OK, what do you think is the first rule of conservatism?
Granted, being cynical fits with populists too, but if the nature of conservatism is to put trust and power in the individual and allow them to make their own decisions, how would being led blindly by corrupted elites fit in?
I think anyone who subscribes to the concept of rugged individualism will want to verify what they are told. To desire a limited government, you need faith the vast majority are mature enough to make decisions for themselves, or will develop the ability quickly.
My statement was a flippant joke. I’d probably probably give it much more thought if I were to come up with a list of rules for conservatives. That’d still be on the list, just not first.”
A philosophical discourse is of course vastly preferable to much of what goes on here. So this is good.
I think conservatism means first of all being guided by history and experience, not coming up with grand ideas guided only by “let’s pretend” and make believe and a desire to make things better rapidly (which usually stems from a belief system girded only by “let’s pretend”).
I don’t think the individualism, on its own, is actually a primary principle of conservatism. I think it is an accompaniment, and a good one at that, but individualism as a founding principle is the beginning and end of libertarianism. Now that said, conservatism for the last 120 years or so has been at war with the overarching state whose mission is to play a grand game of “let’s pretend” and let’s make things better overnight. Conservatism says that that has to be stopped, and it has to have an alternative. An alternative narrative is certainly the one of individual rights, and such a narrative can’t exist with the overpowering State. But at the end of the day, true conservatism, as distinguished from libertarianism, isn’t even really about the individual, as such. It is about the organic health of a people, a civilization, a country, a society. These things are works that have built up over time, and they are easy to bring down, hard to bring up. And there are plenty of examples of healthy, wonderful units of civilization where the individual doesn’t hardly exist at all, yet all of the participants flourish anyway. (Think of a healthy, large family).
Now...back to the populism point. You are quite right that is is a corollary of conservatism in this day and age. And in the political realm, conservatives can use that energy effectively. But populism also contains the seeds of its own destruction, as it ultimately rebels against everything that is “elite”...including literature, the arts, classical music, money, social position and rank, beauty, etc., etc., etc.
Huey P. Long is rightly described as a populist. He is not a conservative, but really a left-fascist. But he stood up for the little guy (or so he said).
In America today, the little guy needs to be protected from the Socialist State. That is absolutely true. And in that conservatives, populists and libertarians must be united.
But conservatives would never think that everything that comes out of the mouth of the little guy is pure wisdom and should govern us. Could they (er, we...) do better than the Harvard Faculty right now? You betcha. Conservatives wouldn’t dispute that at this moment in history (or for that matter, the foreseeable future...alas).
But in a healthy, functioning society like say America in the Founding Era, was there an elite (the Founding Fathers) who appropriately held most of the important political positions? Of course. Everyone had their place, and it functioned, and there was nothing overarching (such as a socialist state) to wreck it.
For a time, at least.
So fast forward to today. Does this have any relevance to the 2012 election? I think it does. I think some strands of what constitutes the Right in America today are really informed more by populism, rather than conservatism. Populism has reared its head on the right in my lifetime in the Y2K embarrassment, in the Buchanan campaigns, and on other occasions. And every election cycle when the polls go bad for us here at FR, we hear populism at work when everyone says “the polls always lie”. Well, the polls don’t always lie. In fact, some of them are spot on. History proves that. And similarly not EVERYTHING the “elites” say is false. Aside from being metaphysically impossible for that to be the case, that level of fear and loathing makes us end up not using tools that could actually help us. Are we really better off in the long run by having our candidates say, “the polls always lie”? Do we really want to never trust polls? If we do that, then we are not using a tool in the box, basically disarming ourselves.
In any event. Not to go on too long, but maybe a few points worthy of further discussion....best regards.
In my posts - even my first one which was admittedly flippant - I think I always emphasized the important to be cynical of elites and to verify what we are told. I don’t think I ever said “reject” or “repudiate” everything we are told. This is like the distinction between our revolution and the French revolution. We created new law, they just through through out the law entirely.
Populism of William Jennings Bryan, Huey Long, and even Ralph Nader is doomed to failure. The idea of a fair play and being treated equally under the law is mutually exclusive with ceding all the power to a big central government. As power and money are concentrated in one place, it only guarantee greater corruption and more effort at circumventing the rules for the well-connected.
Certainly, the ‘populism’ of the right today, is much more sustainable. It is a revolution against cronyism and crooked deals seeking a much smaller government.
All the regulations, rules, and reviews cannot really stop cronyism and special deals. The way to make it manageable to control and limit is with a limited government operating under clear and limited regulations, thereby reducing the potential take.
Your point about the founding fathers being ‘elites’ is well taken. They were in the sense they were the elites of the colonies, but they were not the elites of the British governing class.
They obviously had something great to offer and were critical to establishing a sound and lasting republic. I do not seek to emulate the French revolution and kill them all, I seek to emulate our revolution and carefully screen who I believe and follow.
Take care,