To be a "conservative," one concerns himself with what simply is; he believes in unchanging principles as the basis for political action. The most enduring of those principles, in conservative thought, is self-interest.
Self-interest is the core philosophical precept of the conservative: freedom exists in opposition to tyranny (or regulation); bigger government means less freedom, higher taxes mean less freedom. But what makes a conservative a conservative is not that he loves individual freedom and sees things which stand in the way of that freedom as bad; the conservative sees tyranny and regulation (read: taxes and government) as essentially non-functional. Conservatives don't think socialism is bad; they think it doesn't work.
This is an important distinction, because it relies on the essentially conservative notion of an unchanging human nature. To say that socialism is bad is to present it as an (unjust) alternative to the life that we know and love, though an alternative nonetheless. Conservatives don't see socialism as a system which functions and produces injustice. Conservatives see socialism as non-functional since it contradicts human nature, which they understand to be universally self-interested in the same way and to the same degree.
"It is human nature," says the conservative, "to want freedom in all things. Humans yearn for freedom, universally." Modern conservatives believe that want for freedom is an unchanging fact of public life everywhere in the world. Those who support a "forward policy of freedom" see liberalism (by which I mean a love of freedom for freedom's sake) as a universal fact of human nature, held to an equal degree among all men in every culture.
In the same way, Smith's "invisible hand" guides the market economy of all things traded, universally. The "invisible hand," like the want for freedom, is a claim conservatives make about "human nature."
This term, "human nature," refers to universal precepts of existence: human nature has no time, no place, no gender, no race. Shakespeare and Hobbes and Smith are central to conservative thought because they "explore the human condition," a condition which existed before those authors wrote, and which remains unchanged today. It's not simply that conservatives make claims about what human nature is, but, more fundamentally, that there is a human nature which is common to all men and does not change.
Exploring seriously what is fact and what is custom, what is and what becomes, what can be changed and what can't is how one becomes politically nuanced. At the core of every political decision, and all decisions are political, is the question of necessity.
2 comments:
How is the question of "who we are by nature" resolved? Does it matter to the conservative? What if what we are is in point of fact apolitical, at least insofar as we are by nature "created" with a view towards equality? Are these questions relevant to the description of the conservative?
Also: the liberal tends to the view the community as dominant in the political discussion, rather than the individual. does the conservative view the community as non-functional, non-existent, or just less important than the individual? and is my first claim correct?
also: what do you mean when you say "functional"? sounds like "sensible" or "logical". but do you really mean "practically useful" or something? i am confuse.
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