Managerialism v individualism

Although contemporary society is supposed to champion individualism, it often fails to do so in practice because the desires of the individual frequently clash with the smooth functioning of the managerial state.

A classic example of this is the modern state's attitude to owner-operated small businesses.

Despite the pro-small business rhetoric that we’ve been hearing since the late 70s, most modern liberal governments almost invariably consider small businesses a pain in the ass.

As DIY generalists, owner-operator businessmen and women, violate one of the primary tenants of economic theory, that people should specialise in one task if possible, since according to rational economic thinking, specialisation equals efficiency and small-scale multi-tasking doesn't.

Government bureaucracies also find educated specialists a lot easier to deal with. This is why government and big business get on so well. Both have large bureaucracies staffed by professional employees with specialised skills who can talk to each other in the same jargon-filled language. Subsequently government's in most western countries have been making life more difficult for small business, with increasing regulations, indirect taxes and new or expanding accident compensation levees. Some free business advice is now available, but it tends to be of the generic common-sense kind, which is often of limited use to those in specialised, technical fields.

The recent bailouts of big US and UK corporations in the financial sector, is only likely to add to the already high level of grievance felt by the western small business sector.

Interestingly, while governments in the individualist West have been steadily making life harder for small businesses, governments in communitarian Japan have been trying to make life easier for them, with specialist help for example in research and marketing, and in learning to use the latest technology.

This seems paradoxical from the perspective of western individualism -shouldn't collectivists who believe in tempering economic goals with social ones be anti-small business?

Well it does make sense if you take into account that small business is in many respects a communitarian activity, and that people often go into business for non-rational reasons.

People prefer working for themselves for all sorts of reasons; they don't get on with their co-workers, they want to work in a place of their own choosing rather than sit in traffic for hours, they don't have a great CV, they want to pass on a business to their children, and so on and so on.

Since Japan is more communitarian society than most western countries, it understands that rational managerialism can undermine social cohesion if pushed too far, so the country’s elites try to direct the goals of the bureaucracy towards the needs of society rather than re-mould society to fit the rational logic of the bureaucracy.

No doubt Japanese small business owners still have a lot of hassles with government bureaucracy, but at least they know that the bureaucracy isn't ideologically opposed to them.

Unlike westerners, the Japanese also have a more concrete, producerist mentality when it comes to the economy and they realise that in a post-industrial society, many people will struggle to find productive employment which adds real value to society.

Conversely, western elites seem to assume that laid off manufacturing workers can easily find steady, reasonably well-paid work in the service sector, even though much of what the service sector produces is non-essential distractions that people have to cut back on in a recession.

Another example of managerial opposition to practical individualism is secondary taxation. Since people who hold multiple jobs are an inconvenience to the state, it discourages people form taking on more than one job by overtaxing them and then making wait in hope for a tax rebate.

A similar bureaucracy first mentality exists in welfare departments, where, in New Zealand and Britain for example, those seeking short-term unemployment relief are treated like minor criminals, while long-term welfare recipients like solo parents and sickness beneficiaries are regarded as permanent wards of the state.

If traditional music be the food of law and order, play on?

Over the pat few years local authorities in the US, UK and New Zealand have started using the tactic of playing classical music near shopping areas and other public places to deter teenagers from gathering in large groups and making a nuisance of themselves. And apparently this technique is proving pretty effective - a lot of teenagers are really getting turned-off by listening to traditional classical music that sounds totally alien to the simplistic Afro-American hip hop that they usually listen to.

While this is probably a good tactic, if it proves effective, It's a little sad to see classical music, being portrayed as the music of the establishment, when in today's liberal order, it's nothing of the sort. In today's world, where market populism reigns supreme, the classical scene music is more like an endangered species, which gets a modest government subsidy to broadcast on community radio and provide the odd concert. If the modern liberal establishment has a signature sound, it's more like the easy-listening pop, rock and electronica heard reverberating around shopping mall food courts and automated help lines.

I have a pet theory that one of the reasons why classical music is stuck in such a marginalised cul-de-sac, is the persistent campaign by Marxist music critics to drive a wedge between popular music and traditional musical genres like classical music and folk. From the 1930s to the 1970s there was a sizeable popular demand for crossover-music like jazz and progressive rock with musicians from George Gershwin and Miles Davies to Robert Fripp held in high regard by the popular music press and the Stuff White People Like crowd. However, with the arrival of punk in the late 1970s, there was an aggressive campaign to strip popular music of any links to traditional western music and culture.

Progressive rock in particular, came in for savage attack, with music critics accusing it of being bourgeois and pretentious (as in the case of ELP) disturbingly politically apathetic (as in the case of Yes which championed spiritual enlightenment over leftist politics) or even "crypto-fascist" (as Canadian rock band Rush were labeled for using Ayn Rand-influenced lyrics). Indeed, some leftist music critics savaged just about any band which deviated from the prescribed 3 minute, 3 cord, sex,drugs and rock n roll formula set down in the late 50s. Not surprising, in such an anti-bourgeois climate popular musicians from middle-class backgrounds ( like Joe Strummer of The Clash)  went to elaborate lengths to prove their proletariat credentials by adopting fake accents, working-class personas, and denying having any formal musical training.

This sustained and largely successful attack on cross-over music means that today's young people have little or no exposure to music with traditional sounds and instruments or complex structures, and popular music that’s been stripped of folk, choral and classical influences is proving to be bland and unmelodic.  Hip hop music is particularly alien to the western musical traditional since it offers almost no instrumental virtuosity, which was one of the main factors that made heavy mental music so popular with working-class white males from the 1970s to 1990s.

The Conservative Dilemma in America: Turf Wars, Fusionism or Alliance?

With the two major election losses of 2006 and 2008, the Republican Party has respectively lost Congress and the Presidency and now finds itself adrift and in search of a new identity. It seems at this point, with the Tea Parties and anti-ObamaCare movements, that conservative leadership is coming more from the grassroots than from the Republican Party. But while I’ve supported third parties in the past, when conservatives were in power instead of a statist left wing regime, this is not a time for such advocacy if conservatism is to survive, as the statist transformation of American society and government promoted by the Obama administration is in the process of inflicting irreparable damage on the Republic. At its inception in the 1950s, the conservative movement had a common foe in Soviet Communism abroad and Progressive statism at home. I think we live in similar times, although the threat at home is currently drowning out the threat of Islamic jihadism abroad.

In the 1960s, Frank S. Meyer, a communist before converting to libertarianism and joining the staff at William F. Buckley’s National Review, promoted the theory of “fusionism”: a political philosophy that unites elements of libertarianism and conservatism (See Wikipedia). Meyer argued his theory in his book, In Defense of Freedom: A Conservative Credo (1962), although he had not yet dubbed his theory “fusionism.” It is fair to say that Meyer’s thesis was not received with undiluted acclaim as none other than Russell Kirk, one of the father’s of American Conservatism ‘retorted that “individualism” (the term then used for libertarianism) was “social atomism” and even anti-Christian. The political result of individualism, he said, was inevitably anarchy.’ Kirk also criticized Meyer’s fusionism and individualism for its rationalism, and countered that ‘Custom, tradition, and the wisdom of our ancestors . . . constituted the firm foundation upon which a society should be built.’ (Lee Edwards, “The Conservative Consensus: Frank Meyer, Barry Goldwater, and the Politics of Fusionism,” Heritage Foundation, January 22, 2007, p. 1). Meyer had previously criticized Kirk’s seminal The Conservative Mind (1953) for lacking any “clear and distinct principle,” or a comprehension of the institutions of a free society (Ibid.).

Friedrich Hayek joined in the fray with his essay “Why I Am Not a Conservative” (The Constitution of Liberty, 1960), where he criticized Kirk and fellow conservatives for not understanding economics, for “strident nationalism,” and for a lack of “any guiding principles which can influence long-range developments” (Edwards, p. 2). Needless to say, while fusionism wasn’t perfect, it worked well enough to help nominate Goldwater in 1964 and elect Reagan to the Presidency in 1980. I’ve written previously in “Political Definitions: Conservative, Liberal, and Libertarian” about how I think Hayek’s classical liberalism or libertarianism can be reconciled with conservatism, as Hayek was an admirer of Burke, the father of Anglo-American conservatism, and his theory of “spontaneous order” was respectful of traditions that evolved historically. George Carey has also written about the compatibility of Hayek’s “evolutionary” theory of society with traditional conservatism (“Conservatives and Libertarians View Fusionism,” Modern Age, Winter 1982, Vol. 26, No. 1, p. 12).

Reflecting upon my own political philosophy, which combines elements of conservatism and libertarianism, there is an uneasy contradiction inherent in such a point of view. For the modern libertarian, freedom or liberty is the highest virtue, including political, economic, and social liberties, whereas for the conservative, while freedom may be important, tradition has earned a higher place in his sentiments. Of course in America, where our tradition is one of classical liberalism, liberty and freedom are at the core, making it a bit easier to entertain inconsistencies. We, after all, do not have a tradition of Toryism or monarchism, as do the Europeans. But there’s definitely a difference between classical liberals, such as Edmund Burke, a Whig who was also religious, and modern Progressive Liberals, who are influenced by Marxism and other socialisms, and tend to be irreligious. But even classical liberals or libertarians are often irreligious and ready to overturn traditional cultural institutions when they obstruct economic freedom or individual liberty, and there lies the rub. It is also significant that those of us on the Right always have to consider this contradiction between freedom and tradition, some of us embracing one or the other, but many of us struggling with the contradiction, while those on the Left almost universally embrace equality as the primary political virtue. Thus, rather than a contradiction, their thought exists on a continuum of Statist egalitarianism, from Progressivism and social democracy on one end to democratic socialism and the absolutism of communism on the other end of the scale. As my readers may have observed in their own experience, for the left, the enemy is always to the right, seldom if ever on the left.

Contemporary internecine disputes are complicated by the ascendency of Neo-Conservatism in the Republican Party power structure, although with recent election defeats, the Neo-Con standard has been in some disrepute, as Bush’s foreign policy was largely designed by Neo-Con strategists. While in the course of my own conversion to conservatism in the late1980s, as an avid reader of Chronicles magazine, I have felt more affinity for the traditional conservatism espoused there by Thomas Fleming and fellow travelers such as the late Sam Francis, Paul Gottfried and Pat Buchanan, than I have with Neo-Conservatism, but I must say, I’ve never liked the term Paleo-Conservative and find the conservative infighting between the Paleos and Neos to be rather tedious. Beyond a few well-known examples, I’m often not sure, nor do I care, who is a Neo and who is a Paleo. (I confess as well to disagreeing with the Paleos about Israel, while I agree with their stance on illegal immigration, and to some degree, on economic matters. But to complicate my own political affinities further, I was also influenced by so-called Paleo-Libertarians such as Murray Rothbard and his mentor, Ludwig von Mises, Hayek as I’ve previously noted, and Ron Paul.) That aside, the average conservative American voter really doesn’t give a damn about the Neo-Paleo conflict, and such academic politico squabbling reminds me of Freud’s phrase, “the narcissism of minor differences,” which he used to describe “the phenomenon that is precisely communities with adjoining territories, and related to each other in other ways as well, who are engaged in constant feuds and in ridiculing each other” (Civilization and Its Discontents, p. 61). This is not to say that there are no real points of contention between Neo-Cons and Paleo-Cons, but disagree or not, if they don’t unite to battle their common foe of left wing statism, the battle will be lost before it begins.

That said, what are some of the policy implications inherent in a Republican coalition that includes traditional conservatives, libertarians, and neo-conservatives? Several issues emerge. In the economic sphere, the conservative dilemma is whether to pursue a global free trade policy despite the fact that the U.S. has a huge trade deficit with China and Japan, or whether to pursue a more nationalistic economic trade policy. Paleo-Cons tend to prefer the latter course whereas Neo-Cons and Libertarians tend to prefer the former policies. Both sides do believe in free markets; the Paleos however, want reciprocal trade agreements. As I’ve said elsewhere in “Is the Republican Party Really Conservative?” Adam Smith did not promote the idea that a free market nation should tolerate huge trade deficits. But as we’ve all discovered with the recent global financial collapse, when it comes to modern global economics, nothing is simple. I recently began reading David Smick’s The World Is Curved (2008) because I wanted to understand, from an insider’s point-of-view, what happened in the economic meltdown of 2008. While I am personally in favor of some kind of return to the gold standard and have been influenced by Austrian economics (see “Inflation, the National Debt, and Monetary Reform”), Smick does make some good points: For example, without all the easy capital flows and credit, the global economic expansion of the past 25 years would not have been possible. That doesn’t change my views as to the need for monetary reform because I don’t think the bubble to bust cycle is good for the average American, but it does point to the fact that now that we have a Democratic Congress in favor of increased government regulation of the economy, redistributionism, and protectionism, there could be drastic unintended consequences following economic tinkering by clueless politicians. Smick wrote:

The problem, however, is that in a highly entrepreneurial economy, it is difficult, if not impossible, to micromanage wealth distribution without negative countereffects. To some extent, the system must tolerate a certain amount of ugly distributional “unfairness” with the greater goal of producing an explosion in wealth creation, greater job creation, and broad-scale poverty reduction. (p. 88)

Another area of dispute between Paleo-Cons, Neo-Cons, and Libertarians is in foreign policy where Neo-cons tend to prefer an internationalist/interventionist and Pro-Israeli foreign policy whereas Paleo-Cons and Libertarians prefer a more Nationalist America First policy in the case of the former and an anti-war policy in the latter case, both of which tend to be non-interventionist. These are real differences that won’t disappear in the near future. Both sides of the conservative movement do, however, believe in a strong national defense.

In summary, all of these policy differences make a right wing coalition government much more problematic than a left wing government, which is at least fairly united in the goal of increased statism and greater government control in the lives of individual Americans: On the left the question is generally how much and how fast to increase government power, not whether to be for or against globalization or illegal immigration or interventions in the Middle East. While these differences do exist on the left, particularly on the issue of globalization, they do not generally elicit the passionate infighting that is apparent on the right. Of course, we shall see, with Democratic control of Congress and the Presidency, how Obama will handle the dissatisfactions of the extreme left, and more moderate Dems on the center-left of the Party.

While I think it’s essential to have thinkers who take principled Paleo-Con, Neo-Con, and Libertarian positions, to win an election in a democratic republic like the United States involves winning over a broad coalition to your point-of-view. So while a fusion of the three positions may not be possible, after all, people with differences do not melt into a common stew, a coalition that includes Paleos, Neos, and Libertarians is possible: a coalition or alliance against a common enemy, left wing statism. As I argued in “Is the Republican Party Really Conservative?” we can agree about our values in favor of individual liberty, economic freedom, limited government, opposition to political correctness in our cultural institutions, and pro-American rather than anti-American foreign and domestic policies, despite the significant disagreements enumerated above. Without such an alliance, which as I’ve argued in “Conservative Populism,” must also include Reagan Democrats, an appeal to youth, and hold on to most of the Religious Right, America will end up being a mere shadow of its former self, a socialistic mess of a third world banana republic.

Quote for the week

Great line from View from the Right on the strange desire of Britain’s elites to continue promoting immigration in the crowded post colonial era:

“The British couldn't afford an overseas empire any longer, so they brought the Third Worlders to Britain, imagining they could continue benignly leading them at home just as the had done in the former empire.”

New Zealand’s third world fisheries

Fisheries are one of the few productive sectors which most developed countries still run along nationalistic lines. Generally only financially desperate third-world governments open up their fisheries to foreign vessels. An exception to this is New Zealand, which as part of its apathetic attitude to fishing resources  and later a neoliberal commitment to free trade, has allowed foreign vessels from around the world to fish in its territorial waters since the late 1970s.

Initially foreign vessels were allowed into New Zealand waters to fish for deep-sea species which local fishermen were unable or unwilling to fish for. However, after a collapse in numbers of deep-water species such as Orange Roughy in the 1980s, a quota system was introduced which meant foreign vessels were only permitted to fish for quota on behalf of New Zealand companies.

Unfortunately there are two standards when it comes to policing this quota system. New Zealand-run ships are carefully policed by on-board fisheries officers, but foreign vessels are often left totally un-supervised. The reason for this lapse monitoring of foreign vessels was revealed in a programme entitled the Great New Zealand Fishing Scandal  which aired on the Documentary Channel earlier this week.

Apparently, conditions on many of the foreign-owned vessels from countries such as Thailand, Myanmar and Russia are so bad that New Zealand Fisheries Officers refuse to stay on them for health and safety reasons. Subsequently, we have little idea if these boats are confirming to local regulations or not. And even when it is proven that they are breaching fisheries regulations, it is often easier for them to pay the relatively modest fines than abide by the rules.

Defenders of the current system, argue that New Zealand wouldn't need to employ foreign vessels if New Zealand were willing to go and get the fish themselves, rather than rely on keener, harder-working foreigners to do the job for them. However, this doesn' t really apply  when you are taking about a shrinking resource for which demand is increasing. Even if New Zealanders under-exploit the resource in the short-term, this isn't really a serious problem as the resource will therefore last longer, and the total value of fish taken in dollar terms will be higher, as a fish not caught today can be caught and sold for a higher price tomorrow. And in any case, that's likely to be an academic problem, as there are now sufficient New Zealand boats around to catch the existing quota (which has recently been cut dramatically for many species) without needing to call on foreign vessels.

The end result of this rash experiment in laissez-faire fisheries management is that many New Zealand fisherman are unable to compete with foreign vessels and hundreds have left the country for jobs in better managed fisheries in Australia and North America.

For a developed country with a small population of 4 million people, and thousands of kilometres of relatively unpolluted coastline, this is a situation of third-world incompetence.

Former Labour prime-minister David Lange once had the audacity to say New Zealand was run like a Polish shipyard. However, in the case of fisheries, he and successors have turned it into the equivalent of a Nigerian shipyard.

Subsidising market populism

With state-owned Television New Zealand facing increasing pressure these days to cut staff and compete with Sky TV, perhaps the government should be putting some thought into whether taxpayers should continue to subsidize mass-market entertainment.

Most of the programming on TV2 for example is popular soap-opera entertainment like Shortland Street, which is little different to the kind of television viewing produced by the private sector. And if such programmes can be made successfully in the private sector, then there's little justification for the public sector producing them as well.

The original rationale behind public broadcasting was to provide high quality content that the market was unable or unwilling to deliver. This relatively elitist approach to public broadcasting reached its cultural apex in the 1960s and 1970s, with the BBC in particular, delivering a number of excellent dramas, documentaries and comedies, which in many cases have not been bettered.

In the 1980s though, market populism began to take hold as an odd alliance of left-liberal egalitarians and neoliberal managers decided public broadcasting needed to take account of mass market tastes, i.e., the tastes of those US commentator Steve Sailer refers to as "people who like movies with big explosions."

Market populism, for better or worse, has also spread through the Anglosphere's education establishment with its notorious "communications" and "studies" majors, and through cultural institutions like museums which switched from being relatively hi-brow cultural repositories to kid-centric pop culture centres, guaranteed to insult the intelligence of anyone with an IQ north of a 100.

This was kind of sad, since in the 70s and 80s many had struck a pretty good balance in their displays, which made them accessible to the average person, while still being interesting to the well- educated.

In the new millennium public broadcasting reached further lows as public radio became little more than a left-liberal propaganda vehicle and public television sunk to the reality TV lows of Treasure Island, Big Brother and I''m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here.

From a conservative perspective, it would make sense for the commercially orientated TV2 to be privatised, and to reserve the limited state funding for the more educational and high-brow, but less commercially viable, Television One.

As far as Radio New Zealand goes, this should either be privatised, or made to present a more diverse range of political viewpoints.

A good start would be to include a few conservative and libertarian guests on its interview shows. If we have to listen to interviews with leftists like Howard Zinn or Naomi Klein, then why not interviews with independent right-wing figures like Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan?

The Concert Programme arguably deserves to stay, as its about the only arm of state broadcasting that's focused on preserving western culture and providing a genuine alternative to populist commercial media.

Political Definitions: Conservative, Liberal, and Libertarian

Liberalism, Conservatism, and Statism

So-called “Liberalism” is in the very air we breathe; it permeates the air with the media, newspapers, TV, the entertainment industry, movies, and music. Schoolchildren are imbued with the air of liberalism from their first day of school right through to their graduation from colleges and universities. Unless one is brought up in a deliberately conservative Christian environment, it is the worldview we grow up with. But what is often forgotten is that liberalism has a history; a history marked by a dramatic change in the meaning of liberalism and how it is defined. Prior to the Progressive era of the early twentieth century, liberalism in America connoted belief in liberty and limited government, the Rule of Law in which equality before the law was a core principle but equality of condition was not because only by government intervention and redistribution of wealth could the latter be achieved, at the cost of economic freedom. Political liberalism first arose out of the English “Rule of Law” tradition of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was this tradition that was transplanted to the American colonies, and eventually gave birth to constitutional government in America. Hayek wrote that the rule of law is “sometimes confused with the requirement of mere legality in all government action”:

The rule of law . . . presupposes complete legality, but this is not enough: if a law gave the government unlimited power to act as it pleased, all its actions would be legal, but it would certainly not be under the rule of law. (The Constitution of Liberty, 1959, p. 205)

Unlike the French tradition of 1789, the Anglo-Saxon tradition did not trust absolute power in the hands of a legislature (as in majoritarian democracy), and thus set up a system of judicial review, to limit legislative power (Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty). Thus, liberty or freedom was the dominant abstract principal, whereas with the ascension of the Progressive movement, liberalism was redefined to include and even to prefer, the ideas of socialism and Marxism, so that equality became the guiding light of the new liberalism. As the well known American historian, Will Durant, has commented (I think he took the notion from Tocqueville), freedom and equality, taken to their logical extremes, are contradictory.

In Suicide of the West (1964), James Burnham described how classical liberalism, with its belief in individual liberty, had been transformed (or morphed) into modern liberalism, with its primary principle of egalitarian social justice (and hence influenced by Marxism and other socialist doctrines):

This difference in human character type corresponds to a theoretical conflict within the ideology of modern liberalism: the conflict between the principles of free speech and the other individual freedoms on the one hand, and the principle of egalitarian social justice on the other. Essentially, it is a conflict between individualism and regimentation: the individualism that the liberal ideology derives from its past and the regimentation it has absorbed in the present. This conflict is real, and can be hidden but not solved by discussion, negotiation and compromise. It is a fact that liberalism’s inherited principles correspond to individualism, and a highly atomistic individualism at that. It is equally a fact that the Welfare State and plebiscitary democracy mean a good deal and an increasing deal of regimentation. One or the other must give way; and, on the evidence of the past generation, there is little doubt which is the tottering horn of that particular dilemma. (p. 171)

In the 1960s, the New Left established an even closer allegiance to Marxism, with the Civil Rights movement, the anti-War movement, radical feminism, the counter-culture, with an ideological spectrum that spanned the distance between Progressivism on one end, to Maoism on the other. The political correctness movement also appeared on the scene at American colleges in the 1960s, as campus radicals argued which Marxist ideology was the most politically correct. According to Wikipedia, the term can be traced back to Mao’s Little Red Book. What many, perhaps most, Americans are unaware of, is that the Conservative movement did not exist prior to the 1950s and did not really become a political force until the 1960s, with the Goldwater for President Campaign. Nixon was elected for a second term in 1972, largely as a reaction to the 1960s New Left and counter-cultural movements, which supported McGovern. With the founding of the Moral Majority in 1979, the New Right came to the fore as a political force, helping to elect Reagan in 1980. But throughout the Progressive era, World War II and the early post-War era, there really was no Conservative movement. There were of course, libertarian and conservative thinkers, and a few conservative politicians, such as Robert Taft, but there was no large-scale Conservative Movement.

Conservative Libertarianism

America was founded as a noble experiment. Once independent of Great Britain, we had no monarchy, no titled aristocracy. We were to be a “government of laws, not of men.” Liberalism, as stated above in its original meaning, was the ideology of the republic. The orthodox way of presenting the political spectrum is based on the French model, originating in the Estates General which seated from right to left, First Estate (clergy), Second Estate (nobility), Third Estate (bourgeoisie and commoners). That arrangement eventually became obsolete, but in Europe, monarchists and the Church came to represent the right wing whereas the capitalist bourgeoisie became the left wing, espousing liberal ideals. Eventually, with the advent of the socialist movement in the nineteenth century, the proletariat became associated with the left and the liberals moved to the right. The Libertarian Party has argued that this old world political spectrum no longer applies to the modern world, that in fact Hitler and Stalin had more in common than not (for example, the Hitler-Stalin Pact), and shouldn’t be on opposite sides of the spectrum. For the libertarians, the political spectrum should run from the government with the most individual liberty, on one end, to the most state control at the other. A liberal republic with limited government would be at one extreme, and totalitarianism would be at the other extreme. (While some might argue that anarchy should be at the extreme end of complete liberty, I would argue that without the Rule of Law, it would be survival of the fittest, and the thug with the mightiest gang would prevail. For those who would argue that that is our current system, I suggest they move to a country were such conditions actually prevail, such as Somalia, and report back.) So my argument would run thus: since we had no tradition of monarchy and America was founded as a liberal republic, to be a conservative in America is to conserve that tradition of liberalism. Conservatives in America are, for the most part, classical liberals. New “Liberals,” on the other hand, tend to embrace various forms of statism, from social democracy, to democratic socialism, to political correctness and Marxism.

As a result of confusion around the term “liberal,” classical liberals in the modern age have adopted the identity of libertarian. There are, indeed, differences between libertarians and conservatives, in particular, libertarians tend to be more socially liberal and less religious. But both groups do share similar roots. For example, Gary North, has argued in an article entitled “Robert Nisbet on Conservatism” (LewRockwell.com, April 1, 2005) that both the conservative, Robert Nisbet and the classical liberal, F. A. Hayek had roots in the Whiggism of Edmund Burke, generally considered to be the father of conservatism. Although Hayek includes an essay entitled

"Why I am Not a Conservative?" in his Constitution of Liberty (1959), he concludes that he would rather be called a Whig, after Burke. Hayek was a classical liberal, but so was Burke (he was a Whig, after all, and not a Tory). Burke was also an admirer of Adam Smith, generally considered the father of free market capitalism. So there are many points at which conservatism and libertarianism (or at least the classical liberal version of it) converge, and one could argue that most American Conservatives are actually classical liberals, that being our tradition going back to the Founding Fathers. Unfortunately, the label "liberal" has been polluted by the Progressives and socialists, who have re-defined it to mean something entirely different. While New “liberals” are constantly accusing conservatives of Orwellian Newspeak, changing the meaning of the political term “liberal” from one who believes in the Rule of Law, limited government, and economic liberty to one who believes in unlimited state power to micromanage the economy, redistribute wealth, and privilege certain classes of people before the law to the detriment of others, is a classic case of Orwellian Newspeak known as doublethink. And yet, the redefinition of liberal is seldom challenged.

What the conservative brings to the table (in addition to the above), a respect for tradition, can peaceably coexist with Hayek’s classical liberalism because traditions due tend to evolve naturally like Hayek’s “spontaneous order.” Traditions evolve through trial and error, and they continue to exist because, from a pragmatic perspective, they work (even though they may be in many ways irrational). Robert Nisbet in his Quest for Community (1953) has emphasized the importance of intermediate (local) associations, such as families, churches, guilds, and community groups as a necessary buffer between the individual citizen and the absolute power of the State. This notion also came from Tocqueville, who was a French classical liberal theorist if we are to venture a political categorization, and it is also a conservative position. It is also perfectly consistent with libertarianism (although not often emphasized) because by creating a buffer between the individual and the state, freedom is furthered. Unfortunately, many Enlightenment and modern liberals have actually looked askance at intermediate associations such as religious organizations because, particularly during the Enlightenment, such associations were considered to be enslavers of mankind, whereas the modern liberal state would become the guarantor of liberty (see Voltaire, for example). Remember that in the eighteenth century, the Church and the aristocracy were on the right in Europe, in opposition to the liberal bourgeois class that was on the left. It should have become abundantly clear, however, with Twentieth Century totalitarianism that the State could not be trusted to be the sole guarantor of liberty.

Two Types of Rationality

Another way to distinguish the classical liberal from the new statist “liberal” has to do with their stance towards rationality. As both the conservative philosopher Michael Oakeshott (Rationalism in Politics, 1962) and the economist Friedrich Hayek have stressed, the left tends to rationalize economic and political systems to a degree that is incompatible with human freedom. (It should be mentioned that Oakeshott and Hayek had their differences, as Oakeshott rejected all forms of rationalism while Hayek did not. As Oakeshott said of Hayek’s Road to Serfdom: “A plan to resist all planning may be better than its opposite, but it belongs to the same style of politics” Ibid., p. 26). Hayek, on the other hand, believed that there were different types of rationality, some more conducive to freedom than others. North noted that “Hayek argued in his 1952 book, The Counter-Revolution of Science, that there are two kinds of social rationalism: "constructivist" rationalism, or top-down rationalism, and the rationalism of the free market, a bottom-up rationalism.” I think this gets to the difference between the Rationalist and the believer in reason as a necessary tool of human intelligence. The “constructivist” Rationalist always believes that he or she can design the perfect socio-political and economic system to order all human behavior. This is what the utopian socialist or Marxist, or the Jacobins of the French Revolution believed. Hayek wrote: “Those who believe that all useful institutions are deliberate contrivances and who cannot conceive of anything serving a human purpose that has not been consciously designed are almost of necessity enemies of human freedom. For them freedom means chaos” (The Constitution of Liberty, p. 61). As Austrian economists, such as Hayek and Ludwig von Mises demonstrated, you cannot perfectly plan an economy because there are too many variables. No central planner can have perfect and complete information required to manage a whole economy. The Soviet Union always produced too much of what people didn’t want and too little of what they did because they had no way of pricing goods according to market demand. It was a command or top down economy. Surplus food often rotted on trains and eventually the system broke down (see The Economist, “A Survey of Perestroika,” April 28, 1990). An old Soviet quote was, “They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work.” Hayek, on the other hand advocated “spontaneous order,” an order that naturally evolved over time through the trial and error of human experience, often from the bottom up. I think a similar logic applies to social and political arrangements. When government thinks it can legislate or order by judicial fiat such arrangements, individual freedom is lost.