The "Conservative Progressive"

Why are Republicans bad at politics? Let's talk about this, again.

78. The "Conservative Progressive"

One of the many problems of so-called “conservatives,” and even many on “the right” is that their thinking is shaped by liberalism in ways that are not entirely obvious to them, because they do not take the time to properly understand the meaning and implications of the political context within which they find themselves. As a result, they show themselves to be liberals in ways that actually reinforce the current political order. For example, a concern over the policy platform of your candidate or party is an inherently liberal way of thinking. This belief in policy prescriptions is an acceptance that we live and breathe within a world defined by liberalism and thus struggle to conceive of social and political realities which would lie outside the liberal order. It is a baseline acceptance of the idea that society can, through proper policy and administration, be conservative. More than this, there is an operative belief that if an idea is good, it is universally good for everyone and thus must be applied to all, equally without favouritism. The government should not be in the business of picking winners and losers. This is, fundamentally, a liberal way of thinking.

There is a complex of ideas at work here. Let’s begin at the beginning. Perhaps the most important, foundational idea at work within liberal thinking is the idea that people are born into a state of nature, that is, they are born unformed blank slates. They are born free, not shaped by the ills of society and its various structures and problems. Society places us into a bondage to its customs, mores, institutions and systems. This leads to two dynamics fundamental to liberalism. One is that for us to be free, we need to shake off the restraints placed upon us by society and its “social constructs.” We need to be free to create the world as it emerges from within us. We must uncover our untainted state of nature and release it. Our own inner genius becomes the only truth that matters.

Along side of this, there is the concomitant vision of fixing all of societies structures, systems and institutions. The idea is that if we can fix, if we can properly engineer the mechanisms of our society, this will then allow us to properly develop ourselves in true freedom. If the architecture of our society is good, then we will grow up to be good. This compels us to first of all try to understand fully ourselves and our society, to engage in the “science” of social self-examination. Secondly, we then develop plans to fix all that is wrong with our society. This urge to produce the right set of policies flows out of this basic belief system. If we get the plan right, we can fix society. This basic desire is at the heart of the idea, the “myth” of human progress. When Jacques Ellul says that that the right must bow before the ideas of the left in order to gain legitimacy, this is what he means. Within the context of the liberal order, all politics must simply accept that the liberal order is THE order. This means that you must have policy proposals which present your plan for engineering society towards its perfection.

“The System,” though, is itself essentially technological, striving for scientific rationality. It looks to engage in that process of thesis, experimentation and the evaluation of results leading to a new thesis, another experiment and then a further evaluation, leading step by step, ever closer to an understanding and a reality that is increasingly perfected over time. All of the institutions of the state, including even its constitution, become subject to this dynamic of continual improvement. When so-called conservatives engage in social research so as to develop better plans than the liberals, they are doing so in a context that has been developed out of and around liberalism’s core philosophical ideas. As such, they are subject to the dynamics of technological systems, that they are ambivalent and that the fact of the system is more important that its content. We tend to see things like modern parliamentary democracy or the administrative state as inert content free structures which are merely waiting to be filled with our political content. But these structures, like all technological systems, have their own telos, their own results that come from their mere implementation. This brings effects, both good and bad. Many of these effects can be predicted. Many cannot. You cannot get the good effects without the bad. And with each layer of technology, the problems they generate become more complex. And like a car, the fact of the car and its mobility is more important than any one trip you take. The fact of the television is more important than any one show. The fact of Twitter is more important than any one post. The fact of parliamentary democracy and the administrative state is more important than any one policy enacted through it. In fact its true meaning is not in the policies, but in its mere use and implementation.

In some sense, there are two political struggles going on at the same time. The first and most prominent is the fight for control of progressive liberalism. The second, emerging battle is between those who support the system, and the very tiny minority who are looking at political and societal realities outside of, or beyond, the current system. In this regard, when Republicans, or “conservatives” more broadly, propose policy reforms, they are not really challenging the system built by progressive liberalism. They are looking for a better run liberalism, a more cautious progressivism, a less oppressive state apparatus. They want to keep watching TV, but they are insistent on better programming.

Often the battle is between two competing versions of progressivism. On one side is the belief that the only way that we can reach the progressive utopia is by maximizing system excellence. This is the argument for the meritocracy. But this societal instrument, is itself a progressive technical mechanism used to break down the social order that preceded it. When the bourgeoisie began to ascend the stage of history, they looked at themselves as the equals of the old aristocracy, if not their betters. How to demonstrate this? They would use “objective” mechanisms (which are not really “objective,” but that is another story). It was a technical solution for a political problem. It was wildly successful for a time, producing great results for a while. But then people began to notice that these technical methods did not produce the kinds of outcomes some were expecting. It did not seem to be engineering true equality of opportunity. If, as the presupposition went, all people are equal, then it should produce equal results across society among all the various groups in society. And since technical society is results driven, when you don’t get the results you expect, you have to adjust the system to produce the expected results. So now you have two groups both pursuing a version of the progressive vision: the “conservative” progressives leaning into the older form of progressivism, the “meritocracy; while the “liberal” progressives are embracing the newer form of progressivism, that of DEI, diversity, equity and inclusion.

Alongside of this, the technological system is always on the quest for the one best way to do everything, the universal truth which can be applied universally to all in the same manner. The conservative progressive understands this as meaning that we should treat everyone as individuals, with no one person or group getting special treatment. This would apply not only in the personal realm, but also in the business realm as well. The government should not be in the business of “picking winners and losers.” One set of rules should apply to everyone equally. There should be one standard for hiring: excellence. Always choose the best candidate regardless of which group they belong to. And because liberalism and with it the technological society — for how else do you engineer society without it becoming a technological society? — have within itself a universalizing logic, this impulse will eventually be applied globally. The best and the brightest must be elevated no matter where they are found, whether that is in your own neighbourhood, or from half way around the world.

The liberal progressive, on the other had, sees this same universal vision being applied slightly differently. And here is where they are able to embrace the dynamics of an older form of politics, enfolding it into the vision of human progress in a way that the conservative progressive cannot because of his commitment to individualism and the application of laws or policies equally to everyone, and thus, as

Auron MacIntyre

has argued, they can “break the meta” of the progressive system. How do they do this? You claim to be working for the same goal as the conservative progressive, that of equality. But by noticing that idea of universal equality of opportunity results in unequal outcomes, they are able to hack the system. They use narrative control to ensure that any questioning as to why different groups have different outcomes simply never becomes part of the popular consciousness. Anyone who does question it is branded a “hater” or a “racist.” Then the meritocratic system of selection is then characterized in a way that is akin to how the older system of the nobility functioned. It’s not designed to create opportunity for all, but instead masks a system of exclusion, keeping out marginalized groups. A new form of universal criteria must be employed, either openly or not, that of the “quota.” Every group must be represented proportionally according their percentage of the whole population. This has the side benefit of allowing them to hand out patronage and largesse to groups deemed “marginalized,” while punishing groups that are deemed to be “privileged.” So too those who are “allies” of the “marginalized. They receive patronage and power through their noble efforts of helping engineer the truly equal society. And this is the hack. It allows the liberal progressives to play an older form of politics, buying support through patronage and largesse, while doing so within the context of realizing the progressive vision through the mechanism of the technocratic administrative state. And because they control the narrative by dominating all the major outlets of propaganda — news, entertainment and education — they are effectively able to demonize the cautious, conservative progressives as racists for wanting equality of opportunity, that is, the older form of progressivism, the meritocracy.

In practice, what this means is that the conservative progressives have effectively hamstrung themselves politically because they remain committed to the idea of egalitarianism wherein they attempt to end discrimination by trying to treat each individual the same as every other individual. The same rules apply to everyone equally. The argument is that theirs is the better society, one which is fair to all. This idea of universality, though, means that they are as much trying to service and benefit the supporters of their political opponents, just as much as they try to service their actual political supporters. In many cases they actually forbid themselves from enacting policies which are desired by only their supporters, such as on abortion, because they are constantly seeking a universal consensus which treats everyone the same, which can be supported by everyone in society. The idea is that it may not give everyone what they want, but by being a universally accepted compromise it achieves a status similar to that of a universal truth. This is how the marketplace of ideas is seen as working in practice. Either an idea will win the consent of all through its superiority, or a compromise will be reached that can be accepted by all. Either way, the goal is always to strive for a universal solution that applies to all individuals the same. Any time that it might be suggested that one group might be favoured over another, conservative progressives jump into action to argue against such policies because they mimic the approach of the liberal progressives. So they constantly find themselves caught in a situation where they are trying to appeal to supporters of their political foes with plans that benefit them only because they benefit everyone. Meanwhile, the liberal progressives are literally using government funds and the policy regime of the administrative state to buy their votes and give them power. The best response of the conservative progressive is that we would take all that away and make everything the same for everyone. Or they say that the supporters of the liberal progressives can keep their perquisites. Which means they reward people who don’t vote for them and do nothing of substance to benefit their own supporters beyond what they might do for everyone universally. It is no wonder that they lose. All of this happens because they work within the current system of the technological society which has a fundamental progressive bias.

So what is the alternative? First off, one must be willing to challenge the notion of human progress, that we can make society incrementally better and better over time. Once we properly understand the nature of technological progress, that all advances come with both benefits and costs, even if those goods outweigh the ills, you can never arrive at a situation where you eliminate the negative effects of technology, including the technologies of social engineering. With each stage where we try to solve one set of technical problems with new techniques, we multiply the number of problems, often exponentially. In a sense, the technological society is not unlike a vast Ponzi Scheme. The alternative is to recognize that people are born flawed, that old religious idea of “original sin.” And we accept that we can’t solve social problems. There is always going to be poverty, racism, and pollution to name the biggies. We do the best we can and work out something that works for us, our character and our place and accept that until the Lord returns, that this will be ok.

Further, because people are flawed, we understand that the only truly lasting solution is to inculcate virtue in our society. First and foremost this is religious in nature. It means living under the moral and religious tutelage of one’s elders. It does not mean a theocracy, that is rule by a priestly class. But it does mean that religious devotion and practice are at the core of the life of the community and are its highest ordering principle, subordinating all things, even business and economics. This passing on process, what we as Christians know as “discipleship” is a core practice in the community. I use this term “community,” because any alternative to the technological society will not be able to operate at the scale of the “nation” or the “global community.” These are products of technical reality. With this reduction in scale comes a concomitant reduction in a great many other things made possible when society operates at scale, chief among them our level of material prosperity. It also means a return to people and persons being directly in charge of things, being able to wield power directly, but also building it by means of directly benefiting the people over whom they rule. This is the much older compact between a ruler and his people.

I suppose in theory it is possible to make a certain peace with technology, cleansing it of its progressive and utopian pretensions, allowing a greater scale than village life, while maintaining a high degree of human flourishing. I am open to this possibility. I am skeptical of it being achievable without some outside shock like rising energy costs and availability. The temptation to the myth of human progress, and the power and wealth that can be acquired and wielded within the technological society, I suspect will be too great for someone not to take advantage of it. Resisting this lure would require a tremendous communal willpower.

So this leaves us with the problem of doing politics in the present order. Short of taking down the current system, or building something parallel with a different foundation, one which respects the flawed nature of human beings, we are left with doing politics within our current system. This means confronting certain political realities. You cannot win in today’s political “meta” by trying to appeal to everyone. Trying to outbid your opponents for the favor of their key client groups is also not a winning strategy. In business there is an old rule that it often costs multiples more to win new business than it does to keep your existing clientele happy. The old political rule is that you reward your friends and punish your enemies. Perhaps you are not bloodless enough as a conservative progressive to want to punish blacks and unmarried college educated women. But that does not mean that you cannot reward white men and married women, especially if they are Christian. What policies matter the most to them? First and foremost, it means abandoning policies of immigration, whether legal or illegal. It means pursuing trade policies which reward the repatriating of industrial capacity. It means some degree of abortion ban, if not an outright ban on the practice. It means ceasing needless wars that do not directly benefit the people who support you. It would mean choosing policies which benefit your supporters at the expense of multi-national business interests.

Would this entail a politics that mirrors that of the liberal progressives? In many ways, yes. It means an abandonment of the idea of treating people like individuals and enacting a policy regimen that is identical for everyone across the board. There must be a letting go of the goal of the notion of individualism to think in terms of collectivism. You might still desire to capture the votes of high achieving white men, for example, so as to hopefully continue to maintain high levels of innovation and performance, by prioritizing certain metrics of high achievement. This is still fundamentally a progressive idea — you are choosing excellence and innovation over strong tight knit communities and human or religious values — but at least you would be targeting a group that you could reward with largesse and power. It would mean embracing the new political meta for the benefit of groups which have been marginalized by the liberal progressives. Dutifully clinging to an older form of progressive ideology is a losing formula. But saying this means that you will face an uphill battle, because the liberal progressives occupy the narrative high ground. This means that you need to do all the other things better, such as organizing your ground game, because you cannot win in the realm of ideas in the current political environment. Your supporters have to know that you absolutely have their backs and that their support will be handsomely rewarded. Because of the intellectual commitments of conservative progressives to its understanding of how to achieve human progress, I am skeptical that they will be able to manage this shift before it is too late and the United States is firmly under one party rule.