« Markets in Everything: Pay to Stay | Main | What I've Been Reading »
Ross Douthat defines conservatism
...A commitment to the defense of the particular habits, mores and institutions of the United States against those socioeconomic trends that threaten to undermine them, and those political movements (generally on the left, but sometimes on the right) that seek to change them radically in the pursuit of particular ideological goals.
Here is the post, which is interesting throughout. I should not speak for Ross but having read his blog for a while I believe he would prefer a modified definition to allow some of those habits and mores to be judged. Ross circa 1958 for instance need not defend segregation. But it is hard to invoke a standard of judgment without moving away from conservatism in the philosophical sense and becoming a rationalist.
Insofar as I am conservative (debatable) I would rewrite the definition:
A realization that we will do best by building on the strengths of the particular habits, mores and institutions of the United States (and other successful nations) rather than trying to reshape the nation radically in the pursuit of particular ideological goals.
You can then pick a rationalist standard of judgment (e.g., utilitarianism, virtue ethics, Rawls, whatever) while keeping this vision intact. Conservatism is then an empirical claim about the resilience and power of national and cultural strengths. There is no "pro status quo" trap lurking in the background here and no reason why you can't be both a conservative and a rationalist at the same time.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on June 5, 2008 at 01:33 PM in Political Science | Permalink
Comments
Tyler,
I like your definition. It addresses that we should build on our and other's strengths, but what of our weaknesses? Do we ignore them wholly and focus only on addressing what makes us strong?
Posted by: Jonathan at Jun 5, 2008 1:53:41 PM
"A realization that we will do best by building on the strengths of the particular habits, mores and institutions of the United States (and other successful nations)..."
So were the Tories or the Revolutionaries the conservatives in 1776? If another nation becomes more "successful", will that become the model for conservatism, perhaps with some suitable lag (e.g. 2 centuries)? In other words, does the definition evolve depending on which nation is successful or is it eternally defined with reference to the United States?
Posted by: a student of economics at Jun 5, 2008 1:54:57 PM
The definition seems overly broad and would encompass most people who define themselves as liberal. For example, is there anything in there that Barack Obama would object to? I'm sure he sees his healthcare plan as building on the strengths of American institutions.
Posted by: wph at Jun 5, 2008 2:19:28 PM
Good start in rehabilitating the conservatives. Up to this point I refer to them in short as soviets, as in Union of Soviet Socialist Republicans.
Posted by: Matt at Jun 5, 2008 2:20:32 PM
Indeed, it seems Tyler has merely defined conservative as "not radical." Neat.
Posted by: Scott Scheule at Jun 5, 2008 2:27:56 PM
I would define a conservative as someone who seeks to protect the accumulation of capital (economic, human, social, and moral) from predation and erosion.
Posted by: Chris at Jun 5, 2008 2:31:37 PM
My definition is shorter: I am a conservative b/c I believe most attempts to reshape nations radically fail, and even the good ones have unintended consequences.
Scheule, wph, and matt are all correct of course: conservative is the opposite of radical, not the opposite of liberal, and Obama is demonstrably more conservative than anyone who thinks invasions can spread democracy. There is no contradiction in him being both the most liberal and the most conservative candidate this year.
Posted by: DK at Jun 5, 2008 2:45:05 PM
Tyler,
Can you please then give your definition of "liberalism"? Generally assuming that the US is split 50/50 between conservatism and liberalism, does your estimate of people subscribing to one camp or the other reflect this approximately even split? Thanks.
Posted by: anon at Jun 5, 2008 2:46:19 PM
Conservative is something that someone else calls you... usually when they want to imply that your support of free-markets means that you must be a warmonger or religious zealot. Conservative is a way to try to lump you in with the ugliest parts of the right-wing. I don't know why any intelligent person would willingly label themselves a "conservative".
Posted by: Rex Rhino at Jun 5, 2008 2:51:28 PM
So were the Tories or the Revolutionaries the conservatives in 1776?
They were both conservatives: the King can take our freedom away vs. we are the most free people in the world already. It was an argument about the best way to preserve the existing habits, mores, and institutions of liberty.
Posted by: 8 at Jun 5, 2008 3:05:17 PM
Let me amend Chris's signaling statement:
"I would define a conservative as someone who seeks to protect accumulation of capital (economic, human, social, and moral) from predation and erosion."
Notwithstanding any predation required in accumulating said wealth to begin with, of course.
See: 2008 hedge fund and i-bank failures.
Posted by: at Jun 5, 2008 3:06:52 PM
I inserted "his own" in brackets after "accumulation" but typepad apparently didn't like that.
Posted by: at Jun 5, 2008 3:08:09 PM
"Conservatism is then an empirical claim about the resilience and power of national and cultural strengths." Well, it's a *very vague* empirical claim, because the group that constitutes *we* is left unspecified.
Posted by: Philo at Jun 5, 2008 3:18:18 PM
"Conservatism is then an empirical claim about the resilience and power of national and cultural strengths." Well, it's a *very vague* empirical claim, because the group that constitutes *we* is left unspecified.
Posted by: Philo at Jun 5, 2008 3:19:01 PM
I believe that I am conservative/libertarian because I believe in this simple definition:
Laws are in place to protect property rights and only laws that do this are justifiable.
Posted by: Samara at Jun 5, 2008 3:25:00 PM
'So were the Tories or the Revolutionaries the conservatives in 1776?'
I think the American revolution set a terrible example for the future. It's a one in a million success story that Americans keep trying to replicate in other coutries.
Posted by: PJ at Jun 5, 2008 3:42:44 PM
Definition: Conservative - n., a liberal running for political office.
At least that's true a good portion of the time where I'm from.
Posted by: Andrew at Jun 5, 2008 3:43:08 PM
Laws are in place to protect property rights and only laws that do this are justifiable.
Samara,
You cannot seriously mean that ONLY laws that protect property rights are justifiable. What about laws that protect, say, your life? or your liberty? One tends to forget about those laws because there is less disagreement about them (at least between liberals and libertarians) but those laws are still kind of important...
Posted by: MS at Jun 5, 2008 3:59:06 PM
It was an argument about the best way to preserve the existing habits, mores, and institutions of liberty.
In which case why on earth risk your all in such a war? I'm still bewildered as to the disparity between the pretext and the action. What can it really have been about?
Posted by: dearieme at Jun 5, 2008 4:00:53 PM
"You cannot seriously mean that ONLY laws that protect property rights are justifiable. What about laws that protect, say, your life? or your liberty? One tends to forget about those laws because there is less disagreement about them (at least between liberals and libertarians) but those laws are still kind of important..." -MS
So far you haven't listed any laws that aren't simply protections of property rights. The right to "life" is simply the protection of the property right of the individual over his own life. The right to liberty can simply be considered your right to self-ownership. In other words your body is your property, so if anyone kills you or enslaves you they are "stealing" your property (in this case your body).
Posted by: Jayson Virissimo at Jun 5, 2008 5:16:41 PM
"...I am conservative/libertarian..."
If George Bush and his followers are conservatives, then by most important measures (e.g. interventionist foreign policy, curtailed civil liberties, record new entitlements like Medicare part D, record government borrowing, increased government funding and supporting religious activities, government emphasis on morality with respect to activities of consenting adults, increased secrecy, appeals to nationalism, dramatically increased executive power to imprison people without charges, modify laws, and issue executive decrees, etc) then conservatives are the pretty much the opposites of libertarians.
Posted by: a student of economics at Jun 5, 2008 7:02:19 PM
Jayson,
Your definition of "property" can easily be extended to include things like clean skies, newspapers free of vulgarity, felon-free elections, or anything else really. Careful there.
Posted by: anon at Jun 5, 2008 7:41:29 PM
Where does teaching creationism in public schools fit in?
Posted by: at Jun 5, 2008 9:02:10 PM
Where does teaching creationism in public schools fit in?
Posted by: at Jun 5, 2008 9:03:55 PM
With some abuse of terminology, I think of this as the difference between positive and normative conservatism. The first is a statement about how you think the world is, the second about how you think the world should be.
Posted by: luispedro at Jun 5, 2008 9:06:32 PM
I like the sentiment expressed in the Declaration of Independence --
"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."
Posted by: SheetWise at Jun 6, 2008 12:29:42 AM
anon: No it can't. You don't own skies, newspapers, or elections...
Posted by: greenish at Jun 6, 2008 5:15:06 AM
Jayson,
That is really stretching the accepted definition of "property". In common use, with the exception of intellectual property, it is almost always a tangible object (or a security). I'd define property as something that has monetary value, or can transfer ownership. Since we usually don't put monetary value or trade human life and freedom (or haven't for almost 150 years now), it is a stretch to consider it property.
And even if you do you are still left with things like freedom of speech, the right to vote, right to trial by jury, etc.
Posted by: MS at Jun 6, 2008 8:31:35 AM
That's a fair enough definition, although it seems a bit of an aspirational re-definition. George W Bush is exactly what conservatives should aspire not to be.
This is why I'm not a conservative or a progressive. By analogy, Edison famously proved 10,000 different ways not to produce a light bulb. Most endeavours fail. Therefore, where ignorance prevails, caution is warranted before committing major scarce resources toward any initiative.
However, when you KNOW the right way to produce a lightbulb, caution is stupid. Where a populace is ready for libertarianism, anything less than radical progress in that direction is stupid.
This is not a commentary on compact fluorescents, but it could be.
Posted by: Andrew at Jun 6, 2008 8:44:39 AM
You have just restated Edmund Burke's 18th century definition of conservatism.
Posted by: David at Jun 6, 2008 9:01:34 AM
greenish,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coase_theorem
Posted by: anon at Jun 6, 2008 10:27:55 AM
"Edison famously proved 10,000 different ways not to produce a light bulb": and Edison famously lost his patent suit anyway.
Posted by: dearieme at Jun 6, 2008 1:39:14 PM
that the definition must include the qualifier "the United States (or other successful nations)" defeats any notion that conservatism is divorced from value judgments. at best, it reduces to the statement that "things that successful societies did to make themselves successful are likely to keep them that way." is that so surprising? does anyone really disagree with that? the challenge is to discover what things the society is doing that are no longer likely to make it successful once it has acheived success or things it has been doing that have, to this point, placing a limit on the success the society could have acheived (i'll let historians argue about where slavery in the usa fits here). also, feel free to replace "successful" with whatever other value judgment (e.g. just, virtuous, egalitarian, religious, etc) you wish to smuggle into your definition of conservative.
Posted by: andres at Jun 6, 2008 1:50:16 PM
So conservatism is just non-radicalism? Pretty weak. By that standard just about everyone is a conservative, and there are probably about as many non-conservatives on what we think of as "the right" as on "the left."
Posted by: Bernard Yomtov at Jun 7, 2008 5:26:45 PM
How does Social Security fit into the definition? All successful countries have SS. Mandatory SS, whether defined benefit or defined contribution, is a serious restriction on economic liberty (and of course, Chile with a defined contribution system is not a "successful" country). Yet, the lower economic middle class and down never did and probably never will sufficiently save for retirement. Few people outside of libertarian circles would trade this social insurance (and Medicaid too) off for the increased liberty (and federal budget improvement) of eliminating it, if nothing else to guarantee their parents' and siblings' retirement living standards
Posted by: liberalarts at Jun 9, 2008 7:20:09 AM
Mr. Douthat's definition seems to have the simple problem, too long un-noted, that is a firm statement against the very existence of these United States to begin with. Although I would say it is an excellent definition of conservatism over the last 250 years in North America.
I would put your's forward as an excellent idea, for some, and not for others (couldn't your's still be used to defend slavery and jim crow laws?), that may reflect the "considered" conservative values of many voters. Both viewpoints remind me of romantic dribble, I apologize for saying. Too similar to the easily loopholed romantic dribble of progressives these days as well.
Posted by: Lawrence at Jun 9, 2008 1:49:43 PM
"It's a one in a million success story that Americans keep trying to replicate in other coutries."
By "trying to replicate", you must mean "succeeding in relicating"
-Germany
-Japan
-Korea
-The former soviet union
-Iraq (although afghanistan is a mess)
Posted by: DocMerlin at Jun 12, 2008 11:42:30 AM
I think the American revolution set a terrible example for the future. It's a one in a million success story that Americans keep trying to replicate in other coutries. News about Air Force Ones...
Posted by: kicksonfire at Oct 5, 2008 7:54:35 PM
