You are right on all three points, of course, and in regard for your first one (“first one” is a redundant yet amusing expression, isn’t it?), I do think that Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” proposing a “system of natural liberty” shows an aspect that goes unaccounted for in this slash-and-burn essay that would require another figure: Namely, Rousseau and the question of freedom.

Back to Burke.

Burke’s position is not a simple one and I fear that my use of him here is too simple. But the point remains: If we take Burke’s basic stance as something like Pascal’s against Descartes (another simplistic but useful view), then, I think we find the cautionary tale of conservatism that has been ignored and, perhaps, forgotten in today’s liberal climate.

That forgetting has, in my mind, largely been because of the odd duck that American liberalism is—something like political trash-can punch: a combination of Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau (and more!)—but is also because of your final two points that depict the ability of the liberal nation-state ideology to consume the political imagination to the extent at which anything but itself becomes folly, and must be reinterpreted accordingly, including Burke.

David: I think that I probably have something like an incompatibility thesis going on in my head regarding liberalism and conservative, in principle. So, I do not think that such a mish-mash is possible. It might appear that way, as we see in the pre/anti-Rawls camp and the Rawlsian liberals, but, in the end they are liberals nonetheless.

So, I guess that I am arguing that there is no moderation, in principle, between believing in a secular nation-state (or any nation-state, as the case may be) and an autonomous individual, or not.

Pinky: Interesting distinction. Thanks!

That second understanding is usually implied. I might be more sensitive to it than most conservatives because it resonates with a Catholic understanding of Tradition. But we’ve heard people expressing it explicitly in the discussion of same-sex marriage.

Why wouldn’t conservatism be more explicit about the divine origin of truth? Mostly for political reasons. (The Founding Fathers had to walk this same fine line in order to keep the Deists and Anabaptists from throwing tomatoes at each other.) It’s a concession to the atheistic liberty-fanatics.

Anyway, interesting discussion.

If true liberals and true conservatives are as you describe them, what are “moderates”? Wouldn’t they have to be people who are inexplicably comfortable making a mishmash of two incompatible philosophies?

1) Adam Smith cited Burke as perhaps the only thinker with whom Smith always found himself in agreement. (Unles, of course, you would also consider Smith to be an example of true conservatism, in which case MM may have a thing or two to say to you.)

2) Modern American conservatives actually read and cite Burke a great deal. (Though, of course, you can maintain that they fully misunderstand Burke.)

3) Burke expressed a fair amount of support for both the American Revolution and the founding principles of the US — which would seem to cut against your thought that American conservatism has no connection with “true conservatism”.

Pinky: You raise a very important and valid point. To a certain degree, the idea of “objectivity,” as you put it, is something that seems continuous in today’s self-proclaimed conservatives. However, I do not want to make too much of this for several reasons:

1. Liberals are hardly the converse, they are not relativists. Only the really stupid articulations of liberalism tend to be that way and, as you know, even those articulations fail the test of outright relativism—relativism is utterly impossible to practice. But many liberals can tend to be non-absolutist absolutists, or something like that.

2. Limbaugh et al, frequently invoke secularism—i.e. the neutral state that has no source but in the collective will derived from individual autonomy of its parts—when they find it convenient. This makes me think that they believe in a groundless, secular state, until it seems inconvenient. Kind of like a bully who enjoys fighting until he gets beat up by the quiet new kid.

3. The fetishes from these so-called conservatives over the Christian essence of the US nation-state is mostly exaggerated, I think. Especially when we consider that, unlike the French Revolution (or the one in Tutor England), this liberal experiment “worked,” or has endured thus far. It should not be a shock to anyone that the secularism inherent in that experiment has progressively shown its head more and more.

4. Finally, this “ontic primordiality” articulated by a divine will or natural law does not suggest to me something “objective.” If anything, it makes things more slippery and in need of more rigorous examination. (Take God for example, things don’t get much harder to discern than this.)

This is where the post-structural (or postmodern, as Henry put it) element comes into play.

So, in sum, I would argue that while you are quite right to point out that, at first glance, there seems to be a similarity in my first principle and present-day conservatives, I think that when we look closer we find that it is mostly a false alarm.

This is very apparent in the decidedly populist tone of the “conservative” movement today that you mention. Its roots are with the complaints of the Tribe of Israel in First Samuel, not the other guy.

Dusty: Hey buddy! What book, exactly?

David: Ahistorical approaches to politics are themselves a serious problem, I think. While the meaning of the terms has evolved (something I recognize, in part, in Rawls’ update), they still find themselves within that literature and history. In fact, much of the new discourse of neoliberalism is largely mistaken, in my mind, for the very same (ahistorical) reasons.

About what to do, I think the suggestion is clear: Be less liberal and more conservative. How that affects suffrage should also be clear, namely, vote for those who seem to have less of the former and more of the latter. Or run yourself on those same principles.

Either way, the challenge of conservatism, as I put it here, goes beyond mere deliberation: it forces us to consider a better world altogether, I think.

MM: Yes, me too.

Kyle: There are some useful fictions, but they become dangerous when the cease to be fiction. David was the King of Israel, a very useful fiction, but became less-than-King when he forgot that he was NOT King, and acted like it.

Rights, in my mind, articulate a present intuition like ‘dignity,’ but leave behind a residue of individualism and things-that-are-owed-to-me. This may not be so useful. Why not be simpler and just argue for the nonsensical and beyond-jurisprudence aspect of dignity and personhood?

David: Or course I do. I agree with his grammar, easily proven by my use of it in this post. As you note, though, I also disagree with his meaning—as I said here, I think that he has no idea what that grammar means historically or otherwise. He uses it more like what I mean when I say “Go Longhorns!” or “Boo, Aggies!” or something meaningless like that.

Hence the subtitle: Why Rush Limbaugh is Right About Being Wrong.

No, you don’t agree with him, because he and you mean two different things.