Conor Friedersdorf continues to struggle with right-wing heretic hunters, who seem to think that the first and last word in conservatism is a neo-liberal market fundamentalism. He asks them to explain exactly what they think a conservative is:
Are there actually other standards being used to decide who must not invoke conservatism -- or to determine which so-called pseudo-conservatives must not be engaged on the substance of anything, because apparently it is better to plug one's ears and close one's eyes when someone you deem to hold a different political ideology speaks? Is there anything beyond gut level judgments and Red Team tribal loyalty guiding these decisions?
Alas, there isn't. The fact is, there are multiple conservatisms, and that's fine -- except that the heretic-hunters insist on treating conservatism like an ideological religion, instead of a disposition and general approach to life and politics. I suppose they'd call the Tory political philosopher and skeptic John Gray a liberal too, inasmuch as he has the common sense to understand how free-market fundamentalism undermines conservatism. From his book "Black Mass" (follow that link to buy a copy of the American edition, well worth the money):
In a television interview in January 1983 Thatcher declared her admiration for Victorian values and her belief that they could be revived. Actually, the country of Thatcher's nostalgic dreams was more like the Britain of the fifties, but the idea that unleashing market forces could re-create this lost idyll was strinking paradoxical. The conservative Britain of the fifties was a by-product of Labour collectivism. Thatcher tore up the foundations of the country to which she dreamt of returning. already semi-defunct when she came to power in 1979, it had vanished from memory when she left in 1990. in attempting to restore the past she erased its last traces.Thatcher propagated an individualist ethos of personal responsibility, but in the type of society that is needed to service the free market old-fashioned virtues of saving and planning for the future are no longer profitable. A makeshift lifestyle is well suited to the incessant mobility of latter-day capitalism. Chronic debt has proved to be a mark of prudence, and a readiness to gamble is more useufl than diligent application to the job at hand. Though an earlier generation of social theorists anticipated that as capitalism developed it would foster embourgeoisement -- the spread of a middle-class ethos throughout society -- it has done the opposite. Most of the population belong in a new proletariat, with high levels of income but nothing resembling a long-term career. The deliquescence of bourgeois society has come about not through the abolition of capitalism but as a result of capitalism operating without restraint.
By the way, did you see Barbara Ehrenreich's remarks to the graduating class of UC Berkeley's journalism school?. Excerpt:
"You are going to be trying to carve out a career in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. You are, furthermore, going to be trying to do so within what appears to be a dying industry. You have abundant skills and talents; it's just not clear that anyone wants to pay you for them. Well, you are not alone. How do you think it feels to be an autoworker right now? And I've spent time with plenty of laid-off paper mill workers, construction workers and miners. They've got skills; they've got experience. They just don't have jobs. So let me be the first to say this to you: Welcome to the American working class."
And do not miss Kara Hopkins' reflections on the localist, kitchen-table future of conservatism.
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Most peoples of the Americas are more conservative than their European equivalents. The Dutch territories in the Caribbean are much more conservative than the Dutch at home. In fact colonies/descendants-of-colonies in general are often more conservative than the motherland. This is common enough I think there was some historical study on it.
In some cases colonists are intentionally creating a traditional realm that has vanished, or is vanishing, at home. Kane is sort-of confusing the South with Appalachia. The South was largely a creation of English aristocrats, or those who admired aristocrats, and intended to maintain a quasi-feudal system dying out at home. At first they got Scots/Irish/Peasants to come in and be the indentured servants. Then they brought black slaves to be somewhat serflike. Some slavers would even intentionally dress their slaves like English manservants and give them lower-class English names.
In other cases the colonists feel a greater need to maintain traditions to compensate for the sense of loss and homesickness. After the first generation those just continue by inertia to a degree.
The idea that "rootedness" makes conservatism seems logical, but I don't think it corresponds that well to reality.
Your Name at 7:19 P.M ... is close to being a TRUE and PURE member of the "Austrian School".
Why pray tell? Well, because he may have learned THE prime directive of Friedrich Hayek which is: "Theories can never be verified or falsified by reference to facts. All that we can and must verify is the presense of our assumptions in the particular case."
IOW, and to translate this quackery, OUR assumptions and axioms are beyond critism, YOURs are obviously bogus, because WE do not share them.
IOW Part II, the "Austrian School" is not about economic science, in terms of econometrics or the behavioural aspects of a social science, but rather is all about ARGUEMENT. It is rather pathetic when pundits and advocates make a vain attempt at analysis and realism.
Finally, a sane conservative movement would have no more to do with the "Austrian School" than the sane anti-communists had to do with the John Birch Society.
True, pure or whatever, you seem not to have grasped the point, so I will re-iterate.
A laissez-faire economy cannot be the cause of social decay in Britain or the U.S. because a laissez-faire economy does not exist in either Britain or the U.S. One does not need to be beholden to Austrian economics to recognise that, merely have a reasonable sense of history and perspective.
Once upon an time even committed Keynsians admitted that once a government started appropriating >25% of G.D.P. it was pointless to talk about a free economy. Those were the days; now opposing further expansion of the behemoth state renders one a "neoliberal extremist" or some other spectre of the imagination.
A "laissez-faire economy" does not exist because both the U.S. and Britain are, were, and hopefully also will be ... societies and the concept of a laissez-faire society is an oxymoron ... as any conservative knows.
The "point" about the "Austrian School" is that it belongs not on the fringes of conservatism, but outside the tent, even big tent conservatism.
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