Straight Talk on Conservatives

27May08

Here’s something Matthew Yglesias wrote the other day. The conversation was about if Conservatism had failed because it lacked ideas or appropriate problems.

There’s something to that, but I think the problem is actually much worse — the problem with the conservative movement is that it’s fundamentally malign. The plenty of things of, for example, a deregulatory nature that would enhance access to health care. Reducing the regulatory barriers that artificially restrict the supply of health care wouldn’t “solve” the health care problem in America, but it sure would help! And it could be a conservative idea in perfectly good standing. Reducing senseless land use regulation that over-mandate parking and under-supply residential density would mitigate inequality and reduce carbon emissions. And that could be a conservative idea in perfectly good standing. The whole situation of professional licensing in the United States is a scandal and very bad for poor people, and easing the burden there could be a conservative idea in perfectly good standing.

The trouble is that no sensible person believes that electing conservative politicians will actually improve the situation because even though some instances of reducing the power of economic privilege would be deregulatory and conservative, actually existing conservatism isn’t interested in reducing the power of economic privilege except on behalf of some other, greater privilege. Similarly, the conservative movement is correct to say that more stable family structure would be a boon to America’s children, but its operational commitment to family values just consists of the political exploitation of anti-gay sentiment. The ideas have some merit, it’s the actual moral character of the people able to move the levers of power that are the problem — they’re not fundamentally interested in the merits of ideas, even their own ideas, they’re interested in power and greed.

This argument is fundamental to the Liberal critique of not only Conservatism but also society broadly and yet you never see in print anywhere. Even other liberal bloggers rarely advance the idea that in broad sense Conservatism isn’t just set of incorrect ideas, but group of people that are in a “fundamental” way less interested in improving the world then consolidating elite power by exploiting pre-existing prejudice and irrationality.

Typically when people try to define the difference between Conservatism and Liberalism they like to talk about the appropriate use of government in society, religion, or traditional values. Which is fine you’re designing a half baked civics lesson. However, those issues just don’t capture the nature of Conservatism as it’s expressed in this particular plane of existence. Conservatism is about consolidating elite power.

Yglesias titled the post, “Matt Gets Simplistic and Shrill”, which is more or less a correct explanation of why you’re strongly discouraged from writing something like that in a major newspaper. What’s odd is that you hear Conservatives suggest that Liberals are inherently malicious actors all the time. It doesn’t especially matter if the Liberals in question are in fact highly centrist (Clintons) or politically irrelevant (think Bill O’Reilly’s efforts to get Ludacris fired as a Pepsi spokesperson) or even if they are clearly personally virtuous as defined by Conservative ideology (John Kerry, Max Cleland) Conservatives still suggest they’re personally malevolent.

Liberalism is selling itself short not advancing the line Conservatism “fundamentally malign”. This doesn’t have to mean personally attacking every person involved in Conservatism. It does mean not pretending that changing State Constitutions to ban gay marriage is about values, and that’s not some crazy coincidence that conservative economists think that taxes are too high for rich people and supporting tax cuts for the rich is good way to raise campaign contributions.

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Tags: Conservatism, Conservatives, Matthew Yglesias, Rightwing