Well, part of the confusion here is rooted in the fact that modern American “conservatism” – as it has been understood from Goldwater’s 1964 presidential bid to the present day – is something radically different from “conservatism” as it was understood pre-1964 in America, and as it is still understood in Europe. From The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America, by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge (New York: The Penguin Press, 2004):
Mostly just lurking in this thread, though its interesting. However, I don’t see how what you cited makes your case that conservatism can be characterized as “sloth and quietism” BG…in fact, to me it kind of makes the opposite case, especially about ‘quietism’ if I understand that english term to mean being quiet. Maybe you can analyze what you posted in your own words and explain how this supports your position?
As to the OP (since I’m here I might as well comment :)), is Conservatism based on faith? I think its been answered already, but I’ll put myself in the ‘some of it is’ camp. I think social conservatism IS mostly based on ‘faith’, while economic conservatism is based on other things. American style conservatism therefore would have faith elements in it…and non-faith elements in it, depending on the subject being discussed. I think of myself as a moderate, though I have economic conservative tendencies. And I’m an agnostic, basically just one step away from an athiest…and its a step that gets shorter and shorter every year. 
-XT
The adulation of economic conservatives for unrestrainted free markets and the Invisible Hand of Adam Smith all seem fairly faith-based to me.
Just like a creationist saying that evolution is ‘faith based’, ehe? I tend to go with what works. To me, the adulation of economic liberals for government controls and high taxes to the rich and the whole class warfare thing seem faith-based. Different strokes I guess.
-XT
But, by most reasonable measures, the welfare states of Europe have generally healthier societies than ours. What’s your definition of “what works”?
From “The American Paradox,” an article by Ted Halstead, in The Atlantic Monthly, 2/1/03 – http://www.newamerica.net/index.cfm?pg=article&DocID=1155:
To me its debatable how stable their economy is in the long term…and I note that much of their recent ecomonic success, especially in the UK, comes from repealing the more radical aspects of their socialism and re-embrassing something curiously resembling a free(er) market than what they had before. But thats neither here nor there…time will tell on whether it will work for them in the long run. Whats my definition of ‘what works’?
Sounds good to me, though I’m sure the author didn’t mean it as a good thing. I’m NOT my brothers keeper. Personal freedom and economic dynamism trumps social cohesion (I dispute that we don’t have a broad based middle class…in fact, I’d hazard to guess that we have the BROADEST based middle class out there) IMO, as long as you don’t go completely overboard…we don’t. I wouldn’t WANT to live in Europe with their strangling tax structure and even more nanny government. You might think its a paradise. Different stroke for different folks BG. Do we have problems? Certainly. Guess what? So do they.
To get to my point though to rjung (which was mostly a joke btw), it seems that heavy government controls and high taxes a la the liberal dream HAD its day…and pretty much failed to the point where many American’s reach for their wallets whenever a liberal starts talking. Every president (afaik) from Roosevelt to Carter were proponents of a heavily controlled economy and what I consider to be a stock liberal economic model. Now you might disagree with that (I can pretty much guarentee you do disagree in fact :)) but thats how I see it.
So, to cut this short, from my perspective liberal economics ARE more ‘faith based’ than conservative (though it really was just a way for me to pull rjungs nose when I made that statement…something I enjoy doing :)), because liberal economics pretty much gave us the 70’s…where conservative economics gave us the 90’s. Before you jump up, I realize Clinton was in the drivers seat then. Two things. The 90’s didn’t just happen full blown due to Clinton alone…it was building to that already (just like the 70’s was an anti-build up culminating in the Malaise). In addition, whatever the rabid right might say, Clinton was a centrist with a pretty conservative economic streak of his own…in fact I think there were many times when Clinton out Republicaned the Republicans.
-XT
I can’t believe that a fairly established political philosophy such as conservatism is so woefully misunderstood here on the Straight Dope.
Conservatism was founded by great and intelligent men. To claim that they would even begin to accept a philosophy that insisted on “little or no change” is ludicrous. When Edmund Burke put pen to paper centuries ago he realized just as we do now that change is inevitable.
Great conservative thinkers like Burke (and one of my favorite, Theodore Roosevelt) looked at change as something that can be dealt with both reactively and proactively.
Other values besides your political philosophy will determine whether you start trying to initiate change or whether you just react to changes as they happen. For example, if you are a big environmentalist you will try to initiate changes in environmental policies. But you may also at the same time not care at all about personal income taxes, so you will only react to changes in that area (either negatively, positively, or not at all.)
“Philosophical” conservatism is just a tool for making decisions. Conservatives often feel that change is necessary, they often initiate change.
But the overriding rule is that for a change to occur we must be sure of a few things:
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Said change has been analyzed, we have some idea as to what may happen when the change is implemented.
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It must be implemented gradually. Both so that it does not gravely disrupt society but also so that we can monitor its progress, we can decide during the course if the course is truly worth travelling, and we will have more and more experience to help us make decisions as the change progresses.
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The change must create a better situation than the status quo. For example doing X may be seen as inherently good, but if this good is less than the benefits of remaining at the status quo, there is no legitimate reason to change.
Obviously there is a great deal of subjectivity, and that is where conservatism ends and other political philosophies and ideas come in.
If you tear liberalism down to it’s core philosophical base it basically has this concept:
“We must embrace change, and experiment with change until we find the best result.”
No one reflects this better than FDR, he very openly said he had no idea what was going to work in the New Deal, but he was willing to try every thing.
That is to me, very reckless. Especially since national level policy changes are huge, expensive, and very time consuming. They aren’t things we should ‘experiment’ with in my opinion.
Liberals like to conduct experiments on society. A conservative would prefer to sit back and work in the lab before applying anything to society at large.
What I am describing here is classical conservatism.
At its root classical conservatism doesn’t make value judgments on matters like socialism, social welfare, war, peace, gay marriage, indecency on television et cetera.
The term conservative has in many ways fallen into a great quandry of confusion, as has the term liberal. A good number of people that label themselves “conservative” or that are labelled conservative are actually “reacitonary.” And reactionaryism goes against the very foundations of conservatism.
TO me theoretically you can have a conservative Republican, a conservative Democrat, a conservative socialist, a conservative fascist. It is purely a decision making tool. It relies on order and “correct” implementation. Following the rules and analyzing decisions.
Theoretically you could have a conservative socialist. But since most socialists want fast and reckless change, you don’t see that very often.
I think classical conservatives are hard to find today. You have to look at the roots of the Republican party to find them. You have to strip away the neocons, the Religioust Right, the libertarians (who are sort of pseudo-classical liberals), and even some of the more reactionary fiscal conservatives.
When you do that you arrive at the core Republican party of the Gilded age/first half of the 20th century. This is the Republican party that stresses order and discipline. Business and corporate interests stand along with the classical conservatives because stability is good for business. Social change and dramatic experimentation is bad for business. That’s about as simple as it gets.
Obviously things in the real world need to be analyzed on a greater level. Classical conservatism isn’t a “catchall” ideology. It’s basicaly just a philosophy you use to make decisions, the actual factual concerns of the decisions are best left to other philosophies.
Oh, please. That’s just silly.
But Burke’s version of conservatism is dead in this country, Martin. See post #21.
If you tear liberalism down to it’s core philosophical base it basically has this concept:
“We must embrace change, and experiment with change until we find the best result.”
No one reflects this better than FDR, he very openly said he had no idea what was going to work in the New Deal, but he was willing to try every thing.
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But FDR’s experimental policies worked. The let-it-fix-itself policies of his predecessors did not work. You have just stated a pretty cogent argument for the value of what you define as “liberalism.”
Please provide proof that they worked, or worked with any kind of efficiency. Was it the New Deal that brought America out of the Depression, or was it WWII?
Both. That is, the New Deal had some success in acheiving recovery even before the war. But it was WWII that made the full implementation of the New Deal politically possible, in the form of “war socialism.” From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_deal#The_New_Deal_and_economic_relief:
To relate this to Martin’s post – all this resulted from experimenting. For a long time, FDR tried implementing economic-recovery programs within the constraints of a balanced budget. When that failed to end the Depression, he tried more drastic measures, which worked. But the change-averse policies of Coolidge and Hoover could never have worked.
Wow, there are a lot of strawmen being knocked around in this thread. If you truly want to debate an opponent’s position, it is necessary to understand that position well first. Few in this thread have demonstrated any real understanding of the positions held by the opposite side. Knocking down a mockery of the opposing position is not debating.
Conservatism might be generalized as: “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Except that, these days, conservatives dislike many pieces of long-standing legislation which, while they were created to fix something, are solutions conservatives have long opposed. So, they now want to change them, because the fixes themselves are viewed by conservatives as broken. Elements of faith: those who feel their politics are guided by the Bible or prayer or whatever, and those who feel that the free market is the best economic system for any society. For the latter, some further examples: that a society can remain stable even if the economic system continues to widen the gaps betweem “haves” and “have-nots” and increasing wealth is controlled in the hands of the few, that business corporations on their own can be trusted to keep society’s best interests at heart, that America’s influence (military, economy, democracy) in the world will have a net long-term benefit to other societies in the world, in other words that the solutions that we prefer are good for everybody.
Liberalism might be generalized as: “things are not working out as well as they could, so let’s try to make some changes in hopes of making things better.” Except that, these days, liberals are working hard to protect some long-standing pieces of legislation, which–although problems with them are acknowledged by both sides–they would prefer to see kept as they are, rather than risk alterations they view as worse. A few elements of faith: that a powerful, centralized democratic government can be relied upon to kept society’s best interests at heart, that this government will do better protecting the needs of its societies than any for-profit corporation, and that America will benefit from paying more attention to what other societies have decided is right for them, and by being less arrogant about the superiority of its own ideals.
In a nutshell, I don’t think there are any strong, persistent political ideas that don’t take something on faith. One could argue whether one example has stronger evidence for its validity than the other, but it is foolish to pretend there isn’t a lot being taken on faith on both sides. It also foolish to fail to acknowledge that both sides have some things that they get absolutely right.
However, I do think it is most regretable that a particular religious sect presently holds such a stong influence, but that is my own personal bias showing. I believe strongly in secular government, because I see no evidence that a theocracy (even a de facto one) is anything other than horrifically repressive. Economic conservatives as well as liberals should be very, very worried about the power of religion in government: both have a lot to lose if zealots increasingly get their way. Religious conservatives are right to fear both.
The big puzzle to me these days is how right-wing Christianity and economic conservatives ever got in bed together in the first place. It won’t last; they’re simply wrong for each other.
BG basically the New Deal did little or nothing. The Great Depression was too enormous to be deal with using the measure FDR used. The huge production required to run WWII is the reason the Great Depression ended with WWII. And the fact that the economy had become too dependent on the military production was proven when we had a massive recession after WWII was over. Of course by the late 40s we had turned around and experienced one of the most amazing periods of growth in our country’s history.
You say Coolidge and Hoover’s policies could “never” have worked, but we don’t know. All we know is that FDRs really didn’t work either, and that his vast experimentation with little pre-analysis is why we have systems in place 60 years later than FDR intended to only be “temporary” or “transitory.”
No, Burke’s version of conservatism is not dead. Many “ideological” conservatives still use his method when trying to address problems. It’s about as alive as the “core” of liberalism is. Neither are dead, both have just been saddled with lots of issues that aren’t necessarily related to the philosophies themselves, so as political philosophies they aren’t seriously talked about anymore.
And again, FDRs policies sadly did not work. Well, maybe two of his policies did. The creation of regulatory agencies set the groundwork for protection from future debacles (to a degree), and his policies that lead to WWII worked out very well as far as the military aspects go.
His other policies designed to alleviate the Great Depression had the same effect as an infant does trying to stop a tidal wave. All of these programs do have significant effects today but most of them were stop-gap measures (and ineffective ones at that) which did little to stop the Great Depression.
You are either very old or very unaware BG. Because the old schoolbook story of how FDR stopped the Great Depression has been mostly rejected for decades by serious historians and economists alike.
Also trying to summarize conservatism as “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is blatantly wrong. Conservatives believe in continual progress and improvement. Just because one decides reckless experimentation is not the way to go does not mean one says all progress must stop, or that we should only address problems not try to create new ideas.
Also liberalism and conservatism as “pure philosophies” aren’t really appropriate subjects to be “denounced” or “praised.” I think both have valid uses and depending on the situation I think there are cases where the liberal approach could bring about a better result.
As a conservative, I simply believe that overall if we look at the “big” picture then ultimately conservatism is the “safe bet” the one that will insure we don’t wreck society. Liberalism is too much of a gambler’s game for me. But I am a gambler in real life, and I know the value of going all in, or not worrying about the possible negative consequences.
I’ll draw an analogy to Texas Hold’Em. Most serious Texas Hold’Em players know that the bluffing and such that you see on the World Series is very rare. It happens at key moments when players are forced into situations like that (either by high antes or something else.) Virtually every “real” poker player has a conservative game plan. However there are key moments where they will take the big risk, because sometimes those moments become necessary. And because of their conservative gameplan, they won’t typically be in dire straights when it comes time to take that big risk.
I’d compare that to society by saying there are times we must experiment, but our overall viewpoint shouldn’t be one that praises constant experimentation and chance taking. We aren’t playing with poker chips in government, we’re playing with people’s lives.
What about Social Security? Perhaps FDR did not foresee the financial strains caused by widespread longevity, and it’s hard to see how he could have; but other than that, doesn’t the program do what it was intended to do – provide basic support for those too old to work?
Mr. Moto showed up.
Rather than abandon the definitions of the words, perhaps it would be easier to consider that if things are a certain way, and then get changed, wanting to change them back to the way they were originally is still conservatism. Even though it’s a change, it’s still a desire to adopt ways from the past. And likewise, if things change, then revert to an older state, wanting to go back to, (or protect, if it’s still in force) the “changed” state is still liberalism. (Actually, isn’t “progressive” more the opposite of “conservative” than “liberal”?)
Seems like that would be an easier way to define it, rather than having to rotate the definitions 180 degrees every time a different political party comes to power.
Maybe it has, but whoever described it as such was a social conservative who was trying to sway a social liberal to his POV on economics. In practice, low regulation free market means letting the wealthy run roughshod over the poor and the middle class, because they invariably use their financial gain to enhance their political power so that their wealth gets codified into law.
Free market “liberals” or “conservatives” however you want to call them, always support the status quo and have little interest in the poor and the middle class.
I would suggest that the REAL dividing line between conservatives and liberals is the amount of REAL interest they have in the economic health of the poor and the middle class. Both groups FEIGN such support, but general Republicans/conservatives are more prone to support the wealthy vs. the poor and the middle class than the Democrats/liberals.