The Hard Heart of Conservatism

"...If there were a king over us all again and he sought the counsel of a mage as in the days of old, and I was that mage, I would say to him: My lord, do nothing because it is righteous or praiseworthy or noble to do so; do nothing because it seems good to do so; do only that which you must do and which you cannot do in any other way."

- the advice of Ged the Archmage to the future king Arren in Ursula K. LeGuin's The Farthest Shore

The great rhetorical Achilles' heel of conservative reasoning is that almost by definition it subscribes to the aphorism of some supposed sage, "If it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change."  By trivial example this can be shown an untenable philosophy if subscribed to as a Kantian imperative.  If I have by habit drunk a glass of red wine each night with dinner, there is still no harm in drinking a glass of white, or shocking all traditionalists whatsoever by sampling the hard cider, or even abstaining from alcohol altogether.  The conservative therefore who defends the current status quo, whatever it may be, finds himself faced with trying to explain away particular supposed injustices for which a progressive (no matter when or in what form the progress is advocated) purports to have a solution; the conservative who argues against measures already implemented in the name of progress finds himself arguing for a hypothetical - a tricky proposition at best - or else dismissed as nostalgic, no matter how accurate his analysis of the problems brought on by the newfangled ideas.

But despite the rhetorical difficulties, the wonder of the human condition is that life goes on: sometimes better, sometimes worse; sometimes with more variation and sometimes with less; sometimes with tragedy and sometimes with wonder.  All the brilliant policies of all the brilliant men brought together in all the superlative conferences and committees in the world (quite often, I must confess I find them, summing to far less than the total of the parts) have not managed to account for the mysterious ways in which humanity moves.  To take but one example, economists of great renown are reduced either to noting the obvious facts of life - that I can charge a higher price for Chinese silk than for American wool, or that a man who can write makes in general more than one who cannot - or to propounding the most absurd theories - as when they suggest a government with no actual money and a vast debt can improve a nation's status by borrowing still vaster sums of money.  (If by some miracle - which I doubt - that last is accurate, the absurdity of the theory is not reduced, but the absurdity of the world may be greater than we like to admit.)

All of the evidence suggests that we have very little idea what we are doing when we attempt to alter things, that it is easier to disrupt normal lives than to improve them intentionally, and that the most unfailing of natural laws, outside of the law of gravity, which attends human activity is the one of unintended consequences.  All of this I take as evidence supporting the presupposition of modern so-called conservative thought: that the government should do nothing that is not necessary.  The difficulty of course is that it is hard to tell what is necessary; it is harder still to restrain humanity from attempting much more.  Any fan of baseball recognizes the sinking feeling that arrives when you realize that some journeyman outfielder with half a bat is determined to swing for the bleachers rather than go through the trouble of working the count.  Of course he occasionally comes through, but most of the time - there's the dejected walk back to the dugout after the third strike, or the half-hearted jog down the first base line as the ball floats into the night sky for an easy fly ball out.

This is all to say that when I call myself a conservative I mean that I start with the self-evident proposition that the government does not in general know what it is doing or what the sum of the consequences will be; I draw the conclusion that it is best to restrict the government.  This results in the conservative saying to the anonymous man in pain, "I do not know what it is best to do for you; I certainly do not know whether what is good for you is also good for your friend down the street; therefore I refrain from issuing directives."  The liberal may or may not agree with the premise; however, he says, as allegedly FDR said, that doing anything about a problem is better than doing nothing; that it even makes more sense to try a bunch of things at once and hope some of them work.  The conservative restricts government because government is human and therefore fallible; the progressive tries to work through government because government has power and therefore the possibility - which most progressives see as a likelihood, if not an inherent tendency - to do good.

The conservative view then ends up seeming clearly the more cynical, the less (with apologies to Bush II) shallowly compassionate, the more, as I titled the post, apparently hard-hearted.  And yet, it is also more realistic: all of the programs and redistributions of empowered government have not ended poverty, or reduced familial traumas, and there is no evidence to suggest they ever will.

So we return to necessity.  (I am coining a word: I am a necessistist.)  What is necessary?  There we can begin a debate; but at the moment we do not have such a common starting point.  We have a progressive movement advocating the use of power "for good" and then the doing of anything that seems to be a good idea; and a reactionary conservatism, feeling itself under pressure, retreating even past its foundations to the (almost equally absurd) point of fighting to do an actual nothing.

You Are Taking My Money

Or, "Well, not that different I guess."

One of the things I find most perplexing about the recent HHS debacle is how, after an absolute minimum of pull-back by the administration, most liberals I know went right back to the "oppressed women" screed, despite the fact that objectively (as opposed to formally or technically) nothing has changed with regards to the issue of freedom of religion.  To forestall some comments, yes; I posted before saying I found the manner of the legal protection of religious freedom potentially problematic, logically speaking.  I also added subsequently that intentionally and contextually, it would be hard to improve on the amendment as written.  And even if I did find it objectionable, the fact is that it remains the first law of the land (and favorable to me), and so should not be run over roughshod by a bureaucracy empowered by an (itself probably unconstitutional) law - much as I, despite the significant amounts of alcohol consumed in my life, and the absurdity of most US drinking laws, still would do my best to stay within those laws.

But let us pretend for a moment that the Health Services contraception mandate was not opposed on the basis of any religious objections or Constitutional concerns.  Let us pretend that some of the forms of contraception and infanticide covered by it do not touch on any vexed moral questions - and however clear your own opinion, what else are we supposed to call, politically speaking, an issue where half the country disagrees with the other half?  Let's say, for the sake of argument, that I don't even object to what you are doing myself and am just being a mean old Scrooge.

I still get a say in the law.  I can still object, with perfect justice, to something I dislike.  "How so?" you scream in outrage.  "It's my body!" Well, of course it is.  I don't care what you do with your body.  (I mean, obviously, within limits.  I don't want you and your body to kill me, or steal from me, or... I could go on for a while.)  But the part I get upset about is when you try to use my money to do something I don't want to happen.  Oh, it's not my money?  It's just a government handout?

Where do you think the government get the money?  That's right, me - and a bunch of other people.  (And you - but if you're just spending "your share", why does the government need to have it in the first place?)

So in conclusion - forget you and your panicking about "rights" you need somebody else to pay for.  Your rights are not in danger.  No one is trying to tell you you can't do it yourself.  But you are taking my money, and I don't want you spending it like that.  I need exactly zero justification beyond that to present a perfectly reasonable objection.

Putting the Worst Face on It

Or, I promise to write about something else next time.

As I have made clear recently, of the major candidates for President of the United States beginning in 2012 - which I currently estimate as current president Obama, and challengers Romney, Paul, and Santorum - I am most sympathetic to Santorum, with Paul running a close second and Romney a distant third.  Practically this matters very little at the moment as I am not registered with any party affiliation at all, but there it is.

The reasons for my attraction to Paul and dislike for Obama should be clear to anyone reading this blog; I will not go into them in detail here.  Romney I distrust as a consummate politico, though I have little objection to his current "face".  Why Santorum?  There are three main reasons.

In the first place, I agree in large part with Santorum's presuppositions and, unsurprisingly, also most of his political conclusions.

In the second, he is of all the candidates - and this includes Paul - the one most open about what he believes and has done.  Even if I disagreed with him substantially, I could respect him for that, as I hold Biden or Nader in relatively higher regard than our current actual President, given what I know of them.  Santorum is the only candidate about whom I can confidently say that the reasons for voting for him are the same reasons as those for voting against him.

And in the last place, Santorum is the candidate most maligned and misrepresented both in the mainstream press and by my recent favorite whipping boys, the internet liberals.  After my last post, I wanted to let the subject drop, but then the ugly side of uncivil discourse raised its head again.

I have The Daily What in my feed for a number of reasons - tech stuff, nerd news, cool videos of Messi, random trivia - but when it comes to political discourse they exemplify the failures of the collective liberal internet.  Here is the post in question.

Let's look through what this supposedly informative post does to Santorum.  It takes little analysis to conclude that the entire post is made from a viewpoint of supporting Obama.

First, the graphic presents a good picture of Obama and a bad one of Santorum.  (Thus my headline.)  We like to think superficialities like that don't matter, but we know they really do make a difference.

Second, Santorum's positions are given either the worst possible spin, or misrepresented entirely.  Look:

• "Rape victims should make the best of it," is what is quoted.  This is part and parcel of the steadfast refusal to admit the humanity of unborn children, on which point myself and others have said so much as to make further commentary here fruitless.  But not even a tiny effort is made to understand Santorum - the poster is only interesting in discrediting him to like-minded people.
• "Free prenatal testing leads to more abortions," is, I am forced to assume by the tone of the post, held up for ridicule.  Yet we live in an age where "sex-selective abortion" is the new big PC worry, and where mothers are encouraged to abort "defective" or handicapped children.  How exactly is Santorum wrong on this one?
• "Contrary to the Constitution, the separation of church and state should not be absolute," - oh wait, I just wrote about that.

To review, a la fact checkers: the three positions mentioned are, for the first, presented with bias; for the second, Santorum's position is factually correct; and for the third, he is being provably misrepresented.

Now it is important in civil discourse to be as accurate as possible and - perhaps more importantly - to assume the best when possible.  Thus I largely keep silent on the record of Obama's administration.  But I am losing patience, and feel called on to demonstrate what could be done.  If I wanted to apply an "internet conservative" approach to the President, I would discuss in detail at least the following two things, which - unlike the attacks on Santorum - are beyond disproof.

• The administration itself, if not Obama himself, is fundamentally dishonest.  The Obamacare package was rushed and bullied through Congress and we still don't know the half of it; bad enough, but that is politics.  Worse, the package was reputedly passed on the back of an executive promise to issue an order mandating protection for those not wanting to be forced to pay for abortions: even if not, the Constitution and all of American law is rife with such protections.  Obama still has not, to my knowledge, given such an order, and in fact - well, you've maybe heard of the HHS mandate which is both diametrically opposed to the alleged promise and in clear defiance of American traditions.  His so-called compromise is anything but.
• The administration has made investments - in, most notably, Solyndra - driven by ideology, cronyism, or sheer bad judgment.  Meanwhile, such economic progress as has been made has been made in the interval while the freshly reinvigorated Republicans in Congress have tied the administration's hands to prevent any of the neo-socialist bailouts that didn't help the mess in the first place (thanks Bush - or Keynes?  FDR?).  And the lesson goes unlearned by either Democrat bigwigs or the administration itself, while the Republican candidates, noticing facts and listening to constituents, are all doubling down with promises to continue the approach and in fact go farther.

You may justly say that I am clearly biased myself.  Very good - I admit it.  I admit it blatantly and without shame.  In case you have not figured this out yet: in the modern American political continuum I count myself - however inaccurate the name is objectively - as a conservative.  What you cannot demonstrate - and I will publicly correct myself, on this blog or wherever else you may comment, if you can demonstrate it - is that anything I have said here is factually incorrect.  If I have accused someone incorrectly, I will not only correct myself but apologize.

Bring it.

Did Santorum Just Disqualify Himself?

It is being trumpeted by the internet liberals everywhere that Santorum is just confirming his dedication to turning America into a theocracy.  Take this:

"I don't believe in an America where the separation of church and state are absolute," he told 'This Week' host George Stephanopoulos. "The idea that the church can have no influence or no involvement in the operation of the state is absolutely antithetical to the objectives and vision of our country...to say that people of faith have no role in the public square? You bet that makes me want to throw up."

Now Santorum's use, as a Catholic, of "the church" is troubling.  It brings to mind images of medieval Roman triumphalism.  On the other hand, let's go find the linked ABC transcript and see what the context is.  Ah, he continues:

This is the First Amendment. The First Amendment says the free exercise of religion. That means bringing everybody, people of faith and no faith, into the public square. Kennedy for the first time articulated the vision saying, "No, faith is not allowed in the public square. I will keep it separate." [quotes added] Go on and read the speech. "I will have nothing to do with faith. I won't consult with people of faith." [again] It was an absolutist doctrine that was abhorrent at the time of 1960. And I went down to Houston, Texas 50 years almost to the day, and gave a speech and talked about how important it is for everybody to feel welcome in the public square. People of faith, people of no faith, and be able to bring their ideas, to bring their passions into the public square and have it out.

Well that's not so bad, is it?  I get a say, the Muslim across the parking lot gets a say, the atheist down the road gets a say - sounds pretty much like the American ideal Santorum is defending.

Here is a newsflash: this should not be surprising to anyone paying attention to Santorum except the ones already determined to shout him down because he is openly religious.  Is his position as a Catholic antithetical to everything Kennedy presented himself as, as someone who said faith does not matter?  Yes, yes of course.  But then, Kennedy was hardly a moral exemplar - do we want to make him our model?

But the article I cited quotes Jefferson, citing him against Santorum as follows:

...I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.

A very minimal knowledge of history will be sufficient to dismiss this as a counter-argument.  The worry at the time of the Founding was the use of state power to oppress dissenting religions.  Certainly a state church - as in England - could provide the excuse.  Certainly a "universal" church, as the Roman Catholic was claimed to be over Spain, could provide the incentive.  But the drive of the amendment in question was hardly to abolish belief, but to protect it.  It is noteworthy that the state churches of the States were in no wise disestablished by the Constitution - merely the case was made that in the new united country, a federal state church was beyond a laughably bad idea.  Maryland was Catholic, Massachusetts officially Puritan, Pennsylvania tolerant, New York still Dutch and reformed, or else Anglican, but mainly cosmopolitan, Rhode Island dissenting but free.

Further amendments and the flow of history abolished these State establishments or let them gently into the night, but to suggest the Constitution or the Founders were against religious influences in toto is absurd.  This is the context Jefferson spoke from: one in which the greatest fear was a religious establishment forbidding other public religious expression.  Would they have looked with any greater favor on a "secular establishment" being permitted to dismiss religion from the public square instead?  This is what Santorum is protesting against: the movement over the last century to put religion in its place and dismiss its expressions from politics and public functions.  What we saw with the Kennedy candidacy, what was then a lingering anti-Catholicism which forced a (badly behaved and mostly nominal) Catholic to all but publicly disavow his faith, we now see as a general anti-religiosity.  Are you inclined to doubt this?  Consider, Santorum cannot even point this out, state this hypothesis without being quoted out of context and vilified.  I see your fears of so-called "theocracy", manufactured without context and with prejudice, and raise you public discrimination (however extra-legal) again religious opinion.

The Internet Liberal

I used the term "internet liberal" on facebook yesterday; a friend said he'd be interested in reading a further elaboration on the coinage.  Since I have a blog, this post was pretty much inevitable.

At the most basic, the internet liberal is simply a liberal who is on the internet.  It goes further than that, in that most of the internet which is not specifically dedicated to ideology is nonetheless dominated by at least quasi-liberal social mores.  Some of this is simply demographics, I suspect: conservatives seem, on the whole, more liable to limit their children's internet time, and thus on the whole I suspect conservatives grow up to have less of an attachment – and less of a presence – on the computer.  (The major exception seems to be in the political sphere, as especially demonstrated by the various right-wing blogmedia groups.)

These habits and expectations are, roughly, tolerance as defined by the modern left wing, and a mostly unquestioned acceptance of social democratic political ideals.  Europe is everybody's favorite place on the internet; America is an ignorant backwater.  Insulting homosexuals (or calling them wrong, or even asking the obvious question, "So wait, if you guys get 'married', which dude is the 'wife'?") is a major offense, as is, quite often, insinuating there might be actual physical differences between men and women when it comes to achieving careers (or on other liberal-sensitive issues).  Abortion is mostly accepted without question and any questioners abused with the usual nonsense about "women's reproductive rights" (to immediately deny the child a chance to ever reproduce).  Religion, especially Christianity, is assumed to be an enemy of science.  In short, the usual denizen of the internet is practically a left-wing stereotype: Occupy Wall Street is mostly viewed as well-intentioned (even when actual methods and results are questioned) while the Tea Parties were roundly mocked.

I exaggerate, a little, in that in most cases the conservatives are at least allowed to have their say, as long as they don't seriously transgress these bounds of liberal taste.  But in short, the liberal on the internet tends to view the argument as over, left-wing progressivism as a clear winner, and anyone who disagrees as the person who is really being "tolerated".

The irony, of course, is that the internet in its modern incarnation is, in most of the world, a shining example of practical conservative laissez-faire policy at work – and where it isn't, or where those liberties are threatened, the internet mobilizes  and complains and spreads the news.

True, the necessary infrastructure is provided by others, by ISPs and webhosts, but as government analogues go, they do pretty much nothing beyond keeping things running while you pay your taxes, I mean bills.  Most importantly, when contrasted to the social democratic government ideal, regulation is practically nonexistent – notoriously, even various illegal materials (either immoral or violating, say, copyright law) are freely available and not hard to find.

If you questioned one of these internet liberals and pointed out this contrast, I suspect the usual response would be something like, "But in the end, the internet doesn't really matter, nobody's life is ever going to be at stake because of something I write on my blog".  It's a good point, as far as it goes – but confident behind that objection I suspect it will be almost impossible to get them to listen to the one point the conservative movement keeps trying to hammer home: there is no – none, zilch, nada, zero – proof that the liberal social democratic regulatory state actually improves things overall even when the outcome does matter (for a thorough exploration of this, see Amity Shlae's book The Forgotten Man).

The internet as an example of a contrary model working (even as a limited test case) still hasn't made a dent in the indoctrinated liberalism of these people.  That's why I talk about the "internet liberal": they're the one class of liberal who really ought to know better, and do know better when it comes to their private hobby horse (the internet), but they refuse to see beyond that.

On the "Christian Nation"

Let's say there is a person who knows the Absolute Truth about how the world should be run. Let's say he thinks he has a good chance to shape the world – or at least his own town, state (or province), country – in that image. Let's say that he believes even if he can't accomplish his own goals entirely, his efforts will at least yield an improvement.

The above paragraph describes everyone who has honestly held a political opinion, ever. Everyone. Ever. Can we accept that much?

Now a favorite modern bogey-man is the idea that the "far right wing of American politics", whatever it calls itself at the moment and whatever it says its goals are, wants to impose a "Christian nation" scenario on the United States. In this rhetoric, the phrase "Christian nation" suggests, not merely that the nation as constituted pursue morals and policies consistent with a Christian ethos (which, for the record, is what most Christians in politics want, and the majority would likely be satisfied even with a consistent natural law ethic), but that the "Christian vote" wants to reconstitute America as a direct theocracy – or at best, a caricatured medieval-style polity where the church says what goes.

On any consideration, that caricature falls to pieces. Even the most hide-bound traditionalist Christian recognizes that this goal – even if any significant number actually have this goal – would falter on the simplest question of, "Which church?" The 1st Amendment was written to prevent that sort of authoritarianism. What the First Amendment doesn't say, however, is that an opinion is politically invalid just because it is religiously based. In fact, it protects the right to express your opinion: and bearing in mind the time period of writing, we have to realize that what the Founders were primarily protecting was religious, and religious political expression. Even if there were a vast conspiracy of loonies proposing to establish the rules of order of the Southern Baptist Church (or whatever) as the law of the land, they're completely allowed to say so: just vote them down.

As I mentioned, however, that's not what anyone – okay, almost anyone – is proposing. Politically active Christians, like anyone else who applies their beliefs to politics, think that their ideas are the best ones to put into practice. At the same time, almost all Christian politicians – it might even be fair to say especially Christian politicians – believe in working with the system of government as it is. If this means political movements largely made up of Christians want a "Christian nation" then we have to apply the same logic to other movements. Liberals want a "liberal nation". Neo-cons want a "Neocon nation". And so on and so forth. Communists want a "Communist nation".

If the ideas these groups advocate are goofy ideas, expose them as goofy ideas. If Christian ethics are goofy – I obviously think they're not, but then I'm Christian – then attack the ideas of the Christian ethics themselves. Debunk Christianity and its morals, if you can. But don't act as though it's ludicrous that Christians think Christian ethics are good for everybody: that's a logical fallacy from the ad hominem family. "Christians want an essentially Christian law code," is neither news nor a good reason to vote for or against such a code, any more than, "Homosexuals want a sexually free law code," is unusual or reason to vote one way or another on the subject.