No. The crime rate has been falling since the early 1990s.

On the other hand, perhaps I was somewhat over-broad in my description, but not by much. I don’t want to get in a tit for tat discussion of statistics, but overall crime is up and I don’t care which blog one reads—be it Harry’s place, etc., or even blogs outside the UK which concentrate on the UK, plus newspapers and magazines—the increasing number of absolute horror stories, many of which involve Moslems,
cannot be denied. As someone who follows events in the UK fairly carefully (albeit not in a heavily concentrated academic way) my experience is that the frequency and magnitude of such stories—in print, on the tube, or even via rumor, was fairly sporadic and in line with the experience of most major industrialized societies until very recently. And while there are always neighborhoods in every major city in which strangers are suspect and often at peril, the UK has seemingly seen an exponential rise in general lawlessness among both the general population and depredations of Moslem youth against non-Moslems in particular. As the old saying goes: “All I know is what I read in the newspapers.” But if your objection is that I made it sound as if such things are occurring everywhere and everyday then I would say a point well made, but I remain an unrepentant advocate of my general view of recent overall trends in the UK.

I think this effort at definition is futile (and not only because of all of the self-serving). “Conservatism” is NOT a political philosophy or a philosophy of life or anything coherent at all. Neither is liberalism in the contemporary American political sense of the term. Rather they are two loose and self-contradictory groupings of cultural and political affinities and tics. No set of core principles unites the white suburban soccer mom who listens to Dr. Laura, the Straussian political scientist who reads the Weekly Standard, the bottle-blond society matron with a tiny dog and John Birch sympathies, and the Wal-Mart manager with a big SUV, a golf-club membership, and a Wall Street Journal subscription. They might all vote Republican till they die, and they might all call themselves conservatives and be filled with disdain or hatred of liberals. There is no “philosophy” there, however. No unified outlook on life. Just a set of overlapping affective investments. Engage them in conversation and you’ll probably find radically different “sticking points,” places where they will not budge and will get increasingly irate if pushed.

Same goes for “liberals.”

I have no doubt that the affective constellation of conservatives is very different from that of liberals, and there have been efforts to characterize those differing constellations. But that is not the same as a definition of conservatism or liberalism. This is the realm of descriptive sociology, not political philosophy.

Well, we’d all much prefer a form of conservatism that didn’t involve demanding the exile of people you disagree with.

Hearing conservatives talk is a bit like hearing Foucauldians: yes you should be cautious about supporting change with no thought about the costs, yes power and knowledge are interlinked; but change is often good and is all knowledge really just an effect of power relations. A lot of conservatives beleive that they have a unique methodology that exempts them from critical scrutiny.

Virgil Xenophon – one of the things I was too polite to say before about conservatives is how many of them aren’t just scared of the unfamiliar, but ignorant about it. When you have some clue about the UK, it might be worth discussing things.

What’s “natural” engels?

All the more so when I’ve linked to an article by Tony Judt ridiculing and with good reason the arguments of Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Labor, the publisher of The American Prospect. and former employer of Matthew Yglesias…
“And for the record (don’t post this), Yglesias as an individual has a great, self-aware sense of humor and is much more starkly honest (if also unapologetic) about his own elitism than most liberals. Take him out for a beer and I think you’d find that.”
From an email from one of Y’s copains. I posted it then too.

Both conservatives and procedural (corporate, administrative, technocratic) liberals are maddenly stubborn about refusing to assign responsibility for any mainstream disaster. (Though at the same time, they’re often willing to blame anyone who’s not pro-Israel enough for the Holocaust.)

The word “traditional” is yours not mine. Using economics to preserve traditional ways of life seems to be exactly what Russell Arben Fox was talking about upthread, the vital element that he thinks is missing in American pseudo-conservative movement. Unless I misunderstood. Typical conservative programs provide subsidies to the small farmers and small businesses, protect domestic industries (and higher wages) by imposing tariffs on imports, create government jobs and incentives for mothers to stay home with their children. Social stability, decent wages, low unemployment. That’s what I would call ‘conservatism’. What’s your definition?

I think you’re right that ‘conservatism’ is different from ‘social democracy’; it doesn’t aim to minimize injustice and so on. Ideals (like fairness and consistency) are easily sacrificed for the sake of stability; conservatives are not searching for oppressed minority groups to liberate. But obviously conservatism is, indeed, an effective bulwark against neo-liberal globalism. Mahathir bin Mohamad in Malaysia provided an example.

As for Magistra, well, again I am rather amused. Since when have concerns about “cost” and “Liberty” become invalid? Sounds like pretty bedrock stuff to me. I shudder to think what “progressive,” “totalist” approach you have in mind for “traffic-calming.” Not enough of us on bicycles, eh? I note that two of your biggest worries are drugs and the environment. Are you to say with a straight face that our drug-addled society is the result of conservative values? Please. And while conservative solutions as have been tried have not always been well thought out, neither have those coming from the left. About “different people?” Well, if and when one of those “different people” blows up your child in the tube one day I wonder how “hostile” you will feel towards these selfsame people? And I would point out the obvious fact(reality again) that those nations with the most disasterously degraded environments are all Communist or former Communist ones, with a slew of nations in Africa and South America that have been dominated by left-wing Socialist governments (many of them single-party states) not far behind. So much for “the Right” as enemies of the planet.

As far as parenting standards are concerned, are you trying to argue (again with a straight face) that the public comportment of today’s youth, their level of educational attainment, the viciousness of the crimes committed by them, their general level of lawlessness, their uber levels of drug and booze usage with all their attendant social dysfunctions etc., are the product of standards in practice prior to the 60s? Again, please. To even ask such a question is to answer it. Many areas in most of the U.K’s major cities have become “no-go” zones either because of the immigrant population or crime in general. This is an improvement? The fault of conservatives? Conservatives may properly be blamed for many things, but are not those very things that might harm your children—dope, porn and Islamists—coming from people that “don’t share your values?” And do not the people behind these threats have “hostile intents?” Just how “scary” do you believe porn, dope, and Islamists to be? Or are these things mere figments of fevered conservative imaginations?

The names shift because the threat shifts. Life is dynamic. No one was flying planes into buildings or blowing up sub-ways in the 50s, but worrying about changing threats is somehow a conservative neuroses? You yourself admit that you have “genuine fears and worries.” Are not these the same worries conservatives have? As we see in the newspapers everyday “something scary out there” is indeed “coming to harm your children.” You just don’t like to be reminded by conservatives that these threats to your children are largely the outgrowth of misguided policies set in motion by your side of the political/philosophical equation.
In my city of New Orleans “the left” has controlled City Hall and the School Board for the last sixty years—the first thirty by white Democrats; the next thirty by black Democrats. And the corruption and maladministration of City Hall
and the miserable performance of the Public Schools the fault of Conservatives? And what of the mess made by “Nu Labor?” The only way that left-wing governments can get elected in either the US or UK is to run as conservative lefties—they dare not show their true colors. And conservatism has a problem?

Your definition of traditional conservatism (‘a concept of government intervening in economic matters to preserve elements of culture’ #91) is so obviously false that one has to wonder whether you are putting it forward in good faith, or just trying to annoy people and get attention.

Seth, implying (#86) that any ideology which is not ‘strictly individualistic’ is to that extent ‘conservative’—and hence to try to claim social democracy for a form of conservatism—is completely crazy. But you knew that, right?