Mar
10
The Three Ways Of Politics
Filed Under Conservatism, General Politics | 15 Comments
Here is a Vanity Fair piece on David Cameron. To be honest, I neither care about the views of Vanity Fair, or in any great way David Cameron. But there was a sentence I found interesting:
There are, in both countries, three political directions, a toxic right, a statist left, and a third way—the trickiest approach—which involves complicated role-playing, ideological legerdemain, and marketing acumen.
I’m not sure I really buy this analysis but it does have elements of truth. But how about a fourth way. A principled yet pragmatic, positive and hopeful right. A right that doesn’t see the value in underwriting the ruinous liberal behemoths of massive entitlement programs as Cameron does with the NHS, but also a right that recognises the anomic dangers of an anti-statist slash and burn program. A right that celebrates the positive benefits of “we” conservatism represented by our allegiances to family, faith and nation. A right that brings values to the head of debate, recognising that the modern erosion of values is ruining society. But also a right with a vision for a more positive future that celebrates the dynamic nature of society.
Conservatism is about inclusion, integrity, the recognition that a rights based culture is a construct, a belief in responsibility, both personal and shared, and a commitment to self-improvement. It recognises that hate is ugly, but that universal love is unrealistic and that we are as equally defined by our flaws as we our by our strengths.
I’m proud to consider myself a conservative, I’m just not necessarily proud of some of the current forms of the philosophy.
Sep
28
Conservative Intellectualism
Filed Under American Politics, Conservatism | 2 Comments
No, not an oxy-moron.
As I’ve said before, I’m interested in the narrative of American conservative history, and one of the key features of that history, is the intellectual search for the meaning of conservatism. The likes of William Buckley, Whittaker Chambers, Russel Kirk, Irving Kristol and Milton Friedman along with many others attempted to develop an understanding of conservatism that often defied a traditional Burkean conception. The many threaded and often divergent philosophies eventually coalesced into a pragmatic if sometimes fractious fusion that forms what is generally considered conservatism today.
What worries me, is that this intellectual tradition has dried up. Conservatism is now being defined by how to put policies into place at the expense of continuing to explore what it means. And whilst I’m a strong believer in conservative populism, that still requires a living guiding philosophy, not just a dead canon of thought.
And so this piece by Charles Murray, lamenting the passing of three of conservatism’s intellectual greats struck a chord with me:
I have been brooding about the cumulative void. First we lost Milton Friedman, who died in November 2006, then William F. Buckley, Jr., in February 2008, and then on September 18, Irving Kristol. The respective giants of the libertarian, conservative, and neoconservative Right, all gone within three years.
…
The comparisons with the voices of the Right today are unavoidable (The Left’s no better, but they’re not for me to worry about). There are many exceptions in print and some on radio and television. But who got on the cover of Time magazine the same week as Irving died? Glenn Beck, sticking his tongue out. He and others like him comprise far too much of the public face of the Right today—crudely sarcastic when they are not being angry, mean-spirited, and often embarrassingly ignorant. The antithesis of Friedman, Buckley, and Kristol.
I expect to be told that I’m too squeamish. We’re in a battle for America’s soul at a pivotal moment. But the very truth of that statement—we are indeed in a battle for America’s soul—makes it a good idea to stop and think about when the American Right was truly influential. It didn’t start after right-wing talk shows got big. It started in the 1960s, as Friedman, Buckley, and Kristol were hitting their stride. It flowered in the 1970s, then reached its apogee in the 1980s when their ideas were given political force by Ronald Reagan—another man of civility, good humor, and optimism. Don’t tell me that we have to put up with the Glenn Becks of the world to be successful. Within living memory, the Right was successful.
Whilst I agree with Murray on the timeline of conservative success, I do disagree with him on one point. Conservatism does need the shock and awe value of the rabble rousers; intellectuals aren’t likely to be rousing any rabbles, but it needs to be tempered by an understanding of the nature of conservatism. Resentment at progressive change, blanket obedience to pre-determined dogma and cliched observance of ritualistic America does not cut it. We need to be sold on why conservatism is the right path, and for that, we need a conservative intellectual renaissance that can be filtered through the pundits and politicians to the people.
Sep
28
Defining Liberalism And Conservatism
Filed Under American Politics, Conservatism, Liberalism | 57 Comments
Whilst holding my nose and trying not too breath, I was reading the Balloon Juice site (far too many noxious gasses there) when I came upon a post trying to define conservatism and liberalism. Now intelligence and Balloon Juice are strange bedfellows so very little was achieved, so I figured we might do better.
Some noteworthy quotations from people that matter:
Conservatism
Abraham Lincoln:
“What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried”
Dennis Prager:
“Liberals tend to put the onus of your success on society and conservatives on you and your family.”
And one of my favourite definitions of conservative from Michael Oakshott:
“To be conservative…..is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss.”
Liberalism*
Hubert H Humphrey:
“Liberalism, above all, means emancipation — emancipation from one’s fears, his inadequacies, from prejudice, from discrimination… from poverty.”
Friedrich Von Hayek:
What the liberal must ask, first of all, is not how fast or how far we should move, but where we should move.
My own limited definition, is that liberalism is the kick up the backside that conservatism needs, whilst conservatism is the brake on liberal excess.
Now it’s your turn.
* I had trouble finding some good liberal quotes that weren’t critical or back-slappingly self-congratulatory. That’s probably because “liberalism” is too broad a subject to be defined easily. Both Republicans and democrats can lay claim to being liberal, either in it’s modern or classical sense. It might be easier to define progressivism or left-liberalism.
Sep
7
William Buckley editorialising about the John Birch Society:
It was precisely my desire to strengthen the ranks of conservatism that led me to publish the editoria. Our movement has got to govern. It has got to expand by bringing into our ranks those people who are, at the moment, on our immediate Left – the moderate, wishy-washy conservatives; the Nixonites… I am talking… about 20 to 30 million people… If they are being asked to join a movement whose leadership believes the drivel of [the Birch Society leadership], they will pass by crackpot alley, and will not pause until they feel the warm embrace of those way over on the other side, the Liberals.”
I have a real problem with conservatives dismissing RINO’s and moderates. What is the point in being a conservative if you are not able to enact a conservative agenda? And to do that requires political power, and political power requires more votes than the fundamentalist conservatives can put together.
Will this mean watering down a conservative agenda? Possibly, but not restrictively so. What it means is finding a consensual conservatism that appeals to conservatives of different hues (and yes, RINO’s can be conservative too). Conservatism is not the didactic and doctrinal philosophy of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, it is in it’s original form, a moderate and respectful political philosophy. One that acknowledges peoples differences, but puts its emphasis on the things that unite us, like church, nation and community). It’s a philosophy that understands the need for change, but one within the framework of our past experiences. At it’s very core, is the knowledge that we are all fallible, so how can we be absolutely certain of a single truth?
If Ronald Reagan were to witness some of the antics of some on the right today, he would be turning in his grave.
And to that end, I thoroughly support Jon Henke’s campaign at The Next Right to get conservatives and the Republican Party to distance themselves from the ‘birthers’ at World Net Daily.
And to their credit, that’s exactly what CPAC, the largest conservative PAC in America have done:
Let’s start with good news: WorldNetDaily will not be at CPAC next year. I exchanged emails with the CPAC organizer earlier today and she told me this:
[WorldNetDaily founder Joseph] Farah asked if he could speak on the issue (birther movement), but that isn’t something we’re interested in.
Let’s hope more important conservatives do the same. Over to you Rush.
And before anyone calls me “moderate cabbie” again, they had better have done some reading on the grandfather of conservatism, Edmund Burke 
Update:
You really should read this brilliant essay by Patrick Ruffini, also at The New Majority. He’s talking a lot of sense, although I disagree with his conclusion about conservative elites. Having said that, there is certainly a need for the rediscovery of conservative intellectualism. conservatives seem to have lost sight of their first principles. The best quote from the piece:
The automatic problem that arises when someone who is not a William F. Buckley (and none of us here pretend to be) is that you’re instantly tagged a RINO for calling out something that is objectively and demonstrably false. The space between fact and fiction is confused as a litmus test between right and left. But what if the WNDers are not the true conservatives in this argument? What if the actual test of conservatism was not how fervently you oppose Obama, or where you went to school, or where you pray, but how firmly your conservatism is rooted in First Principles and not personalities or conspiracy?
Aug
31
Managing Change, Not Resisting It.
Filed Under Conservatism | 31 Comments
I was listening to an interview today on the radio. It was with a lesbian solicitor who was working to help gay couples become parents either through sperm donation, adoption or surrogacy. I’ve stated previously my view that conservatives should welcome gay marriage because it represents good conservative values like responsibility and duty. But I was interested by my reaction to gay parenthood. To be honest, I recoiled from the thought of it. This less to do with an anti-gay prejudice and more to do with the belief that children brought up in a mixed sex family unit have better outcomes.
But those mixed sex family unit statistics are used to compare childhood outcomes with children from single parent families. I’m sure there are statistics on gay parenting, but I would think that they are fairly meaningless owing to small sample sizes.
I found that as I thought about the issue, I found myself becoming less and less opposed to the idea of gay parents having children. The conservative in me says that the traditional view of families, that they are the preserve of one man and woman committing for life is the ideal. But we do not live in an ideal world, we live in a world where being gay is a fact, is not a lifestyle choice (usually), and acknowledging those factors, is a world in which being gay is no longer something to be ashamed of thankfully.
So in my linear way of thinking, I moved from opposing gay parenting to realising that being gay is a reality that conservatives have to accept to then thinking that if those were true, shouldn’t conservatives, as with gay marriage, realise that children raised in a loving gay family are much more likely to be well brought up functional children than those raised in single parent families (note that I am not criticising single parents necessarily, there will be a significant number of great ones, but the statistics probably don’t lie on this issue). But we’re not about to prohibit single parents from having children, so how can we do the same to gay couples?
And all this led to me thinking about how conservatism should handle issues such as these. One problem I see for conservatism is that resisting change is a lose-lose scenario. The fact is, in the last thirty or forty years, the world has changed almost beyond recognition. If conservatism resistance was being demonstrated, it has failed badly. But by always being the voice of resistance, conservatism has failed in another way too. It has lost control of society. However, if instead of resisting change, conservatism had accepted the inevitability of it, it would have been in a much better position to manage change with conservative values in mind. By welcoming gay families, conservatives can more easily make the argument, in the face of liberal opposition, that marriage and families have a moral and functional component. And a similar approach to change can be applied to American Health Care reform, immigration and environmental issues.
Conservatives should be expending their energies on making sure that inevitable change should be the right kind of change rather than on a quixotic resistance to inevitability.
Aug
2
The Stratification Of Society
Filed Under American Politics, Conservatism, Liberalism | 15 Comments
In a comment by Hayward, a reply to my recommendation of the book “The Conservative Intellectual Movement Since 1945″, he posted a review of the book which included this little gem:
Conservativism is about the entrenchment of power and the stratification of society. At all levels from race, to wealth to gender, each will know his place.
It put me in mid of a post I’d recently read at HotAir which spoke to the very issue of stratification within society, but at the hands of Obama and his liberals. Any stratitification resulting from conservatism is a functional outcome derived from the nature of society, not something that happens by design. Conservatives do not legislate the promotion of stratification, in fact, often the opposite is true. Consider Margaret Thatcher’s decision to allow residents to buy their own social housing, in both the U.K. and the U.S., it is the right that propose allowing parents to choose the school of their choice through voucher programs, a measure the left strongly oppose. The HotAir article I referred to earlier makes it very clear just how Obama and his Congressional buddies are dividing up the country into the “haves” and the “should be kept in their places”:
On Healthcare:
* The Peasant Plan: The Obama Administration is trying, inexorably, to force “the American street” into a “public” (read: socialized) healthcare system.
* The “Haves” Plan: Congress and their union benefactors are making sure it (and its benefactors) are exempt from Obamacare. Expect the rest of the elites to follow suit.
Education:
* The Peasant Plan: The Obama Administration wasted no time in cutting DC’s wildly-successful school voucher plan. And Obama’s Democrat allies around the nation are busy trying to roll back charter schools, open enrollment laws, voucher plans and school choice in general, in particular in the communities that need them most, the inner cities and the various Indian reservations; while these plans are often wildly successful, they sap jobs from the teachers’ union – and that’s much more important than educating the children. To be fair, it is a jobs stimulus plan – for public school teachers. Not to mention all the people who’ll have to deal with the failure of our public school system. And India and China.
* The “Haves” Plan: Being “Haves”, they send their kids to private schools (or, for the lesser “haves”, to public schools in areas with fewer of the social problems caused by three generations of using the inner city as a warehouse for other “have nots”.
Food and drink:
# The Peasant Plan: McDonald’s – the fine dining of choice for middle-class Americans who judge restaurants by whether there’s a playland for the kids to run around in – stands to get taxed back to the stone age.
# The “Haves” Plan: No special taxes for the high-end restaurants, like the ones in DC where those who pull the levers of government dine.* The Peasant Plan: Soda pop – the cheap opiate caffeinate of the masses – is in line for punitive taxes to “pay for obesity”.
* The “Haves” Plan: Starbucks – home of the fat-bomb froux-froux coffee beverages that fuel the Administration’s kids’ all-night policy-mongering sessions – goes forth blissfully untaxed. Live and latte live, I guess.
Transport and energy:
* The Peasant Plan: “Clunkers” – affordable used cars – are actively harassed off the road via “Cap and Trade” energy taxes, implemented to attempt to force people off the roads and into cramped, perpetually-late or broken-down public transit systems.
* The “Haves” Plan: Hybrid vehicles – which are presently hideously expensive to buy, and moreso to maintain, and are thus the province of the well-off – are subsidized.
The left have given us social housing, public healthcare, equalised education (which reduces standards) and a welfare state that denies ambition and motivation. All this is done under the self-serving pretext of “caring”. In truth it is about absolving oneself of one’s own guilt at being rich and ensuring that poor place are kept in their place (ie not near the rich people).
I would just like to finish by quoting shockwaver in full who makes this point so much more eloquently:
your implication in the use of “entrenchment” is exactly backward from modern day conservatism. stratification is the result, not the goal. And it’s not a static stratification either, at least up to the 95-percentile, but more akin to a geologic one except the scale of time is years, not eons, with the whole system constantly churning.
the U.S. is known for its remarkable vertical social and economic mobility. my sphere is filled with success stories of those with humble origins in numbers not found in any of the socialist countries that i have visited. these stories are not restricted to the field of science but permeate all of the productive part of our society. where i see the most generational stratification is in the effete intellectual community where theoreticians pontificate about thing about which they have no practical knowledge.
and the belief that conservatism is about entrenchment of wealth is laughable on its face. anyone who lives in this country knows to a certainty that the wealth is not controlled by conservatives. just look at the party affiliation in the richest congressional districts or look at the backgrounds of the financial gurus on wall street who all come from the ivy league schools and have a stranglehold they are unwilling to release.
the biggest popular lie about conservatism is that it is the party of the rich when in fact it occupies the great middle of America. i admit that there is correlation of income with conservatism in middle America but it is liberals who populate the extremes: the very wealthy (just visit the tony part of any major American city) and the poor whom they demagogue by constantly telling them that they are stuck in their circumstances until the government can get them out.
to me, socialism is about equalizing results independent of effort. conservatism is about being allowed to succeed. simply put, it’s the conservative part of our social structure that has allowed me to make a better life for myself and my children while the socialistic part would deny me that. i will not bore you with my story; it is enough to say that it started low socio-economically and it’s our system that allowed me to get ahead without any government help.
one fundamental flaw in socialism is that it does not acknowledge that unearned “success” is no success at all. i strongly believe, in principle, that socialism destroys initiative and that society suffers because of it. you know, it’s that rising tide thing — except in this case, it’s a lowering tide.
socialism is compassion blind to its ultimate consequences and it fails. conservatism is harsher but it works.
Jul
6
Meritocratic vs Democratic
Filed Under American Politics, British Politics, Conservatism, Liberalism | 59 Comments
I was struck by a paragraph in Ross Douthat’s latest column in the New York Times about Sarah Palin:
Palin’s popularity has as much to do with class as it does with ideology. In this sense, she really is the perfect foil for Barack Obama. Our president represents the meritocratic ideal — that anyone, from any background, can grow up to attend Columbia and Harvard Law School and become a great American success story. But Sarah Palin represents the democratic ideal — that anyone can grow up to be a great success story without graduating from Columbia and Harvard.
My question is, do the two ideas of meritocratic and democratic necessarily oppose each other? Is one preferable to another?
Whilst I’m a strong believer in a meritocratic society (all conservatives should be), I increasingly believe that our meritocratic elites are letting us, the people, down. Whether it is because of the dubious climate change assertions, the maternalistic approach of government and the evident incompetence and corruption of those in power whilst claiming their own intelligence as qualification, I have developed my conservatism from paternalistic toryism to the redstate democratic belief that the people are best able to run themselves and not the government.
So if you’re interested, feel free to discuss meritocracy v Democracy, the elites v the people.
NB You can use Obama and Palin as the models for the two positions if you like, but please try to keep it to substance and not try to personalise it.
Jul
6
The Theory of Political Relativism
Filed Under American Politics, Conservatism, Liberalism | 11 Comments
By Original Tony
As my interest in politics has grown over the last few years I have struggled to analyse what drives a person towards a political viewpoint, but at last I have come up with a sort of chemical formula.
The Republican
1. A person who loves his home and country more than the rewards of political gain.
2. A family person.
3. Perhaps less articulate or educated than a Democrat
4. More ‘earthy’ than intellectual (likes hunting and fishing)
5. Has a grade C average at school but is a quick learner and often ends up running his own business, perhaps employing A-graders and Democrats!
6. Is a tireless physical worker
7. He runs the factories, shops and small businesses of middle America.
8. He favours religion in his life. Despises PC and to a certain extent, multi-culturalism
9. Treasures conservative values, like the constitution and saluting the flag.
10. Despises laziness and any system that will reward the lazy.
11. Is afraid of mass immigration destroying the familiar feel of the land.
12. Will accept frugality.
The Democrat
1. A person who loves personal gain more than the country.
2. A family person but will commit adultery more than a Republican.
3. Very artistic, intelligent in the sense that high IQ’s can be attained. Cerebral.
4. Loves debating, thinking and ordering others around without doing the work themselves.
5. A poor administrator.
6. A big spender.
7. Tolerates…no accepts and compensates, the lazy and useless as a panacea for guilt generated by personal excesses
8. He governs corporations and industry, often without ever having worked in it. Quite often, is an employee of a Republican in the Industrial sector.
9. Will readily undermine traditional values for ideological reasons.
10. Will take down others before ‘losing his own’
11. Feels that PC and multi-culturalism is the way forward
The more I read blogs and enter into debates, or even chat to people, the quicker I can slot people into either one of these moulds. I almost have it down to a fine art now.
Jun
24
A Change Of Perception
Filed Under American Politics, Conservatism, Liberalism | 23 Comments
By Original Tony
I have just looked at the video clip that Cabbie posted called ‘The Pacific’, along the lines of the excellent ‘A band of brothers’. I am thrilled that series is being made because I love contemporary history, especially WW2 and am pleased Tom Hank’s and Steven Spielberg have collaborated one more time in this genre.There were two things that caught my ear in the clip.
One of the characters was asked what he believes in; is it God or what? The answer was ‘I believe in a bullet’.
The lead actor, well I assume it was him, replied, ‘I believe in this war because it is just’, or words to that effect. He implied the USA had the moral high ground.
What has happened to the West in general and the USA in particular, whereby people used to support their soldiers in wars they considered ‘just’ but do not do so today?
Very few people demonstrated or complained when the USA went to war in 1941; very few complained when the Korean war was fought in the 50’s but ever since Vietnam a class of ‘whiners’ and ‘complainers’ seems to have arisen. A class of people that feel despots or dictators are no longer worth removing, that they can just sit there torturing their people in the same way dictators of the 30’s and 40’s did.
Why have people lost their moral courage and why so much name-calling and name-blaming in the media? Why are there such divergent views on the USA’s foreign policy today?
The other thing is that in old movies the troops used to pray and even in this video clip God is mentioned, before being trashed by the comment ‘I believe in a bullet’.
I ask therefore, has the death of God in America become the cause of the decay of the ‘moral high ground’ and has the media and its pundits become the New Testament? Why are despots allowed to reign unfettered today; Saddam being the exception as he was removed beacuse of oil?
May
18
The Race For The GOP Nominee In 2012
Filed Under American Politics, Conservatism, Polling | 23 Comments
Fox has a new poll out and one of it’s questions was asking non-Democrats who their preference is for the GOP nominee in 2012.
Republicans
- Mike Huckabee – 20%
- Mitt Romney – 18%
- Newt Gingrich – 14%
- Sarah Palin – 13%
- Rudy Giuliani – 12%
- Mark Sanford – 4%
- Bobby Jindal – 3%
- Jeb Bush – 3%
Independents
- Rudy Giuliani – 19%
- Mike Huckabee – 16%
- Mitt Romney – 12%
- Sarah Palin – 10%
- Newt Gingrich – 5%
- Bobby Jindal – 3%
- Jeb Bush – 3%
- Mark Sanford – 3%
Obviously this is not good for Sarah Palin, fourth amongst both independents and Republicans. Probably more alarming for her is that she trails Mike Huckabee amongst Republicans. Either he’s snaring more of the social conservative vote than she is, or he is appealing to both social conservatives and more moderate Republicans.
It’s not good news for Mark Sanford and Bobby Jindal, both are way down the list.
Now if only Rudy Giuliani can work out how to run a decent primary campaign.