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Change (Probably) Isn’t Good
I think a lot about the nature of conservatism and what is variously called leftism, progressivism, or liberalism, but which I like to call radicalism. I think of the political spectrum as having, as its most important axis, a continuum that runs from conservatism to radicalism — from, on the conservative side, an affinity for tradition and reluctance to accept change, to, on the radical side, a casual disregard for tradition and a comfort with change.
I don’t believe that either side has a lock on intelligence, morality, or virtue. I think people of both conservative and radical dispositions are necessary. I think most of us lean one way or the other innately, rather than as a result of education or circumstance — and that most of us lean toward the conservative side, for fairly obvious reasons of evolutionary selection and survival.
While I don’t think either side is necessarily more intelligent or thoughtful than the other, I do think that conservatives tend to be correct more often than radicals. This isn’t an indictment of radicals, but merely an observation that it is easier to preserve what exists than to create something new that is as good as what already exists. And what exists, whatever its faults, has withstood the test of time and demonstrated itself to be, in a cultural sense, fit: like a species that has adapted to its environment, a culture is an evolved thing that has proven itself functional and durable.
Just as it’s easier to successfully prepare an elaborate meal from existing, tested recipes than from inspiration and imagination, so too is it easier for a population to live comfortably by its tested rules and customs than by making radical and experimental departures from them.
This is true to the extent that the culture is a good one — that is, that it provides a decent and rewarding life for its members. Cultures that are grossly dysfunctional, that are cruel and barbaric, that fail to serve most of the population reasonably well, may be functional and durable, but it’s easier to imagine that radical departures will tend to be for the good, given that so much of the culture is already bad.
In other words, the better the culture, the more likely it is that the conservative perspective will be the one more conducive to a general prospering, and the worse the culture, the less worthy of preservation its principles, and the more welcome the risk of radical transformation.
Ours is a good culture. This is an objective statement: by any historical comparison, and by any even remotely fair and reasonable analysis, our culture has promoted the security, comfort, and prosperity of the vast majority of the people who live within it, and done so to a degree never before and nowhere experienced.
Good isn’t perfect. There are aspects of our culture that could undoubtedly be improved. But the burden of proof should be on those who propose radical change because the status quo is good. What is, is good. Those who propose to change it should make their case, and make it plainly, and openly, in detail, and with some humility. It isn’t enough to have a catchy phrase or to be swept up in hope and enthusiasm. It isn’t enough to have a winsome or charismatic champion. Radical ideas need strong arguments and robust debate.
We should insist on the open and healthy discussion, debate, and criticism of radical ideas, and oppose efforts to suppress such discussion under the guise of political correctness, tolerance, or sensitivity.
Published in Culture
Swell post. I disagree with two ideas. First, the natural state of humans is tribes killing tribes and not ordered liberty. Second, both sides are not equally smart. It is clearly smarter to use historical wisdom (validated recipes). I prefer the terms “Left” and “Right” and use the scale of Ordered Liberty going to full Marxism. This is different that “left” and “right” as used in Europe, which causes some confusion.
Don, thank you.
I disagree about the smart/not-smart thing, though I have no evidence to back it up. I think conservatives tend to be conservatives for emotional reasons — and that radicals tend to be radicals for emotional reasons as well. I think it has more to do with comfort, with our sense of risk, than with thoughtfulness or intelligence.
The test, I suppose, would be to look at well-designed, standardized test results for conservatives and radicals. I haven’t, but I’d be surprised if they showed a large or consistent discrepancy. (If anything, I would guess that smarter people are more likely to tip toward radicalism, since I would guess that their intellectual confidence is more likely to lead them to think — often erroneously — that they can anticipate and mitigate the risk of whatever new idea they’re entertaining.)
Regarding the “natural state” of humans, I don’t think I made any claims with which you might disagree. There is nothing inherently non-conservative about slaughtering other tribes — nor about Marxism, for that matter. That is, if the status quo has been Marxist for a long time, and that’s what everyone is used to, then I’d expect a good conservative (in the sense I use the word) to be reluctant to change from it to something else.
When speaking of human nature, “conservative” does not mean “freedom loving.” It means “resistant to change.”
Burkean Conservatism sees change as inevitable and beneficial hence the axiom “to conserve is to reform and to reform is to conserve.” But yes radicalism and revolution are always bad. Change itself is not anti conservative. Conservativism is neither traditionalist or reactionary. It is the virtuous management of an ever changing world based on principles which are eternal.
What we now call conservative in the US was a British accident which we embraced but not as conservative but as ordered liberty. The British Isles were too penetrated by rivers and complex coasts and grew up dispersed in spite of efforts to centralize controls. We took this as guidance but with time the centralizing nature of human organization is eroding what we did. All of the robust Anglo Saxon countries followed, embracing ground up growth, not top down which exists in all other developed societies. We call it conservative but it was ordered liberty. We have to adhere to what we explicitly did because the centralizing powers, which dominate, will push us toward centralization and these will be increasingly dominated by the most powerful pieces who will cooperate with each other, not compete. Centralization erodes and ultimately kills. Decentralization works not because it is inherently superior, but because some pieces prove more successful than other pieces, and others will ultimately either try to crush by shear numerical power or will adapt and freedom and decentralization will survive. Centralization ultimately always will fail even though it can take quite a while to do so, at the same time the magic, which may have been an accident, was to combine a centralizing authority to provide security with the decentralization of everything else.
Great stuff.
Dispositional conservatives prefer the actual to the hypothetical, whereas dispositional radicals prefer the hypothetical to the actual. (Dispositional radicals also have a habit of dismissing the actual as an arbitrary social construction (thus subsuming it into the hypothetical), but that’s a subject for another rant.)
I cannot peruse the stats at sites like humanprogress.com or the videos from folk like Johan Norberg and then refuse to at least entertain the thesis that the world has been changing for the better on a net basis.
But really, the problem is that “change” is a classic weasel word. Every single politician/activist can support “change” or oppose “change” depending on which is most politically expedient on a given day.
Say you agree that the world is changing for the better, but you’d like it to change for the better at a faster rate ? That’s “change”.
Say you agree that the world is changing for the better on a net basis, but you’d like it to change even more for better in a specific targeted area? That’s “change”.
Say you agree that the world is changing for the better but you don’t really care because it’s not changing for the better for enough of your voters. That means you’re in favour of “change” … change that benefits your voters.
Or, to take a different tack now, say you think that the world has changed for the worse. That doesn’t mean you’re against “change”. It simply means you want to change the way that the world is changing.
Or, say you think that the world used to be changing for the better but now it’s changing for the worse. That simply means you want to change the way the world is changing so that it’ll change back to the way it used to change.
In this way, “progressive” and “conservative” aren’t antonyms. There’s no reason a person cannot support conserving the current direction and rate of progress.
After all, what if you agree that the world is changing for the better, and you think it should be allowed to continue to change for the better, and you think that changing the policies that have contributed to that change for the better will slow down the change for the better or even reverse the change for the better until it starts to become change for the worse? Do you then support change or do you oppose change? Can you even tell anymore?
“In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”
This paradox rests on the most elementary common sense. The gate or fence did not grow there. It was not set up by somnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose in the street. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable. It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some whole aspect of the question, if something set up by human beings like ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious. There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming that all their fathers were fools; but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease. But the truth is that nobody has any business to destroy a social institution until he has really seen it as an historical institution. If he knows how it arose, and what purposes it was supposed to serve, he may really be able to say that they were bad purposes, that they have since become bad purposes, or that they are purposes which are no longer served. But if he simply stares at the thing as a senseless monstrosity that has somehow sprung up in his path, it is he and not the traditionalist who is suffering from an illusion.”
–G.K. Chesterton
Decentralization is the only viable way to govern an empire over the long term. Make no mistake, any country with the square mileage (fourth largest on the planet) and population (third largest on the planet) of the United States is an empire, even without military bases and naval forces overseas. It is, quite simply, impossible to govern a territory that large and that diverse from a single central location.
The tricky thing is that decentralization means different things to different people. e.g. Much like the United States, Canada is a federal system with a division of powers between the provinces and the national capital. However, which powers go to which level of government are set out differently. Unlike in the US, there’s only one criminal code for the entire country (as opposed to the 51 criminal codes of the USA), and only the national parliament can pass criminal legislation. At the same time, Canada’s constitution gives the provinces sole responsibility for education and welfare, and almost sole responsibility for health care. There is no federal department of education, and the federal department of health has no authority to dictate how provinces run their health care systems (think of it more like the FDA, the CDC, and the Surgeon-General all rolled into one).
My point? Simply that decentralization is “superior” because it’s an abject necessity for a territory of such size and diversity. The question isn’t whether to decentralize government, but how.
There is another continuum that is valid: rational vs emotional. Conservatives seem to emphasize rationality. Leftist base their opinions on emotion.
All,
It’s hard to talk about big concepts in small ways, but that’s what I’m trying to do.
I am using “conservative” and “radical” in a very narrow sense: conservative as in resisting change; radical as in favoring change. Neither offers a value proposition; both are necessary; neither guarantees that things will get better or worse. They’re simply two directions on the continuum of comfort-with-change.
In that sense, I’ll respectfully disagree with the breadth of Harry’s comment, while accepting its accuracy in the current instance:
I would say that, given where our culture is today, yes, being conservative generally makes more sense. This is true because, as I suggested in my post, where we are is very good by historical standards, and examples of radically different ways of organizing society and government have generally turned out poorly. Given that, common sense suggests that we change things slowly, and with a great deal of reflection and caution. Radicals, people who want to “fundamentally transform” our country, people who call for “socialism” or the nationalization of big chunks of the economy, these people are almost certainly demonstrating an unfamiliarity with the reality of the systems they propose, and an unwarranted enthusiasm for risk.
But in general, no, I don’t think those who are wary of change are particularly more rational than those who encourage it, at least not in an historic context. I think it’s mostly emotional on both sides.
Oh, I do think that the world tends to change for the better, on a net basis. I think this is true for two reasons: first, our material prosperity continues to increase, as a result of accumulated knowledge; secondly, because our ideas of what constitutes good governance and effective social order also improves over time as we learn and observe failure and success.
What you are talking about, Miss Theocracy, is change in the aggregate. More, you’re talking about the accumulation of tested and accepted changes. What we aren’t discussing is the world of bad ideas tested briefly and discarded. Most change, I would argue, is for the worse, not the better — even most considered change, change thought up by smart and well-informed people. Most businesses fail, most theories are wrong, most ideas are duds, most initiatives fail to meet expectations. But the things that are tested and that work get adopted, are promulgated, and become part of our spectacularly successful culture.
Sometimes, when the testing process is prevented from working, bad — even preposterously bad — ideas gain currency and contribute to a net decrease in goodness. Gender Studies is a perfect example.
Change is sometimes necessary. I don’t want to put a label on it or restrict it for reasons of ideological purity.
I neither want to get into the argument that one side or the other is the brightest. It is besides the point, other than to say the Brightest don’t always have the best ideas or ideology.
That said change is absolutely necessary to the way our government is currently operating to preserve our Republic and to better insure that it works for the general welfare for all.
Interests and forces, mostly Progressive, have forced our current government to operate in ways that strongly deviate from both the letter and intention of the original Constitution. Those changes were often done to allow special interests to wantonly manipulate instruments of government to act in ways favorable to those special interests and against the greater good.
Their are blatant examples of these unconstitutional practices and institutions such as the workings of the Administrative State, Public Employee Unions and the idea that the Supreme Court is the final arbiter on all issues between the three branches of the Federal Government among a long list of deviances from the proper Constitutional operation of our government.
Many Progressives are today loudly and forcefully pushing for a complete shredding of our Constitutional rights; the new Progressive Golden Boy Beto O’Rourke being the latest in a long line of Progressive to push for that shredding. They seek dictatorial powers and a division of our union into preferred and un-preferred tribes with distinct levels of rights.
High minded discussions of what is conservative and what is not or whether change is good are besides the point when faced with powerful interests in our nation actively seeking to shred the Constitutional rights of much of our population and do them great harm.
Well, let’s agree that they’re different discussions. ;)
Henry, as an academic exercise , I guess it would be fine where one could discuss whether change is a good thing, in and of itself, or whether “change” as an idea fits into some pre-conceived notion of what is conservative or not, but I guess my point is that given the impending and real strife that is affecting our nation and much of the world, a “high-minded” discussion of whether change in an academic sense is good in some artificial world devoid of strife when real change is absolutely necessary right here right now seems to be counterproductive and a purposeful distraction from some really difficult discussions that we need to have of our real problems.
U, it isn’t an academic exercise. I’m trying to encourage my fellow conservatives to resist discounting our political and cultural opponents as evil, stupid, or motivated by bad intentions. I think we will be more persuasive, and ultimately more successful at growing the right, if we treat our opposition with respect and focus on the ideas they espouse, and not the personalities espousing them — and encourage them to do likewise.
Part of that is getting past stumbling blocks I often hear from people who agree with me on many, if not most, substantive points of policy. I hear, for example, that our friends on the left are stupid, that they’re ignorant, that you can’t engage them, that they are conspiring to tear everything down, that they want us to fail, that they’re irrational.
However reassuring it may be to those of us on the right to tell ourselves those things, approaching the political divide with that attitude is a poor way to build bridges, establish rapport, and persuade the audience.
The specific point of this post is to suggest that, while American conservatives have an advantage in that we support ideas that have been tested and proven successful, our advantage stems not from some intrinsic superiority on our part — nor, in turn, from some intrinsic inferiority or deficit on the left — but rather from the simple good fortune that we live in a wonderful time and place, in a country built by radicals of old who were addressing serious problems with the status quo, and for whom we conservatives should be grateful.
If we want to persuade people, we should start by treating them with respect, and demonstrating that we are trying to understand their positions and their values. That takes some humility. That’s what I’m trying to foster.
“I’m trying to encourage my fellow conservatives to resist discounting our political and cultural opponents as evil, stupid, or motivated by bad intentions”
Henry, the reality is that many of our political and cultural opponents are evil, stupid or motivated by bad intentions.
I don’t believe that’s true to a significant extent. I also think it better serves our interests if we engage them as if they are not, regardless of what we may believe.
Henry, you do great harm misrepresenting the evil acts of evil people. To acquiesce to evil to become evil yourself.
Anyone who has seriously looked at what the IRS did to the Tea Party, how Hillary and Obama responded to Benghazi and how they set up of the treasonous Operation ZeroFootprint, how Hillary sold out the country in Uranium One acquiring $145 million for her plaything the Clinton Foundation, how Obama misused the NSA database where a full 85% of the searches by audit were political hit jobs, how Obama misconstrued the Iran agreement to give away $150 billion to Terrorists, how Mueller criminally set up Flynn and Papadopoulos, how the Mueller/Rosenstein team set up the illegal Special Counsel and how Brennan set up his working group to investigate Trump in the spring of 2016 well before any hint of Russian Collusion – this list of evil acts of the Democrats is almost endless going back many decades – if they are reasonable people, has a very difficult time in not seeing the pure evil of these Democrats and their activities. An unwillingness to fight evil is to give evil free rein.
When you try to equate the misdeeds of the Right and there are surely quite a few, but very few of a seriously horrible and purposeful nature, with the many, many horrible, purposely evil manipulations of the Left that has caused great harm to millions , you legitimize the evil the Left has committed and give them sanction to commit more evil. You have to call out evil where you find it no matter who does it, or you are letting you perpetuators commit more evil.
Since I have had many clients lives ruined by your friendly “charitable and compassionate” leftists in government, your ideas simply disgust me.
Just to be clear, what I’ve said is that ideological differences should be addressed in a respectful and thoughtful way, with a focus on the ideas and not the personalities of the individuals, and without demonizing people with whom we disagree.
I think you’re kind of missing the point.
Is it a happy coincidence Right and Left tracks with Right and Left brainy-ness?
I agree with you that we need each other. We need the left to challenge the right out of stagnation and the right to put boundaries on the left.