Just as traditions vary from one place to another and one time to another, so too must the principles that are the practices of these traditions vary.

The Conventional Account

There is much chatter these days among self-declared "conservatives" of multiple varieties of the need for Republicans and conservatives to return to "first principles."  If asked as to what these so-called "principles" are, the average self-identified conservative is likely to invoke "limited government," "national security," "economic prosperity," "individual liberty," and the like.

That your average "movement conservative" possesses a tendency to understand his political orientation primarily in terms of principles should come as no surprise, for principles are the central terms of the languages of the dominant political-moralities of the contemporary Western world, whether these moralities are called "conservatism," "liberalism," "socialism," or anything else. 

But what exactly is a "principle?"

Judging from the customary manner in which movement conservatives and their rivals speak of them, principles are ostensibly action-specifying propositions as timeless in origin as they are universal in jurisdiction. Principles owe their being, not to the inventiveness of finite human beings — this would make them cultural artifacts — rather, they have been said to abide in God, Reason, or Nature, that is, a source widely recognized as lacking the contingencies and relativities characteristic of history and culture.

By virtue of their immutability, principles possess an authority that it is impossible to compromise: principles command observance.  And to observe a principle is to "apply" it to the specific situations in which agents find themselves and to which the principle in question is "applicable." 

I contend that when your average self-declared "conservative" (whether he or she is a professional commentator or not) implores the GOP to revisit the "principles" upon which it is (supposedly) founded, and your average "progressive" beseeches his or her fellows to embrace the "principles" of liberalism, it is something along the lines of this conception of a "principle" that they have in mind.

And it is this conception that I wholeheartedly reject.

An Alternative Explanation

While it is hard to believe, there have been and remain visions of morality, political or otherwise, that are not primarily principles-oriented. This, of course, is not to suggest that they are devoid of all allusion to principle; it is neither possible nor desirable to avoid reference to principle. Yet nevertheless, although principles are acknowledged, these rival moralities construe them in a manner significantly different from that in which our dominant political-morality depicts them.

From this alternative perspective, a principle is not an eternal verity that supervenes into the spatial-temporal universe, the arbitrator of tradition, custom, and all that is subject to the perpetual flux of human existence.  Rather, a principle is a "cliff note," if you will, an exceedingly rough and brief summary of the tradition from which it is abstracted.  As such, it is no less provisional, and only slightly less susceptible to fluctuation, as is the tradition that fathered it. 

That this is true is easily seen after just a brief moment's reflection on any number of human activities. Take as but one example the activity of parenting. My wife and I just became parents for the first time (as I write this my son isn't as yet one month old).  At the bookstore that I usually frequent, several shelves are stacked with one book after another that purports to reveal "principles" regarding successful parenting. I have been tempted from time to time to purchase one of these, but ultimately chose to resist the temptation. Why? The answer is something with which, I am confident, most people, and all parents, would agree: the only way to become a good parent is by rolling up your sleeves, so to speak, and parent. 

This, obviously, isn't to imply that a new parent shouldn't consult others who have already been down the road upon which he or she is now about to embark. The point, instead, is threefold.

First, the principles of which these books are comprised, far from subsisting for all eternity in advance of the activity, or a tradition, of parenting, are actually its offspring: had there not first been the practice of parenting, there could never have been any principles of parenting.

Secondly, just as traditions of parenting vary from one place to another and one time to another, so too must the principles that are the practices of these traditions vary. Again, the principles are not timeless (even if they may possess a durability that survives the tradition(s) from which they sprang).

Finally, principles, being inherently general, cannot specify particular actions: principles are not "applicable" to concrete situations. The idea of "applying" one thing to another suggests a more or less mechanical motion, that is, action leaving little if any room for doubt or thought. Upon being informed that the adhesive is to be applied to the back of the mirror, one is in no doubt as to what needs to be done.  On the other hand, knowing that you must love and care for your child and knowing precisely what this requires in this place and at this time are two entirely different matters. The latter is the product of thought and choice.  Principles are not "applicable;" principles are embodied (or not) in and through action.

Christianity is a particularly instructive illustration of the relationship between practice and principle.  The earliest Christians did not endorse something called "Christian Moral Principles;" they sought, rather, to emulate a Person.  And long after Jesus ascended into Heaven, generation after generation of Christians continued to understand their morality as a way of life, a tradition or practice — not a "system" of "principles." 

This isn't to deny that principles could be gotten from Christian practices; nor is it to deny that the enterprise of abstracting principles from such practices is of value.  However, once it is assumed that the cliff note of principle precedes and, thus, has authority over the primary text of practice, the integrity of the latter promises to suffer corruption, for principles inescapably lack the multiplicity of nuances — those unspoken modulations of habit that can only be learned through immersion in the tradition whose habits they are and which defy explicit articulation — that invest a way of life with its distinctive identity: the gates of Hell may not be able to prevail against the Church but the reduction of Christianity to a set or "system" of principles threatens to transform it into a lethargic caricature of itself.

Once more, principles are indeed constitutive of Christianity, but that they are only partially so is readily recognizable by the consideration that adherence to any one of its principles isn't sufficient to specify particular actions.  It is a principle of the Christian faith, for instance, that Christians must love others as they love themselves. Yet this principle, clearly, does not by itself supply any answers as to what any given person ought to do whatever specific situation he or she finds him or herself. The love of others precludes hatred, for sure, but, again, to know this is to know little, for support of capital punishment, war, abortion, euthanasia, killing in self-defense, torture and even cruelty is compatible with a lack of hatred, and is even consonant with some conceptions of love.

The objection that true or real love abhors these practices turns in on itself, for it actually underscores my position that principles defy "application," that they provide only some guidance and that specific actions, even when they can be read as embodying principle(s), involve considerations — namely, recognition of the distinct and unique particularities of place and time — that the invocation of naked principle deviously obscure.

Did Jesus Himself observe the principle to love one's neighbor, or the principle to forgive trespassers, or the principle to be meek and/or humble, when He charged His opponents with being "a brood of vipers," "white washed tombs," "thieves," and "hypocrites?"  Was He observing any of these principles when He assured His disciples that any and all who refuse to do the will of His Father will spend eternity in the fires of Gehenna?  As a believer in Christ, I maintain that He was, but my point in referencing these episodes is to show that even utterances and actions doubtless suspected of being wildly incongruous with the observance of the aforementioned principles may not be anything of the sort, for, once more, principles cannot dictate courses of action.

To return to the original topic of politics, Republicans and movement conservatives have another problem in invoking the principles to which they characteristically appeal.  "Limited government," "national security," and "economic prosperity" are goals that Democrats and other leftists can and have just as easily claim to support.  When was the last time you recall having heard a leftist (of the American variety at least) expressly, or even tacitly, reject any of them?  Principles are anything but self-interpreting. In fact, their intrinsic generality inescapably renders them susceptible to various understandings.

If Republicans and movement conservatives want to convince Americans that theirs is the party to support, they are better off eschewing appeals to principle. In the minds of many, their incessant appeals to principles are empty rhetoric anyhow, for if such allegedly distinctive GOP and "conservative" principles are consonant with the policies that Republicans have promoted for far too long, then, the average American voter concludes, there is no significant difference between this one national political party and the other.

Instead, the GOP and movement conservatives must put their money where their mouths are at and specify the policies, not the principles, to which they are committed.  And in order to make the purchase worthwhile for the voter, they better make sure that their policies are significantly, perhaps even radically, at odds with those of their rivals.