Last time, I gave a very broad description of what Conservatism is, speaking in generalities rather than particulars and giving as little of my own interpretation as possible. Today, I'm digging a bit deeper, and to do so necessarily involves revealing my own views. I also run the risk of excluding some ideas and people from Conservatism. I identify most closely with what is called Paleoconservatism, but there are plenty of people who claim, with some justice, the Conservative label who are conspicuously not Paleoconservatives, and even some Paleoncons who would disagree with me in detail. I want to say at the outset that there is nothing inherently un-Conservative about these other views according to the definition I laid out lat time.
But they're still wrong.
More seriously, what is the fundamental social problem according to Conservatism? Since we focus on the differences between people, there is an obvious answer: people disagree about things. If we want a functioning society, consisting of peaceful associations between people to their general advantage, we must find a way for these quarrelsome people to resolve their disputes without violence. Thus the fundamental social problem for Conservatism is "social order."
Another way of understanding this is to say that Conservatism is about peace, but this is potentially misleading. A Conservative is neither a personal pacifist nor categorically opposed to warfare. Indeed, given that people inevitably disagree, violence and war are all but inevitable as well. Rather, Conservatism sees, or at least wants to make, violence and war as exceptional cases.
"Surely," you might say, "everyone wants as little conflict as possible; what's so special about Conservatism in that regard?" Ah, but Conservatism doesn't have anything against conflict per se, but merely violent conflict which disrupts the processes of society. True, Conservatives would like for everyone to achieve happiness and contentment, but as perfection is denied us on this side of Paradise, this goal is utopian.
This leads to another fundamental aspect of Conservatism that I forgot to mention: an emphasis on man's finite nature. We cannot simply by act of will achieve our ends, nor can we acquire unlimited knowledge. While this may seem obvious, it is important to keep in mind that this fact is not all that important to non-Conservative ideologies; there exist people who think man is truly unlimited. The finite nature of man has many important consequences, but the most pertinent to the present discussion are that everything has costs and that some things are outside man's reach. As much as we might like a world without want or pain or sadness, riding the world of such ills is not possible, and every move toward such a world requires sacrifices that may or may not be worth making. Thus, Conservatism is the enemy of all Molochs; it does not have a supreme end or even supreme array of ends toward which it holds society must move. Even social order is not the be-all and end-all of Conservatism. Conservatives would happily destroy an existing order if that order were unjust.
Alright, so we know what Conservatism wants, but how does it propose to get there? The answer is, by establishing a set of rules for society that are conducing to social order and cooperation. The question immediately arises, how are these rules to be determined? While there are many answers to this question that might be acceptable to Conservatives, the primary source of regulation comes from tradition. As people live together in a society, they adopt rules that are conducive to the orderly function of that society. Since these rules are already in practice and have been justified by their success in the past, the Conservative sees no reason to try to reinvent the wheel.
One thing to keep in mind about social rules as Conservatives see them is that, while they are not static, they also do no change easily or quickly. Traditions are built over many years, even decades and centuries, so if there is a case today that goes against the existing tradition, it's not a new tradition but an exceptional case. If these exceptional cases become frequent, a new tradition may emerge, but this is not an instantaneous process and certainly not done by decree of the authorities, as is common today.
I have deliberately avoided using the world "law" in the preceding paragraphs, not because the law is unimportant for Conservatism, but because it is a subset of traditional rules. The law consists of those rules that are considered enforceable. However, violence is something Conservatives want to limit, so while the law as practiced does have the same origin and character as other traditions, many attempts have been made to identify what the law should be. Modern attempts at this have usually been met with skepticism by Conservatives, and rightly so, but the enterprise is not without worth. I will discuss how philosophy of law relates to Conservatism at a later time.
A corollary of social rules being based on tradition is that no one person or group of people is tasked with devising them. There is no legislature, and community leaders emerge rather than are elected. Of course, there may be a more or less explicit system for choosing leaders when one is not obvious, with large landowners, veteran soldiers, educated scholars, and prominent craftsmen being common choices. Such customs might even evolve into a basically hereditary system. The important thing is that even these elites do not alter the world, but simply make decisions for the present based on the past.
The emphasis Conservatism places on specialization also influences the rule-making process. Specifically, it leads to a hostility toward democracy. Democracy involves placing the task of determining what the social rules are in the hands of a particular body and in accord to particular procedures, either the populace as a whole or their elected representatives and by majority vote. A Conservative looks askance on empowering people who lack the knowledge to make decisions in any case, and the situation does not improve if many ignorant people are involved. A host of sales clerks is not equal to a single physician when it comes to the practice of medicine or an architect in bridge-building. You also don't notice doctors or engineers deciding how to proceed by consulting the masses--they are the ones who know what to do, not these others.
It might seem that electing representatives solves this problem. However, governing by itself, let alone governing with justice, is as much a specialized profession as medicine or construction, so unless these representatives have spent the requisite years studying how to govern, they are not much more qualified than those who elect them. In our modern world, it is not a stretch to say that governing involves familiarity with so many widely disparate fields, from economics to history to physics to many foreign cultures, that no one could possibly be qualified to do many of the things our governments attempt regularly.
Furthermore, modern democratic government does something very different from different from what Conservatives want: it legislates. Instead of making decisions for particular cases, it attempts to devise general rules applicable to many unrelated instances. That such an attempt is doomed to failure is obvious, and this is borne out by the frequent changes in the "laws" produced by democratic regimes. Conservatism sees the function of government is strictly judicial and of a particular, rather than universal, character.
Even now, I've given a very broad sketch of Conservatism, but there's still a lot to be filled in. I'm not going to do that, or at least not do it with any claim to general validity, but instead my next post will involve how you can acquire the tools to flesh out your own ideas within this framework for yourself if you're so inclined.
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