Conservatism in the Midst of Madness
“To be conservative, then, 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.” – Michael Oakeshott, from “On Being Conservative.”
(Today’s essay is in memory of Andrew Sullivan’s excellent but sadly now defunct blog “The Dish”).
I shall analyze conservative politics using Michael Oakeshott’s conservative philosophy. Michael Oaheshott was one of the more brilliant conservative scholars of the twentieth century. To Oakeshott conservatism was a personal disposition rather than an ideological position. In fact, he urged conservatives to reject political positions based on abstract ideals as dangerous and naïve. His roots were definitely in Edmund Burke.
Let’s view conservative politics through this lens. One of the more common ideological positions is some form of libertarianism, held both by Libertarians themselves and by many Republicans. The ideology, simply put, is minimal government means maximum freedom. It is based on a belief that the government is the cause of most problems, and that a “free” market benefits all individuals. It is a position held mostly by the wealthy, the hope-to-be wealthy, and young white males in their 20s. All of whom have in common a desire not to pay taxes, follow rules, or be reminded that they are actually not independent.*
A second ideology is the reactionary position. It is a belief in a Christian, family-oriented, traditionalist, society of small artisans and yeoman farmers. The ideal society is of the old days when people were honest, hard-working, and God fearing, and they were self-sufficient, sturdy, rugged individualists. This position is often held by people living in small towns and rural communities who have romanticized the myth of a simple, untroubled past (as though Mayberry was a real place).
Oakeshott, I think, would shake his head at both, whether it be a quest for the utopian free society or the yearning for the idealized past. The massive structural changes to government and society to achieve either (even if remotely achievable) would be so destructive as to neutralize any benefits. He prefers the “tried to the untried, fact to mystery.” Conservatism is the practice of appreciating what is good now, and in understanding what is attainable. To Oakeshott those ideologies are the dreams of children.
I agree with Oakeshott, with the caveat that to some extent the libertarian ideology has been tried already. Much of the history of the nineteenth century was a libertarian experiment. It failed repeatedly, most disastrously in 1929. The attempt to return to freer markets since 1980 has also proven unsuccessful, resulting in the disaster of 2008. The second ideology, beloved by reactionaries, has never been tried, it is simply a myth. Facts are awkward things.
Ideologies are more attractive than facts. They seduce with their promise of a better world, the creation of a land of milk and honey. They are Succubi, once in their grasp you lose grasp of reality and eventually of sanity. One should eschew such temptations, and with a conservative disposition appreciate the here and the now rather than the abstract ideal, to enjoy “present laughter to utopian bliss.” Therefore, we should demand rational actors to solve problems not angry ideologues engaged in constant filibustering, fear-mongering, and war-mongering. As Oakeshott says:
“The man of this [conservative] disposition understands it to be the business of a government not to inflame passion and give it new objects to feed upon, but to inject into the activities of already too passionate men an ingredient of moderation: to restrain, to deflate, to pacify and to reconcile; not to stoke the fires of desire, but to damp them down. And all this, not because passion is vice and moderation virtue, but because moderation is indispensable if passionate men are to escape being locked in an encounter of mutual frustration.’ - Michael Oakeshott, from “On Being Conservative.”
We live in an imperfect world, and in a deeply flawed system. Change is needed. However, it will require clear and rational heads, not demagogues, religious extremists, or ideological purists. We must honestly recognize what does work and what doesn’t. Even if what does work (publicly funded education? health care?) violates our ideological beliefs that it shouldn’t work. The reverse is also true: the free market is not as infallible as some may want it to be. We need realism not idealism. We need Aristotle not Plato. We need a conservative disposition.
* Libertarianism has also been adopted by the states rights crowd. They are, however, not libertarian but anti-federalist, and simply want the federal government and its pesky Constitution out of the way so they can run intolerant little theocracies at the state level.
