Thinking Like a Conservative

[The_Trouvere]

Come on, that's stupid. Almost Query-class stupid.

Gates was born into an upper class family, private prep school, Harvard, etc.

Arguably the reason he was so successful was the fact that his mother served on the same charity board of directors as the CEO of IBM and was able to get her son an audience with him back in the fledgling days of PCs.

In addition to being born rich, Bill Gates was born with an IQ pf 160. Only one out of several thousand people have IQ's that high.

What all of this means is that Gates' success is irrelevant to most Americans. Most Americans will never become rich no matter how hard they try. They will not come close.

 

[KingOrfeo]

KingOrfeo I'm going to do something I rarely do and that is to say what I'm really thinking.

Much more, IMO.

You have no fucking ideal how a conservative thinks or believes or what values they hold dear.

Everything you think you know about Conservatives you have learned from liberal media or others like yourself.

I have talked a lot of politics with a lot of conservatives over the years. I have argued with a lot of conservatives on messageboards. I have heard a lot of conservative rhetoric, read a lot of conservative literature, and read many histories, written from both liberal and conservative viewpoints, of post-WWII American movement conservatism. I think I have some knowledge of how conservatives think and what they believe in.

For a good (and elaborate) definition of "conservative," see here.

Doesn't necessarily have anything to do with any of the other ideologies - Conservatism is defined by pragmatism, the ability to compromise in the name of sensible policy, and good governance using tried-and-tested methods. Where change is a good idea, or inevitable, conservatism seeks to steer change down the safest - for the public's welfare - course.

Problems immediately arise when attempting to define "conservatism" because the term does not refer to any specific single ideology. The word has been used by many different political groups in many different ways, usually peddling wildly-divergent and often flatly-contradictory political programs. Of course, this has to do with the fact that "conserving" the current state of society does mean a different thing in different countries and, more important, different times. Restoring society as it was in the past is a different thing altogether; that would be reactionary.

Historically, in British political philosophy, conservatism does have a fixed definition, although it doesn't refer so much to a political ideology as much as it refers to a skeptical attitude towards political ideologies.

Conservatism is in many ways more about knowledge than about politics. The French Revolution was philosophically motivated by very strong Rene Descartes-style rationalism (i.e. the belief that all truth can be worked out by making logical deductions from first principles). Conservatism, a product of the Counter-Enlightenment, is based on a rejection of this philosophy. Rather, conservatives tend to be very cautious about new ideas. They tend to focus on practical matters and "what has worked before" rather than what would necessarily be the "best" thing to do. Conservatism is very suspicious of ideologies that claim to have all the answers. In short, conservatism is skeptical and cautious about novelty, and "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" applies.

This translates into a reverence for tradition. Tradition is seen as something that has survived a very long time because it has been useful. It is also seen as vital to the maintenance of order and social stability. It is order and social stability that are the key values of British-style conservatism; this is a great contrast to liberalism's prioritization of human freedom above all else. Edmund Burke has often been called the father of conservatism (although he has not always been classified as a conservative and there is still some dissension about whether he qualifies as one). While maintaining liberal goals, he was very concerned with maintaining social stability. Traditions and social institutions should not be summarily cast aside, according to Burke, as they prevent society from descending into chaos. A society is a partnership between the living, the dead, and the unborn, and they must all be considered when dealing with national policy. It may surprise many that Burke was actually a Whig (the liberal party in Britain at the time), but he was a staunch supporter of British liberties because they were ancient national traditions, rather than universal rights of any sort.

Another British philosopher that exhibited this attitude is Michael Oakeshott. His work is much more obviously conservative (in the British sense) than even Burke (Burke, for one, can be read as a liberal and arguably had significant influence on the very classically liberal economist Friedrich von Hayek; perhaps even more surprisingly to modern readers, he has been an influence on the proto-anarchist William Godwin and on Marxists such as Harold Laski and C. B. Macpherson). Arguably, Oakeshott is the Trope Codifier for British conservatism; he was anti-rationalist, staunchly empiricist to the point of outright skepticism, and as a result argued that our traditions were the only things we had in order to guide our social organizations.

Besides British conservative thought, there was also a notable Continental trend, known as French or Latin conservatism and developed by the other father of conservatism, Joseph de Maistre. Both varieties put an emphasis on tradition and are skeptical of 18th-Century rationalism. The difference, however, is in how far they are willing to go. While Burke's conservatism can roughly be boiled down to a doctrine of political skepticism, Maistre's variety is much stronger. Originally a cautious supporter of the French Revolution, Maistre grew to despise it, and after the revolutionary French army invaded his native Savoy, he began to advocate a strictly counter-revolutionary doctrine of hierarchic order, religion (specifically, Catholicism) and monarchism.

Maistre reasoned, backing himself with Biblical references, that traditional order is not just "good because it works" but it is good in itself — instead of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", he went for "if it was meant to be broken, God would do it by now". His stance on monarchy was that any attempt to derive the right to rule on rational ground leads to discussions over the legitimacy of government, and to question the government is to call for chaos. Thus, a government should be based on non-rational grounds, e.g. religion (through the Divine Right of Kings, and papal recognition — after all, you can argue what best serves the common interest, but how can you disprove "because God said so"?), which the subjects wouldn't be allowed, or even able to question.

By now, it is a good time to return to Burke: because his branch of conservatism allows for change, as long as proper caution is exercised, it is known as evolutionary. Maistre's branch, on the other hand, considers even a small change too much; it is also willing to actively fight to restore the old order where it's been removed, a thing Burke's conservatism would rarely if ever advocate. For this reason, Maistre's conservatism is called reactionary.

It is when we look at American conservatism that things get confusing. "Conservative" as used in the US is not an ideology, but rather a coalition of many different ideological groups. Many self-proclaimed conservatives are ideologically classical liberals! There are also self-proclaimed Oakeshottians in American conservatism as well, such as Andrew Sullivan.

Religious conservatism is a strong element in American conservatism, but it differs from any of the previous subgroups of conservatism (it is probably closest to Maistre's branch). Like British-style conservatives, religious conservatives argue that specific traditions are vital for social stability and thus deserve State protection. However, unlike British-style conservatives, they argue that it is adherence to a specific set of religious traditions and moral beliefs that keep society together, and they also (very much unlike British-style conservatives) are not skeptical about the possibility of knowledge. Rather, they argue faith is a means to perfect knowledge. This attitude is neither Enlightenment nor Counter-Enlightenment; it is a pre-Enlightenment attitude.

Another American phenomenon is the infamous neoconservatism. Developed during the Seventies, it has been initially described as the ideology of "socialists for Nixon" or a "[US-style] liberal mugged by reality" — former leftists who have moved to the conservative camp after becoming disillusioned with their own. As such, neoconservatism shares tenets of US-style conservatism, such as democracy and free markets, with the progressive attitude and revolutionary tendencies of the Left. Thus, neoconservatives have been known for their approval of welfare and big government. In the economy, they support capitalism but endorse state interventionism. However, neoconservatism has garnered most of its criticism from its foreign policies, where these progressive tendencies resulted in doctrine of belligerency, a disdain for diplomacy, and aggressive promotion of capitalist democracy. Altogether, this might've been forgettable, but then the USA suffered a terrorist attack in 2001, aaaaand...

Of course, American conservatism is still fundamentally a coalition of varying ideological groups. Thus, there have been many attempts to bridge these philosophical differences. For instance, Frank Meyer of the conservative National Review magazine argued classical liberals (known as "libertarians" because in the US, "liberal" refers to an electoral coalition of social liberals and social democrats) should argue for the use of classical liberal policies as means to conservative goals. William F. Buckley Jr, also of the National Review, argued in a very Oakeshott-like manner that conservatism is fundamentally based on skepticism and caution about new ideas, and thus a preference for tradition and against ideology. However, he also argued for the incorporation of both religious conservatism and classical liberalism, primarily because they all faced the common enemy of Soviet-style communism.

In short, British-style conservatism is characterized by an aversion to rationalistic and/or ideology-based political programs and instead a preference for proven, pragmatic policies in the pursuit of maintaining social order by protecting established traditions from radical change. Latin-style conservatism is British-style taken Up to Eleven with a strong religious and optionally monarchist element. American-style conservatism is based on an unstable coalition of British-style conservatism, religious conservatism, and classical liberalism, in varying proportions depending on numerous variables.

And here's another definition of American conservatism, by conservative British journalists John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge in The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America:

The exceptionalism of the American Right is partly a matter of its beliefs. The first two definitions of "conservative" offered by the Concise Oxford Dictionary are "adverse to rapid change" and "moderate, avoiding extremes." Neither of these seems a particularly good description of what is going on in America at the moment. "Conservatism" -- no less than its foes "liberalism" or "communitarianism" -- has become one of those words that are now as imprecise as they are emotionally charged. Open a newspaper and you can find the word used to describe Jacques Chirac, Trent Lott, the Mullah Omar and Vladimir Putin. Since time immemorial, conservatives have insisted that their deeply pragmatic creed cannot be ideologically pigeonholed.

But, in philosophical terms at least, classical conservatism does mean something. The creed of Edmund Burke, its most eloquent proponent, might be crudely reduced to six principles: a deep suspicion of the power of the state; a preference for liberty over equality; patriotism; a belief in established institutions and hierarchies; skepticism about the idea of progress; and elitism. Winston Churchill happily accepted these principles: he was devoted to nation and empire, disinclined to trust the lower orders with anything, hostile to the welfare state, worried about the diminution of liberty and, as he once remarked ruefully, "preferred the past to the present and the present to the future."

To simplify a little, the exceptionalism of modern American conservatism lies in its exaggeration of the first three of Burke's principles and contradiction of the last three. The American Right exhibits a far deeper hostility towards the state than any other modern conservative party. . . . The American right is also more obsessed with personal liberty than any other conservative party, and prepared to tolerate an infinitely higher level of inequality. (One reason why Burke warmed to the American revolutionaries was that, unlike their dangerous French equivalents, the gentlemen rebels concentrated on freedom, not equality.) On patriotism, nobody can deny that conservatives everywhere tend to be a fairly nationalistic bunch. . . . Yet many European conservatives have accepted the idea that their nationality should be diluted in "schemes and speculations" like the European Union, and they are increasingly reconciled to dealing with national security on a multilateral basis. American conservatives clearly are not.

If the American Right was merely a more vigorous form of conservatism, then it would be a lot more predictable. In fact, the American Right takes a resolutely liberal approach to Burke's last three principles: hierarchy, pessimism and elitism. The heroes of modern American conservatism are not paternalist squires but rugged individualists who don't know their place: entrepeneurs who build mighty businesses out of nothing, settlers who move out West, and, of course, the cowboy. There is a frontier spirit to the Right -- unsurprisingly, since so much of its heartland is made up of new towns of one sort of another.

The geography of conservatism also helps to explain its optimism rather than pessimism. In the war between the Dynamo and the Virgin, as Henry Adams characterized the battle between progress and tradition, most American conservatives are on the side of the Dynamo. They think that the world offers all sorts of wonderful possibilities. And they feel that the only thing that is preventing people from attaining these possibilities is the dead liberal hand of the past. By contrast, Burke has been described flatteringly by European conservatives as a "prophet of the past." Spend any time with a group of Republicans, and their enthusiasm for the future can be positively exhausting.

As for elitism, rather than dreaming about creating an educated "clerisy" of clever rulers (as Coleridge and T.S. Eliot did), the Republicans ever since the 1960s have played the populist card. Richard Nixon saw himself as the champion of the "silent majority." In 1988 the aristocratic George H.W. Bush presented himself as a defender of all-American values against the Harvard Yard liberalism of Michael Dukakis. In 2000, George W. Bush, a president's son who was educated at Andover, Yale and Harvard Business School, played up his role as a down-to-earth Texan taking on the might of Washington. As a result, modern American conservatism has flourished not just in country clubs and boardrooms, but at the grass roots -- on talk radio and at precinct meetings, and in revolts against high taxes, the regulation of firearms and other invidious attempts by liberal do-gooders to force honest Americans into some predetermined mold.

If you really did have a clue you would be one.

Oh. Oh, that's just too perfect! (See the OP, (Part Five) Epistemology and Empathy.)

 

[KingOrfeo]

I have read all of King Orfeo's copy and paste job. It complains about how the Republican Party has been moving to the right. It does not explain how the Republican Party has been able to keep winning elections.

The average standard of living has been declining since Bill Clinton left office. Nevertheless, the rich keep getting richer. The GOP did splendidly in the last election.

The Republican Party is committed to making the rich still richer, while defunding domestic spending programs that help middle and working class Americans. Why has there not been a political backlash?

I have ideas on the topic. I wonder if King Orfeo has. If he has no original ideas on the topic, I would like to see how well he is able to convey the ideas of others using his own words.

I think the GOP has been winning at least in part by using power, whenever it gets it, to lock institutional structures in its favor (gerrymandering, voter-suppression laws, etc.), and partly by very angry and vote-motivating RW backlash, especially since 2009. And I think a LW backlash is possible. The Tea Party's moment appears to have passed, and, as its old base fades away, we might see something analogous arise on the left in the next few years.

 

[KingOrfeo]

They've been able to win elections because the rich are getting richer and fund them generously.

That too.

 

[1sickbastard]

I think the GOP has been winning at least in part by using power, whenever it gets it, to lock institutional structures in its favor (gerrymandering, voter-suppression laws, etc.), and partly by very angry and vote-motivating RW backlash, especially since 2009. And I think a LW backlash is possible. The Tea Party's moment appears to have passed, and, as its old base fades away, we might see something analogous arise on the left in the next few years.

Any popular movement on the left has a built-in disadvantage in the US, that of being accused of communism.
Such an accusation is designed to elicit an emotional, relfexive, negative response from the political center and the middle classes and usually succeeds.

 

[The_Trouvere]

I think the GOP has been winning at least in part by using power, whenever it gets it, to lock institutional structures in its favor (gerrymandering, voter-suppression laws, etc.), and partly by very angry and vote-motivating RW backlash, especially since 2009. And I think a LW backlash is possible. The Tea Party's moment appears to have passed, and, as its old base fades away, we might see something analogous arise on the left in the next few years.

Gallup Jan 10, 2014

PRINCETON, NJ -- Americans continue to be more likely to identify as conservatives (38%) than as liberals (23%). But the conservative advantage is down to 15 percentage points as liberal identification edged up to its highest level since Gallup began regularly measuring ideology in the current format in 1992.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/166787/liberal-self-identification-edges-new-high-2013.aspx

38% to 23% is still a considerable advantage.

 

[The_Trouvere]

Any popular movement on the left has a built-in disadvantage in the US, that of being accused of communism.
Such an accusation is designed to elicit an emotional, relfexive, negative response from the political center and the middle classes and usually succeeds.

That is not as bad now as it was during the Cold War.

 

[1sickbastard]

That is not as bad now as it was during the Cold War.

That's kinda like saying watching the grass grow is more exciting than watching paint dry.
The point I was making is that there is a built-in cultural bias in the USoA against anything that smacks of 'leveling' (as it was called in Federalist Paper #10). Of course the same essay also called paper money a "wicked scheme" in the same paragraph that included leveling...

 

[KingOrfeo]

Gallup Jan 10, 2014

PRINCETON, NJ -- Americans continue to be more likely to identify as conservatives (38%) than as liberals (23%). But the conservative advantage is down to 15 percentage points as liberal identification edged up to its highest level since Gallup began regularly measuring ideology in the current format in 1992.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/166787/liberal-self-identification-edges-new-high-2013.aspx

38% to 23% is still a considerable advantage.

This might in part reflect attitudes towards the words "liberal" and "conservative" than anything else. Many people who don't like to self-ID as "liberal" will take the liberal side on a given issue.

Better to study the Pew Political Typology, it presents a more nuanced picture, based on poll responders' answers to a battery of specific questions. The three typology groups leaning Republican (to varying degrees) in total make up 36% of the general population and 42% of registered voters, the four groups leaning Democratic 55%/59%.

 

[The_Trouvere]

The Democratic Party never recovered from the disappointments of the War on Poverty and the Civil Rights Movement.

The War on Poverty assumed that the poor are the same as everyone else, only less fortunate. The Civil Rights Movement assumed that blacks are the same as whites, only discriminated against.

Two generations after 1964 it is apparent that neither assumption is true, although it is somewhat dangerous to describe in public what is true. What is true is that genes matter. So does race.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was followed by five years of black ghetto rioting, and more enduring increases in black crime and illegitimacy. Black academic performance has improved little, if at all.

The War on Poverty enabled millions of the working poor to become unemployable welfare recipients who frequently supplement their welfare checks with the gains from criminal activities.

Lower income whites left the Democratic Party and stayed out because they do not trust the Democratic Party on racial issues.

After two years in office Franklin Roosevelt demonstrated that the government could make a positive difference in the lives of ordinary Americans. After over six years in office Barack Obama has not demonstrated that. Instead he has expressed sympathy for black criminals like Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown.

President Obama also promises to ease restrictions on immigration. More immigrants mean lower wages for white blue collar workers.

 

[KingOrfeo]

The Democratic Party never recovered from the disappointments of the War on Poverty and the Civil Rights Movement. . . .

Did you mean this for a different thread?

 

[CandiCame]

Any popular movement on the left has a built-in disadvantage in the US, that of being accused of communism.
Such an accusation is designed to elicit an emotional, relfexive, negative response from the political center and the middle classes and usually succeeds.

You know, I don't think that culturally that's going to work much longer, tho. We've made a cultural shift away from communist being the antagonists in our cultural awareness. COD is the only thing I can think of that still does that. Where once we had Russian or Cuban antagonists in movies, now everyone's vaguely Middle Eastern. Calling a movement "communist" or "Socialist" only elicits the negative response to people who are old enough to have that mean something. New generations tend to associate socialism with European models that don't include Nazis.

 

[1sickbastard]

You know, I don't think that culturally that's going to work much longer, tho. We've made a cultural shift away from communist being the antagonists in our cultural awareness. COD is the only thing I can think of that still does that. Where once we had Russian or Cuban antagonists in movies, now everyone's vaguely Middle Eastern. Calling a movement "communist" or "Socialist" only elicits the negative response to people who are old enough to have that mean something. New generations tend to associate socialism with European models that don't include Nazis.

I'd like to think you're right about that. It could be a change in perception that happens in the public consciousness very rapidly.
We'll see.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Every Democrat in Congress is rich. Obamullah is rich, too.

 

[KingOrfeo]

I'd like to think you're right about that. It could be a change in perception that happens in the public consciousness very rapidly.
We'll see.

Some are hoping, anyway.

 

[The_Trouvere]

This might in part reflect attitudes towards the words "liberal" and "conservative" than anything else. Many people who don't like to self-ID as "liberal" will take the liberal side on a given issue.

Better to study the Pew Political Typology, it presents a more nuanced picture, based on poll responders' answers to a battery of specific questions. The three typology groups leaning Republican (to varying degrees) in total make up 36% of the general population and 42% of registered voters, the four groups leaning Democratic 55%/59%.

"Liberal" has become an unpopular label because of failures of liberal policies during the 1960's pertaining to crime and race.

Because of the success of Franklin Roosevelt's economic and war policies "conservative" became an unpopular label during the Roosevelt administration.

By the end of the Second World War Herbert Hoover and Robert Taft called themselves "liberals" although they defined the term differently.

 

[The_Trouvere]

Every Democrat in Congress is rich. Obamullah is rich, too.

One has to be rich to be elected to Congress.