LARGELY RIGHT, BUT NOT "RIGHT" :

We're All Conservatives Now (Robert J. Samuelson, May 24, 2002, washingtonpost.com)

Sometimes the largest truths are the most obvious and overlooked. One is this: Prosperous societies are profoundly conservative. The conservatism is not partisan or ideological. It is personal and psychological, as in: Please don't disturb; let things stay as they are. We see this truth routinely confirmed. It is poorer societies (China, India, Russia, Mexico) that are striving, in fits and starts, to remake themselves. Meanwhile, the world's enclaves of great prosperity -- the United States, Europe and Japan -- are mainly content with what they have. Standing pat has become a public philosophy, practiced by both left and right.

On the whole, this is probably good. It discourages waves of disruptive and probably fruitless experimentation. But the conservatism becomes self-defeating when it prevents countries from moving against undeniable problems. In the United States, Congress and the White House can't ax unneeded or ineffective programs. People feel entitled; someone might suffer. And Japan and Europe are even more tightly tied to stand-patism. [...]

Prosperity becomes a narcotic, accustoming people to present pleasures and numbing them to future problems. What best exemplifies collective avoidance is the refusal to deal with aging populations and the costs of government retirement programs, which -- in advanced societies -- will ultimately become too expensive.

In the United States, political leaders won't consider gradual and modest increases in the retirement age or benefit reductions for Social Security and Medicare. Europe's evasion is similar, but the pressures are worse because birthrates are lower, benefits higher and retirement earlier. In France men retire on average at 59, says the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). In Germany and Italy, the figure is 61. Typically, these retirees will live another 20 or 25 years.

European governments already spend 40 percent to 50 percent of GDP. By official estimates, retirement programs will raise these costs considerably. But the official estimates are probably low, as Richard Jackson shows in a new study for CSIS. Using less generous assumptions on life expectancy, birthrates and health spending, he thinks cost increases could be 70 percent higher over the next half-century. Either way, huge changes will be unavoidable -- someday.

But that day is not today. The instinct is to put off. Never mind that small changes and inconveniences now might avert large changes and disruptions later. The "later" lies in the distant future. Not to worry. Delusion is respectable, even mandatory. We may all be conservatives now, and possibly fools too.

Mr. Samuelson is usually so unflinchingly fair in his columns that I was actually shocked at what must be considered the cheapness of this one. Though he's correct that the term conservative can mean an aversion to change, in modern America "conservative" is a political posture as well and it is openly hostile to the status quo that he describes. Had the Conservative Revolution of 1994 succeeded--on other words, had Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich not chickened out during the government shutdown--we might even now be undergoing the kind of entitlement reforms of which Mr. Samuelson speaks. And it is conservatives, from the Reverend Jerry Falwell to George W. Bush who have been most vocal about the dangers of the narcotizing effects of prosperity. Mr. Samuelson may have one specific meaning of the term conservative in mind, but inevitably the column seems to blame conservative politics for these problems. This is unjust.

In his great book, The Conservative Mind, Russell Kirk defined the qualities that characterize a conservative :

(1) Belief that a divine intent rules society as well as conscience, forging an eternal chain of right and duty which links great and obscure, living and dead.  Political problems, at bottom, are religious and moral problems. [...]

(2) Affection for the proliferating variety and mystery of traditional life, as distinguished from the narrowing uniformity, egalitarianism, and utilitarian aims of most radical systems. [...]

(3) Conviction that civilized society requires orders and classes. The only true equality is moral equality; all other attempts at levelling lead to despair, if enforced by positive legislation. [...]

(4) Persuasion that property and freedom are inseparably connected, and that economic levelling is not economic progress. Separate property from private possession and liberty is erased.

(5) Faith in prescription and distrust of 'sophisters and calculators.' Man must put a control upon his will and his appetite, for conservatives know man to be governed more by emotion than by reason. Tradition and sound prejudice provide checks upon man's anarchic impulse.

(6) Recognition that change and reform are not identical, and that innovation is a devouring conflagration more often than it is a torch of progress.  Society must alter, for slow change is the means of its conservation, like the human body's perpetual renewal; but Providence is the proper instrument for change, and the test of a statesman is his cognizance of the real tendency of Providential social forces.

And he contrasted these core beliefs with those of conservatism's opponents on the Left, the radicals of all stripes, who believe in :

(1) The perfectibility of man and the illimitable progress of society: meliorism.  Radicals believe that education, positive legislation, and alteration of environment can produce men like gods; they deny that humanity has a natural proclivity toward violence and sin.

(2) Contempt for tradition. Reason, impulse, and materialistic determinism are severally preferred as guides to social welfare, trustier than the wisdom of our ancestors.  Formal religion is rejected and a variety of anti-Christian systems are offered as substitutes.

(3) Political levelling. Order and privilege are condemned; total democracy, as direct as practicable, is the professed radical ideal. Allied with this spirit, generally, is a dislike of old parliamentary arrangements and an eagerness for centralization and consolidation.

(4) Economic levelling. The ancient rights of property, especially property in land, are suspect to almost all radicals; and collectivist radicals hack at the institution of private property root and branch.

Even if you'd quarrel with certain aspects of these definitions, it seems hard to argue that moral license and massive entitlement programs can be blamed on conservatives.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 26, 2002 4:24 PM