REPOST: Standing for Something: Part 1 - Indiscrimination?

The Declaration of Independence - one of the anchors of my conservative thought.

What is a conservative? Why are conservatives conservative? Why don't conservatives just accept the changes in America? What's the matter with conservatives, anyway? And why am I talking to myself like this?

This is the first part of a multi-part article about why I am a conservative. As part of this series, I will explore the various fundamental roots of my own conservatism. I have no idea how many of these articles I'll write. I suppose I'll start when I begin and end when I've finished.

First off, conservatives conserve stuff. Conservatives root themselves in formative ideas and texts, then measure modern society against them, in effect, putting the brakes on willy nilly changes, especially those that ignore or break with the formative ideals. Conservatives see that not all old things are bad just as they see that not all new things are good. For example, my own conservatism is rooted in the principles of the Declaration of Independence, in the US Constitution, in the Federalist Papers, and in the principles of limited government.

Modern liberals view conservatives with distrust, precisely because conservatives have ideals anchored to the past. For example, complaints I frequently receive take the forms: "What? Do you want us to return to the Dark Ages?" or, "You're one of those people who would have supported slavery;" or even, "You cling to your fantasy book, written thousands of years ago. Don't you know that things have changed since then?" Apart from being ludicrous misrepresentations of conservatism, these statements are designed as an insult to intelligence and common sense.

Of course conservatives do not advocate a return to the Dark Ages. For some reason, modern liberalism sees conservatives as monolithic, desperately clinging to their guns and Bibles. (Sound familiar?) They forget that conservatives can make modern, reasoned choices based on standards long forgotten by modern liberals. If the standard is something like "all men are created equal," then it makes sense to understand that civil rights are a good thing and that all races should be treated fairly under the law. If the standard is "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," conservatives will take that statement at face value and decry attempts to prohibit free exercise of religion. The point is that the standards exist and conservatives attempt to adhere to the standard, while at the same time allowing changes to the world that improve it.

Conservatives want to mold future changes without seriously damaging the fundamental texts of conservatism. Modern liberalism, on the other hand sees no problem in changing the texts to suit the situation. One of my students, when confronted with the standard of the US Constitution stated that the Constitution needed to be changed. This exemplifies modern liberalism - there is no attempt to conserve past fundamentals or ideals.

Then what are the standards of modern liberalism? Allan Bloom, in his book The Closing of the American Mind, makes this observation:

[Liberalism] pays no attention to natural rights or the historical origins of our regime, which are now thought to have been essentially flawed and regressive. it is progressive and forward-looking....It is open to all kinds of men, all kinds of life-styles, all ideologies. There is no enemy other than the man who is not open to everything. But when there are no shared goals or vision of the public good, is the social contract any longer possible? (pg. 27)

The reason that modern liberalism is antithetical to and even hostile to, conservatism stems from placing ideals in progress, not in the past. It is forward-looking, so "backward" texts (such as the US Constitution or the Bible) are ignored. Under such an ideology, concepts such as hope and change become more important than first principles. Bloom puts it this way:

Indiscriminateness is a moral imperative because its opposite is discrimination. This folly means that men are not permitted to seek for the natural good and admire it when found, for such discovery is coeval with the discovery of the bad and contempt for it. Instinct and intellect must be suppressed by education. The natural soul is to be replaced with an artificial one.

I appreciate this quote, especially because of its first sentence, "indiscriminateness is a moral imperative." Social liberals, besides its forward-looking nature, would like all morals to be filtered through the lens of indiscriminateness, because, of course, discrimination is bad. The problem arises precisely in the ideal of indiscrimination: every person, every idea, every lifestyle, every choice must be accepted because, if we fail to accept them, then we discriminate. Lack of discrimination becomes a moral imperative.

Hence, conservatives lose by default, simply because they dare to discriminate between things: good and evil, virtue and vice, limited government and oligarchy, marriage and neutered marriage, life and choice, and so on.

Modern liberals like to attack conservatives on the grounds of discrimination. One familiar argument goes like this: "You don't want gays to get married. That's discrimination! You wouldn't have accepted interracial marriage either." This type of argument is ludicrous, yet shows how deeply indiscriminateness has seeped into modern thought. When indiscriminateness becomes the moral imperative, nearly everything looks like discrimination, especially when past standards are conserved.

In my next installment, I will talk about the anchors of my own conservatism. (see part 2)