Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 23, 1994 TAG: 9411010012
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: D3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GEOFF SEAMANS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Most, though, were of the "oh, yeah?" and "what would you guys know about it?" school of debate. Few disputed the editorial's contents - either its delineation of core conservative principles, or the evidence it adduced to argue how what passes for "conservatism" these days departs from those principles.
Well, if they won't dispute it, I guess I'll have to. Even though I wrote most of the thing.
To avoid conflict of intellectual interest, I'll disagree only with a part I didn't write. I'll get to this in a minute.
But first: The problem, in the academic sense of the word, is that if you define "liberal" and "conservative" by concrete issues, the labels make no sense. Take either side of virtually any question of enduring consequence in U.S. history - tariffs and trade, fiscal and financial policy, order vs. liberty, the role of the states in a federal system, war and peace, internationalism vs. isolationism, race relations, you name it - and it has been regarded both as the "liberal" and as the "conservative" view, depending on when and where.
So, either there's something more to "conservative" and "liberal" - a set of underlying principles, attitudes, tendencies, whatever - or the labels don't mean much of anything.
I think they mean something.
Conservatism, in my (and the editorial's) view, counsels respect for traditional institutions of government and the orderly conduct of society's affairs; maintenance of robust communities and the mediating nongovernmental institutions that arise from them; and working with the world as it is rather than as we might like it to be.
Respectable and useful principles all ... as are their liberal counterpoints: recognition of the creative power of disorderliness and breaking with tradition; emphasis on the rights of the individual above the desires of the community; and preoccupation with what the world ought to become rather than with what it is.
Where I part company with the editorial is its inclusion of "the libertarian impulse ..., according to which the state should meddle less in the affairs of individuals and families" as a fourth characteristic of conservativism.
Libertarianism, it seems to me, is neither liberal nor conservative.
Amid conservatism's esteem for institutions and community, and its skeptical view of perfectionist paradigms, libertarianism is incongruous. But it is equally incompatible with liberals' tendency to find in government a useful tool for protecting individuals against depradations by groups and for bringing the world closer to what ought to be.
That isn't meant as praise for libertarianism. In and of itself,without regard to the purpose or practice of the particular government or governmental activity. Passion for minimalist government strikes me as too much reflexive and too little reflective to be a lasting substitute for the traditional principles of either conservatism or liberalism.
Though the idea is too narrow and brittle to have much value over the long haul, at least libertarianism does seem interested in holding to one.
Liberalism collapsed of its own weight some years ago. It was taken down by the avoirdupois of the special interests that had attached themselves to, and ultimately seemed to many people the same as, liberalism.
The special interests are still around, of course, but the liberalism cover is in tatters. There are some signs of the emergence of a cleansed form of liberalism, but not yet to the point that very many politicians would willingly adopt the liberal label.
Much of conservatism, too, has degenerated into special-interest pleading, though the ruse of adhering to coherent ideology has held longer. Perhaps this is because the special interests hiding under conservatism's cloak are on the whole more affluent, and thus able to buy self-delusion with a longer warranty.
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB