There isn’t a choice between conservative and liberal philosophies. This is because conservatism is not a philosophy. Let me explain.
Liberalism is a philosophy. Liberalism defines the general welfare—Bentham’s “greatest happiness for the greatest number”—as the center and purpose of all decision-making; and proceeds from there to consider how best to organize and govern the society.
Conservatism is not a philosophy. It is a pattern of behavior. The conservative works toward wealth and power for himself and his friends. All decisions are made on this basis. But when speaking about his decisions, he describes them in liberal terms. He claims to be motivated by concern for the general public. He claims to be working for the general good. Asked to describe the difference between himself and a liberal, he will say that very broadly they have similar goals; their differences come down to how they propose to get there. But this is not true. Conservative decisions are not designed to benefit the general public, only the plutocrats and power-brokers. Conservatism is not a different technique for serving the public; it is a technique for fleecing the public.
Therefore, public servants cannot and do not choose to adopt either a liberal or a conservative philosophy. They choose either to care about their community or to only pretend to care. They choose to tell the truth, or to lie.
So-called “conservatives” are liars. They pretend that there is a conservative approach to solving community problems, which can be contrasted with the liberal approach. But the conservative approach to helping the community does not exist. Conservative methods do not help the community, because they are not intended to. The conservative approach is not to care about community problems. Therefore, as soon as a conservative starts telling you how he’s going to help you, he’s already lied to you twice. The second time was when he said that he thought his plan would help you—he doesn’t think so. The first time was just before that, when he said that he wants to help you. He doesn’t.
YASHWATA 
Isn’t the main claim of this post refuted by the existence of, say, the works of Edmund Burke? Or Barry Goldwater’s _Conscience of a Conservative_, for that matter?
Not to mention by the fact that conservatives donate more money to the poor than liberals, even if you discount donations to churches. Cf: http://lippard.blogspot.com/2006/12/charitable-giving-conservatives-vs.html
I’m skeptical of claims that attempt to completely dismiss the very existence of opposing viewpoints without even making reference to them, let alone engaging with their content.
[…] a comment » It was a blast to hear Conceptual Guerilla read my post On Conservative “Philosophy” out loud. He’s got a terrific voice. My words sounded mighty impressive in his mouth. The […]
This post is, in a word, ignorant; it is most ignorant of conservatism, at least as defended in political discourse in the United States.
I can say that, without specifying a particular strain of conservatism, because I can think of no popular variation of conservatism (as defended in political discourse in the U.S.) of which the post is true.
Just because you cannot think of it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Maybe you are fortunate enough not to come into direct contact with conservative extremists; I know there are more pragmatic conservatives who realize that there are some functions of our American government that are necesssary and proper.
Consequentialism is false, but even were it true, I would not support a left-liberal political platform in the United States, because the question of which platform to select is happily one of those where the consequentialist and the moral idealist views produce the same result: Both are imperfect, but conservatism is superior.
Consequentialism is about results, and its popularity suggests I should amplify the preceding paragraph: Conservatism produces a superior outcome for individuals; if one’s sole concern is to have a healthier society for the poor and the disadvantaged, one should shun left-liberal policies (which tend in the long term to harm both) and embrace something mixing law-and-order regulation, economic libertarianism, and a moderate social traditionalism. In other words: Something closer to conservatism than to anything else in the American spectrum.
(1) “law-and-order regulation”? Is this code for “police state”, “putting the rich above the law”, or something else?
(2) Oh yeah, economic libertarianism worked so well for the banks – they set up a house of derviative cards, and when some housing speculators overextended themselves, the cards fell – and nearly sliced the whole country to death.
(3) Even moderate social traditionalism includes bashing gays, stereotyping blacks, and generally judging anyone different guilty until proven innocent.
Apart from all of that, your post discounts the statistically proven and now incontrovertible fact that conservatives in the U.S. care more about the poor than left-liberals.
Oh, I’m certain you have tons of sources to back this up.
That is, they voluntarily give more of their money to charities (including non-church charities) and they volunteer more of their time (including non-church groups like Habitat for Humanity) than left-liberals do. This is true across all income levels…but it is even more true in the aggregate since left-liberals tend to have slightly more income than conservatives, and therefore the meager amount of income they give represents a slightly smaller proportion of their overall income than the same amount would represent among conservatives.
Define Charity. Make sure to exclude all those pseudocharities who use a single-digit percentage to actually help people, and spend the rest on “administration”. I would not consider sitting in an air-conditioned office getting paid to write checks to yourself drawing on money you donated “charitable intent”. Nor do I particularly consider donating to charities whom only cater to very select groups “charitable” either – donating to the White Anglo-Saxon Homophobes Club does not set you high in the eyes of God or man.
Oh, and I find it interesting that you state that “left-liberals tend to have slightly more income than conservatives”. I wonder why that is. Could the liberal mind be flexible enough to create more innovation? Though I am more concerned more with the possibility that you have excluded the ultra-rich, who tend to be far more conservative, and are the real problem, as they are best suited to use their vast resources to manipulate society to their benefit.
This is not to say that there are not stingy conservatives and generous left-liberals. The argument is in the aggregate; there are always those whose individual habits run against the grain of their political allies.
But in the aggregate, the two groups aren’t particularly close. Conservatives care more; they act generously more often and more generously.
This makes their policies confusing to left-liberals since the left-liberals only identify those policies with *hatred* of the poor and disadvantaged. Hence the left-liberal assumption that conservatives are (a.) liars, (b.) confused and inconsistent, or (c.) suffering from “false consciousness.”
But when the conservative arguments are analyzed, we find that they *really believe* their policies are better for the poor and disadvantaged,
You say they care more, and they really believe in their policies. I wish i could read minds too.
while simultaneously allowing the wealthy more money as well
If this argument was a land claim I was mining, this is where my pickaxe would go “dink”, and I’d know I just hit something important. Y’see, a lot of the liberal argument involves rich people helping other rich people stay rich and get richer – at other peoples’ expense.
(”a rising tide lifts all boats”)
This is the first thing you say that I agree with. Indeed, most liberals are trying to “rise the tide” to “lift all boats”, but what they are railing against are conservative extremists who want to lower the tide and expand the gap between rich and poor, in order for said extremists to gain power over others.
which, if the wealthy are conservative, they’ll probably donate much of to church and charity. (Statistically, if they’re left-liberal, they *won’t* donate much more…but that’s hardly conservatives’ fault!)
Now the conservatives may be wrong about whether their policies help the poor in the long run.
You know where my money (quite literally, really) lies on this.
(Speaking purely from an economic perspective, I think they’re self-evidently correct.)
Thinking they are correct is one thing, but self-evidently correct? Not only do I find the idea ludicrous, but its phrasing, faintly echoing the Declaration of Independence, almost offensive.
But, right or wrong, it doesn’t change the fact that they believe it.
There are people out there that believe we’ve been probed by aliens – I wouldn’t commend someone’s radical belief based on unsound evidence.
So it makes perfect sense, from the conservative perspective, to follow a path which (a.) helps the poor, (b.) helps the non-poor, (c.) allows the conservative non-poor more money and time to donate to the poor (as they’re already commendably in the habit of doing), and (d.) seems more closely aligned with a traditional or originalist interpretation of the U.S. Constitution (another favorite *philosophical* plank of American conservatism).
If most of American conservative actually behaved this way, we’d have far less political friction and far less problems today. The problem here is that extremist conservatives are abandoning most of this, favoring only pooling the world’s resources in their own hands, and only doling out meager portions to those who sacrifice themselves to help the extremists. I have little beef with the “small ‘c'” conservative whom is wary of government power but is concerned with the plight of all of his fellow man. *I* am wary of any collection of power, be it governmental, religious, corporate, or otherwise. Whom I have a beef with are those extremists who collect that power and use it to deprive others of what little power they have – putting most of the populace “over a barrel” and forcing them to march to the extremists’ drumbeat.
Now, Yashwata,
The remainder of this was directed at Yashwata (instead of, say, his arguments) so I needn’t repeat them here. However, do not confuse me with someone unaware of complexity as you did him – you will defeat yourself long before my counterpoints have a chance to.
Angel really IS an angel, and a solid thinker too.
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I too want to thank you for your wonderful, concise piece. I love it! You explained something that wasn’t clear to me before.
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Although I could see ‘conservatism’ isn’t conservative, I didn’t think in terms of philosophy vs a simple pattern of behavior. You are so right!
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And don’t you love the ‘conservatives’ who come on here and prove your principle? You wrote a serious piece, they are writing comedy…
I’ve never been blessed by an angel before. Turns out it’s a REALLY good feeling. :~)
I was delighted beyond words to encounter your essay on conservative philosophy because it seems to circle in toward an idea I’ve been formulating on my own for a while.
It has occurred to me that the radical right–I do not think of them as “conservative,” despite their insistence upon the label–is not so much a political movement as it is a deliberate and systematic movement bent upon subversion of the fundamentals of this country as envisioned by the Founding Fathers.
To this end, they have created think tanks to formulate and distill their toxic ideas into palatable form, media outlets to disseminate them and even universities to lend legitimacy to their repugnant concepts. The Republican Party is merely the money-and-power arm of this “vast rightwing conspiracy,” an aggregation of liars and thieves who are, at core, anti-democracy and un-American. The real question is this: If their ideas are so intrinsically superior, why do they need bottom-feeders like Atwater, Segretti and Rove to get their politicians elected?
I have been blogging for a couple of years myself, most recently at http://www.conceptualguerilla.com and I think it’s about time to think this thing through, write it up into a large, important piece and get it out there. You have unwittingly assisted in the spade-work of my effort and, for that, I am immensely grateful. There is every possibility that I will once again link to “On Conservative Philosophy” at that time.
Meanwhile, take care and be well; we need more clear thinking like yours on the left if we are ever to tear the masks off the faces of those who would pretend they are not America’s enemies.
That was me who published a link to your outstanding essay on my thread entitled “Republican Hypocrisy & Perversion” at Political Fever.
I didn’t know I’d be kicking over the hornets’ nest! I merely wanted to pass it along because it echoes my own feelings so closely; many, many thanks!
More later; I’m not writing this from home…
“A healthier society for the poor and disadvantaged” is the concern where liberals and conservatives disagree most acutely. Liberals are constantly trying to help the poor and disadvantaged, and conservatives are constantly trying to prevent this help.
How can that be? Conservatism is all about not caring about the poor. Y’all aren’t doing a very good job!
Oh, they volunteer more. Well, there are various ways we can try to help other people. One way is to give them some of our money or time. Another way is to allocate greater governmental resources, backed by our own taxes, to helping them. We liberals try to arrange it so that our tax revenues benefit the needy as much as possible; conservatives prefer directing those monies toward the rich.
Yes, it is confusing — because we observe the conservatives striving relentlessly to enrich the wealthy and marginalize the poor. This is not just an fanciful image we have. It’s what conservatives do.
To call this an “assumption” is to attack my character. Listen carefully. Conservatives relentlessly strive to glorify the wealthy and punish the poor. This is not what they keep saying they are going to do — yet, it is what they keep doing. Therefore, their “arguments” and “beliefs” are either mistaken, misleading, or both. It is not assumed, it is reluctantly concluded from a nauseating quantity of evidence.
Both of those sound good, especially A. Y’all should start doing some of that.
The liberal philosophy is that it is good to care for other people. Furthermore, we take this to mean all other people, not just those in our own church, town, or country. Conservatism is the absence of this ideal. That’s why I say that liberalism is a philosophy and conservatism is not.
Highly educated conservatives insist that they do have a philosophy and that liberals don’t understand it. I think that if conservatives do have a philosophy, it’s something like “You come into my house, I’ll blow your head off,” and it seldom gets articulated in intellectual circles. What’s passed off as conservative philosophy is basically hand-waving: a way of capturing your attention while they steal your wallet.
[…] HERE. I remain consistently amazed that the GOP simply cannot behave themselves…but recently I encountered something which may partially unveil the reason for this: […]
This post is, in a word, ignorant; it is most ignorant of conservatism, at least as defended in political discourse in the United States.
I can say that, without specifying a particular strain of conservatism, because I can think of no popular variation of conservatism (as defended in political discourse in the U.S.) of which the post is true.
Consequentialism is false, but even were it true, I would not support a left-liberal political platform in the United States, because the question of which platform to select is happily one of those where the consequentialist and the moral idealist views produce the same result: Both are imperfect, but conservatism is superior.
Consequentialism is about results, and its popularity suggests I should amplify the preceding paragraph: Conservatism produces a superior outcome for individuals; if one’s sole concern is to have a healthier society for the poor and the disadvantaged, one should shun left-liberal policies (which tend in the long term to harm both) and embrace something mixing law-and-order regulation, economic libertarianism, and a moderate social traditionalism. In other words: Something closer to conservatism than to anything else in the American spectrum.
Apart from all of that, your post discounts the statistically proven and now incontrovertible fact that conservatives in the U.S. care more about the poor than left-liberals.
That is, they voluntarily give more of their money to charities (including non-church charities) and they volunteer more of their time (including non-church groups like Habitat for Humanity) than left-liberals do. This is true across all income levels…but it is even more true in the aggregate since left-liberals tend to have slightly more income than conservatives, and therefore the meager amount of income they give represents a slightly smaller proportion of their overall income than the same amount would represent among conservatives.
This is not to say that there are not stingy conservatives and generous left-liberals. The argument is in the aggregate; there are always those whose individual habits run against the grain of their political allies.
But in the aggregate, the two groups aren’t particularly close. Conservatives care more; they act generously more often and more generously.
This makes their policies confusing to left-liberals since the left-liberals only identify those policies with *hatred* of the poor and disadvantaged. Hence the left-liberal assumption that conservatives are (a.) liars, (b.) confused and inconsistent, or (c.) suffering from “false consciousness.”
But when the conservative arguments are analyzed, we find that they *really believe* their policies are better for the poor and disadvantaged, while simultaneously allowing the wealthy more money as well (“a rising tide lifts all boats”) which, if the wealthy are conservative, they’ll probably donate much of to church and charity. (Statistically, if they’re left-liberal, they *won’t* donate much more…but that’s hardly conservatives’ fault!)
Now the conservatives may be wrong about whether their policies help the poor in the long run. (Speaking purely from an economic perspective, I think they’re self-evidently correct.) But, right or wrong, it doesn’t change the fact that they believe it.
So it makes perfect sense, from the conservative perspective, to follow a path which (a.) helps the poor, (b.) helps the non-poor, (c.) allows the conservative non-poor more money and time to donate to the poor (as they’re already commendably in the habit of doing), and (d.) seems more closely aligned with a traditional or originalist interpretation of the U.S. Constitution (another favorite *philosophical* plank of American conservatism).
Now, Yashwata, if you knew much about conservatism or the way most conservatives think, none of the above would be new. Heck, a cursory reading of Arthur C. Brooks’ “Who Really Cares” would be enough to make you edit or qualify your post to make it more representative of reality.
As it is, the current disconnection from reality represents ignorance. Nothing to be ashamed of, much: We all don’t know *something*. (Admittedly, most of us don’t post such confident-sounding statements as you did, here, on topics about which we’re uninformed. But nobody’s perfect.)
Still, you’ve now been notified that the facts are more complicated than you knew: Like a Newtonian physicist who suddenly finds out about quantum mechanics.
It’s up to you, what you do with the information.
(“Still, a man hears what he wants to hear/And disregards the rest.”)
J: The idea of the greatest happiness for the greatest number *includes* questions such as “at what cost?”. The greatest-happiness criterion is not in conflict with “will it help achieve higher living standards?” — the two are *equivalent*. “Handouts” are a good idea when, and *only* when, they lead to greater overall well-being. (Deciding when that is, is a very tough problem.) Finally: what on Earth makes you think I’m in favor of communism?
“Greatest happiness for the greatest number” is irresponsible without adding the question of “at what cost and for how long?” and: “would that cost bankrupt the community, keep it unchanged or will help it achieve higher living standards?” question should be also asked. Making everyone happy it is Utopia. Making everybody happy around you because You have created wealth for yourself and you can afford to help others in many ways it is a completely different proposition and it makes sense. Being conservative on money making and liberal on helping others (to achieve what you have accomplished…) is the best of these two worlds. Giving out handouts to everyone is the biggest mistake a society can make. Communism is the biggest nightmare mankind have ever invented… it does not work – I know, I lived in it for decades.
You did not understand my post. Read it again.
Every kind of behavior implies some type of philosophy.