Why Conservatives Are… Conservative

Ten years ago, it was wildly controversial to talk about psychological differences between liberals and conservatives. Today, it's becoming hard not to.

You could be forgiven for not having browsed yet through the latest issue of the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences. If you care about politics, though, you'll find a punchline therein that is pretty extraordinary.

Behavioral and Brain Sciences employs a rather unique practice called "Open Peer Commentary": An article of major significance is published, a large number of fellow scholars comment on it, and then the original author responds to all of them. The approach has many virtues, one of which being that it lets you see where a community of scholars and thinkers stand with respect to a controversial or provocative scientific idea. And in the latest issue of the journal, this process reveals the following conclusion: A large body of political scientists and political psychologists now concur that liberals and conservatives disagree about politics in part because they are different people at the level of personality, psychology, and even traits like physiology and genetics.

That's a big deal. It challenges everything that we thought we knew about politics—upending the idea that we get our beliefs solely from our upbringing, from our friends and families, from our personal economic interests, and calling into question the notion that in politics, we can really change (most of us, anyway).

In other words, the conservative ideology, and especially one of its major facets—centered on a strong military, tough law enforcement, resistance to immigration, widespread availability of guns—would seem well tailored for an underlying, threat-oriented biology.

The authors go on to speculate that this ultimately reflects an evolutionary imperative. "One possibility," they write, "is that a strong negativity bias was extremely useful in the Pleistocene," when it would have been super-helpful in preventing you from getting killed. (The Pleistocene epoch lasted from roughly 2.5 million years ago until 12,000 years ago.)

There is by now evidence from a variety of laboratories around the world using a variety of methodological techniques leading to the virtually inescapable conclusion that the cognitive-motivational styles of leftists and rightists are quite different. This research consistently finds that conservatism is positively associated with heightened epistemic concerns for order, structure, closure, certainty, consistency, simplicity, and familiarity, as well as existential concerns such as perceptions of danger, sensitivity to threat, and death anxiety.

All of this matters, of course, because we still operate in politics and in media as if minds can be changed by the best honed arguments, the most compelling facts. And yet if our political opponents are simply perceiving the world differently, that idea starts to crumble. Out of the rubble just might arise a better way of acting in politics that leads to less dysfunction and less gridlock…thanks to science.

Recent Republican and Conservative Convocations

Recent Republican and Conservative convocations have showed one general thing. Those who pass for thinkers and leaders of these intertwined movements think they can keep doing the same things but attain improved outcome. With the prominent except of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, most Republicans, after sifting through the debris of November 6, think they need new spokespeople and better packaging. 

The lone thing standing between Republicans and the great Reagan landslides of 1980 and 1984 is them. This is a sad commentary on once noble movements. Republican and Conservative “leaders” believe 21st Century Americans are coming up to embrace 10th Century stands on social matters and science, and blustery vague pronouncements on government spending. Does any rational person think today’s Republicans and conservatives stand the slightest resemblance to those who rallied around Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan? Those two icons would not have ended in the top ten in the 2012 Iowa Caucus or South Carolina primary.

What made the success of late 20th Century Republicanism and conservatism was not just charismatic and eloquent candidates. After World War II, the Foundation for Economic Education and its publication The Freeman (1946), the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (1953), and National Review (1955) formed a triad of scholarly forums where the great thinkers of 20th Century conservatism talked about issues. Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley, Frank Meyer, Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Heyak, Milton Friedman, James Burnham, and countless other great minds, applied the principles of the Enlightenment (1650-1789) and 19th Century liberalism to modern challenges. This three hundred year provenance of reason, critical thinking, scientific inquiry, and the nature of man and his relationship to the state formed a solid foundation for philosophical exploration. It is tough to go wrong using John Locke, Isaac Newton, Denis Diderot, Charles-Louis Montesquieu, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, and America’s Founding Fathers, as touch stones for civil discourse on the function of government in society.

Sadly, today’s conservative touch stones are Karl Rove, Dick Morris, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity. The forums are soundbites on Fox News and Talk Radio. Today’s activists came of age under George W. Bush’s NeoCon global adventurism, theocratic government activism, and opportunistic federal spending. They view the libertarian/conservative fusionism of Goldwater/Reagan through this clouded lens. The Republican and conservative movements have become what Russell Kirk once stated he despised a party of “millenarian ideas of pseudo-religious character.” 

Where are the REAL Conservatives? Who in the present day mentions Enlightenment ideas, or bases their policies on this noble philosophical heritage? What the Right has now is a handful of pundits, and a disdain for those who owns any scholarly credential. The demise of the conservatives is not a matter of “messaging” as many on their side has claimed. It is an end of intellect. The great sages of conservatism, from Edmund Burke to John Adams and contemporary figures like Buckley, used up their time reading not blogs, but books. Further, they spent time writing dissertations on them; not like today’s “leaders” who dress in their ignorance as badges of honor and electability.

Has conventional philosophy been lost? In the words of Kirk, citing T.S. Eliot, has “wisdom” been lost to a vapid neoconservative philosophy of “information”?

The swap over of ideas -- the cornerstone of philosophy and democracy -- depends upon differing sides exchanging thoughts. It cannot consist of one side saying, for instance, diplomacy means blowing up the United Nations building in New York, and the other wanting to cede America’s sovereign authority to an unaccountable and dysfunctional international body.

This explains how the extremes have grown so far from the roots of Western political and philosophical thought. Yet there are few of us who still think these matters deserve consideration aside from partisan politics, electioneering, and fundraising.

We are in a different place now. Conservatism has been drawn into the blogosphere, the talk radio universe, and the cable news echo chambers in which each fulfils their own micro-targeted audience. Even “live” forums like CPAC and the National Review Institute Summit are more forums for media soundbites than critical discourse. Conservatives, but also all Americans, need civil forums for the point of good governance and debate, deeply rooted in conservative principles and tempered by liberal ones, supporting openness, and nurturing common sense and common ground. 

We write in that mood and in the hope that both sides in our democracy regain their roots. Conservatives, especially, must reconsider their evolution over the several centuries, and return to key philosophical values, if they desire to stay pertinent. Our view here is that a sturdy democracy only thrives when both sides match each other. Today there is no balance, and we are confident that will vary.

Where have all the Conservatives Gone?

In George Orwell's 1984, the Party had three slogans: "War is peace," "Freedom is slavery" and "Ignorance is strength." In 2005 we could easily add another one: "Radical is conservative."

For in almost every sense — but certainly in the principle areas of fiscal responsibility, applied federalism, adherence to the rule of law, conservation of natural resources and national security — extremist elements have seized control of the so-called "conservative" (Republican) party and turned it 180 degrees, leaving most true conservatives behind and more than a bit confused.

Clarity can be regained, however, by turning off far-right television and radio and picking up a dictionary. In it you'll find "conservative" defined as "tending to preserve established traditions or institutions; cautious; avoiding excess." Huh? In other words ….

President Bush's record achievement — borrowing more money from foreign countries than our 42 preceding administrations combined — isn't conservative, it's radical. Converting record surpluses into a massive deficit practically overnight isn't conservative, it's wasteful.

There's nothing conservative about the executive order we've just learned eliminated judicial oversight over the National Security Agency's electronic monitoring of American citizens, a secret order that opens the door to Big Brother abuse. And certainly bypassing the Constitution and well-established international treaty law like the Geneva Convention in order to detain suspects at will, engage in secret renditions and even torture isn't conservative, it's downright evil. 

Truly conservative reforms to traditionally state-controlled issues like education and tort law would have been minor tweaks designed to encourage greater uniformity across state lines — not designed to remove power from the states.

Is it conservative to throw caution (and hydrocarbons) blithely into the atmosphere in the face of increasing evidence of a greenhouse effect that scientists predict could lead to disastrous climate change, the dangers of which could shortly eclipse the damage from Hurricane Katrina? Refusal to enforce congressionally mandated clean air standards on industry isn't conservative, it's dereliction of duty.

Finally, what happened to that great, conservative Bush Sr.-Powell doctrine set forth after the first Gulf War that emphasized how the U.S. only would engage in armed military conflict under a narrow set of circumstances, when clearly justified, with international consensus and support, with publicly understood goals and a clearly defined exit strategy? If I remember right, it was Colin Powell himself who was more or less forced to give the deathblow to his own conservative foreign policy doctrine, trading it for today's extremist "pre-emptive strike policy."

Republican leaders and Bush administration officials seek to justify all of these precipitous breaks with past practice and law with "9/11 changed everything." But such a justification only underscores how extensive their overhaul has been and how these policies are categorically not conservatism. Chalk up another "I told you so" for Orwell.

The new radical Republicans who falsely pass themselves off as conservatives don't feel bound by long-standing laws or traditions, nor do they even feel bound by reality. Some have even boasted of making their own reality.

But their surreal dreams of cakewalks and spreading democracy through shock and awe already have come apart. And the first wakeup calls also have sounded to their denials of global warming. Reality and Mother Nature do have a way of catching up with those presumptuous enough to think they are above it all. It turns out that hard-learned lessons are often at the root of the laws and policies that have stood the test of time, proved their value, and do not therefore deserve to be thrown aside for no good reason.

For example, torture is not wrong because it is against international and U.S. criminal law. Rather, torture is banned by law because it is wrong. Just last week Bush reluctantly accepted this fact and backed Sen. John McCain's proposal to ban torture and "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment of prisoners in American custody.

True conservatives, like our founding fathers, were smart enough to understand that the hard laws of history and nature need to be taken into account when fashioning man-made law.

So true conservatives and independent-minded thinkers are increasingly abandoning the radical Republicans. Democrats, whether or not they fully appreciate it, in many ways have become the new conservatives by advancing fiscal responsibility, steadfast allegiance to the rule of law, environmental conservation, a return to federalism and sounder principles of foreign policy.

Conservatism

Conservatism (Latin: conservare, "to retain") is a political and social philosophy that promotes retaining traditional institutions and supports, at most, minimal and gradual change in society. A person who follows the philosophies of conservatism is referred to as a traditionalist or conservative.

Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism and seek a return to "the way things were". The first established use of the term in a political context was by François-René de Chateaubriand in 1819, following the French Revolution. The term, historically associated with right-wing politics, has since been used to describe a wide range of views.
Edmund Burke, an Anglo-Irish politician who served in the British House of Commons and opposed the French Revolution, is credited as one of the founders of conservativism in Great Britain. According to Hailsham, a former chairman of the British Conservative Party, "Conservatism is not so much a philosophy as an attitude, a constant force, performing a timeless function in the development of a free society, and corresponding to a deep and permanent requirement of human nature itself."

Conservative Party (UK)

The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House of Commons with 306 seats. It governs in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, with party leader David Cameron as Prime Minister.
Colloquially referred to as the Tory Party or the Tories, the Conservative Party emerged in 1834 out of the original Tory Party, which dates to 1678. The party was one of two dominant parties in the nineteenth century, along with the Liberals. It changed its name to Conservative and Unionist Party in 1912 after merging with the Liberal Unionist Party, although that name is rarely used and it is generally referred to as simply the Conservative Party.

In the 1920s, the Liberal vote greatly diminished and the Labour Party became the Conservatives' main rivals. Conservative Prime Ministers led governments for 57 years of the 20th century, including Winston Churchill (1940–45, 1951–55) and Margaret Thatcher (1979–90). Thatcher's tenure led to wide-ranging economic liberalisation, placing the Conservatives firmly as the most free market and eurosceptic of the three major parties. The party was returned to government in 2010 under the more liberal leadership of David Cameron.

In the European Parliament, the Conservatives are the largest British party with 25 MEPs, who sit with the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, while the party is a member of the soft eurosceptic AECR. They are the third-largest party in the Scottish Parliament and second-largest in the Welsh Assembly. They are currently allied to the Ulster Unionist Party, which is part of the five-party Northern Ireland Executive.

Alluaudia procera

Madagascar ocotillo or Alluaudia, is a deciduous succulent plant species of the family Didiereaceae. It is native to Madagascar. Although strikingly similar in appearance, it is not closely related to the ocotillo. Young alluaudias form a tangle of stems that last for several years after which a strong central stem develops. The basel stems then die out leaving a tree-like stem that branches higher up on the main trunk.

Alluaudia

Alluaudia is a genus of six species of flowering plants endemic to Madagascar, where they form an important component of the Madagascar spiny forests. They are spiny succulent shrubs and trees from 2–20 m tall, with leaves that are deciduous in the long dry season. The leaves are in pairs, 0.5-3.5 cm long, with one or two thorns 2-2.5 cm long in the axil of each pair of leaves. The flowers are small, grouped many together in large numbers.

Several of the species are grown as indoor ornamental plants in specialist succulent collections. Of the six species Alluaudia ascendens, A. procera, A. montagnacii, and A. dumosa form a tall central trunk that that sprouts strong vertical branches. Alluaudia comosa and A. humbertii are shorter, and form a thick tangle of horizontal branches. Alluaudia dumosa, unlike the other species, bears small leaves only on the new growth and are quickly shed. Photosynthesis is carried on by the stems.