WEEK 9: CONSERVATISM

1. For conservatives, ideology consists of philosophical abstractions that simplify complex realities, inflame popular passions, and undermine political order;
2. Contrarily, the public interest may be presumed to be what men would choose if they saw clearly, thought rationally, acted disinterestedly and benevolently;
3. Conservatism differs from other ideologies in the five following ways:
1) It is commonly defined in relations to changing historical contexts, rather than to
abstract principles of justice;
2) It is a disposition of temperament rather than a belief system;
3) If it is a belief system at all, it is one with many internal tensions;
4) Conservatives tend to unite around specific issues;
5) Conservatives find it easier to identify what they are against than what they are for;
According to Russell Kirk, conservatives share at least six basic principles:
1) Conservatives believe that a higher moral or spiritual order rules over nature and society; compared to this higher wisdom, human reason is small and frail;
2) Conservatives have great affection, even reverence for the complexity and mystery of tradition;
3) There is a hierarchy of orders and classes in every society;
4) Fourth, property and freedom are inextricably intertwined;
5) Citizens are attached to a government only when it engages their moral imagination;
6) Conservatives recognize that every society eventually undergoes changes, but they prefer that change be gradual;

Conservatism in America
1. If the United States was born liberal, then conservatives had little other than liberalism to conserve; Peter Steinfels: the Federalists stressed a cautious, pessimistic liberalism less as a vehicle for betterment than as a bulwark against folly;
2. John Adams (like Burke) opposed the French revolutionaries’ concept of equality and sameness; according to him, although every being has a right to his own, as clear, as moral, as sacred, as any other being has, this hardly suggests that all man are born with equal powers and faculties, to equal influence in society, to equal property and advantages through life;
3. Adams defends an aristocracy that is a meritocracy; a balanced or mixed government such as that established in the US Constitution is the answer to this question (it is obvious that, as Love points out, the implications of popular government are disturbing to American Conservatives); Since Adams, unlike Burke, was not inclined to view aristocracy as incorruptible, according to him separation of powers provides a structural solution to the problem of power; Adams’ argument about the resemblance of the US democracy with the three different orders of man sees a democratic House to balance aristocratic despotism; an aristocratic Senate to balance democratic licentiousness, and a quasi-monarchical executive to veto both House and Congress;
4. Critics charged Adams with misunderstanding of the US democracy;
5. Fisher Ames: America could not avoid the dangers of democracy since its materials for a government were all democratic;
6. To avoid the excesses of democracy in America, the Federalists combined their conservative themes with a more pessimistic liberalism: natural aristocrats must earn their status; no social order has a monopoly on virtue; institutional arrangements stand in for traditional authorities; and mechanical analogies largely replace organic metaphors;
7. Only in the South, where slavery challenged America’s commitment to liberty and equality, could liberal influences pay a less significant role in conservative politics; to defend their way of life, southern thinkers invoked another conservative theme: the little platoon; Calhoun: slavery is instead of an evil, a good—a positive good; according to him, the South is the balance of the system—the great conservative power, which prevents other portions, less fortunately constituted, from rushing into conflict; He goes on: by attacking slavery, northerners destabilize the nation and ultimately threaten the security of their own property;
8. The growing American conservatism during the second half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty first century has been explained by themselves as a reaction to “the cumulative inadequacies of liberalism;” according to conservatives, liberalism loses quality with time;
9. While Reagan presidency moved conservatism to the center of national politics, partly by blurring the lines between economic conservatives (or free market liberals) and European-style social conservatism, as Anne Norton (2004) points out, in our time, American conservatism has departed from the cautious principles of this tradition;
10. Irving Kristol (1976): if the traditional economics of socialism has been discredited, why has not the traditional economics of capitalism been vindicated? The answer was to be found in liberal capitalists’ tendency to think economically, that is, to accept the revolutionary premise that there is no superior, authoritative information available about the good life or the true nature of human happiness;
11. There are, according to Kristol, three ways in which a liberal capitalist mentality undermines the ethical foundations required for a healthy society: 1) a secular society can neither reconcile citizens to their fate nor restrain them with the promise of heaven; 2) because the state is merely the servant of private interests, liberal democracies cannot compel sufficient political loyalty from their citizens; 3) the doctrine of free-market capitalism gradually undermines even the bourgeois virtues—honesty, sobriety, diligence and thrift—required to achieve economic prosperity;
12. The five features that apply to the American neo-conservatism:
1. Neo-conservatism is not at all hostile to the ideas of a welfare state, but it is critical to
the Great Society version of this welfare state;
2. Neo-conservatism has great respect for the power of the market to respond efficiently to
economic realities while preserving the maximum degree of individual freedom (supply-
side neo-cons versus demand-side Keynesian liberals;
3. Neo-conservatism tends to be respectful to traditional values and institutions; religion,
the family, “the high culture” of Western civilization;
4. Neo-conservatives affirms the traditional American idea of equality but rejects
egalitarianism—the equality of conditions for all citizens—as a proper goal for government
to pursue;
5. Neo-conservatism believes that American democracy is not likely to survive for long in a world that is overwhelmingly hostile to American values;

The New/est Right
1. Critics explain the failure of the Reagan revolution by charging conservatism as perhaps a European import, American in its pragmatic temperament but alien in its fundamental principles;
2. The conservative recession: according to Charles Kesler, until conservative learned the art of democratic statesmanship, they would remain a social movement, not a political party;
3. Yet, thanks to Bush administration, neo-conservatism began enjoying a second life, at a time when its obituaries were still being published;
4. Kristol—the historical task and political purpose of neoconservatism would seem to be this: to convert the Republican party, and American conservatism in general, against their respective wills, into a new kind of conservative politics suitable to governing a modern democracy;
5. The subtle shift: 1) stimulating economic growth by cutting taxes, even when it creates larger deficits; 2) acceptance—and even praise—of the expansion of state power as a prerequisite for the security of modern democracies; 3) an unexpected alliance between neo-conservatives, many of whom are secular intellectuals, and religious fundamentalists; 4) geographic borders no longer limit neo-conservatives’ concept of national interest.