TAC: Ross Douthat

David wrote: "Conservatives believe in the constancy of human nature, liberals believe in the perfectability (or at least ameliorability) of human nature, either through technology or social policy."

I take it, then, that you were always skeptical of the project to remake Iraq as a democracy? And do you believe that "neoconservatives," if defined as those who believe that the willingness to use force to spread democracy should be the guiding principle of American foreign policy, are not really conservatives?

And David, while I agree that our shit will always stink, we no longer have slaves, women can choose to work if they feel like it and are not treated as a husband's property, and segregation is illegal. No immortality or stink-free poo, but progress nonetheless.

I agree that we should be skeptical about the power of the state to ameliorate the human condition. But, as things have worked out, today, way, way, way fewer of the elderly live in poverty. Hooray for Social Security!>

I actually think future generations will wonder why the state believed it could intrude into the bedroom and doctor's office of its citizens and wonder why it rejected medical advances in a slavish attempt to appease those with an overly broad view of what "life" is.>

I take it, then, that you were always skeptical of the project to remake Iraq as a democracy? And do you believe that "neoconservatives," if defined as those who believe that the willingness to use force to spread democracy should be the guiding principle of American foreign policy, are not really conservatives?

Whether you are conservative or not or skeptical or not, once the decision has been made (for reasons of state) to dispose of the extant regime, the question arises as to the plan of action most congruent with one's objectives. Alternatives to attempting to erect an elected government might have been re-installing the Hashemites, leaving the country in an anarchic state; or perhaps convening assemblies of tribal patriarchs and various opinion leaders, provided you could identify them reliably, and having them erect a government (provided they could agree on a common plan of action). Is it manifest that any of these alternatives would have worked better?


...women can choose to work if they feel like it

Three of my great-grandmothers were farm-bred. I suspect they might have been puzzled at the notion that they and their mothers were not working, or that adding atop one's domestic responsibilities a job writing letters for a local merchant or slinging hash at a local inn would have been something you did because you 'felt like it'.


and are not treated as a husband's property,

Children are subjugated by law. Do you treat your children as property?


and segregation is illegal.

These sorts of caste regulations were peculiar to the Southern United States (with some spillage elsewhere) and were (given a certain amount of local variation) in force from about 1882 to about 1964, which is to say the lifetime of a person of moderate longevity. How is their imposition followed by their removal an indicator of linear moral progress?


No immortality or stink-free poo, but progress nonetheless.

'Progress' paired temporally with manifestations of decay grand and petty: abortion on demand, unilateral divorce on demand, the abolition of reticence...


I agree that we should be skeptical about the power of the state to ameliorate the human condition. But, as things have worked out, today, way, way, way fewer of the elderly live in poverty. Hooray for Social Security!

Poverty is a rather elastic concept. That aside, absolute improvements in living standards are a product of greater refinements in division of labor and of technological applications, not income redistribution. While we are at it, how much has the proportion of income, assets, and consumption adhering to the elderly changed in quantitative terms since 1928, and to what degree has redistribution mediated by state agencies merely replaced redistribution mediated by relatives? Would that be progress?>

Rod: "what we do today that few people bat an eye over that future generations will consider to be barbaric."

That's always an enjoyable discussion. Eating animal meat? Indifference to poverty of foreigners? Reality TV?

One thing, though-- in the end, we can only live in the context we're born into. We can only do our best with our consciences and our understanding of the evidence at the time that we live.

Another thing: if we don't believe in progress, then who cares what the degenerates of the 23d century will think!>

Yeah Tom, we agree that progress is possible. But it is never permanent, and as with technology, solving one set of problems often creates new ones.>

I suspect they would have been even more puzzled by the notion that a woman can vote. Or be a lawyer or a doctor. Or travel, internationally, while single, by herself. Yes, some women did work low-level jobs 100 years ago; today, the range of options available to women is much much much much much wider.

Your suspicions are in error. Suffrage was extended to women in the Wyoming Territory in 1869. (Where I grew up it was a live issue from at least 1872 onward, and had establishment support). The oldest of them was at that time six. Three of the four of them lived at times and places where they could have cast a ballot, as did two of their mothers.


As recently as thirty years ago, the sort of international travel aught but a few were likely to experience was had in the course of military service or immigration. It was seldom an option in the lives of people of any description, ca. 1910.

The range of options for anyone is broader than it was in 1910. The society is much farther from subsistence, the young finish their educations not at 13 but at 23, division of labor is such the number of occupations that might feasibly be followed is enormous, physical mobility is greater, and there are vigorous impersonal institutions which indemnify individuals against the vicissitudes of life. That is affluence, and its blessings have a price tag attached to them.>

What I observe from my tv and postings on b-net is that religious conservatives see human nature and human conditions as being changed from the outside. Man has fallen and is sinful, and things will not improve until Jesus comes and wipes those who don't hold certain beliefs off of the earth.


You might consider using a wider range of information sources than just "my TV and postings on b-net." It's certainly news to me that most religious conservatives are looking forward to when "Jesus comes and wipes those who don't hold certain beliefs off of the earth" but then again I don't watch a lot of TV.

But you are right about at least one point: religious conservatives (and non-religious traditionalists, of which there are more than you might think), are convinced that human nature is what it is. We have an obligation to seek the most just social order possible. But at the end of the day, no political program and no amount of "social change" will ever make human beings perfect.

All of us will always, to one degree or another, be attracted to certain behaviors that harm others -- driven by our greed, lust, envy, self-centeredness, etc. A just social order is one that minimizes such harms without unduly limiting freedom to be creative and pursue all of the good, beauty and truth to which all of us are also attracted. It's a balancing act, which requires constant exercise of the virtue of prudence.

The anti-conservative project, which assumes that human beings can be perfected over time with the right social/economic/political structures, destroys this balance and discards prudence altogether. From a conservative viewpoint, such efforts (whether imposed violently or democratically) are inherently vicious. They are based on a basic misunderstanding of the human person, and they will inevitably cause more harm than good.

The 20th century's extreme experiments in creating a "New Man" or "New Society" -- the USSR, Mao's China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Hitler's Germany and a host of third world nasties -- certainly support the conservative critique. But in less dramatic ways, the slow but steady crackup of libertarian/social democratic society also supports it.>