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The following is a draft conservatism FAQ that I've been circulating on

alt.society.conservatism.  It is intended to deal with the more basic

questions and objections we hear from critics.  It is more abstract than

the things net conservatives usually write, which may be either good or

bad.  I would be grateful for any comments; it has benefited enormously

from those I have already received.







                               QUESTIONS





1.   Q--What is conservatism?



2.   Q--How do conservatives reject both rationalism and irrationalism?



3.   Q--Isn't conservatism simply a blend of obstinacy, bigotry, and

obscurantism?



4.   Q--Why isn't it better to reason things out from the beginning?



5.   Q--Why are most people seriously involved in studying and dealing

with social issues liberals?



6.   Q--Why not just accept change?



7.   Q--Wouldn't we still have slavery if conservatives had always been

running the show?



8.   Q--Isn't conservatism simply about maintaining wealth and power?



9.   Q--Aren't conservatives racist sexist homophobes?



10.   Q--Why do conservatives always want to force their values on

everybody else?



11.  Q--Why can't conservatives just accept that people's personal

values differ?



12.  Q--What role do conservatives think government should play in

enforcing moral values?



13.  Q--What happens to feminists, homosexuals, racial minorities and

others marginalized in a conservative society?



14.  Q--Why don't conservatives care about what happens to the poor,

weak, discouraged, and outcast?



15.  Q--Why do conservatives favor say they favor virtue and community

but in fact favor laissez-faire capitalism?



16.  Q--Why do conservatives always act as if the world is coming to an

end?



17.  Q--Shouldn't conservatives favor well-established liberal reforms?



18.  Q--Wouldn't it be conservative to stay true to the liberal

positions that define Americanism?



19.  Q--I was raised a liberal.  Doesn't that mean that to be

conservative I should stay true to liberalism?



20.  Q--What's all this stuff about community and tradition when what

matters today are interests and perspectives rather than traditions?





                                ANSWERS





1.   Q--What is conservatism?



     A--Recognition of tradition as a source of wisdom greater than that

of any individual or faction.  Such recognition makes possible coherent

action that rejects both irrationalism and the excesses of rationalism.



2.   Q--How do conservatives reject both rationalism and irrationalism?



     A--By recognizing in loyalty to tradition a middle ground between

arbitrariness on the one hand and excess reliance on theory on the

other.  Reason, as orderly thought, helps us develop and put in order

what we know but is not our sole or most fundamental source of

knowledge.  We learn practical things like politics and morals by

experience and following what others have done before us, and most of

what we learn consists in habits, attitudes and implicit presumptions

that we absorb and work with but couldn't begin to put into words.

People don't become good cooks or even good physicists simply by

theorizing about what they're doing, and the same is true of becoming

good citizens.  Our way of learning such things is foreign both to

rationalism, which ignores what hasn't been articulated and put in

rational form, and to irrationalism, which in despair of perfect

rationality embraces arbitrariness.



3.   Q--Doesn't talk of "tradition" and "greater wisdom" simply show

that conservatism is a blend of obstinacy, bigotry, and obscurantism?



     A--The answer would be "yes" if it paid to reject the outlook with

which we grew up in favor of abstract ideology or inventing something

new every time a question arises.  Experience shows that it doesn't.

Productive thought must rely on tradition and in general accept what it

tells us.  We can think only from a point of view, and tradition is the

means by which we start with a comprehensive and coherent point of view

that is connected to the thought and experience of others.  If we don't

accept that a wisdom superior to our own exists and to some degree is

accessible to us and others, there is no point to investigation, thought

or discussion.  If we do accept that such a wisdom exists, we should

presume that people in the past have been no less capable of realizing

it than we are and be willing to make use of their efforts.



4.   Q--Why isn't it better to reason things out from the beginning?



     A--Because the world's too complicated and you can't lift yourself

by your bootstraps.  You can't evaluate political ideas unless you've

already accepted a great many attitudes, presumptions and beliefs.  The

effects of any political proposal are difficult to predict and as the

proposals become more ambitious their effects become incalculable.  So

the most reasonable way to approach politics is to take the existing

system of society as a given that can't be changed wholesale and to try

to make any changes cohere with the principles and practices that make

the existing system work as well as it does.



5.   Q--If conservatism is so great, why are most people seriously

involved in studying and dealing with social issues liberals?



     A--By rejecting political rationalism conservatism rejects the

bureaucratization of society, which is the project of dividing all human

affairs into separate compartments controlled by experts and linked by

an overall rational scheme designed to maximize some pragmatic goal like

economic well-being or control over nature.  Academic and other experts

and officials in social service agencies are participants in that

project and owe their social position and income to it.  It should not

be surprising that they tend to be unsympathetic to perspectives that

reject it.  (Whether they are right in doing so and the motives of any

particular person are of course separate questions.)



6.   Q--Society has always changed, for the better in some ways and for

the worse in others.  Why not accept it, especially if everything is so

complicated and hard to figure out?



     A--Change has always involved resistance as well as acceptance.

Why not accept that?  Presumably changes that have to make their way

over opposition will be better than changes that are accepted without

serious questioning.  In addition, modern conservatism is not resistance

to change as such, but to change of a peculiarly sweeping sort

characteristic of the period beginning with the French Revolution and

motivated by the philosophy of the Enlightenment and successor

philosophies such as liberalism and Marxism.  For example, the family as

an institution has changed over time.  However, the current left/liberal

proposal to abolish all definite institutional structure for the family

as an infringement of individual autonomy is different in kind from the

sort of thing that has happened in the past.



7.   Q--Wouldn't we still have slavery if conservatives had always been

running the show?



     A--Why?  Conservatism is not rejection of all change.  Moral habits

evolve with experience and changing circumstances, and social

arrangements that grow to be too much at odds with the moral life of a

people change or disappear.  More specifically, the conservative outlook

emphasizes community and mutual obligation, both of which slavery

denies.  It's worth noting that slavery disappeared in Europe long

before the modern revolutionary age, and has recently been far more

characteristic of radical than conservative regimes.  The reason is that

radicalism, by overemphasizing the role of theory in politics, destroys

reciprocity between the ruling theoreticians and those they govern, and

therefore is far more likely than conservatism to lead to gross forms of

oppression.



8.   Q--Isn't conservatism simply another way of saying that the people

who currently have wealth and power should keep it?



     A--The adoption of any political view will promote the private

advantage of some people.  If political views are to be treated as

rationalizations for the interests of existing or would-be elites then

that treatment should apply equally to conservatism and all other views.

On the other hand, if arguments that political views advance the public

good are to be taken into account, then the arguments for conservatism

should be considered on their own terms.  It's worth noting that

movements aiming at social justice typically turn out to be intensely

elitist, since the purer and more comprehensive the political principle

the smaller the group that can be relied on to understand and apply it

correctly.



9.   Q--Aren't conservatives racist sexist homophobes?



     A--That depends on what those words mean.



     "Racist"--Conservatives consider community loyalty important.  The

communities people grow up in are generally connected to ethnicity.

That's not an accident, because ethnicity is what develops when people

live together in accordance with a common way of life for a long time.

Accordingly, conservatives think some degree of ethnic loyalty and

separateness is OK.



     "Sexist"--All known societies have engaged in sex-role

stereotyping, with men undertaking more responsibility for public

affairs and women for home, family, and childcare.  There are obvious

benefits to stereotyping, since it makes it more likely that individual

men and women will complement each other and be able to form functional

and stable unions for the rearing of children.  Conservatives see no

reason to struggle against those benefits, especially in view of the

apparent consequences of the weakening of stereotypical obligations

between the sexes in recent decades.



     "Homophobes"--Finally, sex-role stereotyping implies a tendency to

reject conduct and patterns of impulse and attitude that don't fit the

stereotypes, such as homosexuality.



10.  Q--Why do conservatives always want to force their values on

everybody else?



     A--Conservatives aren't different from other people in that regard.

Everyone with a notion of how society should work believes that other

people should get with the program he favors.  For example, it's turned

out to be impossible to comply with the civil rights laws without

remaking the internal culture of every significant institution in the

country.  Such laws are no example of "live and let live".



     As another example, if Liberal Jack thinks the government should

have final responsibility for the well-being of children and wants to

implement that responsibility through a tax system that sends people to

jail who don't comply, and Conservative Jill thinks the family should

have the responsibility and wants to implement it through a well-defined

system of sex roles enforced by social obloquy for violators, then both

will object to a school textbook entitled _Heather Has Two Mommies Who

Get Away with Paying No Taxes_.  Liberal Jack would object to the book

_Heather's Mommy Stays Home and Her Daddy Goes to his Office Where He

Works with Other White Males_, while Conservative Jill would object to

other well-known texts.  Why should one be considered more intolerant

than the other?



11.  Q--Why can't conservatives just accept that people's personal

values differ?



     A--Both liberals and conservatives recognize limits on the degree

to which differing personal values can be accommodated.  Such limits

often arise because many personal values can be realized only by

establishing particular sorts of relations with other people, and no

society can favor all sorts of relationships equally.  No society, for

example, can really give equal treatment to a woman who primarily wants

to have a career and one who primarily wants to be a mother and

homemaker.  Institutions that accept the general validity of traditional

sex roles will favor the latter at the expense of the former, while

institutions that reject sex role stereotypes in favor of individual

independence and autonomy will do the reverse.



12.  Q--What role do conservatives think government should play in

enforcing moral values?



     A--Conservatives typically prefer to rely on informal social

sanctions rather than enforcement by government because they think of

moral values as determined more by the traditions and feelings of the

people than by theory.  They believe that government should be run on

the assumption that the moral values society relies on are good things

and should try to avoid undercutting those values, for example by

teaching in the public schools that such values are optional or by

supporting those who reject such values explicitly (artists who intend

their works to outrage accepted morality) or practically (unwed

parents).  How much more the government can or should do to promote

morality is a matter of circumstance to be determined in accordance with

experience.  In this connection, as in others, conservatives typically

do not have high ambitions for what government can achieve.



13.  Q--What happens to feminists, homosexuals, racial minorities and

others marginalized in a conservative society?



     A--The same as happens in a liberal society to religious and social

conservatives and to ethnics who consider their ethnicity important.

They live in a social order they may not like dominated by people who

may look down on them in which it may be difficult to live as they

prefer.  In either situation, people on the outs can try to persuade

others to their way of thinking, or if that fails to practice the way of

life they prefer in private or break off from the larger society and

establish their own communities.  Such possibilities are more realistic

in a conservative society that believes in federalism, local control,

and minimal bureaucracy than in a liberal society that idealizes social

justice and therefore tries to establish a unitary and homogenous social

order in accordance with the demands of theory.



     An important question is whether alienation from the social order

will be more common in a conservative or a liberal society.  It seems

that it would be more common in a society that emphasizes abstract

rather than concrete aspects of moral obligation and seeks universal

bureaucratic implementation of theory rather than accepting moral

feelings and loyalties that arise over time within particular

communities.  So it seems likely that a liberal society will have more

citizens than a conservative society who feel that their deepest values

and loyalties are peripheral to the concerns of the institutions they

deal with and therefore feel marginalized.



14.  Q--Why don't conservatives care about what happens to the poor,

weak, discouraged, and outcast?



     A--Conservatives do care about what happens to such people.  That's

why they oppose government programs that multiply the poor, weak,

discouraged, and outcast by undermining and disrupting the network of

social customs and relations that allow people to carry on their lives

without being reduced to dependency on a soulless bureaucracy.  It is

the weak who suffer most from moral chaos.  Those who think

interventionist liberalism makes the problems such people face less

widespread and serious should consider the effects on blacks, women and

children of trends of the past 30 years, such as family instability,

increased crime, and lower educational achievement, and of the reversal

since the late 1960s of the older trend toward less poverty, all

coinciding with a period of large increases in social welfare

expenditures.  They should also consider the increase in charitable

giving during the Decade of Greed and its subsequent decline.



15.  Q--Why do conservatives say they favor virtue and community but in

fact favor laissez-faire capitalism?  Doesn't laissez-faire capitalism

promote the opposite?



     A--Conservatives are not fans of pure laissez-faire capitalism.

For example, they are often skeptical of free trade and favor restraints

on immigration for the sake of permitting the existence and development

of a national community.  They have no opposition in principle to the

regulation or suppression of businesses that affect the moral order of

society, such as prostitution, pornography, and the sale of certain

drugs.  Conservatives do recognize that an advantage of the market over

bureaucracy is that the market (like tradition) reflects people's

infinitely various and often unconscious and inarticulate perceptions

and goals far better than any formal bureaucratic process could.  They

believe that the world as a whole can't be administered, and so tend to

think that government intervention in markets is likely to cause more

problems than it cures.  Also, in the United States in 1994 they view

economic liberty as one of the traditional liberties of the American

people that on the whole has served that people well.



     In any event, it's not clear laissez-faire need undermine moral

community.  While social statistics measure such things only very

crudely, crime and illegitimacy rates in England fell by about half

during the heyday of untrammelled capitalism, from the middle to the end

of the 19th century.  Also, the effects of a system can be discussed

only by reference to practical alternatives.  Conservatives do tend to

favor free markets when the alternative is expanding bureaucracy to

implement liberal goals, a process that clearly has the effect of

damaging virtue and community.



16.  Q--Why do conservatives always act as if the world is coming to an

end?  People have been saying that for a long time, but things don't

seem so bad today.



     A--The world is still with us, but there have been a great many

catastrophes along the way.  The history of Marxist regimes displays the

results of energetic attempts to implement post-Enlightenment

radicalism.  Less energetic attempts, such as modern American

liberalism, do not lead to the consequences predicted by conservative

theory as quickly.  However, social trends toward breakdown of

affiliations among individuals, centralization of political power in

irresponsible elites, and increasing stupidity and brutality in daily

life suggest that those consequences will come just the same.  Why not

worry about it?



17.  Q--Many things liberals favor, such as the welfare state and steady

expansion of the scope of the civil rights laws, are now well-

established parts of our political arrangements.  Shouldn't

conservatives favor things that have become so well-established?



     A--Yes, to the extent they are consistent with the older and more

fundamental parts of our social arrangements (such as family, community,

and traditional moral standards) and contribute to the over-all

functioning of the whole.  Unfortunately, the particular things

mentioned fail on both points.



18.  Q--I was raised to believe in certain substantive liberal positions

(the color- and gender-blind ideal, for example) on the grounds that

those are the positions good Americans should hold.  Wouldn't it be

conservative for me to stay true to them?



     A--Yes, if those are the views the people among whom you grew up

really lived by and experience does not drive you to change them.  Such

a situation can't arise often, because liberal positions (affirmative

action is an example) typically are developed centrally and propagated

through the mass media and the educational system, are adverse to the

connections between people that make community possible, and in any case

are less suited to be incorporated into people's informal day-to-day way

of life than applied to society as a whole by a bureaucracy.



19.  Q--I was raised a liberal.  Doesn't that mean that to be

conservative I should stay true to liberalism?



     A--If you were raised an ideological liberal, you were raised to

reject tradition and follow reason.  How can you feel bound by loyalty

to a viewpoint or way of life that does not value loyalty?   Similar

comments apply to some other views people are raised with, for example

the view that career success and self-fulfillment should be valued above

all.  Such views can not give rise to binding traditions because they

contain no principle of loyalty to things that make a decent life in

community possible.  If you were raised in one of them, the conservative

approach would be to look to what it was that the people you grew up

with really relied on in their lives, and also to the traditions of the

community upon which the group among whom you grew up depended for its

existence.



20.  Q--What's all this stuff about community and tradition?  The groups

that matter these days are groups like yuppies, gays, and senior

citizens that people join as individuals and are based on interests and

perspectives rather than traditions.



     A--To the extent that is true, can it remain true?  When times are

good people can follow their own impulses and imagine that they can

define themselves as they choose, but when times get hard they have to

base what they do on things for which they would be willing to

sacrifice.  Membership in a group with an identity developed and

inculcated through tradition serves the purpose far better than life-

style option, career path, or leisure-time activity.  One of Bill

Clinton's problems as president is that everyone knows he's a yuppie and

there's nothing he would die for.  At some point that kind of problem

becomes decisive.  Conservatism doesn't claim to be the philosophy that

is always easiest to apply; it just claims that it works long-term and

other views offered today don't.



--

 

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