A Phrase that Always Torques Me Off

I saw it again today, this time from a putatively conservative columnist. I say "putatively" because I have a hard time classifying someone who does not base his conservatism on the idea that man has certain divinely-given rights--note that that says nothing about the nature of divinity and leaves a lot of latitude; I am not saying that one necessarily has to be Christian to be conservative (though it helps), just that if you don't base your ideas about man's rights in someone higher than man, you pretty much inevitably wind up in bed with Thomas Hobbes--and this man is an atheist. You might make a case for him being a fiscal conservative, or perhaps a libertarian. But I digress.

The phrase is, "The Supreme Court has ruled..." and it was used, as it generally is, to indicate that all opinions contrary to the court's ruling are the merest moonshine.

Well, as Sherlock Holmes once said, moonshine is, after all, a brighter thing than fog, and frankly, you need not look very far in the court's history to find instances of blatant bias, partisanship, and outright idiocy. What the court has previously ruled means little or nothing to me. What matters is whether or not they take the Constitution to mean what it says.

Someone once wrote that Clarence Thomas ought to wear a t-shirt reading, "Stare Decisis is fo' suckas." I agree.

First Quote from Liberty and Tyranny

There is simply no scientific or mathematical formula that defines conservatism. Moreover, there are competing voices today claiming the mantle of "true conservatism"--including neo-conservatism (emphasis on a robust national security), paleoconservatism (emphasis on preserving the culture), social conservatism (emphasis on faith and values), and libertarianism (emphasis on individualism), among others. Scores of scholars have written at length about what can be imperfectly characterized as conservative thought.

[snip]

To put it succinctly: Conservatism is a way of understanding life, society, and governance. The Founders were heavily influenced by certain philosophers, among them Adam Smith (spontaneous order), Charles
Montesquieu (separation of powers), and especially John Locke (natural rights); they were also influenced by their faiths, personal experiences, and knowledge of history (including the rise and fall of the Roman Empire). Edmund Burke, who was both a British statesman and thinker, is often said to be the father of modern conservatism. He was an early defender of the American Revolution and advocate of representative government. He wrote of the interconnection of liberty, free markets, religion, tradition, and authority. The Conservative, like the Founders, is informed by all these great thinkers--and more.

It can be difficult to define conservatism. Mr. Levin has done about as good a job in a short space as can be done, I suppose, though his brevity almost necessarily leaves what he has to say about the various factions within conservatism something of an oversimplification. Quite a lot of conservatives will scarcely admit that a Neocon is a conservative at all (I have to grit my teeth when contemplating the idea), for example, and personally, while I think that libertarians have many ideas that overlap with conservatism, libertarianism is not really a division of conservatism. Also, I think a good case could be made for an "emphasis on faith and values" being the means of "preserving the culture," which would mean that "social conservatism" and Paleoconservatism would not necessarily be as easy to distinguish from one another as Mr. Levin might make them out to be.

I do think that Mr. Levin is right in his basic idea, though, that "There is simply no scientific or mathematical formula that defines conservatism." Conservatism, in my opinion, is more a method, more an approach to the maintenance of a society than it is a laundry-list of popular positions. It proceeds largely from certain bedrock ideas and presuppositions, but it is far more flexible in application than many of its detractors think.

Libertarian, Libertarianism

A libertarian is a person who agrees with conservatives that man has certain fundamental rights and that the proper role of government is limited to the securing of those rights--that is, to justice--but who tries to build his argument on a basis other than from God's revelation. Ayn Rand, for example, started from Aristotle's famous A=A and built her whole edifice upon that point. Libertarian arguments in general seem to me to be designed to prove to all men everywhere that man has certain fundamental rights, and for this reason, are generally made without reference to God, on the grounds that not all men believe in God.

The problem, as far as I am concerned, is that as soon as you start building your argument apart from God, the very obvious question comes up: "If I want to violate someone else's rights, as long as I can get away with it, why shouldn't I?" And in the most practical terms possible, a godless argument offers no serious answer to this. To the best of my recollection, every time one of Rand's characters in Atlas Shrugged asked some variant of this question, she has one of heroes or heroines shoot him (said shooting generally accompanied by a sneering observation about the questioner's cannibalistic tendencies) rather than grapple with the question. Ultimately, a godless argument for man's rights suffers from what Francis Schaeffer called an insufficient base. In an atheistic universe, the only law that applies is the law of the jungle: eat or be eaten.

A second problem for libertarians is that in practical terms, they cannot actually finance the very limited functions of government that they will concede should exist, as they usually hold that taxation for any reason amounts to robbery. The conservative says that God ordained government and taxes to support its legitimate functions.

Nevertheless, because libertarians do hold that man has fundamental rights, the violation of which constitutes immoral behavior, libertarians and conservatives have many areas of policy overlap and are frequent political allies.