You are right. In essence the mission is to keep what is valuable from the past and,where possible, improve upon it. Not "move fast and break things" and thereby lose the lessons of the past.
The current crop of US & UK "conservatives" wouldn't recognise the type of conservative I am. The clue's in the name. Conservatives conserve things. I'm a British working class man who despairs of what's happened to my country and our culture. And no, I'm not referring to immigrants. Many of them have the same manners I was taught and still practice, and that, sadly, my native countrymen often lack. Something has gone badly awry with us. I watched Keir Starmer getting excited about AI in possibly the most naive way possible - yes, what my country needs is giant data warehouses polluting the earth and the atmosphere so we can produce slop expensively at speed. Rather than, y'know, affordable housing, heat pumps, real food, or open libraries. What is wrong with these people?
Well-written. I've felt the same way--most of my values are bedrock conservative values like progressive taxation, one person-one vote, rational gun laws, getting the nanny state out of reproductive choice, supporting public goods like education, libraries, etc. They've been rebranded by the right-wing extremist GOP as "socialism," which uses the term as an epithet and not a description of a government or economic system.
Okay, you lost me at "... bedrock conservative values like progressive taxation, one person-one vote, rational gun laws, getting the nanny... ", etc. I'm 69, but I don't recall any of that - must've been before my time. Please, elaborate.
The conversation can’t be had as long as the discourse is drowned out by a professional PR din that every 2 years characterizes any proposed higher taxes on the wealthy as “the largest tax increase in history” and the political media just accepts that as untouchable campaign rhetoric.
"In 1962 I was a Conservative. I believed privilege could only be justified by service, high taxes on very high incomes were necessary to prevent an entrepreneurial economy becoming a rentier economy, and Keynesian growth would finance public service improvements and a welfare state that steadily reduced inequality. I was suspicious of ideologically driven, large-scale change. These were the mainstream policies of the Macmillan government at the time. In 60 years I have moved from centre right to hard left without changing my opinions."
I observed years ago (for one particular person, though he is not unique in this) that a lot of self-described progressives today seem to me rather to be conservatives who are deeply frustrated with modern conservatism, and have accepted the evidence of the validity of the progressive critique and the necessity of the proposed reforms to the point where they can no longer recognize that their advocacy for them stems from their own conservatism. (As an actual progressive likes to put it, the problem the left has is being right too early.)
There was, of course, also Ambrose Bierce's observations:
"CONSERVATIVE, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others."
"RADICALISM, n. The conservatism of to-morrow injected into the affairs of to-day."
EDIT: And, of course, G.K. Chesterton: “The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types -- the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins. He admires them especially by moonlight, not to say moonshine. Each new blunder of the progressive or prig becomes instantly a legend of immemorial antiquity for the snob. This is called the balance, or mutual check, in our Constitution.”
“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”
I just realized the other day that I’m both the most conservative and the most liberal I’ve ever been in my nearly sixty years, and that “conservatives” are not in any way conservative nowadays.
I am drinking to KoolAid on this essay, but as with all profound essays, leave the scene feeling helpless and hopeless except for maybe decades after I am gone. What strikes me is not so much any observation at a point in time, but the change and its rate of change, from before. Sort of like quantum mechanics, movement, probabilities, etc. And for me the rate of change happening justifies a more extreme response than the past; not violence, but a sense of panic that maybe this time is different. Politicians love to say they are an optimistic at heart, then beat the shit out of the present and cannot articulate why they are optimistic. If a genie gave me one wish it would be to put this essay in front of the SC justices and require them to identify which portions they disagree with. And with an ending for some justices to explain how they sleep at night knowing their motives are suspect to many who want what this essay recommends. Overall, what I keep thinking is the need to not only assess where on a topic we are at a point in time, but to acquire/research and debate the change from its before, and whether the change is going in the right direction. Imagine discussions with others where each side agrees to articulate on any topic the BEFORE, and whether the perceived change suggests optimism or pessimism. No discussion is over until each side articulates if the perceived change is in the right direction or not.
I am trying to imagine you teaching Civics in a public high school where young people could learn something extremely valuable to take them into adulthood. I think as well a discourse on why we as a nation cannot of late elect a level- headed, thoughtful, individual as a leader would be appropriate. But most of all this discourse and many that have preceded it should be required reading.
a lot things progressives is not new or radical. most of them are more of what already there is: anti trust, better medicare, better progressive tax, better new deal, better voting rights, etc
i still can't believe you lay blame on trump. he is the symptom of what gop was becoming before him. it was not a benign party before him. Just look at the justices pre trump.
Im responding to this, their theory predates Trump: Donald Trump wants whatever Donald Trump wants at the moment he wants it, and an entire political party has spent a decade converting those wants into a theory of executive power.
In this kind of thinking you miss the underlying structures of capitalism and prescribe recipes for reform that are only vaguely articulated. It is not possible for taxation as it is now conceived to alter the present power dynamics. The cinequality of wealth is an inequality in power. The purpose of capitalism and specifically corporations is to accumulate wealth. In practice that has always meant for a tiny elite. Anti-monopoly laws as currently conceived will not work, in fact cannot work.
The form of capitalism, (at least you imply you want to conserve) functions against the preservation of liberal democracy (at least in the way it was conceived) as the purpose of democratic institutions areto diffuse power. So in effect they work in contradiction.
Both have long histories.
Capitalism’s evolution is very long (that is capturing the fruits of another’s production for profit and accumulation of wealth/property) perhaps as long as several thousand years. The evolution of complex agricultural cultures needed management. This turn may well have stimulated the Chieftain ownership of all property. Systems of various democratic forms are ancient and long. However the likely prehistories of egalitarianism are much longer
You apparently want the keep our constitutional government. Our constitutional government does not mention any form of economy. It does in fact twice invoke as one purpose “to promote the general welfare”, meaning to increase the health and wellbeing of all. There is not much of our current mode of capitalism that does this.
A look back the to the post war era up until the 1970s when we had higher progressive taxation and more regulation capitalists still captured most of the gains. What we did have at that time was twice as much public ownership of services and massive state level educational support.
However the conservatives of the1960s nominated Barry Goldwater and when he lost his supporters, the wealthy elite began to organize. And the Reagan (conservative)revolution brought with it ,deregulation, lowered taxes, destruction of unions, acquiring media, consolidation of industry (mergers and acquisitions) the rise of private equity etc.
it was in the 80s that the propaganda of conservatives was institutionalized. In the beginning came the Heritage Foundation. The wealthy had no problem plowing mountains of capital into these conservative foundations, from Claremont to Cato.
They also purchased and captured departments in universities in order to give a sheen to Neo-liberal economics and ideas of social repression.They even squeezed racist ideologies out of academia, (remember Charles Murray?).
Now there are 500 hundred of these capitalist institutions around the world. Oh, and along the way in order to protect their system they invaded several countries killing 100,000s of thousands of civilians if not more. They had their own home-brewed anti-communist associations that even to this day fetishes robust antagonism against socialism of any kind.
Keep in mind that while conservatives funded these anti democratic institutions there was no public healthcare for most and wide spread poverty existed in the inner cities and many rural areas. Not to be afraid,the military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned about grew by leaps and bounds
.
So where did those conservative roots lead? To a country that now says out loud all the things conservatives have been planning. And unfortunately enacting them.
Where do those unfortunate judges on the SJC come from?
That’s right from the Federalist Society. Endowed by some the most right wing heirs of the riches captured during the gilded age,Scaife Mellon etc..
They are the group that gave us originalism, also hatched from conservative think tanks and Universities.It was a silly ideology useful until it was no longer needed. Now the original mission is clear. The goal all along was conservative libertarian small government, an unleashed capitalist nightmare.
I take that you don’t want associated with any of that conservatism. After all one of their primary goals was to keep racism institutionalized.
Maybe you want go back further. No not to Roosevelt, who was willing to use socialist tools to bring us back from the results of conservative governance.Apparently institutionalized racism had to continue for political reasons. Conservatives / Neo confederates insisted on it.
Don’t get confused because conservatives were then also democrats preserving their cultures of segregation etc. Before that republicans as well as democrats endorsed program’s that enabled my big businesses.
While the word corporation doesn’t exist in the Constitution business couldn’t exist without it. And from earliest legislative corruption to the free incorporation in the middle of the 19th century corporations grew first for all he most part building public infrastructure. Beginning later in the century the SJC from time to time expanded the rights of corporations. Which if we are honest we’re always at the heart of conservatives because the exist as weapon created by the English monarchy to extend the reach and domination of those with capital lying around to invest that is merchants and aristocrats. So is the conservatism you endorse it’s been around a long time. S corporations kept increased not their rights all the way to citizen united which is not only a corruption but among the most ignorant judgements a court has ever. made.
The corporation a select group of the people elite come together to pool their money in order to meow a large business venture. Seems reasonable enough yet one of the virtues of capitalism was sold to us by conservatives who had read Adam Smith was competition. Now assuming this is a democracy with equality before the law and markets that reward merit or effort. Unfortunately this corporation structure not in the conditions enable the wealthy group to avoid the hangs humans cannot such as liability and debt. Now pooling wealth rights get away with gives an advantage to the already wealthy but now government creates a an entity with special protection and rights. Now this structure was invented to protect shipping merchant who at least hat time assumed great risk as there was a n usually great risk the woods ships sinking. So at that time it seemed rational even if in the end it vastly increased the wealth of these capitalists. However the conditions changed the ships didn’t sink very often. However did we reduce the advantages of corporations? No way. The conservatives with their money equals power equation mad sure that the courts increased their rights in every generation. They wanted to conserve the advantageous form and slowly modify to increase their advantage. We have seen how that ends.
Let’s go farther back. Why are we still burdened with a constitution that is unable to give us democratic results. It was design that way. Wealthy landowners and slave holders wanted to conserve their rights. Right from the start the wealthy wanted to conserve their rights. Slavery we fought over finally making it unconstitutional and we extended the franchise in the 20th century.
So what about property? The constitution protects property rights and explicitly. However it is clear that property he constitutional allows the government to define these rights. As it stands accumulation of property rights is unconstrained And that right extends to not just land but all manners of production.
Perhaps this means s what is meant by conservative. The father of property rights is not ne a ther than the famous John Locke.An important English enlightenment thinker. I won’t go into Lockes definition other than he found private property to be a natural right. The stark historical truth of the matter is that this is a myth. And while plenty of evidence shows it to be a myth we shouldn’t blame Lock. The fact evidence destroy this myth was not available to him.
But is it conservative to preserve a myth that has greatly helped to increase inequality of weather and therefore power. Yet even Locke warns about increasing property holding that robs others of he chance acquire property.
And it turns out that Adam Smith the root of Neo classical economics, which conservatives cherish, was about the danger of formation of large corporations. He couldn’t have imagined their nearly unfettered growth and power.
Equality before the law? Where do you find this? Not here in the US. Never has the ideal stood in starker contrast of the ideal. Turns out that even our democratic institutions can’t be preserved legally alone have any but the rich and ever had a fighting chance against charges. It is the constitutional system that brought us here. A long history of corruption he rich empowered to elect and lobby and bribe in order to sustain their dominance. The truth is to make yourself into any kind of conservative you either have to change the meaning of the word or rewrite historically l
That is that you didn’t don’t say anything about capitalism.
Or anything else of historic importance.This mostly a list of conclusions more than it is insight, The tension between reform and preservation is always there. But your repeated general observations are detached from history.
You want to preserve the constitution but not all of it. You list common liberal or progressive viws that are inadequate-and then warn about changing too fast. You want to preserve culture but maybe you want to change It
Pointing out this always present problem between change and preservation without historical context allows it to remain a simple truism. In particular you quote Hume concerning the French Revolution. True you didn’t say anything about it.So what meaning does it have? His observation has a context. The revolution has a complicated reality that has consequences for liberal democracies.
The American revolution exists in this tension between change and preservation. Is it defensible?
From what you say, maybe it is maybe it isn’t. The constitution,written with knowledge of many enlightenment ideas, exists in this tension. Your argument seems to be that you want to preserve it yet you want to amend it.
The idea that the changes needed are beyond the form of the constitution. You assume that by setting out these forms as necessary to preserve, you are setting the moral course.
It’s as though it is not worth observing that many of the purposes of the constitution have never been followed. And that laws that were enacted within its constraints have enabled the current corruption that now threatens that very document.
You mention the importance of law and order underscoring the tensions between the constraints of the constitution and enacted laws as well as the current enforcement scheme. Good point and one that is covered every day.
However you can’t dial back the clock to some point in time when anything close to equal justice under the law existed in our country.It does seem that you are saying that if we just get the proper tension between conservation of our proper restraints and the avoidance of the improper ones we will be doing the right thing.
That there is need for reform is obvious. The reforms you mention are well known.The illegal actions of conservatives have long been in evidence. That there is a tension between conservation of things that exist as custom, habit, tradition or culture is always the case.
So what I would like to know is what it is you wish to conserve. It seems that the most important thing to you is our constitution and liberal democracy.You add that it is an amendable document. Not realistically in any meaningful way. The evidence for that conclusion is embedded in our history.
Ok, so I learn the subtleties of preserving habits, tradition, custom etc and in order to move toward justice I balance tradition and change. What does that understanding tell me to do when the civil war erupts? 650,000 casualties. Amendments added that were often ignored because they were too progressive for the people to accept. And those amendments are still being challenged. That is the hard history. Was entrance into the civil war the right balance of tradition, the constitution and change?
I don’t understand your use of conservative in this context. The challenge of assuring the equality of people as you seem to state as a preference has everything to do with capitalism as it has existed under our constitutional order. The preservation of the corporation undermines liberal democracy.
Its distribution of power conflicts with enlightenment ideas of liberal democracy.
It was conservatives who opposed liberal democracy during the enlightenment. It was conservatives who opposed the revolution and the constitution. And it was the accommodation of conservatives that corrupted the constitution. Conservatives throughout our history opposed the regulation capitalism.
Sure conservative may mean what you want to mean. But if it forces you to avoid the hard questions about reform and its relationship to events in history and its long-standing political meaning,then I don’t see your purpose.
What does it mean to preserve culture, habits and traditions in the face of our traditional enforcement of inequality under the law? What does it mean to the religious now in power or the Neo-confederates?
In my opinion you can’t make judgments about what is necessary change and what is not based on your essay.
Although as usual it was extremely will written and challenging.
I just endorsed a whole bunch of social democratic policies. Including wealth taxes and increased labor power, so I don't know what you're going on about.
Which if you read what I said I acknowledged. Perhaps you don’t see the tragedy of the preservation of Neo-classical economics and its implications for the development of inequality in wealth, power and justice.
You call for a wealth tax. Assuming it’s on the order of those endorsed by a few democrats, it’s grossly inadequate.
The proposed wealth taxes won’t do anything about power consolidation among wealthy elites. It won’t change the structures that have led to our wealth inequality. Neither will enforcement of our current rather vague anti- trust laws.
Follow the history of the break up Rockefeller’s oil company. One of its many progeny is the Exon Corporation.
In essence I’m saying that your essay functions as a veil, obscuring a distinct history. Our development begins with an inadequate document that offers amendment as its mechanism for self correction, a method that has become dysfunctional
.The cause of the dysfunction is the failure of our democratic system to challenge the preservation of an economic system that contradicts the purpose of a democratic system. The historical evidence for this is easily accessed. I would say by obvious.
Conservatives as they have been historically understood want to preserve the private property myth, confuse freedom with capitalism and keep power in the hands of an elite. Wealth consolidation has a long history as the path to power. It’s history precedes our founding.
The typical progressive patch to the system is seriously inadequate in the face of the historical development resulting in our current corrupt system. And by making a case for preservation of forms that have failed, as well as pointing out obvious tensions between change and preservation you fail to adequately address the moment we are in as well as its roots.
Instead you valorize general observations as well as forms that have shown themselves to be inadequate. You avoid dealing with the power struggle between accumulated wealth and the diffuse power of democracy.
The real history undercuts your gauzy claim to conservatism. You embrace an ideal that distracts from the real.
I am not sure why you don’t understand what the purpose of my critique is. Some of the grateful comments are indicators that the work that you are doing is what I fear. Some state that they have been consistent conservatives all a long. It is only that conservatives have moved and now their consistent conservatism has become some form of a progressiveness.
That simply did not happen to any of them. They confused your endorsement of preservation of our historically played out form of democracy with their earlier political conservatism. Perhaps they are misreading you. I hope so and believe so. But your expressed view gives refuge to a weak tea of reform.
If you read this, please try to deal with the substance. If you really don’t understand it or find it irrelevant I will be surprised.
Sure it is possible that I am wrong, or I that am unsophisticated but so far your replies seem glibly dismissive.
I mean, what's the alternative to a mixed economy? We tried collectivization and social ownership schemes in 20th century and that went very badly. Even the Editor and Chief of Jacobin—a committed Marxist—concedes a world like that is "hundreds of years a way" and that social democracy with markets is the best way forward right now. He recently said this on the Ezra Klein podcast. Check it out.
Other serious Marxist intellectuals agree with him, that the elimination of capitalism is over 100-years away. And they don't say that because they think capitalism is going to fight to the death. No. They think that, because they don't think you can tear capitalism out as the organizing principle of the economy without collapsing the economy, leading to famines and disaster—and a return to fascism. So even most serious Marxists wouldn't eliminate capitalism tomorrow if they could. They literally concede it remains a necessary evil for now. Karl Marx himself suggested capitalism was a necessary transition.
So while I'm no Marxist, I put this out there to suggest that your protestations about my failure to diagnose this matter are silly complaints. Nobody seriously thinks we can eliminate capitalism in the near future. Only unserious people on the internet.
Again you didn’t seriously read what I wrote. I never said anything about Marxism. I made diagnostics that I did not take from Marx. Specifically about the contradiction between the purpose of liberal democracy and the purpose of capitalism. And even more specifically about the structure and history of corporations.
I did not make a case for violent revolution, which I oppose. However I do think objectively we are living in much more corrupt system than the one that stimulated the original revolution.
I also found fault with your essay regarding its neglect of the political history and the use history of the word conservative. More importantly what you claim to want to conserve seemingly leaves an ineffective structure in place. Most of all it is not clear what you want to conserve.
The tension between capitalism and democracy is that their intended purposes produce conflicting power arrangements. That this tension exists and that capitalism has succeeded
in accumulating dominant power and wealth does not imply that there is a binary choice between capitalism and communism. What it does seem to indicate is that reform must include structures that support the durability of democracy’s intention to diffuse power. Which means that effective oversight of capitalism must preserve the regulatory power of the people’s government.
That includes dealing with the various ways that corporations capture government. Their size and connectivity within the global economy make their failure a threat to economic stability. Their corporate structure gives them special rights that encourage their growth at the expense of the wider economy. Their fundamental protection of shareholders holders should at least be looked as a place for reform.The conception of the corporate form is anti-merit and invites the suppression of competition. Even Adam Smith warned about the power of corporations.
I could go on about reforms that preserve capitalism while retaining superior power within the institutions of democratic government . These institutions if duly protected from the capitalist markets at least provide an ongoing path for self correction by the people. Markets on the other hand do the opposite. They empower an elite that has no interest in self- correction. They cultivate irrationality that has made the financial system increasingly a legal gambling organization.
Note also the degree to which gambling has infiltrated our government as well as the internet.
This is not a plea to outlaw gambling however since they are often designed to be addictive and especially the government systems have been shown to prey on the poor, regulation seems reasonable.
There are real challenges to meaningful reform. Reform that doesn’t just slow the growth of the disparities but begins to disempower capitalism. I don’t think the difficulty should keep us from articulating effective change. The first challenge is to imagine structures that will work.
Impediments to change include the currently unreachable bar needed for amendment of the constitution as well as a captured congress that on the whole does not support meaningful reform.
The populace has been degraded by media capture, the post modern turn to identity issues and initiation of post truth ideologies. The effects of technology development under the current regime are repressive. The failure of a mutually held ethic has disabled much of the populace.
I don’t appreciate your implication that my views are not serious.I think an objective view would regard my views as serious and be capable of critiquing them in a fair manner. Perhaps I have written nothing of value but my earnest attempt I hope would be respected.
I take your writing seriously. I read it diligently and I think that you are an exceptional writer who publishes challenging and thoughtful essays. I enjoy engaging with them yet I almost never comment.
However I do find faults now and then that I generally let go.
I spend so much time thinking about all that has been lost in recent decades I really struggle to imagine a better future. Until the rot of the greed is good mentality of Reaganism is excised completely from American culture, no meaningful change will ever be possible. Until people in general are no longer willing to violate their principles in exchange for money, there is no institution that will not be corrupted by the corruptable. Our culture is a failure and until we fix that nothing else can or will change.
You are right. In essence the mission is to keep what is valuable from the past and,where possible, improve upon it. Not "move fast and break things" and thereby lose the lessons of the past.
The current crop of US & UK "conservatives" wouldn't recognise the type of conservative I am. The clue's in the name. Conservatives conserve things. I'm a British working class man who despairs of what's happened to my country and our culture. And no, I'm not referring to immigrants. Many of them have the same manners I was taught and still practice, and that, sadly, my native countrymen often lack. Something has gone badly awry with us. I watched Keir Starmer getting excited about AI in possibly the most naive way possible - yes, what my country needs is giant data warehouses polluting the earth and the atmosphere so we can produce slop expensively at speed. Rather than, y'know, affordable housing, heat pumps, real food, or open libraries. What is wrong with these people?
Well-written. I've felt the same way--most of my values are bedrock conservative values like progressive taxation, one person-one vote, rational gun laws, getting the nanny state out of reproductive choice, supporting public goods like education, libraries, etc. They've been rebranded by the right-wing extremist GOP as "socialism," which uses the term as an epithet and not a description of a government or economic system.
Okay, you lost me at "... bedrock conservative values like progressive taxation, one person-one vote, rational gun laws, getting the nanny... ", etc. I'm 69, but I don't recall any of that - must've been before my time. Please, elaborate.
That's a speech which should be delivered to Congress!
I had this same thought.
The conversation can’t be had as long as the discourse is drowned out by a professional PR din that every 2 years characterizes any proposed higher taxes on the wealthy as “the largest tax increase in history” and the political media just accepts that as untouchable campaign rhetoric.
"In 1962 I was a Conservative. I believed privilege could only be justified by service, high taxes on very high incomes were necessary to prevent an entrepreneurial economy becoming a rentier economy, and Keynesian growth would finance public service improvements and a welfare state that steadily reduced inequality. I was suspicious of ideologically driven, large-scale change. These were the mainstream policies of the Macmillan government at the time. In 60 years I have moved from centre right to hard left without changing my opinions."
I observed years ago (for one particular person, though he is not unique in this) that a lot of self-described progressives today seem to me rather to be conservatives who are deeply frustrated with modern conservatism, and have accepted the evidence of the validity of the progressive critique and the necessity of the proposed reforms to the point where they can no longer recognize that their advocacy for them stems from their own conservatism. (As an actual progressive likes to put it, the problem the left has is being right too early.)
There was, of course, also Ambrose Bierce's observations:
"CONSERVATIVE, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others."
"RADICALISM, n. The conservatism of to-morrow injected into the affairs of to-day."
EDIT: And, of course, G.K. Chesterton: “The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types -- the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins. He admires them especially by moonlight, not to say moonshine. Each new blunder of the progressive or prig becomes instantly a legend of immemorial antiquity for the snob. This is called the balance, or mutual check, in our Constitution.”
Also too:
“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”
― John Kenneth Galbraith
I just realized the other day that I’m both the most conservative and the most liberal I’ve ever been in my nearly sixty years, and that “conservatives” are not in any way conservative nowadays.
I am drinking to KoolAid on this essay, but as with all profound essays, leave the scene feeling helpless and hopeless except for maybe decades after I am gone. What strikes me is not so much any observation at a point in time, but the change and its rate of change, from before. Sort of like quantum mechanics, movement, probabilities, etc. And for me the rate of change happening justifies a more extreme response than the past; not violence, but a sense of panic that maybe this time is different. Politicians love to say they are an optimistic at heart, then beat the shit out of the present and cannot articulate why they are optimistic. If a genie gave me one wish it would be to put this essay in front of the SC justices and require them to identify which portions they disagree with. And with an ending for some justices to explain how they sleep at night knowing their motives are suspect to many who want what this essay recommends. Overall, what I keep thinking is the need to not only assess where on a topic we are at a point in time, but to acquire/research and debate the change from its before, and whether the change is going in the right direction. Imagine discussions with others where each side agrees to articulate on any topic the BEFORE, and whether the perceived change suggests optimism or pessimism. No discussion is over until each side articulates if the perceived change is in the right direction or not.
We agree. I appreciate the change in writing style.
Now a request. Please increase the contrast - return to black type on white background - so I can read better. Thanks.
And further to a prior comment — Eloquent
I am trying to imagine you teaching Civics in a public high school where young people could learn something extremely valuable to take them into adulthood. I think as well a discourse on why we as a nation cannot of late elect a level- headed, thoughtful, individual as a leader would be appropriate. But most of all this discourse and many that have preceded it should be required reading.
The Party of Trump calls itself conservative, but they don't seem to have heard of "Chesterton's Fence."
We need an FDR like New Deal.
a lot things progressives is not new or radical. most of them are more of what already there is: anti trust, better medicare, better progressive tax, better new deal, better voting rights, etc
i still can't believe you lay blame on trump. he is the symptom of what gop was becoming before him. it was not a benign party before him. Just look at the justices pre trump.
?
N530GA
I don't blame Trump for where we are. You are arguing against straw men. Your comment has nothing to do with anything I wrote about in this piece. https://www.notesfromthecircus.com/p/the-coming-clash-of-civilizations
Im responding to this, their theory predates Trump: Donald Trump wants whatever Donald Trump wants at the moment he wants it, and an entire political party has spent a decade converting those wants into a theory of executive power.
What happened in 2010? Citizens United
John Roberts
https://youtu.be/AICPILORmfY?si=RG8zS4Dn-RyYh2CI
In this kind of thinking you miss the underlying structures of capitalism and prescribe recipes for reform that are only vaguely articulated. It is not possible for taxation as it is now conceived to alter the present power dynamics. The cinequality of wealth is an inequality in power. The purpose of capitalism and specifically corporations is to accumulate wealth. In practice that has always meant for a tiny elite. Anti-monopoly laws as currently conceived will not work, in fact cannot work.
The form of capitalism, (at least you imply you want to conserve) functions against the preservation of liberal democracy (at least in the way it was conceived) as the purpose of democratic institutions areto diffuse power. So in effect they work in contradiction.
Both have long histories.
Capitalism’s evolution is very long (that is capturing the fruits of another’s production for profit and accumulation of wealth/property) perhaps as long as several thousand years. The evolution of complex agricultural cultures needed management. This turn may well have stimulated the Chieftain ownership of all property. Systems of various democratic forms are ancient and long. However the likely prehistories of egalitarianism are much longer
You apparently want the keep our constitutional government. Our constitutional government does not mention any form of economy. It does in fact twice invoke as one purpose “to promote the general welfare”, meaning to increase the health and wellbeing of all. There is not much of our current mode of capitalism that does this.
A look back the to the post war era up until the 1970s when we had higher progressive taxation and more regulation capitalists still captured most of the gains. What we did have at that time was twice as much public ownership of services and massive state level educational support.
However the conservatives of the1960s nominated Barry Goldwater and when he lost his supporters, the wealthy elite began to organize. And the Reagan (conservative)revolution brought with it ,deregulation, lowered taxes, destruction of unions, acquiring media, consolidation of industry (mergers and acquisitions) the rise of private equity etc.
it was in the 80s that the propaganda of conservatives was institutionalized. In the beginning came the Heritage Foundation. The wealthy had no problem plowing mountains of capital into these conservative foundations, from Claremont to Cato.
They also purchased and captured departments in universities in order to give a sheen to Neo-liberal economics and ideas of social repression.They even squeezed racist ideologies out of academia, (remember Charles Murray?).
Now there are 500 hundred of these capitalist institutions around the world. Oh, and along the way in order to protect their system they invaded several countries killing 100,000s of thousands of civilians if not more. They had their own home-brewed anti-communist associations that even to this day fetishes robust antagonism against socialism of any kind.
Keep in mind that while conservatives funded these anti democratic institutions there was no public healthcare for most and wide spread poverty existed in the inner cities and many rural areas. Not to be afraid,the military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned about grew by leaps and bounds
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So where did those conservative roots lead? To a country that now says out loud all the things conservatives have been planning. And unfortunately enacting them.
Where do those unfortunate judges on the SJC come from?
That’s right from the Federalist Society. Endowed by some the most right wing heirs of the riches captured during the gilded age,Scaife Mellon etc..
They are the group that gave us originalism, also hatched from conservative think tanks and Universities.It was a silly ideology useful until it was no longer needed. Now the original mission is clear. The goal all along was conservative libertarian small government, an unleashed capitalist nightmare.
I take that you don’t want associated with any of that conservatism. After all one of their primary goals was to keep racism institutionalized.
Maybe you want go back further. No not to Roosevelt, who was willing to use socialist tools to bring us back from the results of conservative governance.Apparently institutionalized racism had to continue for political reasons. Conservatives / Neo confederates insisted on it.
Don’t get confused because conservatives were then also democrats preserving their cultures of segregation etc. Before that republicans as well as democrats endorsed program’s that enabled my big businesses.
While the word corporation doesn’t exist in the Constitution business couldn’t exist without it. And from earliest legislative corruption to the free incorporation in the middle of the 19th century corporations grew first for all he most part building public infrastructure. Beginning later in the century the SJC from time to time expanded the rights of corporations. Which if we are honest we’re always at the heart of conservatives because the exist as weapon created by the English monarchy to extend the reach and domination of those with capital lying around to invest that is merchants and aristocrats. So is the conservatism you endorse it’s been around a long time. S corporations kept increased not their rights all the way to citizen united which is not only a corruption but among the most ignorant judgements a court has ever. made.
The corporation a select group of the people elite come together to pool their money in order to meow a large business venture. Seems reasonable enough yet one of the virtues of capitalism was sold to us by conservatives who had read Adam Smith was competition. Now assuming this is a democracy with equality before the law and markets that reward merit or effort. Unfortunately this corporation structure not in the conditions enable the wealthy group to avoid the hangs humans cannot such as liability and debt. Now pooling wealth rights get away with gives an advantage to the already wealthy but now government creates a an entity with special protection and rights. Now this structure was invented to protect shipping merchant who at least hat time assumed great risk as there was a n usually great risk the woods ships sinking. So at that time it seemed rational even if in the end it vastly increased the wealth of these capitalists. However the conditions changed the ships didn’t sink very often. However did we reduce the advantages of corporations? No way. The conservatives with their money equals power equation mad sure that the courts increased their rights in every generation. They wanted to conserve the advantageous form and slowly modify to increase their advantage. We have seen how that ends.
Let’s go farther back. Why are we still burdened with a constitution that is unable to give us democratic results. It was design that way. Wealthy landowners and slave holders wanted to conserve their rights. Right from the start the wealthy wanted to conserve their rights. Slavery we fought over finally making it unconstitutional and we extended the franchise in the 20th century.
So what about property? The constitution protects property rights and explicitly. However it is clear that property he constitutional allows the government to define these rights. As it stands accumulation of property rights is unconstrained And that right extends to not just land but all manners of production.
Perhaps this means s what is meant by conservative. The father of property rights is not ne a ther than the famous John Locke.An important English enlightenment thinker. I won’t go into Lockes definition other than he found private property to be a natural right. The stark historical truth of the matter is that this is a myth. And while plenty of evidence shows it to be a myth we shouldn’t blame Lock. The fact evidence destroy this myth was not available to him.
But is it conservative to preserve a myth that has greatly helped to increase inequality of weather and therefore power. Yet even Locke warns about increasing property holding that robs others of he chance acquire property.
And it turns out that Adam Smith the root of Neo classical economics, which conservatives cherish, was about the danger of formation of large corporations. He couldn’t have imagined their nearly unfettered growth and power.
Equality before the law? Where do you find this? Not here in the US. Never has the ideal stood in starker contrast of the ideal. Turns out that even our democratic institutions can’t be preserved legally alone have any but the rich and ever had a fighting chance against charges. It is the constitutional system that brought us here. A long history of corruption he rich empowered to elect and lobby and bribe in order to sustain their dominance. The truth is to make yourself into any kind of conservative you either have to change the meaning of the word or rewrite historically l
Nothing I said has anything to do with capitalism. It's irrelevant to everything I said.
At least you got the point.
That is that you didn’t don’t say anything about capitalism.
Or anything else of historic importance.This mostly a list of conclusions more than it is insight, The tension between reform and preservation is always there. But your repeated general observations are detached from history.
You want to preserve the constitution but not all of it. You list common liberal or progressive viws that are inadequate-and then warn about changing too fast. You want to preserve culture but maybe you want to change It
Pointing out this always present problem between change and preservation without historical context allows it to remain a simple truism. In particular you quote Hume concerning the French Revolution. True you didn’t say anything about it.So what meaning does it have? His observation has a context. The revolution has a complicated reality that has consequences for liberal democracies.
The American revolution exists in this tension between change and preservation. Is it defensible?
From what you say, maybe it is maybe it isn’t. The constitution,written with knowledge of many enlightenment ideas, exists in this tension. Your argument seems to be that you want to preserve it yet you want to amend it.
The idea that the changes needed are beyond the form of the constitution. You assume that by setting out these forms as necessary to preserve, you are setting the moral course.
It’s as though it is not worth observing that many of the purposes of the constitution have never been followed. And that laws that were enacted within its constraints have enabled the current corruption that now threatens that very document.
You mention the importance of law and order underscoring the tensions between the constraints of the constitution and enacted laws as well as the current enforcement scheme. Good point and one that is covered every day.
However you can’t dial back the clock to some point in time when anything close to equal justice under the law existed in our country.It does seem that you are saying that if we just get the proper tension between conservation of our proper restraints and the avoidance of the improper ones we will be doing the right thing.
That there is need for reform is obvious. The reforms you mention are well known.The illegal actions of conservatives have long been in evidence. That there is a tension between conservation of things that exist as custom, habit, tradition or culture is always the case.
So what I would like to know is what it is you wish to conserve. It seems that the most important thing to you is our constitution and liberal democracy.You add that it is an amendable document. Not realistically in any meaningful way. The evidence for that conclusion is embedded in our history.
Ok, so I learn the subtleties of preserving habits, tradition, custom etc and in order to move toward justice I balance tradition and change. What does that understanding tell me to do when the civil war erupts? 650,000 casualties. Amendments added that were often ignored because they were too progressive for the people to accept. And those amendments are still being challenged. That is the hard history. Was entrance into the civil war the right balance of tradition, the constitution and change?
I don’t understand your use of conservative in this context. The challenge of assuring the equality of people as you seem to state as a preference has everything to do with capitalism as it has existed under our constitutional order. The preservation of the corporation undermines liberal democracy.
Its distribution of power conflicts with enlightenment ideas of liberal democracy.
It was conservatives who opposed liberal democracy during the enlightenment. It was conservatives who opposed the revolution and the constitution. And it was the accommodation of conservatives that corrupted the constitution. Conservatives throughout our history opposed the regulation capitalism.
Sure conservative may mean what you want to mean. But if it forces you to avoid the hard questions about reform and its relationship to events in history and its long-standing political meaning,then I don’t see your purpose.
What does it mean to preserve culture, habits and traditions in the face of our traditional enforcement of inequality under the law? What does it mean to the religious now in power or the Neo-confederates?
In my opinion you can’t make judgments about what is necessary change and what is not based on your essay.
Although as usual it was extremely will written and challenging.
Thanks.
I just endorsed a whole bunch of social democratic policies. Including wealth taxes and increased labor power, so I don't know what you're going on about.
Which if you read what I said I acknowledged. Perhaps you don’t see the tragedy of the preservation of Neo-classical economics and its implications for the development of inequality in wealth, power and justice.
You call for a wealth tax. Assuming it’s on the order of those endorsed by a few democrats, it’s grossly inadequate.
The proposed wealth taxes won’t do anything about power consolidation among wealthy elites. It won’t change the structures that have led to our wealth inequality. Neither will enforcement of our current rather vague anti- trust laws.
Follow the history of the break up Rockefeller’s oil company. One of its many progeny is the Exon Corporation.
In essence I’m saying that your essay functions as a veil, obscuring a distinct history. Our development begins with an inadequate document that offers amendment as its mechanism for self correction, a method that has become dysfunctional
.The cause of the dysfunction is the failure of our democratic system to challenge the preservation of an economic system that contradicts the purpose of a democratic system. The historical evidence for this is easily accessed. I would say by obvious.
Conservatives as they have been historically understood want to preserve the private property myth, confuse freedom with capitalism and keep power in the hands of an elite. Wealth consolidation has a long history as the path to power. It’s history precedes our founding.
The typical progressive patch to the system is seriously inadequate in the face of the historical development resulting in our current corrupt system. And by making a case for preservation of forms that have failed, as well as pointing out obvious tensions between change and preservation you fail to adequately address the moment we are in as well as its roots.
Instead you valorize general observations as well as forms that have shown themselves to be inadequate. You avoid dealing with the power struggle between accumulated wealth and the diffuse power of democracy.
The real history undercuts your gauzy claim to conservatism. You embrace an ideal that distracts from the real.
I am not sure why you don’t understand what the purpose of my critique is. Some of the grateful comments are indicators that the work that you are doing is what I fear. Some state that they have been consistent conservatives all a long. It is only that conservatives have moved and now their consistent conservatism has become some form of a progressiveness.
That simply did not happen to any of them. They confused your endorsement of preservation of our historically played out form of democracy with their earlier political conservatism. Perhaps they are misreading you. I hope so and believe so. But your expressed view gives refuge to a weak tea of reform.
If you read this, please try to deal with the substance. If you really don’t understand it or find it irrelevant I will be surprised.
Sure it is possible that I am wrong, or I that am unsophisticated but so far your replies seem glibly dismissive.
Thanks
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I mean, what's the alternative to a mixed economy? We tried collectivization and social ownership schemes in 20th century and that went very badly. Even the Editor and Chief of Jacobin—a committed Marxist—concedes a world like that is "hundreds of years a way" and that social democracy with markets is the best way forward right now. He recently said this on the Ezra Klein podcast. Check it out.
Other serious Marxist intellectuals agree with him, that the elimination of capitalism is over 100-years away. And they don't say that because they think capitalism is going to fight to the death. No. They think that, because they don't think you can tear capitalism out as the organizing principle of the economy without collapsing the economy, leading to famines and disaster—and a return to fascism. So even most serious Marxists wouldn't eliminate capitalism tomorrow if they could. They literally concede it remains a necessary evil for now. Karl Marx himself suggested capitalism was a necessary transition.
So while I'm no Marxist, I put this out there to suggest that your protestations about my failure to diagnose this matter are silly complaints. Nobody seriously thinks we can eliminate capitalism in the near future. Only unserious people on the internet.
Again you didn’t seriously read what I wrote. I never said anything about Marxism. I made diagnostics that I did not take from Marx. Specifically about the contradiction between the purpose of liberal democracy and the purpose of capitalism. And even more specifically about the structure and history of corporations.
I did not make a case for violent revolution, which I oppose. However I do think objectively we are living in much more corrupt system than the one that stimulated the original revolution.
I also found fault with your essay regarding its neglect of the political history and the use history of the word conservative. More importantly what you claim to want to conserve seemingly leaves an ineffective structure in place. Most of all it is not clear what you want to conserve.
The tension between capitalism and democracy is that their intended purposes produce conflicting power arrangements. That this tension exists and that capitalism has succeeded
in accumulating dominant power and wealth does not imply that there is a binary choice between capitalism and communism. What it does seem to indicate is that reform must include structures that support the durability of democracy’s intention to diffuse power. Which means that effective oversight of capitalism must preserve the regulatory power of the people’s government.
That includes dealing with the various ways that corporations capture government. Their size and connectivity within the global economy make their failure a threat to economic stability. Their corporate structure gives them special rights that encourage their growth at the expense of the wider economy. Their fundamental protection of shareholders holders should at least be looked as a place for reform.The conception of the corporate form is anti-merit and invites the suppression of competition. Even Adam Smith warned about the power of corporations.
I could go on about reforms that preserve capitalism while retaining superior power within the institutions of democratic government . These institutions if duly protected from the capitalist markets at least provide an ongoing path for self correction by the people. Markets on the other hand do the opposite. They empower an elite that has no interest in self- correction. They cultivate irrationality that has made the financial system increasingly a legal gambling organization.
Note also the degree to which gambling has infiltrated our government as well as the internet.
This is not a plea to outlaw gambling however since they are often designed to be addictive and especially the government systems have been shown to prey on the poor, regulation seems reasonable.
There are real challenges to meaningful reform. Reform that doesn’t just slow the growth of the disparities but begins to disempower capitalism. I don’t think the difficulty should keep us from articulating effective change. The first challenge is to imagine structures that will work.
Impediments to change include the currently unreachable bar needed for amendment of the constitution as well as a captured congress that on the whole does not support meaningful reform.
The populace has been degraded by media capture, the post modern turn to identity issues and initiation of post truth ideologies. The effects of technology development under the current regime are repressive. The failure of a mutually held ethic has disabled much of the populace.
I don’t appreciate your implication that my views are not serious.I think an objective view would regard my views as serious and be capable of critiquing them in a fair manner. Perhaps I have written nothing of value but my earnest attempt I hope would be respected.
I take your writing seriously. I read it diligently and I think that you are an exceptional writer who publishes challenging and thoughtful essays. I enjoy engaging with them yet I almost never comment.
However I do find faults now and then that I generally let go.
Sometimes historic facts.
Thanks
I spend so much time thinking about all that has been lost in recent decades I really struggle to imagine a better future. Until the rot of the greed is good mentality of Reaganism is excised completely from American culture, no meaningful change will ever be possible. Until people in general are no longer willing to violate their principles in exchange for money, there is no institution that will not be corrupted by the corruptable. Our culture is a failure and until we fix that nothing else can or will change.