First things first: I have a column up today at The American Spectator Online: They Don’t Make Hate Like They Used To.
I was thinking of linking to a particular internet post today, and then I thought, “No. Too political.”
And it occurred to me to ask, “We’re obviously a conservative blog. How is being conservative different from being political?”
This is an important question, and I think Phil and I are generally agreed on it.
Political questions refer to matters of legislation and electioneering. Heaven knows we comment on such things from time to time here, but it’s not what the blog is about.
Cultural conservatism is a much broader concept. I was a cultural conservative back when I was still a Democrat.
Cultural conservatism means having a long-range view of cultural issues. The fact that an idea is new gives it no more than neutral weight. Newness tells us nothing. The fact that an idea is old disposes us toward it positively (though certainly old ideas have been proved wrong from time to time). That which has worked for our ancestors is very likely to have good reasons behind it, even if we no longer see them.
Ideas do not age.
I know what you’re thinking: What about slavery?
But the fact is, the basic idea that slavery is wrong is not a new idea. Abolition is a new practice in history, but the essential principle is the Golden Rule—do as you would be done by. No one wants to be a slave, so no one should make a slave of another. That’s been true from the beginning.
The inconvenient fact that, up until the Industrial Revolution, civilization was impossible without slavery kept most people from examining the matter too closely.
But the principle itself is one of those old, conservative ones.
Wait! You were a Democrat???
🙂
When I was 20 I had a heart; when I was 40 I had a brain.
My perspective as a historian is that old ideas are complex and struggle against each other.
Slavery was an ambiguous issue (in some periods, and in some cultures–not in mainstream Roman culture, as far as I can tell.) But what if we look at war? Clearly, Virgil was the poet laureate of the Roman Empire. But he also clearly had nearly as much sympathy for those who opposed Aeneas–and who died ignominiously to make way for Aeneas’s future empire. Even Aeneas seems to be morally scarred by war. For Virgil, it seems, war and conquest are necessary evils. The war hero is to be celebrated, but he is to be a sorrowful, self-sacrificial hero who hates war and loves peace.
(This strikes me as quite different from Homer. I’m not sure why Homer should get more weight than Aeneas, but he is a few centuries older, and far less new.)
I cannot personally imagine a future version of our fallen world in which there is no war. However, if there were some equivalent of the Industrial Revolution to make war somehow unnecessary (unlikely, but go with me), it seems there would be a debate.
Likely conservatives would enlist Virgil and his bold, fierce, warlike hero. They would call for the perpetuation of such violence, especially among those who believe that our ancestors “have good reasons behind it, even if we no longer see them.” Anyone who looks at the sympathy with which Virgil depicts Camille, or Virgil’s wicked rage in Book II (before restrained by his mother) or at the conclusion (when he breaks his culture’s values and refuses to honor Turnus as a slain enemy), would of course be a revisionist.
I’m not saying that liberals don’t already do similar things. But so do conservatives. And I think many debates these days actually can be boiled down to “what evils are we now rich enough to avoid,” and others involve the Left resisting modernity and longing for the past. Yes, torture was standard practice in antiquity and common in the Middle Ages, but there was a hundred years or so in which America believed it was safe enough to treat its enemies with respect. In the Old Testament, farmers were required (by their government) to harvest inefficiently, so that the poor could feed themselves on the gleanings even if they didn’t have a job. And it’s hard not to see Augustine as anything other than a moderate progressive in his time, especially in his political philosophy. But now his “Just War” theory (which requires justice in war as well as just reasons for war) seems profoundly out of favor among neocons, who see jus ad bellum as an excuse for any number of injustices in war. (I’m a huge fan of our recent reforms in warmaking, but it saddens me that their justification was pragmatic–people will like us better if we reign in our soldiers–rather than moral.)
Heck, even one of the most ill-thought out attitudes of the Left, “corporations are evil,” is fundamentally backwards-looking. The fear of corporations assumes that this new form of social organization (the multinational corporation) should receive less benefit of the doubt than older forms of social organization, such as individually owned businesses.
In my case, I read this site because while it is conservative (and I need conservative voices in my life), it is primarily Christian and literary-focused (which gives me common ground). Pure, secular contemporary conservatism–especially its libertarian branches–strikes me as being too violently different from the attitudes and values of the past, without at least the honesty of liberalism to admit when it is launching vast political experiments.
CR, I think you are confusing a few things, but maybe it’s just that your No-More-War example is too ridiculous. The reason war will never end is the pride and rebellion within all mankind. We’re on the same page, right? Because of the sin we all suffer through, we will always have hateful marriages, abused children, greedy businessmen, and corrupt politicians.
The problem with liberalism in general is that it argues for the results of beliefs or disciplines that it also argues against. Your gleaning example is a good one. Landowners should show compassion to prodigals and foreigners who can’t find work (or have some problem that alienates them from labor force), but gleaning is still a kind of work. The Bible tells us to show compassion to the misfortuned, but it also tells to that if a man won’t work, he shouldn’t eat. So I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Jesus would accost a man who could get up a glean for himself and maybe others, but won’t. The argument today seems to be all talk of helping those with real needs while defending programs that enable and encourage people to be lazy. So liberals appear to argue that everyone should be fed regardless of their ability to work. That undermines itself.
A general principle of economics is that you will get more of what you subsidize and less of what you tax. I’ve noticed that our government tends to subsidize poverty and tax productivity. I know a family man who could easily earn $50-60k a year, but limits his income to under $30k. At that income he qualifies for federal earned income credit, child tax credit and the state equivalent of the earned income credit to the tune of about $10 grand a year. In addition, his state offers subsidized health insurance for the working poor, defined as those who earn less than $50k and have assets less than $20k and who do not have access to health insurance through their employment. The state subsidized health insurance has no deductible and only a $3 copay for most services and prescriptions, along with full eyeglass and dental coverage. You couldn’t buy similar coverage on the open market for $3000 a month.
When self employment tax, federal income tax and state income taxes are taken into account, he would have to earn over $100k a year to enjoy the same after tax cash and benefits he now enjoys by making less than $30k. Why would anyone invest the time and energy to make themselves worth that kind of remuneration when they can have the same bennies for 1/3 the effort?
Actually, I can think of at least two reasons. One is that each of us will give account on the judgment day for what we have done with the talents entrusted to us. Secondly, as the Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher so astutely observed many years ago, “The problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people’s money.” This kind of free ride can’t last forever.
Phil,
Thanks for your reply. I agree with you that I cannot imagine sinful humans coexisting without war.
Regarding the rest, well, I wrote a response, which seemed to my eyes a bit unformed. I’ll have to think more.
The only thing I have to say is this: even if gleaning required some work, it was government-mandated. In a sane world (by which I may mean the New Heavens and New Earth), I think Christians would come together in the study of Scriptures. Some pragmatists would point out that gleaning required some form of work, some government apologists would point out that it was still government-mandated, and in a process of recognition of the many parts of even the intellectual Body of Christ some synthesis would be formed, even though there might be difference within the community.
Instead (rabid caricature warning), there seems to be a lot of people for whom either (a) liberals are those lazy people who refuse to take responsibility for their actions, or (b) conservatives are those so far in bed with any form of military violence or corporate exploitation to miss God’s call for justice. In their personal lives, I think both are belied by those who live lives in honor of Christ. But in political discussions…I’m looking for an ideal of responsible engagement with politics that doesn’t sacrifice Christ’s perogatives to a secular political agenda.
I probably shouldn’t really complain, until I have a better idea what that responsible engagement would look like. My theory would be that it would involve a *lot* fewer sentences using the words “liberal” or “conservative,” and a lot more individual arguments on the basis of Scriptures and encouraging counter-arguments.
Lars – Civilization was impossible without slavery? Are you drawing a direct equivalence between Medieval serfdom and chattel slavery? Because my understanding was that by the 13th C (and much earlier in the heart of Christendom) the church had effectively abolished chattel slavery and slave trading. Western European nations at least did not engage in the African slave trade until the 16th C and the colonization of the Americas, so there were several centuries without chattel slavery. And in Britain at least, serfdom virtually disappeared after the Black Death, having already been in decline. I believe the last villein in England died during Charles I’s reign (mid 17th C), but we know that because he was already an extreme oddity by that point. I wasn’t aware that slavery was a central part of High Medieval culture anywhere in Europe, and in Britain at least even serfdom was increasingly rare throughout the 14th and 15th Centuries.
Yes, I do consider serfdom a species of slavery. I’ll have to think about the 14th-15th Centuries, but as you say that was the result of a catastrophic demographic change, and slavery did gradually come back. But I appreciate the question. It calls for some refinement of my point.