As the number of conservative bloggers on the Internet increases, it's becoming necessary to distinguish between those of a secular, scientific disposition, such as Randall Parker, John Derbyshire and Steve Sailer, from those with more strongly entrenched religious beliefs such as Jim Kalb, Lawrence Auster and Patrick Buchanan.
At the same time, there is also a need to differentiate economic egalitarians, who are critical of globalisation and cultural Marxism, from those on the liberal-left with more radical, anti-western agendas. Therefore, in writing my posts, I've decided on the following labels to identify these three types of liberal skeptics: "realists," traditionalists" and "commutarians."
Among other things, traditionalists (aka traditional conservatives or "reactionaries") believe in the importance of established religious and social practices, the fragility of prosperous civilisations, and the influence of inherited traits on human behaviour. Traditionalists are skeptical of progress and respect the wisdom of previous generations. Whilst not necessarily opposed to social or economic reform, they acknowledge that civilisation does not progress in a linear manner and that human nature cannot easily be influenced by education or social engineering. In foreign policy matters, traditionalists emphasis prudence and national self-interest over ambitious policies designed to spread particular ideologies or interfere with the politics of other countries. The traditionalist position is well-articulated by Mark Richardson at the Conservative Central Website.
Realists tend to be secular conservatives who are disillusioned with the increasingly ideological nature of modern liberalism. In common with traditionalists, realists believe in the importance of inherited traits in influencing human behaviour, and share the traditionalist's skepticism of progressive social engineering. Realists see technological change as inevitable, and have a high opinion of empirical science, but do not believe scientific progress inevitably leads to human betterment, and acknowledge progress depends on having a cohesive culture to support it. Subsequently they usually advocate a piece-meal approach to social and economic reform, which takes account of human nature and genetic variation. Potential sources of conflict between realists and traditionalists are controversial scientific matters such as birth control, eugenics, and genetic engineering. On foreign policy issues realists share the traditionalist preference for prudence and self-interest. Although the realist position has not yet been explicitly articulated, realist views on various issues can be found in the posts of bloggers such as Sailer and Parker.
Various other suggested labels for realists include:
"Darwinian conservatives," "scientific conservatives," " empirical conservatives" and "post-liberals".
Commutarians tend to be traditional socialists who believe in moderating economic inequality through established institutions, such as unions and cooperatives, whilst preserving the role of the sovereign state and established social norms and religious practices. They tend to dislike modern social engineering, which they see as unnecessary and undemocratic. They tend to believe that the mainstream liberal-left have abandoned the working and lower-middle classes and now operates in the interests of special interest groups and state bureaucracies. Commutarians are skeptical of globalisation and critical of aggressive foreign policies which unnecessarily interfere in the affairs of other countries.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
I would love to read your website but the black background and blue lettering makes that almost impossible.
Okay, so Sailer and Randall Parker (never read him but I will) are examples of realists; Mark Richardson is your example of a traditionalist; any examples of commutarians? Pat Buchanan maybe? Did you coin that word, by the way?
Good thoughts, I'll be thinking about your terminology for a while.
tripp, I'd describe Buchanan as a traditional conservative, by 'commutarian' I mean more economically progressive writers, who also suport some socially conservative positions, though perhaps not as strongly as traditionalists.
Examples of the sort of bloggers I'm thinking of are uk anti-war blogger Neil Clark, mutualist blogger Kevin Carson(mutualist.blogspot.com), and the author of the 'right democrat' blog.
Telos and Prospect are examples of good magazines that publish a lot of commutarian thinking.
I think other bloggers before me have used the term communtarian and also the term communitarian. However, communitarian is also a term for someone with a particular philosophical position which I'm not very familiar with.
There is a good wikipedia article on communitarianism, which has links to communitarian thinkers.
I just read this article in your archives. Very interesting. My terminology is a little different here in America. For example, I think your realists would be in line with our libertarians, perhaps the Paleo-libertarians to the extent they still exist. As you said, Buchanan is a rather obvious example of a traditionalist, as would be Russell Kirk, Robert Nisbet, and Paleo-conservatives such as Thomas Fleming of Chronicles.
Thanks Mark, some of my older posts tend to be a bit idiosyncratic and I don't necessarily agree with some of the views I held a couple of years ago.
However, I think still think we probably do need some kind of a term for old-school moderates and populists, like blue-dog democrats and Lou Dobbs, who aren't keen on cultural marxism and the NWO.
In New Zealand the definition of what a conservative is even more confusing than in the U.S.
For example, the populist politician Winston Peters, whose views would be very similar to those of Lou Dobbs, is regarded as conservative by some because he is a moderate immigration restrictionist and is relatively socially conservative.
On the other hand, many libertarians (who have grown in number since the 1980s) regard him as a leftist since he is an economic centrist who promotes protectionism and compulsory savings plans.
Also in New Zealand there is no such thing as a paleo-libertarian, most NZ libertarians are strongly opposed to the religious right and support increased immigration and the IMF.
Hence the NZ right tends to fall into 3 camps:
1. Mainstream centre-right neoconservatives who are moderately supportive of US foreign policy and are pro-free traders.
2. socially liberal, economic libertarians who strongly support free trade and lower taxes.
3. Socially conservative populists (almost all over 60) who support protectionism and a developmental state.
Thanks for bringing more up to speed on NZ conservatism. I like Lou Dobbs, by the way, although a lot of free trade Republicans and libertarians do not. As you'll see in my next post, The Conservative-Libertarian Debate, Paleo-libertarians are practically extinct in the US. I'd most likely classify myself as a traditional conservative with some strong libertarian tendencies.
Post a Comment