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redneckgaijinOr, to restate it properly, it's a very poor argument.
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starcat_jewel recently recommended an online monograph on her LJ. The title, if you couldn't guess, is, "Conservatives are always wrong."
I've read it, and it's rubbish- not because of any lack of potential valid argument, but because of the many and various flaws in the argument.
First, the broadness of the argument. "Conservatives are always wrong" says it all, really: in order for the basic argument to be valid, conservatives can never be right. This is obviously not correct- blind pigs and acorns, etc. Conservatives were right about the collapse of communism (sp. that an economy cannot function without some market-based systems and the ability of the individual to keep some wealth for him/herself). Conservatives were right about the French Revolution devouring itself (and were very nearly right about the American Revolution doing so before that- had it not been for Washington). Conservatives were right about socialist economies going beyond the point of diminishing returns (which is why Maggie Thatcher held power for fourteen years, and why Great Britain came out of its economic malaise under her watch).
The argument should not be, "conservatives are always wrong," but, "conservatives are usually wrong." There's a very basic reason for this: conservatives, by definition, are those who resist change. In order to resist change, there has to be someone wanting to change something. In order for someone to want to change something, there has to be some aspect of government, the economy, or society that doesn't work properly in their eyes. The greater the number of people who want to change that aspect, the more likely it's broken- but in most cases, conservatives will continue to defend this broken aspect, because that's the status quo (or, in cases like abortion, gay rights, etc. status quo ante) they seek to defend.
Put another way: conservatives preserve the status quo. When the status quo is broken, they're wrong. When the status quo works well, they're right. Since broken things are more likely to get fixed, conservatives fight more often to defend them than to defend things that work- because conservatives preserve the status quo, regardless of its merits. Hence, conservatives are more likely to be wrong than right on any major issue.
Jefferson Smith's monograph doesn't make that argument, or anything like it. Instead it goes on a long ramble, using blatant strawmen and deliberate misstatements of basic conservative arguments to demonize conservatism. Rather than go into the rambling (which I'm prone to myself), I'll focus on the strawmen and deliberate misstatements in the article.
STRAWMAN #1: Conservatives believe(d) in a flat earth at the center of the universe.
Well, if we're going to get into Galileo, first we have to state that modern conservatism stems directly from or through the Roman Catholic Church's effort to uphold its right to establish dogma for all its members. Not so. Outside of Catholic Europe, Galileo's arguments on the Copernican model of the solar system were taken on board by pretty much everyone, conservative or liberal, reactionary or progressive. As Galileo himself argued in his defense, St. Augustine- the same authority who Jefferson Smith repeatedly holds up as the defender of religious-based ignorance- said that if the evidence of one's own eyes contradicted an interpretation of Biblical scripture, then that interpretation needed to be changed.
And as for other comments in the article such as, "four corners of the earth," etc. mean to indicate a general view of a flat earth: those persons who had enough free time to contemplate such things generally believed Earth was a sphere, regardless of their religious or political views. Greek philosophers had actually measured the circumference of the Earth (with reasonable accuracy, for the period) using indirect evidence. Flat-earth beliefs were reserved for the wholly uneducated and superstitious- those, in other words, seldom in positions of political power in those days.
And finally: it doesn't serve Smith's argument that he doesn't even mention Copernicus, the man who first seriously proposed the heliocentric model, in his article. Galileo found the first observational proof, but he didn't come up with the idea- nor was he the first scientist persecuted for defending Copernicus. Arguing conservative ignorance by demonstrating your own ignorance doesn't help the cause.
MISSTATED ARGUMENT #1: The Bible is the perfect textbook on biology, chemistry, etc.
CORRECTED ARGUMENT: The Bible is the literal, inerrant word of God.
Now, there is oh so much to bash conservatives with even on the corrected argument- but Jefferson Smith goes too far. The Bible twice lists a circular object as "ten cubits across and thirty around", but nobody is going to argue that the value of pi is precisely three. Conservatives do not argue against science as a generality, but against specific sciences which go against their beliefs- as view the next item:
MISSTATED ARGUMENT #2: Conservatives oppose cloning and stem cell research because it's unnatural.
CORRECTED ARGUMENT: Conservatives oppose cloning and stem cell research because they believe embryos are human beings with rights equal to grown human beings.
Granted, conservatives appeal to nature (a common rhetorical fallacy) far too often- but it's not their primary argument here. Bluntly put, conservatives believe it is murder to destroy a viable embryo to harvest its stem cells for research. They believe that the hundred-plus embryos that don't survive are a hundred-odd murders to get the one clone that lives. And most of all, they abhor the nightmare of human beings being cloned so their organs can be harvested to keep their predecessors alive. (On this one, I'm with them.) Jefferson Smith's misstatement here serves no purpose other than to belittle conservatives for ignorance and superstition.
MISSTATED ARGUMENT #3: The inequities between rich and poor can't be fixed.
CORRECTED ARGUMENT: Efforts to reduce inequities between rich and poor rapidly reach a point of diminishing returns- while, at the same time, violating a universal right to own property.
Or, stated in longer form, the only means government has to relieve the inequities between rich and poor is to take total control/ownership of wealth- in which case government becomes rich and everyone else becomes poor. I'm on board with this one. The best way to encourage a reduction in wealth differential is to get the rich to put more money back in circulation- by, for example, paying employees more in order to get below a tax bracket. Straight, involuntary redistribution of wealth gives government the power to determine who gets to have how much wealth- which, in turn, gives government the ability to abuse that power.
STRAWMAN #2: Conservatives like cruel and unusual punishments.
I really need to quote direct from the monograph here:
Well... no.
First, the issue of torture and due process is by no means a unifying conservative issue. Republicans backed the Bush Administration not out of any ideology favoring dictatorial abuse of power, but from simple political loyalty. Some Republicans, and quite a lot of conservatives, didn't back them at all (on these issues). And, of course, when a conservative gets brought up on charges, then they're all about due process, or the lack thereof (they claim).
As for cruel and unusual punishment... as a general rule, conservatives are less interested in punishment than in deterrence. Conservatives argue, with some justification, that a dead criminal is less likely than most to commit new crimes. Even so, conservatives limit their calls for the death penalty to the most outrageous of crimes- not for mere burglary, confidence scheming, poaching, etc.
There's plenty to attack conservatives on here: the inequity and inaccuracy of the death penalty as applied, the strong case against deterrence, etc. Jefferson Smith caricatures conservatives here for no good purpose- except, again, to demonize and belittle his opponents.
STRAWMAN #3: Conservatives argue, "Now is different- this time we're right!", but they're the same now as they were centuries ago.
And conservatives could argue, "You liberals are the same as ever- you want to execute priests, burn us out of our homes, launch wars against all opposing societies, just like you did centuries ago!" (See also French Revolution, American Civil War (and British Civil Wars, too), and the Protestant Reformation.) Both arguments are equally valid- in that they are equally bankrupt.
Jefferson Smith notwithstanding, the conservatives of today are not those who persecuted Galileo, or who defended slavery and gender inequality, or who upheld the divine right of kings. Modern conservatives have no desire to reinstitute monarchy or slavery. We can be sure at list fifty percent of conservatives will fight against any restoration of women to chattel status. You can argue that the philosophy of conservatism- to preserve what is, merely because that it is- is flawed from ancient days, but the men of today are not the men of prior centuries- and should not be treated as such. It cheapens both them and yourself to do so.
MISSTATED ARGUMENT #4: This world cannot be made any better than it is.
CORRECTED ARGUMENT: Certain specific proposals would make the world worse, not better.
Conservatives oppose liberal proposals for higher taxes higher minimum wages, for expanding Welfare rolls, and the like because they believe they will make matters worse- by discouraging production, by spurring inflation, by making people permanently dependent upon government, etc. It's not because they believe it's impossible to improve things- otherwise, they wouldn't keep counterproposing tax cuts for the wealthy, the abolition or privatization of entitlement programs, etc.
Modern conservatives do want to change some things- change them back to what they think they were like in a happier time. As a general rule today's conservatives look back to the 1940's (the "good war") and the 1950's (peace, prosperity, and above all conformity) as this idyll which must be restored. Conservatives believe that things have gone downhill since then. Since the world was once better than it is now, it can definitely be made better- by, conservatives argue, reversing trends like Affirmative Action, tolerance of sexual deviancy, etc.
(The fact that they also seek to undo other factors that contributed to this happy time, such as an oppressively high progressive income tax, generous veterans' benefits, Social Security, and careful regulation of financial markets, shows a bankruptcy in their argument- but that doesn't undo the complete fiction that is Jefferson Smith's argument in this case.)
MISSTATED ARGUMENT #5: "You're on your own."
CORRECTED ARGUMENT: "You can't rely on government to be there when you really need it."
To be sure, conservatives generally believe that poverty is the fault of the poor for not working hard enough. That said, to reduce their argument to that point alone is not merely to cheapen conservatism but to ignore vital flaws in liberalism.
There are several important points to the conservative argument which liberals and progressives must address. If you oppose, for example, private gun ownership, how do you propose that people defend themselves if and when they're attacked? All too often, the left glosses over this point- "we oppose vigilantism," "leave it to the police," "the best defense is not to be in a dangerous place," etc. These points ignore the basic conservative belief that government cannot be everywhere and do everything for a person- that is, it can't do it without becoming so big and intrusive as to become the single greatest threat against the same individual.
STRAWMAN #4: "The economy is uncontrollable."
Actually, conservatives have a lot of economists on their side- from Adam Smith right up to Milton Friedman. Likewise, they definitely believe the economy is controllable- which, again, is why they favor free trade, lower capital gains taxes, and reduced regulation. Jefferson Smith goes beyond a specious argument and straight into bald-faced-lie territory here- which makes me wonder exactly how much control he wants the government to exert over the economy...
MISSTATED ARGUMENT #6: "If a solution isn't 100% successful, it fails."
CORRECTED ARGUMENT: "Some problems can't be 100% solved- and efforts to do so rapidly reach diminishing returns, while bringing up new problems."
Take, for example, minimum wage laws. Conservatives, so far as I can remember, have never suggested rolling back minimum wages during my lifetime- or rather, those who do tend to get marginalized in short order. This doesn't stop them from opposing new hikes in the minimum wage as spurring inflation, killing jobs and reducing opportunity for the poorest workers- arguments with significant validity. Raising the minimum wage makes production of goods more expensive, makes business less likely to hire new workers (and more likely to reduce current staff to save money), and prices the unskilled out of the market. Beyond a certain point, raising the minimum wage stops raising the standard of living and starts lowering it. The debate is about where that point lies, and what can be done about it.
MISSTATED ARGUMENT #7: "Life is fair, and shouldn't be corrected."
CORRECTED ARGUMENT: "Life isn't always fair, but there's no guarantee whatever that government is any more fair."
Government is a creation of people, composed of people, and run by people. The best that can be said is that these people are imperfect and prone to error. Most conservatives would go farther and state that government attracts the most corrupt and unjust among us. (Which makes me wonder: if that's true, why do so many conservatives want to be a part of government, hmmmm?)
Anyway, conservatives tend to mistrust giving government the power to correct apparent inequities because the same exact powers can be used to establish new inequities. Affirmative Action is the most debated example, with most white workers having at least one horror story about a non-white worker who refused to work but couldn't be fired because of AA laws and quotas. The validity and quality of such anecdotes is definitely questionable, but the fundamental point remains: in order to correct a system in which a person would not be hired because of the color of his or her skin, the government instituted a system... in which a person would be hired specifically because of the color of his or her skin, regardless of merit.
Unfortunately, Affirmative Action was probably necessary: white bigotry wasn't going to go away until a generation (or two) grew up experiencing all races working side by side in a system that didn't permit segregation. It shouldn't be permanent, though- otherwise AA would be just as great an injustice as racial blackballing was before it.
The second half or so of the monograph is much better than the first half, where the above errors are concentrated. There is one erroneous argument, though, that I want to address before I end: namely, that progressive liberalism wins because its causes are historically favored.
Quoting:
Well... no. Evidence to the contrary, in fact.
We started, thousands of years ago, with tribal cultures, followed by theocracy, followed by absolute monarchy... which then, in Greece and Rome, were followed by republics... which were followed by dictatorships and absolute monarchies... which, in their wake, were followed by tribal cultures and elected monarchies, which were followed by hereditary but limited monarchies... which then, everywhere in Europe except England and Poland, were followed by absolute monarchies (and Poland weakened and eventually vanished as a nation-state). Absolute monarchy was destroyed not by war or by inevitable progress, but by the lone example of a stable representative democracy- the United States- during the 19th century. Even then, had the Central Powers won the first World War, absolute monarchy would likely still be the norm rather than the exception.
We started with enslaving prisoners of war but joining their children to the tribes, to chattel slavery, to abhorrence of slavery (in Europe), to acceptance of slavery, to race-based chattel slavery, to gradual emancipation, to war in order to preserve slavery.
We started with limited franchise (in pre-Norman England) to no franchise, to a franchise that waxed and waned according with the times. There were more English entitled to vote for members of Parliament in 1688 than in 1776. Even in the United States, "progress" has been unsteady. Pennsylvania abolished property requirements for the vote, then reinstated them. New Jersey allowed women (who owned property) to vote, then removed that right. Non-white voting rights went back and forth (and, currently, are still on a backwards track).
Progressive change, as presented in the quote, is a myth- an illusion generated by hindsight. Jefferson Smith, in concluding his monograph with this argument, is indulging in cheerleading for his side. Not only does this ignore past progressivist failures such as Prohibition, but it creates a tautology that works to blind potential liberals- "because it's the way things are going, we support it-" in the same way that convervatives' "status quo is best" tautology blinds them.
In conclusion, this monograph would be better had it been about one-third the length, minus the deliberate distortions of the opposing viewpoints, and with a more clear statement of the unifying weakness behind conservatism. It's so badly done that, yes, I felt compelled to write something half the length of the original to rebut it.
There really has to be something better on the left than this...
starcat_jewel recently recommended an online monograph on her LJ. The title, if you couldn't guess, is, "Conservatives are always wrong."I've read it, and it's rubbish- not because of any lack of potential valid argument, but because of the many and various flaws in the argument.
First, the broadness of the argument. "Conservatives are always wrong" says it all, really: in order for the basic argument to be valid, conservatives can never be right. This is obviously not correct- blind pigs and acorns, etc. Conservatives were right about the collapse of communism (sp. that an economy cannot function without some market-based systems and the ability of the individual to keep some wealth for him/herself). Conservatives were right about the French Revolution devouring itself (and were very nearly right about the American Revolution doing so before that- had it not been for Washington). Conservatives were right about socialist economies going beyond the point of diminishing returns (which is why Maggie Thatcher held power for fourteen years, and why Great Britain came out of its economic malaise under her watch).
The argument should not be, "conservatives are always wrong," but, "conservatives are usually wrong." There's a very basic reason for this: conservatives, by definition, are those who resist change. In order to resist change, there has to be someone wanting to change something. In order for someone to want to change something, there has to be some aspect of government, the economy, or society that doesn't work properly in their eyes. The greater the number of people who want to change that aspect, the more likely it's broken- but in most cases, conservatives will continue to defend this broken aspect, because that's the status quo (or, in cases like abortion, gay rights, etc. status quo ante) they seek to defend.
Put another way: conservatives preserve the status quo. When the status quo is broken, they're wrong. When the status quo works well, they're right. Since broken things are more likely to get fixed, conservatives fight more often to defend them than to defend things that work- because conservatives preserve the status quo, regardless of its merits. Hence, conservatives are more likely to be wrong than right on any major issue.
Jefferson Smith's monograph doesn't make that argument, or anything like it. Instead it goes on a long ramble, using blatant strawmen and deliberate misstatements of basic conservative arguments to demonize conservatism. Rather than go into the rambling (which I'm prone to myself), I'll focus on the strawmen and deliberate misstatements in the article.
STRAWMAN #1: Conservatives believe(d) in a flat earth at the center of the universe.
Well, if we're going to get into Galileo, first we have to state that modern conservatism stems directly from or through the Roman Catholic Church's effort to uphold its right to establish dogma for all its members. Not so. Outside of Catholic Europe, Galileo's arguments on the Copernican model of the solar system were taken on board by pretty much everyone, conservative or liberal, reactionary or progressive. As Galileo himself argued in his defense, St. Augustine- the same authority who Jefferson Smith repeatedly holds up as the defender of religious-based ignorance- said that if the evidence of one's own eyes contradicted an interpretation of Biblical scripture, then that interpretation needed to be changed.
And as for other comments in the article such as, "four corners of the earth," etc. mean to indicate a general view of a flat earth: those persons who had enough free time to contemplate such things generally believed Earth was a sphere, regardless of their religious or political views. Greek philosophers had actually measured the circumference of the Earth (with reasonable accuracy, for the period) using indirect evidence. Flat-earth beliefs were reserved for the wholly uneducated and superstitious- those, in other words, seldom in positions of political power in those days.
And finally: it doesn't serve Smith's argument that he doesn't even mention Copernicus, the man who first seriously proposed the heliocentric model, in his article. Galileo found the first observational proof, but he didn't come up with the idea- nor was he the first scientist persecuted for defending Copernicus. Arguing conservative ignorance by demonstrating your own ignorance doesn't help the cause.
MISSTATED ARGUMENT #1: The Bible is the perfect textbook on biology, chemistry, etc.
CORRECTED ARGUMENT: The Bible is the literal, inerrant word of God.
Now, there is oh so much to bash conservatives with even on the corrected argument- but Jefferson Smith goes too far. The Bible twice lists a circular object as "ten cubits across and thirty around", but nobody is going to argue that the value of pi is precisely three. Conservatives do not argue against science as a generality, but against specific sciences which go against their beliefs- as view the next item:
MISSTATED ARGUMENT #2: Conservatives oppose cloning and stem cell research because it's unnatural.
CORRECTED ARGUMENT: Conservatives oppose cloning and stem cell research because they believe embryos are human beings with rights equal to grown human beings.
Granted, conservatives appeal to nature (a common rhetorical fallacy) far too often- but it's not their primary argument here. Bluntly put, conservatives believe it is murder to destroy a viable embryo to harvest its stem cells for research. They believe that the hundred-plus embryos that don't survive are a hundred-odd murders to get the one clone that lives. And most of all, they abhor the nightmare of human beings being cloned so their organs can be harvested to keep their predecessors alive. (On this one, I'm with them.) Jefferson Smith's misstatement here serves no purpose other than to belittle conservatives for ignorance and superstition.
MISSTATED ARGUMENT #3: The inequities between rich and poor can't be fixed.
CORRECTED ARGUMENT: Efforts to reduce inequities between rich and poor rapidly reach a point of diminishing returns- while, at the same time, violating a universal right to own property.
Or, stated in longer form, the only means government has to relieve the inequities between rich and poor is to take total control/ownership of wealth- in which case government becomes rich and everyone else becomes poor. I'm on board with this one. The best way to encourage a reduction in wealth differential is to get the rich to put more money back in circulation- by, for example, paying employees more in order to get below a tax bracket. Straight, involuntary redistribution of wealth gives government the power to determine who gets to have how much wealth- which, in turn, gives government the ability to abuse that power.
STRAWMAN #2: Conservatives like cruel and unusual punishments.
I really need to quote direct from the monograph here:
Due process is fine – except for criminals, and especially “terrorists,” for whom some of the old methods need to be revived (and have been). OK, maybe the death penalty is wrong for children under, say, 14. (Or maybe not.) But life sentences aren’t. And while we grudgingly accept a penal system that treats even the worst offenders somewhat humanely, we nonetheless want those people killed, in substantial numbers, and the sooner the better.
Well... no.
First, the issue of torture and due process is by no means a unifying conservative issue. Republicans backed the Bush Administration not out of any ideology favoring dictatorial abuse of power, but from simple political loyalty. Some Republicans, and quite a lot of conservatives, didn't back them at all (on these issues). And, of course, when a conservative gets brought up on charges, then they're all about due process, or the lack thereof (they claim).
As for cruel and unusual punishment... as a general rule, conservatives are less interested in punishment than in deterrence. Conservatives argue, with some justification, that a dead criminal is less likely than most to commit new crimes. Even so, conservatives limit their calls for the death penalty to the most outrageous of crimes- not for mere burglary, confidence scheming, poaching, etc.
There's plenty to attack conservatives on here: the inequity and inaccuracy of the death penalty as applied, the strong case against deterrence, etc. Jefferson Smith caricatures conservatives here for no good purpose- except, again, to demonize and belittle his opponents.
STRAWMAN #3: Conservatives argue, "Now is different- this time we're right!", but they're the same now as they were centuries ago.
And conservatives could argue, "You liberals are the same as ever- you want to execute priests, burn us out of our homes, launch wars against all opposing societies, just like you did centuries ago!" (See also French Revolution, American Civil War (and British Civil Wars, too), and the Protestant Reformation.) Both arguments are equally valid- in that they are equally bankrupt.
Jefferson Smith notwithstanding, the conservatives of today are not those who persecuted Galileo, or who defended slavery and gender inequality, or who upheld the divine right of kings. Modern conservatives have no desire to reinstitute monarchy or slavery. We can be sure at list fifty percent of conservatives will fight against any restoration of women to chattel status. You can argue that the philosophy of conservatism- to preserve what is, merely because that it is- is flawed from ancient days, but the men of today are not the men of prior centuries- and should not be treated as such. It cheapens both them and yourself to do so.
MISSTATED ARGUMENT #4: This world cannot be made any better than it is.
CORRECTED ARGUMENT: Certain specific proposals would make the world worse, not better.
Conservatives oppose liberal proposals for higher taxes higher minimum wages, for expanding Welfare rolls, and the like because they believe they will make matters worse- by discouraging production, by spurring inflation, by making people permanently dependent upon government, etc. It's not because they believe it's impossible to improve things- otherwise, they wouldn't keep counterproposing tax cuts for the wealthy, the abolition or privatization of entitlement programs, etc.
Modern conservatives do want to change some things- change them back to what they think they were like in a happier time. As a general rule today's conservatives look back to the 1940's (the "good war") and the 1950's (peace, prosperity, and above all conformity) as this idyll which must be restored. Conservatives believe that things have gone downhill since then. Since the world was once better than it is now, it can definitely be made better- by, conservatives argue, reversing trends like Affirmative Action, tolerance of sexual deviancy, etc.
(The fact that they also seek to undo other factors that contributed to this happy time, such as an oppressively high progressive income tax, generous veterans' benefits, Social Security, and careful regulation of financial markets, shows a bankruptcy in their argument- but that doesn't undo the complete fiction that is Jefferson Smith's argument in this case.)
MISSTATED ARGUMENT #5: "You're on your own."
CORRECTED ARGUMENT: "You can't rely on government to be there when you really need it."
To be sure, conservatives generally believe that poverty is the fault of the poor for not working hard enough. That said, to reduce their argument to that point alone is not merely to cheapen conservatism but to ignore vital flaws in liberalism.
There are several important points to the conservative argument which liberals and progressives must address. If you oppose, for example, private gun ownership, how do you propose that people defend themselves if and when they're attacked? All too often, the left glosses over this point- "we oppose vigilantism," "leave it to the police," "the best defense is not to be in a dangerous place," etc. These points ignore the basic conservative belief that government cannot be everywhere and do everything for a person- that is, it can't do it without becoming so big and intrusive as to become the single greatest threat against the same individual.
STRAWMAN #4: "The economy is uncontrollable."
Actually, conservatives have a lot of economists on their side- from Adam Smith right up to Milton Friedman. Likewise, they definitely believe the economy is controllable- which, again, is why they favor free trade, lower capital gains taxes, and reduced regulation. Jefferson Smith goes beyond a specious argument and straight into bald-faced-lie territory here- which makes me wonder exactly how much control he wants the government to exert over the economy...
MISSTATED ARGUMENT #6: "If a solution isn't 100% successful, it fails."
CORRECTED ARGUMENT: "Some problems can't be 100% solved- and efforts to do so rapidly reach diminishing returns, while bringing up new problems."
Take, for example, minimum wage laws. Conservatives, so far as I can remember, have never suggested rolling back minimum wages during my lifetime- or rather, those who do tend to get marginalized in short order. This doesn't stop them from opposing new hikes in the minimum wage as spurring inflation, killing jobs and reducing opportunity for the poorest workers- arguments with significant validity. Raising the minimum wage makes production of goods more expensive, makes business less likely to hire new workers (and more likely to reduce current staff to save money), and prices the unskilled out of the market. Beyond a certain point, raising the minimum wage stops raising the standard of living and starts lowering it. The debate is about where that point lies, and what can be done about it.
MISSTATED ARGUMENT #7: "Life is fair, and shouldn't be corrected."
CORRECTED ARGUMENT: "Life isn't always fair, but there's no guarantee whatever that government is any more fair."
Government is a creation of people, composed of people, and run by people. The best that can be said is that these people are imperfect and prone to error. Most conservatives would go farther and state that government attracts the most corrupt and unjust among us. (Which makes me wonder: if that's true, why do so many conservatives want to be a part of government, hmmmm?)
Anyway, conservatives tend to mistrust giving government the power to correct apparent inequities because the same exact powers can be used to establish new inequities. Affirmative Action is the most debated example, with most white workers having at least one horror story about a non-white worker who refused to work but couldn't be fired because of AA laws and quotas. The validity and quality of such anecdotes is definitely questionable, but the fundamental point remains: in order to correct a system in which a person would not be hired because of the color of his or her skin, the government instituted a system... in which a person would be hired specifically because of the color of his or her skin, regardless of merit.
Unfortunately, Affirmative Action was probably necessary: white bigotry wasn't going to go away until a generation (or two) grew up experiencing all races working side by side in a system that didn't permit segregation. It shouldn't be permanent, though- otherwise AA would be just as great an injustice as racial blackballing was before it.
The second half or so of the monograph is much better than the first half, where the above errors are concentrated. There is one erroneous argument, though, that I want to address before I end: namely, that progressive liberalism wins because its causes are historically favored.
Quoting:
History isn’t just a big churning, with humankind continually ending up back where it started. Just as we didn’t start with the recognition that the earth is round, or that germs cause disease, and move from there toward flat-earth theories and superstitions about witches and spirits, our social understandings have clearly gone in certain directions and not others. We didn’t start, thousands of years ago, with liberal democracies, and gradually move in the direction of monarchies, feudal aristocracies, Roman military emperors and eventually the rule of priests, pharaohs and tribal chieftains. We went the other way around. We didn’t go from a worldwide rejection of slavery to broad acceptance of it, or from universal suffrage to a voting franchise limited to the propertied elite. We went the other way around. In society as in science, the overall trend is obvious – and it has a name: “progress.”
Well... no. Evidence to the contrary, in fact.
We started, thousands of years ago, with tribal cultures, followed by theocracy, followed by absolute monarchy... which then, in Greece and Rome, were followed by republics... which were followed by dictatorships and absolute monarchies... which, in their wake, were followed by tribal cultures and elected monarchies, which were followed by hereditary but limited monarchies... which then, everywhere in Europe except England and Poland, were followed by absolute monarchies (and Poland weakened and eventually vanished as a nation-state). Absolute monarchy was destroyed not by war or by inevitable progress, but by the lone example of a stable representative democracy- the United States- during the 19th century. Even then, had the Central Powers won the first World War, absolute monarchy would likely still be the norm rather than the exception.
We started with enslaving prisoners of war but joining their children to the tribes, to chattel slavery, to abhorrence of slavery (in Europe), to acceptance of slavery, to race-based chattel slavery, to gradual emancipation, to war in order to preserve slavery.
We started with limited franchise (in pre-Norman England) to no franchise, to a franchise that waxed and waned according with the times. There were more English entitled to vote for members of Parliament in 1688 than in 1776. Even in the United States, "progress" has been unsteady. Pennsylvania abolished property requirements for the vote, then reinstated them. New Jersey allowed women (who owned property) to vote, then removed that right. Non-white voting rights went back and forth (and, currently, are still on a backwards track).
Progressive change, as presented in the quote, is a myth- an illusion generated by hindsight. Jefferson Smith, in concluding his monograph with this argument, is indulging in cheerleading for his side. Not only does this ignore past progressivist failures such as Prohibition, but it creates a tautology that works to blind potential liberals- "because it's the way things are going, we support it-" in the same way that convervatives' "status quo is best" tautology blinds them.
In conclusion, this monograph would be better had it been about one-third the length, minus the deliberate distortions of the opposing viewpoints, and with a more clear statement of the unifying weakness behind conservatism. It's so badly done that, yes, I felt compelled to write something half the length of the original to rebut it.
There really has to be something better on the left than this...
