Devilstower at Daily Kos misrepresents conservatism
Liberalism grew as a response to the changes in society brought on by the industrial revolution and the rise of industrial corporations. Workers were no longer apprentices working directly with the people whose position they expected to hold some day. Instead they were separated from the owners of these new industries by many levels, and often their work gave them no experience useful for moving up in this structure. Liberalism formed around efforts to mend this new rift in society by using government as an instrument of egalitarianism.
Conservatism holds the opposite end of the field. From its foundations in 18th century Europe through the violent sex fantasies of Ayn Rand, the position of conservatism has been the same: stop liberalism. Rather than attempt to smooth out the inequities of society, conservatism seeks to maintain these chasms, and where possible to open them wider. The whole basis of conservatism is that this structure — a wealthy elite holding the reins — is the natural, desirable state.
I accept his explanation of liberalism, although I dispute some of the facts—working class of Industrial Revolution were by no means comparable to skilled artisans of earlier times; they were more like subsistence farmers; Industrial Revolution may have made some fabulously rich, but it did not make anyone poorer than they would have been otherwise, save by comparison to those who are now fabulously rich—I just wish he could have the same sense of fairness for conservatism. I will save you the rant about necessity of representing opposition in its strongest possible form as a prelude to any civilized discourse. However, I do need to clarify the term: given the context, I assume by “conservatism”, Devilstower means American conservatism, as there is a significant difference between, say, European conservatism and American conservatism. I know nothing of European conservatism, especially one that sought to protect the monarchy and aristocracy, and I don’t care to defend them. I do wish to defend American conservatism against the liberal misrepresentation.
Nothing that stands only in opposition to another lasts. John Birch Society is a good example: it had little to define itself save by its anti-communism (and these days, anti-globalism, anti-etc.). I would not be a conservative if I thought conservatism could only be defined as opposition to liberalism—what a miserable existence it would be, where the defeat of my opponent also means destruction of my self-identity!
Conservatism does stand by itself, independently from liberalism or any other political philosophy, and in terms of specific principles, not such generalities as “oppose change” (although that is the semantic meaning of the English word “conservatism”, as a political term, it is inadequate). In as few words as possible, conservatism is the classical liberalism, and little else—after all, we are conservatives; “Don’t fix it if it ain’t broken” is our motto.
In particular, the single most important principle in conservatism is individual rights: we hold that individuals have rights that are natural, in the sense that it is not granted by a government (artificially) and that a just government is obliged not to infringe upon them. “Life, liberty, and property” are these very basic, fundamental rights which a government is empowered only to protect, never to infringe. Other rights (such as freedom of speech and right to arm oneself) we consider essential in U.S. can be derived from these fundamental ones—in fact, libertarians go farther in the other direction and derive everything, including life and liberty, from property rights, but I’ll save you the details.
Holding these individual rights more important than any social institution, conservatives reject causes such as egalitarianism or social welfare as justification for infringement of these individual rights, especially that of property rights, although life and liberty are implicated as well, as you might have experienced if you tried withholding your property from the IRS.
So, if I consider the anchor, “propelling neither society nor the economy”, whose “whole reason for being is to slow change of all sorts and keep the current situation in place for as long as possible for those who benefit most from the current system”, as an inadequate metaphor for conservatism, what else could conservatism be?
I propose the sail. It is true conservatism doesn’t seek to “propel” anything on its own—we conservatives do not tend to agitate; we are a pretty happy lot when we are left on our own—however, at the same time, we embrace the natural laws of society as a sail embraces the wind. And the wind takes us where it might. Although we might tack against the wind at times, as you can with a sail, we don’t pretend that the wind, which is the natural laws of society, is not there. In opposition to conservatism, the metaphor I nominate for liberalism is the row. Take what you will from the metaphor, but I would like to point out that somebody has to be working the row, and they are not always willing participants.
Aside from our staunch defense of individual rights, we are primarily concerned with the natural laws of society I referred to before. No one knows all these laws—the same way no one knows all the natural laws of this physical world—but some things seem to happen again and again. Some of these laws are encapsulated in maxims such as “power corrupts” (hence our distrust of governments, single largest concentration of power), “there ain’t no such thing as free lunch” (hence our distrust of … utility of taxes and other government actions in the face of actual scarcity of resources), and so on. Even the liberals agree to many of these maxims. Our difference is that we conservatives keep these laws in mind, while liberals ignore them—or at least do their best to overcome them.
But what is not one of these natural laws is this: “those in power tends to stay in power.” A case in point: every empire eventually falls, if not by external threats, then by internal disintegration. Although conservatism is sometimes misunderstood as defense of the rich and the powerful, that is not the case: in the U.S. today, those who hold the most influence in the academia (university professors) and in the culture (Hollywood) are overwhelmingly liberal, not conservative. It is not even strictly defense of the corporations. Because corporations more often works by voluntary contracts than coercion (whereas with the government the opposite is true), conservatives hold more favorable view of corporations than government, but corporations themselves stand on the side of liberalism as often as they do on the side of conservatism. Just look at the current health care reform debate and how all the corporate players are for the admittedly liberal reform, even as conservatives vehemently oppose the bill.
I personally believe in conservatism because I am an individualist—I do not want to have anyone beholden to me, nor do I wish to be beholden to anyone else. Do some use conservatism simply to hold onto their power? Probably. But then, even though some use liberalism for their own selfish purposes, as in “something for nothing” welfare state, for the welfare recipients, or the monopolists whose monopoly depends on an enlarged government and its power, it would be dishonest for me to claim that that’s all that liberalism amounts to. Just as it is dishonest to claim that conservatism exists only “to maintain these chasms, and where possible to open them wider”.
