I'm going to step out on a limb here because I am responding extemporaneously to a suggestion.
The overarching principle of Conservatism as I see it is 'epistemological modesty', which is, as I mentioned within the past few weeks, the basic idea that human society has indeed evolved and established conventions for good reasons. Consequently nobody is capable of re-engineering the world in a grossly better way than it has evolved. All utopian schemes should be regarded with extreme skepticism.
Nevertheless, there are leaps and mutations in the course of human affairs, which when guided by a goodly understanding of history may improve the lot. It is something of an axiom of American Conservative thought that the American Revolution was one such leap and that the frameworks and struggles of the Founders to create a nation outside of the tyrannies of monarchy was a success. Unfortunately, the break with the old order was not simple, it was militant and radical. But part of the great promise of the American experiment was found in the good fortune of the character of Washington who had all the incentives to become a philosopher king but refused.
The premises of liberty as conceived by the Founders were wrought with other real practical contradictions as well, clearly among which was the institution of human bondage - of slavery of the African, a direct slap in the face of the nation it sought to establish and a well-understood problem by those Founders. In their establishment of the Constitution however it was clear that rectification of this matter implied violent conflict in the future of the nation.
I would be so bold as to suggest that no such inherent gross injustices remain in the core premises of our nation and that we are thus very well suited to continue to guarantee, by the separation of powers and other fundamental provision, the protection of liberties for generations to come. Nevertheless, there continue to be people born yesterday and the intent and direction of the premises of liberty as conceived by the Founders will be challenged in every respect. It is therefore the duty of the Conservative, and specifically the Hayekian Conservative to protect the American ideal in light of the great magnification of powers which have accrued to this nation, and thus the greater consequences of those abuses and perversions which might become established. This includes those abuses that were well-understood by the Founders and new types which might arise over time. I say particularly the Hayekian because of the specific types of threats that Hayek identified in his great work 'The Road To Serfdom'.
Hayek’s central thesis is that all forms of collectivism lead logically and inevitably to tyranny, and he used the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany as examples of countries which had gone down “the road to serfdom” and reached tyranny. Hayek argued that within a centrally planned economic system, the distribution and allocation of all resources and goods would devolve onto a small group, which would be incapable of processing all the information pertinent to the appropriate distribution of the resources and goods at the central planners’ disposal. Disagreement about the practical implementation of any economic plan combined with the inadequacy of the central planners’ resource management would invariably necessitate coercion in order for anything to be achieved. Hayek further argued that the failure of central planning would be perceived by the public as an absence of sufficient power by the state to implement an otherwise good idea. Such a perception would lead the public to vote more power to the state, and would assist the rise to power of a “strong man” perceived to be capable of “getting the job done”. After these developments Hayek argued that a country would be ineluctably driven into outright totalitarianism. For Hayek “the road to serfdom” inadvertently set upon by central planning, with its dismantling of the free market system, ends in the destruction of all individual economic and personal freedom.
I have mentioned Tytler's Warning just last month and it strikes me as the sort of fundamental wisdom of a conservative sort.
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.
Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage.
It is rather difficult for me to suggest what I think the priorities of Conservative movement ought to be. I don't consider myself sufficiently deep yet. But I do think that the role of Conservatism in American politics is not necessarily radical - that rather it is requires only modest adjustments to keep the nation on the straight and narrow. The aforementioned admonitions are quite clear to me - they speak loudly against the encroachments of collectivism and the abuse of the public trust.
To those two I would add that Conservatives should guard against the establishment of the Nanny State, which is the consequence of an overweaning desire to place the locus of morality in the aegis of the State. This is, I think an evolution of the basic injunction "you can't legislate morality". The fact of the matter is one must legislate morally, but one should not do so in ways that make utopian promises and engender dependency. It seems to me that the more you refrain from making such promises, the more that the collective enterprise of democracy focuses on actual maintenance of the Commons.
Fourthly and finally I would admonish Conservatives to clear up confusion and rigorously discipline them to the distinctions between the politics of Evangelists and Evangelist Politics. I invent these terms because I am not aware of the terms which should be applied when conflations are made between the religiously inspired impulse to do the morally correct thing through politics and policy and the proper secular recognition of the moral ends of proper policy. There should not be special rewards for Christians for doing the right thing. There should not be special rewards for Blacks who do the right thing. In a way, I suppose it is a warning away from identity politics. Take the good from the people in a brown paper bag without fawning quid pro quo.
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