America is not a conservative nation

This is going to be a rather polemical piece, dry on current politics and more to do with philosophy and culture. My mind, as of late, has been shifting to culture. Yes, yes I still follow the daily political news, but I feel as if that is a reflective, rearguard battle. Increasingly, I believe that the real debate within our society is over what type of society we wish to be. The political system, being fundamentally democratic, will reflect such a society. In fact, much of the increasing partisanship, rancor, and ideological clashes in politics can be attributed not to a new set of political issues, but rather to the increasing divides in America’s culture. There is no longer a hegemonic culture whose mores, beliefs, and values set the course for the nation’s cultural and, consequently, political direction. But that is for another post.

The title of this post can mean many things. Typically though, statements as to whether America was a conservative or liberal nation are attempts to identify and describe that nation’s political preferences. These arguments take the form of identifying polling data that gives a majority response to a conservative or liberal position. A majority of Americans are pro-life, and thus we are a conservative nation, conservatives will argue. Wait, say the liberals, a majority back higher taxes on the rich and support the EPA, so we are actually a liberal. Some decide to split the baby in half, and label us a centrist nation. This labeling activity is fun, but ultimately pointless since the definitions of conservatism and liberalism, popularly understood, seem to shift so readily. But this is not what I have in mind. (For the record, I think America is a center right nation, especially on economics).

Before I make my point, I want to define a few terms. We frequently hear and use the terms conservatism and liberalism in our political discourse, but I believe they are divorced from their true meanings. Liberalism in the American sense is very different from liberalism as understood by Europeans. The same is true for conservatism. An American conservative and a European conservative are two very different political animals.

I’m going force a very crude categorization onto political ideologies. Despite all of their nuances and details and thinkers, I’m placing them into three very broad and overly general camps. I freely admit to all of the errors and abstractions this implies. The three main ideologies are: conservatism, liberalism, and socialism. Let’s define each one, starting with the latter.

Socialism is any ideology stemming from Marx that seeks to maximize or is primarily concerned with equality and opposed to traditional moorings. Socialism places emphasize on realizing equality through political or cultural means. It is also an economic system that excludes private property and places all ownership within the hands of the public. We delude ourselves if we think of socialism only in economic terms. As Antonio Gramsci and the Frankfurt School are so keen to realize, socialism incorporates and necessitates an all encompassing socialistic culture. This definition, if limited, should be relatively uncontroversial with my readers.

Liberalism is the next ideology in our list and one of the most variant ideologies. I define liberalism as any system that mentions or values rights and is primarily concerned with human liberty. Equality too has a role within the liberal system, and produces a tension with liberty that gives much of the character of the political energy within liberal systems. The liberal system is a democratic system, and as such requires, much like socialism, a matching culture. Liberal democracy produces and is sustained by a liberal political culture. Note, that liberalism has different flavors. It can be a more capitalist liberal system, such as the United States and the Anglosphere, or it can be a more state managed liberal system, such as the Nordic countries. Its variants all share the notion of private property stemming from a belief in political and natural rights. This challenges American contemporary wisdom, but capitalism and liberalism are twin forces, both upsetting the previous feudal order, both placing emphasis on meritocracy over inherited powers. My definition of liberalism is in accordance with the European and academic definitions of liberalism.

Finally, we have conservatism. In the European context, true conservatism is something very alien to most Americans. It places tradition and the natural order above all else. Conservatism is closely aligned with monarchism, though it can exist in other political regimes. Religion is highly valued, as are the traditional bonds within the community. The aristocracy rules not only because it is inherent to the definition of aristocracy, but also because the aristocracy trained from birth, is the best at ruling. The body politic is not constituted by a contract among peers, but instead by blood and tradition. Every man, from the peasant to the king, has a role within society. And everyman’s role is determined by their birth.

When viewed in this light, I come to what I mean by the title of this piece. America is not a conservative nation, because it was founded on a radical, liberal order. The constitution and Declaration of Independence, with their insistence on natural rights and the right of the people to both rule and determine those rulers, is fundamentally a liberal regime. It rejects the rights of the aristocracy, monarchs, and inevitably the church to govern. A man’s place in the world is determined by and through his own effort, not his father’s position or class. Indeed, the success of the liberal regime in America has thoroughly spread throughout the world. The old conservative natural order of duties and privileges, lords and nobles, monarchs and subjects, has been thoroughly demolished and replaced by liberal regimes. Tsarist Russia, Metternich’s Austria, and the Bourbon’s France are all dead, replaced by liberal democratic states. Even in countries that still nominally have a monarchy, such as the United Kingdom or the Netherlands, the actual governing regime is liberal, not conservative, in character with its emphasis on liberty and rights.

Under this context, America’s political parties are not fundamentally different, though they offer very different policy prescriptions and constitute very different classes and ethnicities. They are both liberal parties, arguing over what strain of liberalism should be adopted. Conservatives in the United States are the old radicals who have been redefined by the forces of time. They seek to maintain and return to the original liberal political order defined by negative rights, limited government, and liberty. The reasons conservatives place such emphasis on the constitution is because it is precisely that document, and its implied political understanding, that they seek to protect. They are liberals in the sense that they believe in rights, liberties, and equality, but they are conservative, and at times reactionaries, in that they seek to preserve and enact an earlier understanding of those concepts.

American liberalism, contemporarily understood, is just liberalism but with an increased focus on material conditions. The equal and free society endorsed by the constitution requires ever more interference in the private economy and culture to equalize man’s material and social conditions. The extent of which is subject to internal debate.

American conservatism seems to always be giving ground, especially in the cultural sense, because it is protecting something that the system it espouses rejects. The traditional family, and the implied interdependence of its parts, is not a product of the liberal order but the conservative, monarchical order. Individualism is a product of a liberal political order, and extreme individualism runs directly counter to the putative concept of the family. American conservatives want a liberal political system but with a conservative culture. But the liberal political system runs counter to a conservative culture. It actively encourages a culture reflecting the values and beliefs of itself. Whether or not a liberalism political system can survive with a liberal culture, a society of atoms and not families, over the long run is debatable and possibly, perhaps probably, unlikely.

Does this then predict the permanent ascendency of political and cultural liberalism? Not quite. It is certainly not a prediction of the permanent dominance of the American Democratic Party. If the culture changes, the parties will reevaluate their positions, in their constant efforts to seek a majority of voters. If a politically liberal system produces a liberal, individualistic culture but requires the conservative culture of yesteryear to sustain it, what then? I truly don’t know.

I’m going to end here. Perhaps more on this later. I hope this is clear, and as always, I welcome comments or questions. Part of the fun of this blog is not just in sharing my thoughts with the public, but putting pen to paper and crystallizing, through writing, many disparate and inchoate thoughts.