The Skype debate between Conor Friedersdorf and Dan Riehl over the future of conservatism is still making waves in the conservative blogosphere. The debate itself developed into a no-holds-barred prize match between the old Reaganite conservatism and the emerging young conservatism (of the Brooks/Douthat/AmConMag wing). I only wish Friedersdorf had pushed back harder concerning the historical legitimacy of the emerging conservatism, which actually has a much better pedigree than Reaganism. Frankly, Riehl’s assertions about the universally-accepted tenets of conservatism were historically myopic — barely thirty years old. Conor could have pointed out the log in Riehl’s eye even while Riehl complained about the speck in Conor’s.
Follow up posts from Conor and RS McCain reminded me of just how confused contemporary conservatism is about its own roots. McCain, for one, invoked F.A. Hayek and von Mises, alleging that Conor and his ilk were ignorant of basic free market teaching (to which Conor responded by revealing his Austrian creds). But the truly ironic thing about all this is that Hayek and von Mises were not conservatives. They said so themselves in no uncertain terms.
Strangely enough, conservatism has been one of capitalism’s most uneasy co-belligerents, often working to slow down the “mechanistic” progress that Hayek promotes (perhaps conservatism has been more of a hand brake than an emergency brake, but still…). And while conservatism has been equally critical of socialism and communism, it has often employed the same critiques of absolute capitalism that were used by Marx and Christian socialists.
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I continue to believe that historic conservatism falls within the Augustinian tradition, whatever its imperfections. Contemporary conservatism, on the other hand, is foundationally disordered, holding to the idea of freedom as the end of society. F.A. Hayek’s critique of conservatism is therefore also a critique of Augustine. The conservative, he argues, is not a true believer in freedom, because he cares more about the direction of freedom than for freedom itself.
That the conservative opposition to too much government control is not a matter of principle but is concerned with the particular aims of government is clearly shown in the economic sphere. Conservatives usually oppose collectivist and directivist measures in the industrial field, and here the liberals will often find allies in them. But at the same time conservatives are usually protectionists and have frequently supported socialist measures in agriculture. Indeed, though the restrictions which exist today in industry and commerce are mainly the result of socialist views, the equally important restrictions in agriculture were usually introduced by conservatives at an even earlier date. And in their efforts to discredit free enterprise many conservative leaders have vied with the socialists. [*]
Freedom is only free for the conservative if it is well-ordered toward love, as Kirk argued. Hayek disagrees and, in doing so, reveals just how un-conservative the contemporary conservative movement actually is. Today’s conservative is in reality a liberal, primarily influenced by the Lockean Enlightenment. And regardless of how one feels about reactionary anti-liberals like Burke, De Maistre, Eliot, Kirk, etc., it is intellectually irresponsible to group them with the modern right-wing of Palin, Limbaugh, The Weekly Standard, and so on. Even when the two groups share common political ground, they arrive at that ground by different paths. I’m by no means a patsy for Burke or the Continental reactionaries, but we still need to play fair with our historical definitions. Our confusion about what the “liberal” and “conservative” labels actually mean often grants a false legitimacy to the revolutionary right-wing of the 21st century.
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For Hayek, the tenets of classical liberalism in contrast to conservatism include:
– belief in the beneficial power of progress (“I can have little patience with those who oppose, for instance, the theory of evolution or what are called ‘mechanistic’ explanations of the phenomena of life because of certain moral consequences which at first seem to follow from these theories, and still less with those who regard it as irrelevant or impious to ask certain questions at all.”);
– preference toward globalism over regionalism (he regards the latter as a bridge to collectivism); he also inexplicably ties conservatism to imperialism, while citing only examples of British and American progressives, and ignoring the deep isolationist trends of Old Right conservatives in the midwest and the south.
– an unwillingness to impose ethical or religious values on the rest of society, since for the liberal “spiritual and the temporal are different sphere[s] which ought not to be confused.”
(Cross posted at Theopol.)