The Community of the Smugly Indifferent
August 22nd, 2008
“Cernig”, of Newshoggers, riffs on conservatism from a Scots/British perspective, seeing in it (not surprisingly) a strong Classical Liberal case for Obama and against McCain and the Republican party. It’s a fascinating reminder that there used to be such a thing as principled conservatism (and apparently in the UK it’s reviving, now that Thatcher is thankfully gone), and that any reasonable version of it has to include much of what liberalism has, slowly, won over the years. Go there to see why Obama is a better and truer conservative than McCain, and why he owes that to liberalism.
The Community of The Realm is the idea that it takes all of a people to make a nation and that in that sense even a King is only one of the many. . . .
Where most conservatives err is in believing that economics takes precedence to morality or that economics can regulate morality just like any other market. The utilitarians - inspired by [Adam Smith and] that other great Scot, J.S. Mill - were to point this error out very well (and indeed Mill became far more of an influence on the Founders of America than Smith ever was). Smith was never that dumb. He himself advocated for a Government that was active in sectors other than the economy: he advocated for public education of poor adults; for institutional systems that were not profitable for private industries; for a judiciary; and for a standing army. . . .
As a consequence of that Scottish pragmatism, a strong British conservative tradition that includes Smith, Benjamin Disraeli (One Nation) and the younger Winston Churchill that predates both Marx and Thatcherite/American Republican thugonomics evolved . . . but that tradition never made its way into the “I’m Alright, Jack” variety of American conservativism exemplified by the modern Republican Party. All Republicanism today is interested in are negative freedoms - the freedom to be without government supervision as much as is concommitant with public safety. But the British variety, like more left-wing political theory, also concerns itself with the need for the government to provide positive freedoms through legislation - such things as rent assistance, food stamps and other social programs enable the people to not be free to starve, go cold or go without shelter.
And here’s where I think the crucial difference between barrack Obama and John McCain lies. Obama, although doubtless fond of rhetoric which he may not deliver upon, seems to really get the Community of The Realm. “Eight Houses” Mccain doesn’t, as when he backed predatory lenders over the people suffering real privation because of the credit crunch those lenders created for themselves. Neither do George Bush or the current mainstream of Republicanism, which is why we’ve seen such a strong push for an Imperial Presidency this last eight years.
As America is asked to choose between the Community of The Realm or the Imperial Presidency, then it would do well to emulate the Founding fathers, who brought their studies of Mill, Adams and the Scottish Declaration of Independence to the fore as they drew up their own and the subsequent Constitution.
Categories: Culture, Economics, General, How Capitalism Will Ruin You, Libertarian Problem Solving, News & Current Events, Politics | 10 Comments
