Fooloso4 wrote:I just read some reviews of the book as well as an interview with the author on NPR. One question I have is whether it is even possible to be a Burkean conservative in the United States today given its history of Liberalism. What is it that is to be preserved in that tradition? Monarchy would clearly be a radical departure from that tradition.
Yes, obviously the preservation of monarchy, specifically, doesn't fit the US. But presumably it's the general principle of reverance for
what are seen as traditional values that US conservatives like.
Although there are some who like like to see nothing more, “Christian values” are not representative of the values of the people today, and so to impose some version of them would be antithetical to Burke’s gradualism.
Yes, I think you're probably right. It's hard to tell because it's hard to take people out of their historical and geographical context and imagine applying the principles that they espoused now. It seems clear that Burke's views were intimately connected with his Irish roots, with the politics of the Whigs, with the "glorious revolution" of 1688, with the relationships and differences between the American and French revolutions, with the wrong-doings of the British Empire in Ireland, India and America etc. If Burke were alive now he'd have a different set of experiences which would result in a different person. But if we try to abstract the most general possible principle - evolution/gradualism and not revolution - then, yes, there's nothing in that general principle that says we have to hang on to what are regarded as traditional values simply because they are old.
He did not advocate a return to an imagined golden age. The Founders had hoped for a natural aristocracy, wise men who would put aside narrow self-interest and be guided by reasoned deliberation,
Not unlike the "philosopher rulers" envisaged in Plato's Republic? This does seem to chime with Burke's advocacy of
representative democracy - the idea that we choose our rulers not to slavishly implement our whims but because we value their judgement.
but in an age where immensely wealthy self professed conservatives have determined that money is free speech (Citizens United) such hopes seem quaint.
Yes, perhaps.
Terms such as ‘liberal’, ‘conservative’, and ‘libertarian’ has no fixed or unambiguous meaning. Many “conservatives” today in the U.S. (I cannot speak for what goes on elsewhere) are strong proponents of classical liberalism, that is, individual rights and autonomy, while many “liberals” favor a strong role for government. But many conservatives are opposed reproductive rights and advocates such things as school prayer and standing for the national anthem. Republican has become synonymous with conservative and Democrat with liberal. Republican, at least until recently, was identified with fiscal conservatism, but recent events belie that association.
This is why it seems that there has to explicitly be a
coalition between libertarian and conservative. i.e. they have to recognize that they have differences but enter into a marriage of convenience. Reproductive rights is one of the most obvious divisions between them. Conservatives are naturally "pro-life" because they tend to stand for tradition, by which they generally mean religiously-based tradition. Libertarians are naturally "pro-choice" because they tend to believe in individualism, the idea that people's morals are their own private business and the principle that the only function of government is to protect contractual agreements between those individuals and property rights. Conservatives fret that we throw away the accumulated wisdom of our elders (odd though it may seem to us) at our peril. Libertarians/Classic Liberals believe in this abstract notion of the pre-government individual, with his natural freedom that no government has the right to curtail, unless he's threatening the freedom of another individual.
Frost wrote:Oh no no no, not at all. I meant American Liberal. Trump is nothing like a classical liberal or libertarian. He is demonstrating himself to be a big government interventionist that attacks other countries, just less than Obama was which makes many think that he is conservative or more libertarian.
He's nothing of the sort. The evidence suggests to me that first and foremost he is an apolitical Trumpian. He is motivated by the desire to be seen to triumph and doesn't care about anything else. The fact that he appears to intervene by doing things like adding tariffs to steel imports or talking to North Korean leaders doesn't make him an "interventionist". It makes him a "what can I do in order to claim that I have triumphed where my predessors have failed"-ist. What he actually does towards that end is incidental, and will probably be something different next week.
The reason I said earlier that, if we can call him anything, we can call him a libertarian is that the only thing in his past words (or the words of his ghost-writer) that seems to come anywhere near what might be called "a philosophy" is his "Art of the Deal" stuff: his hyping himself as the ruthless dealmaker who gets the job done by cutting corners and taking risks, and if those penpushers down at City Hall don't like it they can park their fat overpaid asses on this middle digit and swivel. All that Dirty Harry style BS. The thing that prompted him to reply to the criticism of his tax affairs, in that presidential debate, by saying "it's because I'm smart".i.e. "I do whatever my accountants' interpretation of law lets me get away with and I expect my competitors to do the same". Spoken like a true Libertarian.