iwpoe wrote:

Well, you are in the middle of the Babylonian Captivity of the Crown, but it's at least a peaceable imprisonment. Perhaps as she's permitted merely formal powers you should be thought a merely formal subject.​

Personally, I'd prefer she have more power and the likes of Mr. Slippery have less, but that is a different conversation.

 

Hmm. If you wanted to identify me as a conservative of some kind you could probably classify me as a Straussian, though I believed Strauss about Plato perhaps having the truth and not Bloom about it merely being good to read Plato, so I've been able to avoid the crypto-nihilism Straussians are prone to falling into. The reason for this preface is this:

I agree with conservatives against liberals and reformers of all sorts that traditions, small associations, and all little historical accretions of civil society are not in principle irrational, invalid, or suspicious. They are, in fact, the living actuality of what the lawgiver of a state holds only in potency. Heidegger would say something like 'they are the horizon which constitutes a world'. I would say that they are the most stable and accessible foundations of a full way of life, which is the only possible route to (human) wisdom. However I agree with Plato and the whole history of platonism in saying that they are also not in principle good. They are, at best, necessary instruments to the good. In the US one might wave the bloody shirt of chattel slavery against the good of those little platoons, but I don't think this is necessary. There are many practices and associations which are not merely bad because they are old but which are discernibly foolish and in some case obviously bad for the soul. Plato in his own time identified the Homeric tradition, pederasty as usually practiced, the civil traditions and arrangements of Athens and her democracy itself as especially troubling. Insofar as we're to be wise, and not merely prudent, it seems to be that we must join him.

It also occurs to me that conservatism usually slips into a kind of rosey conventionalism the more it adheres to its respect for little platoons. Churches are good... All of them? Some of them? Why? I have a hard time viewing  polygamous mormon sectarian communes in the same light as I do Westminster Cathedral.

Indeed, if you hold this view, how is sectarianism even to be avoided? I mean, apart from how you all did politically deal with it, what's the authentically Conservative response to "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland? The texture of social life is not, especially in large societies, naturally harmonious. Some voluntary associations explicitly arise in order to combat others.

How even can, after time, conservatism really critique leftist activity anyway? Insofar as conservatism amounts to something like a normative framework about social life and not a political platform then it would have to note that, say, gay pride groups, the Industrial Workers of the World, deconstructionism, etc etc constitute genuine examples as much as the Salvation Army, the Scouts, and Rotary Club do. I don't think it's a conservative requirement that the tradition be, itself, conservative.

 I think we are getting off-track here somewhat. My main point was simply to point out what I take to be a broadly traditional consensus about what matters in life and society and how we ​organise society. This is to avoid sectarianism. Yes, there may be traditionalists of different faiths or schools of thought who would deny, sometimes at least, the virtue of any society or culture that wasn't build around their religion or philosophy. But there are many who do not, who can at least appreciate that there are social and cultural goods that can achieved without  a society being ruled according to their particular particular religion or philosophy. I take it that this is the sort of discussion we are having, given the differences in our beliefs. It becomes a lot harder to convince people of your economic and social views if you have to make Christians or Platonists of them first. 

 I think there are several strands in your critique that need to be unravelled. The point about intermediate associations, for the conservative, is to a degree a sociological one. The conservative is fundamentally opposed to the sociological individualist or atomistic vision of the liberal. He does not sees men, in their mundane existence, as existing as pre-rational, self-sufficient atoms who come together to rationally and always voluntarily form society. To the conservative, man is not only regulated but even partially constituted by his social relations. But unlike some radicals and some reactionaries, the conservative understands that it is not only society as a whole that is formative, as well as regulative, on the individual but it is also the intermediate social associations of families, communities,  Churches, etc., that are essential in this regard. Indeed, it is mostly through these associations the individual is in contact with the larger goals of society and culture. A multiplicity of such associations increases the scope for the individual to pursue different sides of his nature and, importantly, it provides checks and balances on any one type of association. And these associations require a reasonable degree of autonomy, authority, and function to be healthy. Both the centralised state and the modern economy weaken many of them. So, the first point is that at a sociological level, it is not so much a matter of choosing between Churches as just pointing out that a healthy society is one in which individuals are members of a range of healthy intermediate and voluntary associations. 

But then, I think, you also raise the point of tradition and the past and their legitimacy, presumably as sources of both moral and social knowledge. I think one reason to think that the past and tradition have a legitimacy in this regard is expressed by Dr. Feser himself: 

"Realist Conservatism," as we might call it, affirms the existence of an objective order of forms or universals that define the natures of things, including human nature, and what it seeks to conserve are just those institutions reflecting a recognition and respect for this objective order. Since human nature is, on this view, objective and universal, long-standing moral and cultural traditions are bound to reflect it and thus have a presumption in their favor."

Human history and societies reflect the permanent things, because they reflect human nature to which the permanent things are intimately connected. Certainly, this does not mean all that is old is good. We must use various means to sift our patrimony, but we can determine patterns - the permanent things - in human societies that help us to understand what human nature is, and hence what is a good society and culture. This is one way we can differentiate between traditions as worthwhile or not. There are other things to be said for tradition too, about its use as a form of knowledge (esp. about one's own society) and the importance of continuity and so, but really my point was that there is a traditional vision of what is good in life that has very different criteria of value to modern economism (to use Albert Jay Nock's phrase) and yet can be spoken of in terms broad and non-sectarian enough that we can avoid having to all subscribe to a particular religion in order to recognise these criteria as better at least than economism. I gave a broad and perhaps vague account of what this vision, the permanent things, looks like.

Our founders were not as radical as the revolutionary thinkers in France, but they are very much ordinary enlightenment thinkers. I don't consider them to be particularly more respectable intellectually than John Locke. The point isn't that the constitution is Rawlsian but that I see no reason except for time and secular piety that it be treated with more regard by conservatives than something written by Mill or Rawls. Liberalism is liberalism in 1976, 1876, and 1776. It does not age into a conservative ideal with time.

Naturally, as a Tory I don't much agree with the Whiggism of the American founders. But I do believe the exact make up of the colonial and founding elites, their religious, philosophical, and cultural views, is somewhat disputed. The enlightenment can mean different things, of course. Some would claim, for example, there is not just one enlightenment. Some would certainly question the degree to which the doctrines of the more radical enlightenment, of the philosophes, ​were a major influence on the American founding. Of course, there were divisions in the founders. You had genuine radicals like Samuel Adams, Thomas Paine, and, to a degree, Thomas Jefferson, and you had much more conservative figures. But I think, for the most part, Protestant Christianity, what they saw as the ancient rights of Englishmen, and the common law, alongside the general colonial experience of salutary neglect and self-government, were more formative influences on the founding generation than enlightenment thinkers or even Locke. The Bible, Shakespere, Bunyan, the New England Primer, these were the books most read, not Locke or Hume and certainly not Voltaire or Diderot.

I just don't understand why this shouldn't be called anything other than conservative- platonist, socialist, or even just philosophic. The point is that this economic focus is myopic and unfounded, and it's somewhat easy to see once one stops taking people's word on it.

 Conservatism or traditionalism does have the advantage of pointing in the direction of the sort of focus one has; there are radicals and others who have an uneconomic but questionable focus. For example, there are greens and hippies and other radicals who question economism but who advocate free love, communism, or other dubious beliefs.

To some degree, it is certainly true I am advocating the position many people would usually subscribe to if pushed at least in the abstract: our relationships with others, with family and friends, and our personal development is far more important than money or material goods (esp. mass produced consumer goods); and perhaps some positive relationship to the nature and redeeming aesthetic elements to our buildings and artefacts is more important than mere production and consumption as well. I am just putting a traditional or conservative spin on it: faith and traditional virtue are important; the preferable forms of community and family are not the sporadic, weakened modern sort; place is important; and so on.

 Platonism, as noted above, seems too sectarian. Socialism has negative connotations and often represents a baleful combination of economism and collectivism. Philosophic is too non-descript. I do think that conservative should perhaps be qualified by the term traditional, to emphasise that more is meant than the likes of the GOP and Fox News, or traditionalism be used.