The disease of Liberalism

[EWolfe]

I found this interesting commentary on Conservatism:

 

"1.1 What is distinctive about conservatism as a political view?

 

Its emphasis on tradition as a source of wisdom that goes beyond what can be demonstrated or even explicitly stated.

 

1.2 Why is tradition a source of greater wisdom?

 

It is a network of commonly accepted attitudes, beliefs and practices that evolves through strengthening of things that work and rejection of things that lead to conflict and failure. It therefore comprises a collection of habits that have proved useful in a huge variety of practical affairs, and a comprehensive and generally coherent point of view that reflects very extensive experience and thought. Through it we know subtle and fundamental features of the world that would otherwise escape us, and our understanding of those things takes on concrete and usable form.

 

The usual alternative to reliance on tradition is reliance on theory. Taking theory literally can be costly because it achieves clarity by ignoring things that are difficult to articulate. Such things can be important; the reason politics and morals are learned mostly by experience and imitation is that most of what we need to know about them consists in habits, attitudes and implicit presumptions that we couldn't begin to put into words. There is no means other than tradition to accumulate, conserve and hand on such things.

 

Other considerations also support the wisdom of relying on tradition, if not specifically of tradition itself. For example, tradition typically exists as the common property of a community whose members are raised in it. Accordingly, it normally unites more than divides, and is far more likely than theory to facilitate free and cooperative life in common.

 

1.3 What's the difference between following tradition and refusing to think?

 

Conservatives do not reject thought but are skeptical of its autonomy. They believe that tradition guides and corrects thought, and so brings it closer to truth, which has no special connection with any private view.

 

Truth is not altogether out of reach, but our access to it is incomplete and often indirect. Since it can not be reduced wholly to our possession, conservatives are willing to accept it in whatever form it is available to us. In particular, they recognize the need to rely on the unarticulated truth implicit in inherited attitudes and practices.

 

Today this aspect of our connection to truth is underestimated, and conservatives hope to think better and know more truly by re-emphasizing it.

 

1.4 Why isn't it better to reason things out from the beginning?

 

Our knowledge of things like politics and morality is partial and attained slowly and with difficulty. We can't evaluate political ideas without accepting far more beliefs, presumptions and attitudes than we could possibly judge critically. The effects of political proposals are difficult to predict, and as the proposals become more ambitious their effects become incalculable. Accordingly, the most reasonable approach to politics is to take the existing system of society as a given that can't be changed wholesale and try to ensure that any changes cohere with the principles and practices that make the existing system work as well as it does.

 

1.5 Why can't tradition be an accumulation of ignorance, error and vice as easily as of wisdom?

 

Since tradition is a human thing it may reflect human vices as well as virtues. The same, of course, is true of relying on autonomous reason. In this century, anti-traditional theories supported by intelligent men for reasons thought noble have repeatedly led to the murder of millions of innocents.

 

The issue therefore is not whether tradition is perfect but its appropriate place in human life. To the extent our most consistent aim is toward what is good, and we err more through ignorance, oversight and conflicting impulse than coherent and settled evil, tradition will benefit us by linking our thoughts and actions to a steady and comprehensive system in which they can correct each other. It will secure and refine our acquisitions while hampering antisocial impulses. To the extent we consistently aim at what is evil, then tradition can not help us much, but neither can anything else short of divine intervention.

 

1.6 There are lots of conflicting traditions. How can anyone know his own is the right one?

 

Comprehensive certainty is hard to come by. Our own tradition (like our own reasoning) might lead us astray where another's would not. However, such concerns can not justify rejecting our own tradition unless we have a method transcending it for determining when that has happened, and in most situations we do not. If experience has led us astray it will most likely be further experience that sets us right. The same is true of tradition, which is social experience.

 

Putting issues of truth aside, the various parts of a particular tradition are adjusted to each other in a way that makes it difficult to abandon one part and substitute something from another tradition. A French cook will have trouble if he has to rely on Chinese ingredients and utensils. Issues of coherence and practicality accordingly make it likely that we will do better developing the tradition to which we are accustomed than attempting to adopt large parts of a different one.

 

1.7 But what about truth?

 

Most conservatives are confident comprehensive objective truth exists, but not in the form of a set of propositions with a single meaning equally demonstrable to all. The world is too big for us to grasp as a whole in a clear systematic way. We apprehend truth largely through tradition and in a way that cannot be fully articulated. Even if some truths can be known with certainty through reason or revelation, their social acceptance and their interpretation and application depend on tradition."

 

 

 

[JayB]

The economic model that Castro & Co implemented could never sustain the populace - that required continuous handouts from the Soviets, and once that ceased to flow they had no choice but to abandon it. The regime is currently sustained by the hard currency generated by the operation of the market within their borders, i.e. capitalism. 100% literacy and a low-infant mortality rate are wonderful things, but these things can be achieved by the citizens of any country that chooses to elevate them to the top of their collective priority list through the operation of their voting rights in a free society. Any country in which the government must forcibly detain the population, whatever its theoretical appeal to those who do not have to endure life within it, is not a model one should hold up for praise or emulation in my opinion.

 

Anyhow, if one is going to discuss things like capitalism and socialism, the terms must have a consistent definition if the conversation is to have any meaning at all. Any definition of socialism which is not centered upon public ownership of all the means of production, and full state regulation of all economic acitivity is not historically accurate, as those are the key tenets that differentiate it from capitalism. Those are also the components that enabled totalitarian regimes to flourish within them, as once the state had enough power to control all aspects of economic life, complete control of political life was never far away. Cuba is a case in point.

[Beck]

...and cuba is certainely not a successful stand-alone socialist economy, but there are no stand-alone economies in the world but mentioned its efforts FOR THE PEOPLE in the light of being torn from your biggest trading partner to you're north for the last fourty years?

 

Socialism is the theory of social aspects of production and its consequences.

Socialism is characterized by enormous variety. It generally involves the argument that economic production has an essential social, as distinct from individual element hence, much different from liberalism Socialism requires and justifies a public share in and reaping of awards.

 

considered by the marxists to be the stepping strone to communism. Communism is 100% ownership of production, Jay, not socialism!

 

Conservativism: a political state based on tradition. also, notions that human abilities are not evenly distributed, and hence it is for the good of all that those with superior abilities lead in politics, economics or social affairs. Private property is deemed good for individuals and for society as a whole, but government should preserve it but not interfere with its distribution.

 

and THAT'S why this country is in trouble. We got the oil men, wildcatting energy futures in policy from the get go of the current administration, and the way our conservative system of government is set up, we are getting hosed by the bussinessmen who are also politcians, and politicians listening to big business interests instead of the , oh, say, 8,000 doctors who releasesd in the AMA's journal backing a national health care plan yesterday.

 

 

[allthumbs]

Have you ever wondered what happened to the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence?

 

Five signers were captured by the British as traitors, and tortured before they died. Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned. Two lost their sons in the revolutionary army, another had two sons captured.

 

Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds or hardships of the revolutionary war.

 

They signed and they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.

 

What kind of men were they? Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists. Eleven were merchants, nine were farmers and large plantation owners, men of means, well educated. But they signed the declaration of independence knowing full well that the penalty would be death if they were captured.

 

Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader, saw his ships swept from the seas by the British navy. He sold his home and properties to pay his debts, and died in rags.

 

Thomas McKeam was so hounded by the British that he was forced to move his family almost constantly. He served in the Congress without pay, and his family was kept in hiding. His possessions were taken from him, and poverty was his reward.

 

Vandals or soldiers or both, looted the properties of Ellery, Clymer, Hall, Walton, Gwinnett, Heyward, Ruttledge, and Middleton.

 

At the battle of Yorktown, Thomas Nelson Jr., noted that the British General Cornwallis had taken over the Nelson home for his headquarters. The owner quietly urged General George Washington to open fire. The home was destroyed, and Nelson died bankrupt.

 

Francis Lewis had his home and properties destroyed. The enemy jailed his wife, and she died within a few months.

 

John Hart was driven from his wife's bedside as she was dying. Their 13 children fled for their lives. His fields and his grist mill were laid to waste. For more than a year he lived in forests and caves, returning home to find his wife dead and his children vanished. A few weeks later he died from exhaustion and a broken heart.

 

Norris and Livingston suffered similar fates.

 

Such were the stories and sacrifices of the America Revolution. These were not wild eyed, rabble-rousing ruffians. They were soft-spoken men of means and education. They had security, but they valued liberty more. Standing tall, straight, and unwavering, they pledged: "for the support of this declaration, with firm reliance on the protection of the divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."

 

-Gary Hildreth

[Beck]

Trask, that is, the most amazing post of yours. What an eloquent piece of american history!!

 

Is that something you'd want published?

 

 

 

 

[allthumbs]

I didn't write it Beck, Gary Hildreth did. I'm not taking credit for it...just thought it was cool.