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Why Conservatism Lost
It’s no secret that I’m gleeful about the crack-up in Conservatism. I’ve made that clear in audio-meetups and in the live chats. If I may be so bold, I would like to propose a simpler reason for the demise of Conservatism than many of the reasons currently floated by political analysts. It doesn’t involve climate change or demographics, and it is only somewhat related to economic growth. It is not beyond the control of Conservatives themselves. Conservatives caused their own demise for one reason, and that reason comes down to Conservatism’s lack of quantitative explanations for middle class problems.
Before I go deeper into this explanation, let me just add that Progressivism does not have this problem. Indeed, Progressive control of academia has allowed Progressives to analyze many discoveries made in economics, political science, mathematics, statistics, etc. and craft explanations for many of these phenomena through the development of models. Some of these models offer great insight, while others do not. Still, Conservatives have ceded academia to Progressives, and Progressives have been the ones to make the discoveries and apply an understanding of these discoveries to government policy. This is done directly, through government research institutions (such as the Federal Reserve), or indirectly through advice given by think-tanks and academics to Liberal politicians, who then seek to turn this advice into policy.
Now let me get back to Conservatism. Conservatives do not have the mechanism described above. Their contempt for academia has harmed them more than they would like to admit. In place of the above, Conservatives must rely upon comforting heuristics that are derived from nothing more than mere musings.
For example, consider trade. The government has mechanisms to recognize whether or not a country is engaging in harmful trade practices against the United States. The government has the means to act upon what it recognizes. The mechanisms and the means were developed through a mathematically rigorous process of creating a model of trade under certain assumptions, adding and removing assumptions to understand how this affects concepts of trade, and then using these assumptions (or lack of assumptions) to write a proof. This proof, which for the sake of an example we will suppose to be a proof of the optimal response by a government to dumping, then offers insight into what the government should do in a dumping situation. This rigorous explanation for dumping then makes its way to politicians (separate from bureaucrats at the federal trade agencies) who offer a solution to middle class communities that have been affected by dumping.
It is my understanding that the Conservative response to dumping, or any trade phenomenon for that matter, is to simply say something along the lines of “People are engaging in free exchange. If anyone tries to stop it, they are against freedom.” There is no proof that is offered. There is no deep and mathematically rigorous explanation. The framework does not exist to offer a policy prescription. Instead, Conservatives merely point to the musings of Hayek, Smith, Rand, or sometimes even Aristotle.
Now consider the above and apply it to any issues currently affecting the middle class. The Progressive can offer an explanation in quantifiable terms, with a policy based upon measurable outcomes. Conservatives can merely quote “great men and women” whose explanations for a particular phenomenon are no better than yours or mine (and often involve vague terms such as “freedom” and “virtue”). In so doing, they place many middle class issues and anxieties in a mystical twilight, seemingly beyond the realm of Man’s ability to measure. When Conservatives do this, they fail to assuage or confront the anxieties of their base, who ultimately turn to a bastardized version of Progressive explanations and solutions to their problems.
And that’s why you have Donald Trump.
And that’s why Conservatism lost.
Published in General
Yes they do. That is why the academics can only advise. True power rests with the elected representatives, with power granted to them by the people.
Human beings, even really smart, well-educated human beings, ignore blindingly obvious realities all the time. Since we are hard-wired for confirmation bias, any institution or organization tasked with discerning truth (a college, a government agency, a newspaper, a church) will be compromised, perhaps fatally, should it come to be dominated entirely by like-minded people.
Yes. The progressives crafted an explanation for one phenomenon—the difficulties faced by minorities and women in America—that is almost wholly false, extremely unhelpful and yet astonishingly persistent.One result is the visible and embarrassing decline in the intellectual environment at formerly fine academic institutions, and the screaming snowflakes who are causing many people—not just conservatives—to feel contempt.
The question isn’t whether conservatives are invariably correct about trade, bathrooms, racism or any other issue you might want to raise; the question is whether liberals in or out of academia can arrive at the right answers, or even ask the right questions, if they are insulated from the competition and critique (and, increasingly even the physical presence) of conservative peers?
And yes, vice versa too. Political polarization makes us stupid. Hence Trump. And Bernie. And #BLM. And the Snowflakes. And…
If mathematical proof is the only standard, VC, Progressives have failed their own test. Just one example: children without fathers do poorly in every way compared with children who live in a home with two parents, one of them a father. Progressive policies promote fatherlessness. Modernist policies do away with the idea of fatherhood altogether. Where is the success? Or are we discussing careerism here?
I’m not aware of any proof written by anyone proving that children without fathers have some special ability.
I can’t be held responsible for the advice of many sociologists or whatever studies majors, if they did indeed advocate for fatherless families (although I don’t think anyone has). Musings are musings, whether they come from the right or the left. It’s just that the musings on the right dominate the intellect of the right.
Re 64, I am shocked that you are unfamiliar with these facts, but here is a decent summary. http://fatherhood.about.com/od/fathersrights/a/fatherless_children.htm
And who has advocated for fatherless families?
I think Viruscop has posed a legitimate question although I doubt I agree with Viruscop’s viewpoints and analysis. “Free markets” are not lawless markets in conservative philosophy. So the challenge is how to regulate market activity to maintain the primacy of private contracting with party parity. (I know the last two phrases are too alliterative, but I think these words are correct.) And “free markets” are broader that exchange of goods and services but extend to social interactions as well.
I read Viruscop’s criticism of conservatism to be basically a quantum argument, i.e., Progressives have a superior volume of quantitative analysis to support their policies. I cannot judge the quality of the work, but I do know that the thickness of the book is not a proof of its accuracy.
I am in accord with Ball Diamond Ball that conservative views reflect millennia of experience while Progressive views are relatively untested and what evidence there is does not lead to happier, healthier, and sustainable standards of living. Viruscop dismisses this problem as one of implementation and not theory. Why? I suspect because the numbers are beautiful in the Progressive model.
So whether Viruscop is right or wrong, the challenge remains: how do we persuade our fellow citizens at every level — indigent, working poor, shopkeeper, union worker, government worker, intellectual — in terms and analysis that speak to them that a conservative approach to government works best.
Right. This is an example of the problem I stated above: whether liberals in or out of academia can arrive at the right answers, or even ask the right questions, if they are insulated from the competition and critique (and, increasingly even the physical presence) of conservative peers?
What one discovers tends to depend on what one seeks to discover, and ideology (not pure, unbounded intellectual curiosity) inevitably drives the choice of what, exactly, inquiring minds do and do not want to know, especially when these are likely to be applied to government policy.
Confirmation bias is, again, not a handicap only for the progressive seeker; we all have it and, as Megan McArdle pointed out (quoted in the new issue of The Week) :”The internet creates a sense of universality; it’s easy to think your bubble is more representative than it actually is.” The university also creates a sense of universality; if everyone you see, hear, speak to and hang out with shares your ideology it’s easy to believe that it isn’t ideology at all but—literally— common sense.
We have to show up and be with them. (This, by the way, is what brought me to Ricochet —the realization that I had to break out of my liberal bubble…though, I warn you, doing so has definitely changed my mind…!)
So Viruscop—stick around.
So you’re going to back into your bubble?
It’s not going to happen by dropping Atlas Shrugged, some Greek classic, or The Road to Serfdom in front of them and saying that everything is in there.
Retake the schools. The people will support it. Cut all federal funding or schools, welfare etc. That too will be supported. We kid ourselves to think we do dumb stuff because the people are dumb. We do dumb stuff because it serves interests that are more powerful than the rest of us.
The father thing is very old news. Beginning in the 1970s and gaining traction in the 1980s there were a number of sociology and psychology papers that insisted that kids from broken or blended families did just as well as kids from traditional families. Leftists of all sorts promoted this narrative. It was an academic- and media-led celebration of divorce culture.
It became an issue in the 1992 campaign when VP candidate Dan Quayle criticized fictional TV character Murphy Brown for deliberately having a child without a husband.
After that, new research began to show that fathers are important after all.
I am not surprised that Viruscop is unaware of that history, since the infractions were mainly in the days before internet.
In the 1990s there were a few researchers who started untangling the sociological malpractices of their predecessors. Even while they were addressing the faulty work of Progressive researchers into broken families, other Progressive researchers were doing garbage research to prove that kids raised by gay couples did just as well as kids from traditional families.
A decade ago when a couple of researchers did better-quality work to counter that narrative, the reaction of the Left was breathtaking. There were vicious lies, character assassination, intimidation, baseless investigations, ugly editorials, and dirty tricks applied to ruin the careers and lives of those brave researchers. It proved to all that no conservative would be permitted to work in the fields of psychology or sociology as researchers.
And yet, despite this sorry state, conservatives all over America continue to give money to their universities.
Just because “freedom” is vague and unquantifiable does not mean it isn’t a key component of the decision to trade.
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What you, or “experts” value and decide is “optimal” may not be what an individual thinks is optimal. That’s the fundamental flaw behind the “what’s the matter with Kansas” theory, that people are “voting against their own interests”. MAYBE what they perceive as their interests differ with what you perceive as their interests. When there is conflict between individual perception and “experts” perception, freedom means the individuals perception takes precedence.
My contribution:
Cultural Hegemony.
Didn’t read through all the responses so if a fellow genius already posted the explanation, my bad.
Do you have any idea how many conservative research institutions exist? The Heritage Foundation, AEI, ALEC, state think tanks, etc? And seriously, the Federal Reserve produces liberal research? If you define “liberal” as “not the gold standard” than perhaps that is true. But that’s an absurd definition.
Conservatives do enter academia, and they do so in large numbers. What they do not do is enter traditional research colleges, or participate in the traditional peer-reviewed process (for good reason). Rather they enter institutions whose sole purpose is to study public policy, not give cushy job protections to left-wing professors.
I don’t see how progressives are making inroads with the middle class. They seem to have overly simplistic solutions that will do more harm than good. i.e raising the minimum wage and more income redistribution thru higher taxation, medicare for all. You know all the wonderful stuff Bernie Sanders will give us. Most people have a very minimal understanding (myself included) in the economy. What quantifiable terms have progressives been able to explain their complex economic theories in which all us laymen can understand? Isn’t Bernie Sanders the example of the left not being able to explain their non-socialist yet progressive economic agenda?
Keep in mind that what most people thinks of as “science” is nothing of the sort. It’s something of an open secret among scientists (and us poor engineers who rely on them) that the scientific process is broken. It broke first in the “soft” sciences, but recently the quality of “hard” science has declined a lot as well.
Real public policy “science” happens in think tanks, not universities. Think tanks generally dislike making headlines (Brookings is something of an exception here). They tend to avoid the limelight, because let’s face it, one of the reasons science sucks right now is public hyping of published research. That’s why they do such a better job than traditional universities.
In one of the other comments, I mentioned that the citizenry lay out their preferences at every election, and it becomes the job of policymakers to see that these preferences are carried out. When these preferences are carried out to some quantifiable end (like maximizing the income of the greatest amount of citizens given certain constraints), the government acts. This is policy. When the citizenry want something that is unquantifiable or unconstitutional, like more “virtue” or like suppressing a certain minority group, then the government should not act. This is an approximation of the Progressive limiting principle on the power of government.
And those think tanks are garbage, with the exception of the Hoover Institution. The state of Florida has a think tank. I should know, since I was involved with some work that they were doing. It doesn’t compare to anything that is done at many economics departments around the country.
Research being done at the Federal Reserve accepts the framework that many Liberals have crafted in economics. They accept the importance of econometric methods, which many on the right, especially those of the Austrian persuasion, do not accept. The people who work at the Federal Reserve feel that they work at a legitimate government institution, unlike many on the right who feel that the Fed needs to be abolished in favor of gold? Bitcoin?
Additionally, when I sent in my econ paper for peer review it was criticized for not considering some harmful effects of a tax that would be necessary to pay for a subsidy that the paper proposed. This criticism had to be addressed. It isn’t like the reviewer gave me a pat on the back because the paper proposed that more money be handed out by the government. There was legitimate criticism, and I’m sure many on this site would have agreed with that criticism.
I see no evidence that progressives and the policies they push have helped at all and see all sorts of evidence to the contrary. It’s trivial to name a city run by progressive for decades that’s gotten worse in the very areas progressives claim to have solutions for (poverty, income inequality etc).
If you’re going to claim the left has the answers you need to show your work because the left has had free reign over much of the country for decades.
Progressive academia has been solely dedicated to destroying western values and repackaging Marxist ideology in service to the old and debunked idea that ggovernment bureaucrats can run society.
Obama – we we’re told – was an academic who would just do what works and practical and show us that government can work.
He said he’d reform the VA. He failed – if he even tried.
Conservatives tend to think that a bunch of egg heads with “models” are a poor excuse for people being free to try and find solutions in an open market.
In a sense, you are right. Bernie Sanders also has bastardized Progressive views, much like Trump.
Well, Progressives have explained many things in quantifiable terms to the population. They have explained how the economy works to undergraduate and graduate econ students at universities, and they have explained this to other types of students. True, this isn’t aimed at the layman, but any layman can understand when given the proper training; however, to hide this all from the citizen and say that it all comes down to freedom or whatever is a disservice to the citizen.
The left does so well politically because it gives its supporters cash and other payments and imports vast numbers of foreigners who vote overwhelmingly for the left.
The GOP establishment is in full agreement on these policies, in actual practice.
Hence the real question for American politics is just why has the left done so badly? It has literally everything going for it. Yet it still manages to lose- and often.
I don’t think the leftist control of academia- which has turned American education into an expensive disaster, hurtling towards oblivion, with science prostituted in endless stupid efforts to justify quasi-religious leftist dogma- matters that much, when you can simply give people cash to vote for you, plus you can bring foreign leftists to America, and give them cash to vote for you.
Claiming that progs win because science is just silly.
Anyway, if you want to convince the mass of non-leftists that a conservative approach to government works best, I think a good first step would to find a political party that actually believes that.
The GOP as it exists apparently does not, nor will it oppose the left with a tiny fraction of the fervor it deploys against Donald Trump.
That’s a problem, if you want to defeat the left.
Just out of simple curiosity, how is this any different than what a LOT of folks on Ricochet say about “properly explaining” conservative policy?
My preferences are quantifiable, for instance I’d like to see:
You can set measurable goals for each and every one of those preferences.
I sincerely hope you don’t honestly believe that nonsense and that you’re just yanking our chain.
They have “explained how the economy works”? Seriously?
So where’s our 5% growth and full employment?
How could you ask for such things?!
You are a horrible racist/bigot/chauvinist!
…….is what they will say.