Conservatism is not simply "about human freedom."

Conservatism and Freedom

by Carson Holloway

Conservatives need to refine their understanding and presentation of the moral substance of their cause, crafting a message that appeals to both reason and imagination.

Conservatives continue to lick their wounds and brood on their missed opportunities. A year ago, they failed to unseat Barack Obama, an unpopular and apparently beatable incumbent. A few weeks ago, they failed to defund Obamacare, an unpopular and incompetently implemented law. What, they have been asking themselves, have we been doing wrong?

Pressing that question provokes debate within conservatism, since there are various kinds of conservatives, and the different kinds tend to blame each other for the movement's woes. Recently, a skirmish in these battles took place between National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru and Rich Lowry, on the one hand, and RedState's Erick Erickson, on the other. Ponnuru and Lowry penned a piece for National Review contending that the impatience and tactical recklessness of some conservatives in Congress had harmed the movement by launching a doomed fight to defund the Affordable Care Act. Erickson responded by claiming that National Review was no longer a reliably conservative institution.

I do not want to take sides in what is primarily a debate about tactics. That debate is necessary and, in any case, unavoidable, and there are worthy points to be made on both sides. Ponnuru and Lowry are correct that everything the conservative movement does in the realm of politics should be carefully calculated to achieve real policy effects, that it should not squander its strength on merely symbolic displays of fervor.

On the other hand, Erickson has a point that in some circumstances a bold and even intransigent stand can sometimes accomplish more than a more cautious approach. As Machiavelli teaches, a successful prince must know how to use both the nature of the fox and of the lion. Either may be necessary in the right circumstances. Conservatives should not be mere Machiavellians, but this much of the Florentine's wisdom they need to internalize. Then they will be able to see the legitimacy in each other's dispositions: the lions will see that the foxes are not necessarily cowards, and the foxes will see that the lions are not necessarily fools.

Although they are primarily tactical, these debates tend to spill over into matters of substance. Hence, Erickson suggests that Ponnuru and Lowry are not really conservatives. I think that Erickson errs in his remarks on the substance of conservatism, and that his misstep is serious enough to merit some extended comment.

As he nears the end of his critique, Erickson offers a seemingly definitive statement about the nature of conservatism. "Conservatism," he says, "is about human freedom." This, he suggests, is "true north" for conservatives. This claim is problematic on a number of counts.

First, there is a question of definition. If conservatism is simply about human freedom, then how is it different from contemporary libertarianism? Are they supposed to be the same thing? This would come as a surprise to American traditionalists--social or moral conservatives--who have always supposed that society can only flourish on the basis of some moral order that must guide and limit the uses of our freedom. These traditionalists number in the millions, and their support is necessary to any realistically conceivable conservative political coalition.

Second, Erickson's claim is inaccurate as a matter of history--both more recent American history and the older history of modern Western conservatism. He appeals to the original, more conservative National Reviewfounded by William F. Buckley--the NR that boldly and grandly aimed to "stand athwart history yelling Stop!" But the progressive "history" that NR's original editors wanted to halt, or at least defy, was not just the progressive erosion of freedom, but also the progressive erosion of traditional standards of morality they thought were necessary to any civilization worthy of the name. On any number of disputed issues--in the realm, for example, of sexual morality and the regulation of obscenity--the old NR did not take positions that could be understood simply in terms of the maximization of human freedom.
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