A personal note. People often ask me if I’m really a conservative. Old friends, some of them not particularly liberal themselves. The reason is in large part my sociodemographic profile. I’m an atheist. I’m scientifically educated and inclined. I don’t hate France and appreciate fine foods. Often people will push me and ask if I’m a libertarian, rather than a conservative. I simply respond that I’m a conservative who happens to have some libertarian views, not a libertarian who happens to align with conservatives for tactical purposes. As an individualist in my personal life who has no deep need for conformity to the norms of my social circle I have no great interest in becoming a Left-liberal or libertarian to forestall the future queries I’ll no doubt receive. I’m satisfied with that.
But the bigger reality is most people are not like me. They conform and are shaped by the wisdom and norms of their subculture. Positive feedback loops of agreement naturally emerge with these networks. To be a liberal or conservative in the United States results in the acceptance of a wide set of beliefs which one has not closely examined, or which one is not even very well informed about. I believe this explains the nearly mindless contempt for Europe which sometimes is taken as a given on the Right. I understand that there are real substantive reasons for a distaste for European ways on the American Right (e.g., social democracy, elitism on cultural issues, lack of muscularity on foreign policy, etc.), but it is reflexive to a great extent. I thought of this when I listened as the conservative commentator Matt Lewis expressed support for birthright citizenship by jus soli because Europeans don’t tend to use that method (on bloggingheads.tv)! I’m not saying this was the only reason that Lewis had, or it was well thought out. Rather, it expresses the group wisdom, the heuristic, of looking to Europe to judge whether a policy is correct or not.
For conservatives:
if (Europeans == X) { Americans = -1 * X } else { Americans = X }
For liberals:
if (Europeans == X) { Americans = X } else { Americans = -1 * X }
It’s an illustration of a general human tendency. Political beliefs are socially mediated. The personal is often the political. A singular instance of this is Bob Inglis. Inglis was a conventional conservative from South Carolina, so I had been curious about his peculiar stylistic and symbolic heterodoxies in the latter aughts. A new chronicle of his personal journey in The Wall Street Journal makes things much clearer. Consider this:
On Capitol Hill, Mr. Inglis found new interests. Influenced by his son, then a Yale student, Mr. Inglis took a look at conservation and climate-change policy, seeking what he called conservative solutions to problems long the province of liberals.
If Bob Inglis’ son had not gone to Yale, but rather Clemson, this may not have happened. Which brings me to a recent analysis which shows quantitatively how powerfully to the Left students at elite universities have shifted over the past 40 years. There are likely many reasons for this, in particular demographics. But, I suspect one major reason is a positive feedback loop of a social norm that to be an elite university student entails an adherence to a particular set of liberal political beliefs. Of interest for the purposes of this weblog, I think Kevin Drum has identified a major point:
Just to be clear: my guess is that this is primarily a reaction to social conservatism. Students at top universities just can’t stomach the anti-gay, anti-feminist, anti-civil rights, anti-religious-tolerance attitude of the current GOP.
In particular, it is a social conservatism of a flavor rooted in New Right Evangelical Protestantism, which has had an oppositional relationship with the elite universities since the 18th century (Princeton was originally founded to offer a more orthodox alternative to Harvard, though it naturally was co-opted by religious liberals in its own turn). The emotional aversion of elite university students and graduates to American conservatism has more to do with the amygdala than the neocortex.
Why does this matter? Consider economics. One can be a Left-liberal and orthodox on economics; many economists are. But many elite university graduates (though thankfully not most) waste their time being attracted to what is basically “junk economics.” Ill-thought out anti-globalism and primitivism. Economies of scale and specialization are promoted by the “other side” after all. Additionally, because the staunchest defenders of conservative institutions couch their defense in a tribal language of conservative Low Church Protestant Christianity many elite university graduates who practice the bourgeois virtues in their own life deny their centrality and necessity in a well ordered society. One can go on in this vein (and also frankly flip the identities and policies around).
One reason I began to contribute to this website is to work in my own way to decouple the tribal associations of conservatism with conservative Protestant Christianity. I have no expectation that atheist liberals will become conservatives. But, I hope that they will examine some conservative ideas, rather than dismiss them without inspection because they’re clothed in the language of the cultural and social enemy.
You speak for me as well. These affinities really are tribal, whether they’re about church or sports or cuisine or music or politics. There are exceptions, always (Hugh Hewitt listens to Joan Baez), but it’s depressingly easy to predict what someone will opine about an issue after learning his or her political party.
I think the reason for it is simply that unity of fundamental belief is essential for any group that is to continue in existence, and unity of ancillary opinions helps bolster (and signal) that fundamental unity. If this is true, then it explains why so many people will canvass their friends (openly or not) before expressing their own ideas. It makes Orwellian groupthink more than a literary device. It also bodes ill for gently sundering the orthodoxies by reason.
You speak for me as well. Although you may be a bit luckier than I, since given the work I do, I’d lose all my sources of income if I admitted to conservative beliefs. Bur I’ve long since accepted that as the cost of doing business.
I appreciate conservatism as a philosophical position: Change should be gradual, we shouldn’t draw our political beliefs from abstract principles but respect traditions as they historically evolved, etc. What this has to do with the right half of the American political spectrum is beyond me – it seems to me that the left half actually embodies small-c conservative values a little better.
I’m maybe more a secular centrist. Look at Europe and Latin America and you see the downsides of left and right economics. Social liberals denigrate tradition and precedent by calling them patriarchy and white privilege.
My biggest problem with liberalism is “multi-culturalism” that doesn’t distinguish among cultural values. Legal immigrants, selected for education, assimilate into our culture fine. Ethnic influences on art, food, clothing and music are largely unobjectionable and even enriching.
But worldwide, education and feminism seem to be incompatible with birthrates, so advanced places like Western Europe and Anglo-America import people from places like the Middle East and Latin America. I don’t know how anyone expects this won’t create problems with issues like abortion rights, gay rights and domestic violence. The lack of respect the left has for Western values creates some truly nonsensical positions. They don’t seem to understand how anti-gay many black churches are, for example.
Students at top universities just can’t stomach the anti-gay, anti-feminist, anti-civil rights, anti-religious-tolerance attitude of the current GOP.
But they can stomach sex-segregated swimming hours to accommodate Muslims, as was being proposed at Harvard a while back.
Given the way Larry Summers was crucified for his mild comments on women in science, I think it’s the top universities that should be more worried than the GOP here. There’s an advantage they have now because the cache their names carry, but, really, I have yet to see a significant difference between someone with a degree from, say, Texas A&M or Yale. Actually, in engineering, I’ll go with the Aggie every time. That perception will eventually seep through to the rest of the nation.
One reason I began to contribute to this website is to work in my own way to decouple the tribal associations of conservatism with conservative Protestant Christianity.
How do you decouple “tribal conservatism” of this culture from its foundational cult? To defend the basic traditional more of this society, you have to use its language, and that language is religious. The only other option, as far as I can see, is resorting to some sort of juvenile elitism, as Nietzsche did.
“Political beliefs are socially mediated.”
This hits the nail on the head. As a conservative swimming in a liberal fishtank, I have believed this for a long time. Rational argumentation will never get you very far; not far from the surface in everyone’s mind is that what really matters is not fundamental principles or “truth”, but what will gain you social acceptance in your own culture. For many people what is socially acceptable IS reality.
At heart, perhaps I’m more of a Libertarian than a conservative. But I find myself rooting for religious rightists out of accumulated hatred for Liberalism. Then I rationalize it by telling myself that religious people may be wrong and stupid, but it’s a far less dangerous form of stupidity, at least in our current society. The lesser evil.
How do you decouple “tribal conservatism” of this culture from its foundational cult? To defend the basic traditional more of this society, you have to use its language, and that language is religious. The only other option, as far as I can see, is resorting to some sort of juvenile elitism, as Nietzsche did.
i would dispute this assertion on its merits, but that’s not primarily relevant here. the audience i’m talking about isn’t someone who is a republican in a baptist church. i’m talking about atheists and agnostics who are liberal because that’s what they think atheists and agnostics are in some essential sense.
It works both ways. A lot of fundamentalist Protestants believe you can’t be an atheist or an agnostic and be a conservative.
I don’t think it has anything to do with the religious nature of the “Right” in the U.S. After all, the same phenomenon can be observed in European countries where Christianity is essentially a non-factor today especially amongst the under 40 year olds. I think modern Leftism from the get-go was a highly elitist affair with heavy support in the intelligentsia, the essential founder of their movement was after all a German middle-class kid studying philosophy who then spent most of his life writing pamphlets whilst leeching off his friend Friedrich, the wealthy offspring of an industrialist family. It’s not that surprising either that they ultimately came to dominate intellectual life, they promised an utopia in which they themselves, the intellectuals, thought they were always going to be needed and held in much higher regard than the detested vulgar merchants and noblemen. At the same time, nationalism, the other big “ism” of young intellectuals of the 19th century, seemed to extract a fairly high and futile price in the form of blood in Flanders and elsewhere and went fairly quickly from being many a young student’s fascination to being the apparent symptom of acute idiocy.
Their rage and scorn was of course initially directed against the monarchy, the nobility and the rich in general and WW1 even could still be blamed on the barons and big industrialists. But then the masses disappointed them, in Germany they elected Hitler, after that they enjoyed the materialism of post-war affluence, they didn’t join the revolution in 1968, no, they wished the cops cracked a few more protesting college kid skulls, they had no time for feminist and queer theory either, in Britain they staged demonstrations in support of Enoch Powell. In other words, they quite clearly had proven to be deranged, primitve rubes.
From this point on, anyone who held a position that was generally popular in the population but at best a small minority position in the intelligentsia had by default the stench of a rube as well – or at best that of an evil master of puppets. A subject could go from being okay to be discussed (and disagreed on) in educated company to being a taboo within a decade or two. The positions hadn’t changed, just the framework of what fits the subculture of the elite. Immigration, capital punishment, nuclear energy, military spending, agricultural policy, it could be anything. In late 60s Britain people who defended grammar schools were decried as hopelessly unsophisticated barbarians. It just depends on the current hot button issue and what the intelligentsia has decided is the “reasonable” position. Of course on religion in their minds atheism or agnosticism or at most a very liberal approach to religion is the reasonable position. If you hold it, they will assume that you will likely hold all their other reasonable positions too. But if you expose yourself as say someone who thinks illegal immigrants should be deported and immigration laws tightened up, oh boy, you may as well start living in a trailer in Kentucky in their minds, no matter what else you believe.
On which issues would you agree with a conservative, yet disagree with a Libertarian?
I realize that’s a pretty blurry question since Libertarians tend to be all over the place, but from your own view of the core of the two philosophies?
It works both ways. A lot of fundamentalist Protestants believe you can’t be an atheist or an agnostic and be a conservative.
I’m wondering if there’s something to that, though, Susan. Like it or not, we are swimming against the tide here. Really, how much of your conservatism is carried over from prior religious upbringing and surroundings?
I don’t have a fully thought out position here, but it is a bit troubling that I can’t really think of a “way forward” in terms that are both atheistic and conservative.
IOW, the atheist liberal has his leveling project, a utopian dream which will never be fully level. Look at Drum’s list of whines. “Anti-feminist”? Really? WTF? The leading lightning rod for conservative evangelicals is a woman who sneers at people who say she should stay home.
On the other side, the evangelical has the promise of God’s salvation reaching every corner of the earth and preparing for heaven and Judgement Day, again equally unobtainable by still an ideal endpoint.
What secular vision is there that can act as a unifying principle for conservatives. We’ve had the neocon’s stab at it with their “invade the world, invite the world” Americanism, but I don’t think many of us would like that secular vision. What else is there?
On which issues would you agree with a conservative, yet disagree with a Libertarian?
communal institutions and history matter as more than just means toward individual ends.
What secular vision is there that can act as a unifying principle for conservatives. We’ve had the neocon’s stab at it with their “invade the world, invite the world” Americanism, but I don’t think many of us would like that secular vision. What else is there?
the “vision thing” is more a problem than not. “unifying principles” don’t seem necessary for conservatism anyway. they probably are necessary for liberalism.
Good answer.
While as a Libertarian I don’t disagree with you, I think of those institutions as being on balance negative and thus to be avoided.
The institution of historical culture creates group unity and thus division between those groups. This benefits partisanship rather than ideology, nationalism and war, and worst of all, bureaucracy and the death of the individual. The stronger your culture, the more it influences you and the less you influence it.
David, you’re right – it is not easy, and it’s a bit lonely without a convenient tribe to cozy up to. I just wanted to take this moment to say thank you for your blog.
Contrasting tactics have created a divide that sweeps people into categories they may not be comfortable inhabiting. Tribalism and our ridiculous zero-sum party system do the rest.
American liberals—the elite, at least—are publicly far more open to differing viewpoints. It turns out to be a political weakness, but it’s an attractive personality trait.
It would be odious & embarrassing for any thoughtful person to exhibit in their private life the kind of intellectual rigidity that conservative elite routinely display on the cable shows. Thoughtful conservatives don’t get any play. So populist conservatism has hitched its wagon to gleeful ignorance, and that can’t be a long-term winner. When you have good arguments, you shouldn’t let Sarah Palin present them.
Fascinating discussion, if frustrating because the issues by their very nature (inevitably crude labels etc.) can’t be settled. I would just like to add my voice to those who emphasize the link between conservatism and religion (and religious upbringing) and the limits to what reasoned argument can achieve.
As a non-religious conservative I am aware of the contribution religion has made and increasingly aware of the limits of reasoned argument about human affairs.
Jay – I am by no means a friend of Sarah Palin but it is relevant to point out that Sarah Palin isn’t the first and won’t be the last conservative to be labelled an idiot and a primitive rube. Everybody who represents political views outside of the mostly left-wing elite consensus will get that treatment.
On the Right we are always stuck apologizing for our Palins, our O’Donnells, our Rush Limbaughs and Glenn Becks. I don’t see liberals apologizing for the crude manipulations of a Michael Moore or the deranged rants of a Keith Olbermann or the corrupt idiots Democrats routinely elect in safe districts especially in the big cities. Why is that? Probably because for leftists, everything leftist is ultimately a good thing. And leftists dominate the academy, the media, the internet and “polite company” in many places.
So as a conservative trying to move in such circles, you’re immediately under pressure to at least conform to the general social norms in that group. Which of course means, you’re anything but a Palin supporter and you’d never listen to Limbaugh, you’re too sophisticated for that. Really the whole thing is more about class than anything else. You’re a conservative who is trying to get a pass for the intellectual elite and thus you are walking a minefield of what goes and what doesn’t.
What I’m saying is, it’s not the fault of Palin or Beck or Limbaugh, that people go “You a conservative? But you seem to be smart.” It’s a) simply a leftist tactic to subdue dissent and b) it’s a result of the “me too” defeatism of broad parts of the Right in the 60s and 70s which essentially ceded most arguments and thus the “reasonable” tag to the Left, leaving serious conservatives branded as vile reactionary idiots.
This is one of those posts that makes me suspect that the Internet connects across alternate universes.
I’m an atheist, and by nature skeptical of most attempts to better society and human nature, so I guess I’m kind of Humean in that regard – I’m quite certain that Utopean attempts are doomed to fail.
But nonetheless it seems obvious to me that atheism does necessitate liberalism, because in the light of atheism, the notion of “how shall we govern ourselves” can only be answered by “well, we need to determine what mores, strictures, and laws best serve the people” and that’s – fundamentally, and by definition – a liberal proposition. Tradition cannot be very informative because tradition says “there is a God, exactly like people say” and if tradition can be so spectacularly wrong about that, there’s no telling what else it could be wrong about.
So, yeah. Despite the author’s assertions I’m pretty sure he’s still wrapped up in group identity and tribalism. The part where he construes liberalism as nothing more than Euro-worship pretty much proves it. Wouldn’t someone who was truly independent of groupthink have developed a more nuanced view of his ideological opponents?
“many elite university graduates who practice the bourgeois virtues in their own life deny their centrality and necessity in a well ordered society.”
This is pretty much exactly how I end up in the left-leaning moderate camp. At least, on social issues.
If you look at the way I choose to live my life, it would certainly line up in the same camp as most conservatives do (and better than much of their political leadership). But I feel as though trying to enforce one’s own idea of a good way to live on other people, even if you can show empirically that it is “better” in many respects, is not a good way to run a society.
And that’s just setting aside the truly nutty fringe of the social conservatives who believe things that can’t possibly mesh with scientific fact, let alone what is or is not a good way to run a society.
Everybody is tribal: The American anti-Europeanism of the conservative movement has it’s analog on the left, with anti-Eurocentraism. This may seem anti-racist for American whites, but both American ideologies are born of the belief that US is sui generis, and exceptional. From the start it was populated by Europeans but anti-European. Non-Europe. Even anti-European. A place for Europeans to create a new man, and leave the blood stained continent behind. On the left the best example is the hatred of the dead white male canon, the science of Europe, even the idea that democracy was European – thats all leftist, and all – though they dont realise it – tribal. France doesnt do it. The French teach their canon.
( Europeans have their anti-Americanism too, liberals and conservatives).
“But nonetheless it seems obvious to me that atheism does necessitate liberalism, because in the light of atheism, the notion of “how shall we govern ourselves” can only be answered by “well, we need to determine what mores, strictures, and laws best serve the people” and that’s – fundamentally, and by definition – a liberal proposition.”
That is hardly the case in the US. In particular liberals, like you, should believe that the DisEstablishment clause means the US was secular from the start. Palin may disagree, and I think as an outsider she is right, but the liberal belief ( and some conservative) beliefs are that the US was founded on how people govern themselves, built with a wall between Church and State.
So Mr Hume *can* be a conservative atheist.
I’m sorry I’ve come to the game late, but better late than never, right?
@Mike H:
I think it’s rather unfair to say that those supposedly on the Right “are always stuck apologizing for our Palins, our O’Donnells, our Rush Limbaughs and Glenn Becks,” while those on the Left don’t do the same for Michael Moore. In fact, I’d say (based solely on first-hand experience and nothing more) that the opposite is true. When Moore makes the occasional salient point (as any loon is bound to do from time to time), it is summarily dismissed by those on the Right as typical liberal BS from Mr. Liberal himself. And few leftists *really* take Moore seriously; he’s more of an amusing clown with whom some on the Left agree from time to time.
With the Right, however, the problem isn’t really the Becks of the world, but the Palins. Comparisons between Beck and Moore are fine, but you can’t really lump Sarah Palin in with them because she was the VP candidate for the largest supposedly conservative party in the United States! So, while the Right need not apologize for its wingnuts any more than the Left, those small-c conservatives who consider themselves Republicans *do* owe an explanation as to how someone so ignorant, so mean-spirited, and so obviously oblivious to facts could possibly be allowed to be taken seriously in the national discourse.
Of course, a lot of this cuts to the heart of conservatism versus Republicanism (in the partisan sense of the term), as much as liberalism versus Democraticism. I’d consider myself something of a social leftist but fiscal moderate, and there are plenty of old-school Republicans with whom I agree over old-school Democrats. I don’t think those on the Right, particularly the secular Right, are represented at all by most in the GOP, any more than I think those on the libertarian Left are represented by most in the Democratic Party. The major parties try to box us in, as David very astutely points out, but many of us hold views that are in great conflict with the parties that are supposed to represent our viewpoints.
I feel a lot like David, coming from the other side. I’d appreciate Democrats who were more interested in cutting the size and scope of government and devolving it, but who still had a healthy appreciation for civil liberties and rights(I think it says a lot that the Log Cabin Republicans are the ones challenging the Obama Administration’s implementation of DADT in court). But just as the secular Right gets kind of bugged by the religious fanatacism of its religious Right brethren, there are plenty of us on the Left who are nonetheless disgusted by the portrayal of us as wanting to insert government into everybody’s life as some sort of groupthink (and, let’s face it, Democrats don’t exactly do us any favors in that regard).
That’s why I love this site. I don’t agree with everything every commenter says, but it’s awesome to be able to read sane, rational conservative responses to President Obama and the Congressional Democrats. You’d be surprised at how many on the Left actually agree with those on the Right.
David Hume writes, “because the staunchest defenders of conservative institutions couch their defense in a tribal language of conservative Low Church Protestant Christianity many elite university graduates who practice the bourgeois virtues in their own life deny their centrality and necessity in a well ordered society.”
Some disentangling is needed here. One can understand the importance of raising the next generation well, of citizens who are generally law abiding, of “a well ordered society,” without believing that has anything to do with religion, opposing the “homosexual agenda,” or banning abortion. There is a very real sense in which modern American conservatives are not so in the sense of valuing a well ordered society, but only in the sense of pushing a sectarian view of that.
The same conflict over the meaning of conservative is tacit in Eoin’s comment. Were Madison and Jefferson conservative? They were attacked by the religious right of their day, for building that wall of separation. Now, Patrick Henry was conservative in the sense of today’s conservatives. But he lost that battle.
Some disconnected thoughts:
1/ Conservatives, in Hume’s and Burke’s sense of the term, believe that institutions are essential to human society and should develop gradually, and not by paradigm changes. The institutions do not necessarily have to be religious. It is enough that they express and preserve “Western values”.
2/ That distinguishes you from, say, Limbaugh, who, when he stops with the ad hominem attacks, believes that “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness” are God-given and are equivalent to “free will” as understood by conservatives.
3/ “Liberals” or “Left-Liberals” are defined nowadays principally in noneconomic terms. Thus, there may be room for agreement between them and conservatives.
4/ Libertarianism is on the rise, especially in Silicon Valley and other areas of those for whom the virtual world is friendlier than the real one. These libertarians do not appreciate history and believe that institutions are as easy to create and destroy as websites.
5/ Hume, of course, was the first published economist.
Thanks for listening.
American liberals—the elite, at least—are publicly far more open to differing viewpoints.
LOL. no. vid: Juan Williams.
Also, if the liberal elite are so open to differing viewpoints, why is it that Ann Coulter, Bill Kristol, Colin Powell and others require security details when they speak on campuses?
…“well, we need to determine what mores, strictures, and laws best serve the people” and that’s – fundamentally, and by definition – a liberal proposition.
No. The liberal outlook is one choice among many that result from the “death of God.” Nietzsche’s morality is not liberal. I don’t think we can fairly call Marx’s morality liberal, either.
What we can say is that constructing a new morality is definitely NOT conservative. The very nature of constructing a new outlook is by definition not conservative. The closest approximation to that situation might have been Christianity’s displacement of Greco-Roman paganism, which, as Hume has pointed out before, was syncretized into orthodox Christian practices. But even that transition was a radical change.
Wouldn’t someone who was truly independent of groupthink have developed a more nuanced view of his ideological opponents?
the only group i spend any time around in real life are liberals. anyway, you stuffed a bunch of things into my mouth and others. the comment says more of your views than mine.
Thanks for this post, David Hume. I think you’ve isolated an important idea, but its one I have been framing a little differently in my own mind for awhile now. I am a conservative to the extent that I fix my policy support around the idea that if you can’t fix it, don’t break it. Its a cliche of the environmental movement, and perhaps it speaks to the example you cited in your post.
As an atheist living abroad for many years, I can’t really speak to the the in-group feedback part of the argument anymore. That is a feature, not a bug, of leaving home. The truth is, I have no idea how to square evidence based decision making with religious dogma or rigid ideology. I think it’s a lack of imagination on my part: I could only wrap my head around one kind of truth.
I don’t mean to be glib, but any argument that begins with the assumption that the US does everything better or that a certain religion is true has always been lost on me. Given that, cultural tolerance (multiculturalism) is not a stretch; a mens only swim time at the Harvard pool to accommodate muslim students is exactly the same listening to any reverend talk about gays, or immigrants or whatever. Multiculturalism is a habit I started while growing up in a tiny all white town, and it came from making allowances for the religious folks all around me there. There is nothing noble about it, “multiculturalism” is about as inspiring as live and let live. To me, anyway.
Thanks again.
Why so narrow?
You are trying to decouple conservatism from conservative Protestant Christianity, but not with say conservative Catholic Christianity? For example, I see five very conservative Catholic justices on the U.S. Supreme Court – and they seem problematic to having a secular existence in this country.
Why be a conservative atheist only fighting against the coupling of Protestant Christianity to conservatism when you can also fight against the coupling of conservatism with any religion?
One one hand, it is “depressing” that (because of their social mediation) political opinions usually travel in packs: that if you hear one political position from a person, you can generally predict their other positions pretty accurately. However it’s also probably the case that some opinions really are mutually exclusive, and to hold them both would be inconsistent. Msr. Hume’s own less pseudonymous work with GSS data showed that atheists who believed in ghosts were less intelligent. Similarly one hopes that among intelligent Christians, you wouldn’t find many people who explicitly rejected the existence of a personal God, just because such a person also couldn’t be very bright not to see the inconsistency. Even without the tribe reinforcing each other, most people would be arrive at the same set of positions (supernatural beings like gods do not exist, spirits of deceased humans do not exist; or, Christianity best religion, personal God exists.)
So, to the degree that the existence of suites of ideological positions result from tribal influence rather than individual consideration of those positions, that’s bad – but individual consideration of opinions will often lead to the same set of positions, and it’s not a foregone conclusion that two people arriving at the same set of opinions are doing so only because they’re socially influencing each other.
fwiw, andrew sullivan linked to this post. just so the “regulars” get that.
BTW, with regard to conservatism in the Burkean sense of preserving institutions, it’s interesting that it is the modern right that is quite radical. Witness their attacks on social security, on the courts, and even on public schools. Regardless of what one thinks of the merits of these attacks, it’s the liberals today who more often seem interested in protecting American institutions from radical change.
“You are trying to decouple conservatism from conservative Protestant Christianity, but not with say conservative Catholic Christianity”
There’s an over-rated threat. Are the Catholics on the supreme court even conservative, or that is just a reflex. ( In terms on in-group tribalism the hysteria about Catholicism in protestant societies is a fair example of a bigotry which runs through the ages. It used to be rightwing, now it is on the left).
Anyway, a Burkean conservative, to clear up any confusion would not be opposed to the BBC, or the Welfare State in Britain, since that is how he finds the world, and it works – however imperfectly. The Free Marketeers are the radicals.
I posted after Russel, but he is right. Free Marketers and libertarians are indeed radical. The problem is the definition of conservative. Which one we using here?
You are trying to decouple conservatism from conservative Protestant Christianity, but not with say conservative Catholic Christianity?
American culture is protestant. We happen to also have Catholic Protestants and Jewish Protestants.
BTW, with regard to conservatism in the Burkean sense of preserving institutions, it’s interesting that it is the modern right that is quite radical.
Burke would advocate necessary change. He wasn’t a preservationist. For example, Paul Ryan’s suggestion to means test Social Security would be a Burkean reform. Even vouchers and charter schools would fit that bill.
As far as reigning in the courts, if bringing judges who tend to legislate for the sake of a headline to heel is radical, then make the most of it.
Anyway, a Burkean conservative, to clear up any confusion would not be opposed to the BBC, or the Welfare State in Britain…
You have Peter Hitchens as a good example of this. He bewails a lot of privatization that happened in Britain.
…those small-c conservatives who consider themselves Republicans *do* owe an explanation as to how someone so ignorant, so mean-spirited, and so obviously oblivious to facts could possibly be allowed to be taken seriously in the national discourse.
Well, she was plucked from obscurity by Senator Maverick. You know, the guy the liberals kept saying the GOP should nominate.
At any rate, it’s a little hard to take complaints of obliviousness seriously from people who supported the guy who sat in Wright’s church for 20 years, yet he never ever EVER heard anything objectionable.
polichinello, always sticking fingers into the dam whenever we get a lot of newcomers 🙂
In the German language, there are words describing different sorts of conservatives. For one you have the Strukturkonservativen who wish to preserve structures i.e. institutions and systems. On the other hand you have the Wertkonservativen who wish to preserve values i.e. culture. The former have indeed been found in the center-left parties of the U.S. and Europe and the “moderate” wings of center-right parties. Their policies are generally protective of consensus rule and the established institutions of the state as they seem to promote social harmony. Social harmony is valued over say traditions and values.
The Wertkonservativen on the other hand want to preserve or if necessary reinvigorate the traditional values of their society, be they liberty, family or simply a clearly defined sense of right and wrong, success and failure. If they feel the country has lost its path and has headed down the wrong path for quite some time, they are not afraid to tear down the structures and institutions they find in place in order to re-build them in a proper way or to put it in gentler terms, to “reform” them. Some institutions of course might still be in line with your values so you may want to protect them anyway.. To be this sort of conservative, you of course need to believe that there is something which transcends current mass culture and accepted notions hence most people in this category are either religious (or at least people inspired by a traditional look at culture and thus appreciative of the role of religion) or nationalist.
I consider myself part of the latter category and that’s why I have no problem with say tearing down the welfare state, attacking the courts or whatever else it may take to restore natural order in society.
Well, some hard leftist like Stalin also were in a way agaisnt the educated elite. He supported a theorists I believe Lysenko that had pretty strange theories on science. Also, in the old days, leftist supported the working class which mainly in the 19th century or early 20th century barely had a grade school education. It was after world war II that leftiest became more college educated. Granted, most of the working class leaders were more educated or had more smarter than the average working class that hated the rich. Also, Khruschev also had only a grade school education. And Mao and the Pol Pot threw the unversity professors into labor camps. Yes, the left too has had its movement against education and even those in academia don’t like students that disagree with them. So, the blame can’t all be put on the right.
Polichinello:
No, not all of them can stomach this. While many such liberals aren’t vocal about it due to fear of being labeled ‘racist’ or ‘intolerant’, they are more prominent than expected from conservatives. I know of a lot of liberals who hold true to the principles of the Enlightenment that don’t excuse minority cultures for their discrimination. For example, the British Humanist Association have stated that they are staunchly opposed to these kind of religious accommodations. another example would be the liberal Peter Tachell of Outrage! who challenged the muslim groups in the UK for their homophobia.
The point I’m stating is simply to not paint liberal students all under the same brush when it comes to this matter.
Well, an amercian conservatives without discussing the social issues is a cross between Disreali and Gladstone, how. The neo-cons which are more supported of defense and warfare to do with enemies are more in the tradition of the conservativism of Diesreali or Bismarck who wanted a strong militaty. On the other hand, small government and free trade were the philosophy of old classical liberals like Gladstone which before Barry Goldwater was considered conservative against the new deal philosophy of liberals.
Who *ever* sat in a church and didn’t hear a hundred objectionable things? The whole *enterprise* is an exercise in disregarding the objectionable. The payoff is covered-dish socials and getting to see your kid in a blazer once in a while. That’s it: that’s the entire thing.
If people walked out of churches to demonstrate their oposition to offensive rhetoric, those buildings would all be condos by now. Most people won’t even leave a church to protest institutionalized child rape, so I think it’s a bit disingenuous to pretend that this is something people just do.
The point I’m stating is simply to not paint liberal students all under the same brush when it comes to this matter.
That’s fine, Rob, and I applaud you. But you’ll note I was responding to Kevin Drum’s patch of smug about lefties not associating with those horrid retrograde Republicans.
And Mao and the Pol Pot threw the unversity professors into labor camps.
Hmmm. Cue malicious chuckle.
The payoff is covered-dish socials and getting to see your kid in a blazer once in a while.
That’s true. I dare anyone to find more objectionable and non-sensical content packed into two hours than your average Eastern Orthodox Christian liturgy, but the dishes are…sublime. So very, very worth it.
The blazer pics? Ehhh. My kid looks cuter in his Buzz Lightyear get up.
polichinello, always sticking fingers into the dam whenever we get a lot of newcomers
I’m glad you didn’t say dike. We’ve had enough with the gay issues.