Is there anyone in punditry who exemplifies the word "bloviation" more than George Will? His recent column on why Americans should choose conservatism over liberalism is, as usual, detached from reality. But it's a detachment I've observed as fairly typical of people who call themselves "principled conservatives"–Andrew Sullivan comes to mind. They seem to have little understanding of the reality that inevitably follows from their conservative/libertarian principles.
For both Will and Sullivan the choices are either the morally noxious welfare state in which citizens surrender their freedom and regress into dependent sucking on the government teat or the morally superior rugged individualism in which each citizen stands on his own two feet and fights it out in the market place. Never mind that it's a false choice, but it's what Will's discussion contrasting freedom (the preference of conservatives) with equality (the preference of liberals) comes down to. And for him, it's what principled conservatism and the Republican Party stands for–or should.
Both Will and Sullivan seem oblivious of the real consequences of their celebration of their narrow definition of freedom: that those who have wealth and power have more freedom than those who don't and the wealth and power they have enables them to dominate the system in ways that impinges on freedom of those who do not have wealth and power.
A society in which conservative "freedom" is the absolute value is a society ruled by the law of the jungle. It's a society in which the strong dominate the weak, because in such a society no restraints are put on the strong to prevent them from doing as they please. And what the strong please to do more than anything is maintain their prerogatives and that requires their exploitation of the weak. That's just the way it is in the jungle: the lion and the hyena eat the wildebeest.
Humans are capable of transcending that "natural" predatory dynamic. They organize themselves into societies, and the most morally advanced societies are those in which the rights and interests of the powerless are perceived as equal in importance to the rights and interests of the powerful. And in such societies institutions and traditions are established to prevent the strong from exploiting the weak. And if you want to understand why when conservatives get into power they behave in the reckless, lawless way that they do, it's because they believe that the law of the jungle takes precedence over the rule of law. It explains the whole macho tenor of their thinking and behavior, and why they are so obsessed with feminizing those who opt for the rule of law rather than the law of the jungle.
A guy like Sullivan would insist that someone like Bush isn't a conservative or that he has had a destructive influence on principled conservatism, but the policies of his administration follow inevitably from the removal of governmental restraints Libertarian conservatives like Sullivan promote as central to their program. The Katrina fiasco, the brainless militarism that led to the Iraq debacle, the whole corrupt K Street system, the disregard for the Geneva Conventions and the undermining of habeas corpus, the politicization of the DOJ, and the degradation of the environment are all predictable consequences of his Libertarian brand of conservatism, whether Libertarians desire these results or not.
The idea that real Libertarians frown on these excesses is facetious. Whether wittingly or unwittingly these Libertarians are providing the intellectual cover that creates the conditions for their possibility. Libertarianism is a sophomoric philosophy that can appeal only to the intellectually second rate. It sees itself as the morally superior and principled celebrant of individual liberty and self reliance without understanding how it promotes an ideology seized upon by the greedy and power obsessed to justify doing as they please.
Whether Libertarians approve of these consequences is as irrelevant. It's like the defense of the person who ignorantly poured water on a grease fire causing the house to burn down. It wasn't his intention to do so, but the consequences were predictable. Sullivan is not the pompous fool that George Will is, but I continue to wonder why anybody can take seriously someone who seems so incapable of making the connection between his conservative principles and their real-world consequences.
There's an interesting discussion of this at TPM Cafe for those who want to pursue it in more depth, but here are some of the better comments:
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of mankind's oldest exercises in moral philosophy, that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. It is an exercise that always involves a certain number of internal contradictions and even a few absurdities. The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character-building value of privation for the poor." – JK Galbraith (quoted by maxgowan)
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I'd even argue that the conservative notion of liberty entails government constraints on liberty in order to maintain market-based inequality. It's predicated on government as stern parent and the individual as driven by not just greed but strong values of self-reliance. That's why it's so easy for the party of the rich to enlist the values crowd against its economic interests (a problem for Thomas Frank).
But that's also another limitation on the creed. One often accuses free-market ideology of social Darwinism. In assuming that success turns so much on self-reliance, it amounts even more to a kind of social Lamarckism. It's too discomforting to claim that markets attain efficiency by weeding out failure. It's so much more cheerful to say that birds grow wings because they want to, and these traits survive. Thus, as in Will's own pitiful example quoted above, ending social security would make older Americans richer, since, well, they'd darn well have to become richer, or else. (jhaber)
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The conservatives are interested in one and only one freedom and that
is the freedom to form monopolies and take as much as they can from us
without having to pay taxes. The word freedom is code. (Good 4 A
Merica)****
I'm 65 and I have to say that throughout my life I've met all too many people who (in the immortal words of Jim Hightower) were born on third base and thought THEY hit a triple. (cal1942)
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