Writing a paper on conservatism headsonpikes, thanks for the ping.In my introduction I am trying to come up with a succint definition of conservatism.
Rots of ruck. You will have to decide for yourself what the definition is. I will however make some suggestions:The Theme Is Freedom: Religion, Politics, and the American Tradition by M. Stanton Evans.That's a must-read for conservatives, IMHO - but you don't necessarily have time to read the whole thing in the midst of the time pressure of a deadline for a paper. That's why you count on me to summarize. The "theme" to which the book's title refers is the theme of American conservatism. As Evans notes, conservatism relates to the particular polity and society you are considering: if you were talking about German conservatism or Russian conservatism or Chinese conservatism you would not say that the theme of conservatism in those places is freedom.OK, that's Evans on American conservatism. What about American Beliefs by John McElroy?
McElroy notes that there were four main colonial powers in America, and each of them found different things and wanted to do different things:
The conclusion is that Americans respect any honest work. If you reflect on English costume drama, you will realize that we didn't get that attitude from England - where the emphasis was on who you were rather than what you did - but in the American melieu where people who were respected because they were useful, and were respected for the caluses on their hands.
- Spain found bronze-age civilization, and conquered them in a conventional manner as they would have liked to have done in Europe, especially England. Since they found a going concern their only interest was in dominating and exploiting it, rather than creating it. So the only people they sent to their colonies were soldiers and gentlemen to be in charge. No Spanish peons need apply.
- France found in Canada not a going bronze-age civilization but a stone age one. But like Spain, France's primary motivation was control - of navigation of the St. Lawrence River - and trade with the natives. So there was need of traders, but mostly of gentlemen and soldiers to control. Very few peons, even French ones and certainly none other, were neededD
- Portugal found stone age peoples in Brazil. In order to exploit Brazil they sent over workers - in the form of African slaves. Plus of course, gentlemen to control the operation.
- England (it wasn't Great Britain until later) found in the portion of North America which it was able to claim nothing but stone-age people and forests. The land was rich and had tremendous agricultural potential but wasn't farmland until it had been laboriously cleared of trees and vines. The English colonists found that gentlemen were pretty useless; what the situation cried out for was farmers. So England sent over poor people - some, including some of my ancestors, came from Lutheran Germany - and so the American polity was dominated by practical people (even if they often had religious motivations for wanting to come, still they learned that the situation required diligent work).
Now consider the Constitution of the United States of America. That obviously defines American conservatism. And what defines the Constitution (which, BTW, is considered to crowning achievement of the Enlightenment) is its preamble. There we find an echo of "the theme is freedom" in the mission statement "to preserve the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity"."
In the reference to "posterity" - which variously can mean "descendants" or, more generally, "those who live after us" - defines conservatism as preserving something for the future. That seems to make sense for a definition of conservatism except if you consider the object being preserved. Liberty, after all, is the possibility of doing things differently than your parents did them. Working in different occupations, inventing new ways of doing things. "Liberty" is about the strangest possible form of "conservatism."
In fact, American conservatives weren't always called "conservatives." Historically we were "liberals." Why then is "liberalism" a dreaded label to shun when you are running for political office? For the simple reason that the word was misappropriated and run into the ground by people who had the ability to manipulate the language - journalists and intellectuals - and who had an agenda other than "liberty." Their agenda was the overthrow of liberty, and they hit on a way of subverting it. They took the word for the public - the word "society" - and appropriated it into the coined word "socialism."
I put it to you that the word "social" has nothing inherently to do with leftism; there's nothing "social" about a business call from a policeman. If you are an American Conservative you probably have learned to check your wallet whenever you hear someone use the term "social" or "society," and you are right to do so. Because leftists adopted the form of usage of the term which inverts its natural meaning. When a leftist says "society" s/he means nothing other than "government."
That is the con. Because "liberty" is only what remains when you subtract "government" from "society." If there be no difference between "society" and "government," then "liberty" is logically excluded. And that is the leftist project.
Well, where was I? I was saying that "liberalism" is a word which once related to "liberty" and applied to the people who are now in America called "conservatives." The transformation of the meaning of "liberalism" occurred in America before it happened anywhere else. Indeed it still hasn't happened everywhere. If you hear or read a foreigner refering to "liberalism" you have to do a context check to determine whether they refer to leftism or to American "conservatism." The Road to Serfdom by F. A. Hayek is a 1944 clasic which was reprinted many times, as recently as 1994. In a foreword to one of the printings, Hayek bewailed not only the fact that his use of the word "liberalism" was so easily misunderstood in America but the fact that that essentially "indispensible word" had been destroyed as far as Americans were concerned. IMHO that destruction had already been accomplished in America by the time of the advent of the FDR Administration. Because FDR used the deformed American version of "liberalism" entirely unselfconsciously.
I put it to you that the reason that America's leftists, and not the leftists of other nations, misappropriated the label "liberalism" lies in the fact that the term "socialism" - which I have noted is deceitful in its etymology - was a smashing success outside the US but a flop inside America. We already had a country which was governed by society; you couldn't promise us one in name which was actually "governmentism" (tyranny) in practice and con us into thinking you were offering nirvana. ("Socialism" in leftist speak actually means "governmentism" in plain talk, since as I noted earlier leftists always mean "government" when they say "social" or "society" - or, for that matter, "public").
I realize that you asked for a "succinct" definition of "conservatism." But I did warn you that it wouldn't be simple to be "succinct" and still be at all accurate. And your problem is compounded by the fact that your professor is almost certainly far too leftist to give much of anything I have said here a respectful hearing.
The most effective way of making people accept the validity of the values they are to serve is to persuade them that they are really the same as those they have always held, but which were not properly understood or recognized before. And the most efficient technique to this end is to use the old words but change their meaning. Few traits of totalitarian regimes are at the same time so confusing to the superficial observer and yet so characteristic of the whole intellectual climate as this complete perversion of language.
The worst sufferer in this respect is the word ‘liberty’. It is a word used as freely in totalitarian states as elsewhere. Indeed, it could almost be said that wherever liberty as we know it has been destroyed, this has been done in the name of some new freedom promised to the people. Even among us we have planners who promise us a ‘collective freedom’, which is as misleading as anything said by totalitarian politicians. ‘Collective freedom’ is not the freedom of the members of society, but the unlimited freedom of the planner to do with society that which he pleases. This is the confusion of freedom with power carried to the extreme.
It is not difficult to deprive the great majority of independent thought. But the minority who will retain an inclination to criticize must also be silenced. Public criticism or even expressions of doubt must be suppressed because they tend to weaken support of the regime. As Sidney and Beatrice Webb report of the position in every Russian enterprise: ‘Whilst the work is in progress, any public expression of doubt that the plan will be successful is an act of disloyalty and even of treachery because of its possible effect on the will and efforts of the rest of the staff.’
Control extends even to subjects which seem to have no political significance. The theory of relativity, for instance, has been opposed as a ‘Semitic attack on the foundation of Christian andNordic physics’ and because it is ‘in conflict with dialectical materialism and Marxist dogma’. Every activity must derive its justification from conscious social purpose. There must be no spontaneous, unguided activity, because it might produce results which cannot be foreseen and for which the plan does not provide.
The Road to Serfdom (Link to the Readers' Digest Condensed Version in PDF!)