Liberals, in general, see conservatives as brutish God-drunk bigots determined to crush whomever stands in their way in order to preserve the inequities of the status quo; by contrast, liberals see themselves as worldly, open-minded, kind-hearted paragons of social virtue whose guiding principle is their determination to look out for those less fortunate than themselves.
It’s rare that a single passage encapsulates an entire benighted mindset, but Michael Kinsley accomplished the trick the Sunday after the November presidential election of 2004 in his Washington Post postmortem on the Bush-Kerry outcome. Declaring that we now live in the “Disunited States,” one side conservative and one side liberal, Kinsley wrote:
We on my side of the great divide don't, for the most part, believe that our values are direct orders from God. We don't claim that they are immutable and beyond argument. We are, if anything, crippled by reason and open-mindedness, by a desire to persuade rather than insist. Which philosophy is more elitist? Which is more contemptuous of people who disagree?
For its sheer callow narcissism, Kinsley’s passage called to mind Jesse Ventura’s notorious pronouncement in Playboy that organized religion was “a crutch for weak-minded people,” or perhaps, going further back, Allen Ginsberg’s passionate declaration in the opening of Howl that he’d seen the “best minds of [his] generation destroyed by madness.” Such statements invariably tell you more about the intended audience than about the actual state of things. Just as the typical Playboy reader would naturally regard churchgoers as superstitious hayseeds denying themselves pleasures of the flesh out of an irrational attachment to fairy tales, and just as the typical 1950’s bohemian would naturally identify doped up poets bopping around the Village, rather than, say, physics geeks pulverizing atoms at Princeton, as the true geniuses of his era — likewise, the typical liberal nowadays naturally holds an exceedingly warped view of the relative reasonableness of liberals versus conservatives. Indeed, if you travel in left-liberal circles — and I live in Manhattan and teach at a branch of the State University, so I do — you’re struck not only by the heartfelt rage towards conservatives but also by a kind of reflexive snobbery.
Liberals, in general, see conservatives as brutish God-drunk bigots determined to crush whomever stands in their way in order to preserve the inequities of the status quo; by contrast, liberals see themselves as worldly, open-minded, kind-hearted paragons of social virtue whose guiding principle is their determination to look out for those less fortunate than themselves.
As wrongheaded as such perceptions are, they merit scrutiny — and Kinsley’s formulation remains especially telling. In supposing that liberals are “crippled by reason and open-mindedness, by a desire to persuade rather than insist,” Kinsley slyly suggests that conservatism’s ace in the hole is its narrow-mindedness — the fact that it’s not responsive to counterarguments. The hidden premise here is that liberals, though not fanatically tied to particular policies, ultimately know what’s right — in Kinsley’s words, “a society where women are free to choose abortion and where gay relationships have full civil equality with straight ones” — and the only reason they cannot turn conservatives from their errant opinions is conservatives’ own prejudice and obstinacy. In his misreading of reality, Kinsley ironically resembles a medieval Iconoclast who thought that the main obstacle to converting Jews and Muslims to Christianity was the offense given by iconic images of Jesus; if only these were eradicated, Jews and Muslims could be won over. Such thinking rules out the possibility that Jews and Muslims might have coherent belief systems of their own.
***
Setting aside Kinsley’s navel-gazing, it’s nevertheless true that a cognitive divide runs through American politics. It’s worrisome, but also perhaps inevitable since what’s at stake runs deeper than specific courses of action. Indeed, there are foundational differences between liberals and conservatives, irreconcilable epistemologies which underlie what each group deems reasonable. On this score, several general observations can be made.
Conservatives, the vast majority of whom come from one or another Judeo-Christian tradition, tend to accept on faith that human nature is unchanging and prone to sin — or at minimum not altogether virtuous. Every just government must acknowledge, as its actuating principle, that people cannot be perfected, and, thus, that societies will always be plagued by individual wrongdoing and collective inequities; in short, conservatives are never utopians. They point to the horrific body counts rung up by would-be utopian societies which attempted to alter human nature — Stalin’s Russia and Mao’s China — as evidence of the dangers of governments refusing to recognize this basic truth.
The vast majority of liberals also come from one or another Judeo-Christian tradition, and many still cling to it, but they are loathe, as Kinsley notes, to claim their values are “direct orders from God.” This is a caricature of conservatism of course. Every liberal’s dream conservative is a cross between Archie Bunker and Elmer Gantry; their nightmare is a cross between Victor Davis Hanson and Thomas Sowell. But Kinsley is onto something here since liberals, despite their backgrounds, are more likely to imagine themselves as products of Enlightenment secularism. (It’s worth noting that the same week as Kinsley’s column, Garry Wills devoted a New York Times op-ed to asking whether America, in light of Bush’s re-election, could “still be called an Enlightened nation.” Times regulars Maureen Dowd and Nicholas Kristof echoed the theme.) Kinsley’s sense of liberals’ openness to persuasion derives, without question, from an Enlightenment sensibility. This matters because one of the hallmarks of the Enlightenment was its rejection of the doctrine of mankind’s inherently sinful condition. By contrast with conservatives, liberals tend to regard human nature as essentially malleable — and, thus, to support government policies which propose, directly or indirectly, to tinker with human nature, to make human nature more perfect. Liberals, unsurprisingly, are readily drawn to utopian visions, inspired by collectivist rhetoric wherein everyone pulls together. But of course realizing such a vision requires remaking human nature.
This is where liberals get mugged by reality. For human nature is not malleable, much less perfectible — conservatives have simply got that right. It’s the central insight of Freud. It’s the central error of Marx. Even worse for the intellectual life of liberals is the fact that their commitment to utopianism engenders a kind of schizophrenia of ideals: On the one hand, a utopian society would have to establish and maintain equality; on the other hand, a utopian society would have to safeguard liberty (or else wind up dystopian, as in Huxley’s Brave New World). The trouble is that the two goods — liberty and equality — are fundamentally incompatible. If people have the liberty to capitalize on their natural abilities, a hierarchy will necessarily emerge which undermines equality. The only way to ensure equality, thus, is to prevent people from capitalizing on their natural abilities — in other words, to deny them liberty. Bill Gates’s kids and Michael Jordan’s kids are born with advantages most other kids will likely never overcome. Do we therefore deny Gates and Jordan the freedom to provide advantages for their families? If we do that, what’s their incentive to excel? Would we be a better society if we stifled the excellence of a Gates or a Jordan?
***
What makes liberals liberal and conservatives conservative, in a nutshell, is their contrasting responses to the tension between liberty and equality.
When liberty and equality come into conflict, conservatives pay lip service to equality but tend, in the final analysis, to favor liberty. Conservatives believe they’re making the world a better place, but “better,” for them, is never a utopian ideal; it just means “more prosperous” and “more free.” It’s not that conservatives are against improving the lives of the poor — which is, of course, an egalitarian impulse. It’s just that they point to the fact that most government efforts to redistribute wealth have resulted in less total wealth . . . and, thus, in the poor winding up worse off than before. Favoring liberty over equality is wholly consistent with conservatives’ non-utopian aims since they can argue, on a preponderance of evidence, that the liberty to excel, even though it fosters actual inequality, ultimately creates greater wealth to benefit the collective. The shorthand for this comes from the movie Wall Street: “Greed works.” (I’d substitute “self-interest” for “greed,” but the latter doesn’t offend me.) Wealthy societies are awash in inequities, but even those at the bottom are well off compared with those in poorer societies. As Adam Smith wrote, "In competition, individual ambition serves the common good."
Certainly, conservatives’ prioritizing of liberty can become dogmatic — which perhaps (to be fair) accounts for Kinsley’s perception of conservatives as unreasonable. Indeed, it can even place conservatives on the wrong side of history. This happened during the civil rights movement, a moment in which the equality demands of African-Americans should have trumped the liberty demands of whites to determine the character of their communities. But there’s a logical consistency to conservative positions, even when wrongheaded.
By contrast, liberals tend to favor equality when liberty and equality come into conflict. Though liberals pay lip service to notions of individual liberty, they will often seek to curtail liberty when they deem it incompatible with their egalitarian agenda. The phenomenon of political correctness in the workplace and on campus is a manifestation of the liberal commitment to equality at the expense of the liberty to express intellectually incendiary, or emotionally hurtful, ideas.
Unlike conservatives, however, who readily acknowledge the tension between liberty and equality, liberals won’t admit such an opposition; if they did, they’d have to abandon their utopian visions. They’re determined to make the world a better place, but if you ask them to define “better,” they’ll reply “fairer” and “freer” — logic be damned. This is the nature of utopianism; it’s why liberals have difficulty in debates with conservatives. Conservatives will accuse them of attempting to stifle liberty, and cite instances where it’s plainly the case — for example, utilizing the federal tax code to redistribute wealth, or outlawing election campaign contributions above a certain dollar amount — but liberals won’t own up to what’s going on. They’ll claim that they’re fighting corruption, or the potential for corruption, or oppression, or greed itself; they won’t admit that they’re curtailing liberty. Their commitment to utopianism trumps even their commitment to speaking the truth.
Which returns us to Kinsley’s observation about liberals’ “open-mindedness.” I suspect what he’s actually perceiving in not open-mindedness but logical mushiness. Conservative politics tend to flow in a direct line from conservative premises — and the premises themselves are taken as axiomatic. Hence, to liberals like Kinsley, conservatives seem unreasonable. Liberal politics, on the other hand, constitutes a theoretical grab bag. Liberals gravitate towards whatever seems likely to make society fairer . . . but also whatever seems likely to make people freer . . . except when the two conflict . . . and then, well, what does it matter if the two conflict? What matters is that liberals’ hearts are in the right place.
That, for liberals like Kinsley, is the very definition of being open-minded.
…” liberals won’t admit such an opposition; if they did, they’d have to abandon their utopian visions. They’re determined to make the world a better place”…
Mr. Goldblatt:
Many groups, driven and formed by utopian vision are very conservative in nature, even in the very terms you have defined as conservative. This includes the Mormons, the Jehova Witnesses, and the Puritans. Other groups may embody certain of the collectivist traits you define as liberal, but eschew some of the other specifics you have identified as liberal, such as the Amish and the Hutterites. I enjoyed your article although some statements have been applied with a very broad brush.
Mr. Goldblatt:
You push the belief that Liberty and Equality are mutually exclusive goals. They are not. Not only are they not mutually exclusive, it is absolutely necessary that there be limits to each to maximally achieve both goals. For there to be ‘equal opportunity’ there must be some limits on liberty.
As you state with complete liberty you get ability for people through maximizing capitalization of their natural ability to reap huge rewards (you use the example of Michael Jordan and Bill Gates). You propose that these stars would not have worked as hard if they were limited further on how much of that money they can pass on to their children. You cannot seriously believe that Bill Gates would have invented less if he thought the prize was going to be worth “only” 10 billion instead of 20 billion. The same goes for Michael Jordan who made most of his money AFTER his best years in basketball. Would he have worked less if he knew he would only keep ½ of his 60 million a year instead of 2/3? They both got to where they are at partially through the use of the common-wealth of this nation. A certain amount of redistribution of the proceeds they have received back to the common-wealth is needed to maximize the opportunity for others. Their children can somehow still succeed on a ten million dollar inheritance. In fact their children will more likely apply themselves and work if they receive less of an inheritance. I have two words for your idea of conservative keep all your money world: Paris Hilton.
Meanwhile, most other children could use some more of the common-wealth of this nation to get an opportunity to excel. Stuck in a poor school, with parents working several jobs, some extra help from the common-wealth will better locate the next Bill Gates or Michael Jordan.
It is time we join the majority of the industrialized world and have free college for all who can pass the tests and limit the number of ‘legacy’ children picking choice spots at the best colleges without having the grades or work habits they need to make the best use of that education.
Yes this limits the freedom to hoard all the money a person has taken from the commonwealth. But, it balances that by increasing the number of people who have ‘equal opportunity’ to capitalize of their natural abilities
christianzog,
So, why don’t you tell us how much government confiscation is appropriate in order to “equalize opportunity?”
You say, “A certain amount of redistribution of the proceeds they have received back to the common-wealth is needed to maximize the opportunity for others.” Needed by whom? Government? So that government can spread it around to those who didn’t earn it? So that the person who actually earned the money cannot hire as many people for his business, or spend this confiscated money on products and services made by workers, transported by workers, and sold by workers at businesses and serviced by workers at other businesses?
Apparently you believe that government is better equipped to spend your money than you are. If that is true, then why not simply hand all of your money over to government and let them, with their proven track record of success, spend your money for you? What’s stopping you?
To close, here’s a little math problem for you: Assume there are 5 people who make $1 million per year. How much revenue would the government take in if the tax rate was 100%?
Dear MountainMan:
You talk like taxes are necessarily 0% or 100%. That believing some redistribution of wealth is beneficial means believing that 100% taxation and redistribution of wealth is even better. This, of course, is not what I am saying. In fact I am saying just the opposite. What I am saying that the extremes (0% income wealth redistribution AND 100% wealth redistribution) lead to huge inefficiencies.
No redistribution leads to a class system of very poor and very rich with a very small middle class. Only the children of the wealthy in that system have a chance to reach their full potential. In that system the wealthy children attend the best schools, get ‘legacy’ acceptance into the best colleges despite poor grades, get ‘legacy’ into fraternities that have all the past college tests and therefore can spend college partying and still get through college. The children of the wealthy know they are set for life and have no incentive to work hard. The children of the poor know they have little chance of getting ahead and also don’t work hard. As businesses have fewer and fewer good quality graduates (those who earned their way) business suffers and we no longer can compete in the world.
Too much redistribution and you get the socialist problems of lack of desire to work. Why work if everyone get the same benefits?
Over the last 30 years the US has approached the zero redistribution model. With capital gains taxation dropping to 15%, limits on social security taxation, and millions of dollars of inheritance before any of it is taxed. As Warren Buffett has said, he pays a lower tax rate now than his secretary!
Good schools (including free college for those who have the smarts, not necessarily those whose parents worked hard), good roads and bridges, police, fire, and military (although I have to admit $700 billion for military is obscene). Are all things that ensure more people can make the middle class and maximize their potential. The more people working at their maximum potential the better.
What is the right amount of taxation? I do not know, but, when CEO make hundreds of millions of dollars putting companies into bankruptcy, you know the taxes on those people must be raised.
It is hard to justify anyone making over a million dollars a year when others working 40 hour weeks are making only twelve thousand. We should go back to a large taxation rate on anything over a million a year. Those making over a million a year may actually be induced to work harder and longer.
Mr Goldblatt:
Your discussion of the “tension between liberty and equality” as a means of pointing out the differences between conservatives and liberals was interesting. I believe you have touched on a critical difference but, by your assumption that tension between the two principles exists, you may have missed the bull’seye.
I agree with the assertion that the fundamental difference between liberal and conservative thought is the way in which each views liberty and equality. However, I believe that while some see the two ideas in frequent opposition, the reality is that they interdependent and, combined, offer a symbiotic partnership in which equality is the result and measure of liberty’s wise use.
Under this premise, it may be easier to understand the nature of social conflict, and also offer a clearer view of the best ways to resolve it. If liberty and equality are interdependent, then social conflict is not the result of liberty vs. equality, but rather the liberty of one vs. the liberty of another.
When conflicts between liberties arise, there is a natural process for escalating and resolving them, from simple reasoning, an appeal to law, changing law, etc. up to and including war. The implied purpose of law as I understand it, is to ensure that the exercise of one person’s liberty doesn’t limit the liberty of another unnecessarily or, rather, to an even greater extent. (Thus we have DUI laws which limit an inebriated person’s liberty, but that liberty is trumped by the possibility that a drunk driver can severely damage the liberty of others.)
christianzog:
You were asked a pretty simple question — how much government confiscation is appropriate in order to “equalize opportunity?” — and then you refused to supply an answer.
That’s hardly any fun at all. In fact, that seems intellectually lazy.
If you announce to the world on a discussion board that you are in favor of higher taxes, you should anticipate that the next question will be, how much?
So, how much more should the goverment tax than it already does?
christianzog,
And YOU talk like the purpose of taxes is to engineer society to your liking. However, there is only one purpose of taxes, to fund the constitutionally mandated functions of government. Anything else empowers government to force citizens to serve the social aims of government.
Wealth distribution at any level means that the money we work hard to earn does not belong to us. Government then has first claim on the fruits of our labor, at whatever level it decides it needs, leaving us to live on the rest. Again I ask, why not turn over all your money to the government, if you are so convinced that they can spend it better than you?
There is no such thing as free college. Forcing one person to pay for another person’s college (or anything else) is immoral. College is a privilege, for those who have earned it and can pay for it.
You said, “Over the last 30 years the US has approached the zero redistribution model.” This is utter nonsense. The top 25% of wage earners pay 86% of income taxes. 97% of all income taxes are paid by the top 50%.
In 1980, when the top marginal tax rate was 70%, the top 1% paid 19% of all income taxes, but now the top 1% pay 35% of all income taxes. Furthermore, welfare, Social Security, and food stamp expenditures are at all-time highs. Wealth redistribution has never been more pervasive than it is now.
You said, “It is hard to justify anyone making over a million dollars a year when others working 40 hour weeks are making only twelve thousand.” That is not yours to justify, nor is it a problem for government. These are private corporations. These companies are legally pursuing their legitimate business aims, which includes the risk of failure and loss. What they choose to do with their assets is their decision, and it’s none of your business.
Notice, christianzog, that I actually answer your points with counterpoints. Try it yourself, won’t you?
Mr. Goldblatt:
“Liberals, in general, see conservatives as brutish God-drunk bigots determined to crush whomever stands in their way in order to preserve the inequities of the status quo”
This is a carricature of a carricature.
Many ideologues of both the right and the left , the Limbaughs and the Michael Moores, see their fellow Americans in these sterotypes.
A true intellectual and humble person sees those decent people that differ with himself in a thoughtful way as compatriots with a differing world view.
Most of my life I have been nominally liberal and now am pretty center. Since my first vote for LBJ, McCain might be my first vote for the GOP. I did vote for Anderson and Perot, more a contrarian streak than anything else.
I have a great deal of respect for conservatives and I neither carricaturize them or belittle them. The late WJB who we are still mourning, was a thoughtful, bright refreshing, conservative, and one of the things that makes him both remarkable and sets him apart from the latter day purveyers of hatred and insult like Coulter and Limbaugh was that he respected those that disagreed with him.
The left reached their peak of intolerance in the 60s and early 70s with the Abbe Hoffmans and the Chicago 7 and they paid for it when the silent majority rewarded their boorishness with a landslide for Nixon.
Although, that wing of those left of center exists, and perhaps those people are what the writer is carricaturizing, in the last 20 years, the right seems to have gained the ascendency in boorishness.
The impression that I get when I turn on any AM conservative talk show is that the Hannitys and the Limbaughs would just assume line up everybody to the left of Fred Thompson and machine gun them. Hannity routinely refers to people that disagree with him as maggots.
And the silent majority in the country is now rejecting that viewpoint. I see that clearly in McCains victory. Even the majority of Republicans are tired of this war of ideologues
To be sure hatred of that sort lives on the left, but fewer are listening to them.
Now Mark, you go on at legnth with your carricature of liberals and it speaks little to me. I have inhabited that terrain much of my life and I recognize few of your landmarks.
You use the world liberal, as if their is some monolithic viewpoint that characterizes all people left of center and it is too broad a brush. It is as if I painted conservatism from Pat Robertson to William Buckley Jr. as one monolithic viewpoint.
The question remains what is right and what is wrong and not what is liberal or what is conservative.
IC seems to be obsessed with being anti-liberal rather than exploring the depths of thoughtful conservatism.
“It is hard to justify anyone making over a million dollars a year when others working 40 hour weeks are making only twelve thousand.”
Mountain Man — To your point: I’m not quite in the over-million category yet, but I do make enough to invest in other companies. One of the things my partners and I did last year is invest in a new business we acquired. As a result, in addition to the general economic benefits that come from purchasing supplies from other companies/vendors, we’ve put food on the table for the employees who work directly for us and/or do contract work for us.
Now, as it turns out we’ve lost a considerable amout on this particular investment to date, and may end up bailing on this opportunity at some point. At best we can write a third of this investment off, but no one is going to give us the other 2/3 back that we invested. That money is forever gone. Of course we could have taken our money and sat on a beach someplace, but this isn’t the way capitalism works. People make more money because they invest in the education and hard work to position themselves, and then accept the risk-reward that comes with it. When the risk pays off there’s good money for you, when it doesn’t you lose a lot of your own money. Others, like my schoolteacher wife, opt for security and a fixed salary. But even she had to educate herself appropriately to get that job, unlike my sister-in-law who makes about $12K a year — and who coincidentally decided not to go to college and bounced around jobs instead of pursuing a particular career path.
All of which reinforces your point that in the real world things happen for a reason. Unless you’ve won the lottery or your daddy’s last name was Kennedy and you inherited a lot of money, people usually get the payoffs they earn commensurate with their education, and risk/reward.
You come very close, Mr Goldblatt, to identifying the irreconcilable epistemologies that separate the conservatives from liberals but ultimately you fall victim to it. You see, while it is very true that conservatives drone on and on about how human nature is immutable, and they constantly write tedious columns declaring that the essential difference between conservatives and liberals is their opposing view of human nature, in reality the essential difference is that liberals don’t care about this kind of pseudo-intellectual claptrap at all.
I’ve never in my life (except maybe once on acid when I was seventeen) had a discussion with a liberal, or read a blog or an opinion column, in which “perfecting human nature” or “Utopia” were ever even mentioned, whereas I read columns like this where a conservative accuses the left of such things practically every day.
The real difference in epistemologies (disregarding conservatives’ delusion that they have an intellectual ‘foundation’) is in their respective definitions of the word “Commonwealth” and in differences their respective ability to conceptualize (and care about) the future.
So for instance, for MM, a conservative, education is “a privilege, for those who have earned it and can pay for it” but for the liberal CZ, it is something that “ensure(s) more people can make the middle class and maximize their potential.” In this example, the conservative would sacrifice both the commonwealth (the higher paid/taxed work that an educated person provides to society) and the future (the scientific advances and creative thinking that powers our economy) simply because they believe human nature is ‘un-malleable.’
Thus, a below average Yale legacy who becomes president demonstrates a conservative success story, whereas a mulatto raised by his grandparents, who puts himself through Columbia University and Harvard Law and then goes on to become a Legislator, Senator and President would be an example of liberal success.
To a conservative, “commonwealth” means ‘something that belongs to everyone, but that through careless exploitation I may become wealthy’ whereas to a liberal it means, ‘the resources and product of our Nation that is the birthright of every American, past, present and future, and through carefully management can benefit all of us.’
Chasm,
I have never stated nor do I believe that human nature is “un-malleable.” People can and do rise above their life situations and limitations every day, simply because they choose to overcome the obstacles and refuse to let circumstances keep them from their goals. That is quintessential conservatism, where unremarkable people do remarkable things without the help (and/or interference) of government.
You misstate what conservatives believe, either because you do not understand conservatism, or because you deliberately intend to mislead. But I suppose it suits your purposes to make conservatives out as stupid and heartless. Then you do not even have to deal with the substance of opposing arguments, you simply dismiss them. That is, I submit, truly anti-intellectual.
Your statement, “…something that belongs to everyone, but that through careless exploitation I may become wealthy” is a caricature based on a false premise. A conservative would reject the premise that there are things that belong to everyone, since something that belongs to everyone by definition belongs to no one.
Further, conservatives do not exploit anything, whether carelessly or otherwise. However, there are people in society who revel in exploitation. Leftists continually exploit race for their own gain. Leftists profit immensly from ginning up controversy, crisis, and hatred. Leftists are the exploiters.
You say, “…the resources and product of our Nation that is the birthright of every American, past, present and future, and through carefully management can benefit all of us.” Translation: What is produced by John Doe, who worked hard and took risks, must be taken from him, because he cannot be trusted with his own money. John Doe may spend his production incorrectly, so government must carefully manage this wealth (i,e., spend it on people who it deems more deserving).
Brilliant article.
“Free people are not equal, and equal people are not free.”
Total freedom is anarchy and total equality can only be enforced by fascist totalitarianism. Capitalism doesn’t represent complete freedom, but does lean more in the that direction than Communism, which leans in the “equality” direction. Each has its pluses and minuses, so you have to ask yourself which you prefer.
The forefathers of the U.S. quite clearly favored freedom over equality. The problem with freedom is inequity. The problem with equality is that some authoritarian body has to enforce it. That leads to two things: firstly, the entire society is reduced to the least common denominator, stifling hope, achievement, nobility, and every other characteristic a healthy society or person might regard as good; secondly, because imperfect people are required to enforce this equality, the enforcers of equality will naturally succomb to their human natures and cull benefit for themselves, a’la the old adage “absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Given these two different worlds, I choose freedom. It isn’t perfect, but its better than the forced slavery of a Utopian society.
MM,
You many not have stated that human nature is “un-malleable,” but the author of this paper sure did. It’s right there in paragraph 9: ” For human nature is not malleable, much less perfectible — conservatives have simply got that right.” It’s the whole freaking point of the article – to declare that conservatives and liberals see the world through “irreconcilable epistemologies,” didn’t you read it?
Conservatives on this blog say as much all the time, it seems to me that whenever a conservative starts waxing on about “first principles” that a discussion on the varying views held by political factions on human nature is not far behind.
I merely used your words in the education example, which, while snide, is quite accurate and I notice you didn’t touch that.
As for anti-intellectual, again, this blog effectively and this post specifically contains all sorts of lazy, inflammatory and inaccurate caricatures of liberals – many which have been pointed out and corrected time and time again by the liberals who troll here – and yet the same tired points will get dragged out and ‘debated’ again next month when another new columnist calls us “Utopians.” I was just being my usual snide self and evening the score, though of course it’s backed up by facts.
Unlike when you laughingly make declarations like “conservatives do not exploit anything… Leftists are the exploiters.” What are you even talking about? I was making an (not very clear) allusion to environmental exploitation – which I define not as simply using natural resources, but specifically underpaying for public natural resources and then dumping the clean-up bill on taxpayers to boot – and you’re taking about what? Give me an example of a ‘leftist’ profiting from ‘ginned’ up controversy. And I mean real money profit, not imaginary ‘trial lawyer’ profit.
How is your insufferable insistence that getting taxed is the functional equivalent to giving ALL your money to the government an ‘intellectual’ argument? I personally don’t mind paying for things like yellow lines on the road and fixing potholes. I think all business, conservative and liberal, benefit from the interstate highway system that no modern day conservative would consider building on the public dime. Public works, good public education, health care, the CDC – these are the things that make nation strong and self-reliant – and these are things that require a commitment to the future that I don’t see evident in modern conservatism. I NEVER see a commitment to future from conservative politicians, and this administration is the poster boy for bad planning.
Conservatives don’t like government, and they constantly prove it by running it so badly. Ergo, they really shouldn’t govern, for the good of the rest of us.
My post was simply to point out that, while true that conservatives and liberals see the world through differing political lenses, one of those lenses is itself the way in which you people describe us (and cleary, vis versa).
adding,
I can see how you may think I was putting thoughts in your mouth in the example, but what I was really saying is that, outside of whatever ‘first principles’ a conservative may or may not consult before coming down on one side of an issue like availability of university education, liberals will generally take a larger and longer view of society into account than a conservative will, or if a conservative is thinking long, it’s only in reference to the conservative movement or the Republican Party rather than the towards the Commonwealth as liberals generally understand it. I didn’t mean to imply you, MM, specifically felt this way, but was merely using your quote as a illustrative example.
christianzog, in post 2 you said, “For there to be ‘equal opportunity’ there must be some limits on liberty.” What limit on liberty could be required other than the prohibition of the initiation of force? The problem with most policies is they involve some use of force. Liberals and conservatives alike propose using force to achieve their ends.
I side with the 0% tax group. Taxes represent the initiation of force by “the government” on its own citizens. This is the “first blood” by most governments. Rather than the protector of our rights, it is the means by which our rights are abridged in the first instance.
No matter what “inefficiencies” (your post 4) may result, the most important thing that would be achieved by abolishing tax is respect for the institution of government.
You cannot legislate equality of result. That is dependent on many factors, all of which in the final analysis can be traced back to the effort expended by a given individual on his or her own behalf. Whether someone is born into a family of wealth or of poverty, history is full of successes and failures from all walks of life. “Advantages” are helpful to some and ignored by others. Disadvantages discourage some and are ignored by others.
The pervasive sense of hopelessness in our culture is a product of our immoral system of government, which has everyone convinced that we must accept the necessary evil of the tax system for some undefinable reason. Oh but wait – the reason proffered is that things would somehow be even more unjust if there were no interference in the economy by the government.
As for Chasm and his list of things he doesn’t mind paying for – it’s not the point whether you “mind” – it’s the principle of the thing, and you ought to mind being forced to pay. If you value those things, you would pay voluntarily to a private company for each of those things you list. Or you’d make a donation to help a school even if you didn’t have kids.
Why do you need to have a gun held to your head, and why do you agree that everyone should be forced to pay, even for things they do not use?
Chasm,
Thank you for clarifying. I cannot read your mind, so if your don’t tell us you’re talking about “evironmental exploitation,” who would know?
An example of leftists profiting from ginned up controversy: Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have made a career of labeling everything on the planet as racist. They have created the impetus for whole industries and government programs dedicated to fighting racism. Before you rush to judgment with a rejoinder about race being a real problem, let me remind you that your request was to provide an example of profiteering, not to evaluate the issue.
Another example is global warming. Again, I am not debating the reality of lack thereof, only that it is an issue used to stir up controversy and government funding. Or how about leftist artists whose depictions of crucifixes in urine or the Virgin Mary covered in feces? Or how about sexual harrassment, a real issue, with all sorts of people riding the coat tails into financial benefit. Or certain lawyers whose sole career objective is to create issues from which to profit, issues which invariably benefit the lefist perspective?
As far as utopia, which I did not address in my response, but was brought up by you again, the case could easily be made that the policies and worldview of leftists are utopian in nature. By this I mean that “if only we had enough government, if only we could tax the rich enough, if only we could get businesses to stop polluting, if only we could get CAFE averages high enough, if only we could make people think the right way, if only we could dismantle the military…, then the world would be a better place, with everyone getting along, no hunger, no greed, no racism, no inequality…” That is utopian, while not expressly using the word.
You ask, “How is your insufferable insistence that getting taxed is the functional equivalent to giving ALL your money to the government an ‘intellectual’ argument?” Well, let me ask you, how is making sure that no one profits too much by having government tax excessive wealth an intellectual argument, Hmm?
Aside from that fact that I did not suggest that taxation is giving all money to government, it is clear that government has a track record of failure in its social engineering endeavors. There is not a single government social program which has succeeded in wiping out the problem for which it was created. Failure is an objective reality when it comes to government attempting to rewrite society into its own mold.
Conservatives don’t hate government. They hate the government that leftists have installed, the government that perverts the constitution, that fights against success, that pits people against each other, that confiscates may more money than it ought, that treats people as serfs as it goes on its spending sprees.
Again, if you really understood conservatism, you would not be making such foolish statements.
Sorry, but I feel you’re all a bit off the mark.
The beauty and lure of simplification is a natural desire that works well in hard science, but very poorly in politics.
One can not base a fundamental discussion of values on two variables – liberty and equality.
Actually, I see some here trying to reduce it to a single variable, by claiming liberty and equality are perfectly coupled and each others inverse.
The result is your typical endless debate, where no one concedes anything.
Let me start by declaring myself as an outsider, in the sense that I’m European, more specifically Danish.
Maybe the complex and multifacetted political landscape in Denmark has taught me something different. Maybe living under socialist rule prior to 2001 and conservative rule since 2001, has taught me something.
Maybe our clever conservative PM, by accident or design, has taught a lot of Danes a few things in the past almost 8 years.
I propose atleast five basic dimensions or values, that one must balance:
1. Wealth.
2. Liberty.
3. Security/safety.
4. Equality of oppertunity.
5. Equality of outcome.
To make it more complicated, these are all interdependant to some degree:
Liberty is hollow if you don’t have the wealth or oppertunity to exercise it.
Conversely, wealth allows you to ‘vote with your feet’, thus buying you liberty – to the extent a better deal can be found somewhere in the world. Britons, mostly young and educated, are doing that to the tune of 250k a year.
Equality of outcome is a thoroughly leftist value that should be reduced as much as possible. On the other hand, we don’t want anyone dying of hunger in the streets.
Security/safety is highly affected by this value.
Equality of oppertunity is a value traditionally ‘hijacked’ by the left, and used to leverage increases in the lethal equality of outcome.
In their attempts to stem this trend, conservatives risk coming across as being against equality of oppertunity.
Equality of oppertunity should be important to conservatives too. It tends to ‘lift all boats’ in the long run. The value and morale/spirit of the workforce is increased, which leads to wealth and liberty.
While equal oppertunity shouldn’t be overdone, I feel public elementary school is too little in a modern democracy. Same with healthcare, but it needs to be well thought out.
The darwinian viewpoint that children should inherit the education and oppertunities their parents can afford, leads to a tremendous waste of human resource. On the other hand, a total lack of responsibility for ones own, leads to complacency, selfindulgence and children raised by the government.
But this whole discussion should be at an even deeper and more fundamental level. In a perfectly constructed democracy, the optimum state of affairs should be reached after some number of iterations. It should end up corresponding perfectly with the optimum culture that human nature will allow.
Since this doesn’t happen, and societies and civilizations swing violently from one extreme to another, there must be some flaws in the system:
0. First, what is human nature ? How much can it be changed through culture (social engineering) ? What is the optimum culture ?
As a baseline, any culture that can’t atleast sustain itself and civil society indefinately, should be outright rejected.
Second, culture should be chosen as a compromise between overriding human nature as little as possible, while still ensuring continued progress.
1. Human society’s conciousness is continually “reset” due to people dying and new generations’ limited understanding of history. The humanity “function” thus never stabilize due to information loss.
To solve this you need culture. A cultural awareness that emphasize both history and the future. The result should be more longterm viable decisions – unselfish actions that benefit future generations. Ideally, we should act as if we lived to be a 1000 years.
2. Large scale civil society is an artefact of culture, that has come about *despite* human nature. Culture is the recipe that guides the basic ability of human nature to self-organize. Without advanced culture to override the builtin fallback mechanisms of human nature, only stable societies of a few 100 individuals can be reached.
Again, the solution is awareness of the importance of culture and of it being perpetuated.
Multiculturalism, cultural Marxism or cultural relativism is the very antithesis of this. The notion that histories, cultures and ideas are equal, is probably the most destructive force ever invented.
3. Democracy is an artefact of culture, but democracy also affects culture. Since democracy can change and potentially destroy the very foundation of its existence, checks and balances needs to be in place to remove all positive feedback mechanisms.
That’s supposed to be taken care of by a constitution.
Some politicians of the new democracies in Eastern Europe (I think it was Hungary or Czech rep.), proposed to make the right to vote, something you earn by paying taxes on work income.
I guess this idea has been voiced because of observations of the state of democracy in The West, and because they don’t feel their version of democracy is set in stone yet.
In The West, such attempts at tinkering with the left’s ability to import or produce losers/leftist voters through unsustainable policies, would be considered draconian, fascist, violation of human rights and undemocratic.
Another problem is the tendency of political power to accumulate at the top. The more power, the more leverage to grab even more power.
This positive feedback is evident in both the US and the EU. Central governments should only be concerned with foreign policy, national security, overseeing the enforcement of the constitution and enforcing adherence to deals and agreements made between member states.
Further, member states should only have limited power, like setting minimum standards that counties need to comply with.
Unless a country is very homogenous, centralization will eventually clash with the tribalism of human nature, leading to either disintegration or totalitarianism aided by fascism.
Witness the Orwellian, maybe even soft totalitarian legislation and rulings, emmanating from the EU and several member states.
Let me finish this, by dragging my own country out as an example.
Denmark is currently less of a socialist country than it was in the past.
The conservative, or “right wing”, side in parliament has won absolute majority, three times in a row since 2001.
As if that’s not rare enough, our PM had a longterm vision… That of debating and slowly changing fundamental values – and rediscovering old values, with conservatives setting the agenda.
He did this out of the realization that superficial quick change, inevitably leads to the pendulum swinging in the opposite direction, undoing everything.
By implementing his politics no faster than a majority could accept, and simultanously, slowly, educating people to revise their values, permanent change has been achieved.
The leftist opposition has been forced to adopt important parts of the conservative project, out of sheer populism, if you can believe that.
In the past three years, this has begun to really pay off.
A cultural and historical canon, listing important events and personalities in Danish culture, has been released for use in public debate and schools.
A democratic canon, of the development of Danish and Western democracy has been released, also for use in schools.
History is emphasized in school curricula again.
Slowly, the traditionally leftist educational, media and culture establishment is changing its tune.
One tangible result you may have heard of, is the Mohammed cartoon crisis one and two. It really opened our eyes to the importance of values, and the lack of support from the rest of Europe, opened our eyes to the value deficit that has developed in The West.
A less known result of conservatism in Denmark, is the fact that our economy is no longer tracking the rest of socialist EU.
Deficits have turned to surpluses. State debt is now down to 15% of GDP.
The state budget surplus for the past 3 years alone, totals DKr 251bn. Adjusted for population size and converting to USD, that’s comparable to a 3 year US surplus of $2890bn. Almost $1 trillion per year.
The socialists are eager to spend the loot, while our PM is focusing on paying off debt and giving tax cuts.
The biggest problem last year, was a lack of workers.
Employees in the private sector are working what amounts to 2 weeks more per year, to pick up some of the slack. Still, Danish employers had 65k job openings they couldn’t fill. We’re importing skilled workers from our neighbors, like never before.
Adjusting for population size, 65k Danish jobs correspond to almost 3.6 million American jobs.
It’s a big threat to the economy.
The point I’m getting at, is that basic values are what matters. When they’re in place, almost any democracy works, and sorts everything out by itself.
If they’re not entirely in place, one better hope ones flavor of democracy is robust enough to deal with it.