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Respecting the Institutions
I went to a high school basketball game this evening to watch my cousin Grace play. As we always do before the first varsity game each night, we stood for the national anthem. I’ve written in years past about the impression this makes on me, the thought of crowds of parents and players in thousands of high school gyms across the country doing exactly the same thing. It’s one of the things that makes me stubbornly optimistic about America, the knowledge that this is a solemn moment for so many, many of whom are largely unconcerned about politics but nonetheless feel pride and reverence toward our flag and the nation it represents.
On the drive home I thought about those who burn flags, or kneel in disrespect to the flag, or otherwise feel and express contempt for our country. I understand criticism, and I respect the right to express criticism. But I think I also understand the desire to tear down, burn down, gut, and destroy whole institutions out of anger and frustration, often in hopes that something better might rise in its place.
Our institutions are under attack. Folks on the left, frustrated that they can’t consistently achieve the electoral victories they seem to think are their due, would abolish the Electoral College. They would dilute the Supreme Court until its partisan bloat reliably delivers the verdicts they deem appropriate. Defund the police, redefine marriage, assert primacy over parents in the raising and educating of children, fundamentally transform transform transform until all the Bad Old ideas, all the outdated Constitutional provisions, all the stodgy old institutions have been subverted, coopted, or simply obliterated. The nuclear family, the idea of objective truth, the concept of merit, and virtually every other cultural convention and traditional value has come into the left’s crosshairs in recent years.
The left is no respecter of institutions.
We should respect our institutions.
Being conservative doesn’t mean opposing every change. It does mean seeking to conserve, seeking to change modestly and cautiously when possible, and working to improve our institutions rather than tearing them down and starting over. Occasionally that’s necessary: some institutions are so deeply wrong-minded, or so corrupted, or so ineffectual as to warrant being razed to the ground. But that shouldn’t be something conservatives pursue lightly, in the heat of the moment, and without careful consideration.
I’ve listened to woefully misinformed attacks on the Republican Party, sweeping and bizarre indictments of law enforcement, scathing rejections of 90% political allies, and imperfect yet overwhelmingly reliable conservative voices. I expect those from radicals; I understand why they might occasionally come from frustrated conservatives. But cautious evolution is almost always better than radicalism, better than nihilism, better than revolution.
We won 38-24. It was a terrific game.
Published in Culture
This may well explain why Catalonia is a province of Spain. Isn’t loyalty a conservative value?
Franco, do you see any irony in arguing against labels after accusing Hank of authoritarianism and epistemological arrogance?
And what in the world is epistemological arrogance? Someone who firmly holds to a conviction? Are you as uncertain of your beliefs as this suggests that you want others to be? If so, such uncertainty is not coming across to me.
I’m not writing this to try to be a jerk, Franco. We’re friends, as is Hank. I think that you’re feeling frustrated at the moment, and taking it out on Hank. I sometimes find myself not making sense, when I’m really frustrated.
I think that we should avoid the temptation to give up on the Republic. Sure, the barbarians are inside the gates at the moment. Let’s not blow up the castle. Let’s recapture it.
I can tell you a bit about what conservatism means to me, in the American context.
I want to conserve our Christian moral heritage.
I want to conserve our representative system of government.
I want to conserve an independent judiciary, but this one presents a challenge due to judicial overreach. There’s not an effective check on judicial overreach. It’s a difficult problem to solve, and I do not have an easy solution.
I want to conserve the traditional family.
I want to conserve private property, with the traditional understanding that it can be taken for public use upon payment of compensation.
I want to conserve the free enterprise system, with the understanding that many regulations are reasonable and necessary.
I want to conserve freedom of speech, with the traditional exceptions.
I want to conserve the right to bear arms.
I want to conserve many of the procedural rights set forth in the Bill of Rights, from the search-and-seizure rules of the 4th Amendment to the privilege against self-incrimination of the 5th and the right to a jury trial and counsel of the 6th.
I want to conserve the ideal of colorblindness with respect to government treatment of racial and ethnic groups.
There’s doubtless more, but that’s a pretty good start.
If loyalty does not go down it should not go up. Or do you believe loyalty is a thing only owed by the weak to the strong?
Perhaps not surprisingly, I see it differently.
President Trump was, in my opinion, a pretty good President. In particular, he did respect the institutions. When the courts shot him down, he yielded. He conducted his administration within the letter of the law, and he respected the spirit of America, as a nation of individuals, of business, and of free expression.
I think President Trump deserves recognition for that. Neither Obama nor Biden behaved as well.
Unfortunately, I think Trump made a serious, perhaps politically fatal, mistake at the end, when he stopped respecting one of our most important civil traditions — the orderly transfer of power following an election.
I know people will argue that the election was stolen, or that he believed the election was stolen, or that he simply wanted a recount. I think there’s at least a hint of truth in all of that. But I also think that our President behaved badly, joining the ranks of Mr. Gore and Mrs. Clinton in undermining the dignity and solemnity of America’s transfer of power.
And to those who will respond with “but the election was stolen, and we’ll keep losing if we don’t act radically in response to that,” I say yes, we have to expose electoral fraud whenever we can. We have to call it out. We have to draw attention to the left’s obsession with undermining the integrity of our elections. But the way President Trump did it was both ineffective and self-defeating. It was also unnecessary. Unfortunately, President Trump is not a particularly conservative man. Perhaps, if he was, he’d have conducted himself in a more self-controlled manner and would remain an unambiguously viable presidential candidate today.
(Usual disclaimer: I voted for him twice and will vote for him again if he gets the nomination. I’ve never thought him a conservative, but often been pleased by his decisions while in office.)
No real disagreements from me, except I don’t get as worked up over his “undermining the integrity of our elections” as a lot of folks. The Democrats do that at every opportunity. Tit-for-tat. Yes, I know about “an eye for an eye makes everyone blind,” but if they don’t get a taste of their own medicine they’ll never stop. They may not stop anyway, but they definitely won’t stop if they get away with it and we do nothing buy try to stay above the fray. Just as I don’t get worked up over the so-called “insurrection” in D.C. I don’t like it, but these are the new rules as established by the Dems — riot when you don’t get your way. Goose, gander.
I’m just not convinced that the sainted Institutions can be saved. It is becoming more apparent that they’re mostly populated by partisan leftists and our elected representatives are either unable or unwilling to do anything to change that.
Perhaps our argument is more about the word conservative or the verb “conserve”. These things barely exist anymore and they certainly aren’t maintained by our ‘institutions’, which have been fully over-run and weaponized by the authoritarian left.
I’m with you in spirit, but most if not all of the above are lost battles. The institutions are failing us. Now they’ve been fully co-opted.
I don’t have a solution, but defending these institutions is defending the marxist dystopia.
Yep. To the extent we want these things, we’ll need to be activists, even “extremists” (as Obama liked to call us), re-establishing what has been largely destroyed, not conservatives defending what exists.
I can’t argue with that, although I honestly can’t blame him either. He’s not a politician, and I am still naive enough to like that aspect. Had he had the temerity to play his hand differently, he would be a politician and would trust him much less. Of course I am always skeptical of everyone.
I don’t understand this statement. To you, what is a conservative man? Is it how he lives his life? What he believes? What books he’s read on conservatism? You recognize his policy accomplishments. One could question our other supposedly conservative Presidents and what policies ultimately followed and said, they lived as conservatives but they governed as liberals.
I think the GOP got their wires crossed, and leftists helped. We get the worst of both worlds. Our nominees are derided and mocked for their personal lives (and God forbid they have some transgression from sainthood in their past) and they cave to every leftist ploy and demand.
Which institutions do you agree should be razed to the ground?
And which conservative principles does the Republican party adhere to? They spend like drunken sailors, have failed to protect the unborn for 40 years, grow government like a cash crop, aid election fraud, condone political persecution, sell themselves to lobbyists, and ignore their constituents. Tell me again what they conserve?
They even sat silent as monuments were removed and the military was wokeified. Well, one Republican stood against that, DJT, but he stood alone as I recall.
Some of us want a country that’s loyal to the citizens, their history, and their culture. Others like Henry want a citizenry that’s loyal to the Republican Party and their power structures which are woefully inferior compared to what the left has and have done nothing to stop the left. Mitch McConnell came out and basically towed the democratic line as usual. This is who our leadership is. Backstabbers and traitors but we are supposed to keep quiet, hand them our money, and sing their praises when they do nothing but prostrate themselves to the left. No thanks.
Power is corrupting. Pretty much all Federal power is abusive but States are giant and non accountable as well, even local government, police, school boards. Once gathered power does that. Power is abused pretty much everywhere around the world. We rooted it in local authority, accountable to people, but mostly it wasn’t government in any form. In the 20th century we moved power to the Federal level because bureaucrats there seemed more professional, but they are largely irrelevant at best and across the board abusive. We’d evolved from a different place, Germans who wanted to be left alone and British who had to learn to do things locally as the place was simply too complex to be governed from the top. Even folks who came from top down places where corruption was the norm seemed to adapt to the American system. In the colonies, when power was abused folks could leave and that worked and both learned from that. Now is there a way out? There is only one persistent reality throughout history, power concentrates and narrows then rots. I don’t know what the US might do, but what can’t work is obvious. Top down professional control is where it ends, not where it gets fixed.
Absolutely brilliant stuff.
Could you write a post on that @iwalton? That’s a fascinating topic. I’d love to hear you flesh that out a bit.
I don’t know. I lost all short term memory a couple of years ago so even short posts have to be done at once. Longer ones are a struggle, or take longer than anyone else has to focus on the topic of the moment as I slowly dig stuff out. So I’ll think about a topic, review what makes sense given my foreign service career in three continents and lots of capitals, try to sum up what makes sense in the context under discussion. I never served in Germany, or Great Britain so am out of my field, but some characteristics stand out. The Germans are confident and rigid, and do well as small groups but we saw what happens when they unify. The Brits sort of evolved ground up because the top couldn’t handle the complexity of that diverse, place of rivers, estuaries and harbors, attempts to tighten control led to just more political or group diversity. Our founders liked the result and purposely adopted that ground up system. I suppose it’s always tending toward chaos so we’re always trying to pull it together. Big mistake.
Do you mean 4 star health admirals?
Half of what you want to conserve, Hank would willingly give up in the spirit of “not too rapid change, but change happens.”
And I think that’s a portion of Franco’s critique.
On the matters revolving around sexual ethics and traditional Christian morality, you are no longer a conservative but a radical. There’s nothing about the current status quo you would want to conserve while Hank sees no issue with leaving them alone for the sake of preserving institutions.