of man and specifically exists as part of man’s human nature as it exists in nature. This is convoluted stuff. Conservatives have given human nature an objective existence outside of our secular world. Discovered no more than 300 years ago liberty has become a major conservative principal. How did this happen? Free market capitalism is what happened and conservatism had to bend so that it wouldn’t break. For free market capitalism requires a different personality and a different set of values than the medieval characteristics of authority, hierarchy and obligation.
The sort of person we become depends, in large part, on the sort of institutions in which we find ourselves, and the moral norms to which we are exposed. [Adam Smith]
Self-discipline, a sense of justice, honesty, fairness, chivalry, moderation, public spirit, respect for human dignity, firm ethical norms - all of these are things which people must possess before they go to market and compete with each other. [Wilhelm Ropke]
So what happens when "sinning man" goes forth to do battle in the competitive market place? Why should we expect any good consequences? Remember, self-interest is still not the same as depravity.
The Divides Of Conservatism
Traditionalists and Libertarians share only two beliefs and that is an antagonism toward strong, centralized government and a shared belief in liberty.
Modern conservatism emerged in response to the particular leap into statism of the 1930s and 1940s. Conservatism came to include both Libertarians and Traditionalists, united only in their opposition to egalitarianism, to compulsory leveling by use of state power. [Murray Rothbard]
A shared belief in liberty, however, obscures the difference between basic assumptions of the Traditionalists and the Libertarians. The Traditionalists believe in communities of people and values. Libertarians believe that society does not exist; that only individuals are real and important. Libertarians are more likely to see human nature as less threatening than Traditionalists. These differences have occasioned much wrangling between the two sides of conservatism.
Combining cultural conservatism and welfare-statism is impossible. Pat Buchanan’s conservatism is false: it wants a return to traditional morality but at the same time advocates keeping the very institutions in place that are responsible for the destruction of traditional morals. [Hans-Hermann Hoppe, On the Von Misses Website]
Once supernatural and traditional sanctions are dissolved, economic self interest is ridiculously inadequate to hold an economic system together, and even less adequate to preserve order. [Russell Kirk]
Is Liberty An End Or A Means?
Conservatives cannot agree. Libertarians think that liberty is an end in itself.
At the heart of the dispute between the Traditionalists and the Libertarians is the question of freedom and virtue. Should virtuous action be compelled, or should it be left up to the free and voluntary choice of the individual? [Murray Rothbard]
Unless men are free to be vicious they cannot be virtuous. No community can make them virtuous. Virtue is the ultimate end of man as man. [Frank Meyer]
Though it may not appear so on the surface this is an argument about the role of government [we previously contrasted Meyer and Bozell on that subject]. It’s also about Christianity, salvation and what God wants for man.
Morality Is A Restraint On Liberty
Not every conservative is convinced of the value of liberty.
Morality is and must be a prohibitive system, one of the main objects of which is to impose upon every one a standard of conduct and of sentiment to which few persons would conform if it were not for the constraints thus put upon them._ [James Fitzjames Stephen]
_What is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils. To temper together the opposite elements of liberty and restraint in one
consistent work, requires much thought, deep reflection, a sagacious, powerful, and combining mind._ [Edmund Burke]
Corporations can restrain liberty as well as government. [Willmoore Kendall]
Frank Meyer’s Creation Of "Fusionism"
Conservatives are well aware of the contradictions and antagonisms between the various people who could claim the mantle of "conservative."
It is difficult to figure out what the ideologies of the Reverend Jerry Falwell, Frank S. Meyer, M.E. Bradford, Harry Jaffa, Donald Atwell Zoll, Russell Kirk, Seymour Martin Lipset and Jude Wanniski have in common. [Murray Rothbard]
But one of those on Rothbard’s list above, Frank S. Meyer, an associate editor at William Buckley’s magazine National Review in the 1960s, set himself the task of bringing together the Libertarian and Traditional branches of conservatism. His solution, a formula: "Reason Operating Within Tradition." Though Meyer did not wholly support this label, his position came to be known as Fusionism.
In seeking to lay out common ground between Libertarians and Traditionalists Meyer edited a book published in 1964 for which authors from both sides contributed essays. Meyer declared that he had found a consensus in these writings upon which both sides could agree.
Conservatives all believe in an objective moral order of immutable standards by which human conduct should be judged. Second, whether they emphasize human rights and freedoms or duties and responsibilities, they unanimously value the human person and oppose liberal attempts to use the State to enforce ideological patterns on human beings. They all agree that the State should be circumscribed. They are deeply suspicious of planning and attempts to centralize power. They join in defense of the Constitution as originally conceived and share an aversion to the messianic Communist threat to Western Civilization. [Nash summarizing Meyer]
Meyer’s declaration of consensus was initially met with a good deal of scorn, but over time Fusionism came to be widely accepted as a true statement about those things that bind diverse individuals’ viewpoints together in conservatism.
But being accepted and being correct are two separate things. Libertarian Murray Rothbard in an insightful essay demonstrates why Meyer’s Fusionism fails.
If reason is indispensable to judge good and evil and to decide between traditions, then obviously it cannot operate within tradition. For either reason is the ultimate arbiter, or tradition is; it is impossible to have it both ways. Fusionism has ineluctably run afoul of the law of the excluded middle. [Rothbard]
Tradition: Knowing The Mind Of God
Modern conservatism is said to have begun with the publication of Reflections on the Revolution in France by Irish politician Edmund Burke in 1790. Russell Kirk is his American popularizer. Burke is the source for the idea that the accumulation of "tradition" has been a result of God’s will acting within human history.
God’s purpose among men is revealed through the unrolling of history. How are we to know God’s mind and will? Through the prejudices and traditions which millennia of human experience with divine means and judgments have implanted in the mind of the species. And what is the purpose of the world? Not to indulge our appetites, but to render obedience to divine ordinance. [Burke]
Burke’s propositions raise more questions that they answer, but they form the backbone of the narrative put forth by today’s Traditionalists. Morality comes from God. Conservatives know morality better than anybody. The family and the church are the primary traditional institutions.
Libertarianism: Knowing The Mind Of The Market
I think Murray Rothbard sticks a fork in the idea that Western Christian traditions are inerrant expressions of God’s moral code.
Time can hallow evil as well as good. But if we are stuck within tradition, whatever it may happen to be, how do we know whether it is good, indifferent, or evil? Only principle can judge, can decide, between traditions; and reason is our key to the discovery of principle.
[Murray Rothbard]
Friedrich Hayek devised "a third way" to explain how history is driven not by God but by process. Hayek describes his theory of "spontaneous order" as a third alternative in contrast to human design or supernatural design to explain the workings of society.
_A complex and orderly society with purposive institutions has evolved spontaneously which owes little to design, but arose from the separate actions of many men who did
not know what they were doing._ [Hayek]
Hayek’s theory has become a key "talking point" in the conservative narrative about how the world has gotten to be the way it is, so it deserves a lot of scrutiny to see if it has merit. Historian Jerry Z. Muller describes some problems.
Like many evolutionary thinkers Hayek seems to regard the survival of institutions as itself proof of their fitness and superiority. Taken to the extreme his emphasis on our inability to fully comprehend the market order amounts to a counsel of acceptance and resignation. And Hayek’s opposition to the use of government to enshrine any single culture leads him to deny that there could be any shared cultural standards for the sake of which the market might be restrained. [Jerry Z. Muller]
Another factor underplayed in Hayek’s theory is that in order for spontaneous market activity to work, freedom from tyrants, kings and religious authorities has to have already been accomplished.
A capitalistic economic system, with all the institutions, laws, regulations, dispositions, habits, and skills that make it work, is not part of the constitution of the universe. It does not spring up from the social soil unbidden, like prairie grass. It requires an educational system, bank and currency systems, highly developed laws of commerce, and much more. [George Will]
Will’s observation points to a problem with the emphasis on "process" and "spontaneous development of order." Things, including a capitalistic economic system, have multiple antecedents which occur in specific times and places. Hayek’s conception of "spontaneous order" just does not capture the reality of the secular world. While he starts out to dismiss a supernatural explanation his spontaneous order is itself an evocation of a supernatural cause, a process, in his case, rather than a deity.
Is The Individual Or Society The Basic Human Reality?
While I rely on the commentary of Libertarian Murray Rothbard to skewer Traditionalism, I think that the Libertarians are on even shakier ground than the Traditionalists. George Will and others point out that human beings do not exist independently of the world in which we live, and the world into which everyone is born comes complete with a culture and society already made, unchosen by us; a culture and society, including level of technology, from which all our choices are presented to us.
English conservative Roger Scruton and Frank Meyer are excellent foils in the argument over whether society or the individual are basic.
The true conservative is the person who recognizes that his life is derived from and dependent on society. As members of society we only become the people we are through society’s power over us. No citizen is possessed of a natural right that transcends his obligation to be ruled. [Roger Scruton]
Meyer couldn’t agree less.
Only individuals exist, and "society" is only an abstraction for a set of relations between them. [Frank Meyer]
I’ve made it plain that I agree with Scruton.