The Conservatism Debate

Ross replies:

"I think this is a good example of why arguments about what "true conservatives" will do often don't tell us very much. Sure, a conservative might support a carbon tax for the reasons Andrew lays out - but then again, a conservative might instead agree with Jim Manzi that any carbon tax will perforce be both onerous and overly-ambitious. Moreoever, a conservative might also disagree with premise that climate change is the most pressing "emergent question" that our government ought to "ameliorate" and favor reform on other fronts instead.

I don't deny that on questions having to do with the scope of government action Andrew may be marginally to my right. (Though not far enough to prevent him from supporting Barack Obama.) But overall, I think our disagreements have more to do with differing assessments of the big problems the U.S. is facing - he's primarily worried about global warming and the looming entitlement crunch, so far as I can tell, and I'm more concerned about issues related to family structure, mobility and inequality - than with deep-seated ideological differences that make him a "true conservative" and me something else. Not that Andrew and I don't have deep-seated ideological differences, mind you - I just don't think the question of whether government should try to "solve" every problem or merely "ameliorate" the most pressing ones is one of them."

I agree. The trouble with a political philosophy that is not ideological and that relies on a prudential judgment of emergent problems ... is that it is resolved by prudence. And there is no eternal, external guide to what such prudence will dictate in any given moment. So we can all call ourselves conservatives and come up with different priorities. The way this thread started has confused that. But it's clearer now.

So what are our primary, emergent problems? I agree with Ross that social and cultural inequality is one of them - not because inequality is inherently bad. Just because we know that overly-polarized societies tend to have trouble remaining healthy liberal democracies (see your Aristotle).

But I agree with Ezra that on this one, conservatism doesn't have much of an answer except muddling through. Once you accept globalization, meritocracy and economic change, I can't see how the deeper problems, outlined in The Bell Curve or Mickey's End Of Equality, are finally resolved. I definitely don't think that sending more government money to the struggling is much more than a panacea. Maybe a defensible one, but no solution. Education, obviously, but that's a truism.

We do have climate change - but the answer here is a pragmatic one for conservatives. I'm persuaded that the carbon tax makes sense, but Manzi's critique is certainly powerful. Dealing with variables stretching decades into the future is an inherently uncertain one. To my mind, the biggest problem is obviously the confluence of a globalized world, extreme inequalities, advancing destructive technology, religious fundamentalism and terror. How we tackle these complex inter-related problems -without watching civilization blow up - is the central challenge. Whether to back an Obama-style rapprochement with the world, as opposed to Bush's polarization of it, at this moment in time, is again a prudential issue.

The genius of conservatism is that it has no fixed permanent set of policies to pursue. It just has a prudential, empirical modesty in tackling them. All conservatives should be arguing on those grounds. Increasingly, I'm happy to say, many are.