2.5 The Invention of Modern Liberalism and Conservatism: part 5

Why create these posts? Give candidates ten pages of information, their response: “Too Long, Didn’t Read”. People defend their common knowledge answers. “The Puritans came to the new world for religious freedom.”

Unless we know the origin of our common knowledge answers, a single fact can destroy our credibility. Persecuted English Puritans moved to religiously tolerant Holland (1608). They left Holland to establish intolerant theocracies in the Colonies.1

Most of us know little more than the American mythology high schools teach. Our understanding of the Constitution, rights, and limited government is so deeply embedded in the weltanschauung that conservatism successfully replaced the Enlightenment principle of self betterment with meritocracy platitudes.

I am not criticizing meritocracy. I hope people achieve better lives through hard work. Considering Burke’s and de Maistre’s foundations, does modern conservatism support people rising above their station at birth? Do conservative policies advance the American Dream?

Burke and de Maistre opposed public assistance and education which enable people to achieve better lives. Conservative meritocracy praises success and blames poverty on poor people being lazy. Meritocracy judges people by their wealth, not their labor. Defining poverty as personal failure justifies ignoring “undeserving” people’s needs…and their children’s needs. Never underestimate the abuse comfortable people eagerly inflict on the “undeserving”. Self-righteousness protects weltanschauung beliefs.

Burke’s traditions began with the Norman Conquest (1066) and serfdom. By 1790 Britain was a colonial power leading the Industrial Revolution. Christian theocracy, the Great Chain of Being, ignored seven centuries of change. For Burke the poor in the fields and factories needed to remain poor and at the service of the elite. Enlightenment challenged that Great Chain expectation. Further, by 1790 seven centuries of religious wars, revolutions, and an expanding economic world discredited Burke’s traditions and Christian theocracy.

From the sixteenth century forward, slavery, international trade, and industrialization created wealth matching and exceeding that of nobility. Too powerful to be ignored, wealthy commoners’ growing demand for the privileges of class threatened the Great Chain of Being. Calvinism provided a solution. The Protestant work ethic sanctified work as duty and a form of worship. Where being poor had been people’s God assigned station, meritocracy made poverty proof of personal moral failure. Further, while Christ’s death could atone for all of humanity’s sins, salvation was restricted to an elect few. Living a faithful life did not assure salvation. But…if you were one of the hardworking elect, God might hint at your salvation. Not everyone had to experience Job’s suffering before receiving God’s reward. Wealth hinted that God approved the rise in your station.2 Unlike having noble blood this elevation was not inheritable. Nonetheless, it reaffirmed the Great Chain of Being and Tradition.

Burke’s and de Maistre’s conservative principles remain important only if they still guide conservative thought. Ignoring campaign slogans, do conservative leaders support the American Dream that through hard work you or your children can rise above the station of one’s birth? What legislation and policies do conservatives such as the Heritage Foundation, Federalist Society, Project 2025, Family Research Council, and Opus Dei promote? What, in simple language, are conservatism’s principles?

Conservative writers from Burke to Nisbet have written thousands of pages defending conservatism. Despite rephrasing and reorganizing, their arguments reduce to three principles.3

1. A desire for hierarchy and human inequality.

The Great Chain of Being

2. Society must be based on Christianity.

Only divine dispensation creates order

Faith demands obedience

3. Society must be based on tradition.

Polis

The myth of decay

Despite two and a half centuries of social, political, and economic change since Burke, conservative writers4 defend the traditions and principles protecting the privileges of class. Conservatives make allusions that the deserving might join them. The test is whether conservative policies help or hinder ordinary people. For example, Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923)5 argued that it is irrelevant how unjust or exploitative the elite are, the elite must use every resource to remain in power.

My goal in writing is to shift people’s focus from outrage over individual acts and laws by encouraging them to reveal how those acts impose the three conservative principle on society. Why, for example, defund public libraries? What is the purpose in appointing a person with no medical or medical research qualifications to head Health and Human Services? To encourage ignorance and mistrust.

What must conservatives control to create and sustain an oligarchy? Congress. The presidency. Courts. Education. Christianity. Law enforcement. News. Internet. Do conservatives support individual freedom? Freedom from religion? Body autonomy? Marriage? Sexual/gender identity? Habeas Corpus? Citizenship? Rather than defend these, are they limiting protections to chosen groups? Do their actions feed anger?

The Conservative River

The Constitution is inseparable from its consequences: slavery, racism, misogyny, and genocide. That originalism benefited the wealthiest men by denying individual rights.

Extending its protections to more Americans has been a slow process because it challenged the privileges of class. Expanding individual freedom and gaining income stability threatened the “polis” (i.e., the privileges of class), so conservatives launched a new anti-Enlightenment movement in the mid 1950s. Their goal was to restore the nineteenth century traditions and values that protected their “natural aristocracy”.

The Path: tell the most compelling story with the best evidence. Data and research are insufficient. Reclaiming the American Dream requires grounded arguments. Present median income budgets to show that families cannot survive on one paycheck, cannot afford an unplanned child, are one accident of illness away from bankruptcy. Enjoying a reasonable standard of living and raising their families as they choose is central to the American Dream. Whether from our overpriced medical system, underfunded educational system, or inadequate support for dependent individuals and children, conservatism demands suffering for someone’s profit. The reason is simple: suffering destroys social commitment. Oligarchies flourish when countries are thrown into chaos. Then their messianic savior can appear, and people will kill their children to prove their fealty.

Next: Do people have a right to exist? The Charter of the Forest.

1  Yes, the London Virginia Company financed and coordinated the settlement. Also, not all Puritans went to the colonies through Holland.

² This foreshadows the Prosperity Gospel.

³ Mike Lofgren “There’s no such thing as a conservative intellectual – only apologists for right-wing power” Salon July 1, 2023

https://www.salon.com/2023/07/01/there’s-no-such-thing-as-a conservative-intellectual—only apologists for right-wing-power/

⁴ A partial list of past and current influential conservative writers included” Michael Oakshot, Herbert Spencer, William Graham Sumner, Vilfredo Pareto, and contemporary writers including Friedrich Hayek, Los Strauss, Russel Kirk, and Robert Nisbet.

⁵ Pareto, Vilfredo The Rise and Fall of the Elite (1901)The Bedminster Press Tatowa, New Jersey (1968)