Conservatism needs work

[DJ]

In Canada, Alberta comes off far ahead of Quebec, despite both provinces having large natural resource bases. Perhaps the fact Quebec has a much higher level of taxation and squanders its wealth through a plethora of government programs has something to do with it?

Do you really think that you can equate Alberta's oil wealth with Quebec's resources?

 

[a_majoor]

Resources are resources, and Quebec has a very large and diversified resource base that is less suceptible to industry cycles than Albertan oil. It has the most potential to be the leading province in Canada, but it is not.

For a really extreme example, the former USSR had the resources of an entire continental landmass, including many valuable and exotic materials such as titanium, as well as more mundane items like oil, timber and food. The USSR was also governed by the Communist Party, which practiced a form of socialism based on the theories of Marx and interpretations by I.V. Lenin. Theory (including some being quoted here) would suggest that this combination of socialism coupled to a rich human and natural resource base would be a totally unstoppable combination.

The end result after 70 years was a nation in ruins, the environment poisoned, a demographic collapse happening and the average life span decreasing. Of course with their shriveled GDP/capita, Russia and the Russian people have very few resources available to reverse this decline. The shift from Socialism to Autocracy bodes ill for the long suffering people of Russia, this will constrain the ability of the people to exchange ideas, use existing resources in novel ways or create new wealth and resources to solve their problems.

 

[RangerRay]

In Canada, Alberta comes off far ahead of Quebec, despite both provinces having large natural resource bases. Perhaps the fact Quebec has a much higher level of taxation and squanders its wealth through a plethora of government programs has something to do with it?

I would almost say that a better comparison would be between Alberta and Saskatchewan.  They have virtually the same resources (as far as I know, oil and gas has no boundaries) yet a fundamental difference in economic policy.  One province is booming while the other stagnates in an ecomony created by crown corporations, and loses poplutaion to its more affluent neighbour.

Just looking at my own province, BC has a robust economy when there is a market-friendly party in power.  When the NDP are in power, the economy goes in the tank and people flee for Alberta.

Too much of a coincidink for me!

 

[a_majoor]

Another analysis of Conservatism. The poster is advocating very limited government, essentially a small "l" Libertarian position.

http://commonsenseaintsocommon.blogspot.com/2006/07/defining-conservatism.html

Defining Conservatism
This is one of those issues that I've been thinking about most of my adult life. Pulled into the mix are both my personal experiences, a ton of reading from a lot of different sources, media concepts of conservatism, both here in Canada and elsewhere, and a certain degree of randomness as to what I consider to be relevant.

When I boil it all down to basic principles, the one thing that Conservatism means to me is "small government". To put some more meat on the bones, people have created governments to do that which they cannot effectively do individually. Government that limits itself to only those purposes is a small government. Thomas Jefferson once said "That government is best which governs least.", and this, to me, is the best summary of conservatism that I can think of.

So then, what is conservatism not? I'm going to alienate some people who call themselves conservatives here, but so be it.

Social Conservatives
People who call themselves Social Conservatives often try and use the coercive power of the state to impose morality upon their fellow citizens. This has manifested itself in many forms over history: The Inquisition, Puritans in England, the "Religious Right" to name just a few.

It is not the role of government to define morality. Regardless of the majority of the people who hold a moral philosophy, government should never impose that morality upon others, with one provio:

Governments need to regulate the interaction of individual rights. For example, your right to swing your arms about wildly ends when your hand hits my nose.

Let's look at an issue that pops up in the news frequently, that being the posting of the "Ten Commandments" in public places and how my philosophy of conservatism applies. I feel that it is inappropriate for the state to make or fund such displays. On the other hand, they should not restrict private citizens from making, funding, and displaying them in public places.

Conservatives and Business
Contrary to popular belief, my view of conservatism is not pro-business. By contrast, it's not pro-labour, pro-consumer, or pro-anything. Simply put, the government needs to get out of the business of being in business. The free-market is the most powerful regulator that has ever, or will ever, exist.

That's not to say that I support a completely unregulated free-for-all. Governments need to ensure that there is a stable climate for business to operate within. This means that they need to ensure that the rule-of-law exists, contracts and other agreements between business and individuals have appropriate enforcement mechanisms.

In terms of investors, Governments have a legitimate role to play in ensuring that there is consistency among businesses so that investors can appropriately evaluate businesses and direct their investments. That does not mean that investors should be "protected" by governments from losses in financial markets, but they should have confidence that a company reports they had a profit of $x million, that that number can be reasonably compared to another company that reports $y million. I support laws like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that require corporate offices to personally certify financial results, and face personal civil and criminal penalties if those results are falsified.

Conservatives and Wealth Transfer
It is not the role of government to provide for people. There is a legitmate role for the government to provide assistance to those who cannot provide for themselves, not for those who will not.

Looking at the investor portion above, the basic point of government is to provide equality of opportunity, not equality of result. People need to be able to take risks and profit from them. Taking risks also means that you may lose from them, and generally speaking, the greate the potential profit, the greater the potential loss.

Conservatives and Labour
It is my firm opinion that the right of free association is absolutely critical in a free society. With that said, it is the right of employees to band together to bargain collectively through trade and labour unions. It is also the right of individuals to choose to not associate with unions, and it is inappropriate to use the coercive power of the state to force such association. Nobody should be forced to join a union in order to work at a particular job, regardless of the opinion of other employees at that job site.

Conclusion
Conservatives span a wide range of opinions. There are many ways to emphasise the different aspects of what it is to be a Conservative, and this post is my attempt to define my opinion on the subject. I would never seek to impose my opinions on others. We conservatives are not a monolithic group, which has gotten us in trouble in the past, with some "wingnuts" being blown out of proportion by the media. Unlike some other political movements, I believe on of our greatest strengths is out ability to tolerate dissent and grow from it with constructive debate.

I leave you with these words, which I don't have appropriate attribution for (except that they're not my own!):
"Principles cannot be compromised. They can either be adhered to or surrendered. Honesty is surrendered as surely by the theft of a dime as a dollar".

 

[a_majoor]

Another look at Conservatism, this time from an objectivist viewpoint: (multi part post)

http://www.objectivistcenter.org/ct-1876-Up_from.aspx

Up from Conservatism
by Robert James Bidinotto

[Editor's note: On September 23, 2007, this article was honored with a prestigious 2007 Folio "Eddie" Gold Award for Editorial Excellence.]

“There is no commonly-acknowledged conservative position today, and any claim to the contrary is easy to make sport of.”  —William F. Buckley, Jr.

The preceding confession is noteworthy because its author has been a seminal spokesman for American conservatism. But more significant is the fact that by “today” he did not mean a day in 2007. No, William F. Buckley was referring to the day in May 1959 when he penned those words for the “Introduction” to his conservative manifesto, Up from Liberalism.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Indeed, nothing of philosophic substance has changed for the American right since the late Eisenhower years, when Buckley first acknowledged that conservatism was “disordered and confused.” That state of intellectual chaos persists to this day.

The seeds of this chaos can be found in the evolution of modern conservatism. In the aftermath of the New Deal and World War II, conservatism arose as an anti-statist intellectual movement incorporating two elements: anticommunism and opposition to the burgeoning welfare state. That intellectual movement transformed itself into a political coalition with the 1964 presidential candidacy of Barry Goldwater. It achieved its political ascendancy with the election of Ronald Reagan.

But as an anti-statist coalition, conservatism always defined itself in negative terms—and remained united in terms of what it opposed. Members of that coalition did not share a single, overarching, philosophical frame of reference or agenda. There were a number of competing intellectual forces within that coalition, and as long as they confronted common enemies, they could remain in an uneasy alliance.

However, with the 1989 collapse of communism and the 1994 Democratic electoral debacle, conservatives found themselves in the political driver’s seat—and suddenly in need of a positive agenda on economic and cultural issues. But which competing set of views and values within the coalition would define that agenda?

Ironically, then, at the conservatives’ very moment of political triumph, the unstable fault lines beneath its “big tent” began to crack apart. By 1996, U. S. News & World Report would note that the primary race within the GOP had become “a slugfest over the ideas and identity of the Republican Party,” a battle that “exposed a network of fissures and fault lines that is dividing the party and encouraging Democratic hopes of retaining the White House in November.” A prescient analysis in New York magazine even predicted “The Coming Republican Crack-up.”

And so it came to pass. Today, the American right no longer consists of just “conservatives.” There are “social conservatives,” “traditional conservatives,” “economic conservatives,” “religious conservatives,” “neoconservatives,” “paleoconservatives,” “compassionate conservatives,” and, more recently, “South Park conservatives,” “crunchy conservatives” (see the book review in this issue), even “big-government conservatives”—all battling each other for the “conservative” mantle. And in the wake of the 2006 Republican election defeat, the intramural bloodletting has only gotten more ferocious.

Why should this factional warfare on the political right matter to any of us?

It matters because these battles are being waged among those who proclaim themselves to be the champions of America’s moral, intellectual, cultural, and political legacy. The combatants all declare themselves to be the keepers of the American flame, its guardians against the anti-American ideologues who seek to snuff it out. The outcome of their conflicts will either uphold or undermine the very meaning of that legacy.

It matters critically if America’s moral heritage is seen as standing for the primacy of the individual—or the supremacy of society over the individual. It matters critically if America’s intellectual heritage is interpreted as being rooted in reason—or in religious faith. It matters critically if America’s cultural heritage is regarded as the product of individual creativity—or of social tradition. It matters critically if America’s political heritage is viewed as founded upon the principles of individual rights and limited government—or upon pragmatic expediency and unconstrained statism.

These issues are of no concern to the postmodern relativists of the left, who are doing their utmost to obliterate what remains of the American Enlightenment legacy. Today, only on the political right are these matters seriously addressed and debated. Therefore, who wins these arguments will decisively shape our future as a nation and culture.

 

[a_majoor]

Long article; part 2:

http://www.objectivistcenter.org/ct-1876-Up_from.aspx

So who are today’s conservatives, and what do they believe?

“Principled Unprincipledness”

On his first page in Up from Liberalism, Buckley warned of the danger that “comes when a distrust of doctrinaire social systems eases over into a dissolute disregard for principle.” Well, then, what principle do all the various conservative factions share? What single idea would distinguish them, as a group, from non-conservatives?

It is an enduring indictment of the movement that nearly a half-century since Buckley acknowledged conservatism’s intellectual drift, no one has yet provided a clear answer. Those on the right who have tried to get a grip on the defining principle of conservatism have approached the subject warily, only to retreat empty-handed.

“So what is a conservative?” asked Jonah Goldberg, an editor at National Review Online (NRO), in his May 11, 2005 column. “I’ve been wrestling with this for a long  time and I don’t pretend to have a perfect or definitive answer. . . From the beginning, American conservatives have been trying to answer this question definitively to almost no one’s satisfaction.”

One would think that the godfather of modern conservatism himself might shed some light here. John Dean, former White House counsel during the Nixon years, recalls a segment with Buckley on Chris Matthews’s Hardball television show. According to Dean, Matthews asked for a definition, and Mr. Conservative uncharacteristically stammered, “The, the, it’s very hard to define, define conservatism.” Buckley then retreated to his more characteristic linguistic impenetrability, quoting a University of Chicago professor: “Conservatism is a paradigm of essences towards which the phenomenology of the world is in continuing approximation.”

Yes. Of course. That helps.

A survey of conservative literature does not offer illumination, either. In fact, conservative thinkers are much more forthcoming about what their “ism” is not than what it is. This is no accident, for many of them seem to take pride in their hostility to coherent, systematic philosophical thinking.

Writing in The Conservative Tradition (1950), scholar R.J. White described conservatism as “less a political doctrine than a habit of mind, a mode of feeling, a way of living.” Similarly, conservative organizer Paul Weyrich, in an August 15, 2005 column, echoes the anti-ideological rhetoric of Buckley, White, and others:

      If there is one clear lesson from the 20th century, it is that all ideologies are dangerous. As Russell Kirk wrote, conservatism is not an ideology, it is the negation of ideology. Conservatism values what has grown up over time, over many generations, in the form of traditions, customs and habits. Ideology, in contrast, says that on the basis of such-and-such a philosophy, certain things must be true. When reality contradicts that deduction, reality must be suppressed.

Leaving aside the falsehood that systematic philosophy must necessarily try to impose itself on reality—a claim that would have raised the hackles of Aristotle and all those in his system-building tradition—Weyrich nails it when he describes conservatism as “the negation of ideology.” Humanities professor Wilfred M. McClay, writing in January 2007 on Commentary magazine’s website, affirms that…

      …conservatism in American politics is less an ideology than a coalition. It has many different flavors and strands, and there is no sense in pretending that they do not occasionally conflict with one another, or tug at the fabric of the whole. As in any coalition, not all of the pieces fit together coherently.

      This is always frustrating to those who want their ideology neat and pure. But show me a political movement that has a clear, crisp, unambiguous, and systematic philosophy and I will show you a movement that will lose, and will deserve to lose.

McClay goes on to cite the views of another conservative, prominent blogger and author Andrew Sullivan:

      “The defining characteristic of the conservative,” Sullivan asserts [in The Conservative Soul], “is that he knows what he doesn’t know.” This stance of systematic modesty, or principled unprincipledness, undergirds the way Sullivan himself, an avowed if unorthodox Catholic, proposes to understand politics, culture, society, and religion itself.

“The negation of ideology.” “Principled unprincipledness.” Surely, no one can seriously accuse contemporary conservative leaders of valuing philosophic consistency and integration; what is astonishing, however, is how many of them tout their quest for intellectual incoherence as a virtue.

Conservatism may be incoherent, but it is not entirely vacuous. The stew that is today’s conservatism does contain a number of ingredients: a lumpy, indigestible assortment of premises, attitudes, and values meant to satisfy the diverse tastes of those who bear the movement’s label. Among these ingredients: traditionalism, irrationalism, pragmatism, altruism, tribalism, and—clashing with all the rest—individualism.

The factionalism on the right can be understood by the differing emphases that various conservatives place on these elements.

Traditionalism

For “cultural,” “social,” “paleo-,” and “religious” conservatives, preserving “traditional values” lies at the heart of their concerns and interests. Traditionalists lean heavily on the presumed “authority” of what was said and done by others in the past.

In his influential little book The American Cause, traditionalist conservative author Russell Kirk stressed the “Christian principles which sustain American society,” behind which “is a great weight of authority and tradition and practice.” According to the online Wikipedia, the late paleoconservative writer Samuel Francis “defined authentic conservatism as ‘the survival and enhancement of a particular people and its institutionalized cultural expressions.’ Roger Scruton calls it ‘maintenance of the social ecology’ and ‘the politics of delay, the purpose of which is to maintain in being, for as long as possible, the life and health of a social organism.’”

For such traditionalist conservatives, this means yearning nostalgically for past ways of doing things. Paul Weyrich writes:

      I know America has always been a future-focused country. But that may be changing. . . . Even fifteen years ago, most people said the past was better than the present and the future would be worse than the present. I think millions of Americans might rally to a call to return to the ways we used to live, in many (obviously not all) aspects of our lives…. I really think that a next conservatism that included a movement to recover our old ways of thinking and living could win the culture war, which so far we have lost. . . . Bill Lind [director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at Weyrich’s Free Congress Foundation] calls it Retroculture. What it means is that, in our own lives and the lives of our families, and eventually our communities, we would deliberately revive old ways of doing things.

But why is “old” synonymous with “good”? A withering assessment of traditionalist conservatism came from philosopher Ayn Rand in her famous essay “Conservatism: An Obituary”:

      It is certainly irrational to use the “new” as a standard of value. . . .But it is much more preposterously irrational to use the “old” as a standard of value, to claim that an idea or a policy is good merely because it is ancient. . . . The argument that we must respect “tradition” as such, respect it merely because it is a “tradition,” means that we must accept the values other men have chosen, merely because other men have chosen them—with the necessary implication of: who are we to change them? The affront to a man’s self-esteem, in such an argument, and the profound contempt for man’s nature are obvious.

Cultural conservatives reply that their own traditions are grounded in “timeless values” and “permanent truths.” In fact, though, their hand-me-down values, attitudes, and practices are actually rooted (if that’s the word) in cultural relativism.

Whose “old ways of thinking” are to be chosen as true and valuable? By what standard is “a particular people and its institutionalized cultural expressions” to be considered superior to all others? To simply assert, without reason, the superiority of one’s own cultural traditions to those of any other society is the height of arbitrariness. Yet that cultural relativism lies at the heart of the traditionalist outlook.

In his book Right from the Beginning, well-known conservative spokesman Patrick Buchanan provides a perfect example of his own cultural relativism. Note in the following his employment of the words “our” and “ours”:

      Traditionalists and conservatives have as much right as secularists to see our values written into law, to have our beliefs serve as the basis for federal legislation. . . .[We must not stop fighting] until we have re-created a government and an America that conforms, as close as possible, to our image of the Good Society, if you will, a Godly country. . . .Someone’s values are going to prevail. Why not ours? Whose country is it, anyway?

This is not a rational voice demonstrating the validity of “permanent truths.” It is a thuggish voice whose only argument for his views is “Sez me!”—and whose only defense of his values is “…because they’re mine.”

None Dare Call It Reason

The gleeful rejection by many conservatives of integrated, coherent philosophical thinking has been noted and quoted. But that is only one symptom of their broader contempt for reason as such, for the products of human creativity, and for those eras in human history—such as the Enlightenment—when reason flourished.

For diehard religious traditionalists, the basic institutions of a free society have their basis and justification not in reason and reality, but in faith and the supernatural. The religious conservative worldview was given voice by Russell Kirk in The American Cause.

“Civilization grows out of religion,” Kirk declared. “The ideas of freedom, private rights, charity, love, duty, and honesty, for instance, are all beliefs religious in origin [emphasis added]. These ideals also are discussed and advanced by philosophers, of course,” Kirk concedes, “but the original impulse behind them is religious.”

In other words, there is little reason to be honest, or to love, or to require personal liberty; the ultimate rationale for such things can only be otherworldly.

Among the specific ideas supposedly at the foundation of American freedom—ideas that we must accept on faith, according to Kirk—are “original sin”; the view that “the world is a place of moral suffering, a place of trial”; that “perfect happiness never can be attained upon this earth, in time and space as we know them, or in our perishing physical bodies,” for “this little worldly existence of ours … is not our be-all and end-all.”

Given this lowly view of human nature, it of course follows that there could be no natural source for a conception of human dignity and worth: “The dignity of man,” says Kirk, “exists only through our relationship with God,” and from that relationship only “there has grown up a recognition of what are called ‘natural rights.’”

In short, without religious faith—specifically, Christianity, and more narrowly still, a dour, Calvinist brand of it—there would be absolutely no good reason for men to value themselves, to respect each other’s rights, or to desire liberty.

Is there any rational alternative to this malignant view of man and his potential? Conflating faith and reason, neoconservative intellectual Irving Kristol dismissed “faith in the ability of reason to solve all of our moral problems, including our human need for moral guidance.” Reason, he declared in a 1992 essay, “is a faith that has failed”:

      Secular rationalism has been unable to produce a compelling, self-justifying moral code. Philosophy can analyze moral codes in interesting ways, but it cannot create them. And with this failure, the whole enterprise of secular humanism—the idea that man can define his humanity and shape the human future by reason and will alone—begins to lose its legitimacy.

The logical implication is clear. Our American way of life—its freedoms, its values, its opportunities, its achievements—cannot be rationally justified. There is no reason that these values can be labeled “good” or “right,” no rational method by which they can be validated as superior to the slavery, butchery, and destruction that occurs elsewhere in the world. Reason can’t sort out the good from the bad in any of this; we must simply resign ourselves to accepting these things on blind faith.

 

[a_majoor]

Part 3:

http://www.objectivistcenter.org/ct-1876-Up_from.aspx

Pragmatism

Because their source of morality is otherworldly, and because they therefore do not believe that morality can be consistently practiced in this world, many conservatives have thrown in the towel, embracing inconsistency and compromise as “necessary evils.” Pragmatists are the conservatives who preach “the negation of ideology” and “principled unprincipledness.”

Neoconservatives, particularly, are pragmatists who dismiss moral principle—on principle. In a cynical Wall Street Journal essay (“When It’s Wrong to Be Right,” March 24, 1993), neocon guru Irving Kristol presented to fellow conservatives what he called his first law of politics: that “there are moments when it is wrong to do the right thing.” He explained: “There are occasions where circumstances trump principles. Statesmanship consists not in being loyal to one’s avowed principles (that’s easy), but in recognizing the occasions when one’s principles are being trumped by circumstances. . . .”

Of course, there’s a problem with this claim. By what principle could Kristol determine when to abandon his principles? In reality, there is no such principle. The governing consideration of when to exercise expediency would be … expediency.

And, indeed, pragmatic expediency has governed most choices made by the Bush administration—no surprise, since it has been heavily influenced by neoconservatives. President George W. Bush often pays lip service to “principles” in the abstract, but rarely specifies exactly what those principles are. They certainly have not been the principles of individual rights, limited government, and free-market capitalism. On the day of President Bush’s State of the Union address, author David Frum—a conservative more sympathetic to those principles, observed:

      The most important thing to understand about George W. Bush’s domestic policy is that he is not and never has been an economic individualist in the Reagan/Thatcher model. He cut taxes yes, but for essentially political coalition-building reasons. Beyond that, his instincts have always been statist and centralizing. That’s why he emphasized standards rather than choice in his education proposals—and why subsidy, not markets, has always been central to his hopes for new energy sourcing. . . .

      The day will come, and probably soon, when American liberals and the American left will wake up to the fact that . . . on domestic issues Bush was “one of us.” Much as they disliked Bush’s foreign policies, cultural style, and political methods, he actually had more in common with them on domestic issues than he did with his own political base. It will someday be very hard to explain why liberals so hated Bush.

Today, pragmatists like President Bush are the most prevalent group among Republican officeholders. The reason is simple: The other feuding conservative factions tend to cancel each other out, forcing the GOP to resign itself to candidates preaching compromise and consensus.

But pragmatists have no ideas or agenda of their own: the other philosophical camps provide the ideas and pressures to which pragmatists respond. Like dry sponges, they soak up whatever notions flow forth from their more ideological competitors. It’s the latter who define the debates and thus shape the future.

 

[a_majoor]

Part 4

http://www.objectivistcenter.org/ct-1876-Up_from.aspx

Altruism

One of the most toxic influences in our political life is the moral view that equates “virtue” with “self-sacrifice.” No other single factor has been as responsible for eroding America’s individualist heritage and capitalist system than the view that self-sacrifice to others constitutes our highest moral duty and virtue. Yet, it is a “virtue” that conservatives have never rejected.

“It is useless to argue, as some libertarians do, that we do not need redistribution at all,” wrote conservative former senator Jack Kemp in his 1979 book, An American Renaissance. “The people, as a people, rightly insist that the whole look after the weakest of its parts.” “Democracy works only so long as a sufficient proportion of the people are willing to place the common good above self-interest,” said Paul Weyrich in 1990. Among the “major weaknesses in a market economy,” declared Irving Kristol in 1992, “the first is the self-interested nature of commercial activity.”

The potency of the toxin of self-sacrifice was demonstrated clearly and dramatically in the mid-1990s during the budget battle to enact the Republican “Contract with America.” President Bill Clinton successfully exploited charges of “selfishness” against congressional Republicans in order to neutralize support for their economic and political reforms. By the time the fight was over, conservative Republicans were retreating in full gallop from the principles of individual liberty and limited government.

“The budget battle,” said conservative strategist and writer William Kristol, “played into the two great Republican vulnerabilities: that we are the party of the rich and meanspirited.” Vulnerabilities? Only because the Republicans have never dared to fully embrace individualism. They never have argued, unequivocally, that individuals have the moral right to exist for their own sakes—and that this is the moral reason to limit government and slash the spending that plunders some individuals to benefit others.

What followed the failure of the “Republican Revolution”—and what has continued ever since—is a desperate competition among conservatives to demonstrate that they have just as much “compassion” as do liberal Democrats.

And how do they demonstrate that “compassion”?

By using the coercive power of government to seize the earnings of some people and to transfer it to others who did not earn it but who claim to “need” it.

Religious conservative Marvin Olasky, author of The Tragedy of American Compassion, became “the godfather of compassionate conservatism.”  In July 2000, he  told an audience at the conservative Heritage Foundation: “More people are understanding that the problem with the welfare state is not its cost but its stinginess in providing help that is patient; help that is kind; help that protects, trusts, and perseveres; help that goes beyond good intentions into gritty, street-level reality.”

In reality, the problem with the welfare state is neither its cost nor its “stinginess,” but its underlying ethical premise: that the needs of some constitute valid moral claims upon the earnings and property of others. 

Olasky became an advisor to George W. Bush, who adopted the “compassionate conservative” cause as his own during his 2000 campaign for the White House. “It is compassionate to actively help our fellow citizens in need,” President Bush later declared. “It is conservative to insist on responsibility and results.”

“The President rejects the old argument of ‘big government’ vs. ‘indifferent government,’” explains a White House Web page on “compassionate conservatism.” “We do not believe in a sink-or-swim society [emphasis in original]. The policies of our government must heed the universal call of all faiths to love our neighbors as we would want to be loved ourselves. We are using an active government to promote self-government.”

Translated, “indifferent government” actually means constitutionally limited government. A “sink-or-swim society” means a society based on self-responsibility. And the call for an “active government” to help us “love our neighbors” means governmental redistribution of the wealth. What the White House statement means, then, is this: “We are abandoning America’s founding principles of limited government and individual self-responsibility and instead adopting a policy of legalized plunder.”

And so they have.

Tribalism

The continuing controversy over immigration underscores yet another ugly premise within cultural conservative circles: tribalism.

Tribalists draw their personal identities from group affiliations. They believe that there are inherent conflicts of interests among men that pit their group against all others in a battle for social supremacy. This prompts them to see themselves as victims of powerful elites, group favoritism, and dark conspiracies—a paranoid view that fuels envy and hostility.

The two dominant tribalist factions within the conservative movement are nationalists and populists.

Nationalists focus on national, racial, and cultural conflicts of interest, seeing themselves as in a “culture war” to preserve our “national identity” from foreigners and racial, ethnic, and religious minorities. Thus, they oppose foreign trade, treaties, immigration, and racial/ethnic integration.

Populists define themselves not by nation or race, but by economic class. They believe that there is a fixed national economic “pie” to be divided, and so any gains by others must come at their expense. This prompts them to see themselves as “little guys” exploited by a privileged elite of bureaucrats, businessmen, and bankers.

Prominent tribalists within the conservative movement include writers associated with the magazine Chronicles, political figure Patrick Buchanan, and radio talk show host Michael Savage.

Samuel Francis, the late firebrand writer for Chronicles, once wrote that “the concept of ‘America First’ implies a nationalist ethic that transcends the preferences and interest of the individual or the interest group and may often require government action.” For his part, Buchanan has spent much of the past decade pressing both nationalist and populist hot buttons, bashing immigrants, foreign trade, and international institutions. Meanwhile, Savage—the third-highest-rated radio talk show host in the nation, and a bestselling author—delivers nightly tirades “to take back our borders, our language, and our traditional culture from the liberal left corroding our great nation.”

Such are the major intellectual forces within the conservative movement that are working to undermine the commitment to our nation’s founding premises: reason, individualism, capitalism, and limited government.

Fortunately, they are not the only intellectual forces at work.

 

[a_majoor]

Part 5:

http://www.objectivistcenter.org/ct-1876-Up_from.aspx

Fortunately, they are not the only intellectual forces at work.

Individualism

Individualists constitute the most intellectual and principled elements on the right, upholding Enlightenment premises about man, his rights, his relationship to his fellow man and to the state. Though fewer in number, they wield disproportionate and growing influence, mainly via independent public-policy journals and think tanks.

Among individualist subgroups today are economic conservatives and political libertarians, as well as rational individualists. To the debates on the political right, they bring, respectively, market-based economic proposals, initiatives to limit government power, and a cohesive moral-philosophical vision.

Individualists differ over how to advance their shared ends and in their consistency. Indeed, some economic conservatives and libertarians uphold individualism only tacitly and harbor mixed premises—including some of the premises dissected above. Confused or even crippled morally and philosophically, they’ve only fought delaying actions for decades, slowing the growth of government regulation, spending, and taxation, but failing to reverse the trend.

Without more explicit philosophical moorings and guidance, it’s too much to expect economic conservatives and libertarians always to grasp—let alone publicly resist and repudiate—the many arguments and policies premised on altruism, pragmatism, tradition, and religion.

But that brings us to the final, and potentially most significant, subgroup on the right: rational individualists.

In her famous novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and in powerful nonfiction works such as Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, Ayn Rand forged a systematic philosophy of reason and freedom.

Rand was a philosopher, a novelist, and a passionate individualist. Her stories are compelling hymns in praise of “the men of unborrowed vision” who live by the judgment of their own minds—people willing to stand alone against tradition, popular opinion, even the frightful power of the state. Meanwhile, her challenging new philosophy, Objectivism, upholds the power of reason and rejects the tribalist ethics of self-sacrifice.

Objectivism celebrates the power of man’s mind. It defends reason and science against every form of irrationalism. It provides an intellectual foundation for objective standards of truth and value. It upholds the use of reason to transform nature and create wealth. It honors the businessman and the banker, no less than the philosopher and artist, as creators and as benefactors of mankind.

Ayn Rand urged men to hold themselves and their lives as their highest values, and to live by the code of the free individual. She taught that we bring meaning to the world through the exercise of self-reliance, integrity, rationality, productive effort.

Politically, Rand was a great champion of individual rights, which is the concept that protects the sovereignty of the individual as an end in himself; of limited, constitutional government, which is the institution that guarantees those rights; and of capitalism, which is the social system that allows people to exercise those rights. Rand’s vision was of a society where people live together peaceably, by voluntary trade, as independent equals.

Millions of readers have been inspired by the vision of life in Ayn Rand's novels. Scholars are exploring the trails she blazed in philosophy and other fields. Her principled defense of capitalism has drawn new adherents to the cause of economic and political liberty.

Her ideas can now serve as the basis for a new intellectual force: a movement of rational individualists.

However, Rand observed that it’s still too early to expect consistently individualist candidates to win public office: the moral and philosophical groundwork has yet to be laid. But this suggests where individualists can best make their impact felt.

Completing the Revolution

First, principled individualists must publicly challenge and repudiate the rising tribalism and irrationalism on the right.

America is a big place of many competing forces and factions. There’s no immediate danger that America will fall prey to right-wing theocrats or nationalist mobs. The real danger is that the ideas of anti-individualist factions within the conservative movement will be picked up and “mainstreamed” by Republican Party pragmatists. That is exactly what happened during the Bush administration, and the results have been catastrophic for liberty.

Those factions and their ugly ideas must be fought by tearing away their deceptive “pro-American” packaging.

Unique among nations, America was constituted to advance not tribal interests but individual life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In that sense, nationalism and populism are fundamentally un-American. They are ideologically alien to America’s Enlightenment heritage of reason, individual rights, and capitalism.

Second, principled individualists must begin to defend capitalism on moral grounds.

Because of the cultural pervasiveness of the “self-sacrifice” ethic, capitalism has seldom had champions, only nervous apologists. But now there is undeniable empirical evidence of the intellectual bankruptcy pervading the conservative movement. As if the 1996 collapse of the “Republican Revolution” weren’t enough, the disastrous legacy of the Bush administration provides damning proof that no free-market economic or political reforms can take root in cultural soils poisoned by tradition-worship, irrationalism, altruism, tribalism, and pragmatism. A decade filled with glaring examples demonstrates the futility of an aphilosophical approach to political and social reform.

As we’ve seen, some conservative thinkers have long understood that their fundamental philosophical ideas are incompatible with capitalism and freedom. Some have even explicitly renounced their commitment to America’s founding ideals, forsaking any further pretense of defending capitalism or limiting government.

Those of us who have not abandoned this cause—those of us who are fully committed to the promise of America—must man the ramparts from which the traditionalists and pragmatists have retreated.

We must replace their tribal code of self-sacrifice with an inspiring new moral vision of principled self-interest, an ethics that will resonate within the American soul and reflect our nation’s highest rational traditions.

We must boldly champion a limited-government reform agenda—on the moral grounds of an individual’s right to exist for his own sake.

We must proudly uphold the social-economic system of laissez-faire capitalism: the system that has allowed hundreds of millions to realize their individual potential, while creating the greatest civilization in the history of the world.

We must remember that ours is not a battle against self-sacrifice, tradition, or tribalism; it’s a crusade for individualism. That battle can’t begin within the Republican Party, nor be led by political candidates dependent upon public favor. It is an intellectual battle, and it must start in the intellectual arena: in the journals, think tanks, and talk shows of the right.

We must understand that our path to political and cultural influence will be indirect, at first. It will lie not in politicking, but in the broader realm of ideas.

For well over two centuries, America has been home to the only social system in history fully compatible with human life on earth. Yet, from its beginnings, that system has been maligned by its sworn enemies and betrayed by its supposed friends.

Irving Kristol was right about one thing. The secular humanism of the Enlightenment era never did produce a compelling moral code. This failure stemmed from the inability of the thinkers of that era to fully repudiate the tribal morality of self-sacrifice, and to replace it with a new, individualist alternative.

Now it is time for us to complete the work begun with the American political revolution by launching the American moral revolution—for the legacy that America’s Founding Fathers bequeathed to us for safekeeping is a legacy that we truly must conserve.

Bidinotto_Robert_inf.jpg

Robert Bidinotto is the editor of The New Individualist.

 

[a_majoor]

If Conservatives are to be successful in the long term, they need to clearly be a party of ideas. While this seems to fly in the face of recent history (The Liberal Party was still using the 1993 "Red Book" as their 2005 platform, and nothing new has surfaced from them since); in the past Liberals *did* have ideas. Louis St Laurent is the architect of many of modern Canada's institutions and international security agreements, and Pierre Trudeau was the architect of the "Just Society". Similarly, Brian Mulroney ran and won on Free Trade, and Mike Harris ran and won on effective tax cutting on the Conservative side.

Ideas are always open to question and analysis, I only put forth these examples because they are pretty clear cut. John Tory did not run on ideas, and look what happened to him:

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=9de4432d-9564-44f4-9dfe-1dfa6a43f082&p=1

Bye-Bye, Mr. Nice Guy

Adam Daifallah
National Post

Friday, October 26, 2007

Watching Canadian Conservative parties lose elections is like a young child watching his favourite tragic movie: Despite the sad ending, he hopes that this time, it will turn out differently.

Here's how the story goes: the Conservatives pick a leader deemed moderate and likeable. Said leader is expected to cruise to victory in the next election. Said leader will not propose much policy and will not draw clear distinctions with the Liberals. Said leader will win based on personality. Said leader runs on the "vote for me, I'm like the Liberals but nicer" mantra. Said leader loses.

At the federal level, Robert Stan-field, Joe Clark, Kim Campbell and Jean Charest all followed this pattern. In Ontario, there was Larry Grossman, Ernie Eves --and now John Tory.

Tory's collapse is particularly illustrative. The bridesmaid in the 2004 Toronto mayoralty race, he easily won the party leadership on a promise to break with the Harris era and win in Toronto. He was loved by the media because, to them, he represented everything Harris wasn't: moderate, inclusive and compassionate. "John Tory represents a less strident brand of conservatism that was once common in this country -- one that favours free markets and fiscal prudence, but also believes in social justice and the positive power of government," declared a Toronto Life writer in a fawning profile in August. Lamenting the apparent decline of Red Toryism, the magazine called Ontario's Conservative leader the ideology's "last hope."

Hopes were high after Dalton Mc-Guinty's promise-breaking reign as Premier, and pre-writ polls showed a dead heat. But Tory collapsed like the others before him by running a campaign devoid of ideas. Well, except for one -- his ill-fated promise to extend public funding to faith-based schools. Conservative campaign strategists were frustrated with the media's singular focus on this issue, but the blame lay with the Conservatives themselves. They gave the press nothing else to talk about. (Not only did Tory's school-funding idea clash with the public's gradually decreasing level of faith in multiculturalism, it was not the least bit "conservative." Unlike the Harris government's tax-credit proposal for private school tuition, the Tory policy would have essentially nationalized private schools, bringing them under the purview of the public education system.)

By all accounts, Tory is a terrific person. His record in business and commitment to civic duty are beyond reproach. He inspires intense loyalty amongst those around him. And, in his defence, it is never easy to defeat a government when the economy is strong.

But the lesson from this campaign and others like it remains clear nonetheless: The Conservatives do well when they run on ideas, particularly when they are easy to understand and well packaged. Brian Mulroney may have won on charm and Liberal fatigue in 1984, but in 1988 free trade catapulted him to re-election. Mike Harris' campaigns in 1995 and 1999 were very much focused on ideas. Stephen Harper lost when he ran an unfocused campaign in 2004 and won in 2006 with a simple five-point program.

Voters are smart enough to know that if they want Liberals, they can vote for the real thing. Campaigns devoid of conservative policy fail to win over new voters and simultaneously demoralize the party's base by giving them no reason to show up at the polls. In the end, some policy will beat no policy at all.

Tory has now disavowed his school proposal. His supporters are trying to lay blame at the feet of senior campaign advisors and calling for them to be replaced. But it was Tory who put those people in place to run the campaign, and who listened to their ideas. Choosing the right people to surround yourself with is part of leadership. The leader must be held responsible for those choices.

A party leadership review will take place next February, and Tory is planning to fight to keep his job. Regardless of what happens, let this be the last time any Conservative party jettisons a conservative agenda in the hopes of winning just by showing up and trying to be nice. We've seen that movie once too often.

adam@daifallah.com

 

[RangerRay]

From my far away vantage point, it appears that the British Tories will emulate their Ontario namesakes result with their "Blairesque" leader, David Cameron.  He has pretty much repudiated Thatcherism and appears to be steering the Tories toward "Labour-lite" policies.

On the other hand, here in BC, this is meeting a different result.  After their victory in 2001, Gordon Campbell and the BC Liberals embarked on "Harris-inspired" program of reducing the size and scope of the provincial government, and decreasing taxes.  However, after losing ground in the 2005 election, the BC Liberal government has become bland, avoiding controversial policies, and moving towards the centre.  Currently, Premier Campbell and the BC Liberals have never been more popular!  ???

 

[a_majoor]

Interesting observation, but time will tell. The BC Liberals were elected because they had distinctive ideas, but are now in the process of repudiating them. In the next election, will people vote for them, or a party which clearly stands for something? (Rhetorical question at best).

 

[RangerRay]

As to the BC Liberals, I believe that they will be re-elected without any problems.  Even though they are not as "right-wing" as they were in their first term, there is no credible free-enterprise alternative for the more "conservative" voter to support.  I believe most "conservative" voters will still vote for the BC Liberals simply to keep the Socialist Horde (aka the NDP) out of office.

In BC, the NDP only wins when the free-enterprise vote (comprised of federal Conservative and blue Liberal voters) is split.  Right now, there is no credible alternative on the right.

 

[a_majoor]

Here is a site more geared to actions:

http://www.freedom-force.org/

The Freedom Force strategy can be summarized as:
Don't fight city hall when you can BE city hall.

 

[a_majoor]

Thoughts for a new generation of Conservatives:

http://www.amazon.ca/Comeback-Conservatism-That-Can-Again/dp/0385515332

At a moment of crisis and pessimism for American conservatives, David Frum offers fresh ideas—and fresh hope.

Not in a generation has conservatism been in as much trouble as it is at the end of the Bush years. A majority of Americans say the country is “on the wrong track.” Voters prefer Democrats over Republicans on almost every issue, including taxes. The married, the middle-class, the native-born are dwindling as a share of the population, while Democratic blocs are rising. A generation of young people has turned its back on the Republican party.

Too many conservatives and Republicans have shut their eyes to negative trends. David Frum offers answers.

Frum says that the ideas that won elections for conservatives in the 1980s have done their job. Republicans can no longer win elections on taxes, guns, and promises to restore traditional values. It’s time now for a new approach, including:

A conservative commitment to make private-sector health insurance available to every American
Lower taxes on savings and investment financed by higher taxes on energy and pollution
Federal policies to encourage larger families
Major reductions in unskilled immigration
A genuinely compassionate conservatism, including a conservative campaign for prison reform and government action against the public health disaster of obesity
A new conservative environmentalism that promotes nuclear power in place of coal and oil
Higher ethical standards inside the conservative movement and the Republican party
A renewed commitment to expand and rebuild the armed forces of the United States—to crush terrorism—and get ready for the coming challenge from China

Frum’s previous bestselling books have earned accolades for their courage and creativity from liberals and conservatives alike. Today, with the conservative movement and the Republican Party facing their greatest danger since Watergate, Frum has again stepped forward with new ideas to take conservatism—and America—into a new century of greatness.

 

[a_majoor]

A review of David Frum's latest book:

http://www.irpp.org/po/archive/apr08/daifallah.pdf

After Bush: updating conservatism
David Frum. Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win
Again. New York and Toronto: Doubleday, 2007
Review by Adam Daifallah

How the mighty have fallen. The triumphalist proclamations of the late 1990s and early 2000s had it that conservatism and the Republican
Party were in a “permanent” majority situation, an electoral behemoth out of the reach of the out-of-synch, out-ofdate and rudderless Democrats.

Then came the messy war in Iraq, George W. Bush’s unpopular presidency, the bungled handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster and various scandals involving lobbyists and politicians (think Senator Larry Craig and his “wide stance”).

The Republican Party in 2008 is in dire straits, and the back-patting of recent years now seems unbelievably misguided, if not laughable. What went wrong, and how do they regain their glory? Very few people are asking the tough questions, and David Frum is one of the
few who are. In the short but stinging Comeback, Frum, the Canadian expatriate who wrote speeches for President Bush, sets out to define three things: what went wrong, why the ideas of the past no longer work and how to win again.

Few are as good as Frum at highlighting the shortcomings of his own movement. Out of curiosity, after reading Comeback, I dusted off my copy of his 1994 breakout book, Dead Right. That volume had a similar theme: how to rejuvenate the conservative movement. In Dead Right, Frum surveyed the failings of the Reagan years, analyzed the state of  the Republican Party, and concluded by challenging conservatives and Republicans to recommit themselves to shrinking the size of government. That goal has eluded every self-proclaimed conservative revolutionary, from Reagan to Thatcher to Mike Harris.

In 2008, Frum takes a different tack. Writing now as much less an observer of politics and more an active partisan (he constantly uses the term “we” to describes Republicans and conservatives throughout), Frum says the solutions of the past can no longer work. The Reagan revolution is over, he says, and conservative ideas have won the day.

Inflation is consistently low. Income taxes have been reduced so much that nearly 30 million income earning households don’t pay any tax at all. Crime hardly registers as an issue. He trots out a plethora of social science data to demonstrate that the recent demographic,
economic and attitudinal shifts in American make it so that the issues of the past no longer have traction.

Therefore, according to Frum, it is time to move on to new ideas and a new conservatism fit for the times. This time Frum is not  advocating a libertarian-style revolution. Rather, he is happy to use the levers of the state to move the country in a more conservative direction. He wants to introduce tuition tax credits for families earning less than $75,000 a year. He urges the Republicans to come up with better solutions to the health care problem or permanently cede the issue to the Democrats. He wishes America would do more to help India, to try to advantage it over Communist China. There are even suggestions for a conservative campaign to humanize prisons and for a government campaign against the obesity epidemic.

Another surprise is Frum’s enthusiasm for a carbon tax to wean America off its dependence on oil and to force expansion of nuclear energy production. As someone who has advocated a Canadian conservative co-opting of the environmental issue, I find this strategy makes obvious sense. Environmental issues cut across the partisan divide, and much as in health care, the American right is presently offering no innovative policies.

This book will surprise some readers, who (mostly wrongly) associate Frum with the right wing of the Republican Party. This is no libertarian manifesto. But as an adherent myself to the view that conservatism in America and throughout the Anglosphere needs
some updating, I think Frum makes some convincing points. Attitudes and priorities have changed, and any political movement wishing to stay relevant must change with them.

Conservatism is in a state of crisis compared to where it was only a few years ago. Before Frum’s prescriptions are contemplated or adopted, a return to first principles — just as he advocated in his 1994 book — would probably be a much better first step. Frum does prescribe this near the end of his book, urging conservatives  to stop neglecting the “ideas business.” But I think it would be more useful
if they were to do this first before exploring specific policies. The movement is lost. Another problem is that the movement has no clear white knight (or “next Reagan”) at the moment. Without strong leadership at the top acting as a uniting force, there is little hope that the base of the movement and the party could be dragged in a new direction.

If nothing else, this book should cause the American conservative movement to give itself a good look in the mirror. It needs it.

Adam Daifallah is co-author, with Tasha Kheiriddin, of Rescuing Canada’s Right: Blueprint for a Conservative Revolution
(2005, John Wiley & Sons).

 

[a_majoor]

While David Frum says Conservatism needs to change and evolve, this poster disagrees.

http://strongconservative.blogspot.com/2008/06/conservatism-is-timeless.html

Conservatism is Timeless
Some conservatives, like David Frum and others, have argued that conservatism needs to change in order to win. Adaptation to new realities, evolution of thought, etc...

But conservative principles are timeless: freedom, the rights of the individual, democracy, free markets (capitalism), the rule of law, personal responsibility, peace through strength, government of the people, the subjugation of government to the will of the electorate, less government is better government. These are what conservatism is.

Rush Limbaugh artfully describes this reality:

RUSH: I was perusing using various websites, conservative websites. (I'm not going to mention the name; it doesn't matter; they're a dime a dozen now.) But I ran across some guy in a little post on his blog say, "You know, conservatives have got to change with the times. This is not Reagan anymore. They can't keep talking about Reagan. We've gotta modernize. We've gotta adapt." You know, the problem with this is... Let me make it as simple as possible. It has nothing to do with Reagan. It has nothing to do with cult-like devotion to Ronald Reagan. It has to do with the fact that personal freedom will never go out of style and personal freedom is at the root of conservatism; personal freedom and liberty and holding on it and maintaining it. And that's what conservative is, and that's never going to go out of style, and I don't know that we have to adapt that to anything other than what needs to be adapted and changed and stopped is the ongoing movement found in way too many parts of this country that would infringe upon individual liberty and freedom and yet we're told, "Come on! You gotta adapt, you gotta modernize. You gotta understand where we're headed here. We got a new set of problems and so forth." That's just it. There isn't a problem in the world that doesn't have as its best start in solving it freedom, pure and simple.

Exactly! Preach it brother!

RUSH: Well, you are singing my tune, which basically is: We have defeatists who do nothing but accept every premise offered by the left (HAGEL). I have been part of a discussion before the program today -- well, I have been a witness to a discussion, one of these chat things, in a chat room on a blog -- amongst conservative intellectuals on global warming (conservative intellectual pamphleteers as you would call 'em) and they're all saying, "Well, of course it's happening, manmade global warming. Of course I was the happening. What we have to do is accept the premise and then go in there and tweak it and make sure that what they're fix is doesn't cost a lot of money and ruin the economy." So this is what's happening in way too many instances. We accept the premise because it's easier to do that than to fight the premise. It's precisely what American conservatives want from their leaders, though, is to fight the premise of all this; to fight the premise of socialized health care; to tell people how it's going to cost them more money and reduce the quality of their care, and the availability of it.

It's so frustrating because it's happening all across the world, where they're trying it. Canada, the UK. There is a great column in the op-ed section of the New York Post today about the kind of care Ted Kennedy got for his brain tumor and the surgery to remove it, versus somebody who has the same circumstance in the UK. Yet the same people who are benefiting from the greatest health care system in the world are those who want to destroy it in order to put themselves and the government in charge of it -- and it's a pure myth. It is a myth that they want to do this because they feel sorry for poor people. It's because they want power. Liberalism is oriented around a series of false promises and fallacious premises. And one of the primary things that drives it is this whole notion -- and we have talked about this before, and it's the root of class envy -- is the equality of outcomes. It isn't fair that some people should have more money than others, bigger houses, nicer cars, better neighborhoods, better schools. It isn't fair. And America will not be a just nation until all these inequities have been rectified to where everybody is the same. Well, the only way everybody can be the same is if a tyrannical despot dictator takes over the group and forces misery on them all, because no two Americans are the same. Aside from physically, look at the psychological. Look at the differences in ambition, desire, abilities. And you're absolutely right: conservatism is nothing more than natural law, and at the root of it is freedom. And they tell us conservatism needs to reform and adapt to the times? Nope. Because personal liberty and freedom is for all time, and it's the foundational building block of what we believe in.

For all you Canadians in the GTA, you can hear Rush on AM 930 out of Buffalo every week day from 12 to 3pm. Tune in and learn what conservatism is, why it is better than statism preached by Obama, Clinton, Trudeau and the rest, and why we need it in the USA, Canada, and around the world.

I agree in the sense that the fundimentals never change, but what is needed is a better tactical sense of how to apply the fundimentals to the issues of the day, in a manner people readily understand.

 

[adaminc]

You guys should read up on the Freedom Party, supposedly they are going to be a new party in the Federal Election in 2008. Whether or not that will actually happen I don't know. But I do like some of their policies. Especially the ones on Property rights.

They seem very Libertarian like.

 

[a_majoor]

Rebuilding of Conservatism in the US and strengthening it throughout the world requires a building of Classical Liberal culture:

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/ask-dr-helen-where-is-conservative-culture/

Ask Dr. Helen: Where Is Conservative Culture?

Posted By Helen Smith On November 10, 2008 @ 12:53 am In . Column1 01, . Positioning, Art, Ask Dr. Helen, Books, Culture, Film | 47 Comments

The election is over and everywhere you turn, people are saying that the Republican brand sucks, conservatives are on the way out, and free markets are over.

This is a hope on the part of liberals and not reality. Haven’t people been saying that Democrats or Republicans were on the way out since, well, there have been Dems and Republicans? Conservative and libertarian ideas are still good ones, but ones that need to reach out to a wider audience in venues that they can appreciate.

My email question today has to do with where to find conservative culture:

Hello Dr. Helen,

I am just discovering Pajamas Media. What a nice surprise.  My question is where is the conservative culture? Conservative politics is fairly easy to find. What I am looking for is music, novels, tv, movies, magazines — see what I mean? So much popular culture is lead by deadbeat celebrities. Perhaps Pajamas Media will evolve to fill this need. I hope so.

A Reader

Dear Reader,

You raise a good point: culture drives politics and not the other way around, at least in my opinion. Because of this, it is imperative that if conservative and libertarian ideas are to survive, we must educate people in ways that they can relate to — and this means popular culture in the form of books, music, television, movies, and social groups, starting with education.

I used to think that people could resist being indoctrinated in our education system and culture in left-leaning modes of thought, but I found out that I was wrong. For example, in [1] an article in Forbes, author Ray Fisman explains how professors can turn bleeding hearts into capitalists — and vice versa. Students taught by economics professors who valued efficiency tended to be more capitalistic in their outlook, and those exposed to philosophy professors who focused more on “equality” tended to be more into wealth redistribution.

My guess is that public schools teach more like the latter professors than the former, giving students more exposure to liberal ideas than conservative ones. How do we instill more conservative and libertarian ideas into schools? Talk to your school board member and find out what books the kids are reading. Suggest at a meeting that they be exposed to a plethora of ideas and not just one or two. Donate books to the school library that are conservative or libertarian in nature. I take right-leaning books to my local bookstore for resale or to put them in the free bin just to give the place some ideological diversity. Perhaps you can do the same at your local schools. Run for school board or support those who you think might be willing to balance conservative and liberal ideas in schools.

That point made, there are many good places to read or learn more about conservative culture. I will give my suggestions and turn the floor over to others who can widen this selection. Science fiction is a good place to start (though I am not a big fan, many people are!). Try Robert Heinlein’s books if you have not already done so. [2] Starship Troopers and [3] The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress are good places to start. Or try Venor Vinge works such as Singularity and Rainbow’s End. (Here’s [4] an interview my husband and I did with him here.) Orson Scott Card’s books also might be of interest to you; as a layperson when it comes to science fiction, I [5] enjoyed interviewing him about Empire, a fascinating thriller set in 2008 that tells the story of what will happen if the political polarization in America continues to divide this country on the issues. In terms of music, try John Ondrasik’s (Five for Fighting) albums. (You can listen to music clips and our [6] interview with him here.) John writes pro-American songs that I find very beautiful and may or may not be your cup of tea. What about Firefly by Tim Minear, who talks [7] here about his work? There is so much more that I do not have room for.

So, PJM readers, can you help our emailer with more suggestions on where to find conservative culture? What books, magazines, shows, music, movies, etc., do you consume to get your dose of conservative ideas? Do you organize or belong to any groups that have conservative or libertarian ideas? Lastly, how can we reach out and support more right-leaning culture?

_______________________________________________________________

If you have a question you would like answered, please leave it below or email me at [8] askdrhelen@hotmail.com. Your questions may be edited for length and clarity. Please note that your first name only or no name at all will be used to identify your question — if you want me to use your name, tell me; otherwise you will be referred to by your first name or as “a reader,” etc.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Article printed from Pajamas Media: http://pajamasmedia.com

URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/ask-dr-helen-where-is-conservative-culture/

URLs in this post:
[1] an article: http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/0505/032.html
[2] Starship Troopers: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0441783589?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwviolentkicom&linkCode=as2&cam
p=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0441783589
[3] The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312863551?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwviolentkicom&linkCode=as2&cam
p=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0312863551
[4] an interview : http://drhelen.blogspot.com/2006/04/podcast-with-vernor-vinge.html
[5] enjoyed: http://drhelen.blogspot.com/2006/11/podcast-interview-orson-scott-card.html
[6] interview with him here: http://drhelen.blogspot.com/2007/02/interview-with-john-ondrasik-five-for.html
[7] here about his work: http://drhelen.blogspot.com/2006/02/podcast-on-creativity-writing-and.html
[8] askdrhelen@hotmail.com: mailto:askdrhelen@hotmail.com

 

[a_majoor]

Knowledge and understanding are powerful weapons once harnessed:

http://thecanadianrepublic.blogspot.com/2008/12/why-conservatives-must-abandon-anti.html

Saturday, December 20, 2008
Why Conservatives Must Abandon Anti-Intellectualism & Reclaim The Realm Of The Mind

On one level, I can appreciate why so many North American conservatives have chosen to turn up their noses at academics. Having spent the majority of my adult life dealing with the so-called 'intelligentsia,' I can confirm that they are, to generalize, an impossible group of garrulous and anorchid weasels. The few scholars who are able to scramble out of the pit of evil that is modern day pragmatism do so only to embrace some trendy political philosophy, typically Kantian or some idealistic derivative thereof, that is so entirely divorced from reality that one is left to wonder whether they can still be said to live on earth.

That said, it would be unwise for the right to abandon the realm of philosophy in protest. As a post at The New Clarion points out, just look at the influence one blue-collar man who has read Austrian economics had on the American election:

    Just think: one plumber who has read Mises rocked the Obama campaign for days. If one educated American can have such an effect, imagine what would happen if just 5% of Americans read good economics and good philosophy. The welfare state would be seriously challenged. It might even be over.

The author's point is well taken. If 1.65 million (or approximately 5%) of Canadian citizens had read any decent economics or philosophy before the last Canadian election or even during the coalition crisis, is there any chance whatever that the Conservatives could have failed to secure a significantly stronger mandate?

I wrote in a recent post that I couldn't understand why Keynesianism has remained so popular in Canada despite its thorough refutation and the existence of profoundly more rational alternative economic models. After giving it some thought, however, I have concluded that at least some portion of the blame must be laid at the feet of those individuals who choose to base their opinions on floating abstractions and refuse to ground themselves in reality. That criticism is meant for both the left and the right. In fact, perhaps it should apply most to the alleged defenders of capitalism, particularly those currently involved with the US Republican Party, whose arguments in favour of laissez faire economics consists largely of religious hokum and half-understood snatches of Adam Smith.

The solution to our problem is to promote the pursuit of philosophy, not to abandon academia to our enemies. The solution is to reclaim the realm of the mind from the pragmatists, postmodernists, and idealists, not to allow them victory by default. As a commenter at The New Clarion puts it, all you have to do to save the world is think.