Relying on the low?

I came across a speech by Boris Johnson that he gave back in 2013. It was on the topic of equality. The gist of it was that IQ is real and that people with an IQ under 85 are unlikely to succeed to the same extent as those with an IQ over 135. He also said:

I don't believe that economic equality is possible; indeed some measure of inequality is essential for the spirit of envy and keeping up with the Joneses that is, like greed, a valuable spur to economic activity.

This reminded me of something Patrick Deneen wrote in his book Why Liberalism Failed. Deneen argues that in the early modern period there was a revolution in the understanding of politics:

First, politics would be based upon reliability of "the low" rather than aspiration to "the high." The classical and Christian effort to foster virtue was rejected...Machiavelli proposed grounding a political philosophy upon readily observable human behaviours of pride, selfishness, greed, and the quest for glory. He argued further that liberty and political security were better achieved by pitting different domestic classes against one another, encouraging each to limit the others through "ferocious conflict" in the protection of their particular interests rather than by lofty appeals to a "common good" and political concord. By acknowledging ineradicable human selfishness and the desire for material goods, one might conceive of ways to harness those motivations rather than seeking to moderate or limit those desires. (pp.24-25)

This view of politics was carried into classical liberal philosophy. This means that classical liberals accepted the existence of human nature but focused on qualities such as self-interest and greed:

Early-modern liberalism held the view that human nature was unchangeable - human beings were, by nature, self-interested creatures whose base impulses could be harnessed but not fundamentally altered. (p.36)

Progressive (or "left") liberals came to hold a different view. They felt that human nature itself could be conquered in the same way that classical liberals thought external nature could be. They emphasised the idea that human nature was perfectible, for instance, through education or through changes to social institutions.

You can see from this that Boris Johnson's outlook is more like the classical liberal one than that of left-liberalism. He accepts certain fixed aspects of human nature, including IQ, but is focused on "the low" - on harnessing greed and envy to spur economic activity.

And what of the traditionalist view of human nature? I've read a little bit about the "Tory" view on this (i.e. of the more traditionalist members of the UK Conservative Party). Kevin Hickson has written a book surveying the views of these members of the "conservative right" and states:

...traditional conservatism held to a much more pessimistic view of human nature. As John Hayes put it "we appreciate that man is fallen, frail and faulted".

That view has been vindicated by what has happened to Western culture in recent decades. When human nature is allowed free rein, unimpeded by social norms, you do not get a more elevated level of culture but a more degraded one. Even so, I think there were faults in the "Tory right" view of human nature. If you leave your understanding of human nature at the idea that we are fallen, then you can lose idealism and with it the strength of motivation to lead and direct society.

For example, the Prime Minister of the UK in the late 1800s was the Marquess of Salisbury. He was part of the "Tory right" but his mindset seems to me to have been defeatist. Here is how Kevin Hickson puts it:

Although he believed that certain forces at work at the time he was alive would lead to social disintegration there was nothing one could ultimately do to stop them. The wise statesman would delay. Government would need to be ever vigilant but ultimately was bound to fail. The frailties of human nature would ensure that all that was good in society would decay. (Britain's Conservative Right Since 1945, p.8)

If the leftist radicals were promising an idealistic utopia and the best that traditionalists could come up with was "we are holding the fort but will ultimately lose" then the initiative was going to be with the radicals.

So although traditionalists should continue to insist on a fallible human nature, we shouldn't slide into this kind of pessimism. Nor do we need to. After all, unlike the classical liberals we do not wish to base politics on the "low" - we are not seeking to harness greed and self-interest. We wish to uphold the higher goods in life that men will ordinarily seek to live within and to defend. This ought to draw forth the strongest and deepest political commitments, much more so than those motivating the utopians, because they involve issues of identity, of meaning and of the good.

If traditionalism is done right then it ought to attract those willing to serve, i.e. those who wish to be connected to and to place themselves at the service of the transcendent good in life (rather than the individual pursuit of happiness or the selfish pursuit of profit). The leftist mindset, in contrast, is often of the "non serviam" variety - a prideful desire to not submit to a higher good, to have no reverence and to remain bound up in self. Although that gives leftists an oppositional energy, and although leftists can also be motivated by utopian dreams, it does not draw on the same loyalties and loves that motivate traditionalists toward political commitments.

I'd like to illustrate some of this by discussing two issues. The first is family. It's possible for a traditionalist to understand the stresses placed on family life by fallible human nature but to still recognise the traditional family as a significant good to be defended. The modernist approach is to claim that people can be left to their own individual reason to pursue their own wants and ends and that whatever results is equally family and equally good. This hasn't worked out well in practice. If men and women are not oriented to serving the common good of the family unit, it becomes difficult to find a point of harmony in relationships between men and women. Nor do all people act presciently for their own longer term good (e.g. women who want children but who leave things too late). Nor is the capacity to lay down stable emotional attachments likely to survive the churn of relationships that the modernist approach enables.

But even if the modernist principles weren't so influential, there would still be a gap between the ideal of family life and the reality. There exist, for instance, relatively fixed personality traits and some of these do not make for loving or faithful spouses. And so some families will be unhappy. It's possible to recognise the reality of this whilst still seeing a larger truth about the family as a model of human community, as something that is rightly striven for but, given human nature, cannot be taken for granted.

The second issue is that of moral community. Liberals claim that they are neutral in respect to this, but that isn't really so. Even right-liberals, who look to the individual pursuit of profit or pleasure, are still led, by their ideological preference for a limited state, to envision a moral community of self-helping, free-standing, law-abiding, hard-working, self-reliant, responsible, adult individuals. In general, given the liberal preference for "doing as thou wilt as long as it doesn't interfere with others doing the same", the liberal vision of moral community is one that is open, non-judgemental, non-discriminatory, tolerant, respectful of diversity etc.

Traditionalists should not be shy, therefore, in having their own vision of moral community. In part, this means a return to a pre-liberal understanding of the core ordering moral concepts, such as freedom, justice, equality and dignity. It means as well a return to a moral vision that was centred on the ideal of living within and serving the higher good in life. For our forebears, this meant a moral language centred around the praise of the nobler qualities of character and an avoidance of the baser ones, and of the cultivation of virtue.

Which brings me to one final matter. Much of what I have been discussing is properly an aspect of polis life. It is part of the masculine role of upholding the vertical dimension, of a hierarchical ordering of things, of looking upward toward the higher good.

There is a crossover here with the role of the church, but the focus of polis life and of the church are not exactly the same. The church focus must be, at least in part, also horizontally planed, i.e. on the sideways relationships between people, so that there is an emphasis on qualities such as love, neighbourliness, forgiveness, acceptance and hospitality. The church should hold to this as well as to the vertical dimension, in which there is an emphasis on reverence, worship, obedience and virtue.

It would be a mistake for a church to focus on the horizontal dimension alone (as a wholly feminised church might do). After all, it is in looking upward to serve the higher good that we are often brought to the service of God. Through the vertical structure we create the protected, cultivated, social spaces in which people can best unfold their "telos" - their God given purposes. It is through the vertical structure that moral community is formed and safeguarded. It is through the vertical structure that we maintain the continuity and stability of our communities (country, people, family) which fosters our capacity for love (in contrast to social anomie).

St Paul made this connection, this link between the aims of the church and the upholding of the vertical dimension (the aspiration to the high), in writing the following to the Philippians:

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things and the God of peace will be with you.

The skirmish line

The focus in liberalism is on freely determining for ourselves our identity, our purposes, our values and so on. Therefore, a liberal society cheers on those who reject received identities. It's considered a great thing for a young woman to play rugby and not so good for her to be oriented to motherhood.

On what basis do traditionalists reject this liberal focus? One serious way to do so is to emphasise that we should, as individuals, be focused on ordering ourselves to the good. In this view, our impulses are wayward and need to be directed, through the cultivation of virtue, and with the support of culture, toward higher ends.

How would a liberal react to this claim? Well, I don't think a liberal would easily think along these lines, but at the same time a liberal might attempt to incorporate it into the liberal view. A liberal might respond that, yes, an individual might order themselves toward the good, but that nobody else but the individual has the right to determine what that good is. We would then have a society in which each individual orients themselves toward the good that they have chosen, whilst respecting the right of everyone else to do the same.

So the idea of being oriented toward the good is only, at best, a skirmish line separating liberals and traditionalists - it is not the war line.

The liberal view can work if people choose a good that can be pursued at the individual level. For instance, if it is my chosen good to be successful in the career, status and money sense, then I can pursue this within the liberal framework. Similarly, if I choose to pursue personal pleasure, such as through travel, entertainment or dining out.

So what is the war line?

We get to the war line if we insist that the good that we orient ourselves to is given to us within the natural order rather than being subjectively chosen. The liberal view is that we can choose anything, and that as long as it does not limit the choice of anyone else, it is equally valid. The traditional view is that there is an objective good for us to order ourselves toward and that there are ends given to us that we properly seek to fulfil in life.

Professor Patrick Deneen, in his book Why Liberalism Failed, explains the distinction this way:

Premodern political thought...understood the human creature as part of a comprehensive natural order. Humans were understood to have a telos, a fixed end, given by nature and unalterable. Human nature was continuous with the order of the natural world, and thus humanity was required to conform both to its own nature and, in a broader sense, to the natural order of which it was a part. Human beings could freely act against their own nature and the natural order, but such actions deformed them and harmed the good of human beings and the world. (p.35)

A secondary war line is when we see the individual good and the common good as being intertwined. For instance, let's say that I see my individual good as being tied in with the good of family life. I might take seriously a goal of marrying well, having a large family, playing a distinct sex role as a husband and father, expressing both marital and paternal love within the family, socialising my children into a familial, communal and civilisational heritage and so on.

I cannot easily do this within the liberal framework because I cannot do it alone through my own choices. It requires that I live within a culture that supports such a concept of the good. Imagine, for instance, that the women I live amongst have been socialised to be independent career women, who see family life as limiting their autonomy, and who see an unrestrained sexuality as empowering. Imagine, too, that it is assumed that family life is secondary to careerism and that I should spend all my time and energy at work. Or that I should not be paid a living wage, given the default assumption that there will be two full-time wage earners.

In other words, the assumptions that liberalism makes about the good - that it is based on the subjective preferences of autonomous individuals - limits the realm of what goods are practically available to us, in particular by undermining the possibility of a common good. And if you hold that the individual good rests upon the existence of a common good, then liberalism does clearly fail.

Nisbet: the quest for community

Robert Nisbet

I'm reading The Quest for Community by the American sociologist Robert Nisbet. The book was published in 1953 which serves as a reminder that the problems besetting the West go back further than some are willing to acknowledge.

The first chapter is titled "The Loss of Community". It begins,

Surely the outstanding characteristic of contemporary thought on man and society is the preoccupation with personal alienation and cultural disintegration. The fears of the nineteenth-century conservatives in Western Europe, expressed against a background of increasing individualism, secularism and social dislocation, have become, to an extraordinary degree, the insights and hypotheses of present-day students of man in society.

This is put very clearly. Nisbet believed that the thought of his age was focused on the problems of personal alienation and cultural disintegration.

What had brought society to such a point? Nisbet continues by noting that in the nineteenth century, the age of individualism and rationalism, words such as individual, change, progress, reason and freedom carried great symbolic value:

All of these words reflected a temper of mind that found the essence of society to lie in the solid fact of the discrete individual - autonomous, self-sufficing, and stable - and the essence of history to lie in the progressive emancipation of the individual from the tyrannous and irrational statuses handed down from the past.

He is pointing here, in part, to the "anthropology" of liberal modernity, i.e. its framework for understanding man and society. Liberal moderns based their framework on the "discrete individual", i.e. man considered alone, separate and unrelated. It was then fitting, as a perfecting of society, that history would gradually liberate this self-sufficient and autonomous individual from a pre-modern past that emphasised instead a vision of man fulfilling his nature within a network of communal relationships.

Nisbet adds:

Competition, individuation, dislocation of status and custom, impersonality, and moral anonymity were hailed by the rationalist because these were the forces that would be most instrumental in liberating the individual from the dead hand of the past and because through them the naturally stable and rational individual would be given an environment in which he could develop illimitably his inherent potentialities. Man was the primary and solid fact; relationships were purely derivative. All that was necessary was a scene cleared of the debris of the past.

Again, it was assumed that man was to be understood as a discrete individual, not as someone whose nature was expressed and fulfilled in relationship to others. And so these traditional relationships were thought of negatively as limitations holding back the potential of individuals, rather than as the social framework allowing the individual to reach toward his better and fuller nature. (Nisbet seems to have thinkers like J.S. Mill in mind when describing nineteenth century thought.)

Those who pointed to the costs of "individuation" were met with the response that progress required periods of disorder (an argument still heard today):

If there were some, like Taine, Ruskin, and William Morris, who called attention to the cultural and moral costs involved - the uprooting of family ties, the disintegration of villages, the displacement of craftsmen, and the atomization of ancient securities - the apostles of rationalism could reply that these were the inevitable costs of Progress. After all, it was argued - argued by liberals and radicals alike - in all great ages of achievement there is a degree of disorder, a snapping of the ties of tradition and security.

Nisbet's next point is interesting. He argues that the nineteenth century had faith "in the harmonies of nature", in the sense that the "natural man" - freed from "artificial" constraints of traditional social relationships and conventional morality - would then release his true natural potential and forge more authentic relationships. Therefore, the individual was right to follow his natural interest, guided by reason:

This was the age of optimism, of faith in the abstract individual and in the harmonies of nature. In Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, what we are given...is the matchless picture of a child of nature revolting against the tyrannies of village, family, and conventional morality...In the felicities and equalities of nature Huck finds joyous release from the cloistering prejudices and conventions of old morality. Truth, justice and happiness lie in man alone.

In many areas of thought and imagination we find like perspectives. The eradication of old restraints, together with the prospect of new and more natural relationships in society, relationships arising directly from the innate resources of individuals, prompted a glowing vision of society in which there would be forever abolished the parochialisms and animosities of a world founded upon kinship, village, and church. Reason, founded upon natural interest, would replace the wisdom Burke and his fellow conservatives had claimed to find in historical processes of use and wont, of habit and prejudice.

Let's stop there for a moment. If Nisbet is correct, there already existed in the 1800s a framework of thought in which it was tremendously difficult to defend traditional society. What was inherited was thought to artificially restrict a self-sufficient, "natural" autonomous individual. Restraints on behaviour did not exist to secure a common good, but were irrational limitations on a pursuit of individual "natural interest". (I criticised this type of thinking in an earlier post Every Eve knows and follows the best path?)

And how was "reason" understood? Things get worse here: our particular loyalties and attachments were thought to be based not on reason but sentiment. Reason was connected instead to general principles which would govern abstract social groups, with these groups ever expanding in composition. Nisbet quotes the observations of the nineteenth century Russian sociologist Ostrogorski that,

Henceforth, man's social relations "were bound to be guided not so much by sentiment, which expressed the perception of the particular, as by general principles, less intense in their nature perhaps, but sufficiently comprehensive to take in the shifting multitudes of which the abstract social groups were henceforth composed, groups continually subject to expansion by reason of their continual motion."

An Australian Prime Minister of the early 1900s, Alfred Deakin, was torn by this idea that the particular was to be rejected in favour of a constant expansion toward the universal (see Deakin's strange contradiction). On the one hand, he thought that the loss of the particular would lead to a flattening of identity; on the other hand, he associated the "expansion" to the universal with a vision of progress.

Nisbet explains the nineteenth century mindset further:

Between philosophers as far removed as Spencer and Marx there was a common faith in the organizational powers of history and in the self-sufficiency of the individual...Both freedom and order were envisaged generally in terms of the psychology and politics of individual release from the old.

We see this in the social sciences of the age. What was scientific psychology but the study of forces and states of mind within the natural individual, assumed always to be autonomous and stable? Political science and economics were, in their dominant forms, concerned with legal and economic atoms - abstract human beings - and with impersonal relationships supplied by the market or by limited general legislation.

Above everything towered the rationalist's monumental conviction of the organizational character of history - needing occasionally to be facilitated, perhaps, but never directed - and of the self-sufficing stability of the discrete individual.

It's important to grasp the importance of this view of history. If historical movement has a direction of its own, one with an organisational power that is a guarantor of social stability and progress, then it logically becomes wrong to uphold a traditional way of life - as this would then disrupt the proper organisational power of history.

So if Nisbet is right about all this, there were a number of features of nineteenth century thought which were dissolving of traditional society:

1. An anthropology based on the discrete individual, rather than man embedded in society.

2. A view that the individual was self-sufficient and that his potential was therefore restricted by traditional social relations and moral conventions.

3. The idea that relations flowing from the innate resources of the discrete individual were "natural" in opposition to the "artificial" relationships associated with traditional family and community life.

4. The notion that individuals should act according to "natural interest" rather than a common good.

5. The belief that particular loyalties and attachments were based on mere sentiment and that this was inferior to the "rational" formulation of general principles to regulate ever expanding abstract social groups.

6. The faith in the organisational power of history as a guarantor of progress.

If such ideas hold for too long they will inevitably have an effect - so we should not be surprised at the hollowing out of culture that afflicted most Western nations by the mid-twentieth century.

A note to Melbourne readers. If you are sympathetic to the ideas of this website, please visit the site of the Melbourne Traditionalists. It's important that traditionalists don't remain isolated from each other; our group provides a great opportunity for traditionalists to meet up and connect. Details at the website.

Metternich the Seer

It is remarkable that the Austrian statesman Metternich was able to foresee as long ago as 1820 that liberalism would turn against nationalism, and would do so out of a belief in individual autonomy. This is from a letter he wrote to Tsar Alexander:

"Is it necessary to give a proof of this last fact? We think we have furnished it in remarking that one of the sentiments most natural to man, that of nationality, is erased from the Liberal catechism, and that where the word is still employed, it is used by the heads of the party as a pretext to enchain Governments, or as a lever to bring about destruction. The real aim of the idealists of the party is religious and political fusion, and this being analysed is nothing else but creating in favour of each individual an existence entirely independent of all authority, or of any other will than his own, an idea absurd and contrary to the nature of man, and incompatible with the needs of human society."

For Metternich nationality is "one of the sentiments most natural to man" but liberals wish to erase it so that the existence of each individual is "entirely independent of all authority, or of any other will than his own".

This is liberal autonomy theory articulated in 1820. Liberals see individual autonomy, i.e. a freedom to self-determine or self-define, as the highest good. Therefore, whatever is predetermined, and beyond the control of the individual will, has to be made not to matter. This includes whatever we are born to (our nationality, our biological sex etc.) as well as unchosen or inherited forms of authority.

Interestingly, it was in 1820 that the play Prometheus Unbound, by the Englishman Percy Bysshe Shelley was published. His wife, Mary Shelley (who wrote Frankenstein) penned a note to the play in which she explained:

The prominent feature of Shelley's theory of the destiny of the human species was that evil is not inherent in the system of the creation, but an accident that might be expelled...

Shelley believed that mankind had only to will that there should be no evil, and there would be none. It is not my part in these Notes to notice the arguments that have been urged against this opinion, but to mention the fact that he entertained it, and was indeed attached to it with fervent enthusiasm. That man could be so perfectionized as to be able to expel evil from his own nature, and from the greater part of the creation, was the cardinal point of his system.

...He now took a more idealized image of the same subject. He followed certain classical authorities in figuring Saturn as the good principle, Jupiter the usurping evil one, and Prometheus as the regenerator, who, unable to bring mankind back to primitive innocence, used knowledge as a weapon to defeat evil, by leading mankind, beyond the state wherein they are sinless through ignorance, to that in which they are virtuous through wisdom.

So what does Shelley's vision of regenerated, virtuous man look like in the play Prometheus Unbound? Well, much like the very thing Metternich was critical of:

The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains/ Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man/ Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless,/ Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king/ Over himself

Remember, Metternich accused the liberals of his age of rejecting the natural sentiment of nationality because they wanted an individual existence in which they were subject to no will but their own. And here is Shelley, in the same year, claiming that human perfection would mean that man would be "king over himself" and therefore "nationless" (and church-less and king-less and class-less and generally "uncircumscribed"). According to Shelley, this would leave man both free and equal.

It is John Lennon's Imagine given voice in a much earlier era. Metternich thought the vision "absurd and contrary to the nature of man, and incompatible with the needs of human society." Metternich was right, but it is the liberal view which, to our detriment, has so far prevailed.

A note to Melbourne readers. If you are sympathetic to the ideas of this website, please visit the site of the Melbourne Traditionalists. It's important that traditionalists don't remain isolated from each other; our group provides a great opportunity for traditionalists to meet up and connect. Details at the website.

Yet more feminist regret

Dennis Prager had this call from a woman on his radio show:

I’m 50 years old with four college degrees. I was raised by a feminist mother with no father in the home. My mother told me get an education to the maximum level so that you can get out in the world, make a lot of money. And that’s the path I followed...

I want to tell women in their 20s: Do not follow the path that I followed. You are leading yourself to a life of loneliness. All of your friends will be getting married and having children, and you’re working to compete in the world, and what you’re doing is competing with men. Men don’t like competitors. Men want a partner. It took me until my late 40s to realize this.

...It’s hard to find a partner in your late 40s to date because you also start losing self-confidence about your looks, your body. It’s not the same as it was in your 20s. You try to do what you can to make your life fulfilling. I have cats and dogs. But it’s lonely when you see your friends having children, going on vacations, planning the lives of their children, and you don’t do anything at night but come home to your cats and dogs. I don’t want other women to do what I have done.

...I’m stuck now because I go to work every day. I smile like I love it, but it’s very painful to not plan a vacation with someone. It’s painful to not have a Thanksgiving dinner with someone. You sit home alone and you do nothing.

Somebody asked me the other day, ‘Why did you stay single and never have kids?’ There’s answers: Because I was brainwashed by my mother into this. But it’s hard and it’s shameful to tell people, ‘I don’t know. I ran out of time.'”There’s not a good answer for it except ‘I was programmed to get into the workforce, compete with men and make money.’ Supposedly, that would be a fulfilling life. But I was told that by a feminist mother who was divorced, who hated her husband—my father.

She tried to steer me on what she thought was the right path, but feminism is a lie.

I didn’t realize this until late in life. I want to tell women: Find someone in your 20s. That’s when you’re still very cute. That’s when you’re still amiable to working out problems with someone. It’s harder in your 50s, when you’ve lived alone, to compromise with someone, to have someone in your home and every little thing about them annoys you because you’re so used to being alone. It’s hard to undo that, so don’t do what I did. Find someone in your 20s.

The reactions I read toward this were interesting. There were women in their 30s who were especially upset with the idea that women should focus on finding someone when in their 20s.

I've come to understand this response as follows. Liberal modernity began with the ideal of "voluntarist choice" - of individual choice being "liberated" from tradition, authority, social norms and so on.

Patrick Deneen, in his book Why Liberalism Failed, argues that there was a second major aspect to this project, namely a different attitude to nature. Humans now stood outside of nature, and sought to gain mastery over it, in order to better realise wants and desires. The earlier liberals still thought of human nature as relatively fixed and aimed to manipulate the natural world, but later liberals took things a step further by seeing human nature itself as something that could be transformed.

The point is that those women who react so sharply to the idea that it is preferable to find someone when in your 20s are not just suffering from a lack of inborn prudence. They are the products of a 300 year old experiment, the point of which is to overcome natural limitations rather than to prudently work within them. A modernist mind recoils at the idea that aspects of reality, i.e. of the nature of things, might limit our choices. It therefore becomes "offensive" to assert that there is a season to things and that we cannot simply choose as we wish, when we wish.

It is assumed by some women that there are no natural limitations and that claims that they do exist are attempts to assert an unnatural and oppressive external control (the patriarchy).

A person who believes that there are no natural limitations will not be as concerned with making prudent choices. And if there are negative life outcomes, they are more likely to blame an oppressive restriction on their liberty by some malevolent force.

Brandis 3

I've been looking at an essay on liberal values by the Australian right-liberal George Brandis. Here's the next section:

Secondly, conservatism and socialism share a theory of social change which owes much to the dogma of historical determinism. Both believe that the forces which shape a society's development - whether those forces are understood according to the conservative's metaphor of society as an organism with its own spontaneous causes of growth and change, or the socialist's more formal theory of dialectical materialism - are impersonal and irresistible. Neither gives any place to human reason as a reconstructive social force. For both, the past determines the present and therefore limits the future. The socialist feels that he is the prisoner of the past; the conservative would like to think that he still lives there.

Liberalism, by contrast, simply rejects historical determinism. It asserts that individuals, acting rationally and with co-operative goodwill can consciously shape the future of their societies so as to avoid the errors of the past and correct the injustices of the present. The reconstructive spirit of liberalism was captured well by Robert Kennedy when he proclaimed that it was 'the shaping impulse' of a liberal society that 'neither fate, nor nature, nor the irresistible tides of history, but the work of our own hands, matched to reason and principle, will determine our destiny'.

What does this tell us about Brandis? It suggests to me that Brandis does not feel a positive connection to the past. What matters for him is the idea of individuals rationally following a principle in order to create a just future. In this sense, the individual can only be acting against the past. The past is a kind of foil against which the rational individual sets himself.

I do think that Brandis has accurately described a liberal mindset in all this. Liberals have set themselves to create a new order based on the rational unfolding of a principle that aims at justice.

But there are major problems in taking this approach. First, a society is not built on the basis of a single, clearly enunciated principle. Any society faces the difficult task of coming to a sense of an "order of being" - an order which brings together the natural, the social and the spiritual aspects of life. There is no single principle which can express all of these things. What (ideally) happens instead is that a society gives rise over time to a culture which represents the best efforts of that society to reach a harmonious order of being.

Things are likely to go wrong if you seek to reorder society along the lines of a single principle aiming at justice. First, there is no such single "rational" principle. Second, the negative effect of adopting a false principle, as liberals have done, is radically heightened. Third, once you adopt such a principle there is no way to provide limits to its effects, as it becomes the sole organising principle of a society. The principle is likely to run to much more radical extremes over time than its originators ever intended.

Does this mean that Brandis is right when he claims that traditionalist conservatives do not give "any place to human reason as a reconstructive social force"? It's true that we reject the idea of radically breaking with the past in order to reconstitute society on the basis of an ideological principle. But it's not true that a culture, as an expression of an attempt to create an order of being, is frozen in time. Each generation tries to add to it, to improve and refine it, and this is partly an act of human reason (and conscience and creativity). Traditionalists do have a sense of justice and the good, and we do expect society to aim to measure up to this, but not as a singular, rationalistic principle that serves as its own starting point. We aim to carry forward a culture and a tradition and we look instinctively to the best of what our forefathers achieved to inspire us in reaching toward the good.

One final point. Brandis approvingly quotes Robert Kennedy speaking about "the shaping impulse" of liberalism, an impulse which overrides not only history but also nature. A traditionalist would never set reason against nature in a simplistic way. It's not that nature is sacrosanct. Anyone who has had children knows that they don't come ready civilised. Ruder aspects of their nature do have to be overcome. Even so, principle has to have regard for our created nature. You can't formulate principles about the way that human life is to proceed abstractly and without consideration for what humans are, for both better and worse, in their given natures.

Solitary, selfish, suspicious

I've written a couple of posts already on the book Liberalism & Community by American academic Steven Kautz.

The book was written as a defence of classical liberalism, particularly that early version of liberalism set out by John Locke (late 1600s). What are we to make of this defence? I'd list the following main points:

a) Classical liberalism is openly hostile to a traditionalist conservatism.

b) Classical liberalism begins with too negative an assessment of human nature and an artificial account of the basis of human society. It radically limits the sights that we may set ourselves as individuals and as communities.

c) Classical liberalism discourages people from acting publicly in the defence of a community.

I'll illustrate these points with some excerpts from the book, beginning with this:

Since human beings are by nature solitary and selfish, querulous and untrustworthy competitors for scarce and often fragile private goods, prudent individuals will learn to attend to the mostly private acquisition of the tools necessary to provide for their mostly private welfare - above all, liberty and property ...

... even a well-ordered civil society can ... not abolish, the harsh natural conditions and the querulous traits of our human natures that make it necessary to treat our fellows with abiding suspicion ...

So it is the principal business of political community to arrange "conditions" so that the acquisition and maintenance of liberty and property is protected, as against the "Fancy or Covetousness" of incipient aggressors.(p.30)

Is this really a balanced reading of human nature? Are humans by nature solitary and selfish? Must we limit our aims to our private welfare, in particular to the accumulation of private property?

the way of life of the businessman is only the most prominent among many other private ways of life, available in a liberal community, that enable human beings substantially to retain their natural freedom to "order their Actions, and dispose of their Possessions, and Persons as they think fit" ...(p.31)

The most prominent way of life is that of the businessman? As we'll see, there is a great emphasis on acquisitiveness in classical liberalism.

According to classical liberals, the political community is surely not natural: man is not by nature a political animal. Still, there can be no doubt that membership in a peaceful and stable political community accords with the interests of almost all individual human beings.

Thus, the liberal political community, which seeks above all to secure this peace and stability, is an artificial rational construction, established by a "social contract" among free individuals; it is not a natural organism, a whole to which the individual is related as the hand is related to the body ... The liberal believes that "each of us" is somehow independent of, or prior to, the political community. Or again: we constitute our (political) communities; they do not "constitute" us. (p.32)

This is not a persuasive account of how human communities are, in practice, formed. We are supposed to believe that naturally solitary and selfish individuals decided to make a contract with each other, in order to safeguard their property and personal security. Therefore, human community is to be understood in terms of an unnatural, but rational, political arrangement.

It's more plausible to regard humans as social creatures, who are born into social communities, in which they live and work together with others they are related to, and with whom they share a common identity. Such communities arose naturally rather than being created through a process of contract; nor are the aims of these communities limited to the protection of life and property.

There are some particular problems with the classical liberal view as set out by Kautz. First, Kautz believes that the contracted form of community is rational because it accords with individual self-interest. So Kautz connects reason here with self-interest. It would seem that if you want individuals to act rationally, as liberals do, you will then expect them to act in a self-interested way. Egoism becomes a matter of principle.

Second, the larger, natural form of community is hidden within the liberal framework. In the classical liberal view, there are "free" individuals who contract to form a political community. Where in this is the natural social community? How can we have a proper regard for this natural social community if it is made obscure?

Third, the classical liberal theory sets up a framework in which the aims of a community are severely limited: community was established for the purpose of defending property rights and a right to personal security. The higher aim of a society is too one-sided and materialistic: it is to create the conditions in which property can be safely accumulated.

It's a recipe for a materially wealthy and technologically advanced society, but one which is likely to suffer a "hollowing" process, in which the culture and institutions which once sustained it and inspired loyalty in those who belonged to it are gradually lost.

There's more to add but I'll leave it to the next post.

What is conservatism?

Conservatives got their name because they wanted to conserve important aspects of their own tradition.

What conservatives wanted especially to defend were particular forms of human identity and connectedness. For conservatives, the need for these forms of identity and “relatedness” is an unchanging part of our human nature.

These forms of connectedness include:

- the connection existing between members of an ethnic group based on a shared ancestry, culture, religion, history and language

- our masculine identity as men or feminine identity as women

- our role as fathers and mothers or husbands and wives within a family and our place within a family tradition

- marital love and paternal & maternal love

- our sense of connectedness to nature and our attachment to a particular locality

- a positive sense of our moral nature and of the existence of an objective moral order

Historically, individuals did not create these things for themselves. Instead these forms of connectedness grew in a distinctive way within a particular tradition. This is one reason why conservatives have tended to be strongly traditionalist.

Liberalism

However, from the time of the Renaissance in the 1400s there arose a strong challenge to conservatism, which is best known today as liberalism. Liberalism was based on the idea that the individual should be radically autonomous, so that he could choose to do what he wanted according to his own will and reason, and be able to create himself in any direction without impediments.

Most liberals did not want to radically destroy their own traditions. Unfortunately, the logic of their own first principles (known as liberal individualism) meant that the traditional forms of human identity and connectedness were undermined.

This is because liberals can only accept those things that the individual has chosen for himself. Most forms of human relatedness though are not chosen by the individual. For example:

- We don’t choose our own traditional forms of national or ethnic identity. Instead, we are simply born into them. Therefore liberals have tended to either reject nationalism altogether in favour of internationalism or else they support forms of nationalism, based solely on citizenship, which the individual can choose, or else they support fluid and pluralistic forms of nationalism based on multiculturalism.

- We don’t choose whether we are male or female. Therefore, liberals insist that masculine and feminine behaviour is simply an oppressive and artificial social construct which can be overcome through social engineering. Liberals prefer gender sameness or “androgyny.”

- The actual form of traditional family life, involving a husband, wife and children, was also unchosen. Liberals want to claim that there are many models of family life, and they want very easy divorce laws so that the individual can choose at any time who they will live with. Similarly, liberals don’t want gender based family roles, such as distinctive roles for fathers and mothers, since gender itself is unchosen.

- The existence of a moral order, as expressed through a traditional moral code, also restricts choice for the individual. Therefore, liberals have advanced the idea of a "personal" morality that is chosen by the individual alone and applies only to the individual.

Further differences

There are some typical differences between the way that conservatives and liberals think about things. For instance:

Human nature. Conservatives believe that there exists an essential human nature. This human nature is flawed, having both higher and lower qualities. Our human nature gives a definite direction to our lives. It is a part of the aim of any society, and of every individual, to draw out what is best in our nature, and to repress the worst, a difficult process that might occur over a long period of time.

Liberals, in contrast, want the individual to be created through his own will and reason. They therefore prefer to view the individual as a “blank slate” without any inherent qualities to influence his behaviour or to encourage particular loyalties or forms of association.

A further consequence of this belief in the individual as a “blank slate” is that individuals can theoretically be perfected under the right social conditions. Therefore, liberals have often put great faith in the idea of a human progress to perfection, and in the idea of reforming social conditions as a solution to any social problem.

Progress. Liberals have often believed in the idea of linear progress, which means a constant advance of humanity toward a perfect individual and a perfect society. It is because of this belief that liberals have sometimes been called progressives.

This belief is rarely held so naively these days. However, it is still evident in the fear of liberals in “going back” (to the 1950s etc) and in their enthusiasm for social change, even when the effect of such change is poorly thought through.

Conservatives tend to view societies as rising and falling according to their inner strengths and weaknesses rather than inevitably advancing. Furthermore, conservatives have a more protective attitude to their own tradition, and want to keep it alive for future generations. Therefore, conservatives tend to be more cautious about social change, as they want to know the long term effects that such changes will have on the social fabric.

Equality. Liberals often raise the slogan of equality. By equality, they seem to mean treating people the same, or not discriminating against people.

Conservatives don’t believe in treating people the same for the simple reason that people are different, in their inner natures, in the quality of their beliefs and actions, in their capacities and in the relation in which they stand to each other (for instance, we will usually discriminate in favour of people to whom we are closely related, such as family members).

There is a levelling tendency within liberalism, which denies the distinctions between people and refuses to judge the worth of their actions.

Rationalism. Liberals want people to decide things according to their own individual reason. This has led many liberals to support the idea of rationalism: that we come to our beliefs and knowledge of the world through abstract reason, ie through the analytical intellect, alone.

This belief in rationalism makes it hard for liberals to accept inherited forms of knowledge, and even more importantly, it undermines the position of whatever in life is intangible, in other words, whatever is hard to measure intellectually. How, for instance, can you validate through abstract reason such qualities as love and beauty, or nobility and honour, or whimsy and fancy?

Liberty. Liberals believe that by removing impediments to individual behaviour they are creating ever greater levels of human freedom.

The conservative view is that humans are fundamentally social creatures. Therefore, if we pursue a purely individual freedom to choose anything, we will fail to maintain the social conditions in which we can choose those things that are most important to us.

Varieties of Liberalism

There are two different varieties of liberalism. Left liberals place their focus on social individualism. They resent restrictions on the social behaviour of the individual, and so have sought to deconstruct traditional family life, gender roles, moral codes and so on. They are strongly statist, believing in a high level of government intervention in both society and the economy.

The focus of right liberals is on economic individualism. They tend to see individuals as economic units, and oppose restrictions on the economic activity of the individual or on the operation of capital (such as the movement of labour, or restrictions on investment etc.) Right liberals have often preferred a more limited role for government.

There is also a distinction between radical and gradualist (or mainstream) forms of liberalism. Radicals want to rapidly push liberal individualism to its logical conclusions, and are sometimes willing to use violent means to achieve their aims, whereas gradualists tend to work peacefully within the system and only want to take liberals principles one step at a time.

How do these distinctions work out in practice? Left liberalism is strongest amongst government employees like public servants and teachers. It is also well represented in the mainstream media, in the churches, and at universities. Left liberals have considerable influence politically through parties like the Australian Labor Party, the British Labor Party and the American Democrats.

Radical left liberalism is represented by movements like the anarchists, the communists, and the radical wings of the feminist and animal rights movements. It draws much of its support from the intelligentsia.

Right liberalism is supported by big business and the commercial classes. It is much more poorly represented intellectually than left liberalism, but has considerable political influence through its ownership of the mass media and through political parties like the Australian Liberal Party, the British Conservative Party and the American Republicans.

There is a more radical form of right liberalism called libertarianism. This movement is stronger in the US than Australia. Libertarians are often uncompromising in opposing the role of government in society and in their admiration for individual economic enterprise.

The realities of electoral politics have somewhat blurred the distinctions between mainstream left and right political parties. To achieve the necessary support to win office, the Australian Labor Party has been willing to adopt some right liberal policies, such as economic deregulation, whereas the Liberal Party has been willing to accept higher levels of taxation to maintain government social programmes.

Conservatism in Modern Society

Conservatism is sometimes wrongly seen to be an establishment philosophy. In fact, the establishment in all Western societies has for a long time been dominated by liberalism.

It is true that right liberal parties, like the Australian Liberal Party, are sometimes described as being conservative. However, there is at best a conservative tinge to a particular section of these parties.

The right liberal parties are “conservative” only in the sense that they sometimes object to new liberal measures introduced by the left liberal parties. Once implemented, though, they are usually content to carry forward the new programmes. Similarly, they might be “conservative” in being more concerned to carefully manage the process of social change. They rarely object though to the fundamental direction of the change.

In short, there is little principled or substantive conservatism within the right liberal parties, and certainly nothing that can withstand the primary emphasis in these parties on economic liberalism.

If genuine conservatism has had any influence in recent times it is because conservative values are still held to some degree by the general public. Populist conservatism, though, will not succeed by itself. It’s important also to have people who can present conservatism in a clear and consistent way as an alternative to the current liberal orthodoxy.

(First published 2002)

Conservatism vs Liberalism

One of the great choices in life is between conservatism and liberalism. This choice is not just about politics, but about the way we see the world and the values we hold.

Unfortunately, we are rarely given the information we need to make this choice intelligently. It is especially rare to get the information from a conservative point of view.

This essay aims to fill the gap. Hopefully it will make clear for the reader the most basic features of both conservatism and liberalism, and the significance of the differences between them.


Chapter 1. What is Liberalism?

Liberalism is made of up several elements, including individualism, rationalism and linear progress.

Individualism

Sometimes the word individualism is used in the same sense as individuality: the rejection of conformism to create an individual style or personality. Individualism in this sense would be supported by both liberals and conservatives.

The term liberal individualism, though, means something quite distinct. It refers to the belief of liberals in a certain kind of individual autonomy. In short liberals believe that human freedom depends on individuals being subject only to their own reason and will, so that individuals are left free to create themselves in any direction.

This belief has been asserted strongly in Western societies ever since the Renaissance. For instance, the fifteenth century writer Pico della Mirandola once imagined God saying to man that,

You, constrained by no limits, in accordance with your own free will ... shall ordain for yourself the limits of your nature ... We have made you ... so that with freedom of choice, as though the maker and moulder of yourself, you may fashion yourself in whatever shape you shall prefer.

In order for individuals to be "self-created" in this fashion, liberals have to clear a path for the exclusive operation of individual reason and will. Usually this involves:-

(i) An assumption that the individual starts out as a blank slate, without anything inborn to limit or give a natural direction to individual behaviour.

and

(ii) A rejection of forms of identity and authority which can't be shaped by individual reason or will.

Conservatives are opposed to liberals on both of these points. Firstly, for conservatives it is simply untrue that individuals start out as a blank slate. Instead, conservatives believe that individuals are heavily influenced by an inborn human nature. This human nature is flawed, intricate and difficult to shift. Much of the effort of society is to draw out the finer qualities of this nature, whilst discouraging the worst.

Secondly, conservatives don't reject forms of identity and authority simply because they aren't chosen by individual reason or will. Conservatives have often found themselves attempting to "conserve" such forms of identity and authority because of their value to individuals or to society. Specific examples of this are given in the next chapter on conservative belief; in general, though, conservatives would argue that rather than creating human freedom, the liberal approach tends to undermine the social framework and erode important forms of human "connectedness".

Rationalism

As already mentioned, liberals only wish to accept what has been validated by individual reason. This forms the basis of liberal rationalism: the idea that we come to our beliefs and knowledge of the world through abstract reason, i.e. through the "analytical intellect" alone.

Conservatives are critical of certain aspects of liberal rationalism, especially when it is crudely applied.

This is because abstract reason is really only able to deal with a small part of human experience. It is unable to adequately recognise many of the finer, more subtle and more intangible qualities of life.

How can you, for instance, validate through abstract reason such qualities as love and beauty, or nobility and honour, or whimsy and fancy?

At its worst, liberal rationalism has applied rigid "machine principles" to human life. For instance, the French utopian reformer Charles Fourier once calculated that humans should live in phalanxes of exactly 1620 people. The British utilitarians believed that they could scientifically calculate morality according to a balance of outcomes. And the German Bauhaus architects went so far as to define a house as a "machine for living in".

Another conservative complaint against rationalism is that it sometimes leaves liberals curiously dependent on abstract ideology. There are times when liberals cannot simply accept the most natural and healthy of human behaviours (e.g. romance between men and women, boys playing with trucks etc. ). Instead, such behaviours have to be agonisingly justified in reference to an abstract ideology: they have to be declared "politically correct".

What alternative do conservatives offer to liberal rationalism? Firstly, conservatives don't have such an abstract starting point as liberals. Conservatives are unlikely to want to "wipe the slate clean" in order to build up knowledge on wholly abstract (and inevitably arbitrary) principles.

Instead, conservatives are likely to start out with what we are able to perceive about ourselves, society and the larger nature of things, and apply to this our critical intelligence, in order to arrive at a consistency and reasonableness of belief, as well as to draw the lessons of experience, i.e. the testing of our beliefs in practice over time.

Also, in contrast to liberal rationalists, who have often wanted to start from "year zero", conservatives are likely to consider (but not blindly accept) the guidance of tradition. This is because successful traditions are often built on the collective insight and experience of generations; it seems more sensible to conservatives to try to learn from such traditions, rather than to force each and every individual to learn from scratch.

Linear Progress

Liberals used to have a strong belief in linear progress: in the idea that the world was steadily advancing towards a higher level of civilisation. This idea was clearly expressed, for instance, by the English writer Matthew Arnold in the mid-nineteenth century, when he proclaimed his "faith in the progress of humanity toward perfection."

Liberals today are usually not so optimistic. Nonetheless, the idea of linear progress still exists more subtly in liberal beliefs about the "progressive" nature of social reforms and change, and fears of "stagnation" or "going back".

Conservatives have a different reading of history. For conservatives, history is more about the rise and fall of societies according to their inner strengths and weaknesses, rather than a constant progress. Nor would conservatives ever talk of human perfection, given the flaws embedded into human nature.

Given these different starting points, it isn't hard to see why liberals and conservatives have a different attitude to social change.

It's not that conservatives are against change; in fact, there is a great deal in modern societies that conservatives would like to reform.

However, conservatives believe that social change has to take account of human nature - in particular, that the social framework that is put in place must intelligently complement the real motivations and desires that are part of human nature. Liberal reforms, based as they often are on abstract ideas, often fail to do this and so misfire.

Furthermore, conservatives believe that real reform, i.e. the shifting from worse forms of human behaviour to better, is a difficult cultural achievement that takes place over generations. Such achievements, therefore, are not to be lightly discarded.

For this reason, conservatives are critical when liberals make reforms merely in a spirit of social experimentation, or when liberals want change just for the sake of change.

Conservatives and liberals have usually also wanted a different direction to change. Liberals, over several centuries, have sought to deconstruct the traditional social framework, in order to achieve a greater level of individualism; conservatives have attempted, in contrast, to conserve the more valued elements of this framework (hence of course the name conservative).

Over time liberals have succeeded in their aim; since the 1970s very little in Western societies has escaped the influence of liberal individualism.

This means that conservatives today are not the defenders of an established order, but instead are challengers of what has become a liberal orthodoxy.

Chapter 2. Conservative Belief

The differences between conservatism and liberalism should become clearer if we look at several key areas of conservative belief.

Nations

Throughout history there have existed groups of people united in a special way by kinship. Such peoples have shared a common ancestry, language, history, culture, religion and so on, which combine together to form a distinct ethnic identity.

Often such ethnic groups have existed at a tribal or regional level. However, it sometimes also happens that an ethnic group lives together in a large territory with its own political state. When this occurs, the people involved become something more than an ethnic group - they become a nation, with a distinct national identity.

For conservatives, membership of an ethnic group, and especially of a nation, is a positive feature of life. It is part of a real, historical collective identity existing between a group of people, which often becomes an inseparable part of our individual identity - of our sense of who we are.

Furthermore, a national or ethnic identity gives us a sense of connection to both past and future generations; it also encourages the idea that each individual has a respected place in society, in terms of having a role and responsibility within the collective effort; and finally, a national or ethnic tradition also strengthens the connection felt by individuals to their environment - it strengthens the attachment felt by individuals to the urban heritage or to the countryside of their native land.

Unlike conservatives, liberals have not given a very stable level of support to national or ethnic traditions. It's not hard to understand why this should be the case. As we saw in the first chapter, liberals support a philosophy of individualism, in which individuals start out as "blank slates", and are self-created through their own reason and will.

A national or ethnic identity, however, is not something we choose for ourselves through our reason or will, but is something we are born into. Liberals, therefore, have either tended to reject inherited national traditions altogether in favour of internationalism, or else have sought to redefine the idea of nationalism, so that it is based solely on citizenship.

When membership of a nation is based only on citizenship, then a national identity is something that can be chosen by the individual: the individual can seek to alter the definition of citizenship, or to choose to hold citizenship rights in whatever country they prefer.

Conservatives would argue, though, that in making membership of a nation malleable in this way, the inherited, and deeper, forms of national identity are lost, leaving the individual to a far greater degree "free-floating" or "rootless" - without the same strength of attachment to a particular national culture and tradition.

Finally, conservatives are also critical of those liberals who, curiously enough, are happy to support and enjoy foreign national or ethnic cultures, whilst denigrating their own.

In Australia, this denigration of the "home" culture has led to a distorted view of Australian history. There is a tendency to underplay the sacrifices and achievements of the early settlers, and to emphasise their faults. The historian John Hirst has criticised this trend towards "a history of Australia that characterises British Australia - Australia before the great postwar migration - as a long dark age." For conservatives, this "black armband" view of Australian history is of special concern, since conservatives wish to build on the best of a tradition, rather than to selectively emphasise the worst.

Gender

Conservatives support gender difference. They believe that men and women are different by nature, and that this is a positive aspect of life.

Conservatives support gender difference for several reasons. Firstly, for conservatives the feminine qualities of women and the masculine qualities of men have a value in themselves - they are something to be admired. Secondly, gender difference is the basis of heterosexuality; by definition, heterosexuality means the attraction of men to the feminine qualities of women and vice versa. Finally, gender difference is important in making men and women complementary to each other, so that together men and women provide the different qualities needed by individuals, families and communities.

The conservative attitude to gender is well-summarised, if a little overstated, by the nineteenth century writer John Ruskin, who wrote,

We are foolish, and without excuse foolish, in speaking of the "superiority" of one sex to another, as if they could be compared in similar things. Each has what the other has not; each completes the other, and is completed by the other; they are in nothing alike, and the happiness and perfection of both depends on each asking and receiving from the other what the other only can give.

Unlike conservatives, liberals have not proven to be reliable supporters of gender difference. Again, this can be traced back to liberal individualism. Liberal individualists want to be "self-created" - they don't want to be born into a particular gender with well-defined gender qualities.

When confronted with the reality that men and women do tend to act in certain typically masculine or feminine ways, liberals claim that this is merely a product of "socialisation": of the oppressive influence of traditional culture. Accordingly, liberals have attempted to "re-engineer" gender, with the purpose of creating more similar patterns of behaviour between men and women.

The results have been predictable. There has been some blurring of gender, as the normal process of encouraging the stronger masculine qualities of men, and the stronger feminine qualities of women, has been put into reverse.

However, the basic gender differences have inevitably remained, since these are "hard-wired" into us, as scientists have demonstrated ever more conclusively.

Again, for conservatives, this is not a cause of regret, since gender difference, while occasionally frustrating, is generally an appealing aspect of life.

Family

Many people in their teenage years react against the idea of family. It is often a time when people wish to be independent and free of of the personal frictions which go along with family life.

Nonetheless most people eventually choose to establish their own families. Why? Partly because the family, for all its imperfections, is usually the most stable source of support for individuals. It is also due to the strong instinct most people eventually feel to find a life partner and to have children.

Conservatives are supportive of family life. In particular, conservatives believe in the ideal of a stable family life, in which the different qualities of men and women are made complementary to each other.

Liberals take a different view of the family. Firstly, liberals find it more difficult to accept stable family commitments, since for liberals the idea of individual autonomy, of being independent and "free to choose" is paramount. Liberals, therefore, have acted to "loosen up" family commitments, by redefining the family so that it describes any arrangement of people living together, and by supporting easier divorce laws, culminating in the "no fault" divorce laws of the 1970s.

Secondly, liberals, being hostile to the idea of gender difference, have attempted to create a genderless family, in which men and women are expected to behave exactly the same.

This is one of those liberal "reforms" which was never thought through very clearly. It was heavily promoted in the 1970s when motherhood was unpopular amongst political women; this allowed the assumption to take hold that women could easily follow the same career pattern as men.

However, most women did eventually choose to have children, and were then left with the role of "supermums" - of trying to juggle motherhood responsibilities and traditionally masculine career demands at the same time. This was unrealistic, especially as most men proved less committed to taking over motherhood tasks, not least because their working hours were already steadily rising.

As a result, men and women have been left to muddle their way through the expectations of the genderless family as best they can. Conservatives believe that it would be better to scrap the emphasis on gender sameness within the family altogether, and try instead to achieve a balance between men and women in family life.

The Economy & Society

Historically there have been two basic kinds of liberalism.

The first kind, classical liberalism, had its heyday in the mid-nineteenth century. Classical liberals believed that the free market was self-regulating, so that governments should remain small and interfere as little as possible in the economy.

This kind of liberalism has made a comeback in recent years, under the name of "economic rationalism" or "neo-liberalism." Such liberals want to privatise and deregulate the economy.

The second kind of liberalism, "new liberalism", emerged in the late nineteenth century. New liberals wanted to make social reforms through intervention by a strong central government. Eventually, new liberalism was to lead to high levels of state ownership of the economy, and the building of the welfare state.

Conservatives are similar to classical liberals, and opposed to new liberals, in wanting a small central state. Why? When a large bureaucratic state takes over it tends to erode the institutions of civil society. People deal with a central state passively as separate individuals, rather than as mutually supporting members of a community.

Furthermore, too much power in the hands of the central state allows it, temporarily at least, to engage in social engineering - to overthrow the more natural forms of social organisation in favour of a ruling ideology.

There are some free market liberals who have a similar attitude to conservatives in this respect. Such liberals recognise that to have a small government you need to look after society by encouraging an ethos of personal responsibility and by having a well-functioning civil society.

However, unlike such classical liberals conservatives do believe in the need to regulate the market. Conservatives don't believe that the profit motive, if left to itself, necessarily creates the best outcomes for society. An example of this is that without sensible regulation a capitalist economy would quickly exploit and degrade the environment.

The Environment

Conservatives are strongly environmentalist. In part, this is because of the importance of heritage to conservatives, which means that conservatives wish to preserve the better historic areas of towns, as well as attractive areas of the countryside. Conservatives also believe that a natural environment has a positive influence on people, so that it is better for people to grow up and live in leafy surrounds, rather than in a concrete jungle.

Conservatives, however, would differ from some radical greens in recognising the need to use and develop natural resources. The point for conservatives is to attempt to do this intelligently and sustainably, with the least long-term damage to the environment.

Chapter 3. Politics in Australia

It is time now to look at the way in which conservatism and liberalism are actually represented in Australia. The starting point is to distinguish between two different kinds of liberalism: left liberalism (the modern version of "new liberalism") and right liberalism (the modern version of classical liberalism).

Left Liberalism

Left liberals believe in a relatively high level of government intervention in the economy and society.

They tend to support state ownership of sections of the economy, as well as high levels of government spending. Not surprisingly, many left liberals are white collar state employees, such as teachers and public servants.

Left liberals are (like all liberals) individualists, who believe in breaking down restrictions on the self-created, autonomous individual. They are more willing than right liberals to achieve change in this direction through government social engineering and collective social movements.

Left liberals have considerable influence in society. First of all, they are represented politically by the Labor Party, the Democrats and the Greens. They also dominate the education system, the arts and much of the media, particularly where social issues are concerned. (The Age in Melbourne for instance is almost exclusively left liberal on social issues.)

There is also a more radical version of left liberalism, found in sections of the socialist, feminist and gay movements. Such radical left liberals are often more ideological than other left liberals, more inclined to work outside the system through campaigns and demonstrations, and more likely to believe in using violent or authoritarian means to achieve their aims.

Right Liberalism

Right liberals have a much stronger focus on economic issues than left liberals. Their major concern is for economic activity to be unfettered by the state; they want, in other words, to remove impediments to the operation of the free market.

As might be expected, right liberals are often drawn from the business or commercial classes. Politically, right liberals are represented by the Liberal Party, the National Party (and by the Republican Party in America and the "Conservative" Party in Britain).

Right liberals have much less cultural influence than left liberals, though they do have considerable clout through their economic power and their ownership of the media.

On social issues, there are some differences between right liberals. Some right liberals are not so much social individualists as "economic individualists": they tend to see people in terms of being individual economic units, and they want an "open" society, not for the triumph of individual reason and will, but to have the least restriction on business choices and economic activity.

There are however more "conservative" right liberals, who still want to defend some parts of the social framework. As mentioned earlier, some right liberals recognise that if you want to reduce the role of central government, you need individuals to be supported by civil society and by an ethos of personal responsibility.

The existence of these "conservative" right liberals has often drawn conservatives toward parties like the Liberal Party. However, conservatives have usually ended up disappointed; such parties have never defended conservative values or institutions effectively as their underlying philosophy remains individualist, and as their belief in an unregulated free market often clashes with a defence of conservative values.

Conservatism

It should be clear from the above that the major political parties in Australia, as well as the media and education system, are dominated by different forms of liberalism. Conservatism, therefore, is not well represented in Australian politics.

Conservatism, though, is not entirely without influence. This is because the beliefs of the average person still remain closer to conservatism than to liberalism. Liberalism really only has a stronghold amongst the inner-city, middle class "chattering classes" (and some of the middle-suburban commercial classes). The rest of the population has been surprisingly resistant to liberal ideas, despite the heavy dose of liberalism they receive from the education system and the media.

It is possible to speak, therefore, of a division between a liberal "elite" and a "popular" conservatism. This popular conservatism, though, has not been well-enough organised, or clearly enough defined, to take a leading role in politics. Instead, its major influence has been more indirect: the commercial media, and the main political parties, do have to take some notice of it if they wish to succeed.

One example of this was the defeat of the Keating government in 1996. This is usually explained by the excessive attention Keating gave to "trendy" liberal policies, which alienated the more conservative blue collar vote.

Conclusion

Liberals may only be a minority of the population, but they have dominated Australian politics for many years now. They have been able to do so because they have been much better organised than conservatives.

The challenge for conservatives, therefore, is to begin to bridge the gap by becoming better organised. As part of this, conservatives need to argue their beliefs more clearly and to a wider audience.

This pamphlet has been a small step in that direction. Hopefully it has opened up for the reader the significance of the debate between conservatives and liberals. It is this debate, after all, which is the crucial dividing line of politics, and which will determine the future direction of Australian society.

(First published as a pamphlet 1997)

A great papal homily

There are still signs of life in the Catholic Church. Earlier this month Pope Benedict delivered a homily which firmly and eloquently rejected the modernist liberal mentality. It is a refreshing thing when a religious leader dares to move beyond accommodation to a hostile philosophy and actually attempts to refute it.

I must say that I was not so impressed by the first part of the homily. It is yet another attempt to place Mary at the centre of Catholic worship (“In her lies the true center in which we trust”).

However, further on we come to a passage which effectively rejects liberalism in the religious sphere. As you read the passage, remember that liberalism is the idea that to be fully human we must be free to create ourselves through our own individual will and reason. It is the philosophy of the sovereign, autonomous, independent, self-authoring individual.

Pope Benedict says, regarding the famous Bible passage in which Eve is tempted by the serpent,

What picture does this passage show us? The human being does not trust God. Tempted by the serpent, he harbors the suspicion that in the end, God takes something away from his life, that God is a rival who curtails our freedom and that we will be fully human only when we have cast him aside; in brief, that only in this way can we fully achieve our freedom.

The human being lives in the suspicion that God's love creates a dependence and that he must rid himself of this dependency if he is to be fully himself. Man does not want to receive his existence and the fullness of his life from God.

He himself wants to obtain from the tree of knowledge the power to shape the world, to make himself a god, raising himself to God's level, and to overcome death and darkness with his own efforts. He does not want to rely on love that to him seems untrustworthy; he relies solely on his own knowledge since it confers power upon him. Rather than on love, he sets his sights on power, with which he desires to take his own life autonomously in hand. And in doing so, he trusts in deceit rather than in truth and thereby sinks with his life into emptiness, into death.

Love is not dependence but a gift that makes us live. The freedom of a human being is the freedom of a limited being, and therefore is itself limited. We can possess it only as a shared freedom, in the communion of freedom: Only if we live in the right way, with one another and for one another, can freedom develop.

We live in the right way if we live in accordance with the truth of our being, and that is, in accordance with God's will. For God's will is not a law for the human being imposed from the outside and that constrains him, but the intrinsic measure of his nature, a measure that is engraved within him and makes him the image of God, hence, a free creature.

There is more. Pope Benedict says that we all carry a drop of the poison of thinking this way and that,

We call this drop of poison "original sin." Precisely on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, we have a lurking suspicion that a person who does not sin must really be basically boring and that something is missing from his life: the dramatic dimension of being autonomous; that the freedom to say no, to descend into the shadows of sin and to want to do things on one's own is part of being truly human; that only then can we make the most of all the vastness and depth of our being men and women, of being truly ourselves; that we should put this freedom to the test, even in opposition to God, in order to become, in reality, fully ourselves.

In a word, we think that evil is basically good, we think that we need it, at least a little, in order to experience the fullness of being. We think that Mephistopheles -- the tempter -- is right when he says he is the power "that always wants evil and always does good" (J.W. von Goethe, "Faust" I, 3). We think that a little bargaining with evil, keeping for oneself a little freedom against God, is basically a good thing, perhaps even necessary.

If we look, however, at the world that surrounds us we can see that this is not so; in other words, that evil is always poisonous, does not uplift human beings but degrades and humiliates them. It does not make them any the greater, purer or wealthier, but harms and belittles them.

This is something we should indeed learn on the day of the Immaculate Conception: The person who abandons himself totally in God's hands does not become God's puppet, a boring "yes man"; he does not lose his freedom. Only the person who entrusts himself totally to God finds true freedom, the great, creative immensity of the freedom of good.

The person who turns to God does not become smaller but greater, for through God and with God he becomes great, he becomes divine, he becomes truly himself.

I hope the significance of Pope Benedict’s words is clear to readers. In effect, the Pope is asserting that the liberal concept of what makes us human, namely a freedom to choose for ourselves, as autonomous individuals, who we are and what we do, is a false concept.

Instead, the Pope is arguing that there is a given truth to our being (not something we create for ourselves), which is not an impediment to freedom, not a “limitation,” because it forms the higher part of ourselves. We are free within a part of our nature, and therefore if we want freedom it is logical that we should aim, in what we will, to live in accordance with this higher part of our nature.

I do believe that this corresponds to the real experience of human freedom. Liberals would have us believe that we experience freedom when we are unconstrained in our choices. For example, liberals believe that we are liberated when we are not influenced in any significant way by the sex we are born to. Liberals want it not to matter whether we are born male or female.

So I am meant to feel free when I as a man am “unconstrained” by masculinity. But in reality I don’t feel free. I feel dismayed when I see signs of effeminacy in other men, or when I am hampered in fulfilling a masculine role in society. I feel most free when I witness the better and stronger masculine qualities in myself or others.

Which leads to a final point. It is encouraging that the Pope should reject the liberal mentality so firmly in the religious sphere. But the challenge for the Church is to understand how liberalism has also distorted other important spheres of life.

(I have already mentioned the issue of gender; the Church did, in fact, release a letter on gender last year which clearly rejected a liberal feminism, but only to replace it with a Catholic one.)

Liberating women for war?

Derryn Hinch is a right-wing talkback radio host here in Melbourne – but he is no conservative.

I was listening to his programme a week or so ago and he introduced the topic of women in combat. First Hinch told us of a female friend who had argued against placing women in the firing line:

My friend said that women were inherently different to men ... That men can kill more easily than women. That women are protective. And if you have a female soldier alongside you then you are at risk because she said a woman is less likely to shoot. It’s in her nature.

This is roughly the conservative position: that men and women are different in their natures and are not interchangeable in all things.

How did Hinch respond to his female friend’s observations about the nature of women? He ignored them. He simply announced his support for placing women in combat on the following basis:

If women want to be soldiers then there should be no restrictions on what they can or can’t do.

So all that matters for Hinch is that we are not impeded in our individual will. This principle is so paramount for Hinch that he doesn’t even bother to deal with other considerations, such as how men and women in their real natures are likely to act in combat situations, or the real instincts and expectations men and women have toward the opposite sex. Hinch does not even bother to realistically consider the physical capabilities of women compared to men.

This is not surprising for a liberal. After all, liberals believe that we are made human because we can create who we are and what we do through our own individual will and reason. So for liberals like Hinch, it’s a threat to someone’s humanity to deny them their will. Unrestricted individual choice becomes everything, even when this is destructive of the framework of a society or of an institution.

Yesterday, there was an interesting sequel to this story. The Herald Sun carried an article in which the first woman to pass an Australian SAS training course spoke out against placing women in combat roles. Jane Cunningham, reputedly one of the physically toughest women in the Australian Defence Force, said of such roles,

Women will never have the personal strength and are not designed to carry the loads required ... in my view women just shouldn’t be out there.

Playing nicely

Women today aren't supposed to be feminine. We live in a liberal society and the first principle of liberalism is that we become human when we create who we are through our own choices: through our individual will and reason. A traditional gender identity is not something that we choose, it's simply inherited. Therefore it takes on a negative connotation in a liberal society; it comes to be seen as an oppressive impediment to our individual freedom to choose our own identity.

So, we have a generation of women brought up to believe that traditional femininity is somehow oppressive to women.

At a practical level, this wreaks havoc in relationships between men and women. After all, heterosexual men, by definition, are going to be attracted to the feminine qualities of women. If women are too successful in denying these qualities, men will understandably be left confused and less willing to commit to relationships.

Toby Green is a relationships psychologist who recognises the damage done to relationships by the denial of traditional gender qualities. In her latest column she writes,

Nick said he was throwing in the towel. Women were now officially in the "too hard basket". The latest problem was asking a woman in a pub if he could buy her a drink only to be told to "p--- off".

Nick said he'd tried to adjst to the "new woman" and was no longer confused. He just didn't like them.

Being a female has become a serious business. It's as though women have been militarised into believing that femininity is sissy, they've even giving up on the art of flirting.

Psychology practices are bursting with single women in their 30s asking "How do I find a man?" These are successful, attractive and smart women. But what they're missing is the soft, sensual side ...

Some of the women saying they want to find a man don't know how to play the game, or refuse to play it.

Toby Green goes even further down the path of conservatism later in the article. She talks about how difficult it is to simply switch gender roles because of the existence of an "inherent psychology" of man, existing as part of a "human nature".

In other words, she openly rejects the liberal idea that we are "blank slates" and that we therefore simply make up who we are as we go along. Instead, she agrees with conservatives (and modern science) that qualities of manhood and womanhood are hardwired into us and are therefore difficult to change.

Conservatives, who don't share the liberal first principle, have no reason for wanting to obliterate the differences between men and women. What we want to do is to work with human nature, rather than against it, by encouraging the best masculine qualities in men and the best feminine qualities in women.

Overall, we like gender difference. We wouldn't be heterosexual if we didn't. We want our women to be attractively feminine as we find much to admire and love in a genuinely feminine woman.

Raising character?

It's a hundred years since the children's classic The Railway Children was first serialised. The Age yesterday marked the occasion with a fascinating account of the author's life.

Edith Nesbit was not only an author of children's books, she was also a founding member, together with her husband, of the Fabian Society. The Fabians began as revolutionary socialists, but achieved considerably more influence as reformist left-liberals. Broadly speaking, they have been intellectual standard bearers for social democratic parties like the Australian Labor Party.

The earliest recorded goal of the Fabians was to form "an association whose ultimate aim shall be the reconstruction of Society in accordance with the highest moral possibilities" and that the object would be "the cultivation of a perfect character in each and all."

These are high sounding, if utopian, aims. Unfortunately, the Fabians were a long way from cultivating a perfect character, as the life story of Edith Nesbitt makes clear.

Her story goes like this: her future husband and fellow Fabian founder, Hubert Bland, first achieved fatherhood by impregnating a friend of his mother. He then impregnated Edith and married her two months before the birth of the child. However, even after marriage he continued to live with his mother for part of the week, while Edith fended for herself.

He then impregnated the secretary of the Fabians, one of Edith's friends, Alice Hoatson, who came to live with the family in a menage a trois. Edith herself had numerous affairs.

Eventually, Edith made a lot of money through her books, and the household moved to an imposing mansion of 30 rooms with a number of servants, in spite of their supposed Fabian commitment to achieving human equality in a classless society.

Edith did not get on well with her own children, despite achieving fame as a writer of children's books, and her son Paul, like many children of middle class bohemians, was to eventually take his own life.

Hardly a monument to the character raising effects of liberal politics. The men and women who founded Fabianism wanted to achieve human perfection, but seemingly lacked the moral values to act decently within their own private lives.