House of Eratosthenes

In order to really understand what happened this last Tuesday, it is necessary to explore conservatism and liberalism in the United States: What those terms used to mean, what they mean now, what people understand these terms to mean, why they think that, what changed.

Quoting me, as I explored this previously:

What exactly does conservatism seek to conserve? Civilization, the blessings that come from having it, and the definitions that make civilization possible. From what does liberalism seek to liberate us? Those things — starting with the definitions.

This, I daresay, makes everything click into place. It has become an argument about definitions, with conservatives insisting on crisp, strong, clear definitions, and liberals resisting definitions. Strong definitions lead to good understanding, and good understanding — as we have just seen — leads to democrats losing elections.

A common misconception is that America’s conservatives are conservative, as in, unwilling to change; and that its liberals are liberals, as in, open to change. You don’t have to look at how self-professed conservatives and liberals really behave, to see the problem here. As Ludwig von Mises observed clear back in the 1940’s,

The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau.

When’s the last time liberals had a truly new idea about how an economy should work? Been awhile, hasn’t it? Something about how, the system is rigged to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, and we need a revolution to really turn things around? There’s a century of dust on that one. These aren’t literal “liberals,” these are people stuck in a time warp, in the vicinity of 1917.

What makes them liberal, and what makes conservatives conservative, is this act of defining things. There is defining things with precision, such that the definitions mean something and can be applied objectively, or else they don’t and cannot be; then, there is defining things strictly, conservatively, versus defining things over-broadly so that the very definition suffers and dissipates, as a battleground general would want an enemy to suffer and dissipate — liberally. Some of the most important words we use are words that can be defined conservatively, or liberally. “Marriage” can be defined conservatively or liberally, as we argue back and forth about whether these specimens around a periphery can or should qualify as legitimate representatives of the term. “Citizen” can be interpreted conservatively or liberally. Prosperity, constitutional, representation, entitled, right, governing, freedom, liberty…all these words, and many more, which are so important to these descriptions we have in mind of what our constitutional republic should be doing and how it should be functioning. They can be applied conservatively or liberally.

At the end of it, it is the conservatives — and Christians — who are moderate, sensible, middle-of-the-road people. Is it also the conservatives — and Christians — who place their faith in the human capacity for learning. Here’s how that works: Imagine a situation in which a human with verified & verifiable skill, applies his talents within a system. Outside the system, he knows that what he does works, but within it he encounters failure. He tries again, and again. After a few rounds of this it is clear there is a problem, and the problem has something to do with the contact between this particular individual and that particular system. There are three possibilities to be considered in explaining what’s going on.

Wonder Palin And the first two of those three are: The person is good and the system is messed up; and, the system is working fine, it is the person who has all the problems. Those are extremist views, located at opposite endpoints of a spectrum. Which is not to say they are necessarily wrong. Both are possible. Liberals, being extremist by nature, favor one of these two depending on what the situation is. If the person is a minority or an illegal alien and the system is our economy, then the entire problem is due to the system being prejudiced against the person’s class. Of course if the person is Sarah Palin and the system is American politics, with its left-leaning journalists flying up to Alaska to move next door to her and spy on her, then the second possibility explains everything and she is the problem. The same explanation applies when a conservative college professor can’t get tenure, or a climate scientist is ostracized by his peers for his failure to support the global warming credo. The system is impeccable, its standards unquestionable, the individual is simply failing to meet them.

Along comes the Christian conservative, to point out: Humans, as capable as they may be of doing good, are fundamentally flawed. We are all sons of Adam, who ate of the apple. The performer is a flawed human, and the system is a construct created by flawed humans. When they come into contact with one another, we should expect failure as a result. It is the sensible default premise. And, we should expect it a few times.

But this doesn’t mean the failure is everlasting, because humans have intellect and they are capable of good. God commanded Noah to load the Ark with animals, who are innocent, and with humans who are not so innocent. He did not say “Load it up with the animals and then get your worthless ass out of there because you’re part of what’s being rebooted away.” That means there is hope. That also means there is the burden of expectation.

And, mistakes will be made. By us. But, we’ll learn. Not evolve to some state of perfection, in which we always get it right the first time. That ship has sailed, we ate of the apple. We’ll just try to get better, succeed sometimes, fail other times, and hopefully eventually learn something. We must be capable of doing this or else we would not be here.

So this bad-performer, eventually, will use his intellect and start performing within the system, better. The two flawed things will learn to get along — if they want to get along. That is the third, centrist, most reasonable and most likely explanation for this early frustration and early failure.

Of course, for that to happen, this skilled but bad-performer is going to have to pay attention to what does & does not work, and make sensible decisions about it. Liberals aren’t capable of doing this, at least, not with liberalism; not so long as they remain liberals. Remember, they’ve been practicing the same economic model since at least 1917. There have been many opportunities since 1917 for them to learn that it isn’t working. It’s not that they’re lacking the ability to learn, the problem is that they aren’t using it. If they were using it then they wouldn’t be believing what they do believe, and they wouldn’t be liberals.

But I thought the definition of “conservative” was “favors increased inequality, because they sat on Louis XVI’s right in the Estates General.” All the experts say so. 🙂

In all seriousness, though, I really like this post. I’d like to discuss this part, though: It’s not that they’re lacking the ability to learn, the problem is that they aren’t using it.

I’m not going to go all Anonymous Conservative and suggest that no, they can’t learn, they have broken amygdalae — I don’t have nearly the background for that kind of claim — but I am going to suggest that in one important respect, conservatives are stuck in 1917, too. Back then, the Left was quite clear about what it wanted. They had elaborate blueprints for the Revolution and the creation of the New Soviet Man. The Right pointed out that all of those are hogwash, and we’ve done little in the subsequent hundred years but footnote that original claim — “Marx is wrong in theory, and now we have proof he’s wrong in practice. Cf. Albania, Bulgaria, Cuba…Vietnam, Yemen, Zimbabwe.”

I would argue that the Left has learned that, quite well. They’ve gone from earnestly trying to forge the New Soviet Man to just using New Soviet Man rhetoric to make life easier for themselves. What is von Mises’s “gigantic post office,” after all, but lifetime job security where you don’t have to work too hard? Barack Obama and his media bootlickers are perfect examples of what lefties actually do with power — give a sound bite, then hit the links. Do the bare minimum to justify the bennies.

In this, their definitions are clear and precise, and above all functional. They don’t track with reality, but they’re not supposed to. The end goal isn’t to achieve anything tangible; it’s to justify their unearned place in the pecking order. Every lefty definition carries with it the implication that I, the definer, have the right to define things, and the world should check with me on a case-by-case basis. It’s von Mises’s bureaucrat mentality writ large.
- Severian | 11/08/2014 @ 07:43
There’s a disconnect here. I’m talking commoners, the true-believers; you’re talking elites, the exploiters. Liberalism being an ideology founded upon and relying on deception, there has to be a disparity when we talk about interests, since if all of its sub-factions labored toward identical interests there would be no need for deception.

Of course some of them seem to be making a sport out of deception without any necessity involved at all. But that’s another matter, since we know there is a necessity since there are different interests. The “true believers” really do want something they’re not getting, that they call “greater equality.” Which is really more like “state intervention that will change things and make things better for me (or, those poor people over there).” The liberal elites, on the other hand, don’t really want change, if they wanted it then they would have made it happen sometime during the 40 years they had control of Congress. As you adroitly summarized, we don’t need to wonder about what they do, we now know: “give a sound bite, then hit the links.”
- mkfreeberg | 11/08/2014 @ 08:06
We agree on THIS.
THIS IS our compromise.
We stated it before a jury of “our” peers.
We ALL signed it.

Well, a Liberal interpretation, well after the fact, of what “is” is, is All animals are created equal, BUT some get all the windfall apples, AS WELL AS your contribution to the Tragedy of the Commons with what’s YOUR Fair Share.
Lest arrangements that “The Farmer peaceably assembles” at your place of business, AND/OR your family’s home, be made.

You know, I’ve heard that SOME simple public/anonymous accusations, of behavior deemed heinous, are often met with ZERO consequence deemed “equal” or “fair”, once preemptive “cautionary” measures have been assumed, and found them to be disingenuous, uneducated, or outright malicious lies.

Of course, I could be wrong.
- CaptDMO | 11/08/2014 @ 13:01
The “true believers” really do want something they’re not getting, that they call “greater equality.” Which is really more like “state intervention that will change things and make things better for me (or, those poor people over there).”

Do they, though? Admittely, I live in a college town, which I’m sure distorts the sample in ways I don’t fully understand, but ever rank-and-file liberal I run across is a young-ish (but rapidly depreciating) lower middle class soccer mom (or a dude who wishes he was). Aside from “free” birth control — which they have had continuous access to since age 12, let us note — I can’t think of a single concrete thing these people want. Abortion, I guess — I had a colleague tell me to my face that her definition of an “acceptable” place to live was one that had a Planned Parenthood — but other than those (which, again, zero danger of losing)….

If they wanted other things, we should be able to see it in their consumer choices. And yet, as Stacy McCain gleefully pointed out, more people signed a petition for the White House to build a Death Star than voluntarily signed up for Obamacare. They don’t actually use wind or solar or biodiesel. Not even the people who want to “Keep ____ Weird” drive Priuses for the most part (though there are some). Actual lower-class people (the “town” to the true-believers’ “gown”) might vote Democrat because their unions force them to, but they’re all ridiculously conservative otherwise — in religion, in temperament, in taste. They’re the intended “benificiaries” of the true-believers’ program, and for the most part they want none of it.

The true believers, I submit, really really really want to be seen “caring” for the poor and downtrodden. They’ve got enough money to shelter themselves from the worst effects of their stupid policies, though, and therefore never have to reality-check them.
- Severian | 11/10/2014 @ 11:57

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Memo For File CXCSaturday, November 8th, 2014

Memo For File CXC
Saturday, November 8th, 2014