Liberal, Conservative, Pangloss, Plotinus, Galton

Also, you’ve misspelled Corey Robin’s first name. Just a heads up.

Cohen’s a Canadian post-Marxist academic philosopher, actually.

JH — I think I agree with all of @@8-9. And thinking about this, I can imagine painting myself into a weird corner (e.g. “conservatism”: yay ideal theory (in some sense); “conservatives”: no ideal theory! That’s a strange place to end up.) Must think more!

Thanks for the Cohen link. I’ve gone so far as to label myself a Tory in the past on similar temperamental grounds – given a choice between “gain X, risk losing Y” and “keep Y, risk forfeiting X” I’ll always go for the latter. (We’ve got Y, for heaven’s sake. It’s ours right now. Hands off our Y!) Like Cohen, I’m the Marxist kind of Tory.

But: you start with

There is a non-trivial risk of 1 & 2 coming completely apart.

and then devote the rest of the post to warning against different ways of pushing 1 & 2 together; the implication is that they need to be held apart. Surely you were right the first time – 1 & 2 need to be informed by each other, or in dialogue, or connected somehow or other at any rate. The question then is, how? What’s the alternative to Panglossianism here?

If question 2) is broadened to include, as Yourcenar would say, “a glance towards a past epoch or a distant land”; that is to say if an understanding not only of the political system of the US in 2010 is sought, but also for instance that of the US in 1910 and/or that of Sweden, Taïwan, Italy, Russia and Tunisia in 2010, then it seems to me that question 1) quickly reveals itself to be a much too hard (perhaps borderline non-sensical) philosophical question (it might be tractable as a sociological and anthropological question).

Also

1) and 2) could come totally apart if actually existing liberals and/or conservatives are so non-ideal that thinking about what they would be like, ideally, doesn’t give us a rough template of what they are like, actually.

Who exactly is doing the thinking in this sentence? Who is “us”? If the answer is “academic philosophers” or (god forbid!) “commenters on CT”, then isn’t this the problem to begin with (conversely, Sarah Palin and Ann Coulter might think that the actually existing front runner is quite the embodiment of the ideal conservative)? To be clear, independently of any actual divergence between 1) and 2), why would you expect the mode of thinking and analysis peculiar to a very specific and fringe group to be a good model for any social reality? I bet there is a gulf between the way “we” would think about karaoke, urban planning and parent/teachers meetings and the reality of those as well.

Call that one the Weak Normative Terentian fallacy, if you wish (in fact, multa sunt a me alienum puto.)

Ugh.

“People who say they are Republicans and don’t vote are like people who say they are Christians but don’t attend church.

Also: Hayes’

“To the contrary, a lot of US conservatives clearly have clusters of semi-coherent beliefs and values they call ‘conservatism’.”

And this is the *contrary* of what I said exactly why? Just analyzing this statement would be a great seminar topic, for whoever cares enough. What is expressed in that claim? Look at all the disclaimers: “a lot”o f conservatives, “clusters”, “semi-coherent”, beliefs that “they call ‘conservatism'”. Of course all of this is sort of true, but what follows?

But I think group behavior explains enough of the anomalies in the ‘a party is a bundle of philosophical commitments’ notion to be taken seriously.

Rather than me making this argument, let me point you to an interesting philosophical post from about 15 years ago, about the gap between what politicians say and what they mean:

It’s really true, I suspect, that when most conservatives say that they don’t buy this global warming junk science, what they really mean to do is, simply, signal ‘I’m in favor of capitalism’. If you are a conservative, talking to conservatives, and you say you think the scientists might be right, your audience is going to hear you refusing to send an ‘I’m in favor of capitalsim’ signal. Needless to say, this means conservatives can’t have reasonable discussions of global warming unless they are free from worries about what they are signalling, as opposed to saying. Which they never are, at least if they are politicians.

Doesn’t the use of philosophically ungrounded in-group signalling suggest enough group maneuvering to make trying to understand the GOP’s real philosophy a mug’s game?

https://crookedtimber.org/2011/09/03/must-we-act-as-if-they-mean-what-they-say/

24: “You imply that they don’t have any philosophy that is recognizable as ‘conservatism’. But they do.”

But you cannot define that philosophy, can you? And if you could: suppose you present us a reasonably definite description of a certain political philosophy and claim that that is the philosophy that “a lot of US conservatives” ascribe to. How would we test that claim? I’m really not trying to impose an unreasonable burden of proof on you. But to defend your claim, you would have to overcome at least these two hurdles: define the philosophy “conservatism”, and show that “conservatives” (*) actually subscribe to it. And that is going to be pretty hard, but I’ll be curious if you try.

(*) You said at 20 “a lot of conservatives”. It is unclear how many (a plurality? a majority? almost all?) you would need to make your case stick. We haven’t even mentioned the very plausible possibility that different conservatives ascribe to different kinds of “conservatism”. I think in order to prove me wrong, you’d have to show a minimum degree of philosophical coherence within the group of self-described conservatives.

J. Holbo @8/@9
Corey R. can speak for himself, but if all he were saying in The Reactionary Mind (RM for short) is that conservatives “systematically tend” in a reactionary direction the book would be less interesting and provocative than it is. There are in RM, as I recall, several more specific claims about “the normative core” (to use your phrase) of conservatism, although the lines between the normative core and the actual behavior may get blurry; e.g.: (1) conservatives/reactionaries are above all interested in preserving hierarchy in ‘private’ (e.g. workplace and family) as opposed to public domains, though they care about the latter as well; (2) conservatives/reactionaries have a special affinity for violence and war, though they often prefer to celebrate these things from a certain distance; (3) conservatives/reactionaries relish and draw energy from fighting (figuratively or literally) against revolutionary forces, meaning they are happiest when there is some kind of ‘revolutionary’ threat to be confronted; conservatives admire revolutionaries’ disdain for caution and willingness to use sometimes extreme means in the effort to achieve their ends.

The interesting and controversial aspect of RM is thus, IMO, not the claim that there is “a normative core” to conservatism but rather the book’s depiction of the contents of that “normative core.”

What they ‘believe’ is that their group should be in charge, which is why they change sides even on seemingly rock-ribbed conservative commitments, e.g. cap-and-trade or Romneycare. If they can’t even commit to market outcomes without first asking ‘Who gets the credit’, well, that’s not much of a philosophical commitment to anything. That’s just the usual place-swapping between the party of envy and the party of greed.

Lemme read you some of the (really quite interesting) Hayes’ piece:

The majority of undecided voters I spoke to couldn’t name a single issue that was important to them. This was shocking to me. Think about it: The “issue” is the basic unit of political analysis for campaigns, candidates, journalists, and other members of the chattering classes. […]

But the very concept of the issue seemed to be almost completely alien to most of the undecided voters I spoke to. […] At first I thought this was a problem of simple semantics–maybe, I thought, “issue” is a term of art that sounds wonky and intimidating, causing voters to react as if they’re being quizzed on a topic they haven’t studied. So I tried other ways of asking the same question: “Anything of particular concern to you? Are you anxious or worried about anything? Are you excited about what’s been happening in the country in the last four years?”

These questions, too, more often than not yielded bewilderment. As far as I could tell, the problem wasn’t the word “issue”; it was a fundamental lack of understanding of what constituted the broad category of the “political.” The undecideds I spoke to didn’t seem to have any intuitive grasp of what kinds of grievances qualify as political grievances. Often, once I would engage undecided voters, they would list concerns, such as the rising cost of health care; but when I would tell them that Kerry had a plan to lower health-care premiums, they would respond in disbelief–not in disbelief that he had a plan, but that the cost of health care was a political issue. It was as if you were telling them that Kerry was promising to extend summer into December.

http://chrishayes.org/articles/decision-makers/

And this seem like ‘What’s The Matter With Kansas and New Hampshire and Idaho and South Carolina and…”, here’s a bit from the much more recent piece, Millennials’ Political Views Don’t Make Any Sense:

On government’s role in our lives:

Conservatives can say: 66 percent of Millennials say that “when something is funded by the government, it is usually inefficient and wasteful.”
Liberals can say: More than two-thirds think the government should guarantee food, shelter, and a living wage.

On government size:

Conservatives can say: 57 percent want smaller government with fewer services (if you mention the magic word “taxes”).
Liberals can say: 54 percent want larger government with more services (if you don’t mention “taxes”).
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/07/millennials-economics-voting-clueless-kids-these-days/374427/

If you had to list ways of describing those sort of commitments, I don’t the phrase ‘philosophically coherent’ would be in the Top 10.

32, interesting stuff.

Can we play this game from the other direction?

For question 1) Lets suppose I am certain that the bedrock of conservatism is: racism, sexism, capitalism and elitism….and therefore for question 2) the real politic application is to say or do whatever’s necessary with respect to a given topic while not revealizing the four bedrock conservative values.

Someone wiser than I may know of an ‘ideal’ philosophy which embraces this. Once they do, part 2 takes care of itself as defined.

The Wizard of Oz is closest I can think of at the moment, except maybe the witches win a bit more often than Dorothy (the liberal) does and the Tinman looks more like Trump.

@30 very helpful. Does that imply in the absence of a revolutionary threat there are no reactionaries, though “reactionary” suggests to me someone who is after the wheels of history have turned trying futilely to return the world to an imagined status quo ante, e.g. Hayek trying to revive Gladstonian liberalism.

Shouldn’t we differentiate between the core beliefs of a reactionary from the core beliefs of a conservative? Zingales and Rajan have a book titled saving capitalism from the capitalists; couldn’t someone issue a call for saving conservatism (1) from the conservatives (2)?

Or in today’s language of political economics the Republicans are not *conserving* inclusive institutions or the open-access liberal order but presiding over the transmutation into extractive and closed-order institutions.

Rakesh B @38
Shouldn’t we differentiate … the core beliefs of a reactionary from the core beliefs of a conservative?

Many would say yes, of course. However, CR in The Reactionary Mind argues that “the core” of conservatism *is* reactionary. (I don’t necessarily agree with that thesis completely, but that’s what he argues.) J. Holbo sort of blands this out, if I can put it that way, by saying that conservatism on CR’s view “tends toward” a reactionary position, but as I read CR his argument is that most conservatism, both ‘in the world’ and in its high-flown theoretical expressions, just is reactionary. I think that’s one reason the book’s subtitle is “conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin”: puts the theorist and the practitioner into the same box, so to speak.

@40. Digression: I think Kasich will win New Hampshire and eventually the Republican nomination. He’ll choose Rubio as his VP. This may give the Republicans 1. OH and FL in the national election and 2. more of the Latino vote as while Latinos may disagree with Rubio, it will symbolize Latino’s inclusion in the US if a mainstream conservative stand-bearer is Latino. Clinton and O’Malley may well lose. Of course Sanders may yet win the nomination.

@42: agree Kasich prob. worth watching

“Eugenics fits perfectly in the liberal worldview ”

Oh does it now?

= = = . From what I see, contemporary US Conservatives appear to be united mostly by a distrust of government. = = =

Absolutely. Thus the oft-heard Tea Party exclamation “keep your government hands off my Medicare”, and “I want my Constitution back” coupled with renewed fervor for destroying the Post Office (which is explicitly called out in the Constitution as a Federal government function).

MPA and TM illustrate the problem perfectly. They are so tribalist that they can’t even finish a sentence. The quote is “Eugenics fits perfectly in the liberal worldview if you don’t leaven it with a strong dose of the hated libertarian critique.”

We DO leaven liberalism with a strong dose of the hated libertarian critique, so the social planning/we know better than poor people/technocratic side loses out. Just like on abortion.

It isn’t about ideology. You use libertarian ideological arguments all the time. The hate-fest on libertarians is about in-group out-group signalling.

And if you don’t know about the Democrats, all the signatories to the worldwide drug treaties, and the drug war 1900-2000 I really can’t help you.

“You use libertarian ideological arguments all the time”

And I thought liberals are using liberal arguments against illiberalism.

“And I thought liberals are using liberal arguments against illiberalism.”

“Government off my body” is an ideologically libertarian argument. If you get to call all arguments that you like “liberal” you get whatever results you want. But then “liberal” isn’t a describable ideology, it is a label for “stuff people I like also like”. Which is precisely what I said about tribalism.

My point is not that it is BAD. I prefer liberalism to all sorts of competitors. My point is that ideological coherence isn’t actually something we expect out of our political parties. Conservatism is an affiliation, not an ideology. Liberalism is an affiliation, not an ideology. There are clusters of ideologies that fit more easily with each of the affiliations, but they shouldn’t be mistaken FOR the political affiliations.

Trump and Sanders are appealing to the idea that the middle class has been sidelined in the political debate for at least a couple of decades. That is an affiliation argument. Their idea about what to do for their affiliates is informed by ideology plus polling (or in Trump’s case maybe whatever popped into his head first). But the affiliation appeal is what is driving it. Again I don’t claim to know why Trump appeals to many in the working and middle classes. But he does. And whatever it is, I’m certain it isn’t ideology. What scares me about a Trump/Clinton race is that Clinton hasn’t had a clue about appealing to the middle class ever. She portrays New York bankster kiss-up more than Trump–which is saying something. And yes, that is an affiliation argument, not a policy argument.

Bianca: “Where are these supposed liberals who equate liberalism with social planning?”

I think those making that accusation are working with a definition of “social planning” that’s vague enough to include a graduated income tax and some degree of redistribution, signposts on the road to serfdom.

I certainly don’t think liberals “really” agree with libertarians on everything. Im saying that “hands off my body” is a libertarian argument. It is in fact the classic one. Liberals are allowed to make libertarian arguments.

“Eugenics fits perfectly in the liberal worldview”
Again I ask does it now? Part of liberalism is treating people not as means but as ends in themselves. How does eugenics fit perfectly with this?

Sebastian H: can you walk us through your argument from “non-libertarian-leavened liberalism” to eugenics? Go slow and be specific about the steps.

” “Government off my body” is an ideologically libertarian argument”
Not necessarily. The first part of your sentence is a practical policy/regulatory level claim while the latter part of the sentence refers to one theory among the many fundamental moral theories. But other fundamental moral theories can also, from their own non-libertarian theoretical resources, argue for the first practical policy/rule. For example a rawlsian or rule consequentialist argument. A component in such an argument would be that to not have fairly robust limits on invasive actions tends to lead to bad outcomes.

CCC and MPA, you are treating liberalism and conservatism under different standards and not treating the original post seriously. Historically, liberalism and eugenics were fine together until the Nazis gave eugenics a bad name. That is empirical history. I’m not saying it is impossible to define some ideology as excluding eugenics and then label it ‘liberal’. Of course that is possible by the power of academic stipulation. But actually existing stuff often called liberalism was fine with eugenics for much of its history. It is the libertarian critique which is most often used to exclude eugenics and allow abortion in currently liberal ideological statements.

‘”Hands off my body” is a libertarian argument. It is in fact the classic one.’

No, this is the classic one:
https://twitter.com/reason/status/694143168049090560

“The result of criminalizing abortion or the unauthorized consumption of recreational drugs is epidemiologically worse than not-criminalizing them. ”

China’s experience with opium would seem to be a pretty strong counter-example.

It is clearly true that most conservstives like government that does what they want. But, rhetorically they blame most problems on government. Or, at least, on “liberalism” in government. Which is pretty much defined as whatever they don’t like.
Or Cleek’s Law, conservatism is the opposite of what liberals want, updated daily.

BTW, color me confused: last week it was current-day (post 2000) [US] progressives who were supposedly responsible for the historic [US] Progressive movement (1890-1920) and its alleged support of eugenics; this week it is currently day (post-Woodstock) [US] liberals who are responsible for the Liberal era of the 19th century and… the Liberals’ alleged support of eugenics?? Can we make up our mind about which subgroup of the not-hard-Radical-Right is responsible for eugenics (a morally repulsive theory which most living liberals/progressives have either not heard about or forgotten from 11th grade history)? It can’t be all of them.

Less snarkily, the attempt/requirement to link post-1970 US liberals (and particularly those who still refer to themselves as liberals in the Limbaugh/Rove era) to historic Liberal philosophies/movements/eras is not particularly meaningful IMHO. Which I think is approximately where JH started.

Gary Johnson was the last Libertarian Party candidate, and he could certainly have been worse. Pro-choice even.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Johnson

“I have this radical idea that learning, thanks to the horrific extreme example seventy years ago, that something is indeed a bad idea and never being comfortable with it again is to the credit of a political community. ”

Absolutely. But this post is about ideological consistency in parties. You can label everything you like as ‘liberal’ and everything you don’t like as ‘apostate’ or ‘satanic’ or whatever you want. That isn’t ideology identification thought. That is choosing your in group and sticking with it.

My point is that the project Holbo is attempting is mostly fruitless, not because conservatives are particularly prone to being ideologically flexible, but because ideology doesn’t map well onto power politics as practiced by Democrats or Republicans.

On some level that good. Ideology could almost be defined as “ideas taken too far”. Libertarians aren’t wrong that government capture exists, or bad side effects of policies exist, they are just wrong that such factual underpinnings mean that you should drown government in a bathtub.

@Geo #49: Tribalism is closer than prejudice, because there are lots (and lots and lots) of ways to signal that you are part of a tribe, without prejudice being at the center of it.

Think of Vonnegut’s granfalloons, groups that would create a sense of solidarity while being assigned at random — sort of a cross between being a Hoosier and being a Sagittarius.

So when I wear my Music|Band t-shirt, my fellow kids who also like Music|Band will see me as one of their own, and know that they can speak to me in our own special argot, without there being anyone we are particularly excluding (mostly because no one wants into our club.)

Politics is a particular form of tribalism, and it matters a lot what sort of tribes the system produces. Because the U.S. system has two political tribes that are far more powerful than any others, the system is practically designed to produce philosophical incoherence.

It’s striking that in this thread, people really really want to discuss conservativism, even though the original question was about politics, and the U.S. political system does not have a Conservative party. We have a Republican Party, many of whose adherents do not in fact believe in tenets conservatives take to be quite sacred.

And the best place to see this gap between philosophy and party play out is in National Review, who has been able to maintain a lorgnette-lowering level of shock that some Republicans are behaving as if they have forgotten their sacred commitment to principled, small-government conservativism, with the clear indication that people who merely register and vote as a Republican are the anchor babies of the movement. It’s the political version of “Fog in Channel; All of Europe cut off.”

LFC @44: Surely @42 is a joke?

@RB — are you really serious? Maybe it’s a little bit unfair of me to say this as the IA results roll in, but in what possible world does Kasich win the nomination? Also, this bit of yours made me laugh out loud:

America has under-exploited the cultural capital of Hooters and Hard Rock Cafe. No more with Trump.

Making me think you weren’t being terribly serious about any of this (for good reason).

Clay Shirky:

What they ‘believe’ is that their group should be in charge, which is why they change sides

Is this supposed to hold true only for conservatives/conservatism or also for liberals/liberalism? Genuine question, this—and not coming from someone who’s a conservative.

In general, I think it’s interesting that the discussion has focused almost entirely on conservatism, even though JH’s post is equally about conservatism and liberalism. (I did the same thing above of course, but not because I think liberalism is in better shape re (1) and (2), but because I think it—i.e. post-war American liberalism—is even more at sea re (1).)

@js.
Surely @42 is a joke?

Well, I didn’t take it that way. Kasich as the nominee is not impossible by any means. Way too early to say so. Cruz has won IA (I see from the headlines), but so did Santorum and Huckabee. Doesn’t nec. mean that much. I understand why US presidential election campaigns are long, btw, but I have less and less tolerance for their length and all the associated horserace stuff and hoopla. The media get obsessed with trivia etc and the congressional and other downballot races get slighted.

I have less and less tolerance for their length and all the associated horserace stuff and hoopla. The media get obsessed with trivia etc and the congressional and other downballot races get slighted.

I agree entirely. But given that that is how they’re run now, I would—if I were a betting man—bet my bank balance that Kasich will not be the nominee. I just don’t see how and where he gets the votes or the money.

@js #84, it’s supposed to hold true for politics, without much regard to philosophy. (Indeed, that’s my meta-coment on JH’s original post; I get off the ‘but what are the philosophical commitments of the average voter?’ bus before it even leaves the depot.)

You can see this politics > philosophy dealie with procedural wrangling. The party in power understands that filibusters are an anti-democratic abomination, because they prevent the orderly progress of governance, while executive adjustments to the regulatory state are a necessary bit of grease in the wheels of technocracy.

The party out of power is also capable of understanding the difference between violations of democratic principle and vital constitutional accommodations, but assigns those labels in the opposite way the party in power does.

“A hah!”, you think to yourself. “When those Repulicrats thrown the Democans out, their ferocious arguments for limiting executive power will carry the day, and the President will voluntarily renounce such shady dealings! And the Democans, reduced to minority status, will forgo the filibuster, because it taints every issue it touches!”

What happens next will shock you.

72: Conservatives don’t like liberals in government and liberals don’t like conservatives in government. How banal is this. There is no evidence that conservatives question government authority in principle, to the contrary, they are more likely to support coercive government action. Btw, Americans are to my knowledge the only people who unironically celebrate their (current and former) presidents at a special holiday. Is that how Americans express their “distrust of government”? To the rest of the world, this just appears weird. Visit the Carnival – which ends next Tuesday – if you want to see how for example Germans “celebrate” their politicians.

Here’s an example of the purest form of modern American conservatism made manifest (that’s right from Cruz himself). It’s an illustrative example not just of the bold-face lies conservatives tell each other and themselves, but also of the appalling state of modern establishment journalism. From Time: http://time.com/4203730/ben-carson-ted-cruz-caucus-dirty-tricks/ “Carson’s team claimed that Ted Cruz’s campaign deliberately sent emails to supporters to spread false rumors at caucus sites that Carson had dropped out, so his supporters would caucus for other candidates…Jason Osborne, Carson’s deputy senior strategist, read aloud another missive… “The guy speaking for Ted Cruz right before the vote, he was supposed to be done, he announced that there was a story on CNN that Ben Carson was taking a break after Iowa, and then stated, ‘So you might want to rethink wasting your vote on him.’” Cruz’s team flatly denies the allegations. “That’s absurd,” spokesperson Catherine Frazier said.”

The piece contains not a single link, not that there aren’t plenty about. For example, here’s the Twitter feed of Steve King, Iowa congressman, and a key figure in team Cruz https://twitter.com/SteveKingIA?ref_src=twsrc^tfw “Carson looks like he is out. Iowans need to know before they vote. Most will go to Cruz, I hope.”

As a person of faith, nothing gives me quite the same joy as watching poser hypocrites lie their f#cking faces while praising God. I’m sure everyone is totally shocked. A sampling of pro-Cruz commenters suggest that many believe that Ted’s close contact with G-O-D render him incapable of uttering a falsehood. The sole consolation is that he’s bedecking himself in mud so quickly that he’s unlikely to make it deep into the race. Rubio, on the other hand, looks to be the new favorite to displace Trump. How the ego reacts to rejection is anyone’s guess. I don’t believe, btw, that the votes stolen from Carson by Cruz tipped the scales enough to change the result – it’s just nice to see the scummy side of Ted so clearly displayed. Christian lawyer/politician screwing Christian doctor/politician and lying about it. Conservatism in a nutshell.

The other day, Cowen explained that progressives need more liberalism to inoculate them from the temptation of eugenics. Now SH explains that liberals need libertarianism or they will jump on the eugenics bandwagon. Religious conservatives claim that only by opposing abortion can the spectre of eugenics be exorcised. All the while, the one and only prominent contemporary figure on record supporting eugenics is Charles Murray.

Discuss.

97: This is a parody, right?

(Regret the typo)

I’m not sure whether TM is writing parody when he says that conservatism in most places is supportive of the government, therefore conservatism in the U.S. is supportive of the government.

bs: When did I say that?

Ronan: “Of course there are ‘clusters of beliefs’ or ideas or instincts or values that make up something that could, for the purposes of analysis, be called a conservative philosophy” Maybe that is true but then why is nobody (looking especially at JH) willing to describe those “clusters of beliefs” and provide empirical evidence that these are in fact what self-described conservatives are committed to? Sloppy thinking posing as political analysis is cheap.

TM: I understood you to be saying this in @98, since you were comparing the U.S. to the world in other ways, but maybe you were not. You don’t have to look far to find major conservative publications wondering whether the U.S. is illegitimate because it committed treason to the English Crown and/or “European culture,” by which is meant the church. That’s what Eliot was all about: proper conservatism for him meant rejecting his background and upbringing and turning to Europe. To say there’s no evidence of conservatives being anti-government is just wrong. Conservatives may often be authoritarian but they don’t always feel compelled to accept actual authorities as the morally proper ones.

Hi John, not a bit. I find your stuff very solid, but a bit dry and academic for my taste – which your free to take as a double compliment. My own sense is that conservative texts and practices are far more pervasive than liberal varieties for a large number of often predictable sociological, psychological, and economic factors. Large numbers of self-described liberals are among the most closed-minded people I know. Self-described conservatives, especially those of faith, seem willing to gamble wildly on almost no evidence. I’m most familiar with French conservative theorists such as de Bonald. In 1801, very few people were willing to use his “On Divorce” as a map for social order. Yet, by 1815-16 de Bonald was one of the most influential men in France, if not Europe. Conservative thought mapped quite well onto social practices. Divorce was abolished. More than that, a great many French men, in particular, seemed very willing in 1816 to entertain de Bonald’s argument that all the evils that befell France up to the point originated in national rejection of the ‘rites and traditions of the Catholic Church’. As @110 points, out Eliot’s politics were anything but liberal. His art, however, was a long way from conservative. Dali is another example.

Your own arguments seem very reasonable and consistently well-grounded.

TM: I didn’t say you did. I did quote from your comment directly–it’s the “no evidence” bit if you haven’t had your coffee yet. I’ll wait for you to re-read and figure out what words my comment actually contained. Otherwise, I’ll conclude you’ve decided to be a schmuck, for reasons I can only speculate about.

And no bs, you are not quoting me directly. This is a direct quote: “There is no evidence that conservatives question government authority *in principle*, to the contrary, they are more likely to support coercive government action.” (TM, 92).

This is what you wrote: “To say there’s no evidence of conservatives being anti-government is just wrong. Conservatives may often be authoritarian but they don’t always feel compelled to accept actual authorities as the morally proper ones.” (BS, 110) You are not even contradicting me.

TM, yesterday you were complaining that people in the U.S. who call themselves conservatives are not really conservatives. It seems like you’re switching between different definitions of “conservative” as it suits you. Way to disprove the OP! I’m now convinced . . . that it’s barely worth reading your comments on this topic, let alone answering them.

@Sebastian H
The question of continuity is tricky.

One can argue plausibly that there is a link between, for example, Burke’s fascination with “dangers” (“The great virtues turn principally on dangers, punishments, and troubles” — quoted in Reactionary Mind, p.232) and the contemporary neocons’ constant perception of ‘threats’ to ‘natl security’ everywhere and the need to confront them. Corey R. makes this kind of argument, among others.

It’s harder — though not, I might be willing to concede, *completely impossible* — to argue for a link between eugenics and contemporary ‘progressives’ since there are no contemporary progressives who accept the specific assumptions or aims of eugenics. The best you could do is try to construct some general link based on an alleged preference for ‘social engineering’.

I do think, however, you are probably right that where one starts from influences one’s willingness to see connections or not: liberals/’progressives’ are more prone to see continuity in conservatism, while conservatives are more prone to see continuity in liberalism (or at least continuity with unsavory aspects of the past). In general we’re dealing here with the sort of evidence that’s inherently somewhat loose and open to interpretation. (Also, as MPAVict. has pointed out, eugenics was supported by more than one part of the political spectrum.)

Did you see the link I provided on the Mill/Irish famine thread to a piece by Diane Paul on JS Mill’s strong commitments to the regulation of reproductive behavior?

No, missed it — will take a look.

Ecrasez:
I think Quiggin was right that early-C20 and early-C21 progressives are very different beasts.

They are different (for one thing, they are addressing somewhat though not altogether different problems), but given the internally diverse character of the movements I think one could probably find some points of connection. Moreover, the early 20th-cent US progressives, at any rate, are about more than “the desire to apply science…to improve society,” and I think the same could be said of whoever one sees as their British analogues (fwiw, I’m not sure I’d consider the Fabians as precisely comparable, but I don’t know enough about the details).

Can you think of a particular issue (for a given historical context), such that if someone said, “‘I’m against x”, you’d feel safe saying, “well, then you’re not a liberal”? (I’m still trying to push my litmus test idea.) It should also work the other way: “I’m all for x” entails not being a conservative.

Neither eugenics nor abortion rights qualify, I don’t think.

“That is, Corey Robin is basically the Jonah Goldberg of the left. I don’t buy this. Goldberg is a hack and Robin is intellectually more careful (although not perfect, I’m sure.)”

Ugh. You’re taking the most simplistic version of the eugenics/progressive discussion possible, interpret it at highly detailed levels, and trying to compare it to an allegedly nuanced attack on conservatives which must be interpreted only on non-detailed levels. Use the same level of abstraction for both discussions.

Corey’s arguments have lots of underpant’s gnome characteristics–
1) 200 year old conservatives say bad things;
2) Current conservatives say things that if taken up five levels of abstraction could be in the same domain as those bad things taken up seven levels of abstraction.
3) ???
4) Modern conservatives are evil.

Applied to progressives and eugenics:

100 year old progressives said bad things re eugenics. If you take that up a bunch of levels of abstraction, they liked eugenics because they believed that scientific/technocratic social planning was a great idea. Historically progressives were eager to underplay their a) lack of true understanding of the underlying issues, b) their lack of understanding of the side effects of their plans, and c) their own privilege which blinded them to various needs and wants of non-progressives. Progressives still fail to admit their lack of true understanding, their failures to bother with the side effects of their plans, and their class based privilege which causes them to discount the needs of the existing middle class. [see some medium bad thing like the fact that progressives haven’t bothered to get rid of ethanol subsidies] Therefore (logic inferred only by whatever legitimacy you give Corey’s argument) the sins of past progressives still reflect on modern progressives, EVEN IF THEY SPECIFICALLY SAY THEY DON’T HOLD THE UNDERLYING POSITIONS, because they show a recurring character flaw and therefore (same caveat applies as to the previous therefore) we don’t need to bother listening to them or trying to understand their objections.

That’s the charitable version, because in posts like this one on evangelicals and Roe v. Wade he goes further and calls such associations “the real origin of X” as if I were to argue that eugenics was the “real origin” of progressivism. (Spoiler alert, the actual reason why the evangelical political movement took up Roe v. Wade instead of segregation was because they couldn’t form a movement around evangelical support of segregation because most of the evangelicals didn’t support segregation).

Ugh I’m posting three times in a row. I’m sorry for that.

The Billy Graham thing really irritates me. He was MUCH more influential in the success of the evangelical movement than the men that Corey cites (Falwell being the most prominent) so omitting him is cherry picking the ugly side of an argument even though the good side of the argument won and then pretending that there wasn’t an argument at all and representing the losing side as if it was the only evangelical movement opinion. Now if THAT kind of argument is good, the eugenics/progressive argument is great.

In reality progressive ideology isn’t ‘about’ eugenics. Yes eugenics polluted it in the beginning, but what won out was the importance of workers. Similarly desegregation was around polluting the evangelical movement, but abortion is what won out as the unifying measure. But Corey only sees those kinds of evolutions in his friends, in his opponents the positive gets written out of existence and the negative lingers forever.

oops. should be “as I did” not “as I said”

“Maybe they are tendentious hacks who cherry-picked all that and published fraudulent stuff on that basis. ”

The evangelical political right movement is a subset of the evangelical movement. The rise of the evangelical movement is inextricably tied to Billy Graham and the Billy Graham crusades. You can’t write intelligently about the evangelical movement without understanding Billy Graham’s influence on it. Billy Graham is rather inconvenient for the thesis that the evangelical movement was motivated by segregationism because Billy Graham was a supporter of Martin Luther King Jr. and repeatedly preached against the evils of racism at the Billy Graham crusades which formed the heart of the movement. So a valid historical thesis might go something like: Falwell wanted to tap into the evangelical movement on a bigger level (and for all I know there are Falwell papers which suggest that). Graham fought him on the racial issue, and Falwell couldn’t tap into Graham’s followers without abandoning segregation as an issue. They found common ground on abortion, so Falwell abandoned segregation as an issue and seeing the success other people had with the abortion issue adopted it himself to gain more power.

Anyone who knows anything about the evangelical movement would recognize the story in general even if not particularly on the segregation issue. To completely erase Graham from the story is indeed hackish. Using that omission to assert that the real origin was segregation is bullshit. If you get count everything that less powerful leaders tried and then failed to use to get people from more influential leaders as evidence and then erase which side won, you get eugenics/progressives. The only reason it looks so silly to you is *you KNOW that the non-eugenicsts won because you identify with the progressive movement and know how it played out*. But Graham is the one who won on the racial issue, not Falwell. You didn’t know that (if you even had any idea that Graham was at least 5-10x more important than Falwell) so what seems to me as obviously hackish as the eugenics/progressives thing strikes you as “hmmmmm probably true”.

Clay Shirky @90:

I am with you in wanting to emphasize Holbo’s (2) at the expense of his (1). Beyond that, I am quite (as in, entirely) opposed to the line you’re pushing. So, a few, possibly not very coherent thoughts:

JH’s post was about liberals vs. conservatives. You seem to want to reduce this to an opposition between Democrats and Republicans, and then to focus on purely political actors. This seems mistaken to me to me on several grounds. Most generally, I think it’s perfectly sensible, and even useful, to talk about conservatism e.g.*, across states and times (tho obviously you wouldn’t want to stretch it too much). As I’ve already mentioned, I really like Corey Robin’s take on conservatism; the kind of line you’re pushing seems to me to foreclose the very possibility of making sense of that kind of account, let alone disagreeing with it. If I’m misunderstanding you, please let me know.

Or take (postwar American) liberalism. I want to be able to talk about liberalism in a way where someone like Trilling is at least as important (if not more) as FDR or LBJ. Because while I myself am uncomfortable with “philosophy” in this context, it’s extraordinarily far from obvious to me that ideology is irrelevant. (JH himself suggested substituting “ideology” for “philosophy”. I am a fan of the suggestion.) I mean, sure, people actively engaged in political power plays care a lot about political power plays. There’s no gainsaying that. But the idea that there’s nothing to what we call “liberalism” or “conservatism” beyond that seems to me frankly bizarre.

Also, partly to reiterate, this:

I get off the ‘but what are the philosophical commitments of the average voter?’ bus before it even leaves the depot.

In a sense this is true—obviously true, even. But if you think the implication is that it’s simply about party power, it’s equally obviously false. Here’s a simple question: Suppose Cruz becomes president and shortly afterwards, passes a bill legalizing all undocumented immigrants currently resident in the US. How many voters who voted for him in 2016 do you think would vote for him ion 2020? If it’s simply about party power, why should it matter at all?

My point is: ideology matters. It matters for voters insofar as it connects with with their material and social reality, not qua philosophy, yes. But it still does matter for voters. And if there are strains of ideology that survive beyond particular party denominations, like e.g. liberalism and conservatism, then it’s entirely worthwhile thinking about their conceptual/ideological/philosophical core beyond whichever party embodies them in a particular time or place.

*Focusing on this for now because “liberal” means such different things in different parts of the Anglosphere.

The Federal Reserve, direct election of Senators, state and national parks and forest conservation, antitrust, pure food and drug regulation, . . .

I must say: I have been reading (2) in the OP in a somewhat more high-minded way than what’s actually there. I suppose that’s where my predilections lie, somewhere midway between (1) and (2).

Moral purity is at least as important to the left as it is the right, perhaps more so. Few would argue, I hope, that Steve Jobs awoke every morning wondering how to be a ‘better’ person each day. Capitalists are not much concerned with morality. The origins of evil and how to be rid of if occupied a great many thinkers and scientists throughout the 18th and 19th century. Does ‘good’ exist? How can we make both the society and the individual better is/was of primary concern to Robespierre, most Marxists, many philosophers and social scientists, and most people of faith.

Those who subscribe to the notion of original sin are, I suggest, much less prepared to subscribe to the notion that tinkering with evolution is likely to produce a better form of human for reasons that are so obvious (I hope) as to require no elaboration. Materialists, on the other hand, generally dispense with any notion of ‘dualism’ the existence of a soul, or even a ‘self.’ This piece in the Guardian offers a brief survey of eugenics advocates who also happened to possess totemic status on the left: such as Keynes and Marie Stopes. This article Christianity and Eugenics http://shm.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/04/08/shm.hku008 seems quite good, on first reading. (sorry, if it’s already linked)

I agree very much with the position of Sebastian H. both in the need for context and his implied suggestion that we learn less about this issue if our analysis is colored by the need to prove the case, again, that conservatives are good and liberals are evil, or the opposite, a tendency that does so little to help win the sympathies of the neutral and unconverted.

JH @145: Yes, I think we are in agreement there. On the other hand, while I certainly wouldn’t go the full Clay Shirky, I’m still hesitant about (1) as an independent project. Because I think in a lot of cases, there ain’t no ideal normative content there, so to speak, and ideal theory should be reserved for cases where ideal normative content actually exists. (We’ve had this disagreement before, as I recall, and you said something that I genuinely could not get my mind around—it might been about the normative content in a theorizing of slavery, or some such.)

BW @139
The insistence that early 20th century Progressives were definitionally leftists is ahistorical reconstruction.

No one has been insisting on this, really; it’s just that the issue has arisen in the context of an effort to tie contemporary liberals (in the US sense) or left-liberals to the early C20 Progressives.

Figures like Theodore Roosevelt, Charles Evans Hughes, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, George W Perkins, Nelson Aldrich and many others were in many respects political conservatives. They certainly weren’t socialists. Many conservatives were enamoured of modernizing reform aimed at increasing efficiency, a spirit central to Progressive movements.

The liberal-conservative dichotomy fits oddly in some respects onto early C20 Progressivism. There is no doubt disagreement on these matters in the historiography of the period, most of which I don’t know. TR was of course an unabashed imperialist. C. Lasch argued, contrary to some of the school textbks, that his actions as President “favored corporate interests.”[*] TR also ran slightly to Wilson’s ‘left’ on certain domestic issues in 1912, I’m reminded by a piece of old historiography. Wilson as Pres. established Fed Reserve System and Fed Trade Commission, but then proceeded to staff them w business types. Etc.

[*] Lasch, “The Moral and Intellectual Rehabilitation of the Ruling Class,” in The World of Nations (Vintage pb, 1974)

Sebastian H: I see you’ve now squeezed out posts 132, 133, 134 and 138. How about attending to your backlog? See post 95 re your made up accusations and your evasion from claims you’ve made.

It’s wonderful to see Brooks claim the guy he and every other doofus in Brooks Brothers suit picked to fail first is ‘now a loser’ for coming second in race that attracted the largest number of participants in a Republican primary ever. Brooks’ theory fails the falsification test built into his claim – if Trump doesn’t exist, why the record turn-out? Trump opted out of the debate, and viewing numbers collapsed. For somebody who doesn’t exist he manages to exercise an enormous influence over a large number of people, including Brooks.

LFC: The words “but not the right” are actually doing some work in that sentence.

I really thought the OP was just about the philosophical incompatibility (or is it?) between empiricism and some more linguistic approach to concepts. Maybe some commenter with an interest in how intelligent laypeople misread philosophy will come along.

@bianca s.
LFC: The words “but not the right” are actually doing some work in that sentence.

Ok, I take your point here.

“What’s a simple lover of the truth to do (with open heart and open eyes)?” –Holbo@162

It is a treacherous and dark path to follow John. This world and its denizens do not look kindly upon such souls.

Anyhoo, there’s always the potential for a communally administered dose of hemlock to look forward to.

Andrew Sabl’s Hume’s Politics: Coordination and Crisis in the “History of England”, together with Hume’s classic text of course, might be a useful tool for contemplation on this mystery.

170: Clay can speak for himself but to characterize his comments as informed by “a crazy reading” of your piece is just like the old Holbo.

And here’s me, speaking for myself. (Also, as always, geo and J.W. Mason endorse 100% of my comments…)

Throat-clearingly, I do not take a crazy reading of JH’s ‘crazy reading’ comment. I didn’t read that as ‘JH thinks Clay is crazy’ nor that “JH thinks Clay thinks JH is crazy’, but rather ‘Between a patch and a magic bullet, reading the OP as a magic bullet is the crazier of the two readings.” So, all about the text and not about judgements about people. (Take that, Stanley Fish!)

A-a-a-a-nyway, John, when you gloss your condition #2 as:

“Political philosophy plays some role in real politics. Ideas matter. But, realistically, abstract seminar room style political philosophy doesn’t play much of a role in politics. So the question is: how do we best discuss conservatism/liberalism such that we are getting at the thing that really plays a role?”

This clearer (and somewhat less dramatic) reading of #2 is more in line with the proposed patch, but still leaves me cocking an eyebrow. As Rorty was fond of saying, you can’t get language (by which he usually meant philosophical propositions) in one hand and real life in the other and make sure they line up.

Let me make an analogy — if I see you carrying a gallon of water from the well to your house in a leaky bucket, my willinginess to estimate how much water makes it to the house is going to depend on how leaky the bucket is, and how far your house is from the well.

The well is the seminar room. The house is an actual American election. And the distance between the too is (does some calculating)…far. Yeah, let’s go with far.

So: I view the words ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ to exhibit Wittgenstein’s ‘family resemblance’ characteristic — there is no single issue or litmus test that will hold true across partisan variability, regional tastes, and time, so while we can often tell liberal from convervative views in narrow cases, when we start looking at, say, Nixon’s proposed policy’s vs. W’s on income support, or Clinton’s vs. Roosevelt’s on welfare, that clarity fades.

Add to that that — as I noted upthread — we do not have liberal and conservative parties in this country. We have Democrats and Republicans, whose commitment to party over ideology is so strong that their adherents famously and consistently report different commitments to proposed policy outcomes depending on whether they are told that they are evaluating an uncontroversial proposal, a proposal supported only by their team, or only by the other team.

Then there is the design of the U.S. system, whose mix of geographic and party norms mean that politicians can often take different views on e.g. Federal research funds depending on whether they are going to represented or unrepresented zip codes..

And all of this is before you get to the voters, because my god, the voters. Not only do many voters not have a political philosophy, they barely have commitments of the sort that the good folk of CT would recognize as political. (The Hayes’ piece is really eye-opening in this regard.)

There are lots of additional leaks you could identify in your bucket o’ philosophy — party platforms vs. actually existing bills, executive adjustment of legislative intent, lobbying and fundraising as strong non-ideological commitments — but all of this is to say that I am not accusing you of trying to jailbreak Plato’s cave. I’m just observing that you are trying to get a gallon of water up a very big hill, in a very leaky bucket.

(Regret the duplicate.)

Signifiers show us significators significating, and nothing else. But there is a politeness a civility a sociality an ethics that compels or allows us to pretend the bullshit has content and to keep interaction at the level of renga poetry or philosophy or dozens. “Reification” is itself inescapably a reification.

What do we talk about when we talk about love or politics? Making love, doing politics.

@mdc #180, I think it would, for Holbo’s goal. If there was, then a discussion of the overlap between John’s 1 and 2 could begin “There exists at least one commitment whose embrace binds all members of party X together, and has always done, in opposition to party Y, who rejects that commitment.”

Corey Robin has made the case that conservativism is a commitment to counterrevolutionary protection of hierarchical power, and that this is true, if not always and everywhere, then in most times and most places. Even if we accept this, though, there is still a long walk from there to the behavior of actually existing voters for a.e. candidates running within a.e. parties.

Sometimes the Democrats have exhibited this commitment, as under W.J.Clinton’s gifts to the financial industry. Sometimes the Republicans haven’t, as, most famously, with the upending of slavery. Sometimes the commitments themselves change. Policies that favored Amazon or Google in the 1990s were commitments to insurgents over incumbents. In 2016, they are the incumbents, so while any supportive policies may not have changed, their place in Robin’s story has.

So my contention is not that there is no difference between liberal and conservative thought, but that if you try to line up the issues with the philosophies with the parties with the candidates with their campaign promises with their proposed bills with their voting records, and then you try to line all that up with voter rationales and actions, the resulting overlaps will not give you much in the way of consistency or coherence of the sort that would count as philosophy.

John #169: “your proposal…too compressed…My point was that the conjunction of 1 & 2 was not conceptually guaranteed, not that it was necessarily impossible.”

Okay now I see what you are saying. In which case I disagree, because I imagine that the conjunction of 1 & 2 is necessarily impossible. (Which is why I think that describing tendencies is the best we can hope for.)

I would attempt to construct a theoretical guarantee of this, by arguing that individual rhetoric must be different from group rhetoric. That’s a long argument. At the risk of further Proposal-Compression: When a group of individuals gets together to act, the members necessarily find ways to abbreviate their similarities and to avoid their internal differences. Abbreviation and avoidance saves them time and energy, to expend on the group effort instead. (That is, a political party is a typical “institution”; as such, engaged in internal cost-reduction.) Therefore, when we compare the philosophy at the individual level and at the group level, we observe that the philosophy has some different characteristics. At the group level, parts are omitted which have been subsumed by the group purpose. Items are abbreviated, conditional, implied, silent, lost, etc. A theoretical guarantee that nescience will set in. This happens before we get to the historical contingencies.

But even though an exact intellectual expression will never do it, I think that most people sense longterm emotional, epistemological tendencies underlying each side, e.g. rightward accent on individual luck & fortune vs. leftward social amelioration.

Rakesh @186: Ferguson and Rogers’ Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems is the best piece of political science I know of. (Please, no snickers about setting the bar absurdly low.) The essential idea is that, to the extent that there are competing interests among the business class, and that those interests may be helped or hindered by state policy, each business faction will invest in politics (NB – including political ideologies) to secure the policies which will advance its interests. F & R frame their discussion in terms of capital-intensive/internationalist business vs. labor-intensive/domestic business, but obviously the character of the factional conflict may change or temporarily subside, and particular parties or politicians may disappear or change sides. (So much for Sidney Verba.) The golden rule is that who pays the piper calls the tune, or as Marx put it: “In every society, the ideas of the rulers are the ruling ideas.” It’s Historical Materialism 101, really, but that’s as far as American political science has gotten. (Except for our Henry, and a few other mavericks.)

Clay @181: if you try to line up the issues with the philosophies with the parties with the candidates with their campaign promises with their proposed bills with their voting records, and then you try to line all that up with voter rationales and actions, the resulting overlaps will not give you much in the way of consistency or coherence of the sort that would count as philosophy

I guess one question is, how much is not much? And another question might be, what counts as a philosophy? I guess the only consistency I’m looking for is unswerving dedication to the achievement of participatory democratic socialism (which may or may not differ in a few particulars from McManus’s “revolutionary communism”) by the 25th century, at the latest.

Be assured, however, that any comment which approvingly (or at least not disapprovingly) cites Rorty and Fish has earned 100% endorsement from me.

It seems that domestic oil and gas industry is the leading investor in the bloc behind the Republicans; this is of course what Ted Cruz represents. Silicon Valley had been mostly investors in the Democrats, but Larry Ellison has made a big contribution to Rubio due (I think) to his support of Airbnb and Uber. I think Silicon Valley as other globally oriented businesses have believed that they are safer with the Democrats who are ok with immigration in the name of multiculturalism and who have repaired relations with other countries. Investment bankers have shifted to the Republicans, it seems. Hollywood stays with the Democrats. Of course if a Democratic victory seems inevitable, then Wall Street would try to ensure Clinton’s victory and buy her out with promises of funds that would guarantee her victory. Krugman insists that she’s as tough on Wall Street as Sanders; Clinton did say that she would not target Wall Street at expense of other vested interests. This may be relieving to Wall Street, but I also think she is right about that.

Evidence that HRC is evil is that she’s running for president. QED. Take note, Sanders!

Evidence that HRC is evil is that she’s running for president

Hmm. I’ll have to think about that one.

Are other people seeing this?

Yes, and on two browsers with very different settings.

Re the technical thing: I seem to be seeing all the comments right now. Maybe the problem’s been fixed. OTOH I’ve had a certain amt of wine, so who knows.

On the substance of latest Holbo remarks: I’m not sure JH should take The Reactionary Mind (TRM) as the exemplar of his discussion of “bad political philosophy” #2 thing. Because even a cursory glance at TRM shows that it’s based mostly on ‘elite’ writings and statements, giving ‘elite’ a fairly broad definition: e.g., Burke, Maistre, Buckley, Goldwater, Palin, Robert Kaplan, William Kristol, David Brooks, Ayn Rand, etc. Yes it’s a mix of politicians and theorists and journalists, but CR did not go out and interview ordinary people; he read stuff.

More to JH’s #2 purpose, istm, would be studies by pol scientists e.g. interviewing and getting quotes from ‘ordinary’ voters in particular parts (say, rural parts) of X state about their attitudes toward govt, general ‘philosophies’, etc. There was an article along these lines in APSR a year or two ago, but I can’t find the cite right now. Anyway there is a substantial number of such studies, I’m reasonably sure.

Holbo writes: “But in between ideal philosophy and all the money and tribalism is a third realm, which isn’t just a simple function of either. Political philosophy, in real politics.” But this assumes there are clear lines betw “ideal philosophy” and “political philosophy in real politics,” and there are often aren’t, particularly before the C20 and the rise of analytic philosophy and its spillover into political philosophy. Is Burke’s ‘Reflections on the Revolution in France’ or his essay on the sublime “ideal philosophy” or “philosophy in real politics”? I suspect the answer is both, and for Holbo’s purposes “both” is not the answer he needs.

Tl/dr: If Holbo is really interested in this ‘third realm’ as he claims, he has to read empirical social-science studies quoting and analyzing the political ‘philosophies’ of ‘ordinary’ people. It won’t do to sit in the armchair and just read various takes on elite versions of conservatism and liberalism. Of course since Holbo is a philosopher, this is an uncomfortable assignment for him since it involves grappling directly w empirical work, something that many, though not all, philosophers seem reluctant to do.

Holbo’s response might be that actual expressions of ordinary people’s attitudes and ‘philosophies’ is too ‘Galtonian’. Answer: not really, not if you approach it carefully. JH himself basically said in an earlier comment that w appropriate caution one can move from ‘ordinary’ attitudes to ‘philosophy in real politics’. But first one has to look at the empirical evidentiary base — what do ordinary people actually say about X, Y and Z — and JH hasn’t, from what I can tell, done that.

So when you read Burke, should you try to turn him into Cohen, abstracting away and taking conceptual care on his behalf. Writing the best possible Burke, in the possible world in which he was a normative theorist, rather than a current events polemicist? Or should you turn him into even more of a politician or partisan political journalist than he was? What is the ‘best’ Burke can be? It depends what kind of thing you think he is. There isn’t an easy answer to this question, but it’s important to ask and a lot of times the answer is just presupposed.

Point taken.

We have a kind of Great Chain of Being: rigorous academic philosophy down to somewhat sloppier or more polemical but highly thoughtful writings down to whatever semi-random stuff emits from the voter when you poke it with a stick, asking why it’s voting for Trump or Cruz or Rubio. There’s ‘conservative philosophy’ at all three levels. But they aren’t all approximately the same.

Fair enough. And one point I was trying to make @202 is that there are systematic, empirical studies of “the semi-random stuff that emits from the voter” and sometimes that “stuff,” on closer examination, turns out I think to be a *bit* more coherent in some ways than one might have thought. Though still distinct from the other categories.

So here’s the ‘syllabus’ or typology in “descending” order:
1) “rigorous,” “conceptually careful,” “abstract” philosophy: e.g. Plato (?), Aristotle (?), Hobbes (?), Mill, then skip to all the C20th ‘analytical’ or quasi-analytical stuff: Rawls, Nozick, Williams, Cohen, etc etc. etc.

2) “more polemical but highly thoughtful writings”: e.g., Gentillet vs. Machiavelli on [whatever], Burke vs. Paine on [whatever], the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Merleau-Ponty vs. Sartre on [whatever], Camus vs. Sartre on Algeria and [whatever], etc. etc. I’m sorry for the [whatevers] but it’s late.

3) “whatever semi-random stuff emits from the voter when you poke it with a stick” as attempted to be systematized and/or analyzed and/or collated in various studies.

Your assignment, shd you accept it (apologies to ‘Mission Impossible’), is to read more in category #3. (As a credentialed, tenured philosopher, you are presumably already quite conversant w/ categories 1 and 2.) Then take two aspirin and call me in the morning. ;)

p.s. I wasn’t restricting categories #1, 2, and 3 to conservatism, which wd have been more on point, I guess. (But, as I already mentioned, it’s late, at least on eastern standard time.)