Conservative & Liberalism Continued

Excursis Continued:  I don't want to make too much of what might be the trivial, and trivializing, illustration of baseball.  It is enough to recognize the basic stance of conservatism and liberalism.   The conservative agenda is not, as Lilla suggests, hostile to change, and if they are hostile to change, it is to "doctrines and principles that do violence to preexisting opinions and institutions, and open the door to despotism."  There is, however, a directionality to the changes they can accept.  Although the express intent of conservatism may not be to conserve privilege and power, if the game, as constituted, differentiates power and privilege, creates winners and losers, the result nevertheless is substantially the same.  As one might easily imagine, the freedom to act is wholly contingent upon the instrumental means of action and being, so to speak, in a position to act.  If I do not have the means to act, and I am not in a position to act, any individual rights I might have, any theoretical freedom from legal or other constraints, have no bearing on the reality of my life.  I still cannot act.  If I do, however, have the instrumental means to act, and if I am positioned to act, any freedom from legal or other constraint simply enlarges the sphere of my action.  There is a common human aversion to despotism, but one suspects some duplicity in the conservative valuation of freedom.  I would agree with Lilla that conservatism need not be perceived as "the theoretical voice of animus against the agency of the subordinate classes," and there is nothing in the conservative position that provides a consistent, much less profound, "argument as to why the lower orders should not be allowed to exercise their independent will," as Robin would have it.  Indeed, conservatism is what it purports to be, the theoretical voice of animus against the coercive power of the government, and if they present a consistent argument, it is against the regulatory and redistributive government.  It is against the curtailment of individual rights for individuals, not only for individuals, per se, but for individuals more broadly conceived -- the individual corporate identity.  The result, however, is substantively the same as if they had argued as Robin suggests, the consolidation and conservation of power in the hands of those already empowered to act -- a wider gulf between those with (and those without) the instrumental means to act, and diminishing prospects of crossing the gulf.  The increasingly libertarian stance of conservatism, theoretically, would expand the field of freedom for all, but practically it expands the field of freedom for those already in possession of the instrumental means to act and contracts the field of freedom for those who "live and labor in conditions of unequal power."

There is a sort of odd oxymoron in a phrase like "the increasingly libertarian stance of conservatism," as if the classical liberal rhetoric of "free human action" had been co-opted.  Lilla is, I believe, correct in asserting that America is basically liberal in its attitudes and government.  Our constitution is, after all, a genuine construct of human freedom, and both in its body and in its amendments, it demonstrates a consent to transcendent principles.   As a people, we genuinely believe in both freedom and justice for all -- that is to say, we are free to construct our own realities, and if our actions are to be constrained, they are the constraints of justice broadly conceived as equal access to opportunity.  We have not achieved a perfect union, but that does not preclude our ability to work toward a more perfect union, and we can point to steady progress in civil rights as evidence that, when it borne in on us, we recognize and reform arbitrary barriers to opportunity.  It is (or was) an object of deep secular faith that such disparities that do exist between individuals reveal, on the one hand, individual preference (we are not, after all, in pursuit of the same happiness) and, on the other, individual character (one's willingness, for example, to work hard).  It is easy enough to smirk cynically and point out that we have largely lost our secular faith, but why?  As David Brooks has written in a recent editorial, we tend to think "the whole system is rigged," or to put it in other terms, we tend to think the "government has been captured by rent-seekers," or welfare-seekers, those who use government to extract benefits.  The iconic image at the low end of the spectrum is clear enough, the welfare seeker who uses a government subsidy to support her crack addiction, not her children.  The iconic image at the other end of the spectrum is a bit less clear, but is becoming clearer.  As Brooks notes, some of these welfare-seekers are "corporate types.  The federal government delivers sugar subsidies that benefit a few rich providers while imposing costs on millions of consumers."  The recent automotive and bank bail outs are, perhaps, sufficient evidence of the corporate welfare seeker.  We are living, or so we tend to feel, not with redistributive justice, but redistributive injustice, with little faith on either side of the isle that government can correct itself.