The Rants of Issachar

Am I a conservative? I'm talking of course about small-c conservatism, not party membership...


I went out for dinner with my parents the other night and my Dad told me about an article he'd read in Atlantic Monthly about John McCain and conservatism.

The article is really worth reading, but a quick summary is that a true conservative in the tradition of Edmund Burke favours incremental change while respecting long standing customs and institutions and also balancing individual freedom and social order.

So yes, conservative does frequently describe much of my default political sentiment. I generally don't favour rapid change. What's interesting about this definition of conservative is that it's not synonymous with right-wing. As the article suggested it's a temperament as much as anything.
(Note - whenever I use the word conservative in this post, I'm going to mean this definition of the word, it's too much of a hassle to say "Burkean conservative" all the time and I may not even be using the word Burkean correctly)


The article also pointed out that the bulk of the Republican party isn't even remotely conservative. It's as activist as the progressive left but with a different set of policies. Indeed, I'd argue that depending on your opinion as to what counts as "progress", you could simply call this mass of Republicans "progressives".


But this isn't true of the Conservative party in Canada. Of course the Conservative is the default home of the progressive right-wing as I'm going to call them in this post, but if you look at what Stephen Harper has actually done it's quite conservative in the sense of the word I described above.

This is why I find the "Stephen Harper has a hidden agenda" crowd so annoying. Initially the claim was that he'd wreck havoc on Canada with a George Bush agenda as soon as he got elected. Then when that didn't happen the claim became that he'd do it as soon as he had a majority. But the whole idea doesn't hold any water because as a Prime Minister, Stephen Harper is demonstrably a conservative. His government has been marked by small & incremental change. Fundamentally, the Conservative party is not the same as the Republican party, that's just a useful political smear by opposition parties. (And you really get too angry at them for using it if the public buys into it). The US doesn't have a political party that corresponds with our Conservatives. And it's too bad for them.


I find it important to note that Burke supported the ending of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and the emancipation of Catholics. To be a conservative does not mean that you automatically support the status quo. In fact you favour liberty, but you a wary of the dangers posed by rapid or revolutionary change. The best argument I can think of right now to support this view is the different reactions to the miseries of the working class created by the industrial revolution. The Marxist response ultimately led to more oppression in the form of Soviet Communism. The more gradual and non-revolutionary changes that took place in England produced a much better result.

Posted by:  Anonymous

Your saying that our choices are Harper or Soviet style communism? To me that's like saying you have a choice between lung cancer and bone cancer. Both will kill you but one is a lot more painful. There is another option for change that isn't so cataclysmic and that would be democratic socialism. I leave out liberalism because that holds no appeal for me. As liberalism is expressed in Canada (I am not referring to poli-sci definitions but realpolitik) it has come to mean the promise of progressive change and no real results to speak of. My choice therefore is the NDP. The party that has been offering strong 'ahead of the curve policy' (enviro, social, economic, etc) which is often poached by others.

Posted by:  issachar

Your saying that our choices are Harper or Soviet style communism?

No, that's not what I'm saying at all. That would be a false dilemma. My point was on the difference between revolutionary change and gradual change.

Soviet Communism was revolutionary as it uprooted virtually all existing social institutions and created new ones. I didn't contrast the Soviet Union with Stephen Harper at all, but rather with the much more gradual social changes that took place in England after the industrial revolution. Ultimately, the gradual approach resulted in a more egalitarian and free society than the revolutionary one did.

My point with Stephen Harper is that under his watch the Conservative party is largely temperamentally conservative.

Posted by:  Major John

I find myself a bit "Burkean". I like tradition, but have faced the need to innovate and change since I enlisted 23 years ago. I wonder if (Western) military folks are mostly this way?