Are Progressives and Conservatives Too Intellectually Comfortable?
If you are a progressive, see if you agree with these statements. The Constitution was created to secure our natural rights. America celebrates individual freedom and initiative - both essential for society to flourish. Human nature is fixed – we can be kind and socially conscious, but we also look out for ourselves. When electoral majorities oppress minority rights, government must step in. Many of America’s problems are complex and not easy to fix. Freedom depends on checks and balances among the three branches of the federal government, but in recent decades the presidency has come to dominate. The federal debt has mushroomed - a burden on future generations. Much of government growth and debt are due to lobbying by interest groups.
If these capture important progressive views, they are also conservative views in The Conservative Sensibility, a recent book by columnist George Will. The book is not about the current Republican Party but about a governing philosophy Will maintains has been lost in the wilderness of today’s political landscape.
Will’s aim is to reconnect us with conservatism’s core principles. Liberals and conservatives agree – or at least should – on a lot. Will is certainly not suggesting they don’t have important differences, and he knows how to take progressives (and conservatives) to task, but his book invites all of us to do some serious thinking.
For example, progressives who abhor control of government by powerful special interests might ask if this is one result of government doing so much. In short, the more problems we want government to address, the more we invite interest groups to lobby for what they want. The more powerful the lobby, the greater its impact. Another way Will puts it: if you want to get money out of politics, then spread less money around so factions will have less to lobby about.
Progressives might also ask what government can do well and what it cannot. Infrastructure projects, laws to prevent discrimination, and the GI Bill that underwrites education are examples of important problems with reasonably straightforward solutions. Problems such as ending poverty and ensuring the health of Americans have such a complex mixture of interconnected causes that government is much less able to sufficiently understand or fix them. Will suggests we approach such problems with more pessimism about what government can do.
Progressives who see government as responsible for meeting citizens’ needs might ask, Will argues, if that just generates an ever-expanding list of needs. A related point: when government collects a lot in taxes, people expect it to do a lot and to get results. The first expectation, Will argues, leads government to take on too much. The second, given the complexity of many problems, breeds inevitable dissatisfaction with government.
The Conservative Sensibility also asks us to ponder what happens when we set about to provide for an expansive array of individuals’ wants. Government, he maintains, should be concerned with assuring people can pursue happiness, not with providing it. In that sense, he worries about what happens when “the well-being of the citizen [is] defined exclusively with reference to material conditions, without reference to how the citizenry’s character might be affected.” The character needed for a free society depends, Will argues, on self-control and some amount of delayed gratification. When people are encouraged to depend too much on government, character is diminished.
Will asks conservatives to ponder these questions as well as progressives, since so many have been so willing to call on government help even as they disparage government. The expansion of presidential power that so concerned them when a Democrat occupied the White House should concern them equally now. Will asks why conservatives (and progressives) allow “rent-seeking,” the practice of powerful interests (e.g. business, tech, and financial giants) getting government to help them at the expense of their competitors? He also worries why so many demand a greater role for religion in government when the Framers intended just the opposite. He fails, unfortunately, to push conservatives to ask some other questions. Must government be mute when freedom is seriously restricted due to the impact of concentrated wealth or the lack of social mobility? What roles does government have in dealing with systemic issues that have national and global consequences, such as climate change and environmental pollution? What should and can government reasonably do about complex problems, realizing that it cannot solve them alone?
Will is not a conservative apologist for America’s past mistakes, especially slavery and the decimation of Native Americans. We need heroes, he notes, but we have had villains. If we acknowledge them, we remind ourselves of who we should be. That better self – and how to foster it - is something which progressives and conservatives should also spend more time thinking about.
As we approach another presidential election, with all the hyper-partisan rhetoric that will be thrown at us, Will is asking us to discard the comforting self-satisfaction of our political thoughts and open ourselves to thinking anew.
Photo Credit: Nicole Black
