Widely quoted on the Internet these days is the following definition of conservatism:
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.” - Frank Wilhoit
What “in-groups” and “out-groups” do you think fit that description?
I’ve never heard of Frank Wilhoit before, but from this I can infer that he does not identify as a conservative. In fact, for him, “conservatives” would be an “out-group.”
If you really want a serious, useful definition of conservatism (or any other -ism), you need to find one that conservatives themselves as well as non-conservatives would say is fair.
It’s not a definition, it is an observation of behavior.
As to the OP, the in-groups are white christian middle class heterosexual nuclear families. And the out-groups would be anyone else.
I disagree. In my experience, conservatives will not agree that any accurate definition of ‘conservative’ is fair, they will only agree to definitions that are absurdly white-washed, and many times are openly counter-factual. People who’s lives are threatened by conservatives aren’t really concerned with an abstract theoretical definition that fits someone’s thought experiment, they’re concerned with the policies, laws, business cultures, and other real-world systems that conservatives implement in the real world, and conservatives either absolutely recoil at accurately describing any of the stuff they implement, or are a tiny minority who identify as ‘conservative’ but are at odds with the policy-setting conservatives.
But how does that fit Wilhoit’s remark? If conservatives get asked whether there should be binding laws against arson or bribing a cop or whatever, do you think the reply would be, well, hold on a minute; shouldn’t we carve out some kind of exception for guys who are heterosexual and white, in a middle-class household, and so on?
No, they would never actually verbalize it that way.
But, if the white son of a middle class family gets caught with some pot, then they will think that he just made a mistake and shouldn’t have his life destroyed for it.
If a poor minority youth is caught with drugs, then they will get to meet the inner workings of the justice system.
If you don’t think that the justice system goes easier on wealthy white people than on poor minorities, then this discussion has no productive value.
Well, then, this Wilhoit guy should phrase it better, maybe thereby spark a productive-value discussion, if that’s what he means and has in mind; should avoid motte-and-bailey stuff, y’know?
The issue I see there may be with it is the “exactly one proposition” language. This is A proposition in the discourse about retaining the existing dominant structures of sociocultural organization and value, and it works in conjunction with others. As in, first you define what are the sociocultural characteristics that you are supposed to be “conserving” THEN, as a corollary, you may decide that therefore those who share those characteristics, the in-group, must be protected, and those who don’t, the out-group, must be controlled. And that reflects itself in the application of supposedly objective laws, where outgroupness is an implicit, unarticulated “aggravating factor” and ingroupness is an implicit, unarticulated mitigating factor.
Also, most conservatives do not see themselves as “in-group” . They honestly believe their ways ARE the baseline norm or even “god-given” , and of course should be given protection and those who defy them must face consequences.
Yes, we cannot rely on conservatives to offer an honest description of conservatism, because dishonesty is baked into the ideology. It’s about setting up structures that on their face can be described as applying to everyone, but under scrutiny it doesn’t.
There’s the hoary Anatole France quotation: “In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.”
So far as I can tell, there is nothing to know about Frank Wilhoit. His only online existence is a comment he posted in response to a blog post, from which this description of conservatism comes from (The travesty of liberalism — Crooked Timber). The entire comment is worth quoting:
There is no such thing as liberalism — or progressivism, etc.
There is only conservatism. No other political philosophy actually exists; by the political analogue of Gresham’s Law, conservatism has driven every other idea out of circulation.
There might be, and should be, anti-conservatism; but it does not yet exist. What would it be? In order to answer that question, it is necessary and sufficient to characterize conservatism. Fortunately, this can be done very concisely.
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:
There must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time.
For millenia, conservatism had no name, because no other model of polity had ever been proposed. “The king can do no wrong.” In practice, this immunity was always extended to the king’s friends, however fungible a group they might have been. Today, we still have the king’s friends even where there is no king (dictator, etc.). Another way to look at this is that the king is a faction, rather than an individual.
As the core proposition of conservatism is indefensible if stated baldly, it has always been surrounded by an elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, amounting over time to millions of pages. All such is axiomatically dishonest and undeserving of serious scrutiny. Today, the accelerating de-education of humanity has reached a point where the market for pseudophilosophy is vanishing; it is, as The Kids Say These Days, tl;dr . All that is left is the core proposition itself — backed up, no longer by misdirection and sophistry, but by violence.
So this tells us what anti-conservatism must be: the proposition that the law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone, and cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.
Then the appearance arises that the task is to map “liberalism”, or “progressivism”, or “socialism”, or whateverthefuckkindofstupidnoise-ism, onto the core proposition of anti-conservatism.
No, it a’n’t. The task is to throw all those things on the exact same burn pile as the collected works of all the apologists for conservatism, and start fresh. The core proposition of anti-conservatism requires no supplementation and no exegesis. It is as sufficient as it is necessary. What you see is what you get:
The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.
Well, if this thread is supposed to be a discussion about how horrible all conservatives necessarily are, then let’s just move it to the Pit.
I’m not sure what your reference to castles means, but, as one line in a much longer post, it is not meant to stand on its own as a philosophy, but to be a conversation starter for the rest.
And it is true. You have “proactive policing” in poor minority neighborhoods, and you have safety patrols in the upper class areas. In the former, they are looking for crimes that they can charge the residents with, in the latter, they are looking for people that don’t belong there.
In any case, this was just some guy. He wasn’t anyone famous or noteworthy. The only thing that is noteworthy about him is specifically how he phrased this, and the chord that it struck.
Put phrasing aside, do you agree with this notion?
Do you have suggestions on how he could have phrased it better, to encapsulate this concept?
Apparently all the people who think all people should be quarantined unless they are protesting the police are conservatives. All the people who think it is fine to discriminate against asians and whites in college admissions are conservatives. People who want the cops who shot Breaonna Taylor arrested are conservatives. The people who think they diversity is great as long as all people think the same are conservatives.
Liberals love to brag about how only conservatives are intolerant and how much they hate conservatives. Self awareness is apparently not a liberal virtue.
If you consider the things that conservatives do to be ‘horrible’, or that people who do what conservatives do to be ‘horrible’, then any discussion of them will necessarily involve horrible things. What you’re saying is that we can’t discuss in GD conservative support of things like systemic racism including police brutality bad enough that a blatant murder in broad daylight won’t be prosecuted unless people take to the streets in protest, torture (of ‘rioters’, immigrants, and military prisoners), denying human rights (to LGBT people, immigrants, ‘rioters’, and others), the dismantling of public schooling, the dismantling of the post office, outright voter fraud, and the like in GD, which excludes the majority of what conservatives actually do.
While I think you’re being sarcastic, this one is actually pretty true. Conservatives talk a lot about ‘religious freedom’ and ‘free speech’, but are the ones who actually have been practicing extreme ‘cancel culture’ for at least decades, if not centuries (though using ‘conservative’ a century or more back is tricky, since the political landscape has changed so much). “Relgious Freedon” as practiced by conservatives doesn’t mean you are fine if you’re a Jew, Muslim, Atheist, Satanist, Buddhist, or non-standard Christian, it just means that they want to excuse discrimination (including in administering life-saving, time-sensitive treatment) as long as you say you’re doing it because you’re a Christian. “Free speech” doesn’t include criticism of Dear Leader or protesting against blatant murder, it just means that older white people should be allowed to use slurs against minorities without anyone voicing any objection.
I hate to say both sides, but this really is a case of both sides. There were over 20,000 people who expressed support on Facebook for a black man who shot and killed a five-year old white boy, for instance. There were people who felt that the rioting and looting after George Floyd’s death was a necessary and justified expression of anger and protest against racism. Seattle allowed the CHAZ to remain in place for several days. When an Antifa member punched white nationalist Richard Spencer in the face, many liberals cheered.
Conservatives are certainly not the only people who think that their group ought to be allowed a generous bit of leeway under the law, while the other should be held to strict observance of the law.
We are describing the actual systems of government that are used unequally. They are used in ways that harm one group, and protect another.
You are complaining about, at most, the expression of a desire for the out-group to no longer be bound.
For your first point, it was not that they thought that he should get away with shooting a white boy, it is that they didn’t think that he did it.
Your second point just does the “people are saying” part, without actually pointing to anyone actually saying, and for good reason.
I’m not sure what your point about CHAZ is, at all.
And punching Nazis is something that I think that conservatives should be allowed to do too.
The way that American society has been for the last few hundred years disagrees with your statement. I don’t see that contemporary American society has changed much in that respect either.
Let’s take for instance protests. The protesters in Seattle and Portland are vilified for anything that anyone does during the protest. They will be shot because someone on the other side of the street shook a fence. Yet, you get a bunch of armed people storming the state capital, and that’s just them expressing their opinions. No one got shot, no one was charged with anything.
I know you claim to hate to “say both sides”, but that is exactly what you did here, and with no justification for it. You went looking for a way to equate the two sides, to justify the actions of your side by trying to find something vaguely similar in your opponent.
Do you deny that policing and justice are applied differently to poor minorities as to wealthy white people? If so, then there is nothing to discuss here, we cannot come to an agreement on reality. If not, then all you are doing is complaining about the speck in your neighbor’s eye.
Original poster here! For what it’s worth…
I read the quote on conservatism, thought it was saying something potentially important, and felt like I had some grasp of what it meant.
But I was curious what real-world examples come to your minds when you read of “in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind” and “out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
That is why I posted.
It’s more of there being an “in-group” that’s defined as sharing the same sort of populist, Jacksonian-type values, and everyone else not being part of that group, and therefore not deserving of the protections of the group.
It’s a mistake I believe, to think that there are in-groups and out-groups. Rather there’s the “in-group” and everyone else.
Read the essay below by Walter Russell Mead about Jacksonian America, and imagine that the people he describes in his essay feel threatened politically and socially. Think about how they might react, and you pretty much have EXACTLY what’s going on these days.
We’re talking about the United States? I’m not trying to be sarcastic, but it’s obvious, isn’t it?
I think you and I could both grasp what the quote meant but come up with different examples of such “in-groups” and “out-groups,” and that hearing these different takes might be useful.