In my previous posts on this subject (here and here), I have named the three cardinal virtues of conservatism-- or at least, my sort of conservatism-- as tradition, character and gentleness. I have given some account of the first two terms, which was not too difficult. I find myself rather more challenged by the last.
It seems as though gentleness is a virtue we don't really associate with conservatism. We think of conservatives as judgemental, pessimmistic, intolerant and harsh.
And not without reason; there are many brands of conservatism which are noticeably "nasty". There is social Darwinism, which may not have very many self-confessed adherents these days, but which is surely the tradition of those who see life as a rat-race-- the radical individualists and the readers of Ayn Rand who believe altruism is a vice. (I've never read a book by Ayn Rand and I never intend to.)
There are also-- although their numbers are greatly exaggerated-- racists and extreme nationalist who view blacks, foreigners and other groups as inherently inferior and even less than human. Are these conservatives? They are certainly not liberals or progressives.
But, aside from those exceptions, I really think it makes sense to say that conservatism-- especially traditionalist conservatism-- cherishes gentleness.
In this instalment of the post, even more than the others, I plead guilty to making sweeping generalisations that are highly simplistic and highly disputable. Nevertheless I believe they describe a rough sort of truth.
Why do I say conservatism cherishes gentleness? Because conservatives tend to believe that life is worth living, that there is a benevolent Creator behind the universe. Life is not simply a defiance of a cosmos indifferent to our existence. Even if they are not religious believers themselves, traditionalist conservatives are usually sympathetic to religion. They tend to place a very high value on childhood innocence. They tend to believe in chivalry-- chivalry between men and women, rich and poor, strong and weak. They value reverence. They enjoy art and culture that is sentimental, life-affirming and optimistic rather than bleak, cynical and fatalistic-- It's a Wonderful Life rather than La Haine.
Valuing gentleness, and desiring to protect gentleness, this sort of conservative can become highly critical and censorious of whatever threatens it. They complain about bad language, violence on TV and in movies, the flaunting of sexuality, and aggressive marketing. It seems like they are always moaning, always disapproving-- but only because they yearn for a gentle world.
This type of conservative, while being hospitable towards immigrants, will tend to be hostile towards multiculturalism and "pluralism". This doesn't seem so gentle, I suppose. But this is because they recognise that multiculturalism inevitably comes with tensions, resentments, prejudices and even racism. A society that shares a common language and history (or at least accepts the primacy of one language and history) can afford to be more at ease with itself, more relaxed in telling its own story, in celebrating its festivals-- in other words, gentler.
Conservatives have a less problematic attitude to femininity than progressives and radicals. Amongst those preoccupied with sexual politics, women must prove they can be as hard-hitting, abrasive and tough-minded as any man-- generally the most obnoxious sort of man. They must repudiate the stereotypes of nurturing mother, supportive wife and kindly household angel. The extent to which they succeed is the extent of society's loss, since it is women who play the biggest role in creating a gentle society-- both in their own personalities and in the civilizing influence they have upon men and children.
Conservatives believe in bonds-- bonds of family, community, nation and religion. When these are sundered-- usually by a liberal, individualist mindest-- people find themselves in search of an identity and a role. Teenagers and young people are especially affected by this quest for identity.
Unfortunately, when the time-honoured identities are kicked away, the replacement identities close to hand are usually those of pop culture, career, sports, consumerism and sexual adventure. Since most of these are competitive fields, the quest for identity becomes a battle for status-- the battle to be "cool", or "hot", or to own the most impressive car, or to have the most advanced aristic tastes. We become used to hearing that horrible term "loser" applied to those who are deemed to have failed in the quest.
So traditionalist conservatives-- in my view-- are those conservatives who emphasise gentleness, character and tradition, rather than freedom or authority or individualism or any other set of values.
I know that this is an ideal, and one perhaps that is nowhere instantiated in reality, least of all in my own poor self. But as ideals go, I think it's a pretty good one, and one worth aspiring to. I make no stronger claim than that.
I would like to thank everyone who took the time to read this trio of posts, which I enjoyed writing more than I've enjoyed writing anything else on this blog. Thank you.
Showing posts with label conservatism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label conservatism. Show all posts
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Saturday, July 28, 2012
Why I am a Traditionalist Conservative (2)
In a previous post, I named the three cardinal virtues of my sort of conservatism as tradition, character and gentleness.
The first is obvious enough, I'm sure. Who is actually hostile or indifferent to tradition? Not even liberals and radicals, except those of the most hardboiled variety. Most people feel some call to honour their ancestors, to celebrate and perpetuate their national way of life, to pay homage to the past.
Futhermore, even revolutionaries can rarely resist the backward glance; Spartacus, the Peasant's Revolt, the Paris Commune and so forth.
In my case, the call of tradition is very loud indeed. I cherish all traditions. National traditions, family traditions, local traditions, school traditions, professional traditions, academic traditions...I can't understand why anyone would want to remove the wigs and gowns of judges, or force an old all-male club to accept female members (or vice versa), or abolish the English monarchy. It seems like the purest vandalism to me.
My love of tradition is so ludicrously strong that I once found myself feeling sad that the code for my workplace's staff door had changed. It had been there so long and now it would be forgotten...
I don't value tradition because it is (as Burke claimed, and as may be the case) a better guide than reason-- that is, the sort of reason that seeks to engineer society and redesign social institutions, based upon abstract ideas. I don't value tradition for its practical use, or for its distilled wisdom. I value tradition for its own sake. I like old things because they are old.
But why?
This seems to me to be one of those classic imponderable questions, like asking why people enjoy scary movies, or what makes funny things funny. But (as with those other two imponderables) I have spent some time thinking about it.
One thing we can say about tradition, and that may go some way to answering this question of why we value it, is that it cannot simply be willed into being. No amount of power, no amount of money, and no amount of ingenuity can create a fully-formed tradition. It can only be created over time, often at annual or longer intervals, and by a large amount of people, most of them anonymous and unacquainted with each other. Thus tradition has a strangely equalising effect; Christmas belongs to everybody, and unites people across time.
Another possibility is that tradition reconciles two contradictory desires deeply rooted in the human spirit-- the desire for the new, and the desire for permanence. To take the example of Christmas again-- every Christmas is a new experience, and yet it seems to stand outside time and even to unite us with those who went before, and who also decorated Christmas trees and sang Christmas carols.
But in the end, I am happy for the appeal of tradition to remain a mystery-- because I believe that everything that truly enriches life is mysterious. We can only see to the bottom of shallow things.
Character is the middle term of my conservative "trinity". By character, I do not mean moral fibre, but rather personality, distinctiveness, atmosphere.
We value our national traditions, such as the monarchy in Britain or the Irish language in Ireland, not only because they are old but because they make us special, different, unique.
A conservative-- a conservative like me, that is-- is somebody who wishes for a world full of character, and for all things to preserve their own character. His attitude to men and women is vive le différence, and he is suspicious of anything that might make the sexes more alike. In the same way, he treasures national distinctiveness. He wants England to remain quintessentially English, Russia to remain uniquely Russian. If he goes to America, he will take great pleasure in watching a baseball game, but he will frown if he hears of baseball being played in Ireland or England.
Within the nation, too, he wishes to find distinctive character. He exults in the existence of regional dialects, slang words, customs, attitudes. He wants Liverpool to be Liverpool and London to be London. Even within cities, he is pleased to hear of neighbourhoods with a particular reputation or atmosphere, and he dreads the advent of universal identikit suburbia.
I am not a seasoned traveller by any means, but I have paid several visits to Richmond, Virginia. In that city there are two "hipster" bookshops by the names of Chop Suey and Chop Suey Tuey. The shelves are packed with Jack Kerouac books, radical histories, gay and lesbian tracts, handbooks on New Age spirituality, and so forth. As a conservative, did I disapprove? Not at all. It pleases me very much that there are hipster bookshops out there. The existence of such a sub-culture seems to me to make the world a more interesting place.
A conservative of this sort does not fume and mutter about illiteracy when he sees a mispelling on a handwritten shop sign. He is pleased that the shop sign is handwritten rather than printed, laminated and composed at corporate HQ. He dreads a deadening rationalisation and a bland professionalism.
There is one final, and very important, point to be made about character. Even though it is linked to the idea of diversity, I have not used that word for a very good reason. "Diversity" has been hijacked to mean a kind of cultural and social free-for-all that, instead of increasing the world's diversity, actually diminishes it. Take the example of multiculturalism. It might seem that multiculturalism makes the world a more diverse place, but it does the opposite; instead of particular societies boasting their own distinctiveness, each becomes more like everywhere else; an anywhere rather than a somewhere.
The paradox here is that institutions and places and ways of life that are exclusive, stuffy, narrow and strict often do more to make the world an interesting and diverse place than those that are tolerant, cosmopolitan and open-minded.
This is also one of the reasons why a traditionalist conservative is ambivalent about the free market. He does not see the great blessing in having a Starbucks and a Subway in every town and village. He would prefer a local or family-run café, even if it was by all objective standards inferior to Starbucks or Subway.
"Fair enough", you say. "I give you tradition, which was entirely predictable, and character, which was only a little less so. But gentleness? What has that got to do with conservatism? Aren't conservatives the nasty party, the spoilsports, the perpetual begrudgers and curtain-twitching nosy neighours of the world?"
Well, I'll get to that in the third and final part of this post.
POSTSCRIPT: Some after publishing this post, I came upon this quotation from GK Chesterton's essay "What is Right with the World", which illustrates it nicely:
"In short, this vast, vague idea of unity is the one 'reactionary' thing in the world. It is perhaps the only connection in which that foolish word 'reactionary' can be used with significance and truth. For this blending of men and women, nations and nations, is truly a return to the chaos and unconsciousness that were before the world was made. There is of course, another kind of unity of which I do not speak here; unity in the possession of truth and the perception of the need for these varieties. But the varieties themselves; the reflection of man and woman in each other, as in two distinct mirrors; the wonder of man at nature as a strange thing at once above and below him; the quaint and solitary kingdom of childhood; the local affections and the colour of certain landscapes -- these actually are the things that are the grace and honour of the earth; these are the things that make life worth living and the whole framework of things well worthy to be sustained. And the best thing remains; that this view, whether conscious or not, always has been and still is the view of the living and labouring millions. While a few prigs on platforms are talking about 'oneness'and absorption in 'The All', the folk that dwell in all the valleys of this ancient earth are renewing the varieties for ever. With them a woman is loved for being unmanly, and a man loved for being un-womanly. With them the church and the home are both beautiful, because they are both different; with them fields are personal and flags are sacred; they are the virtue of existence, for they are not mankind but men."
The first is obvious enough, I'm sure. Who is actually hostile or indifferent to tradition? Not even liberals and radicals, except those of the most hardboiled variety. Most people feel some call to honour their ancestors, to celebrate and perpetuate their national way of life, to pay homage to the past.
Futhermore, even revolutionaries can rarely resist the backward glance; Spartacus, the Peasant's Revolt, the Paris Commune and so forth.
In my case, the call of tradition is very loud indeed. I cherish all traditions. National traditions, family traditions, local traditions, school traditions, professional traditions, academic traditions...I can't understand why anyone would want to remove the wigs and gowns of judges, or force an old all-male club to accept female members (or vice versa), or abolish the English monarchy. It seems like the purest vandalism to me.
My love of tradition is so ludicrously strong that I once found myself feeling sad that the code for my workplace's staff door had changed. It had been there so long and now it would be forgotten...
I don't value tradition because it is (as Burke claimed, and as may be the case) a better guide than reason-- that is, the sort of reason that seeks to engineer society and redesign social institutions, based upon abstract ideas. I don't value tradition for its practical use, or for its distilled wisdom. I value tradition for its own sake. I like old things because they are old.
But why?
This seems to me to be one of those classic imponderable questions, like asking why people enjoy scary movies, or what makes funny things funny. But (as with those other two imponderables) I have spent some time thinking about it.
One thing we can say about tradition, and that may go some way to answering this question of why we value it, is that it cannot simply be willed into being. No amount of power, no amount of money, and no amount of ingenuity can create a fully-formed tradition. It can only be created over time, often at annual or longer intervals, and by a large amount of people, most of them anonymous and unacquainted with each other. Thus tradition has a strangely equalising effect; Christmas belongs to everybody, and unites people across time.
Another possibility is that tradition reconciles two contradictory desires deeply rooted in the human spirit-- the desire for the new, and the desire for permanence. To take the example of Christmas again-- every Christmas is a new experience, and yet it seems to stand outside time and even to unite us with those who went before, and who also decorated Christmas trees and sang Christmas carols.
But in the end, I am happy for the appeal of tradition to remain a mystery-- because I believe that everything that truly enriches life is mysterious. We can only see to the bottom of shallow things.
Character is the middle term of my conservative "trinity". By character, I do not mean moral fibre, but rather personality, distinctiveness, atmosphere.
We value our national traditions, such as the monarchy in Britain or the Irish language in Ireland, not only because they are old but because they make us special, different, unique.
A conservative-- a conservative like me, that is-- is somebody who wishes for a world full of character, and for all things to preserve their own character. His attitude to men and women is vive le différence, and he is suspicious of anything that might make the sexes more alike. In the same way, he treasures national distinctiveness. He wants England to remain quintessentially English, Russia to remain uniquely Russian. If he goes to America, he will take great pleasure in watching a baseball game, but he will frown if he hears of baseball being played in Ireland or England.
Within the nation, too, he wishes to find distinctive character. He exults in the existence of regional dialects, slang words, customs, attitudes. He wants Liverpool to be Liverpool and London to be London. Even within cities, he is pleased to hear of neighbourhoods with a particular reputation or atmosphere, and he dreads the advent of universal identikit suburbia.
I am not a seasoned traveller by any means, but I have paid several visits to Richmond, Virginia. In that city there are two "hipster" bookshops by the names of Chop Suey and Chop Suey Tuey. The shelves are packed with Jack Kerouac books, radical histories, gay and lesbian tracts, handbooks on New Age spirituality, and so forth. As a conservative, did I disapprove? Not at all. It pleases me very much that there are hipster bookshops out there. The existence of such a sub-culture seems to me to make the world a more interesting place.
A conservative of this sort does not fume and mutter about illiteracy when he sees a mispelling on a handwritten shop sign. He is pleased that the shop sign is handwritten rather than printed, laminated and composed at corporate HQ. He dreads a deadening rationalisation and a bland professionalism.
There is one final, and very important, point to be made about character. Even though it is linked to the idea of diversity, I have not used that word for a very good reason. "Diversity" has been hijacked to mean a kind of cultural and social free-for-all that, instead of increasing the world's diversity, actually diminishes it. Take the example of multiculturalism. It might seem that multiculturalism makes the world a more diverse place, but it does the opposite; instead of particular societies boasting their own distinctiveness, each becomes more like everywhere else; an anywhere rather than a somewhere.
The paradox here is that institutions and places and ways of life that are exclusive, stuffy, narrow and strict often do more to make the world an interesting and diverse place than those that are tolerant, cosmopolitan and open-minded.
This is also one of the reasons why a traditionalist conservative is ambivalent about the free market. He does not see the great blessing in having a Starbucks and a Subway in every town and village. He would prefer a local or family-run café, even if it was by all objective standards inferior to Starbucks or Subway.
"Fair enough", you say. "I give you tradition, which was entirely predictable, and character, which was only a little less so. But gentleness? What has that got to do with conservatism? Aren't conservatives the nasty party, the spoilsports, the perpetual begrudgers and curtain-twitching nosy neighours of the world?"
Well, I'll get to that in the third and final part of this post.
POSTSCRIPT: Some after publishing this post, I came upon this quotation from GK Chesterton's essay "What is Right with the World", which illustrates it nicely:
"In short, this vast, vague idea of unity is the one 'reactionary' thing in the world. It is perhaps the only connection in which that foolish word 'reactionary' can be used with significance and truth. For this blending of men and women, nations and nations, is truly a return to the chaos and unconsciousness that were before the world was made. There is of course, another kind of unity of which I do not speak here; unity in the possession of truth and the perception of the need for these varieties. But the varieties themselves; the reflection of man and woman in each other, as in two distinct mirrors; the wonder of man at nature as a strange thing at once above and below him; the quaint and solitary kingdom of childhood; the local affections and the colour of certain landscapes -- these actually are the things that are the grace and honour of the earth; these are the things that make life worth living and the whole framework of things well worthy to be sustained. And the best thing remains; that this view, whether conscious or not, always has been and still is the view of the living and labouring millions. While a few prigs on platforms are talking about 'oneness'and absorption in 'The All', the folk that dwell in all the valleys of this ancient earth are renewing the varieties for ever. With them a woman is loved for being unmanly, and a man loved for being un-womanly. With them the church and the home are both beautiful, because they are both different; with them fields are personal and flags are sacred; they are the virtue of existence, for they are not mankind but men."
Friday, July 27, 2012
What Will Happen to the Non-Libertarian Right?
Recently I wrote the first part of a three-part post called Why I am a Conservative, which I thoroughly enjoyed writing even if nobody else is especially interested. Using the title made me curious as to what other articles and posts appeared on an internet search if I entered in those words.
I found the results depressing. In virtually all cases, with one or two welcome exceptions, "conservative" meant free market, libertarian, anti-government, and sometimes a US foreign policy "hawk". The concentration was virtually always upon economic matters, sometimes to the exclusion of any others.
Some of the articles were by former leftists who had kept their anti-establishment, anti-traditional, lifestyle libertarian views intact but had come to the view-- naturally, I think-- that anti-statism and free market economics fit these better than their hitherto socialistic opinions.
Yesterday, while browsing the magazine rack in Eason's, I came across a magazine called Total Politics whose cover story was an interview with Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Conservative backbencher who is often hailed as an "old-fashioned" Tory. He looks the part and he sounds the part, with his upper-class accent, air of refinement, and cultural allusions. But a quick skim through the article showed he had little to say about the preservation of Englishness, the bolstering of family life, the importance of community, religion, or any classically High Tory subjects. It was pretty much all to do with money.
And that's your conservative today. I have had one protracted debate with a correspondent who insists he is a solid Catholic but who also insists that "greed is good" and that Rerum Novarum was "a rush of blood to the head". (One of these "Why I am Conservative" essays was written by a Christian who described his priorities as "God, my family, and my country, in that order" but who also said, "I don’t resent wealthy people. To the contrary, I want to become one of them one day.")
Some residual elements of traditional conservatism might survive alongside this passion for the free market and radical individualism-- most of these essays mentioned an opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage, as well as a commitment to patriotism.
But can these hangovers long survive when individual choice has become an idol? My guess is that social and cultural conservatism will become more and more irrelevant as the political landscape is increasingly dominated by the liberal left on one side and the libertarian right on the other.
I found the results depressing. In virtually all cases, with one or two welcome exceptions, "conservative" meant free market, libertarian, anti-government, and sometimes a US foreign policy "hawk". The concentration was virtually always upon economic matters, sometimes to the exclusion of any others.
Some of the articles were by former leftists who had kept their anti-establishment, anti-traditional, lifestyle libertarian views intact but had come to the view-- naturally, I think-- that anti-statism and free market economics fit these better than their hitherto socialistic opinions.
Yesterday, while browsing the magazine rack in Eason's, I came across a magazine called Total Politics whose cover story was an interview with Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Conservative backbencher who is often hailed as an "old-fashioned" Tory. He looks the part and he sounds the part, with his upper-class accent, air of refinement, and cultural allusions. But a quick skim through the article showed he had little to say about the preservation of Englishness, the bolstering of family life, the importance of community, religion, or any classically High Tory subjects. It was pretty much all to do with money.
And that's your conservative today. I have had one protracted debate with a correspondent who insists he is a solid Catholic but who also insists that "greed is good" and that Rerum Novarum was "a rush of blood to the head". (One of these "Why I am Conservative" essays was written by a Christian who described his priorities as "God, my family, and my country, in that order" but who also said, "I don’t resent wealthy people. To the contrary, I want to become one of them one day.")
Some residual elements of traditional conservatism might survive alongside this passion for the free market and radical individualism-- most of these essays mentioned an opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage, as well as a commitment to patriotism.
But can these hangovers long survive when individual choice has become an idol? My guess is that social and cultural conservatism will become more and more irrelevant as the political landscape is increasingly dominated by the liberal left on one side and the libertarian right on the other.
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Why I am a Traditionalist Conservative (1)
There is a particularly funny moment in one classic episode of The Simpsons called "Homer the Heretic". Homer looks through his LP collection and comes across an album with the title "These Things I Believe", whose cover picture shows the artist sitting on the lap of the famous Lincoln statue, dressed in stars and stripes clothing. We hear this LP described as "a spoken word album of right-wing political views."
Not only do I find that hilarious, but I would love to hear this fictional album. I love to read books and articles whose titles begin with the words "Why I Am", whether it be Why I am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell or Why I am not a Pacist by C.S. Lewis. I guess I am just as interested in the personal and emotional reasons as I am in the more intellectual ones; I want to know what makes this person an anarchist, or a communist, or a nihilist, what that feels like, and how it relates to their attitudes to everything else-- right down to mundane matters like housework or etiquette.
As you've guessed, I am presenting my excuse for writing a post that I really want to write, and that is going to be unashamedly personal. I am not putting forward an argument for conservatism so much as trying to put down on (metaphorical) paper the reasons I am conservative and what that means to me. This is not because I egotistically believe that my opinions have any special significance. It is because I want to write it and because I enjoy reading such musings by others.
First off, I am a Catholic conservative, and the accent is very much on the "Catholic." If any of my conservative beliefs or opinions are shown to clash with Catholic orthodoxy, I will drop them like a dumb-bell.
Another point I should make, regarding my Catholic beliefs, is that conservatism (just like liberalism and most other life-philosophies) often appears to me as an embarrassingly this-worldly attitude. What should I care about cultural nationalism, or TV in pubs, or the survival of corner shops? Heaven and Earth will one day be rolled up like a scroll, and only immortal souls will count on that day.
There are two possible responses to this. One is to quote the film Gladiator and say "What we do in time echoes in eternity." That is true, of course. We are on a spiritual battlefield and it seems obvious that the terrain and conditions should play a part in that battle.
But that would be a rather insincere answer. The truth is that my conservatism really is this-worldly, to a great extent. There is a game played in Ireland, mainly in counties Cork and Armagh, called Irish road bowling. It has been played for several centuries. The survival of this game delights me, as does its regional nature, and its disappearance would depress me. But I can't see its relevance to the salvation of anybody's soul. So my response to the accusation that my conservatism is rather this-worldly is to admit that it is, and to hope that doesn't make me a bad Catholic.
What then, is conservatism as I mean it?
For one thing, it has little or nothing to do with the free market. I couldn't really give a fig about the free market. I'm not even sure the free market exists. Laws such as limited liability and intellectual copyright seem like "government regulation" to me, every bit as much as minimum wage laws. I don't see how any market can even exist without extensive government regulation. Big business seems just as scary and bureaucratic as big government. But I don't understand economics and I rather suspect that nobody understands economics, not even economists. If they did understand their subject, wouldn't they be better able to predict recessions?
My conservatism, then, is not economic, but cultural and social.
To many conservatives, "freedom" is the defining value of conservatism. Not to me. Of course freedom is necessary and precious-- you might even say sacred. But prudence is necessary, too, and nobody uses "Prudence!" as a slogan. Engineering and sanitation and abstraction are all necessary, but nobody's pulses are set racing by the very idea of abstraction.
Freedom is precious. But does that mean that, the more freedom we have, the better? Like many conservatives, I don't believe in the freedom to kill yourself, or to help somebody else kill himself. I don't believe in the freedom to shoot yourself up with recreational drugs. Nor do I only approve of the constraint of freedom in dramatic instances like these. I have to admit that I am vastly pleased whenever I hear of some petty local restriction that causes people to grumble and go a little out of their way, like the chewing gum ban in Singapore or the ban on alcohol sales on Good Friday in Ireland.
Once I was reading a Beano annual (for those of you who don't know, the Beano is a British comic for children). In one particular story, a scheming child who craved green jelly babies (jelly beans shaped as babies) put up a sign that read "Green Free Zone", and confiscated anything green that passers-by might have been carrying-- all in the quest for green jelly babies. I liked the idea of a "Green Free Zone" very much. I like these local restrictions because they create local character and interesting situations. A horror of sameness and rationalisation is a big part of my conservatism-- and insofar as petty regulations create interesting variations, I relish them.
To that extent, I even think that societies and settings in which freedoms are limited are often more pleasing to my conservative imagination. Boarding schools, small towns, religious orders, strict families, tradition-heavy universities, fraternal orders-- all of these seem more likely to breed the traditions, slang, folklore, nicknames, rivalries and shared memories that I prize, that I think make the world a richer and more interesting place.
So if freedom is not the catch-cry of my conservatism, what is?
I can't pick just one. I can't isolate one defining value that best describes my conservative outlook. There are actually three that seem essential to me; and they are tradition, character and gentleness.
I will describe these three cardinal conservative virtues in the next instalment of this over-indulgent post.
Not only do I find that hilarious, but I would love to hear this fictional album. I love to read books and articles whose titles begin with the words "Why I Am", whether it be Why I am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell or Why I am not a Pacist by C.S. Lewis. I guess I am just as interested in the personal and emotional reasons as I am in the more intellectual ones; I want to know what makes this person an anarchist, or a communist, or a nihilist, what that feels like, and how it relates to their attitudes to everything else-- right down to mundane matters like housework or etiquette.
As you've guessed, I am presenting my excuse for writing a post that I really want to write, and that is going to be unashamedly personal. I am not putting forward an argument for conservatism so much as trying to put down on (metaphorical) paper the reasons I am conservative and what that means to me. This is not because I egotistically believe that my opinions have any special significance. It is because I want to write it and because I enjoy reading such musings by others.
First off, I am a Catholic conservative, and the accent is very much on the "Catholic." If any of my conservative beliefs or opinions are shown to clash with Catholic orthodoxy, I will drop them like a dumb-bell.
Another point I should make, regarding my Catholic beliefs, is that conservatism (just like liberalism and most other life-philosophies) often appears to me as an embarrassingly this-worldly attitude. What should I care about cultural nationalism, or TV in pubs, or the survival of corner shops? Heaven and Earth will one day be rolled up like a scroll, and only immortal souls will count on that day.
There are two possible responses to this. One is to quote the film Gladiator and say "What we do in time echoes in eternity." That is true, of course. We are on a spiritual battlefield and it seems obvious that the terrain and conditions should play a part in that battle.
But that would be a rather insincere answer. The truth is that my conservatism really is this-worldly, to a great extent. There is a game played in Ireland, mainly in counties Cork and Armagh, called Irish road bowling. It has been played for several centuries. The survival of this game delights me, as does its regional nature, and its disappearance would depress me. But I can't see its relevance to the salvation of anybody's soul. So my response to the accusation that my conservatism is rather this-worldly is to admit that it is, and to hope that doesn't make me a bad Catholic.
What then, is conservatism as I mean it?
For one thing, it has little or nothing to do with the free market. I couldn't really give a fig about the free market. I'm not even sure the free market exists. Laws such as limited liability and intellectual copyright seem like "government regulation" to me, every bit as much as minimum wage laws. I don't see how any market can even exist without extensive government regulation. Big business seems just as scary and bureaucratic as big government. But I don't understand economics and I rather suspect that nobody understands economics, not even economists. If they did understand their subject, wouldn't they be better able to predict recessions?
My conservatism, then, is not economic, but cultural and social.
To many conservatives, "freedom" is the defining value of conservatism. Not to me. Of course freedom is necessary and precious-- you might even say sacred. But prudence is necessary, too, and nobody uses "Prudence!" as a slogan. Engineering and sanitation and abstraction are all necessary, but nobody's pulses are set racing by the very idea of abstraction.
Freedom is precious. But does that mean that, the more freedom we have, the better? Like many conservatives, I don't believe in the freedom to kill yourself, or to help somebody else kill himself. I don't believe in the freedom to shoot yourself up with recreational drugs. Nor do I only approve of the constraint of freedom in dramatic instances like these. I have to admit that I am vastly pleased whenever I hear of some petty local restriction that causes people to grumble and go a little out of their way, like the chewing gum ban in Singapore or the ban on alcohol sales on Good Friday in Ireland.
Once I was reading a Beano annual (for those of you who don't know, the Beano is a British comic for children). In one particular story, a scheming child who craved green jelly babies (jelly beans shaped as babies) put up a sign that read "Green Free Zone", and confiscated anything green that passers-by might have been carrying-- all in the quest for green jelly babies. I liked the idea of a "Green Free Zone" very much. I like these local restrictions because they create local character and interesting situations. A horror of sameness and rationalisation is a big part of my conservatism-- and insofar as petty regulations create interesting variations, I relish them.
To that extent, I even think that societies and settings in which freedoms are limited are often more pleasing to my conservative imagination. Boarding schools, small towns, religious orders, strict families, tradition-heavy universities, fraternal orders-- all of these seem more likely to breed the traditions, slang, folklore, nicknames, rivalries and shared memories that I prize, that I think make the world a richer and more interesting place.
So if freedom is not the catch-cry of my conservatism, what is?
I can't pick just one. I can't isolate one defining value that best describes my conservative outlook. There are actually three that seem essential to me; and they are tradition, character and gentleness.
I will describe these three cardinal conservative virtues in the next instalment of this over-indulgent post.
Thursday, May 31, 2012
I Fear the Geeks Even When They Bring Gifts...
There has been a fair amount of stir recently, in Catholic and conservative publications, about a new book called The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. The latest issue of First Things magazine opens with a piece on it. With evident satisfaction, R.R. Reno writes:
"It wasn't a conclusion he thought he'd come to. When he was a young graduate student, Jonathan Haidt presumed that "liberal" was pretty much a synonym for "reasonable", if not for "obvious". Now as he writes in The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, he has found that liberalls have limited moral vision. One that is, I'd say, therefore certainly less reasonable than conservatism's, and for the vast majority of people in the world far from obvious."
He goes on to describe Haidt's claims; that "our moral outlooks are largely intuitive rather than reasoned" (fairly obvious, I'd say), and that "people tend to be liberal or conservative because they have different emotional responses to the same social realities" (again, fairly obvious, though some people like to insist they have arrived at their views purely through a process of reason. I don't really believe anyone who makes this claim).
The meat of Haidt's sandwich is the claim that conservatives have more "receptors" for moral intutions than liberals do. Liberals only have "receptors" for "care, freedom and fairness" while conservatives also take "loyalty, authority and sanctity" into consideration.
It's true that, when arguing with a liberal or a progressive, I often feel scandalised that they don't even seem to perceive things that I do-- for instance, they don't seem to care about national identity, or the difference between the sexes, or a sense of rootedness.
But deriving some sort of pseudo-scientific theory from this fact is, I think, a leap too far. I am sure the liberal thinks I am sottishly insensible to concerns or hopes or aspirations that he cherishes. I do believe I inhabit a wider and freer mental world than he does, but I don't think there's anything obviously true about my claim. I think he could claim the same thing.
It is unwise of conservatives or religious people to take books like The Righteous Mind to their hearts. Believing in the freedom and dignity of the human soul as I do, I am not much interested in a social scientist's attempt to anatomise our minds, whether it is Haidt in this book or Theodor Adorno in The Authoritarian Personality, a famous and influential attempt to pathologize right-wingers.
It's true that I haven't read Haidt's book, only reviews of it (most of them short), and perhaps I am being unfair to it. But I am much more interested in arguments and philosophies themselves, rather than theories about why people hold those philosophies or make those arguments.
"It wasn't a conclusion he thought he'd come to. When he was a young graduate student, Jonathan Haidt presumed that "liberal" was pretty much a synonym for "reasonable", if not for "obvious". Now as he writes in The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, he has found that liberalls have limited moral vision. One that is, I'd say, therefore certainly less reasonable than conservatism's, and for the vast majority of people in the world far from obvious."
He goes on to describe Haidt's claims; that "our moral outlooks are largely intuitive rather than reasoned" (fairly obvious, I'd say), and that "people tend to be liberal or conservative because they have different emotional responses to the same social realities" (again, fairly obvious, though some people like to insist they have arrived at their views purely through a process of reason. I don't really believe anyone who makes this claim).
The meat of Haidt's sandwich is the claim that conservatives have more "receptors" for moral intutions than liberals do. Liberals only have "receptors" for "care, freedom and fairness" while conservatives also take "loyalty, authority and sanctity" into consideration.
It's true that, when arguing with a liberal or a progressive, I often feel scandalised that they don't even seem to perceive things that I do-- for instance, they don't seem to care about national identity, or the difference between the sexes, or a sense of rootedness.
But deriving some sort of pseudo-scientific theory from this fact is, I think, a leap too far. I am sure the liberal thinks I am sottishly insensible to concerns or hopes or aspirations that he cherishes. I do believe I inhabit a wider and freer mental world than he does, but I don't think there's anything obviously true about my claim. I think he could claim the same thing.
It is unwise of conservatives or religious people to take books like The Righteous Mind to their hearts. Believing in the freedom and dignity of the human soul as I do, I am not much interested in a social scientist's attempt to anatomise our minds, whether it is Haidt in this book or Theodor Adorno in The Authoritarian Personality, a famous and influential attempt to pathologize right-wingers.
It's true that I haven't read Haidt's book, only reviews of it (most of them short), and perhaps I am being unfair to it. But I am much more interested in arguments and philosophies themselves, rather than theories about why people hold those philosophies or make those arguments.
Friday, May 25, 2012
Why I am a Traditionalist Conservative
I'm tired of invoking Edmund Burke
And tired of the shuttlecock of debate.
I really don't care if the new ways work,
I'll always root for the out-of-date.
I'll always root for the long-in-the-tooth
Though the new be better a thousandfold.
No more shall I hide the terrible truth;
I like old things because they are old.
I like old things because they are slower
And cruder and leave us a chance to laugh.
Give me a scythe, not a new lawn-mower;
A daguerreotype, not a photograph.
I like old ways because they wander
I like them because they don't make sense.
I can't add seven and six, but I'm fonder
Of shillings and farthings than pounds and pence.
I like old things because the dust
Of custom and habit have fallen on them.
I like them because they've been blessed and cussed
And joked about since the time of Shem.
I'm all for cooked-up and fake traditions;
There's not a quaint fiction I won't uphold.
Let Christmas be laden with new additions;
I like new things that pretend to be old.
I thirst for cobwebs and rust and dog-ears
By ivy and lichen I take my stand.
I am not pleased when nostalgia's fog clears
And leaves us standing in no-man's-land.
I like a verse more the more it's recited;
I like a tale more the more it's told.
So call me backwards, blockish, benighted;
I like old things because they are old.
You tell me my sort have been moaning and mourning
Since someone rubbed sticks and discovered fire;
That mankind lives in an endless dawning
From tin to typeface to telephone wire.
You say that the past is doomed, you sages,
And tramp on its deathbed to prove you're bold;
By God, I don't think you so very courageous;
I like old things because they are old.
And tired of the shuttlecock of debate.
I really don't care if the new ways work,
I'll always root for the out-of-date.
I'll always root for the long-in-the-tooth
Though the new be better a thousandfold.
No more shall I hide the terrible truth;
I like old things because they are old.
I like old things because they are slower
And cruder and leave us a chance to laugh.
Give me a scythe, not a new lawn-mower;
A daguerreotype, not a photograph.
I like old ways because they wander
I like them because they don't make sense.
I can't add seven and six, but I'm fonder
Of shillings and farthings than pounds and pence.
I like old things because the dust
Of custom and habit have fallen on them.
I like them because they've been blessed and cussed
And joked about since the time of Shem.
I'm all for cooked-up and fake traditions;
There's not a quaint fiction I won't uphold.
Let Christmas be laden with new additions;
I like new things that pretend to be old.
I thirst for cobwebs and rust and dog-ears
By ivy and lichen I take my stand.
I am not pleased when nostalgia's fog clears
And leaves us standing in no-man's-land.
I like a verse more the more it's recited;
I like a tale more the more it's told.
So call me backwards, blockish, benighted;
I like old things because they are old.
You tell me my sort have been moaning and mourning
Since someone rubbed sticks and discovered fire;
That mankind lives in an endless dawning
From tin to typeface to telephone wire.
You say that the past is doomed, you sages,
And tramp on its deathbed to prove you're bold;
By God, I don't think you so very courageous;
I like old things because they are old.
Monday, May 7, 2012
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Left wing? Right wing? Barbecue wings?
Sometimes I think I am going to stop calling myself conservative, since "conservative", "liberal", "left-wing" and "right-wing" don't really seem to have any substantive meaning.
There is a short news item in this week's Catholic Herald (the UK publication) with the headline "Think Tank: Religious are more Left-wing."
The think tank in question is called Demos, and their recent report Faithful Citizens found that "55 per cent of religious believers placed themselves on the Left of politics, compared with 40 per cent who put themselves on the Right." That's fair enough, but this is the bit that got me: "They also found that religious people were more likely to value equality over freedom."
What does that even mean? What sort of freedom? What sort of equality?
Personally, I believe in the freedom that comes from peace and security, social stability, strong communities and families, a respect for eccentricity, and a modicum of wealth and leisure. I don't believe in the "freedom" that means radical individualism, rampant consumerism, transgression as self-expression, and relentless peer pressure.
I believe in equality to the extent that I believe in a spirit of fraternity, a social awareness that a man is more than his job or class or status, a chivalry between men and women and high and low. I don't believe in the egalitarianism that obsesses about symbolic differences, looks under every bush for evidence of discrimination, and aspires towards a bland sameness.
So where does that leave me? And why is the crucial opposition posited as being between freedom and equality, anyway?
If I were to choose a single word to define my own conservatism, it would be "tradition", not "freedom". I doubt any ideal has been as abused in recent generations, by both left and right, as the ideal of freedom.
There is a short news item in this week's Catholic Herald (the UK publication) with the headline "Think Tank: Religious are more Left-wing."
The think tank in question is called Demos, and their recent report Faithful Citizens found that "55 per cent of religious believers placed themselves on the Left of politics, compared with 40 per cent who put themselves on the Right." That's fair enough, but this is the bit that got me: "They also found that religious people were more likely to value equality over freedom."
What does that even mean? What sort of freedom? What sort of equality?
Personally, I believe in the freedom that comes from peace and security, social stability, strong communities and families, a respect for eccentricity, and a modicum of wealth and leisure. I don't believe in the "freedom" that means radical individualism, rampant consumerism, transgression as self-expression, and relentless peer pressure.
I believe in equality to the extent that I believe in a spirit of fraternity, a social awareness that a man is more than his job or class or status, a chivalry between men and women and high and low. I don't believe in the egalitarianism that obsesses about symbolic differences, looks under every bush for evidence of discrimination, and aspires towards a bland sameness.
So where does that leave me? And why is the crucial opposition posited as being between freedom and equality, anyway?
If I were to choose a single word to define my own conservatism, it would be "tradition", not "freedom". I doubt any ideal has been as abused in recent generations, by both left and right, as the ideal of freedom.
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