Tuesday, November 30, 2010

The Basic Conservative Idea

David Brooks shows us in two sentences why, even though he regularly supports the Democrats on particular issues, he thinks of himself as a conservative:
The fact that we live our lives amid order and not chaos is the great achievement of civilization. This order should not be taken for granted.
My thoughts on this particular issue would go something like: the great achievement of civilization is to achieve a balance of order and personal freedom. The order we live with is not nearly as precarious as certain conservatives like to imagine; on the contrary, our experience is that social order can survive all sorts of terrible shocks and rebounds quickly even when it has been nearly destroyed. The real threats to order include not only new things, like anarchist terrorism and genetic technology, but ancient problems like the inequality of wealth, militarism, religious fanaticism, and alcohol. Therefore it is foolish to be nervous about every change because it might unbalance the world and plunge us into anarchy. The concerns of freedom and order always need to be balanced against each other. Our world demands creativity and flexibility as much as obedience and control, and we should consider how best to find this balance in all our important decisions.

Brooks would probably agree with what I just wrote; as with most people in our society, our political opinions are not really that far apart. But in choosing to emphasize the threat to order inherent in rather trivial events like the WikiLeaks document dump (the subject of his essay), he shows which side he lines up on.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

One issue is that order-loving conservatives are not the only force on the right. There is also a redneck populist streak that loves to flirt with violence and disorder, and that sees in liberalism a force for the sort of pervasive, safe order that would give too much scope to whimps who don't have guns and like to read. This is the spirit of Palin. I was struck by a recent pro-Palin editorial in Newsweek that essentially came down to liking Palin because she can beat fish to death (as she apparently did at great length on her reality TV series).

One might say the same of the left. East coast, institutional liberals have little in common with the sort of anarchist left that likes Wikileaks. Gay marriage is a typical institutional liberal cause, while the anarchist left is more drawn to something like San Francisco c. 1978.

John said...

As in Dungeons and Dragons, chaos vs. law does to some extent cut across the conservative/liberal divide. I confess that I have always wondered why political parties are not more often founded on this basis rather than conservative vs. liberal.