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David Brooks makes a point today that is one of my hobby-horses:
[Edmund] Burke is known as the founder of conservatism, but his thought sits oddly these days with the Republican Party and those who call themselves conservative. The party has become much more populist, supporting term limits and political outsiders over those who have been educated by experience. Most call for pretty radical change to the welfare state. It’s the Democrats who fight to preserve the current structures of Social Security, Medicare and food stamps. It’s the Democrats who have been running ads through this election campaign accusing their opponents of being a bunch of wild-eyed radicals. Are Democrats now the conservators of tradition?
I would say: yes. And I would say the same of the European left and even of grassroots movements that view themselves as to the left of the Democratic Party in the US. I’ve argued that America’s most authentic conservative movement is composed of grassroots groups that emphasize community voice, localism, and sustainability. A characteristic leftist stance today is that a given institution (such as the public schools, higher ed, welfare programs, or public employees’ unions) fails to meet criteria of justice, yet we should defend the institution because it’s better than an untested alternative and because we should respect the experience and commitment of the participants (i.e., the teachers, professors, public employees, and their clients). The most ambitious leftist proposals are mostly patches to keep these existing institutions going, not whole new strategies. Therefore, I’ve posited that Edmund Burke would vote Democratic.
To the extent that other people make this argument, it’s often to score a debating point–either to denounce the left for abandoning its radicalism or to tweak conservatives for failing to recognize that their opponents are now more genuinely conservative than they are. For instance, Andrew Sullivan uses the premise that Democrats are conservative to endorse Obama and denounce both neoconservativism and what he calls “progressivism.”* But I intend this point as an analysis, not a polemic. If the left is the true home of conservatism today, that raises some important questions, but it is not necessarily good or bad.
*Sullivan: “As for our time, an attachment to a fixed ideology called conservatism (which is currently suffused with the zeal and passion Montaigne so deeply suspected) or to an ideology called progressivism (which increasingly regards most of its opponents as mere bigots) does not exhaust the possibilities. A disposition for moderation and pragmatism, for the long view over the short-term victory, for maintaining the balance in American life in a polarized time: this remains a live option. You can see how, influenced by this mindset, I have had little difficulty supporting a Democratic president as the most conservative figure, properly speaking, now on the national stage. You can see why I have become so hostile to neoconservatism whose unofficial motto is ‘Toujours l’audace!'”
Interesting post.
However I think the conservative left (Blue Labour) movement in the UK seeks to re-establish the civic relationships and institutions that have been eroded or replaced by the welfare state or market. So not so much a protection of the status quo at all costs, as you say, but a critique of the liberal left’s faith in the ability of the centralised state to deliver social justice.
There is a reform programme imagined by conservative labourites, one which hopes to create new institutions that foster community voice, localism and sustainability around the principles of reciprocity, solidarity and trust. If these principles are not facilitated by existing institutions, I think Blue Labour advocates would argue that they need to be done away with!
And I would be very surprised if grassroots groups in the US were willing to put up with dodgy schools, or the like, because their conservative instinct made them sceptical of the alternative.
Interesting about Blue Labour. Over here, I think grassroots groups are divided (and sometimes individuals are divided in their own heads and hearts). They are quick to defend the performance of schools and to minimize the impact of schools as compared to other factors, such as poverty. They will also criticize aspects of schooling and endorse reforms–but not very effectively or wholeheartedly.
I agree with Scott’s point, and think Blue Labour — developed by Maurice Glassman, a populist member of the House of Lords (the irony is worth noting) and political theorist long active in the London Citizen group — points to some potential for common ground across left and right. Strong elements of both are critical of technocratic, impersonal systems. Centralization is only one feature; Weber’s “iron cage” of technical rationality, or even more vividly the “polar night of icy darkness” which he believed descending across the landscape of the modern world, is a more evocative way of describing the default positivism which has taken hold in contemporary societies across the world. Yuval Levin, a rising star among Republicans, captures a good deal of this “Burkean wish” for recommunalization in his book, “The Great Debate,” seeking to locate today’s left and right in Burke and Paine.
I agree with Levine about the careless disruptiveness of today’s Republican ends — a kind of radical iconoclasm substitutes for strategy for what it might take to “recommunalize” the world; Blue Labour is a far more substantial attempt, though also completely insufficient, since it doesn’t really develop a strategy for the internal transformation of impersonal, bureaucratic local cultures which can be as dehumanizing in nonprofits as in corporations.
But recommunalizing desires definitely help to animate today’s conservative movement, and an “Information age populism” might hold potential for bridging the divides.