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The Failure of Procedural Conservatism

Since at least the 1960s, conservatism in America has come to be dominated by something we might call "procedural conservatism" - a conservatism of process rather than content, of means rather than ends.

Small/limited government.
Low taxes.
Local control.
States' rights.
Free enterprise.
Equality of opportunity.
Equality before the law.
Etc.

Today's conservatives even fancy themselves champions of "free speech", "religious liberty", and so forth.

Not that there's anything wrong with the above formulations, if understood in a non-ideological way that doesn't interfere with common sense. But American conservatism has degenerated to the point where these are taken to be ends in themselves. Lacking a concrete vision of what a good society is supposed to look like - and having a visceral fear of being perceived as "imposing" their vision on anyone - conservatives have retreated to an amoral philosophy of process and procedure.

Therefore, let us remind ourselves: a society may scrupulously observe all the procedures outlined above and still be fundamentally liberal and on the fast track to perdition.

The substitution of amoral political means for moral political ends has a twofold effect: 1) it fosters an attitude of indifference with respect to the moral character of our people and institutions; 2) it creates a dogmatic inflexibility when it comes to process, which is meant to be servant rather than lord. The combined effect is the death of conservatism as a meaningful force for good.

Comments (40)

Equality of opportunity.
Equality before the law.

Please explain how you managed to come up with those, because I'm not seeing it. If you are talking about libertarian leaning Republicans you could possibly make a case (although it would be difficult), but equality is nearly anathema to conservatives.

a society may scrupulously observe all the procedures outlined above and still be fundamentally liberal and on the fast track to perdition.

That's true, strictly speaking. Where I think we might disagree is in our estimate of how likely such a scenario is in the real world. As I've watched the degeneration of the America that once was played out before my very eyes in my lifetime, I have been struck again and again, and especially in the past five to ten years, by the extent to which our substantive enemies find it convenient to override, ignore, and even actively deride and undermine those procedural limits on their power. They seem to believe that that procedural stuff is getting in their way. I think that's pretty significant.

It isn't necessarily that a conservative has no vision of a good society, he may have one but consider politics an ineffective or inappropriate method of enacting it. If the people are corrupt and demanding bad laws, then something has gone awry somewhere in the culture, but it isn't necessarily the job of politics to fix it, nor is it obvious that the political process could fix it. The best one may be able to do is to try to keep all the legal barriers intact so that if the people ever come to their senses, they won't be faced with an impossible-to-dislodge tyranny rather than a representative government. Obama has decided to become a dictator, but the answer is not to install our own dictator.

Obviously this is not the only way to look at things, but I don't find it too odious.

Jeff C.,

I thought your post was going to be all about how "procedural conservatism" has failed to achieve its goals -- its own, what you call "process focused" goals.

As Lydia hints at, but doesn't say so explicitly, one could argue that post 1960 conservatism has been one long effort to stand athwart history yelling stop while history (liberal statist variety) keeps rolling along.

I also think you ignore some of the ends conservatives have been willing to fight for. As an example I would offer the pro-life movement; I would also suggests that explict appeals to traditional families (and their success and well-being) are part and parcel of what the modern conservative movement seeks as an end state for their ideal "little platoons".

Finally I would add that part of conservative philosophy around process or ends is actually related to the "moral character of our people and institutions." For example, another conservative "end" goal would be to foster men who are self-sufficient, or rather who exhibit the moral virtues of hard work and sacrifice in service of their families. A welfare state that usurps the role of men as providers and/or individuals who need to work hard and sacrifice to get ahead is a problem.

Step 2,

Regarding "Equality of opportunity" and "Equality before the law." I think Jeff C. might be thinking here of our efforts to promote free markets (so everyone who wants to get ahead can do so with hard work and determination) and our efforts to oppose affirmative action which flies in the face of the idea that merit and individual character should be all that matters when thinking about how to apply laws fairly to disparate peoples.

The substitution of amoral political means for moral political ends has a twofold effect: 1) it fosters an attitude of indifference with respect to the moral character of our people and institutions; 2) it creates a dogmatic inflexibility when it comes to process, which is meant to be servant rather than lord. The combined effect is the death of conservatism as a meaningful force for good.

I think you're making the assumption - oft repeated around here - that laws somehow change morals. Let us not forget that the overreaching arm of government "morality" has impeded the ability of Christians to freely practice their religion in recent years. (Yet we keep advocating for more government control of behavior - rather than less!) It seems obvious (to me at least) that getting government out of non-essential areas benefits Christians too. Liberty from government oversight would allow the Church the freedom to be the beacon of morality it is meant to be (instead of the government assuming that role.)

let us remind ourselves: a society may scrupulously observe all the procedures outlined above and still be fundamentally liberal and on the fast track to perdition.

It is also true that a society may scrupulously force conservative morality upon its citizens and still be fundamentally liberal and on the fast track to perdition, (the prisons will just be full).

I honestly think though that the term "conservative" is so broad now that it has lost all meaning.

Let me offer my version: A conservative government is the absolute least amount of government needed to still maintain an orderly society.

I'm one of those guys who absolutely loves it when the government shuts down due to some budget "crisis". I was truly hoping that the House would refuse to raise the debt ceiling back in 2010(was it?) I actually think they should start from there. I would love it if politicians had to prioritize government spending by only voting in the absolute necessities as they present themselves.

For example, another conservative "end" goal would be to foster men who are self-sufficient, or rather who exhibit the moral virtues of hard work and sacrifice in service of their families. A welfare state that usurps the role of men as providers and/or individuals who need to work hard and sacrifice to get ahead is a problem.
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An excellent point! And one that others have made. The idea that "merely procedural" structures have nothing to do with fostering virtue is, I believe, a mistake. To give another example, societies in which "who you know" is what it's all about in the legal sphere (rather than equality before the law) foster corruption, injustice, and back-stabbing. The more all-powerful the state becomes, the more passive the people become, the more likely they are to be entitlement-minded, the less motivation they have to learn and pass down various civic virtues or an understanding of true statesmanship. The less motivation they have to start businesses (because the government will just mire you in regulations anyway). Totalitarian governments foster deception and back-stabbing against/informing on one's neighbor. The list simply goes on and on. In short, tyrannical governments were made for slave peoples, and a tyrannical government will seek to make its people into slave types to the extent that it can. There is no sharp and bright line between "procedural" considerations and considerations of substance and national and personal character.

our efforts to promote free markets (so everyone who wants to get ahead can do so with hard work and determination) and our efforts to oppose affirmative action which flies in the face of the idea that merit and individual character should be all that matters when thinking about how to apply laws fairly to disparate peoples.

That is a stunning level of naivety. Free markets include all sorts of rights to discriminate, regardless of work ethic or determination. Affirmative action, which in the opinion of SCOTUS judges is quickly becoming a relic, was created specifically to counteract centuries of economic segregation or outright theft and also to give those minorities a decent chance at becoming integrated into mainstream society. In other words, taking into account that the game was rigged against them.
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-the-lowest-difficulty-setting-there-is/

Obama has decided to become a dictator, but the answer is not to install our own dictator.

The power of the executive branch has been expanding since the Civil War. You can't really think Obama established a new paradigm, not when secrecy and ignoring the Congressional circus has been a major aspect of the office since the Cold War.

Affirmative action, which in the opinion of SCOTUS judges is quickly becoming a relic, was created specifically to counteract centuries of economic segregation or outright theft and also to give those minorities a decent chance at becoming integrated into mainstream society.

Did somebody say "stunning level of naivete"?

Did someone mention John Scalzi? I believe they did:

http://voxday.blogspot.com/2012/05/failure-in-condescension.html

Local control.

Well, maybe, but I would pose that local control is process but not merely process oriented. Local control _just is_ what you have when men and women take responsibility for their own selves and their own communities - which surely is a partial picture of the conservative ideal. Because subsidiarity expresses a need that is crucial to the flourishing of human nature, local control is both the means and the milieu of that flourishing.

To give another example, societies in which "who you know" is what it's all about in the legal sphere (rather than equality before the law) foster corruption, injustice, and back-stabbing. The more all-powerful the state becomes, the more passive the people become, the more likely they are to be entitlement-minded, the less motivation they have to learn and pass down various civic virtues or an understanding of true statesmanship.

Just to be slightly contrarian for a moment, I was reflecting on this in relation to a (fictional) work about a government that intentionally operates by way of a monarchy that is a "rule by person" rather than rule of law. It wasn't just the king working alone, it was a portion of the highest nobility as well. The book paints a kind of best-case scenario of a monarch who, because he doesn't have to run for office every couple years, can focus on long term social needs, and can refuse to tell lies all day long to people. And who is "invested" in the social order as a whole because it is an immediate reflection of his own familial order. Oh, and he is a force for "the people" because he protects them from out-of-control minor nobility in their fiefdoms. Though he is not a perfect man, he is an excellent man and a good ruler.

Well that's the best case scenario. Of course it falls apart as soon as you have a truly bad man as king, one who doesn't care about the people or the social good.

But one point I thought was worth pointing out: we have lived under a "rule of law" standard for centuries now, and we are so used to it that we cannot really imagine another system being OK, much less having advantages. But it would be well to consider what we lose, or the disadvantages we have to put up with under this "rule of law". The principal one is that everything has to be expressed in general terms. Even in the obvious case that an exception is to be made, you have to come up with a GENERAL way of stating the exception or it is considered evil: You have "reasonable accommodation RULES" for when to make exceptions for handicapped people. You have judicial guideline handbooks and RULES for how much of the statutory range of sentence to apply to criminals. Well, that may be a drawback. Maybe relying on individual judgment and discretion, in a way that is not clearly expressible as a general rule, would free up some time, effort, and energy. We spend enormous amount of effort writing ever more detailed laws (because people keep inventing tunnels and secret passages around previous written laws. Then we spend tons MORE time writing regulations that implement these laws into vast arrays of picayune details. Then we spend incalculable time writing individual rulings on specific cases, drawing out the laws and regulations into specific cases, and (not infrequently) just plain guessing at the "most reasonable" interpretation, committing to one "interpretation" more for the sake of an answer than out of convincing resolution. Then we have judges to second-guess the legislators and regulators on the abstruse (and sometimes contradictory) results of these ever more detailed rules. And you still have the problem of odd cases that shouldn't be held to the general rule, but are held to that rule because "nobody is above the law" and nobody has the standing to set the law aside when it needs to be set aside.

If a minor functionary were to simply make determinations according to his discretion alone, we would cry "foul", because his results would not be repeatable across all the similar cases. And so on. It's a legislative (and political) function to decide policy. But in practice, the application of laws into picayune details are often not the results that the legislators envisioned or intended. And it is almost impossible for those legislators to re-visit the issue and correct the matter simply, they almost always make the whole thing much more complex, if they can get anything passed at all.

Solution? I don't know. Is there a way of mixing the flexibility and humanizing component of the rule of the best persons, with the stability, predictability, and non-corruptibility of the rule of law?

Oh, and the "all powerfulness" of the state isn't affixed to either camp - it can belong to both, or neither, depending on other aspects of the situation.

who, because he doesn't have to run for office every couple years, can focus on long term social needs, and can refuse to tell lies all day long to people

That's the part I've never agreed with as a criticism of an elected Republic. Never. I had a long comment in a thread a long time ago where I went into detail on why I don't agree with it, but I don't have the time or energy to find it or reproduce it. The very short version (inadequate to what I said at the time) is that not "having to run for office" doesn't make anyone any more likely to do the right thing. At all. It just makes his acts more fully determined by a combination of his own formed character and the nature of the ideas he has been taught and is being influenced by at a given time. These may be good, bad, or indifferent, but not having to run for office doesn't make them any more likely to be good.

In general, Tony, I agree that prudence will always be required in the application of the law. And I'm rather surprised that you don't seem, at least here, to be acknowledging how much it operates even in our present system. There are entire areas of American law that are still largely operated under common law--family law being a major are of that kind. Judges every day are making unrepeatable decisions about messy things like the "best interests of the child," for example. And even when it comes to civil infractions and even serious criminal cases, police discretion, prosecutorial discretion, and judges' freedom to throw cases out all involve a _huge_ amount of prudential case-by-case decision-making, as do things like instructions to juries, evidentiary exclusion, and on and on.

I'd say that if we're curious as to how well the "wise old men of the village" ruling us works in practice in our own society, we should look to family law. Which unfortunately is a mess, full of bias and injustice, sometimes very grave injustice indeed, with little redress. Perhaps it would be no better if far more thoroughly codified and proceduralized. But at a minimum parents could use a lot more "due process of law" when it comes to things like taking children out of their custody!

Am I closed to the idea that a "wise old men of the village" model might work better in a world with more wise old men? No, I'm not closed to that in principle. But overall, I think we're pretty lucky to have lots of procedure and should have grave suspicions of, at this stage of the game, trying to put more things into the realm of "personal rule."

I believe that the problems of the procedural conservatism are the long-term working-out of the Lockean views embedded in the American founding and culture.

The Lockean views society and the Human City, not as an natural (in sense of human nature) and irreducible whole (as in classical and Christian philosophy) but as a matter of convenience only.

Though this view underlies both progressivism and libertarianism but progressives do retain a modicum of older views.

Libertarianism being the logical climax of Lockean views, the American conservatives have imbibed sufficient amounts of it to become giddy and thus they seek to conserve, not the organic society, but the procedures that would form scaffolding or skeleton for this society. But skeleton without flesh is just dead so is the society that is sought to be built by procedural conservatives.

Excellent point of view. I must admit I totally agree that a society may scrupulously observe all the procedures outlined above and still be fundamentally liberal and on the fast track to perdition. The question is if the so called society still exist?

The very short version (inadequate to what I said at the time) is that not "having to run for office" doesn't make anyone any more likely to do the right thing. At all.

Well, this is what I think: it is undeniably the case that politicians find it difficult to tell the truth to the populace about policies and social needs that require sacrifice and troublesome practices in the near term before a long term solution can be achieved. And in no small measure the difficulty finds its source in the election cycle: any politician running "on his record" needs to be able to point to results achieved within his term.

If a problem has a solution, but the solution is a set of policies that hurts now and won't see visible results for 10 years, there is very little chance a politician will go for it. Make it 20 years, and you can essentially guarantee that only a rare politician will go for it: he cannot reasonably envision that his colleagues and his successors in office will leave the policy in place long enough, and so (in today's world) in political prudence he cannot think that the policy has a reasonable chance of working out in real terms.

I will agree, Lydia, that with regard to the other forces and motivations, a politician and a monarch have similar concerns, and either one may be led to good, evil, or neutral actions.

And I'm rather surprised that you don't seem, at least here, to be acknowledging how much it operates even in our present system. There are entire areas of American law that are still largely operated under common law--family law being a major are of that kind.

Well, I (thankfully) have not been much involved in our police and judicial systems personally, so I am perhaps unaware of how much individual prudential decisions get into the picture. I am more closely involved on the other side, the legislation - regulation - ruling - practices, and I see forever more Congress and regulatory bodies trying to write into rules all sorts of detail that is far too complex for good rule-making. Once in a great while, it is because they don't like the way a judicial decision has come down, but far more often it is because they tried to make something work in the past but it didn't (or isn't) working and they are bent on "fixing" it with double or treble the complexity of rules. I think that a pretty good share of this cycle is due to lawyers and other professional practitioners making and finding loopholes that skirt the letter of the law while breaking it in spirit, and I ask myself, is the fact that "If you write a law, they will find it (the loopholes)" something that reflects a deeper mistake or problem, and I am not sure it isn't. Possibly, the definitive "rule of law" plan promotes reliance on the literal word of the written law and encourages people to simply ignore the spirit of the law. If a judge were to find someone guilty based on the spirit of the law without having a clear basis in the written law, he is almost certain to have that decision overturned up the chain, isn't he? Is THAT sort of prudential determination a protected activity in the system? Doesn't seem so. The assumption is that "the legislators said what they mean" and so if you cannot find it in the literal meaning of the written law, you (the judge) cannot judge by the spirit of the law. Well, that's unless you are an activist judge that likes to legislate from the bench.

Well, that's unless you are an activist judge that likes to legislate from the bench.

Of which we have all too many. And as you know, that hasn't worked out very well. They also all too often don't get struck down at a higher level; sometimes they _are_ the higher level.

I understand your impatience, Tony, with the nit-pickiness of written law as you work with it, but legislative intent often _is_ applied w.r.t. even written law which everyone admits is statutory rather than common law. And "legislative intent" is certainly related to the spirit of the law.

But I'm afraid I'm allowing myself to go onto a tangent about common law vs. statutory law (a subject I do find very interesting) and getting away from not only the original post but also my original comment that kicked off this sub-discussion. My original comment which you quoted was this:

societies in which "who you know" is what it's all about in the legal sphere (rather than equality before the law) foster corruption, injustice, and back-stabbing. The more all-powerful the state becomes, the more passive the people become, the more likely they are to be entitlement-minded, the less motivation they have to learn and pass down various civic virtues or an understanding of true statesmanship.

Now, to be fair both to constitutional monarchies and to common law societies, at their best _neither_ of these could be described either as "societies in which who you know is what it's all about in the legal sphere (rather than equality before the law)" nor as "all-powerful states." And _certainly_ merely adding some ability on the part of a person making a ruling to apply prudential considerations or apply the spirit of the law doesn't automatically turn a society into either of those.

It was C.S. Lewis, far more sympathetic to monarchy than I, who put into the mouth of one of his good king characters the statement, "The king's not above the law, for it's the law that makes him king." This was apropos of an older twin who didn't want to be king but preferred that his younger twin brother have the crown. The father assured him that his having the crown was "in course of law." Note that this would have been true even if the younger twin had been the father's favorite or (more interestingly) even if he had thought that the younger twin would make a better king.

Moreover, at its best, a system of common law is heavily tied to precedent; judges, though we must admit that by making new precedents they are participating in the making of the law, are supposed to do so only very conservatively.

My comments were not meant to distinguish between a well-designed constitutional monarchy or common-law society and our own republic, though I admit that I think that our design is somewhat better. Rather, my comments were meant to emphasize the importance and value of procedure in relationship to substantive issues. I believe (and I think this is very important) that even an advocate of a somewhat different legal system from our own should nonetheless acknowledge these points. It is, indeed, part of understanding statesmanship to understand the dangers of the rule of mere will and the importance of the rule of law. These are matters concerning both the character of the people and the character of the monarch/bureaucrat/ruler.

Tony, what you talk about above at 10:32 sounds like Principles Based Regulation, of which there was some discussion recently at Econlog and other places. I'm inclined to say that whether you regulate based on rules or principles is much less important than whether you trust the regulators. What has been happening in America is that "red-state" Americans increasingly do not trust that the government even attempts to govern in their interests. Often, even the most optimistic of red-staters believe that it is trying to actively subvert them. Without this trust, I'm not sure that a government like we have can function. It must instead turn into something more authoritarian, or the political union between the two tribes must dissolve.

Lydia, good comments and clarifications. Thanks.

Matt, I think you are right in suggesting that there is a huge loss of trust between red-staters and the regulators (have to include the legislators, judges, and throw in the lawyers that stand athwart all those). I don't think, though, that the issue is red-staters thinking that the government is no longer governing "in their interests", so much as the government is no longer governing according to a process in which their interests have a fair playing field. (Maybe those come to the same thing in the long run. Or maybe we are thinking about different aspects of that governing.) It is always "If you red-staters win we back down for now and don't make further change, if we win we do make further change." But there is never any unraveling of last year's changes that were at contest, those are locked in stone. Could be at least partly because stare decisis is a lot more important to conservatives than liberals, so conservatives are less willing to judicially overturn last year's fruitcake decision by the 9th Circuit. (I don't have to think of one in particular, the 9th ALWAYS has fruitcake decisions here and there.)

I think we are talking different things, but your formulation is a better description of the situation among mainstream red-staters (mine is too much projection on my part). The prevailing view is that process has been undermined in the forms of judicial activism or, now, executive orders to advance a liberal/left agenda. These red-staters haven't yet completely lost faith in the political process, but due to the process you describe (yesterdays outrages are today's conventional wisdom) their faith is deteriorating and there is an underlying sense that the people in the government just aren't 'on their side'. But...so far this has been effectively channeled into voting for Republicans, who are supposed to be on their side and who are going to turn this around (the Tea Party refrain of "take the country back"). I wonder what will happen if or when they become disillusioned with the Republican Party as well, as I have, leaving no outlet for their frustrations.

"a society may scrupulously observe all the procedures outlined above and still be fundamentally liberal"

Funny, Jeff, a group of friends and I had a very similar discussion a couple nights ago. The four of us, two paleo/agrarians, one neocon, and one "mainstream" conservative all agreed that modern American conservatism tends to rely too much on policy and not enough on culture. It tends to emphasize the top-down solution via changes in policy, as opposed to cultural changes by which the individual and the little platoon effect change from the bottom up. In other words, modern conservatism tends to default to seeking (ostensibly) conservative ends by liberal means. This, along with the doubtfulness of some of their desired-after ends compels me to argue that many of today's conservatives are not conservatives at all, but are "Right-liberals."

"If you are talking about libertarian leaning Republicans you could possibly make a case (although it would be difficult), but equality is nearly anathema to conservatives."

Note that Jeff wrote "equality of opportunity" and "equality before the law." What's anathema to conservatives is egalitarianism, which promotes a levelling sort of equality that attempts to paper over differences in order to produce equal outcomes. These two ideas of equality are very different.

"American conservatives have imbibed sufficient amounts of [libertarianism] to become giddy and thus they seek to conserve, not the organic society, but the procedures that would form scaffolding or skeleton for this society."

Or to put it another way, they're trying to hang conservative flesh on a liberal skeleton in hopes of getting a conservative organism. This, of course, will not work -- the skeleton will more quickly infect the flesh than will the flesh transform the skeleton (if it ever will.)

Good comments all around.

Rather than getting into the whole business of contrasting different forms of government, my point can be understood in the context of politics as we have it in the United States today.

Conservatives are reluctant - embarrassed, even - to define their ends. We don't want to talk about outcomes. Liberals, on the other hand, have no such scruples, and that's why they're triumphant.

What is freedom for? What is subsidiarity for? What is opportunity for? What is the family for? What is man for? Conservatism is an empty shell if it doesn't ask these questions, answer them, and pursue policies in line with the answers. It's not enough to pursue "freedom of speech" when this only gives the vandals and desecrators a megaphone. It's not enough to pursue "freedom of religion" when only one religion can have any kind of public authority. It's not enough to promote "free enterprise" when our entire nation is being reduced to a service economy. Etc.

Conservatives, what do you really want? Do you even remember? People change language, but language also changes people. If you don't have a political vocabulary that identifies worthy political ends, you will forget about them.

Jeff, I think you are too hard on conservatives if you mean to imply that they do not know what freedom of speech, etc., is for and won't say so. Right at this very moment Christian conservatives in Minnesota are using their freedom of speech to advocate an amendment to their state Constitution defending marriage, as we conservatives in Michigan did some years ago. I'm sure that all over the country you could find conservatives who have used their freedom of speech to hold signs outside of abortion clinics. Others use their freedom of speech to advocate legal regulations restricting the abortion license as much as they can get lawmakers to do (things like waiting periods and ultrasound laws), which has the pro-aborts tearing their hair out. Our Acts 17 friends David Wood and others have been away from their homes for a couple of weeks *just now* at the Arab Festival in Dearborn using their freedom of speech to try to win Muslims to Christ, at considerable risk to themselves. The HSLDA uses their freedom of speech to advocate for the freedom to homeschool and to criticize legislation that would limit that freedom. Here at W4 we use our freedom of speech all the time to tell what we stand for. I stood in a grocery store today talking with an elderly man about the economy and the bad state it is in and openly criticizing our government and advocating change. As I'm just now reading a novel about the fear in which people lived in Tito's Yugoslavia, I was much struck with gratitude for my freedom to have this conversation with a stranger without fearing that I would be reported.

And while many of these uses of free speech are negative (but would still serve as counterexamples to your broad statements, even so), others are positive: Visions of the freedom to worship God in our churches as in fact we do without fear. Visions of the freedom to teach our children God's precepts. (Remember my review of _Children of the Storm_ about Soviet Russia and the Baptists?) Visions of the freedom to wear and display symbols of our faith, such as are being increasingly restricted in Europe and the UK. Visions of the freedom to engage in healthy entrepreneurship without burdensome regulation.

You get the picture. I'm afraid I just disagree with you. I can't help wondering if part of the problem here is that some of your fellow conservatives more in the "mainstream" than in the "trad-con" traditions don't advocate all the *same* things that you would advocate as far as a vision of good outcomes.

It's possible that two things give the impression that most mainstream conservatives have no vision of the good:

1) Some make statements about freedom of speech et. al. that are so sweeping as to sound absolutist, and it's not clear that they realize that the statements are overly sweeping. Nonetheless, I would add that at the very moment that they are doing so, they are often using their own freedoms to advance substantive goods, which negates the claim that they have no concept of what such freedoms are for.

2) Some (Robert Spencer being a recent example) are unwilling even to support what one might call "morals legislation" or "vice legislation," though others are. Spencer recently argued that conservatives must oppose any content legislation that would prevent Lady Gaga concerts in any venue. I want to add, though, that I know many mainstream conservatives who would not agree with Spencer on such a point and would simply *love* to be able to kick out the p*rn shops and exotic dancing establishments and the like in their towns.

Lydia, great comment at 8:21pm on the 21st.


Conservatives, what do you really want?

To defend and preserve for later generations those things I have reason to be grateful for. That many of these are under sustained assault is a fact no conservative can afford to ignore. The political prospects I observe counsel a heavy dose of pragmatism in political alliance. In my judgment conservatism alone has probably never been a faction capable of exerting its particular will, consistently, in American politics. Plus we're internally factional, given to bursts of inquisitorial nonsense which weakens what political strength we do possess.

Nevertheless those bursts of inquisition are not always nonsense. Sometimes you need a good fraternal fistfight. I'd prefer to keep those in-house, so to speak. It is unbecoming in public.

To win on major policy goals, conservatives must find allies. Libertarians have often honored us with their comradeship. Reagan typified that alliance, and its achievements are nothing to sneeze at. Conservatives have over the years made very fruitful alliances with business, small-scale and large. How do great organizations like ISI or Ignatius or the EPPC exists, after all, but because conservative folks have excelled at business and generated the capital to fund them? (Hardline agrarians neglect this at their peril.)

Once these alliances are made, the "proceduralism" gains a bit of legitimate substantive importance. It resembles a treaty, I suppose. The treaty exists for a very sound and noble purpose: mutual aid and defense; the great law of self-preservation. Together we can hold off the Jacobins and Jihadists and maybe even gain some ground back from them. The fact that they still hold so many points of strength, so far beyond their lines that we cannot hope to regain them now, in no way diminishes the necessity of holding them off on the battlegrounds of today. Thus Lydia's moving litany of honorable political endeavor.

So if we sign a treaty not to engage in inquisition even when we want to, it does mean something. It's not, in the final analysis, mere empty proceduralism; not always, in any case.

Conservatives, what do you really want?

To defend and preserve for later generations those things I have reason to be grateful for.

To expand on Paul's territorial claim:

To live the good life, considered with respect to its social perspective.

1. To adore God filled with faith, hope, and love, and seeking understanding of that faith in reason.

2. To pursue the life of the mind: intelligent and critical inspection of the world around us and inside us, enhanced by others' input and contributing ourselves to others' advances.

3. To live in friendship - with one or two who are, each, "another self" without qualification, and a dozen or two lesser friendships that are only slightly less deep.

4. To form a family in pursuit of the blessing "be fruitful and multiply."

5. To establish oneself in a vocation or trade that is materially enriching and (at least some of the time) rewarding on other planes as well, while we contribute to the development of society around us.

Well, you say, none of those are specially conservative goals, liberals and other non-conservatives want them. Yes, true. But I pose them to go on to suggest that conservative wants these under a framework that is peculiarly conservative.

6. A conservative insists that we not only want to worship God, but that we want (and have a definite right) to worship Him in solid connection with the faith of our fathers. That not only the doctrines handed down to us by the Apostles remain uncorrupted, but the wealth of customs and practices built up over centuries to protect, convey, and enliven those doctrines are worthy of honor and support socially.

7. The life of the mind should be pursued with due regard for the light and wisdom of those who have explored the way before us, including those more than 500 years ago. This includes, for example, humility in tackling ancient and medieval philosophy and theology, accepting that they might make valid points that we are not yet equipped to understand, instead of blowing them off as stupid the moment we read something that doesn't sound right to us.

8. How about an admission that when we watch TV for hours a day and idolize stars, we are substituting false relationships for real ones. Conservatives should want to preserve the connections we have with real flesh and blood people. A mass-market culture driven by a mass-market marketing program is dehumanizing.

9. Self evident.

10. The conservative wants material wealth to be the fruit of his endeavor to meet the needs of those around him, not a handout, and not a con conducted legally through the stock market. He wants the opportunities he has to establish himself to be opportunities defined on a level playing field, and does not have unnatural boundaries placed on it by unnecessary interference of "officials." And he wants that wealth he has generated to remain his to use well under his own discretion, building up society the way he thinks is fruitful, instead of being drained away on others' projects that fit with their judgment but not his.

Hey, where is politics in all this? Well, that's just it - politics should not constitute the heart and soul of daily life. Ideally it would be down around the last category most of the time, except for the politics needed to keep saying "Don't damage society with respect to our religious culture", and "Don't damage society with affronts to our pursuit of the life of the mind..." In other words, to keep officialdom from wrecking culture built and maintained without their say so. The government should not normally be a driver of the culture, but a protector of it.

Did someone mention vox day? Bless his heart, that boy couldn't make a coherent argument if you paid him. That is how we do defamatory backstabbing in the South, maybe vox should take notes.
http://www.jimchines.com/2012/05/facts-are-cool/

Q: Hey, where is politics in all this?
A: A conservative insists that we not only want to worship God, but that we want (and have a definite right) to worship Him in solid connection with the faith of our fathers.

America was not established to be a religion. Your right to act only under the guidance of traditional faith does not obviate policy decisions and you must compete in the legal and political spheres to obtain your preferred policies.

And while many of these uses of free speech are negative (but would still serve as counterexamples to your broad statements, even so), others are positive: Visions of the freedom to worship God in our churches as in fact we do without fear. Visions of the freedom to teach our children God's precepts. (Remember my review of _Children of the Storm_ about Soviet Russia and the Baptists?) Visions of the freedom to wear and display symbols of our faith, such as are being increasingly restricted in Europe and the UK. Visions of the freedom to engage in healthy entrepreneurship without burdensome regulation.

Then what you really want, Lydia - just going out on a limb here - is freedom for Christian speech, freedom for Christian worship and expression, freedom for Americans to engage in productive work. None of which suggests that an abstract freedom for anyone to say anything, do anything, worship anything, make anything, or sell anything is the best way to accomplish these laudable ends. Freedom for Islamist speech and worship means the suppression of Christian speech and worship. The freedom of a handful of American retailers to sell imported gadgets manufactured by Chinese prisoners means the end of free enterprise for millions of would-be American entrepreneurs. Etc.

With respect to our love for procedural solutions, Chesterton had this to say:

"Every one of the modern popular phrases and ideals is a dodge in order to shirk the problem of what is good. We are fond of talking about 'liberty'; that, as we talk of it, is a dodge to avoid discussing what is good."

Let's be clear: any conservatism worthy of the name wants liberty, preference, and advantage for the good - and mere tolerance at most for the rest. There's no such thing as a level playing field in politics, and if there were, we shouldn't want it. If we're not making a case for the good in public discourse, we're essentially retreating.


Conservatives, what do you really want?

Freedom.

Rule of Law.

Justice.

Minimal Government.

Personal accountability/responsibility.

Hey, where is politics in all this? Well, that's just it - politics should not constitute the heart and soul of daily life. Ideally it would be down around the last category most of the time, except for the politics needed to keep saying "Don't damage society with respect to our religious culture", and "Don't damage society with affronts to our pursuit of the life of the mind..." In other words, to keep officialdom from wrecking culture built and maintained without their say so. The government should not normally be a driver of the culture, but a protector of it.

The obvious difficulty here is that government, too, derives from one culture or another and has to choose. If the state is not cooperating with any given culture and embracing its authority, it is opposing the culture and undermining its authority. I don't believe there is any foundation in Christian theology or human experience for the kind of "separation of culture and state" that American conservatives seem to embrace.

Now then, if the people have one culture and the state has another, then I suppose we might be forced to take refuge in libertarianism. Libertarianism is essentially defeat. At best it's a long-shot prudential option. But it can never be the goal for Christians in society because a libertarian state is a godless state, and as such it won't be libertarian for long.

Freedom.

Rule of Law.

Justice.

Minimal Government.

Personal accountability/responsibility.

Freedom for whom? To do what?

What is justice? Which behaviors should be punished, and how?

Why should government be "minimal"?

How much government is too much government?

What, exactly, should persons be held responsible for? And which persons?

All of these questions must be answered in order to establish your libertarian state. And none of these questions can be answered without an authoritative metaphysical framework. Even libertarians need to choose. And Christianity doesn't get you there.

Freedom for Islamist speech and worship means the suppression of Christian speech and worship.

Well, you know I'm with you, Jeff, on the goal of "disinviting Islam," though we don't agree on all of the means to that end, though we do agree on some. I would not be inclined directly to suppress all Islamist freedom of speech and worship, but I would be inclined to try to have fewer Muslims and not to accommodate many Muslim demands, which I hope will result in fewer Muslims in America and hence in continued freedom for Christian speech and worship. Your way of wording it here makes it sound like the _only_ effective way to avoid Muslim encroachments on Christian freedom of speech and worship is to outlaw Muslim worship directly, per se, period. Though perhaps that isn't what you intend by it.

The freedom of a handful of American retailers to sell imported gadgets manufactured by Chinese prisoners means the end of free enterprise for millions of would-be American entrepreneurs.

Well, I said "without burdensome regulation." Honestly, I'm inclined to think that burdensome regulation does more to suppress American productive entrepreneurship than Chinese competition. I'm not a terribly ambitious or entrepreneurial person, but even I have thought of things I might like to sell or try to do for money or encourage my children to do but have been discouraged by the whole self-employment thing. Little kids are not getting their lemonade stands shut down because of the Chinese. The Amish are not getting investigated for selling raw milk because of Chinese competition. (To give just a couple of examples out of millions that could be given.) Now, the whole issue of Chinese human rights violations and the impact those should have on free trade is an interesting one, and I'm by no means unsympathetic to the human rights argument there. However, I don't see the same connection, or perhaps the same degree of connection, that you see between that and the stifling of American industry, especially not when compared to our present state of incredible over-regulation--federal, state, and local.

Late to the party as usual, but here's my 2 cents:

1) I disagree that the things that you list as procedural are merely procedural. For example, take "equality of opportunity." It defines a moral idea of how people should treat each other and how they should be rewarded. It is as substantive an idea of distributive justice as there is.

2) As Aristotle says (note to Lydia: I'm using the present tense!), the fundamental political question is: Who rules? Ancient political philosophy does not make the sharp distinction between forms of government and the ends of government like liberalism (which holds that government exists to secure rights), and engaging in political activity is itself part of the Good Life. As Madison puts it: "that honorable determination which animates very votary of freedom, to rest all our political experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government." The form of government (republican) is also the end of government (producing good republicans). Limited government, local government, etc. are all elements of good republican government.

3)

They seem to believe that that procedural stuff is getting in their way. I think that's pretty significant.

Yes. In their attacks on the Constitution, Progressives beginning with Wilson, Croly, et al. were quite explicit that the procedures contained in the Constitution tilted the playing field against the sort of activist government that they advocated, and accordingly they went to great lengths to change those procedures in a way that tilted the playing field towards liberal policy ends.

"Conservatives should want to preserve the connections we have with real flesh and blood people. A mass-market culture driven by a mass-market marketing program is dehumanizing."

Good luck with this one, Tony. Far too many conservatives are caught up in defending the acquire/discard/repeat cycle for an anti-consumerist mentality to ever take hold. Hell, some conservatives don't even think there is such a thing as consumerism.

Schumpeter referred to the "creative destruction" of capitalism. Until we conservatives start paying some proper attention to the destructive side of the thing instead of simply extolling the creative side we will never make any sort of long-term headway. Materialism and the resultant consumerism are rotting the culture, yet we on the right refuse to do the necessary self-criticism that would enable us to distance ourselves from this rottenness. The root of this whole thing is a belief in autonomous individualism, whether that belief manifests itself as sexual liberty, as on the cultural left, or economic "liberty," as on the right. This perncious form of individualism needs to be purged from the Right, or else we will get absolutely nowhere, in that everything we accomplish will in one sense or another be infected, and thus will be self-defeating in the long run.

Freedom for whom? To do what?

Freedom for all. This freedom, however, must be coupled with personal responsibility/accountability for one's actions. Thus everyone should have the freedom to do what's in their hearts - without government imposition - but they must be held accountable when their actions impinge on others. If you have a system where certain groups have the right to impinge on others, the system will fall apart.

What is justice? Which behaviors should be punished, and how?

Justice is equal treatment under the law (that's why she's blindfolded you know!), and, punishment and restitution commensurable with the crime and its consequences to the victims. All behaviors that violate the Constitutional rights of others should be punished. How? Well that depends on the crime.

Why should government be "minimal"?

Because a minimal government maximizes freedom.

How much government is too much government?

According to the US Census Bureau, there are currently 90,741 governments in this country. I'm primarily talking about limiting the Federal government. I don't know that it does anything at the state or local level that couldn't be handled better by the 90,470 other governments.

What, exactly, should persons be held responsible for? And which persons?

All people need to be held responsible for everything they do - if it affects someone else. This, also, must be commensurable and equal. The disproportionate punishments we witness between rich and poor classes is an indication that our current system is not holding the rich to the same standard as the poor.

All of these questions must be answered in order to establish your libertarian state. And none of these questions can be answered without an authoritative metaphysical framework. Even libertarians need to choose. And Christianity doesn't get you there.

Christianity gets you there (so long as you don't view Christianity as requiring government imposition to work!)

Revelation 22:11 says: "Let the one who does wrong continue to do wrong; let the vile person continue to be vile; let the one who does right continue to do right; and let the holy person continue to be holy."

This, to me, sums up nicely the Christian perspective on the imposition of morality on a sinful world. We can't do it! We are supposed to be a light in the world - not a hammer! Christianity gets us to the basic understanding of human rights needed to enact this form of government. Beyond that, if we want the freedom to truly be Christians, we need to allow everyone else the freedom to be what they want to be also.

To elaborate a bit more...

I think the fundamental issue for Christians is 'the role of the Church' vs. 'the role of government'.

My understanding of New Testament teaching is that the Church exists outside the government; outside all governments as a matter of fact. The primary teaching of the NT is that the Church is not "of this world". Government is always referred to as an external entity in the NT: we are told to pray for its leaders and to behave righteously so as not to incur its wrath, but we are not told to rely upon it to do the work of the Church.

There is much instruction given in the NT as to how to resolve issues of morality within the Church, but when it comes to those "outside" the church, we are told simply to be respectful and gracious. The language of the NT is decidedly different in this respect from the language of the Koran - which instructs Muslims how to rule over non-Muslims.

I sense, within these threads, a view that somehow the entire USA is to be treated as if it is "a church" and thus that the tenets of Christianity should be imposed by NT standards as if within the Church.

This is a wrong view of Christianity, Church and government in my view.

Freedom for Islamist speech and worship means the suppression of Christian speech and worship.

With you and Lydia, Jeff, I agree that we have a legitimate role in suppressing Islamist speech, because it is intentionally and primarily directed at a political end that is directly contrary to our constitutional and political order. The state suppressing that is just good ol' self defense pure and simple.

But Islamists and Muslims are not co-terminal categories. And Islam, while it is a wrong religion, is not so inherently wrong in every aspect that even tolerating it of necessity constitutes damage to the common good _more_than_ suppressing it damages the common good. And that's the measure we need to look at.

The obvious difficulty here is that government, too, derives from one culture or another and has to choose. If the state is not cooperating with any given culture and embracing its authority, it is opposing the culture and undermining its authority. I don't believe there is any foundation in Christian theology or human experience for the kind of "separation of culture and state" that American conservatives seem to embrace.

Yes, and that's exactly why I am in favor of the government protecting and cooperating with those good and worthy non-political customs, those cultural roots, that both make us Christians and make us Americans. Those who think that the "freedom from" part of our constitutional order implicitly means freedom from government support for Christian mores are wrong. They are trying to railroad us into a (quiet) revolution that turns the order on its head. The principal laws already meant something before these revolutionaries were born, and forcing them to be read as a counterweight to Christianity means ripping out their guts and replacing them with new meanings - which is fundamentally contrary to the rule of law as such. Liberals know that they typically don't change the law the way they want by majority VOTING for a new law that eviscerates still more of the Christianity that undergirds our constitutional order, so they usually go through the back door, have judges pretend that the law does mean something other than what it meant for 150 or 200 years.

1) I disagree that the things that you list as procedural are merely procedural. For example, take "equality of opportunity." It defines a moral idea of how people should treat each other and how they should be rewarded. It is as substantive an idea of distributive justice as there is.

Well, OK, but insofar as "equality of opportunity" is a moral idea, it's a bad one and full of potential for mischief. The distinction between the equality of outcome desired by liberals and equality of opportunity heralded by conservatives is largely without a difference. Economic opportunity depends upon too many human and structural variables for there to be anything resembling equality.

That said, I call it "procedural" because it cannot possibly exist as an ultimate goal. Opportunity to do what? The answer to this question is the end; "equality of opportunity" is the means. A good society doesn't want its people to have the opportunity to do whatever they please, but to do things worth doing - things of true intrinsic value as opposed to mere economic value.

We really need to wrap our brains around this. Somehow, Americans have got this idea that freedom is either absolute (or nearly so) or it isn't freedom at all. Nothing could be further from the truth. The freedom to do evil, in many cases, literally robs everyone of the their freedom to do good. That kind of "freedom" is pure oppression. My freedom to perform an abortion robs everyone else of their freedom to defend and protect an innocent child. The same logic applies in a thousand more scenarios. The only liberty worth having is the liberty to choose between multiple goods - some superior, some inferior, but all of them goods. Please don't bother with the argument that we can't outlaw every sin. Of course we can't outlaw every sin. Fallen human nature demands that most sins be legally tolerated. Usually, the cost of outlawing sin is greater than the potential benefit. I don't want to live in a Calvinist Rushdooneyite reconstructionist hell-hole. This isn't about sin, really, but about the public good and a society that at least prefers and facilitates virtue.

"insofar as 'equality of opportunity' is a moral idea, it's a bad one and full of potential for mischief"

True, but I don't think all conservatives see it as a moral idea. Rather it's a sort of working principle guiding various efforts towards fairness, and really more negative (removal of unnecessary or unfair roadblocks) than positive (attempted provision of equal starting points).

"A good society doesn't want its people to have the opportunity to do whatever they please, but to do things worth doing - things of true intrinsic value as opposed to mere economic value."

Amen. But one can hear the response already: "Who are you to tell me what's worth doing?"

"We really need to wrap our brains around this. Somehow, Americans have got this idea that freedom is either absolute (or nearly so) or it isn't freedom at all."

Hence the animus, from both the Right and the Left, towards anyone that proposes limits and responsibility, even self-limitation:

http://www.imaginativeconservative.org/2012/02/lovely-dragon-of-choice-freedom-not-to.html

The Left will reject limits on sexual behavior, the Right will reject limits on economic behavior. Yet, according to I John 2:16 these things are related, an idea that neither side wants to come to grips with.

Nice Marmot,
I got an incredible laugh out of this paragraph.

What Chesterton says about orthodoxy is true about the wisdom of tossing choice away: As the real excitement is not in the chosen heresy but in riding the unchosen and unutterable truth, so the most glorious life awaits beyond the reserve of decision. Modern man, clever in tiny things like technology, confused about bigger things like neighborhood and family, and quite flummoxed in matters of good and evil, likes to portray himself, Social Security pension and seat belts and little white balloons and all, as a pioneer, but as far as the real romance of the quest is concerned, the only difference between modern man and the squeakingest churchmouse is all to the advantage of the churchmouse. For he is to be found rather more often in church.

The rest of the article is fairly lopsided, to put it mildly, but this bit of brilliance redeemed it.

"The rest of the article is fairly lopsided"

I'm thinking that the sentiments expressed in the article are plumb; we're the ones who are lopsided.

Well, OK, but insofar as "equality of opportunity" is a moral idea, it's a bad one and full of potential for mischief. The distinction between the equality of outcome desired by liberals and equality of opportunity heralded by conservatives is largely without a difference. Economic opportunity depends upon too many human and structural variables for there to be anything resembling equality. That said, I call it "procedural" because it cannot possibly exist as an ultimate goal.

Equality of opportunity is another name for (or an integral part of) meritocracy. That was one of the core moral principles upon which this nation was founded. Hereditary rule/privileges, government monopolies, corruption, etc. were all deemed violations of that principle, which is not restricted exclusively to economic matters. And as part of an idea of complete justice, it is indeed exists as part of the Good Life. All you seem to be doing is resorting to a snarky caricature of the idea of "equality of opportunity."

And last time I checked (to the dismay of many purist libertarians), there are all sorts of laws on the books designed to promote virtue. Why even liberals like Michael Bloomberg have launched their own crusade/jihad against the cardinal sin of gluttony.

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