On Conservatism: reply to Dave Schmelzer
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:date: 2017-03-03T11:27:02
:status: draft
:category: faith
:tags: politics, FirstThings, blogComment, conservatism
Dave Schmelzer wrote a very interesting blogpost_, where he tried
to reformulate his understanding of the minimal Christian view on
politics, trying to avoid simple left-right or partisan
controversies.
The point of this post is to argue that what Dave describes
mostly aligns with what I understand the classical conservative
politics to be. However, before I can argue that we have to make
a bit of order in the mess of the current political terminology,
especially the American one. Dave, being an American he is
unfortunately locked in the weird American terminology, where
conservative and liberal means something else than on this side
of the Pond. Therefore, I have to start with the boring
definition of the terms I will use.
Liberal
persuasion that the most important value is the freedom of
each individual person. Traditionally in Europe (especially
in 19th century) representing mainstream small enterpreneurs
and intelligensia. Their traditional ideal is small
government. Nice example from that era would be Frenchman
`Frederic Bastiat`_ or from the modern times Milton Friedman
and the `Cato Institute`_ (with caveats). In the current US
politics they could be called libertarians, except the
classical liberals were a way less extremist, a way more
pragmatic, and a way less dominated by the protection of
large corporations (that’s to the Cato Institute).
Socialist
recognizing that society when left to its own devices tends
to be dominated by rich and powerful and poor tend to be
disfranchised and oppressed (“Might makes right”), they claim
that the role of the government is crucial for protecting the
needy. They recognize (in my opinion too often correctly)
that very rich liberals like brothers Koch are not interested
in the individual liberty for everybody but more in their own
liberty to rule over others. Inidvidual liberty should be for
each individual not just for Lesters_. Marxist and
revolutionary socialism is just an extreme, there are many
peaceful and mainstream versions of it, perhaps best
representatives in the current world are various socialist
and social-demorcratic parties in Europe (what’s called
liberal in US tends to be so confused with so many particular
interests of lawyers, banks, etc. and confused by particular
US ideas, that it is hard to accept them as representatives
of this stream of thinking)
Conservative
both previous groups tend to be activist and ideological
meaning, that they have their ideal of the society and their
main effort is to change society according to such ideal.
Conservatives tend to be highly sceptical_ to abilities of
human reason to design human society and even more to our
ability to execute on such design. They tend to be quite
sceptical towards changes in society and only after large
persuasion they could agree to partial modifications of the
rules governing the society. With their appreciation of
history they quite often unashamedly adore Edmund Burke of
Reflections on the Revolution in France. The best source on
the Anglosaxon tradition of conservatism I suggest “`The
Conservative Mind`_“ by Russell Kirk, F. A. Hayek’s “`Fatal
Conceit`_” (despite Hayek’s objections that he is not
a conservative_), or books by the Englishman `Michael
Oakeshott`_
Let me talk a little bit more about Conservatives.
Relationship to faith
---------------------
Although not exclusively Christian (e.g., Hayek is explicit about
his agnosticism), believers tend to favor this camp quite often.
One of the main motivations for this political opinion is in my
opinion thankfulness for the current state of affairs so `typical
for conservatives`_ (both liberals and socialists must be by
definition unhappy about the current situation of the society,
because they want to change according to their ideology). Also,
one of the foundations of conservatism is deep scepticism about
human nature, so the good old Calvinist persuasion about the
corruption of human nature is useful (although the most of the
great Conservatives tend to be Catholics).
To say it in another way. I really like thoughts written in the
G. K. Chesterton’s “`Orthodoxy`_” (chapter V) about Pimlico. He
then considered Pimlico as the most awful place in the world (it
doesn’t look so now, but time has changed apparently). His point
was that in order to make the place better, we have to *first*
love it with passionate sacrificial love, and only *then* we can
have some hope to actually find a way and energy how to make it
better. Nobody likes anything, because it is result of
a political compromise and haggling [#]_, we are only willing to
suffer compromises, because we are willing to sacrifice even our
persuasion how right we are, when the thing we love is at stake.
I believe, that this love goes before politics is very profoundly
conservative stance.
One more thought on the role of faith. I am afraid that a large
part of the conservative movement got hijacked by the various
religious movements, quite often with quite anti-conservative
activist ideologies. Most of what’s in my opinion mistakenly
called conservative in the States are people who are not thankful
for the world they live in and hoping to cure mana flaws they
see. Most of the so called `religious conservatives`_ are here
to the change the world according to their ideologies.
.. _`Orthodoxy`:
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/130/pg130-images.html
.. [#] Don’t misunderstand me. I *do* believe that politicis is
mainly the art of compromises, but this is about love, and
there couldn’t be much compromise in love.
Small communities ruling
------------------------
Whenever we collect large power, it has tendency to be always
overtaken by bad people who will misuse it for their ends. So
yes, liberals (in words of Lord Acton, quoting slightly more than
what is usual) are right:
Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts
absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, […]. There
is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder
of it. […] the end learns to justify the means.
-- `Lord Acton`_
Following on the theme introduced by socialists, conservatives
usually agree that society when left to individuals tend to
degenerate into some kind of plutocracy (rule of wealthy
opressing poor), but contrary to them they are also sceptical to
the rule by government, where they recognize that a bureaucrat
could and usually is as corrupt as the very rich.
Therefore they tend to prefer protection of individuals by the
more or less natural communities, and if government control is
necessary it should be pushed to the smallest possible unit of
government, to avoid concentration of power in one place.
The term “conservative” is commonly used (and I am afraid
misused), but most often something very much different hides
behind that label. So, when I saw Mr. George W. Bush starting his
campaign of the nation building in Iraq, I have not seen
a conservative for a second, no matter how many people called him
such [#]_. President who lead his nation to the biggest budget
(without war expenditures) since Lyndon Johnson is just not
a conservative in any sense of the word. President who decides to
change whole nations according to his designs has no clue what
Hayek wrote (and he apparently has no adviser who read Hayek
either). And yes, all great men (or men who pretend to be great)
are almost always bad men.
Jeremiah 39
-----------
Yes, Jeremiah 39 is the pure gold for living in the
post-Christendom world. I hugely appreciated this `Jewish take on
it`_ and I have even written a sermon_ on the quite interesting
conflict of the Daniel’s apparent betrayal of the Jewish
community and his open collaboration with enemy, which however
seems to be surprisingly sanctioned by the Lord God.
Procedural justice
------------------
Let us return once more to the Lord Acton’s quotation. It ends
with “the end learns to justify the means”. There is a crucial
difference between *material* and *procedural* justice. It is one
of those classical distinctions which seems to be completely
forgotten and whole seems to jump completely to one side (and in
my opinion, the wrong one). Whole world is so much shifted to one
side, that I feel embarassed even trying to explain the
difference.
Material justice is oriented on justice of *results*. Given
procedure is judged on how just *result* it produces. Procedural
justice is focused on *procedures* without much regards to the
results.
And yet, while the procedural justice taken seriously seems
completely weird now, it used to be the complete foundation of
whole world. And it was the whole thinking of Your Founding
Fathers. Notice that the US Constitution is *only* about
procedures.
In the government of this Commonwealth, the legislative
department shall never exercise the executive and judicial
powers, or either of them: The executive shall never exercise
the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them: The
judicial shall never exercise the legislative and executive
powers, or either of them: to the end it may be a government
of laws and not of men.
-- John Adams in the Article XXXth of the Constitution of the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts
Do you see how weird this article feels now?
For them even the Bill of Rights was too much about the ends, so
that there was a huge fight before it has been accepted as the
first ten amendments of Your Constitution. And I have to admit,
sometimes when I see what kind of circus there is about some
amendments, I think they should keep opposing it. Would really
authors of the First Amendment liked *Citizens United*? Did the
New England militiamen hoped for the circus around the Second
Amendment you have today?
However, the world has never stopped just with the Bill of
Rights. All those great men of your history (who were according
to Lord Acton quotation above almost always *bad* men) decided
that all those rules, breaks, checks and balances are just bother
and in the end *ends justify the means*. So, to take the most
controversial example, Abraham Lincoln just sacrificed *around
three percent of population* to die (another couple hundred
thousands wounded, one in thirteen veterans were amputees) for
reasons which are still matter of dispute. I don’t know enough to
be able to discuss the American Civil War with enough
qualification, but it should be hopefully enough to explain my
point: politics focused solely on the results, could sometime
lead to terrible disasters.
Of course, Dave mentions the other controversial example, Mr.
Obama when he couldn’t work with the government just forgot the
above mentioned great ideas of Mr. Adams about the rule of law,
and separation of powers, and went ahead with ruling by the
executive orders_. When your current Mr. President produces
`twenty orders in ten days`_ there is not much you can say now,
unless some serious soul searching happens.
There are couple of serious reasons why this focus on the ends is
very dangerous. First of all, of course, is that it is incredibly
short-sighted. When you are focused on solving the immediate
problem, result is that any longer-term issues are usually
ignored. American foreign policy sneaks to my mind as an example.
Second if the politics (in the similar manner as economics) is
mostly about seeing `what is not seen`_, then this focus on
results is certainly most limited to things which are visib.
.. _blogpost:
http://www.blueoceanfaith.org/im-not-liberal-im-not-conservative-i-think-im-centered-set/
.. _`religious conservatives`:
https://www.firstthings.com/
.. _`Lord Acton`:
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Dalberg-Acton,_1st_Baron_Acton
.. _`Frederic Bastiat`:
http://bastiat.org/en/
.. _`Cato Institute`:
http://cato.org
.. _Lesters:
https://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_the_republic_we_must_reclaim
.. _`The Conservative Mind`:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources?isbn=0895261715
.. _`Fatal Conceit`:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources?isbn=0-226-32066-9
.. _conservative:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/2013/05/08/why-hayek-is-a-conservative/
.. _`Michael Oakeshott`:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Oakeshott
.. _sceptical:
https://matej.ceplovi.cz/cizi/rationalism-in-politics.html
.. _`typical for conservatives`:
https://matej.ceplovi.cz/cizi/on_being_conservative.html
.. _`Jewish take on it`:
https://www.firstthings.com/article/2014/01/on-creative-minorities
.. _sermon:
https://matej.ceplovi.cz/clanky/daniel_1.pdf
.. _orders:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUDSeb2zHQ0
.. _`twenty orders in ten days`:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-4r9XE5EM0
.. _`what is not seen`:
http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html
.. [#] Of course, old conservative adage stays, that whatever has
an adjective in front of conservative is not conservative at
all; so, yes, “neoconservative” is not a conservative.
