Conservative Principles

An interesting post from Stephen Bainbridge at Andrew Sullivan (yes, Sullivan's blog actually does have a name -- "The Daily Dish" -- but I don't think anyone ever uses it but Sullivan). He's posted ten "Principles of Conservatism" from an essay by Russell Kirk, which I have taken the liberty of reposting here, with my comments:

1. The conservative believes that there exists an enduring moral order. That order is made for man, and man is made for it: human nature is a constant, and moral truths are permanent. ... A society in which men and women are governed by belief in an enduring moral order, by a strong sense of right and wrong, by personal convictions about justice and honor, will be a good society—whatever political machinery it may utilize; while a society in which men and women are morally adrift, ignorant of norms, and intent chiefly upon gratification of appetites, will be a bad society—no matter how many people vote and no matter how liberal its formal constitution may be.

Well. I'm reminded of nothing so much as William F. Buckley's howler that "morality is absolute." No. Sorry. This sort of idea is a function of the kind of thinking engendered by a top-down worldview, one that relies on Authority as the first and final arbiter of moral questions. It's demonstrably not the case, as a quick perusal of history will show. I realize that this includes an out: "The conservative believes." Fine. Believe what you want. That doesn't make it true.

2. The conservative adheres to custom, convention, and continuity. ... Conservatives are champions of custom, convention, and continuity because they prefer the devil they know to the devil they don’t know.

I have a great fondness for custom and continuity. Convention, not so much. Conventions, after all, are a social compromise, in the sense that they make all participants equally unhappy. Granted, they make society possible, but they are also equally prone to stultification. This is a fairly pessimistic statement, all things considered: what if they devil you don't know turns out to be an angel?

3. Conservatives believe in what may be called the principle of prescription. Conservatives sense that modern people are dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, able to see farther than their ancestors only because of the great stature of those who have preceded us in time. Therefore conservatives very often emphasize the importance of prescription—that is, of things established by immemorial usage, so that the mind of man runneth not to the contrary. There exist rights of which the chief sanction is their antiquity—including rights to property, often. ... The individual is foolish, but the species is wise, Burke declared. In politics we do well to abide by precedent and precept and even prejudice, for the great mysterious incorporation of the human race has acquired a prescriptive wisdom far greater than any man’s petty private rationality.

Again, top-down thinking. I don't agree that we are dwarfs on the shoulders of giants. Yes, we are standing on the shoulders of giants, but I think there are just as many giants running around now. We're just not always paying attention to them, when we even recognize them. The comment about "immemorial usage" is somewhat bizarre, particularly when you start to relate it to specifics. I'd love to see some everyday applications of this --are we talking about the "5,000 year-old tradition of marriage"? Which one? Ultimately, I don't think there is such a thing as "immemorial usage." There's just what we grew up with.

4. Conservatives are guided by their principle of prudence. ... Any public measure ought to be judged by its probable long-run consequences, not merely by temporary advantage or popularity. Liberals and radicals, the conservative says, are imprudent: for they dash at their objectives without giving much heed to the risk of new abuses worse than the evils they hope to sweep away.

I'm divided on this one. Yes, I am all for prudence -- there's always something lurking in the woodwork that's going to jump out and bite you in the butt if you don't think things through. Sometimes even if you do. I don't see rash action as the province of liberals and radicals alone. Conservatives have come a cropper now and then. Like everything they've done for the last two generations.

5. The only true forms of equality are equality at the Last Judgment and equality before a just court of law; all other attempts at levelling must lead, at best, to social stagnation.

OK -- this one's way out in left field (or actually, considering the context, I suppose I should say "right field"). Let's just dump the Last Judgment part, since I don't believe in it. Equality before the law, yes. What this statement doesn't seem to take into account in the bounds of the law. There is, arguably, a tendency on the part of the left to interpret that too broadly. Equally, there is a tendency on the right to interpret it too narrowly. See "Prudence" above.

6. Human nature suffers irremediably from certain grave faults, the conservatives know. Man being imperfect, no perfect social order ever can be created. ... All that we reasonably can expect is a tolerably ordered, just, and free society, in which some evils, maladjustments, and suffering will continue to lurk. ... The ideologues who promise the perfection of man and society have converted a great part of the twentieth-century world into a terrestrial hell.

I'm not sure I believe in human nature. Certainly not in the sense of this statement, I think. Another example of top-down thinking; it presupposed that "absolute" morality I dismissed above. I do agree that a tolerably ordered, ,just and free society is about the best we can do, but the dismissiveness of the idea that suffering will continue to lurk bothers me. I think, as moral, compassionate creatures, we are bound to remedy that whenever we see it, but the liberal solutions of the twentieth century haven't worked very well. Again, see "Prudence" above. I don't think terrestrial hell, however, can be laid at the feet of liberals any more than conservatives.

7. Conservatives are persuaded that freedom and property are closely linked. Separate property from private possession, and Leviathan becomes master of all.

This is demonstrably not true, at least in the sense I think is propounded here. One thing that's lacking in this whole list so far is the idea of "community" as an operative factor. There have been many societies in which personal possessions were certainly part and parcel of the game plan, but certain resources were "owned" by the community, if the term even applies. Look at the early European commons, and at the Native North American sense of the land as unownable. One made us of it, with proper gratitude, and treated it carefully. The conservative idea of "ownership" of private property is at the root of most of the environmental ills we're facing today. I also think that the more proper term here would be "liberty." Ownership is itself a constraint on freedom, while it can contribute (and does, actually) to liberty in the sense of independence from outside control.

8. Conservatives uphold voluntary community, quite as they oppose involuntary collectivism. ... In a genuine community, the decisions most directly affecting the lives of citizens are made locally and voluntarily. ... If, then, in the name of an abstract Democracy, the functions of community are transferred to distant political direction—why, real government by the consent of the governed gives way to a standardizing process hostile to freedom and human dignity.

Ah -- community. But in a very limited sense, merely as a political structure. The problem we face today is that political structure is removed from social structure in any real sense, and historically (and perhaps even biologically), politics is a function of sociality. The principle here offers no solution.

9. The conservative perceives the need for prudent restraints upon power and upon human passions. ... It is characteristic of the radical that he thinks of power as a force for good—so long as the power falls into his hands. ... A just government maintains a healthy tension between the claims of authority and the claims of liberty.

Yes to restraints on power. I think the American system addresses this issue admirably, and I might note that it is conservatives (whether claimed by the "classical conservatives" or not) who are busiliy dismantling it. Just keep in mind that conservatism has historically been a philosophy that espouses the idea of power in the hands of those best able to wield it -- conservatives all, of course.

10. Permanence and change must be recognized and reconciled in a vigorous society. The conservative is not opposed to social improvement, although he doubts whether there is any such force as a mystical Progress, with a Roman P, at work in the world. ... He thinks that the liberal and the radical, blind to the just claims of Permanence, would endanger the heritage bequeathed to us, in an endeavor to hurry us into some dubious Terrestrial Paradise.

My, how sixteenth century, in diction if not in content. Well, yes, in content, too. Frankly, this is one of those statements that simply doesn't hold up to any sort of analysis -- sort of a semantic null. Permanence and change are reconciled in a "vigorous" society, by definition. It's when one gains too much prominence that the society either becomes chaotic or stagnant. It seems to me that most people deal with stagnation better than they do with chaos, which may be at the root of the popularity of conservatism these days. This is predicated, of course, on a bourgeois society, which America is. The very poor and the very rich don't seem to be so bothered by chaos, the poor because they're used to it, and the rich because they're insulated from it. ON the other hand, the bourgeois seem to revel in stagnation.

It's an interesting summation. As I might have predicted, I fit, here and there, but not so much that I'm going to adopt any new labels. (Unless I make one up -- how about "pragmatic empiricist"?) Bainbridge has a little quiz in his post, but the principles are so imprecisely presented that I couldn't really check off any of the boxes. To many "yes, buts."