6.1 The Means of Accomplishing part 1

The mudsill posts identified conservative values that justified creating non-persons. While many white men imagine themselves to be exceptions, they are non-persons: poor white trash, in antebellum language. They merit no more considerations than other non-persons. Yet, to make a casual observation, they support their exploitation so long as there are minorities, immigrants, and women below themselves who receive worse. The white mudsill response is Milton’s “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heav’n.”

Identifying the assumptions forming Enlightenment and conservatism was a first step. A second step is identifying the policies that Enlightenment or conservative groups must support, oppose, or impose to control the community. This set of posts will focus more on conservative political claims because conservatism has the larger historical footprint. That is because conservatives, the aristocracy Paine opposed, have vested interests in preventing non-persons from gaining the rights and opportunities they enjoy.

Enlightenment and conservatism hold conflicting assumptions about society and economics. Enlightenment believes individuals can rise above their stations at birth. Further, if a community’s economy grows there will be more for everyone to share. That does not assume everyone will share equally, rather that fewer, if any, will have to go without. Conservatism assumes that if the economy doubles, but the elite’s share grows by only fifty percent, then the elite would no longer control the same percentage of the economy.¹ Mudsill Theory assumes that by keeping enough people poor there will always be an ample supply of non-persons forced to do the harsh, dangerous work. To die early. Further, mere survival would exhaust mudsills too much for them to fight for political change. That is the community Burke envisioned in arguing that society must preserve the traditions protecting the elite’s status and privileges. A belief consistent with de Maistre’s call for executioners to enforce the Great Chain of Being.

Community and the Social Contract

How do we understand the social aggregate: all the people in an area, stumbling around and bumping into each other? Locke’s and Burke’s answers reflect different worlds. Burke relied on Filmer’s divine right: social order coming from God through the king. Claiming “It’s God’s plan” doesn’t hold. Even the God of Abraham religions can’t agree on the rules, plus there have been thousands of stable communities that never heard of that God.

Hobbes’ social contract recognized the cooperation and protection needed before people could invest in the shared labor needed to build a community. That shared commitment was reasonable because the resulting community provided a return on their investment (Locke’s people’s right to their property). As communities prospered their members could prosper. Dividing the community into the elite and mudsills embezzled those profits.

Rephrasing Rousseau,² the purpose of the social contract is to preserve its members. “Whoever desires this object desires also the means [of accomplishing it].” He continued that whoever “preserves himself with the protections and benefits of that social contract” must be willing to sacrifice himself to protect the social contract. “It is only upon this condition that he has lived until then in safety.”

“The means [of accomplishing it]” are the services and protections necessary for the community to prosper. These are pivot points that determine whether the social contract protects individual rights or the aristocratic privileges. Notably, conservative attacks on Enlightenment services and protections don’t discount them. Conservatives recognize that those services and protections are necessary for the community’s survival. They also realize that protecting their self-interest requires holding the power to distort or regulate them as needed.

Holding the power to define the behaviors the community will “officially” tolerate eviscerates Rousseau’s “means of accomplishing.” James Henry Hammond was the poster child demonstrating legitimate aristocratic behavior. Antebellum sexual morality had nothing to do with the actual sexual acts. There was no moral stigma over Hammond raping slaves. The morality of raping his nieces depended on their social status. Such mudsill morality left Epstein’s rich friends and clients free to rape underage girls and boys, then be outraged that anyone would expose their behavior. Mudsill morality is the NFL ignoring Patriot’s owner Kraft having massage parlor sex^.3 The entitled believed it their right to use non-persons. Conservatism covets the social-political power to determine how the necessary services and protections are defined and enforced.

The power to define and enforce services and protections includes determining how much variation there can be in fulfilling those needs. Must everyone speak the same language or pray the same way? How much uniformity and conformity are necessary to support the promises of Enlightenment? How much uniformity and conformity are necessary to advance conservatism?

“The means [of accomplishing it]”

What services and protections are necessary to create and sustain a community? A minimal list includes: individual autonomy, education, health care, infrastructure, history, a moral/ethical system, a legal system, and a government. How much variation in fulfilling these needs is allowed determines how conservative or Enlightened a community will be.

Individual Autonomy – The Opportunity For Self-Betterment

The possibility of rising above your station at birth is the fundamental Enlightenment requirement. Beginning at the end of WW II, with the return of war veterans, and expanding in the 1970s, limiting or eliminating women’s autonomy became a conservative priority. Conservative attacks on women’s autonomy rest on claims about God or nature making women men’s (the state’s) property. Although rarely acknowledged, the American legal/religious story grows from fathers’ right to sell their daughters into (sexual) slavery._{^{4 5}}  This “women as property” is a distorted, inadequate story.

Preview of 6.2: Early Jewish women could not declare a divorce, but the other men could beat the husband until he declared it. Jewish women could own property and businesses. Roman marriage laws for citizens’ wives were so abusive that they refused marriage cum manu in favor of marriage sans manu, which gave them control over their lives, children, and property. Women in eighteenth century England and America could own businesses and property until coverture at marriage stripped them of that autonomy.

 1 The Pareto Principle is more stringent claiming the elite deserve eighty percent of the gain.

2 Post 3.7 p. 2

 3 Under inflating footballs was clearly a greater violation according the the NFL. Under inflating footballs was clearly a greater violation according the the NFL.

 4 Exodus 21:7. Unlike a son, who is sold into slavery for a limited time, the daughter is not returned to the family. It is assumed she has been used sexually and has no value as a future wife if abandoned by her owner.

 5 The fundamentalist “Quiverfull” doctrine verges into trading daughters.