Common Sense

As the disturbances of the 1770s descended into the savagery of civil war, most found their way to one side or to the other more by fate than by their own doing. There were then, as there are now, good people living on either side of “the line” as it was known where I was raised. Many of the positive attributes that I see as flowing from Canadian conservatism are common amongst Americans. They value hearth and home just as people do everywhere and there are amongst them those who see human progress springing more from social than from individual action. An American friend said to me, “Well I share those views, but I see myself as a liberal, American liberalism has evolved.” That is not because liberalism has evolved, it is because liberalism has been tempered with the conservative instinct that abides, to a greater or lesser degree, in all of us. Perhaps because it has been discredited by the populist right, thoughtful, conservative Americans tend not to identify by that label. Also, however, it implies that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This contradicts the sustaining mythology of a liberal republic.

All things enlightened do not arise from liberal humanism. Not everything that comprises good governance flows from democracy. That conservatism has come to simply mean, old fashioned, ill-educated, reactionary or right-wing befogs the field of battle between those now entrenched on the right and the left of American politics. Liberalism protects civil liberties, fosters creativity, rewards individuality and prevents government bloating. Conservatism sustains order and decorum, prevents individual excess, honors age and expertise and upholds institutions and their sustaining mythologies.  The liberal impulse fuels the reactionary populists of the right, the conservative impulse the radical social movements of the left. Neither the blue band nor the red band produces good government on its own. When wise conservatives meet reasonable liberals the red and blue overlap and blend to shades of purple; they arrive in the same chamber through different doors. Only then can consensus be reached on the standard left-right spectrum regarding the distribution of power and resources.

People should be labelled conservative or liberal depending on where they fall on most issues most of the time. Each of us, nevertheless, drifts during life’s passage on the left-right political spectrum and we shift between its liberal and conservative bands.  When delusional murderers attacked the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, I was a flaming red-hot liberal. Many, thinking that the only purpose of satire was provocation, advocated restraint and self-censorship in the face of terror. I argued that this idea, disguised as “respect for all religions”, left no space for those who respected no religion and was also blind to the meaning and intent of brilliant, daring and multi-layered satire. Voltaire would have agreed. Several weeks later, at the school I then headed in the Middle East, I called to a meeting the parents of a group of adolescent school girls found to be exchanging American pornography on their cell phones. These children, sheltered in a very traditional culture, had been driven from Eden. The behaviors they observed warped their world view by buttressing the ubiquitous myth, shared by the parents, of the wanton and lascivious Western woman. I became, in that moment, a solid conservative and railed against the flood of misinformation and disinformation available at our fingertips. Each of us is tempered by the times, so are entire populations. In times of uncertainty and rapid change drastic shifts in public opinion occur. Populism of the left and the right prove that people are easily swayed and led. One’s conservative instinct would say, “I told you so.”

<Liberal>

        Anarchism< -------------------------------------------------->Fascism

        Communism< ----------------------------------->Monarchy/Theocracy

<Conservative>

The political morass through which Western democracies now slog has been decades in the making. The virtual un-person at the center of this dysfunctional moment is but a passing symptom not its cause. Urbanization, computer driven marketing and consolidation of rural resources deprived towns and villages of the main street merchant, the local newspaper editor, the learned school master, the wise old judge and the country doctor. The sage, now an electronic talking head on a touch-screen, took us to the threshold of a communication revolution that would make Orwell or McLuhan salivate. Ordinary folk, both urban and rural, traditionally solid believers in the system and its institutions, became suspicious and fearful of things external. Likewise, shallow rooted suburban youth, one or two generations removed from the countryside, pursued elusive prosperity through a university education which often made them more indebted and cynical than enlightened. Urban centres, emptied by the automobile age, in-filled with those whom history and personal experience had most disadvantaged. Ripe disciples were everywhere. People either tuned-out thinking “they are all the same” or drifted into fringe political encampments while wondering if a self-governing nation was still possible. Elites, both liberal and conservative, failed to address this fractured landscape.

It is the job of liberal leaders to defend civil liberties, the tenets of democracy. Liberals of influence became so enamored of worthy causes that many illiberal ideas (not necessarily bad ideas) went without rigorous critique. The liberal literati and the organizations they led pandered their way off stage at the siren call of social-theorists on the left-wing of the conservative spectrum. An osmotic censorship descended over socio-political discourse leaving the liberal microphone open to cynical right-wing propagandists. It is cautionary, to take but one recent example, that the presumption of innocence in response to the #MeToo movement received robust defense from the populist right and only reluctant mention from mainstream institutions. (Here, to underscore the osmotic censorship now in play, one feels pressured to make the obligatory ‘now don’t get me wrong disclaimer.’)  Even more troubling is that cautionary dissent was scorned as being supportive of the alleged behavior of those accused. In this instance and in many more in recent decades such concerns were dismissed as reactionary, especially if uttered by “old white men”. Critics often chose silence over Siberia. First, they came for the powerful perverts and I said nothing.

It is a conservative truth that all systems of thought are flawed. Deep thinking and critical analysis are necessary for the well-informed public required for liberal democracy to succeed. A contradiction within liberalism has pitted the free market against such a thoughtful press. With rapid developments in information technology, driven by ratings, freedom of enterprise trumped freedom of the press and quantity triumphed over quality. Critical thought suffered at the hands of a histrionic news cycle. “Extra, extra” has always fueled news sales, but ratings now demanded an incessant flow of faddish, shallow journalism: news that “broke” again and again and again. Journalists became ambulance chasers at mass shootings and cheer-leaders for each new storm of the century.  Aside from highly telegenic catastrophes, issues of global import were under reported. Yellow journalism and solid journalism blended to one making it easy to dupe the gullible by saying it was all fake news. This amplified the reactionary liberal individualism on the right with its woeful ignorance of world affairs, suspicion of authority, ludicrous conspiracy theories and its worship of guns. The reactionary right that the liberal establishment had created through neglect was not seen as a worthy cause; it was a deplorable embarrassment.

Elite condescension is an old phenomenon. The rugged individualism in the backwoods villages of late 18th century colonial America was also misunderstood. The journal of Reverend Charles Woodmason, for example, an Anglican missionary sent to the Carolina’s in the 1760s to minister on the frontier, illustrates this. In one sermon he implored congregants to “bring no dogs with you.” (His journal claims he counted 57 dogs at one of his services) He had become thin on a diet of water and fruit, he noted, because their food was “execrable.” The Sabbath was “seldom observed … but when some Itinerant Babler, or Vagrant Ignorant Bellweather [New Light preacher] … comes to a Meeting House … the Silly Herd run in Droves … to listen to what none can comprehend.” He lamented the “Low, lazy, sluttish, heathenish” behavior of the young women: “They draw their Shift as straight as possible to their body, and pin it close, to show the roundness of their Breasts and slender Waists.” He complained that “transacting all Public Business on Saturdays” led to widespread intoxication and that therefore Church attendance suffered the next day while “they stay at home to sleep of their Dose.” The magistrates would do nothing about the prevalent debauchery “most of them being store or tavern keepers”.

This effete view of ordinary folk unleashed from the constraints of European society, is akin to the present urbane, gentrified condescension of the intellectual establishment.  “Tut, tut” admonishments from those who were better educated closed more minds than they opened. Hectoring and shaming by social-theorists deepened entrenchment. Liberal nuggets strewn throughout the rhetoric of right-wing populists in the countryside and spent blue-collar towns were dismissed. These people were just reactionary “conservatives” who “didn’t get it.” This was code for ineducable or backward. It was the student, not the teacher, who was to blame. This urbane perspective on “fly-over country”, a manifestation of the dueling-banjo mythology of American literature and film, ignored the thrift and liberal spirit of those who struggled, surrounded by the old and lame, to keep towns and villages alive.

The liberal intelligentsia failed to countenance these heretics on the right as their own. Well intentioned people of liberal instinct have a great deal of re-educating to do to repair this tear in the liberal fabric of America. If the raw and unbridled capitalism, reactionary social views, virulent nativism and reckless foreign policy of the populist-right are to be thwarted before they drive everyone into the ditch, they must be recognized as a failure within liberalism. Instead of heaping scorn, liberal sophisticates should recognize their rough-hewn cousins as an organic gardener sees a heritage vegetable: not as smooth and processed as modern hybrid liberals, but the stubborn sort of individuals of whom republics are built.

Leaders of a conservative bent also failed. The Tories of old were the first to be entrenched on the right-wing political heights. Solid-blue monarchists and theocrats gazed down from their thrones on the great unwashed.  Some governed well, others were tyrants. Good governance was rewarded by loyal subjects who knew and kept their place. Acquiescence and equipoise. There were occasional tinges of red; a bread riot, a rising against a new and disruptive technology, a slave revolt, a rebellion against an oppressive lord, but these were usually a response to worsening conditions; struggles to gain back something that had been taken away or against an intolerable tyranny. It was not until rising expectations fueled the liberal revolutions of the modern period that the Tories of Old were driven from their perch leaving kick-ass liberal populists dug in on the right-wing heights.

Dethroned, beheaded, tarred and feathered, expelled by republicans; what was a Tory to do? They did not vanish, nor did the conservative view of humanity. There are those who believe on most issues most of the time that the unfettered individual is dangerous, that prosperity follows order, that unbridled commerce is reckless, that democracy must be given in measured dose, that hierarchy is with us always and that human progress emerges largely from social not individual action.  People of that conservative bent span the left-right spectrum, but those on the right fall into two categories: calculating cold-blue Tories and Wise Tories.  

Cold-blue oligarchs, monarchy and theocracy no longer being viable options, have had periodic political success through a cynical and manipulative alliance with the mis-labeled populist-right. Their distorted version of the American dream is a capitalist lottery for which many of its followers cannot even afford a ticket.  The cold-blue Tory, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, hides in plain sight amidst the reactionary liberals on the right. They play the game of democracy to augment and secure their wealth, but they do not believe the liberal tenets on which the American experiment is based. They have taken advantage of roughhewn liberals and discredited the word conservative in the process.  But not all conservatives on the right, not all Tories, are cold hearted. There are Wise Tories; they are imbued with noblesse oblige. This group could now play a major role in creating good government.

It puzzles me that conservative intellectuals in America, at least from William F. Buckley onward, accept small government, low taxation and unfettered markets as a doctrinal truth. These flow from our liberal impulse. This is not to say that Jeffersonian liberal positions are always wrong; its just that the worship of Adam Smith should be left to the classical liberals and Ayn Rand ideologues. It is liberalism that breaths fresh air into stagnant organizations and that has stood against over-regulated commerce from British colonial mercantilism to Stalin’s Five-Year Plans. To the conservative, on the other hand, freedom of enterprise is not an article of faith. It is just an economic tool that channels our inherent selfishness into market activity. A conservative mind can understand and find useful the surge of energy that free markets unleash (the present leftist-conservative Chinese regime comes to mind), it can admire the creativity generated by personal freedom, it can support representative democracy, but It does not accept these ideas as always being the best road forward.

Likewise, the aphorism “he who governs least governs best” is a liberal sentiment. The conservative can adopt such a liberal approach in some situations, but not in others. What is required for good government is situational. To the conservative, he who governs best is the one who understands and adapts to the situation. For example, it was the liberal impulse that took the USA and the United Kingdom and several of their “Willing” partners into Iraq in 2003. The citizens “yearning to breathe free”, it was promised, would embrace their liberators. In Canada our conservative instinct, represented in this instance by Prime Minister Jean Chretien of the Liberal Party, counselled restraint. Canada, not willing to openly defy the USA, undertook to be “willing” just as soon as its NATO ally, Turkey, joined the invasion knowing full well it would never do so. Then came Fallujah. Some populations, a conservative would muse, are unready for democracy. The wide-eyed liberals who danced in Tahrir Square in Egypt’s abortive revolution in 2011 achieved truly representative democracy. The government that was fairly and freely elected, however, was intent on creating a perfectly seamless, benevolent and widely popular theocracy; a system that had little room for liberal individualism, freedom of or from religion, gender equality, Western hedonism or personal exceptionality. It is noteworthy that Egypt’s fledgling professional, commercial and land holding class has largely acquiesced to restored military rule, the right-wing retreat of an embattled “middle class”. Sometimes the liberal impulse leads us astray.

The information revolution through which we are living will probably rank with Gutenburg and the Industrial Revolution in its transformative and disruptive impact. It is at such junctures where Wise Tories are most needed and where reactionary populist liberals are positively dangerous. Otto von Bismarck, for example, was such a conservative. He recognized the social dislocation created by the industrial revolution and the capitalism it unleashed. The social structures which had sustained the European population for centuries were withering away. It was Bismarck a man of deeply conservative instinct who, despite many failings, understood the need for social order and for the noblesse oblige required to sustain it. It was his Prussian led Germany that developed Europe’s first and most long enduring social security system. Health care, accident insurance, old age and disability pensions, child labor laws and workers’ safety standards were conservative innovations and in the German case they were right-leaning initiatives.

Such conservative initiatives are also entwined in American history, but they are not usually recognized as conservative. The National Civic Federation (NCF) formed in 1900 was a conservative organization of corporate leaders that sought to bring harmony between capital and labor by giving capitalism a human face. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) was one of its leading proponents. The WSJ held that, “Trusts [corporations] will not be killed by denunciations in the mouths of demagogues … nor will labor unions be destroyed by denunciations in the mouths of those who believe in the “divine right of the dollar.”  Bad corporations, it said, were a “stench in the nostrils of the people” and that “in the long run … only such corporations that are good for the community … will survive.“ The WSJ supported the progressive reforms of Theodore Roosevelt and argued for government regulation to protect the middle-class from the “anarchistic rich” as well as the “anarchistic poor.” Decades later Franklin Roosevelt, also a patrician of the old Hudson River aristocracy, engineered progressive conservative, not liberal, reforms.  Bernie Sanders, a more recent example, is not in essence a liberal, he is a progressive conservative. If in Canada, his purist rhetoric and strident tendency might lead him to join Canada’s left-leaning New Democratic Party to advance his positions, but often in the Canadian past centrist Prime Ministers have reached out to such voices and tempered them by bringing them “inside the tent”.  Sanders could sit on the left-wing of the Liberal Party of Canada and he would be comfortable as a “Red Tory” if he was in the Progressive Conservative Party.*  His proposed policies echo the status quo in other Western democracies where they have thrived, alongside capitalism, for a lifetime.

(*Alas, The Progressive Conservative Party of Canada has been taken over by reactionary liberal poppulists as was the Republican Party in the USA. It has since elimited the word progressive and uses the misnomber Conservative in the “proudly conservtive” manner of the Tea Party. This phalange represents a amaller fraction of the Canadian population than it does in the US, but I see it as the greatest existential threat to Canadian political identity.)

Demographic shifts are reshaping the politics of Western democracies. Increasingly urbanizing, diversifying and aging populations are reshaping old political alliances. The time is ripe in the United States, as elsewhere, for truly progressive conservative political Parties that span the left-right spectrum. This can only be done if Wise Tories, conservatives on the right, engage with their more radical conservative counterparts on the left . Rather than allying with the likes of the Tea Party and the Alt Right, Wise Tories should demonstrate that conservatism offers sensible and progressive options under which individualism, democracy and market economies flourish.

Just as liberal intellectuals have work to do with the reactionary liberals of the populist right so do conservative intellectuals with the misguided left. Conservatives should accept the present disorder on the left as their own. They should bring young college radicals into the fold and engage them in purposeful reform. In this I include the lite-left with its overly sensitive triggers and never-ending angst, but Wise Tories should also take fertile ground away from more serious threats on the hard-left. The present resurgence of radical leftist ideas, given the history of the 20th century, should be just as troubling as the proto-fascist rumblings on the right. The reciprocal violence during the past century between leftist radicals and repressive governments in Western democracies should not be forgotten. Neither should we forget the repression inflicted on entire populations by hard- Left governments that did achieve power. 

The Republican Party deserted the centre and gained power through its right-wing liberal base, the Tea Party. The result is that it cannot govern effectively. The right-wing ascendency has failed to address decaying infrastructure, health crises from obesity to addiction, immigration, languishing public education, looming environmental catastrophe, mind numbing gun violence, regional and rural decay, press freedom in the disinformation age, racism, shocking disparities in wealth and spiraling public debt. Its most noteworthy action is the abdication of government authority by recklessly untethering market forces and disturbing regular order. Much is said about its successful campaign to tilt the judicial branch to the right, but its open contempt for the rule of law and judicial authority have simultaneously diminshed the third branch. Similarly, immigration has been curtailed by building a wall of fear and loathing, but this is just in time to discourage immigration badly needed to flesh out depleted cohorts in the population. These are the Pyrrhic victories of the Tea Party and their virtual President is its crown.

The Democratic Party could shift sharply to the populist-conservative left and play this out in mirror image. A skilled performer with a slick campaign might win a presidential election but in so doing would not gain effective power. The continuing gridlock would once again leave vital issues unaddressed. Quite possibly such a campaign could fracture Democratic support and return right-wing populists to government. If those on the left of the conservative spectrum – socialists, social democrats, social activists - want change, they must work in common cause with the Wise Tories on their right. The Party that can create such a broad conservative alliance will win not just the presidency, but also the ability to govern. Western democracies do not need revolution; they need consensus, stability and common sense.

This is a daunting task in America that requires a national dialogue on the economy and the un-learning of a myth. The catastrophe of World War I and the political extremes it unleashed reverberate still. Had it not been for that debacle, efficient market economies that reward personal initiative at the same time as they provide a universal social security system would have long since been the norm. The Red Scare after World War I and its second chapter that we call the Cold War brought about the demise of the National Civic Federation. It, along with a large part of the American population, was consumed by the myth of the slippery slope: government involvement in the economy was a gateway drug to communism. Debunking this will be the greatest challenge for reformers who will be painted as un-American.

 “How can we afford all of this?” Radicals on the left are quick to note that this is the refrain of dissembling politicians and cold-blue Tory oligarchs who trot out enormous deficit figures to scare those who do not understand economics. But it is not only self-serving scoundrels who raise this question. To hard working folk who just make ends meet, such spending is counter intuitive. One can point to Scandinavia and Germany to see economies that are thrifty, inventive and industrious that have universal social programs, but this is not enough for a population steeped in the notion that “entitlements” are merely vote getting handouts.

People generally accept that a modern state requires physical ifrastructure such as roads, hospitals, airports, fire departments and so on. They understand that these are investments that are a boon to private sector growth. The understanding now required is that a cohernet and unified social ifratructure will also stimulate positive growth and prosperity. The “push-me, pull-me” American welfare system was invented and re-invented along conflicting ideological lines, federal-state tensions, racial and class divides, and urban-rural conflict. It is a cumbersome behemoth that has callously abandoned the “least loved” while at the same time cultivating lethargy and dependence. There are so many gaps, overlaps and conflicting objectives that it should be replaced entirely. If the advocates of common sense prevail, a completely new and seamless social contract will reduce costs. A cohernet program that replaced the present hodgepodge would be fiscally sound. In this the USA has a unique advantage; being the last in the game it can benefit from a lifetime of trial an error from around the world. THE BARRIERS ARE POLITICAL NOT FINANCIAL

A conservative coalition that combines level headed progressives who seek a more equitable distribution of power and resources with civic minded people in the business community, Wise Tories, working in concert with reasonable liberals, could save the day. This movement’s common-sense creed should urgently address the crisis flashpoints but proceed with wisdom knowing that Rome cannot be rebuilt in a day.

Shrewd business leaders will recognize that crowd-funding will steadily diminish the shadowy political influence of corporations and special interests. Wise Tories should lead the charge to “get the money out” of politics. The corporations that take the high ground and boast that they contribute to charities in lieu of political campaigns and that they lobby elected officials (as they must) openly and ethically could be big beneficiaries.

Young radicals need to hear that the corporation is one of the great human inventions without which a modern society cannot function. Granting them legal eternal life and limited liability provides economic stability, enables sensible risk taking and assures inter-generational continuity. Corporate bashing is facile and futile whether it is done polemically or by throwing bricks through plate glass windows. Common sense says that corporate behavior is good and bad, just like that of real people. The government is the most important corporation of them all. The chief problem is that it is malfunctioning,

At the same time, those in the coalition who speak for business must acknowledge that much of the present maze of corporate law and regulation was designed to obfuscate and enable skullduggery. Kept politicians have allowed special interests to act against the public good and rendered both tax law and regulatory law ineffectual. A system of progressive taxation and regulation that is transparent, simple and fair should make corporations accountable, pay a fair share and lead small businesses and individuals out of thickets of needless red tape.

Business leaders, not social activists, are the people who can credibly deliver this message: a social contract between the people and its government ensures that neither circumstance of birth nor vicissitudes of life are debilitating to the individual and thus deleterious to society. Rather than being the death knell of capitalism it prevents its wildest excesses and acts as a bulwark against radical extremes both left and right.

This common-sense coalition would need to spread state by state, town by town, village by village. There is widespread support within American popular culture for this. Good examples abound. The comedian Bill Maher, for example, blends passionate liberalism when it comes to freedom of speech and the rights of the accused with compassionate conservatism when it comes to universal health care. The film maker Michael Moore is another free spirit and creative individualist, but his Dick Whittington journey has not torn him from his communal roots. Further to their right are small businessmen and corporate mandarins who have a similar sense of social obligation and who are given voice by reasoned conservatives such as David Brooks and Margaret Hoover. Warren Buffett, for example, I would count a Wise Tory. In his 2019 annual report he told Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, “Begin with an economic reality: Like it or not, the U.S. Government ‘owns’ an interest in Berkshire’s earnings of a size determined by Congress. In effect, our country’s Treasury Department holds … AA shares — that receives large ‘dividends’ … from Berkshire.” But Wise Tories are not all billionaires. There are prosperous people with noblesse oblige in every hamlet: she employs several neighbours in her flourishing daycare centre, he works long hours to keep his construction crew working and paid, they raise organic crops and drive them to market. Each longs for a return to common sense. Such a consenseus could be built.

If that hill seems too steep, there might be a simpler road to paradise. Americans could cast about for a parliamentary democracy they could join, one that would give everyone citizenship, a health card and a gallon of maple syrup. Or they could request that the Loyal Society of Descendants (LSD) bring forward its counter-revolutionary invasion.  Of course, after nearly 250 years of patient planning, it may be unwilling to fast track the Restoration of the Monarchies. But, I could ask.