After conservatives lost the 2008 elections, they began to fear that their ideas no longer had political appeal. Events soon showed their worries to be excessive. Their concern, nonetheless, offers an occasion to reflect on what American conservatism should defend. The ebb and flow of politics may, soon enough, lead again to undue apprehension or imprudent action. Self-proclaimed conservative — and liberal — pundits will, in any event, continue to tell conservatives, often foolishly, what their principles should compel them to believe and do. Above all, the long-term prognosis may not be good unless conservatism is correctly understood. Political health is not automatic; it requires judgment and choice.
Conservatism has become the name in the United States for the political opinions that defend liberty, good character, strong families, the importance of religion, economic growth, limited government, and vigorous national defense. The question of its future is significant, therefore, not primarily as the issue of one movement versus another — “conservatives” vs. “liberals” — but because at its best it seeks to conserve our county’s core principles, practices, and institutions. These principles should be common ground between conservatives and liberals, not the monopoly of one. Indeed, the most common name for our core is not conservatism, but liberal democracy. Nonetheless, today’s liberals depart from basic liberal democratic standards more often, more profoundly, and at deeper level, than do today’s conservatives.
I intend to sketch the elements of conservatism that appeal to individuals, as we view ourselves in terms of our own freedom or liberty. Reminding individuals to consider themselves first of all as individuals, and not in group, class, racial, professional, or gender terms, is the heart of conservatism’s strength and renewal. Its core is to be true to America’s original liberty. That such an appeal is important for the common good of the country is simply more important than its utility for the preexisting members of a movement or party.
Such an appeal, however, is also likely to be vital to the health of Republicans, because arguments that appeal chiefly to group identities favor Democrats. Of course, there are good reasons to want two strong parties even if one is largely a satellite of the other, and even if the primary party’s ideas are not very good. It is useful if a relatively safe and sane group is available to pick up the pieces when the primary party disgusts the electorate through scandal, mismanagement, and policy excess. Best would be two organized representatives of essentially the same conservative standards. A party manager, however, must concern himself with recruiting candidates and funds, and with pursuing tactical advantage. These measures are easier for parties that stand for something, but they differ from principled action itself.
Although there are good reasons to appeal to conservatives in terms of liberty, there are also characteristic objections to that appeal. Some are visible in the tensions within the conservative movement. Some stem from the views of today’s liberals. Some are visible if one looks honestly at liberal democracy itself. In reminding us of the principles of liberal democracy, or conservative liberalism, I also mean to discuss these objections.
Conservatism, tradition, and liberty
Conservatism conserves, or secures. Presumably, this means to conserve or secure what is good, because what could be desirable about conserving what is harmful? Yet, conservatism does more than secure what is externally good, because conservatism suggests that something desirable exists merely in conserving the old as old, the familiar as familiar. Conservatism is traditionalism, and it tries to secure that which is established.
Such traditionalism is what people have in mind when they are thinking of conservatives’ objections to the French Revolution, Roosevelt’s New Deal, or contemporary irreligion. Because these objections often favor the established upper classes, the elites, the paternalists, the religious, and village-loving agrarians, moreover, it is sometimes difficult for egalitarians, intellectuals, and entrepreneurs to admire conservatives, or to imagine how someone rational or cosmopolitan could become one. When liberal intellectuals tell conservatives to be true to conservatism, they usually mean some such traditionalism or antiquarianism; loyalty to such practices would also, from their viewpoint, have the advantage of ensuring endless conservative, or Republican, defeats.
Conservatism does conserve, but it need not conserve only practices admired by early 19th-century conservatives or other traditionalists. The United States was founded on revolutionary principles, so our conservatism necessarily differs from European tradition. A more ancient “conservatism,” moreover, attempted to secure virtues linked to what is permanent in human excellence and happiness. Indeed, traditional conservatives often believe their institutions and practices to be conditions for, or the embodiment of, these excellences. For to conserve the familiar does not free one from the natural impulse to defend the familiar as also good — to believe that one’s traditions enable virtue, happiness, or artistic excellence, or that they are anchored in the commands of a just god. Traditional religious, political, and economic authority should satisfy some elements of what is just and desirable. Otherwise, the stable restrictions under which we live, and the authorities who enforce them, would only weaken, corrupt, and tyrannize.
Despite the fact that one cannot judge conserving to be desirable without evaluating what it seeks to conserve, there is often something desirable in the old as old, namely, stability, safety, predictability, certainty, modesty, and the attendant limits within which to direct and focus activity. It is difficult, if not impossible, to live well without taking much for granted. Respect for familiar practices and ways can make the necessity of living within the given sensible and coherent. The price of this stability, however, is to make authoritative what one takes for granted; to accept fleeting, conventional things as if they are permanent or natural; and to restrict the effect of thought, or the fullest use of reason.
The virtue of American conservatism is found in its success in uniting the security of something accepted with practices that we connect to a reasoned understanding of what is good. Our tradition is composed primarily of liberal democratic or constitutional principles, practices, and institutions. We combine these with a measure of the natural goals of virtue and happiness. When American conservatism leads the way, therefore, it is not as an imitation of European agrarianism, or by imposing fixed classes, elites, or authorities. Rather, the major element of what we conserve is a group of reasonable and therefore inherently radical standards. The Constitution is meant to be revered, but it is also revolutionary.
The central American conservative principle, and the one most attractive politically, is liberty, or freedom. The Declaration of Independence announces inalienable individual rights, individual authorities to prefer, choose, and act with which we cannot part. These rights are self-evident to reason, i.e., they do not stem from class, religious, or familial order. They channel or organize individual pride or dignity, because they recognize its rational basis. They ground one’s self-direction and effectiveness, because they are entwined with the unavoidable possibility — a possibility that each person can see in himself — of his own assent and dissent to proposed actions. They are held equally by all individuals, because reason recognizes no rank among individuals at the level of the possibility of our own self-direction. They indicate the importance of economic growth, and of political neutrality in the pursuit of most desires, because the substantive twin of equal rights is the comfort and preservation that we usually seek.
The power of liberty’s appeal lies in its clarity, universality, and desirability. Anyone can see quickly that his own ability to prefer and to choose is unshakeable and inevitable. It can be covered over and restricted, but it cannot be eliminated or expunged. My ability to choose, if not to carry out my choices, is clear — it does not require extensive argument to be pointed out and grasped. Its attraction, and its importance for pursuing almost anything else one wishes, is readily and easily visible to common sense. This clear, indubitable, universal presence and desirability differentiates liberty from other grounds that one may consider fundamental, such as religious grounds that are not shared generally or are matters of faith, or views of the best way to use one’s freedom, which may ultimately be demonstrable, but which are not obvious. One’s own self-examination shows the existence of one’s freedom of preference and choice, in a visible and noncontroversial manner. For this reason, an appeal to freedom always strikes a chord, because it is an appeal to something one sees in oneself.
The heart of modern conservatism is the individual stance favored by individual rights. This standpoint is the best ground on which to liberate most of us from domination by attachments to groups, classes, and ethnicities, or to ascriptive and irrational authority generally. It is the heart of self-government and of protection from control by others. A contemporary conservatism that does not appeal to the individual, that fails to make present and visible the freedom that attracts us, will not be successful.
Objections to conservatism
Individual freedom also provides the grounds on which to understand objections to conservatism, and to counteract them when appropriate. One objection is that conservatism is inegalitarian, that it favors unjustified privilege, or that, here and now in the United States, conservatives oppose diversity because they favor white men. This criticism is rooted both in seeing conservatives in the 19th-century way and in common sense about the current base of faithful Republican voters. The conservatism I am discussing, however, is one based primarily on equal rights, equal liberty, equal access to markets, and positions awarded on demonstrated merit. Equality of opportunity is its watchword. In fact, one element of the conservative attack on “elites” is an attack on unearned privilege and authority, and on the consequent restriction of equal self-government. Outrage in the face of reverse discrimination is outrage about the injustice of unequal treatment. American conservatives are not against egalitarianism. Quite the opposite: In seeking to secure individual rights they necessarily seek to secure our equality as the holders of individual rights.
A second objection is that conservatism’s individualism is inherently selfish, that it lacks compassion and generosity. This objection seems belied by the facts of American voluntarism and philanthropy, and by our government’s mandate of substantial transfers of wealth. Yet, one might claim that these practices derive from today’s liberals, for they are concerned with the justice of equality and not merely equality of rights. One might even say that our philanthropy stems from group loyalty, the memory of traditional duties, or, even, the echoes of traditional noblesse oblige.
These factors are significant. Nevertheless, individual liberty can and does support voluntarism, philanthropy, and public concern from its own ethical resources. It is not simply or primarily selfish. We can successfully exercise equally held individual rights only if we also develop certain virtues of character. Otherwise, we will be overwhelmed by competition, and by the difficulty of succeeding when so little is determined in advance. Americans especially prize the virtues of responsibility and industriousness, and the kinds of self-reliance and courage associated with them. One needs these virtues not only for one’s own success, but (or because) they also fit with helping to satisfy others’ needs.
Chief among these virtues is responsibility, which involves the attention to oneself that allows one to be effective both now and in the future. Because the desires and aspirations that help to define the self are, for anyone in liberal democracy, so open, one can choose to effectuate his liberties expansively. One may grasp one’s self and one’s responsibilities comprehensively. No one need take on public tasks in liberal democracies, because they are open to all and prescribed for none. Yet, it is not surprising that many do take on such tasks, because they place their freedom, and understand their responsibility, in these wider spheres. Indeed, if we do not act for ourselves, who will act for us? The responsible men and women who run for office, direct school boards, and support charities are not altruists. They help themselves as they help others. Those who attend to public tasks assert an expansive freedom and mastery, and a broad view of what their future effectiveness requires, in a competition with others that is open to all. Moreover, equality in liberty also fosters considerateness and toleration, because occupations and beliefs are so open, so little ascribed, so voluntary. Conservatism is not narrowly selfish but, rather, encourages regard for others, and (for some) responsible dedication to public tasks, as consequences of elements of the character one needs to employ one’s own freedom effectively.
A third objection to conservatism is to its anti-intellectualism and populist vulgarity. Traditional conservatism’s bias is toward the here and now, not the universal; toward particular groups and practices, not general possibilities; and towards feeling and hesitant change, not reason’s sweeping judgments. These irrational elements especially stand out for most intellectuals when they are describing conservatism. The less traditional conservatives I am discussing, however, are not motivated by nostalgia for inherited privilege and power. But they do apparently make common cause with a related version of this irrationalism, namely, folk wisdom and populist pursuits or, even, populist vulgarity. They lack or destroy refinement, so it seems, and ignore evidence and argument. They enjoy guns, doubt heated claims about global warming, and listen without irony to country music.
Above all, they take religion seriously, not as useful or habitual, but as true. It helps to guide their lives, direct their actions, and shape their politics. Such irrationality and its attendant unease with Enlightenment and with unchecked license for artists and scientists is, for conservatism’s opponents and some of its potential adherents, a central difficulty. Indeed, it shows how conservative talk of individual liberty and responsibility often gives way to concrete controls whose origin is religious moralism or populist fear.
We can counter these objections on the grounds of conservative liberalism while still leaving as a residue what remains forceful in them. For, in fact, conservatism that conserves liberal democratic or constitutional principles conserves a political community and political principles that are based on reason. The United States is formed to serve the reasonable principles that are announced by the Declaration of Independence, developed by John Locke, and made politically concrete by a Constitution formed by deliberation and discussion. The principles of our conservatism are not irrational but, on the contrary, are primarily the principles of the Enlightenment. Moreover, what we conserve has from the beginning usually favored technological advance; Benjamin Franklin has always seemed to be the emblematic American. So, although technological development is one area where the tensions among conservative principles and practices can become evident, and although one occasionally hears conservatives rail against the Enlightenment, the liberty that we conserve is, in fact, uncovered by enlightened reflection, secured by constitutional deliberation, and advanced by scientifically aided plenty.
The attack on conservative irrationalism also takes the form of decrying the vulgarity or mediocrity of liberal democratic art, music, and thought. This criticism is heard less that it once was, but is perhaps increasingly valid nonetheless. Our vast diversity does leave room for excellence, but this excellence has decreasing influence over culture as a whole. The universities that house the resources and positions that might permit excellence to be pursued and transmitted seem instead to be dens of aggressive mediocrity, so that protecting our refined heritage is a difficult battle that always threatens to be lost.
This dominance of mediocrity, however, cannot exclusively or primarily be blamed on those who preserve equal liberty. It is furthered today by egalitarianism, multicultural diversity, and disbelief in the reasonable defense of equal rights. These standpoints are often created by today’s liberals, with their inability to distinguish rationally between better and worse, their understanding of justice as equal results, and their proclivity to vilify or censor deviation from their orthodoxies. The major defense against the culturally and intellectually mediocritizing tendencies of democracy (liberal and otherwise) is education, yet serious education is advanced by conservatives as much as by liberals. Conservatives, after all, are more likely to protect the “great books” in universities, and training in basic skills at the primary level, than are liberals, and they are no less likely to advance serious professional education.
Of course, despite what I have claimed about technology and enlightenment, one might say that conservatives question scientific education. It is not liberals who believe in intelligent design, let alone creationism. Indeed, liberals’ main evidence for conservative irrationalism is religion. Conservatives frighten liberals because many actually seem to believe. Some of their policy judgments are even fueled by belief.
Religion has always belonged to the practices that conservatives seek to conserve, but perhaps “religion” is too broad a term. Traditional conservatives seek to secure particular practices and, therefore, particular religious practices. In the United States these practices are Christian. Remarkably, they are also coordinated with tolerance. More broadly, our religious life accords with the revolutionary and constitutional principles to which toleration belongs. Chief among them is the equal rights individualism that we have been defending. The clarity and visibility of these founding principles notwithstanding, however, their practical dominance requires that there be limits to the authority of the priests and divines who interpret revealed views. This reversal of authority comes to a head in John Locke and certain of the American founders, and it has, from the start, belonged to the liberal principles that American conservatives should conserve. The dominance of toleration does not mean, nor was it intended by the American founders to mean, the elimination of religion. Toleration and free exercise, indeed, keep open the possibility that it might be true. Rather, toleration makes religion chiefly a private or voluntary matter. Moreover it means that Christianity and much of Judaism are increasingly interpreted in ways that allow them to be compatible with individual rights, responsible action, and equal acquisition. Locke worked assiduously to show the compatibility of his principles with Christianity, and the Declaration of Independence speaks of the God of the laws of nature.
This newly private place for religion does not mean that it lacks influence on the public views of its adherents, or that the question of public support for its exercise is completely answered. Our history shows that this is not so. Nor is it to say that religion’s practice has never aided ascriptive inequalities. The situation of many Jews and Catholics in relation to powerful institutions organized by those of other faiths shows otherwise. It is also true, however, that American Protestantism was a leading force in overcoming discrimination generally. The support that some Southerners found in the Bible for slavery was finally overwhelmed by largely religiously conditioned abolitionism. In general, the basic direction and limits of religious life in the United States support the regime of natural rights.
It is unsurprising that religious belief is sometimes the proximate cause of political action. Political battles, however, must still be fought politically. Indeed, on the two major religiously influenced issues of the past 40 years, abortion and gay marriage, it is the secular view, not the religious, that led the way in constraining legislative freedom by seeking to enshrine its view judicially.
Nonetheless, for all their compatibility with energetic freedom, many Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish believers defend policies in the areas just mentioned that limit free action. American religious conservatives conserve principles of freedom, but they do not encourage all free practices. Differences in the scope of free action split libertarian from religious conservatives. Liberals face their own incompatibilities, of course — free speech versus political correctness — and areas where they sense such incompatibilities but hope to ignore them — security versus civil liberties, say, or economic growth versus egalitarian redistribution. Liberals’ incompatibilities are not our topic, however, although their core support of some individual freedoms is an echo of significant common ground with conservatives.
The conditions of freedom
In any event, the central religious-political issue in the United States is not how far to exercise liberty in particular cases but, rather, the conditions that we require to support individual freedom generally. The virtues, such as responsibility and toleration, that accord with exercising one’s rights advance self-interest, generously understood. But noticing and cultivating these virtues is not automatic. To place one’s effort in attending to common goods requires training, direction, and conviction. But we do not undertake difficult activities without encouragement. One’s own passionate attachment to what is reasonably proper and high is vital in making the most of oneself. But we do not form judgment without education and discipline. A grasp of the difference between the vulgar and refined does not occur all at once.
For such discipline and breadth to occur, religious actions and beliefs that fit with the teaching, institutions, and practices of liberal democracy are useful and important, if not altogether necessary or sufficient. Modern religion is in this sense one of liberal democracy’s bulwarks. This is not to deny that belief may sometimes suggest to believers restrictions that step beyond the secular conditions of freedom. We should again remember, however, that a proposed policy that stems from religious belief is subject to political debate. It does not magically become law.
The place of religion, and family, in helping to advance the effective exercise of one’s rights suggests the general importance to conservatism of securing freedom’s conditions. Much government action that seems to counter conservative individualism is encouraged or permitted by this goal. The limited government that is implied by conservatism means that government should be restricted to certain tasks, mechanisms, and procedures, not that government should everywhere be weak or small.
The conditions for effectively using rights include education, safety, equal access to markets that exchange properly understood products, and freedom from harmful side-effects of individual behaviors. These conditions sometimes require aggressive government action in order to be secured. This is why public education, effective policing, firm regulation, and government attention to, say, controlling pollution are areas of legitimate government intervention. Even here, however, conservatives prefer to exercise political authority through mechanisms that permit wide individual choice, such as school vouchers.
Moreover, government is not the primary way in which many of these conditions of freedom are secured to begin with. Several matters are more vitally engaged privately or socially, even when government must provide boundaries, protections, or commands. Responsible freedom means that we do things for ourselves, including, but not limited to, self-governing simply. To what virtues and goals should we aspire? What should we teach in schools? What expectations about love, family, work, and happiness should move us? How we deal with these matters more fundamentally affects the conditions for freedom and its use than does direct government action, and how we treat such matters of culture or justice is, given the purpose of our way of life, primarily a consequence of private action and debate.
One might nonetheless ask why, if public education is a proper political function, there should not be other intellectual, moral, and cultural mandates? If government should sometimes act to control unchosen effects of economic action such as pollution or unemployment, what exactly are its limits? Surely, for example, one might argue that good health is a condition for the effective exercise of rights.
The modesty of conservatism indicates that we can at most employ guidelines for intervention, not use hard and fast rules. The chief guideline for legislation and action is to judge, prudently, their overall effects on securing equal liberty, advancing responsible character, and permitting intelligent individual choice. Prudent judgment means looking at the whole picture whose elements we might be adjusting, and considering the effects of our possible actions on this whole. It is not merely to do what is most efficient for a single part. The virtues, purposes, and conditions of liberal democracy are too diverse to measure along a single scale, and, in any event, free political action makes it impossible to calculate results precisely by looking backwards from a single, stable, standpoint. This perspective will often, but not always, lead one to counsel incremental change; this depends on the gravity and urgency of the practical situation.
When government must act to secure conditions under which liberty can flourish, it should not subvert the ends its means attempt to serve. The guidelines we are discussing should also structure our use of semi-technical standards for judging competing claims about intervention, such as cost-benefit analysis, and our choices about which external effects merit political action. Usually, these standpoints are sensible only if employed where we can weigh on one scale alone, and only if the scope and interaction of the resultant interventions are reasonably transparent and contained. Formulas and techniques should not take the place of experience and common sense in understanding when to act politically, but they should be governed by experience and common sense. Technical devices cannot supplant the political deliberation and discussion that are the heart of free self-government without undermining conservatism’s purpose. Conservatism is not the dominance of economists, any more than it is selfishness posing as freedom or privilege posing as virtue.
One general way to secure liberty’s conditions without subverting liberty itself is to look for mechanisms of policy that use the very characteristics whose enhancement is their goal. This is why, as we have said, conservatism favors private choice and action even when effecting a government purpose. This standpoint, however, hardly solves all tensions among these goals or in government’s service to them. Politics is necessarily imperfect. It belongs to conservatism to acknowledge the merits of the moderation that stems from a recognition of imperfection. A fair look at American conservatism also shows, however, that it wishes above all to conserve our equal freedom. This radical standpoint, when properly considered, belies the view that conservatism is selfish, irrational, and a friend of privilege. On the contrary, it is based on a liberty that each can acknowledge and understand.
