Subject: Conservatism Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Date: 1 Apr 1996 06:34:14 -0500

Posting-Frequency: monthly


                            Conservatism FAQ
                         April 1, 1996 Revision

This FAQ, posted monthly, attempts to deal with common questions and 
objections regarding conservatism.  Additional questions and comments 
are welcome.  The conservatism discussed is traditionalist American 
conservatism; other varieties are touched on in section 6 and their 
adherents are urged to draft additional FAQs.

A current version of this FAQ is available by ftp in compressed form 
from rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/conservatism/faq.Z.  A copy 
can also be obtained in uncompressed form by sending the message "send 
usenet/news.answers/conservatism/faq" by email to mail- 
server@rtfm.mit.edu.  A hypertext version is available at 
http://www.panix.com/~jk/consfaq.html.





                               QUESTIONS


1    General principles

1.1  How does conservatism differ from other political views?

1.2  Why is tradition a source of "greater wisdom"?

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

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

1.5  How can anyone know his own tradition is the right one?

1.6  What about truth?

2    Tradition and change

2.1  Why not just accept change?

2.2  Isn't conservatism simply another way of saying that people who 
currently have wealth and power should keep it?

2.3  Wouldn't we still have slavery if conservatives had always been 
running the show?

3    Social and cultural issues

3.1  What are family values and what is so great about them?

3.2  Why can't conservatives just accept that people's personal values 
differ?

3.3  Why do conservatives always want to force their values on everybody 
else?

3.4  What role do conservatives think government should play in 
enforcing moral values?

3.5  What happens to feminists, homosexuals, racial minorities and 
others marginalized in a conservative society?

3.6  Aren't conservatives racist sexist homophobes?

3.7  What about freedom?

4    Economic issues

4.1  Why do conservatives say they favor virtue and community but favor 
laissez-faire capitalism?

4.2  Why don't conservatives care about what happens to the poor, weak, 
discouraged, and outcast?

4.3  Shouldn't the government do something for people for whom the usual 
support networks don't work?

4.4  What about welfare for the middle classes?

4.5  If conserving is a good thing, why isn't ecology a conservative 
issue?

5    Conservatism in an age of established liberalism

5.1  Why are most people seriously involved in studying and dealing with 
social issues liberals?

5.2  Isn't conservatism essentially nostalgia for a past that never was 
and can't be restored?

5.3  Why do conservatives talk as if the sky is about to fall and all 
good things are in the past?

5.4  What's all this stuff about community and tradition when the groups 
that matter these days are based on interests and perspectives rather 
than traditions?

5.5  Shouldn't conservatives favor well-established things like the 
welfare state and steady expansion of the scope of the civil rights 
laws?

5.6  I was raised a liberal.  Doesn't that mean that to be conservative 
I should stay true to liberalism?

6    The conservative rainbow

6.1  How do libertarians differ from conservatives?

6.2  What are mainstream conservatives?

6.3  What are neoconservatives?

6.4  What are paleoconservatives?

6.5  What are paleolibertarians?

6.6  What are Frankfurt School Neopaleoconservatives?

6.7  Where do the pro-life movement and Religious Right fit into all 
this?

6.8  What are the differences between American conservatism and that of 
other countries?

6.9  What do all these things called "conservatism" have in common?


                                ANSWERS


1    General Principles

1.1  How does conservatism differ from other political views common 
today?

     By its emphasis on tradition as a source of wisdom that goes beyond 
     what can be made explicit and demonstrated.

1.2  Why is tradition a source of "greater wisdom"?

     Because of how it has evolved, it gives us a comprehensive and 
     generally coherent point of view that reflects the experience and 
     thought of other times and a collection of habits that have proved 
     useful in practical affairs.

     The usual alternative to reliance on tradition is reliance on 
     theory.  Taking theory literally can be costly because theory 
     achieves clarity by ignoring things that are difficult to 
     articulate.  Such things can be important; the reason practical 
     things like politics and morals are learned mostly by experience 
     and imitation is that most of what we need to learn 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.

1.3  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 they 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.

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

     Tradition is a human thing and may reflect the depths as well as 
     the heights of human nature.  The same, of course, is true of 
     theories that reject tradition; in this century theories supported 
     by intelligent and learned men professing ideals they considered 
     noble have more than once led to the murder of millions or tens of 
     millions of innocents.  To the extent men desire knowledge and what 
     is good, tradition will secure and refine their acquistions; to the 
     extent they desire neither of those things the rejection of 
     tradition will free them to pursue evil and ignorance.  The issue 
     is not whether tradition is perfect but its appropriate role in 
     human life and whether in modern times our need for it has 
     characteristically been underestimated.

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

     No one can be certain.  Our own tradition may lead us astray where 
     another would not.  However, that possibility can not be a reason 
     for rejecting our own tradition unless we have a method 
     transcending tradition for determining when that has happened, and 
     in most situations there is no such method.

     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 or 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.

1.6  But what about truth?

     Comprehensive objective truth may exist, and most conservatives are 
     confident it does, but we cannot have it in the form of a set of 
     propositions with the same meaning and equally demonstrable to all.  
     We apprehend truth largely through tradition and in a way that 
     cannot be fully articulated, and cannot do otherwise.

2    Tradition and Change

2.1  Society has always changed, for the better in some ways and for the 
worse in others.  Why not accept change, especially if everything is so 
complicated and hard to figure out?

     Change has always involved resistance as well as acceptance.  
     Changes that have to make their way over opposition will presumably 
     be better than changes that are accepted without serious 
     questioning.

     In addition, modern conservatism is not rejection of change as 
     such, but of intentional change of a peculiarly sweeping sort 
     characteristic of the period beginning with the French Revolution 
     and guided by Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment philosophies 
     such as liberalism and Marxism.  For example, the family as an 
     institution has changed over time in conjunction with other social 
     changes.  However, the current left/liberal demand that all 
     definite institutional structure for the family be abolished as an 
     infringement of individual autonomy (typically phrased as a demand 
     for the elimination of sex roles and the protection of children's 
     rights) is different in kind from past developments, and 
     conservatives believe it must be fought.

2.2  Isn't conservatism simply another way of saying that people who 
currently have wealth and power should keep it?

     The adoption of any political view will promote the particular 
     advantage of some people.  If political views are to be treated as 
     rationalizations of the interests of existing or would-be elites, 
     then that treatment should apply equally to conservatism and all 
     other views.  On the other hand, if arguments that political views 
     advance the public good are to be taken seriously, then the 
     arguments for conservatism should be considered on their own terms.

     It's worth noting that movements aiming at social justice typically 
     become intensely elitist because the more comprehensive and 
     abstract the political principle, the smaller the group that can be 
     relied on to understand and apply it correctly.

2.3  Wouldn't we still have slavery if conservatives had always been 
running the show?

     Conservatism as such doesn't guarantee there will be no gross 
     oppression, but neither do attempts at autonomous rational thought.  
     Slavery disappeared in Western and Central Europe long before the 
     modern revolutionary age, and it has been under radical and not 
     conservative regimes that brutal forced labor and other gross forms 
     of oppression have made a comeback.  By overemphasizing the role of 
     theory in politics, radicalism destroys reciprocity between the 
     ruling theoreticians and those they govern.  It is therefore far 
     more compatible than conservatism with tyrannical institutions.

     Conservatism recognizes that moral habits evolve with experience 
     and changing circumstances, and social arrangements that grow to be 
     too much at odds with the moral life of a people change or 
     disappear.  It would be useless as a guide to action if it were a 
     rejection of all change; it could not even oppose liberalism, 
     because under present circumstances to oppose liberalism is to 
     propose a change in the political culture.  Conservative views 
     arise from recognition of the difficulty of forcing society into a 
     preconceived pattern, and of the importance of things for which 
     ideologies of the Left have trouble finding a place.  Many such 
     things, for example mutual personal obligation, are denied by 
     slavery as well.

3    Social and Cultural Issues

3.1  What are family values and what is so great about them?

     They are values that promote and maintain a society in which 
     people's most basic loyalties, and the relationships upon which 
     they rely most fundamentally, are relationships to particular 
     people rather than to the state.  Family values are fundamental to 
     moral life because it is primarily in relationships with particular 
     people that are taken with the utmost seriousness that we find the 
     degree of mutual knowledge and responsiveness that is necessary for 
     our obligations to others to become realities for us.  Family 
     values are rejected to the extent the necessity of practical 
     reliance on particular people is viewed as something oppressive and 
     unequal that the state should remedy.  Conservatives oppose that 
     rejection.

3.2  Why can't conservatives just accept that people's personal values 
differ?

     Both liberals and conservatives recognize limits on the degree to 
     which differing personal values can be accommodated.  Such limits 
     often arise because personal values can be realized only by 
     establishing particular sorts of relations with other people, and 
     no society can favor all relationships equally.  No society, for 
     example, can favor equally a woman who primarily wants to have a 
     career and one who primarily wants to be a mother and homemaker; if 
     public attitudes presume that it is the man who is primarily 
     responsible for family support they favor the latter at the expense 
     of the former, while if they do not make that presumption they do 
     the reverse.

3.3  Why do conservatives always want to force their values on everybody 
else?

     Conservatives aren't different from other people in that regard.  
     Anyone with a notion of how society should work will believe that 
     other people should follow the program he favors.  For example, if 
     Liberal Jack thinks the government should be responsible for the 
     well-being of children and wants to support the arrangement through 
     a tax system that sends people to jail who don't comply, and 
     Conservative Jill thinks the family should be responsible and wants 
     to implement that responsibility through a system of sex roles 
     enforced by informal social sanctions for violators, each will want 
     what the public schools teach to be consistent with his program.  
     Both will object to a school textbook entitled _Heather Has Two 
     Mommies Who Get Away with Paying No Taxes Because They Accept 
     Payment Only in Cash_.  Liberal Jack will object to the book 
     _Heather's Mommy Stays Home and Her Daddy Goes to the Office_, 
     while Conservative Jill will object to other well-known texts.  
     There is no obvious reason to consider one more tolerant than the 
     other.

     The issue of social tolerance comes up most often in connection 
     with sexual morality.  For a discussion from a conservative 
     perspective, see the Sexual Morality FAQ, available at 
     http://www.panix.com/~jk/sex.html (hypertext version) or 
     http://www.panix.com/~jk/sex.faq (plain ASCII version).

3.4  What role do conservatives think government should play in 
enforcing moral values?

     Since conservatives believe moral values should be determined more 
     by the feelings and traditions of the people than by theory and 
     formal decisions, they typically prefer to rely on informal social 
     sanctions rather than enforcement by government.  Nonetheless, they 
     believe that government should be run on the assumption that the 
     moral values on which society relies are good things that should 
     not be undercut.  Thus, conservatives oppose public school 
     curricula that depict such values as optional and programs that 
     fund their rejection, for example by subsidizing unwed parents or 
     artists who intend their works to outrage accepted morality.  How 
     much more the government can or should do to promote morality is a 
     matter of circumstance to be determined in accordance with 
     experience.  In this connection, as in others, conservatives 
     typically do not have high expectations for what government can 
     achieve.

3.5  What happens to feminists, homosexuals, racial minorities and 
others marginalized in a conservative society?

     The same as happens in a society based on the liberal conception of 
     inclusiveness to religious and social conservatives and to ethnics 
     who consider their ethnicity important.  They find themselves in a 
     social order they may not like dominated by people who may look 
     down on them in which it may be difficult to live as they prefer.

     In both kinds of society, people on the outs may be able to 
     persuade others to their way of thinking, to practice the way of 
     life they prefer in private, or to break off from the larger 
     society and establish their own communities.  Such possibilities 
     are in general more realistic in a conservative society that 
     emphasizes federalism, local control, and minimal bureaucracy than 
     in a liberal society that idealizes social justice and therefore 
     tries to establish a unitary and homogenous social order.  For 
     example, ethnic minorities in a conservative society may well be 
     able to thrive or at least maintain themselves through some 
     combination of adaptation and niche-finding, while in a liberal 
     society they will find themselves on the receiving end of public 
     policies designed to eliminate the public importance of their (and 
     every other) ethnic culture.

     An important question is whether alienation from the social order 
     will be more common in a conservative or a liberal society.  It 
     seems that it will be more common in a social order based on 
     universal implementation of a bureaucracy's conception of social 
     justice than in one that accepts the moral feelings and loyalties 
     that arise over time within particular communities.  So it seems 
     likely that a liberal society will have more citizens than a 
     conservative society who feel that their deepest values and 
     loyalties are peripheral to the concerns of the institutions that 
     dominate their lives and so feel marginalized.

3.6  Aren't conservatives racist sexist homophobes?

     That depends on what those words mean; they are often used very 
     broadly.

     "Racist"--Conservatives consider community loyalty important.  The 
     communities people grow up in are generally connected to ethnicity.  
     That's no accident, because ethnicity is what develops when people 
     live together with a common way of life for a long time.  
     Accordingly, conservatives think some degree of ethnic loyalty and 
     separateness is OK.  Ethnicity is not the same thing as "race" as a 
     biological category; on the other hand, the two are difficult to 
     disentangle because both arise out of shared history and common 
     descent.

     "Sexist"--All known societies have engaged in sex-role 
     stereotyping, with men undertaking more responsibility for public 
     affairs and women for home, family, and childcare.  There are 
     obvious benefits to such stereotypes, since they make it far more 
     likely that individual men and women will complement each other and 
     form stable and functional unions for the rearing of children.  
     Also, some degree of differentiation seems to fit the presocial 
     tendencies of men and women better than unisex would.  
     Conservatives see no reason to struggle against those benefits, 
     especially in view of the evident bad consequences of the weakening 
     of stereotypical obligations between the sexes in recent decades.

     "Homophobes"--Finally, sex-role stereotyping implies a tendency to 
     reject patterns of impulse, attitude and conduct that don't fit the 
     stereotypes, such as homosexuality.

     For a more extended discussion from a conservative perspective of 
     issues relating to the liberal demand for "inclusiveness", see the 
     Freedom of Association FAQ at http://www.panix.com/~jk/inclus.faq.

3.7  What about freedom?

     Conservatives are strong supporters of social institutions that 
     realize and protect freedom, but believe such institutions attain 
     their full value as part of a larger whole.  Freedom is fully 
     realized only when we are held responsible for the choices we make, 
     and it is most valuable in a setting in which goods can readily be 
     chosen that add up to a good life.  Accordingly, conservatives 
     reject perspectives that view freedom as an absolute, and recognize 
     that the institutions through which freedom is realized must 
     respect other goods without which freedom would not be worth 
     having.

     In addition, conservatives believe there is a close connection 
     between freedom and participation in government.  Since how we live 
     affects others, an important aspect of freedom is taking part in 
     making society what it is.  Accordingly, the conservative 
     principles of federalism, limited government, local rule, and 
     private property help realize freedom by devolving power into many 
     hands and making widespread participation in running society a 
     reality.

4    Economic Issues

4.1  Why do conservatives say they favor virtue and community but in 
fact favor laissez-faire capitalism?  Doesn't laissez-faire capitalism 
promote the opposite?

     Conservatives typically are not fans of pure laissez-faire, 
     although they view economic liberty as one of the traditional 
     liberties of the American people that has served that people well.  
     Many are skeptical of free trade and most favor restraints on 
     immigration for the sake of permitting the existence and 
     development of a national community.  Nor do they oppose in 
     principle the regulation or suppression of businesses that affect 
     the moral order of society, such as prostitution, pornography, and 
     the sale of certain drugs.

     Conservatives strongly favor free markets when the alternative is 
     to expand bureaucracy to implement liberal goals, a process that 
     clearly has the effect of damaging virtue and community.  Also, 
     they tend to prefer self-organization to central control because 
     they believe that in general social life can't be administered.  
     They recognize that like tradition the market reflects men's 
     infinitely various and often unconscious and inarticulate 
     perceptions and goals far better than any bureaucratic process 
     could.

     In any event, it's not clear that laissez-faire capitalism need 
     undermine moral community.  "Laissez-faire capitalism" has to do 
     with limitations on what the government does and only indirectly 
     with the nature of society as a whole.  While social statistics are 
     a crude measure of the state of morality and community, it is 
     noteworthy that crime and illegitimacy rates in England fell by 
     about half from the middle to the end of the 19th century, the 
     heyday of untrammelled capitalism, and that the rejection of 
     laissez-faire has in fact been accompanied by increasing social 
     atomization.

4.2  Why don't conservatives care about what happens to the poor, weak, 
discouraged, and outcast?

     Conservatives do care about what happens to such people.  That's 
     why they oppose government programs that they believe multiply the 
     poor, weak, discouraged, and outcast by undermining and disrupting 
     the network of habits and social relations that enable people to 
     carry on their lives without the aid of government bureaucracy.

     Moral community declines when people rely on government to solve 
     their problems rather than on themselves and those they live with.  
     It is the weak who suffer most from the resulting moral chaos.  
     Those tempted to attribute opposition to the welfare state to 
     narrow self-seeking should consider the increase in charitable 
     giving during the Decade of Greed and its subsequent decline, and 
     those who think that interventionist liberalism means that the weak 
     face fewer problems should consider the effects on women, children, 
     and blacks of trends of the past 30 years (a period of large 
     increases in social welfare expenditures) such as family 
     instability, increased crime, reduced educational achievement, and 
     the reversal in the older trend toward less poverty.

4.3  What about people for whom the usual support networks don't work?  
Shouldn't the government do something for them?

     Maybe.  An important issue is the practical effect of government 
     programs on people's responsibility for themselves and for each 
     other.  It appears that in the long run a system whereby the 
     government guarantees that no one lacks the material basis for a 
     decent life can not be made to work without an elaborate system of 
     compulsion, and increases degradation and suffering by weakening 
     self-reliance and the moral bonds among individuals that give rise 
     to community.  On the other hand, some government social welfare 
     measures (free clinics for mothers and children or measures that 
     aid only clearly deserving people) may well increase social welfare 
     even in the long term.

     Because of the obscurity of the issue, the difficulty in a 
     democracy of limiting the expansion of government benefit programs, 
     and the value of widespread participation in public life, the best 
     resolution may be to keep government out of the matter and let 
     people support voluntarily the institutions and programs they think 
     are socially beneficial.

4.4  What about welfare for the middle classes, like social security, 
medicare, the home mortgage interest deduction, and so on?

     The most consistent conservatives want to get rid of all of them.  
     Social security and medicare, they say, are financially unsound, 
     and are socially harmful because they lead people capable of saving 
     for their own retirement and supporting their own parents to rely 
     on the government instead.  They could better be replaced by 
     private savings, prefunded medical insurance, greater emphasis on 
     intergenerational obligations within families, and other 
     arrangements that would evolve if the government presence were 
     reduced or eliminated.

     Other conservatives distinguish these middle-class benefits from 
     welfare by the element of reciprocity; people get social security 
     and medicare only if they have already given a great deal to 
     society, and in the case of the mortgage interest deduction the 
     "benefit" consists only in the right to keep more of one's 
     earnings.  Still others try to split the difference somehow.  As a 
     practical matter, the reluctance of many conservatives to disturb 
     these arrangements is likely motivated in part by the electoral 
     power of their supporters.

4.5  If conserving is a good thing, why isn't ecology a conservative 
cause?

     Conservatism is concerned more with relations among men than those 
     between man and nature, so ecology is not one of its defining 
     issues.  Some conservatives and conservative schools of thought 
     take environmental issues very seriously; others less so.  There 
     are, of course, conservative grounds for criticizing or rejecting 
     as well as for supporting particular aspects of the environmental 
     movement.

5    Conservatism in an Age of Established Liberalism

5.1  If conservatism is so great, why are most people seriously involved 
in studying and dealing with social issues liberals?

     Conservatives believe it is impossible to define the considerations 
     relevant to social life clearly enough to make a technological 
     approach to society possible.  Accordingly, they reject efforts to 
     divide human affairs into separate compartments to be mastered and 
     dealt with as part of an overall plan for promoting comprehensive 
     social goals such as equality and prosperity.  Academic and other 
     policy experts are defined as such by their participation in such 
     efforts.  It would be surprising if they did not prefer 
     perspectives that give free rein to efforts to design and implement 
     social policy, such as welfare-state liberalism, over perspectives 
     that are suspicious of such undertakings.

5.2  Isn't conservatism essentially nostalgia for a past that never was 
and can't be restored?

     The accusation is that the goals of conservatism are neither 
     serious nor achievable.  That accusation fails if in the end 
     conservatives are likely to get in substance what they want.

     Conservatism involves a recognition that certain trends are 
     pernicious because they destroy the possibility of moral community.  
     Examples include the current trends toward hedonism and toward 
     radical individualism and egalitarianism.  Since moral community is 
     required for the coherence of individual and social life, and since 
     a reasonably coherent way of life is a practical necessity, 
     conservatives are confident that in some fashion those trends will 
     be reversed and in important respects the moral and social future 
     will resemble the past more than the present.  In particular, the 
     future will see less emphasis on individual autonomy and more on 
     moral tradition and essentialist ties among men.

     The timing and form of the necessary reversal is of course 
     uncertain.  It plainly can't be achieved through administrative 
     techniques, the method most readily accepted as serious and 
     realistic today, so conservatives' main political proposal is that 
     aspects of the modern state that oppose the reversal be trimmed or 
     abandoned.  Those who consider modern trends beneficial and 
     irreversible therefore accuse conservatives of simple 
     obstructionism.  In contrast, those who believe current trends lead 
     to catastrophe and that a reversal must take place expect that if 
     the conservatives aren't successful now their goals will be 
     achieved in the future, but very likely with more conflict and 
     destruction along the way.

5.3  Why do conservatives talk as if the sky is about to fall and all 
good things are in the past?  People have been bemoaning the present for 
a long time but things don't seem so bad today.

     Conservatives don't predict more disasters than liberals, just 
     different disasters.  Like other people they see both hopeful and 
     hazardous trends in the current situation.  Post-communist 
     societies display the social consequences of energetic attempts to 
     implement post-Enlightenment radicalism.  Less energetic attempts, 
     such as modern American liberalism, do not lead to similar effects 
     as quickly.  Nonetheless, social trends toward breakdown of 
     affiliations among individuals, centralization of political power 
     in irresponsible elites, irreconcilable social conflicts, and 
     increasing stupidity and brutality in daily life suggest that those 
     consequences are coming just the same.  Why not worry about them?

5.4  What's all this stuff about community and tradition?  The groups 
that matter these days are groups like yuppies, gays, and senior 
citizens that people join as individuals and are based on interests and 
perspectives rather than tradition.

     Can this be true in the long run?  When times are good people 
     imagine that they can define themselves as they choose, but a 
     society will not long exist if the only thing men have in common is 
     a commitment to self-definition.  The necessity for something 
     beyond that becomes clearest when the times require sacrifice.  
     Membership in a group with an identity developed and inculcated 
     through tradition becomes far more relevant then than career path, 
     life-style option, or stage of life.  One of Bill Clinton's 
     problems as president is that people think he's a yuppie who 
     wouldn't die for anything; at some point that kind of problem 
     becomes decisive.

5.5  Many things liberals favor, such as the welfare state and steady 
expansion of the scope of the civil rights laws, are well-established 
parts of our political arrangements.  Shouldn't conservatives favor 
things that are so well-established?

     Yes, to the extent they are consistent with the older and more 
     fundamental parts of our social arrangements, such as family, 
     community, and traditional moral standards, and contribute to the 
     over-all functioning of the whole.  Unfortunately, the things 
     mentioned fail on both points.  Existing welfare and civil rights 
     measures make sense only as part of a centrally managed system that 
     is adverse to the connections among people that make community 
     possible and is designed to be applied to society as a whole by a 
     bureaucracy rather than incorporated into people's informal day-to- 
     day way of life.  It is very difficult for conservatives to accept 
     anything like such a system.

5.6  I was raised a liberal.  Doesn't that mean that to be conservative 
I should stay true to liberalism?

     How can you feel bound to a viewpoint that does not value loyalty 
     amd therefore can survive only if it is not universally accepted?  
     For someone raised in it the conservative approach would be to look 
     for guidance to the things on which the people with whom he grew up 
     actually relied for coherence and stability, including the 
     traditions of the larger community upon which their way of life 
     depended.

6    The Conservative Rainbow

6.1  How do libertarians differ from conservatives?

     In general, libertarians emphasize limited government more than 
     conservatives and believe the sole legitimate purpose of government 
     is the protection of property rights against force and fraud.  
     Thus, they usually consider legal restrictions on such things as 
     immigration, drug use, and prostitution to be illegitimate 
     violations of personal liberty.  Many but not all libertarians hold 
     a position that might be described as economically Right (anti- 
     socialist) and culturally Left (opposed to cultural repressiveness, 
     racism, sexism, homophobia, and so on), and tend to attribute to 
     state intervention the survival of things the cultural Left 
     dislikes.

     Speaking more abstractly, the libertarian perspective assigns to 
     the market the position conservatives assign to tradition as the 
     great accumulator and integrator of the implicit knowledge of 
     society.  Some writers, such as F.A. Hayek, attempt to bridge to 
     two perspectives.  In addition, libertarians tend to believe in 
     strict methodological individualism and absolute and universally 
     valid human rights while conservatives are less likely to have the 
     former commitment and tend to understand rights by reference to the 
     forms they take in particular societies.

6.2  What are mainstream conservatives?

     People who mix the traditionalist conservatism outlined in this FAQ 
     with varying proportions of libertarianism and liberalism.  Any 
     conservative who gets elected or otherwise hits the mass market 
     (e.g., Rush Limbaugh) is likely to be a mainstream conservative.

     Mainstream conservatives often speak the language of liberalism, 
     especially classical liberalism.  Their appeal is nonetheless to 
     tradition; typically, they reject political practices that have 
     become accepted in the recent past by appealing to those 
     characteristic of the more remote past or to social practices 
     traditionally viewed as outside politics that liberals have called 
     into question and made into political issues.

6.3  What are neoconservatives?

     A group of conservatives most of whom were liberals until left-wing 
     radicalism went mass-market in the late sixties.  Many of them have 
     been associated with the magazines _Commentary_ and _The Public 
     Interest_, and a neopapalist contingent is associated with the 
     magazine _First Things_.  Some still have positions consistent with 
     New Deal liberalism, while others have moved on to a more full- 
     blown conservatism.  Their influence has been out of proportion to 
     their numbers, in part because they include a number of well-known 
     Northeastern and West Coast journalists and academics and in part 
     because having once been liberals they still can speak the language 
     and retain a certain credibility in establishment circles.

6.4  What are paleoconservatives?

     Another group of conservatives most of whom were never liberals and 
     live someplace other than the Northeast megalopolis or California.  
     The most prominent paleo publications are _Chronicles_ and _Modern 
     Age_.  They arose as a self-conscious group in opposition to 
     neoconservatives after the success of the neos in establishing 
     themselves within the Reagan administration, and especially after 
     the neos helped defeat the nomination of paleo Mel Bradford as head 
     of the National Endowment for the Humanities in favor of one of 
     their own, Bill Bennett.  The views set forth in this FAQ are 
     consistent with those of most paleoconservatives as well as many 
     neoconservatives.

6.5  What are paleolibertarians?

     A group of libertarians, notably Llewellyn Rockwell and the late 
     Murray Rothbard, who reject mainstream libertarianism as culturally 
     libertine and often squishy-soft on big government and who ally 
     themselves with the paleoconservatives.  Their main publication is 
     the _Rothbard-Rockwell Report_.

6.6  What are Frankfurt School Neopaleoconservatives?

     A group (so named for the first time in this FAQ) that has come by 
     way of Frankfurt School cultural criticism to a position 
     reminiscent of paleoconservatism emphasizing federalism and 
     rejection of the managerial state.  Their main publication is 
     _Telos_, which now includes paleocon Paul Gottfried on its 
     editorial board.

6.7  Where do the pro-life movement and Religious Right fit into all 
this?

     Like conservatism, both movements reject hedonism and radical 
     individual autonomy and emphasize the authority of institutions 
     other than the modern managerial state.  Their general goals can 
     usually be supported on conservative principles, but they tend to 
     base their claims on principles of natural law or revelation that 
     take precedence over tradition.  Thus, these movements are not 
     purely conservative although they have strong conservative 
     elements.  (It is doubtful that any person or movement could be 
     purely conservative, since the point of conservatism is always some 
     good other than the conservation of tradition as such.)

6.8  What are the differences between American conservatism and that of 
other countries?

     They correspond to the differences in political tradition.  In 
     general, conservatism in America has a much stronger 
     capitalist/libertarian and populist streak than in other 
     countries.  The differences seem to be declining as other countries 
     become more like America and as many American conservatives become 
     more alienated from their own country's actual way of life and 
     system of government.

6.9  What do all these things called "conservatism" have in common?

     Each rejects, through an appeal to something traditionally valued, 
     the liberal tendency to treat individual impulse and desire as the 
     final authorities.  Differences in the preferred point of reference 
     give rise to different forms of conservatism.  Those who appeal to 
     the independent and responsible individual become libertarian 
     conservatives, while those who appeal to a traditional culture or 
     to God become traditionalist or religious conservatives.  Depending 
     on circumstances, the alliance among different forms of 
     conservatism may be closer or more tenuous.  In America today 
     libertarian, traditionalist and religious conservatives generally 
     find common ground in favoring federalism and constitutional 
     limited government and opposing the managerial welfare state.
-- 
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week:   A new order began, a more Roman age bred Rowena.
