The following little reflection was in reply to a question from a friend about the differences between conservatives and liberals. He seeded the discussion with a brief text to which I responded.
Here’s the ‘seed’ text:
The great issue between the two political communities is how they feel about the nature of American society. With all exceptions duly noted, I think it fair to say that what liberals mainly see when they look at this country is injustice and oppression of every kind—economic, social and political. By sharp contrast, conservatives see a nation shaped by a complex of traditions, principles and institutions that has afforded more freedom and, even factoring in periodic economic downturns, more prosperity to more of its citizens than in any society in human history. It follows that what liberals believe needs to be changed or discarded—and apologized for to other nations—is precisely what conservatives are dedicated to preserving, reinvigorating and proudly defending against attack. From: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203440104574402591116901498-email.html
Here is my reply:
I do not like this answer, because it treats the issue in a way so that one side or the other is just stupid. If the conservatives want to preserve a legacy of injustice and oppression, what sickos they must be. If, by contrast, the liberals see only injustice and oppression in the past of a country that set out to create the freest society in human history, with maximal equality for all, a country, moreover, that has been from the start aware of its shortcomings and determined to overcome them, well, what dunces they must be.
I don’t doubt that this is, however, how many liberals and conservatives think of themselves and each other.
Here are three other tries:
(a) Liberty and equality are both fundamental principles of modern politics. There are both historical reasons for this and theoretical reasons. Historically, the ‘ancien regime’ was unequal. Hereditary distinctions gave unequal access to power and privilege. This inequality was tied up closely with a lack of liberty, as people occupied more or less fixed ranks in society from which it was hard to escape, and they were bound by religious dogma as well as social customs that discouraged the free pursuit of individuality. In social and political theory, great pains were taken to explain and justify these inequalities. Biblical grounds were found. Legal tradition was used to support the rights of kings and aristocrats. Slavery and debt-service were accepted as normal and inevitable parts of our fallen condition. As modern political thought emerged and alongside it, modern reform movements (including full scale, bloody revolutions), liberty and equality were both sought for. In time, as more open and free societies emerged, a new debate also emerged, between those who wanted to minimize inequality and use the power of the state to do it, and those who saw inequality as not bad in itself but a natural by-product of giving individuals free reign to express their talent. For these lovers of liberty, state action needed to preserve the “level playing field” and common rules, but the main preoccupation was to maximize liberty and keep the state from interfering in the enjoyment of our individuality. Liberals love equality, conservatives, liberty. However, it isn’t as black and white in practice. This idea has been around a long time, but George Will propounded a version of it over the weekend and declared it a new insight into contemporary American politics. What chutzpah.
(b) Reason and tradition. In line with the tendency of modern liberalizing parties to “protest” (Protestants in religion, critics of aristocracy and monarchy in politics) modern liberalizers (not = “liberals” today) tended to rely upon abstract principles to carry their arguments. They (i) wanted to adopt a new, scientific outlook on society; (ii) needed a convincing rhetoric that could direct critical energies to wide swaths of experience quickly and elegantly — rather than argue piecemeal over every single tariff imposed by each little principality or dukedom, they argued at once against aristocracy. This divide does not as neatly match up with liberal and conservative, because many conservatives, especially in America, are highly “principled” or follow abstract ideologies. However, a true conservative like Hume, Burke, or Oakeshott, would reject the recourse to abstract principle as both false, given the embedded nature of human experience in history; and dangerous, given the tendency of principles to apply too far and wide for their own good. So: liberals and some conservatives love abstract principles, conservatives embrace tradition.
(c) This one I borrow from Oakeshott. From the beginning of modern politics in the 12th century, the vocabulary of modern states contained two opposed (but overlapping) idioms, one favoring the idea that governing is the direction of a common enterprise, the pursuit of a common substantive goal; and another, favoring the idea that governing was the custodial keeping of a community’s traditions, but not in pursuit of any goal other than the continued existence of the state (which isn’t properly a goal). One view is that the state is an association of people united by some common purpose; the other, that it is an association of people “whom chance or choice have brought together,” but who share no common end. The “enterprise” or purposive view gains much plausibility from three factors all present in all modern states: (i) the pursuit of religious salvation (which, in Calvin’s Geneva and perhaps in Puritan Mass., became the aim of the state); (ii) war, and the mobilization and unity it requires; and (iii) feudal lordship, which is a kind of household or estate management based upon mastery (with the aim of increasing revenues, securing the lord’s wealth or power, augmenting his prestige, etc). The “enterprise” view will tend to equate ruling with a managerial pursuit; getting in the easiest, most efficient way to the desired outcomes. It often speaks the language of representative democracy, but in fact is quite compatible with the rule of an elite, whether technocratic, pious, or otherwise fit to secure the ends sought by the state. On the other side, in the budding individuality of the Renaissance, in moral and political thought, in art and letters, as well as in the political experience of early modern states, there were also strong tendencies to imagine the state to be an association of individualist adventurers who respect the laws’ authority but who do not understand themselves to be united in any common purposes. This view is not tied to representative democracy by logical necessity, but it is a view that is friendlier to limiting state power rather than increasing it. If there is no end to pursue, then the state’s power need not be deployed toward an end, and devices like representative institutions will be welcomed when they restrain power and keep it from being used to impose the pursuit of an end on society. These two understandings have persisted, have been modified endlessly, and they cut across todays’ left / right or liberal / conservative divides. There are both liberals and conservatives who adhere to the “enterprise” view of the state as purposive; there are likewise liberals and conservatives who adhere to the view of the state as a non-end-driven “civil association.”
Well, that’s all I got. For now.
