1 - GENERAL PRINCIPLES

1.1 What is distinctive about Conservatism as a political view?

1.2 Why is tradition a source of greater wisdom?

1.3 What's the difference between following tradition and refusing to think?

1.4 Why isn't it better to reason things out from the beginning?

1.5 Why can't tradition be an accumulation of ignorance, error, and vice as easily       as of wisdom?

1.6 How can anyone know his own tradition is the right one?

1.7 What about truth?

1.8 There are conflicting traditions even within a single society. Which gets treated       as "ours?"

2 - TRADITION AND CHANGE

2.1 Why not just accept change?

2.2 Isn't Conservatism simply another way of saying that people who currently       have wealth and power should keep it?

2.3 Wouldn't we still have slavery if Conservatives had always been running the       show?

3 - SOCIAL AND CULTURAL ISSUES

3.1 What are family values and what is so great about them?

3.2 Why can't Conservatives just accept that people's personal values differ?

3.3 Why do Conservatives always want to force their values on everybody else?

3.4 What role do Conservatives think government should play in enforcing moral       values?

3.5 Aren't Conservatives racist sexist homophobes?

3.6 What happens to feminists, homosexuals, racial minorities, and others       marginalized in a Conservative society?

3.7 What about freedom?

3.8 And justice?

4 - ECONOMIC ISSUES

4.1 Why do Conservatives say they favor virtue and community but favor       laissez-faire Capitalism?

4.2 Why don't Conservatives care about what happens to the poor, weak,       discouraged, and outcast?

4.3 Shouldn't the government do something for people for whom the usual support       networks don't work?

4.4 What about welfare for the middle classes?

4.5 If conserving is a good thing, why isn't ecology a conservative issue?

5 CONSERVATISM IN AN AGE OF ESTABLISHED LIBERALISM

5.1 Why do Conservatives talk as if the sky is about to fall and all good things are       in the past?

5.2 Isn't Conservatism essentially nostalgia for a past that never was and can't be       restored?

5.3 What's all this stuff about community and tradition when the groups that matter       these days are based on interests and perspectives, rather than on traditions?

5.4 Why are most people seriously involved in studying and dealing with social       issues Liberals?

5.5 How can tradition do anything but endorse the way things happen to be?

5.6 Shouldn't Conservatives favor things that are as well-established as the       welfare state and steady expansion of the scope of the civil rights laws?

5.7 I was raised a Liberal. Doesn't that mean that, to be Conservative, I should       stay true to Liberalism?

6 THE CONSERVATIVE RAINBOW

6.1 How do Libertarians differ from Conservatives?

6.2 What are mainstream Conservatives?

6.3 What are Neoconservatives?

6.4 What are Paleoconservatives?

6.5 What are Paleolibertarians?

6.6 What are Frankfurt School Neopaleoconservatives?

6.7 Where do the pro-life movement and Religious Right fit into all this?

6.8 What are the differences between American Conservatism and the       Conservatism of other countries?

6.9 What do all these things called "Conservatism" have in common?

1 - GENERAL PRINCIPLES

1.1 WHAT IS DISTINCTIVE ABOUT CONSERVATISM AS A POLITICAL VIEW?

1.2 WHY IS TRADITION A SOURCE OF GREATER WISDOM?

The usual alternative to reliance on tradition is reliance on theory. Taking theory literally can be costly because it achieves clarity by ignoring things that are difficult to articulate. Such things can be important; the reason politics and morals are learned mostly by experience and imitation is that most of what we need to know about them consists in habits, attitudes and implicit presumptions that we couldn't begin to put into words. There is no means other than tradition to accumulate, conserve and hand on such things.

Other considerations also support the wisdom of relying on tradition, if not specifically the wisdom of tradition itself. For example, tradition typically exists as the common property of a community whose members are raised in it. Accordingly, it normally unites more than divides, and is far more likely than theory to facilitate free and cooperative life in common.

1.3 WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FOLLOWING TRADITION AND REFUSING TO THINK?

Truth is not altogether out of reach, but our access to it is incomplete and often indirect. Since it can not be reduced wholly to our possession, Conservatives are willing to accept it in whatever form it is available to us. In particular, they recognize the need to rely on the unarticulated truth implicit in inherited attitudes and practices. Today this aspect of our connection to truth is underestimated, and Conservatives hope to think better and know more truly by re-emphasizing it.

1.4 WHY ISN'T IT BETTER TO REASON THINGS OUT FROM THE BEGINNING?

1.5 WHY CAN'T TRADITION BE AN ACCUMULATION OF IGNORANCE, ERROR, AND VICE AS        EASILY AS OF WISDOM?

The issue, therefore, is not whether tradition is perfect but its appropriate place in human life. To the extent our most consistent aim is toward what is good, and we err more through ignorance, oversight and conflicting impulse than through coherent and settled evil, tradition will benefit us by linking our thoughts and actions to a steady and comprehensive system in which they can correct each other. It will secure and refine our acquisitions while hampering antisocial impulses. To the extent we consistently aim at what is evil, then tradition can not help us much, but neither can anything else short of divine intervention.

1.6 THERE ARE LOTS OF CONFLICTING TRADITIONS. HOW CAN ANYONE KNOW HIS OWN IS THE        RIGHT ONE?

Putting issues of truth aside, the various parts of a particular tradition are adjusted to each other in a way that makes it difficult to abandon one part and substitute something from another tradition. A French cook will have trouble if he has to rely on Chinese ingredients and utensils. Issues of coherence and practicality accordingly make it likely that we will do better developing the tradition to which we are accustomed than attempting to adopt large parts of a different one.

1.7 BUT WHAT ABOUT TRUTH?

1.8 THERE ARE CONFLICTING TRADITIONS EVEN WITHIN A SINGLE SOCIETY. WHICH GETS        TREATED AS "OURS?"

It is worth noting that no society is perfectly unified; each has elites and subordinate societies with their own traditions and spheres of action. A society may also harbor resident aliens and dissident or criminal groups. Which groups are treated as subordinate societies legitimately belonging to the larger one and which are treated as resident aliens, criminals, or foreign oppressors is itself determined by the traditions that define the society as a whole and make it what it is.

2 - TRADITION AND CHANGE

2.1 SOCIETY HAS ALWAYS CHANGED FOR THE BETTER IN SOME WAYS AND FOR THE WORST IN        OTHERS. WHY NOT NOT ACCEPT CHANGE, ESPECIALLY IF EVERYTHING IS SO COMPLICATED        AND HARD TO FIGURE OUT?

In addition, Conservatism is not rejection of all change as such, but of intentional change of a peculiarly sweeping sort characteristic of the period beginning with the French Revolution and guided by Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment philosophies such as Liberalism and Marxism. It is recognition that the world is not our creation, and that there are permanent things that we must simply accept. For example, the family as an institution has changed from time to time in conjunction with other social changes. However, the current Left/Liberal demand that all definite institutional structure for the family be abolished as an infringement of individual autonomy (typically phrased as a demand for the elimination of sex roles and heterosexism and the protection of children's rights) is different in kind from anything in the past, and Conservatives believe it must be fought.

2.2 ISN'T CONSERVATISM SIMPLY ANOTHER WAY OF SAYING THAT PEOPLE WHO CURRENTLY        HAVE WEALTH AND POWER SHOULD KEEP IT?

It's worth noting that contemporary Liberalism furthers the interests of the powerful social classes that support it, and that movements aiming at social justice typically become intensely elitist because, the more comprehensive and abstract a political principle, the smaller the group that can be relied on to understand and apply it correctly.

2.3 WOULDN'T WE STILL HAVE SLAVERY IF CONSERVATIVES HAD ALWAYS BEEN RUNNING THE        SHOW?

While Conservatism, as such, doesn't guarantee there will be no oppression, neither do attempts at autonomous rational thought. It has been under radical and not conservative regimes that brutal forced labor and other gross forms of oppression have made a comeback in recent times. That is no paradox. Radicalism is far more compatible than Conservatism with tyrannical institutions because, by overemphasizing the role of theory in politics, it destroys reciprocity and mutual accommodation between rulers and ruled.

In addition, Conservatism is not self-contained; its recognition of existing practice as a standard does not mean denial that there is any other standard. It recognizes that moral habits evolve with experience and changing circumstances, that social arrangements that come to be too much at odds with the moral feelings of a people change or disappear, and that there are transcendent standards as well as those that exist as part of the institutions of a particular people. It recognizes that there can be improvements as well as corruptions.

Conservatism arose, not from a desire to freeze everything exactly as it is, but from recognition of the necessity of continuity, the difficulty of forcing society into a preconceived pattern, and the importance of things, such as mutual personal obligation and standards of right and wrong not reducible to power and desire, for which ideologies of the Left have trouble finding a place. Those recognitions make Conservatives more reliable opponents of tyranny than Progressives.

3 - SOCIAL AND CULTURAL ISSUES

3.1 WHAT ARE FAMILY VALUES AND WHAT IS SO GREAT ABOUT THEM?

Family values are basic to moral life because it is primarily in relationships with particular persons that are taken with the utmost seriousness that we find the degree of concrete knowledge and mutual responsibility that is necessary for our obligations to others to become realities for us. In addition, the knowledge and habits necessary for the good life mostly have to do with the day-to-day activities of ordinary men. Such things lose coherence if everyday personal relations are unstable and unreliable, as they will be if law, habits and attitudes do not support stable and functional family life.

To the extent the necessity of practical reliance on particular persons is viewed as something oppressive and unequal that the state should remedy, family values are rejected. Conservatives oppose that rejection.

3.2 WHY CAN'T CONSERVATIVES JUST ACCEPT THAT PEOPLE'S PERSONAL VALUES DIFFER?

3.3 WHY DO CONSERVATIVES ALWAYS WANT TO FORCE THEIR VALUES ON EVERYBODY ELSE?

Both will object to a school textbook entitled Heather Has Two Mommies Who Get Away with Paying No Taxes Because They Accept Payment Only in Cash. Liberal Jack will object to the book Heather's Mommy Stays Home and Her Daddy Goes to the Office, while Conservative Jill will object to other well-known texts. Even Libertarian Jerry might have some problems with Heather and Her Whole Family Organize to Fight for Daycare and against Welfare Reductions. There is no obvious reason to consider any of the three more tolerant than the others.

At present, the issue of social tolerance comes up most often in connection with sexual morality.

3.4 WHAT ROLE DO CONSERVATIVES THINK GOVERNMENT SHOULD PLAY IN ENFORCING        MORAL VALUES?

3.5 AREN'T CONSERVATIVES RACIST SEXIST HOMOPHOBES?

"Racist" -- Conservatives consider community loyalty important. The communities people grow up in generally have some connection to ethnicity. That's no accident, because ethnicity is what develops when people live together with a common way of life for a long time. Accordingly, Conservatives think some degree of ethnic loyalty and separateness is OK. Ethnicity is not the same thing as "race" as a biological category; on the other hand, the two are difficult to disentangle because both arise out of shared history and common descent.

"Sexist" -- All known societies have engaged in sex-role stereotyping, with men undertaking more responsibility for public affairs and women for home, family, and childcare. There are obvious benefits to such stereotypes, since they make it far more likely that individual men and women will complement each other and form stable and functional unions for the rearing of children. Also, some degree of differentiation seems to fit the presocial tendencies of men and women better than unisex would. Conservatives see no reason to give up those benefits, especially in view of the evident bad consequences of the weakening of stereotypical obligations between the sexes in recent decades.

"Homophobes" -- Finally, sex-role stereotyping implies a tendency to reject patterns of impulse, attitude, and conduct that don't fit the stereotypes, deviant patterns such as homosexuality.

3.6 WHAT HAPPENS TO FEMINISTS, HOMOSEXUALS, RACIAL MINORITIES, AND OTHERS        MARGINALIZED IN A CONSERVATIVE SOCIETY?

In both kinds of society, people on the outs may be able to persuade others to their way of thinking, to practice the way of life they prefer among themselves, or to break off from the larger society and establish their own communities. Such possibilities are, in general, more realistic in a Conservative society that emphasizes local control, federalism, and minimal bureaucracy than in a society that demands egalitarian social justice and therefore tries to establish a universal homogeneous social order. For example, ethnic minorities in a Conservative society may well be able to thrive or, at least, maintain themselves through some combination of adaptation and niche-finding, while in, an "inclusive" society, they will find themselves on the receiving end of policies designed to eliminate the public importance of their (and every other) ethnic culture.

One important question is whether alienation from the social order will be more common in a Conservative or a Liberal society. It seems that it will be more common in a social order based on universal implementation of a bureaucracy's conception of social justice than in one that accepts the moral feelings and loyalties that arise over time within particular communities. So it seems likely that a Liberal society will have more citizens than a Conservative society who feel that their deepest values and loyalties are peripheral to the concerns of the institutions that dominate their lives, and so feel marginalized.

3.7 WHAT ABOUT FREEDOM?

In addition, Conservatives believe there is a close connection between freedom and participation in public affairs. Since how we live affects others, freedom includes taking part in making society what it is. Accordingly, the Conservative principles of federalism, local rule, and private property help realize freedom by devolving power into many hands and making widespread participation in running society a reality. Respect for tradition, the "democracy of the dead," has the same effect.

3.8 WHAT ABOUT JUSTICE?

Social justice is the ordering of social life toward the good for man. Social injustice is systematic destruction of the conditions for existence of that good. Because the good for man can not be fully known, because it includes respect for each of us as a moral agent, and because human affairs are infinitely complex, social justice can never be fully achieved, nor achieved at all through imposition of a preconceived overall design on society. Attempts to do the latter have led to horrendous crimes including, in several modern instances, the murder of millions of innocents. Since social justice must evolve rather than be constructed, its furtherance requires acceptance of the authority of tradition.The two cannot be separated.

Social justice is sometimes thought to mean promotion of equality through comprehensive government action. That view can not be correct, since men differ and what is just for them must, therefore, also differ. In addition, the goods which that view is concerned to divide equally -- wealth, power, and the like -- do not appear to be the ultimate human goods and, therefore, can not appropriately be considered the ultimate concerns of justice. Finally, a system guided by such a conception must defeat its own purpose because it puts enormous and uncontrollable power in the hands of those who control the government; possession of such power, of course, makes them radically unequal to those they rule.

4 - ECONOMIC ISSUES

4.1 WHY DO CONSERVATIVES SAY THEY FAVOR VIRTUE AND COMMUNITY BUT, IN FACT, FAVOR        LAISSEZ-FAIRE CAPITALISM? DOESN'T LAISSEZ-FAIRE CAPITALISM PROMOTE THE        OPPOSITE?

Conservatives strongly favor free markets when the alternative is to expand bureaucracy to implement Liberal goals, a process that clearly has the effect of damaging virtue and community. Also, they tend to prefer self-organization to central control because they believe that overall administration of social life is impossible. They recognize that, like tradition, the market reflects men's infinitely various and often unconscious and inarticulate goals and perceptions far better than any bureaucratic process could.

In any event, it's not clear that laissez-faire Capitalism need undermine moral community. "Laissez-faire Capitalism" has to do with limitations on what the government does and only indirectly with the nature of society as a whole. While social statistics are only a crude measure of the state of community and morality, it is noteworthy that, in England, crime and illegitimacy rates fell by about half from the middle to the end of the 19th century, the heyday of untrammelled Capitalism, and that the rejection of laissez-faire has, in fact, been accompanied by increasing social atomization.

4.2 WHY DON'T CONSERVATIVES CARE ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS TO THE POOR, WEAK,        DISCOURAGED, AND OUTCAST?

Moral community declines when people rely on government to solve their problems, rather than on themselves and those they live with. It is the weak who suffer most from the resulting moral chaos. Those who think that interventionist Liberalism means that the weak face fewer problems should consider the effects on women, children, and blacks of trends of the past 40 years. That period has featured large increases in social welfare expenditures, as well as increased crime, reduced educational achievement, family instability, and an end to progress in reducing poverty.

4.3 WHAT ABOUT PEOPLE FOR WHOM THE USUAL SUPPORT NETWORKS DON'T WORK?        SHOULDN'T THE GOVERNMENT DO SOMETHING FOR THEM?

Government responsibility for specific cases also means that what happens to people, and therefore what they do, is the business of no one in particular; if there's a serious problem, the government will take care of it. Such an outlook destroys social ties and promotes antisocial behavior. If government does things that weaken self-reliance and the moral bonds that give rise to community, and that can not be made to work without an elaborate system of compulsion, in the long run, it will increase suffering and degradation.

Conservatives are therefore suspicious of social welfare programs, especially attempts at categorical solutions. Suspicion has rational limits. Some government social welfare measures (free clinics for mothers and children or local systems of support for deserving people) may well increase social welfare even, in the long term. However, because of the obscurity of the issue, the difficulty in a mass democracy of limiting the expansion of government benefit programs, and the value of widespread participation in public life, the best resolution is likely to be keeping central government involvement strictly limited, and letting individuals, associations, and localities support voluntarily the institutions and programs they think socially beneficial.

4.4 WHAT ABOUT WELFARE FOR THE MIDDLE CLASSES, WELFARE POLICIES LIKE SOCIAL        SECURITY, MEDICARE, THE HOME MORTGAGE INTEREST INCOME TAX DEDUCTION. AND SO        ON?

Other contemporary Conservatives distinguish these middle-class benefits from welfare by the element of reciprocity; people get Social Security and Medicare only if they have already given a great deal to society, and, in the case of the mortgage interest tax deduction, the "benefit" consists only in the right to keep more of one's earnings. Still other present-day Conservatives try to split the difference somehow. As a practical matter, the reluctance of many Conservatives to disturb these arrangements is likely motivated in part by the electoral power of their supporters.

4.5 IF CONSERVING IS A GOOD THING, WHY ISN'T ECOLOGY A CONSERVATIVE CAUSE?

5 - CONSERVATISM IN AN AGE OF ESTABLISHED LIBERALISM

5.1 WHY DO CONSERVATIVES TALK AS IF THE SKY IS ABOUT TO FALL AND ALL GOOD THINGS        ARE IN THE PAST? PEOPLE HAVE BEEN BEMOANING THE PRESENT FOR A LONG TIME, BUT        THINGS DON'T SEEM SO BAD TODAY.

5.2 ISN'T CONSERVATISM ESSENTIALLY NOSTALGIA FOR A PAST THAT NEVER WAS AND CAN'T        BE RESTORED?

Conservatism involves recognition that moral community is required for the coherence of individual and social life, and that a reasonably coherent way of life is a practical necessity. Current trends toward radical individualism, egalitarianism, and hedonism destroy the possibility of moral community. Conservatives are, therefore, confident that, in some fashion, existing trends will be reversed and, in important respects, the moral and social future will resemble the past more than the present. In particular, the future will see less emphasis on individual autonomy and more on moral tradition and essentialist ties.

The timing and form of the necessary reversal is, of course, uncertain. It plainly can't be achieved through administrative techniques, the method most readily accepted as serious and realistic today. So, Conservatives' main political proposal is that aspects of the modern state that oppose the reversal be trimmed or abandoned. Those who consider modern trends beneficial and irreversible, therefore, accuse Conservatives of simple obstructionism. In contrast, those who see that current trends lead to catastrophe and that a reversal must take place expect that, if Conservatives aren't successful now, their goals will be achieved eventually, but very likely with more conflict and destruction along the way.

5.3 WHAT'S ALL THIS STUFF ABOUT COMMUNITY AND TRADITION? THE GROUPS THAT MATTER        THESE DAYS ARE GROUPS LIKE THE YUPPIES, GAYS, AND SENIOR CITIZENS, GROUPS THAT        PEOPLE JOIN AS INDIVIDUALS AND ARE BASED ON INTERESTS AND PERSPECTIVES, RATHER        THAN ON TRADITION.

5.4 IF CONSERVATISM IS SO GREAT, WHY ARE MOST PEOPLE SERIOUSLY INVOLVRD IN        STUDYING AND DEALING WITH SOCIAL ISSUES LIBERALS?

5.5 HOW CAN TRADITION DO ANYTHING BUT ENDORSE THE WAY THINGS HAPPEN TO BE --        WHICH, AT PRESENT, MEANS ESTABLISHED LIBERALISM?

5.6 SHOULDN'T MODERN CONSERVATIVES AT LEAST FAVOR THINGS THAT ARE        WELL-ESTABLISHED, SUCH AS THE WELFARE STATE AND STEADY EXPANSION OF THE        SCOPE OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS LAWS?

5.7 I WAS RAISED A LIBERAL. DOESN'T THAT MEAN I SHOULD STAY TRUE TO LIBERALISM?

6 - THE CONSERVATIVE RAINBOW

6.1 HOW DO LIBERTARIANS DIFFER FROM CONSERVATIVES?

Speaking more abstractly, the Libertarian perspective assigns to the market the position Conservatives assign to tradition as the great accumulator and integrator of the implicit knowledge of society. Some writers, such as F. A. Hayek, attempt to bridge the two perspectives on that issue. In addition, Libertarians tend to believe in strict methodological individualism and absolute and universally valid human rights, while Conservatives are less likely to have the former commitment and tend to understand rights by reference to the forms they take in particular societies.

6.2 WHAT ARE MAINSTREAM CONSERVATIVES?

Mainstream Conservatives often speak the language of Liberalism, especially classical Liberalism. Their appeal is nonetheless Conservative; typically, they reject more highly developed forms of Liberalism in favor of earlier forms that retain more traces of non-liberal traditions.

6.3 WHAT ARE NEOCONSERVATIVES?

6.4 WHAT ARE PALEOCONSERVATIVES?

6.5 WHAT ARE PALEOLIBERTARIANS?

6.6 WHAT ARE FRANKFORT SCHOOL NEOPALEOCONSERVATIVES?

6.7 WHERE DO THE PRO-LIFE MOVEMENT AND THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT FIT INTO ALL THIS?

6.8 WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN AMERICAN CONSERVATISM AND THE        CONSERVATISM OF OTHER COUNTRIES?

6.9 WHAT DO ALL THESE THINGS CALLED "CONSERVATISM" HAVE IN COMMON?