Category: Conservatism

Cooperation and Competition

Liberals tend to oppose cooperation to competition, and vice versa, as if they excluded each other. "We need more cooperation and less competition." One frequently hears that from liberals. But competition is a form of cooperation. As such, it cannot be opposed to cooperation. One cannot oppose a species to its genus.

Consider competitive games and sports. The chess player aims to beat his opponent, and he expects his opponent to share this aim: No serious player enjoys beating someone who is not doing his best to   beat him. But the competition is predicated upon cooperation and is impossible without it. There are the rules of the game and the various protocols governing behavior at the board. These are agreed upon and respected by the players and they form the cooperative context in which the competition unfolds. We must work together (co-operate) for one of us to emerge the victor. And in this competitive cooperation both of us are benefited.

Is there any competitive game or sport for which this does not hold? At the Boston Marathon in 1980, a meshuggeneh lady by the name of Rosie Ruiz jumped into the race ahead of the female leaders and before the finish line. She seemed to many to have won the race in the female category.  But she was soon disqualified. She wasn't competing because she wasn't cooperating.  Cooperation is a necessary condition of competition.

In the business world, competition is fierce indeed. But even here it presupposes cooperation. Fed Ex aims to cut into UPS'  business – but not by assassinating their drivers. If Fed Ex did this, it would be out of business. It would lose favor with the public, and the police and regulatory agencies would be on its case. The refusal to cooperate would make it uncompetitive. 'Cut throat' competition does not pay in the long run and makes the 'cut throat' uncompetitive.

If you and I are competing for the same job, are we cooperating with each other? Yes, in the sense that our behavior is rule-governed. We agree to accept the rules and we work together so that the better of us gets the appointment. The prosecution and the defense, though in opposition to each other, must cooperate if the trial is to proceed. And similarly in other cases.

Is assassination or war a counterexample to my thesis? Suppose two warring factions are 'competing' for Lebensraum in a no-holds-barred manner. If this counts as a case of competition, then this may be a counterexample to my thesis. But it is not that clear that the Nazis, say, were competing with the Poles for Lebensraum. This needs further thought. Of course, if the counterexample is judged to be genuine, I can simply restrict my thesis to forms of competition short of all-out annihilatory war.  Or I could say that rule-governed competition is a species of cooperation.

Competition, then, contrary to liberal dogma, is not opposed to cooperation. Moreover, competition is good in that it breeds excellence, a point unappreciated, or insufficiently appreciated, by liberals. This marvellous technology we bloggers use every day — how do our liberal friends think it arose? Do they have any idea why it is so inexpensive?  Competition!

Not only does competition make you better than you would have been without it, it humbles you.  It puts you in your place.  It assigns you your rightful position in life's hierarchy.  And life is hierarchical.  The levellers may not like it but hierarchies have a way of reestablishing themselves. 

Why are Conservatives Inarticulate?

From the mail:

My two cents on why so many people who hold conservative views come across as inarticulate: most of the values that ordinary, conservative people live by do not require much reflection or explanation. After all, how much justification does a man need for being loyal to his friends, not cheating his customers, and being kind to his neighbors? It is the man who seeks to undermine those values who needs the rhetorical dodges and obfuscations. It takes little mental skill to tell a lie, but it takes quite a bit of deviousness to construct a justification for abolishing the principle of honesty altogether . . . .

My correspondent supplies part of the explanation.  For those with a conservative bent there is a defeasible presumption in favor of traditional practices, beliefs, and values.  They place the burden of proof on those who would question the traditional practices, beliefs, and values.  For the conservatively inclined there is no need to justify that loyalty is good, cheating is wrong, being kind is better than being cruel, and that killing infants is murder.  Feeling, with some justification, no need to justify his practices, beliefs, and values,  the conservative rarely acquires the skills to do so, and so comes across as inarticulate and unreflective to those skilled in the verbal arts.  Of course, I am talking not about conservative intellectuals but about ordinary conservative folk and their political and talk-show representatives.

What my correspondent may not appreciate, however, is that it is not enough to have the right views and values; one must also know how to articulate and defend them when they come under attack.  And this is where conservatives are woefully inadequate.  How many conservatives could say what I said in the preceding paragraph?  Can you imagine George W. Bush speaking of "a defeasible presumption in favor of traditional practices, beliefs, and values"?  Even if he could get the words out without stumbling, could he explain what they mean? His defense of marriage consisted of the repetition of the flat-footed, "Marriage is between a man and a woman."  A gratuitous assertion, however, calls forth a gratuitous counter-assertion. His mere assertion, unexplained and unjustified, makes him appear a bigot to those who find opposition to same-sex marriage 'discriminatory.'  What he ought to have done is provide a brief justification of why the state is involved in marriage in the first place and why same-sex 'marriage' is not something the state should support.  But could he do that off the top of his head?  I doubt it.  He's got the right view, but he can't defend it.  And that's the problem.

Or consider Charlie Sykes the talk-show host I mentioned the other day.  He claimed that the reasoning in support of the moral acceptability of infanticide was "academic gobbledygook."  When you say something like that about careful and clear reasoning, you make yourself out to be a dumbass, allergic to distinctions and nuances.  You come across as a rube, a redneck, a hick, a yahoo, an anti-intellectual, an Archie Bunker, a beer-swilling, sports-watching, tobacco-chewing ignoramus, a benighted denizen of fly-over country.  Many others who got worked up over that infanticide article claimed that it was 'illogical,' thereby betraying a failure to understand what logic is.  They thought that since the conclusion is morally outrageous, which of course it is, the reasoning to it had to be incorrect.  But that's an elementary mistake since one can reason correctly to a false conclusion.

A local talk show guy, Mike Gallagher I think it was, was fulminating againt the article in question and came out with the remark that 'medical ethics' is an oxymoron.  Well of course it isn't.  What he was trying to say was that a medical ethicist who argues that infanticide is morally permissible cannot be an ethicist . . . .

Or consider my man O'Reilly.  He often points out that we live in a capitalist country.  It's true, more or less.  But citing a fact does not amount to a justification of the fact.  What O'Reilly may be incapable of doing is to provide arguments including moral arguments in favor of capitalism.  That is what is needed in the face of libs and lefties who, when told that we live in a capitalist country, will respond, "Well then, let's change it!" 

But having a nasty streak of anti-intellectualism in him, O'Reilly would probably dismiss such arguments as mere 'theory' in his Joe Sixpack sense of the term.

Conservatives, by and large, are doers not thinkers, builders,  not scribblers.  They are at home on the terra firma of the concrete particular but at sea in the realm of abstraction.  The know in their dumb inarticulate way that killing infants is a moral outrage but they cannot argue it out with sophistication and nuance in a manner to command the respect of their opponents.  And that's a serious problem

To beat the Left we must out-argue them in the ivory towers and out-slug them in the trenches.  Since by Converse Clausewitz  politics is war conducted by other means, the trench-fighters need to employ the same tactics that lefties do: slanders, lies, smears, name-calling, shout-downs, pie-throwing, mockery, derision.  And now I hand off to Robert Spencer commenting on Andrew Breitbart. 

Politics is war and war is ugly.  We could avoid a lot of this nastiness if we adopted federalism and voluntary Balkanization.  But that is not likely to happen: the totalitarian Left won't allow it.  So I predict things are going to get hot in the coming years.

The Problem with Conservatism

Here:

The problem with conservatism is that it is a school of political activity based almost completely on nonconfrontation. It is quietist, scholarly, and unassuming, acting very much in the mode of the upper-class William F. Buckley and the reclusive Russell Kirk. This is not altogether a bad thing. Conservatives have always argued — with some justice — that a major goal of the movement is to maintain standards, to avoid descending to the level of the opposition. But like anything else, it becomes a bad thing when it is taken too far, when conservatives allow themselves — as they so often do — to be bullied out of the arena and on to the sidelines and irrelevance. (Buckley, to his credit, and as Gore Vidal well knows, never allowed it to go quite this far.) This is so common that it shocks both sides when it occurs otherwise. Recall the "blue-blazer riot" at the 2000 Florida election recount, with all the staid, Brooks-wearing paleos banging on the windows and shouting, "I say there," at the vote-counters. Nobody ever saw that before. The problem is, we haven't seen it since, either.

This is not meant as an attack on the bow-tie brigade. We need those types. We need the WASP ethos and the civilized behavior that it promotes. But we also need the hard boys in their black t-shirts and shades who can jump into the trenches and give as good as they get — the kind of cadre that conservatism has for many years lacked.

Anti-Intellectualism on the Right

As I write, the 'infanticide is just post-natal abortion' controversy is being discussed by Charlie Sykes who is sitting in for Dennis Prager on the latter's radio show.  Sykes is obviously intelligent, but he just did something that is not uncommon for conservatives to do but is harmful to the conservative cause, namely, display an anti-intellectual attitude.  He used the phrase "academic gobblydegook" to refer to the reasoning in After-Birth Abortion: Why Should the Baby Live?  (My discussion of the issues here.)

The article's reasoning, however,  is clear and free of unnecessary jargon.  For the anti-intellectual, however, any attempt to make necessary distinctions and couch them in a technical vocabulary is dismissed as 'gobbledegook,' 'hairsplitting,' 'semantics,' etc.  It's unfortunate but  it is the way too many conservatives are.  I am not talking about conservative intellectuals, but conservatives that have influence.  Bill O'Reilly is an example.  He does good work, and his influence is mainly salutary.  But when a guest begins to nuance the discussion with a distinction or two, O'Reilly dismisses it as 'theory' using the word in the way of Joe Sixpack.  (That would make a good separate post, "Joe Sixpack on 'Theory'")

Conservatives have the right views but are too often incapable of defending them. This makes them easy targets for leftists.  Liberals and leftists lack common sense including moral sense, but they possess verbal facility in spades.  So if you talk like George W. Bush or dismiss careful, albeit wrongheaded, reasoning as 'gobbledegook' you just make yourself look stupid, not just to liberals but to everyone who values careful thinking.

On Toleration: With a Little Help from Kolakowski

1. Toleration is the touchstone of classical liberalism, and there is no denying its value. Our doxastic predicament requires it of us. We have beliefs galore but precious little knowledge, especially as regards the large and enduring questions. Lacking knowledge, we must inquire. For that we need freedom of inquiry, and a social and political environment in which inquiry is, if not encouraged, at least allowed. But people who are convinced that they have the truth would stop us. "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies." (Human All-Too-Human #483) This is typical Nietzschean exaggeration, but there is a sound point at its core: People who are convinced that they have the truth will not inquire whether it really is the truth. Worse, they will tend to impose their 'truth' on us and prevent our inquiry into truth. Many of them will not hesitate to suppress and murder their opponents.

My first point, then, is that toleration is a good because truth is a good. We must tolerate a diversity of views, and the people who maintain them, because we lack the truth and must find it, and to do so we must search. But we cannot search if we are under threat from fanatics and the intolerant. Freedom of inquiry and freedom of expression are important because truth is important. 

This implies that we must tolerate many views and actions and people who are deeply offensive to us. The 'artist' Serrano of "Piss-Christ" notoriety is a good example. He has a right to express himself as he does, just as we have a right to protest against him. He has no right to taxpayer money, however, and any liberal who thinks that a refusal of government sponsorship amounts to censorship is an idiot pure and simple.

2. But how far does toleration extend? Ought one tolerate those who do not respect the principle of toleration? To me it is self-evident that one ought not. If toleration is truly a value, then one ought to demand it not only of oneself but of others. My toleration meets its limit in your intolerance. I cannot tolerate your intolerance, for if I do, I jeopardize the very principle of toleration, and with it the search for truth.

Radical Islam, in its fanaticism and murderous intolerance, has no claim on the West's tolerance. It is no breach of tolerance on our part to demand that they behave themselves. We must also demand of them that if they want to be tolerated, they must tolerate others, Jews for example. They must not be allowed to benefit from the West's tolerance in order to preach intolerance and hate. Just as they have right to their beliefs, we have a right to ours, and a right to enforce our beliefs about toleration on them if they would live in our midst.

Kolakowski 3. Toleration is a value because truth is a value. A toleration worth wanting and having is therefore not to be confused with indifference towards truth, or relativism about truth. Leszek Kolakowski makes this point very well:

It is important to notice, however, that when tolerance is enjoined upon us nowadays, it is often in the sense of indifference: we are asked, in effect, to refrain from expressing — or indeed holding — any opinion, and sometimes even to condone every conceivable type of behaviour or opinion in others. This kind of tolerance is something entirely different, and demanding it is part of our hedonistic culture, in which nothing really matters to us; it is a philosophy of life without responsibility and without beliefs. It is encouraged by a variety of philosophies in fashion today, which teach us there is no such thing as truth in the traditional sense, and therefore that when we persist in our beliefs, even if we do so without aggression, we are ipso facto sinning against tolerance.

This is nonsense, and harmful nonsense. Contempt for truth harms our civilization no less than fanatical insistence on [what one takes to be] the truth. In addition, an indifferent majority clears the way for fanatics, of whom there will always be plenty around. Our civilization encourages the belief that everything should be just fun and games — as indeed it is in the infantile philosophies of the so-called 'New Age.' Their content is impossible to describe, for they mean anything one wants them to; that is what they are for. ("On Toleration" in Freedom, Fame, Lying, and Betrayal, Penguin 1999, pp. 36-37.)

4. To sum up. A toleration worth wanting and having is valuable because truth is valuable. It is threatened in two ways. It is threatened both by those who think that have the truth when they don't and those who are indifferent to truth. What is interesting is that the postmodernist nincompoops who deny truth in the name of toleration are powerless to oppose the fanatics who will impose their 'truth' by force. If all is relative, then the fanatics have all the justification they need to impose their 'truth' on us: it is true for them that they possess the absolute 'truth.'

Just Say ‘No’ to Panhandlers

What do you do when a beggar approaches you on the street? Do you give him money? I've given away food, but as a general rule it is foolish and wrong to give money to bums. Once, in downtown Phoenix, I came out of a rib joint with a box of luscious leftovers. A beggar approached asking for money for food. I opened the box, showed him the ribs, and said, "If you are  hungry, you can have these." He thankfully accepted the gift and we both went away satisfied.

But if a bum asks for money, I refuse, sometimes adding, 'Get a job.' This isn't the Great Depression. There are jobs galore. That's why there is a Mexican invasion.

Beggars are for the most part scammers and liars. A bum in Hawaii once asked me for a quarter to make a phone call. I foolishly gave him the quarter.  Later in the day, he passed me again and again asked for a quarter to make a phone call. (No, I am not hasty generalizing, I am illustrating a general proposition to the effect that bums are for the most part liars and scammers.) If you give beggars money, they will buy alcohol or drugs with it. Do you want to contribute to their further degradation? Do you want more inebriated people on the streets?  Do you give any thought to what the bums do to others when drunk?  But even if they use the money for a good purpose, by giving them a handout, you undermine what little work ethic they have.

It is not easy to be genuinely helpful to others.  It takes thought, lest you make them worse. 

Of course, I don't expect the typical  liberal to understand this. For a guilt-ridden, feel-good liberal, one who substitutes emoting for thinking, one shows 'compassion' by contributing to people's dependence and degradation.  It is not that liberals intend to degrade and make dependent, but that is the unintended consequence of their unthinking  'compassion.'

The conservative who refuses to aid and abet unproductive behavior is the man of true compassion. For he gives the bum a reason to cease his bumming. This is why the expression 'compassionate conservative' is ill-advised. True conservatism is compassionate by its very nature. The expression 'compassionate conservative' is a foolish concession to the Left, suggesting as it does that conservatives are not as a rule compassionate. It is an expression like 'articulate black,' which   suggests that blacks are not as a rule articulate.

Further reading: Have a Heart, Give Smart.

 

Be Hard on Yourself

The better people are hard on themselves.  The exemplify the anti-Bukowski property: they try.  They set themselves difficult tasks and strive to complete them.  They make intellectual, moral, spiritual, and physical demands of themselves.  They are alive to the discrepancy between what they are and what they ought to be.

But they also know how to relax and enjoy life.  Be hard on yourself, but honor yourself and permit yourself a bit of self-congratulation at obstacles overcome and goals attained.  The true conservative knows how to appreciate and enjoy — and that includes appreciating and enjoying dear old self.

More on Social Security as Welfare

In an earlier post I pointed out against Robert Samuelson that Social Security (SS), though in ways  like a welfare scheme, is not a welfare scheme.  Others are chiming in with Samuelson:

Social Security is a welfare program masquerading as an insurance program. People may think of it as forced savings, but that isn't how the program really works.

The trust fund and individual account aspects of Social Security are accounting gimmicks. The payroll taxes we pay in are not really saved for our retirements. They are already paying for the benefits of the current retirees. When we retire, if we are very lucky, we will live off the payroll taxes of the poor working stiffs who remain. The trust fund is stuffed with IOUs; the government has already spent the surpluses. Al Gore's lock box has been picked. Millions continue to draw benefits after they've already gotten back everything they paid in plus interest.

The second paragraph is wholly unexceptionable.  But consider the fact that to be eligible for SS benefits, a worker must have completed 40 quarters of employment.  That fact alone suffices to make it literally false that SS is a welfare program.  Add to it the fact that the amount paid out also reflects how long one has been employed and what one's level of compensation has been.  So although it is true that SS is like a welfare program in the ways Samuelson mentions, it is not, strictly  speaking, a welfare scheme.

Language matters.  Precision matters.  And if not here, where?  If you say what you know to be false for rhetorical effect then you undermine your credibility among those who you need to persuade.  Conservatives don't need to persuade conservatives, and they will not be able to persuade leftists.  They must pitch their message to the undecided who, if rational, will be put off by sloppy rhetoric and exaggeration.

I note that W. James Antle, III, the author of the linked article, refers to the SS system as "the liberals' Ponzi scheme."  But of course it is not a Ponzi scheme.  A Ponzi scheme, by definition, is a scheme set up with the intention of defrauding people for the benefit of those running the scheme.  But there is nothing fraudulent about the SS sytem: the intentions behind it are good ones!  The SS system is no doubt in dire need of reform if not outright elimination.  But no good purpose is achieved by calling it a Ponzi scheme.  That's either a lie or an exaggeration.  Not good, either way.  The most you can say is that it is like a Ponzi scheme in being fiscally unsustainable as currently structured.

Conservative exaggeration is politically foolish.  Is it not folly to give ammo to the enemy?  Is it not folly to choose a means (exaggeration and distortion) that is not conducive  to the end (garnering support among the presently uncommitted)?

Taxation: A Liberty Issue

Despite their name, liberals seem uninterested or insufficiently interested in the 'real' liberties, those pertaining to property, money, and guns, as opposed to the 'ideal' liberties, those pertaining to freedom of expression. A liberal will go to any extreme when it comes to defending the right to express his precious self no matter how inane or obnoxious or socially deleterious the results of his self-expression; but he cannot muster anything like this level of energy when it comes to defending the right to keep what he earns or the right to defend himself and his family from the criminal element from which liberal government fails to protect him. He would do well to reflect that his right to express his vacuous self needs concrete back-up in the form of economic and physical clout. Scribbler that I am, I prize freedom of expression; but I understand what makes  possible its retention.

Taxation then is a liberty issue before it is a 'green eyeshade' issue: the more the government takes, the less concrete liberty you  have. Without money you can't get your kids out of a shitty public school system that liberals have destroyed with their tolerate-anything mentality; without money you cannot live in a decent and secure neighborhood.  Without money you can't move out of a state such as California which is 'under water' due to liberal fiscal irresponsibility.

Taxation is a liberty issue.  That is one thought as April 15th approaches.  Another is that the government  must justify its taking; the onus is not on you to justify your  keeping. Government exists to serve us, not the other way around.

The Decline of Liberalism

Conrad Black provides some historical perspective.  A balanced assessment as the following excerpt demonstrates:

Roosevelt's social programs were left essentially unaltered for 20 years after he died, until President Lyndon Johnson cut taxes while expanding the social ambitions of the federal government with his Great Society War on Poverty, and massive job retraining efforts, coupled to great and long-delayed advances in civil rights. Kennedy and Johnson favored civil rights more actively than had their predecessors, and backed conservatives into pious humbug about the Constitution not allowing for federal imposition of voting rights and official social equality for African Americans. Johnson overcame that opposition and it was one of liberalism's finest hours. But the long Roosevelt-Truman-Eisenhower consensus frayed badly when Johnson, who had been a congressman during the New Deal years, determined to take it a long step further and proposed a policy extravaganza that promised to buy the end of poverty through social investment. As all the world knows, it was a disaster that destroyed the African American family and severely aggravated the welfare and entitlements crises.

 

Pelosi’s Theme Song

Not Fade Away.  The dingbat won't slink off into the sidelines.  Pretty face, though.  Too bad there's nothing behind it.

The late Ted Kennedy's favorite song actually was The Impossible Dream.  Figures.  It sums up the Left so well: the pursuit by any means of impossible mirage-ideals without regard for consequences.  "To be willing to march into hell for a heavenly cause."  To be willing to break 100 million eggs for omelet-in-the-future.

So conservatives don't have ideals?  Not at all. Ours are reality-based, grounded in genuine potentials of human action, and respectful of hard facts about man and nature. 

Companion post: Standing on the Terra Firma of Antecedent Reality

Conservative Activism, The Left’s Incomprehension, and the Genetic Fallacy (2010 Version)

'Conservative activism' has an oxymoronic ring to it.  Political activism does not come naturally to conservatives, as I point out in The Conservative Disadvantage.   But the times they are a 'changin' and so I concluded that piece by saying that  we now need to become active. "Not in the manner of the leftist who seeks meaning in activism for its own sake, but to defend ourselves and our values so that we can protect the private sphere from the Left's totalitarian encroachment.   The conservative values of liberty and self-reliance and fiscal responsibility are under massive assault by the Obama administration . . . ."

Continue reading “Conservative Activism, The Left’s Incomprehension, and the Genetic Fallacy (2010 Version)”