JimBowie1958
Old Fogey
- Sep 25, 2011
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I am specifically referring to Anglo culture because it has been the best culture at adapting to modern changes and movements since 1700 and the ascendance of first the British Empire and then the USA Republic I think supports that assertion. But how this was pulled off or how these apparently opposed view points worked together is something it seems is now lost to the current political dialogue. Here is a piss into the wind to try and set the record straight and remind everyone of what we lost int he past three decades.
Firstly, Classic Liberalism and Classic Conservatism (for brevity referenced as CL and CC) were born about the same time in British culture as a learned lesson from contrasting the American Revolution vrs the French Revolution and this dialogue was led by men like Edmund Burke who lived during the Age of Reason and the American Enlightenment. Under Burkean logic, the American colonies were justified in their revolt due to the British Crown trampling over the inherited rights and institutional traditions of the American people, which he believed the Crown had no right to do. But when it came to the French Revolution, Burke took a different conclusion from the same tack, not because it was in France, but because it was altogether a different kind of creature.
While the Americans fought to restore rights unjustly taken from them, the French Jacobins were stripping other institutions, the monarchy, the aristocracy, the clergy the peasantry, and the entire civil leadership torn down to the ruin of the nation. Burke said in response to Pitts praise of the French self destruction:
In the end, the British leading thought was that if change must come in response to a need for the correction of the unjust, it must be grown organically in the institutions affected by inciting them to do the right thing through the use of public policies, taxation, public censure, etc. One was doing irreparable harm if one simply swept away all the public institutions and forfeited all their wisdom, expertise and practical experience accumulated across many generations and to replace it with the untried abstract design of amateurs who had no real experience in the industry under discussion. So the thought was grow change organically, do not impose it by governmental force. Give the ideas that propelled the perceived need for change some due time to air in public discussion with their opponents and mature as it was instituted voluntarily among the impacted leaders of industry.
There was also this mature respect between what we see now as liberals vrs conservatives. The life long friendship between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson is a perfect example of that sort of respectful disagreement and debate. It was the foundation of our society in the early Republic. And it was severely damaged by fringe fanatics among slave owning Democrats and their supporters vrs Abolitionist Republicans. But once the civil war was over, reconciliation and reuniting the country was seen as obviously of paramount importance.
Liberalism was understood generally to be the advocacy of the weaker but more numerous working class population and farmers, and to make progress in improving our society so that each successive generation of Americans left a better America to their children. For example we are now blessed with safer work conditions, safer cities, less violence in most of our country and we have hampered the spread of disease and filth. These are the boons of Classic Liberalism.
Conservatism was understood to be the brake on the stage coach, slowing the rate of change where too drastic and too fast, to question how change might be implemented and if all of it needed to be implemented as the liberals initially conceived of it. Conservatives grew our heavy industry through the use of tariffs of cheap British manufactures and saw to it that we had a respectable military establishment as well, something the more idealistic Liberals often saw as wasted money as America sat behind the largest Moat the world has ever seen. but most importantly, CC's moderated the excesses of the CLs and what usually emerged as public policy was based on years of experimentation, thought, debate, reform and public acceptance. When one contrasts this process with the process used in approving the Affordable Care Act, one can see the advantages.
And politically, the swing from CL to CC and back was part of the ideological dynamic, as the ascendant partner would run its course and then yield to their counterpart for a short time in turn. And back and forth it went for 200 years. Each respecting the foibles and forte of the other and that tolerance buttressed by the realization that one is always plausibly wrong about their own beliefs and so one must treat their opposites with respect for they might be your closest friends one day, as exemplified by Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan.
We need to restore this symbiotic ideology and return to a more sane form of discussion so that we do not lose our entire nation to anarchy and chaos.
Firstly, Classic Liberalism and Classic Conservatism (for brevity referenced as CL and CC) were born about the same time in British culture as a learned lesson from contrasting the American Revolution vrs the French Revolution and this dialogue was led by men like Edmund Burke who lived during the Age of Reason and the American Enlightenment. Under Burkean logic, the American colonies were justified in their revolt due to the British Crown trampling over the inherited rights and institutional traditions of the American people, which he believed the Crown had no right to do. But when it came to the French Revolution, Burke took a different conclusion from the same tack, not because it was in France, but because it was altogether a different kind of creature.
While the Americans fought to restore rights unjustly taken from them, the French Jacobins were stripping other institutions, the monarchy, the aristocracy, the clergy the peasantry, and the entire civil leadership torn down to the ruin of the nation. Burke said in response to Pitts praise of the French self destruction:
Since the House had been prorogued in the summer much work was done in France. The French had shewn themselves the ablest architects of ruin that had hitherto existed in the world. In that very short space of time they had completely pulled down to the ground, their monarchy; their church; their nobility; their law; their revenue; their army; their navy; their commerce; their arts; and their manufactures...[there was a danger of] an imitation of the excesses of an irrational, unprincipled, proscribing, confiscating, plundering, ferocious, bloody and tyrannical democracy...[in religion] the danger of their example is no longer from intolerance, but from Atheism; a foul, unnatural vice, foe to all the dignity and consolation of mankind; which seems in France, for a long time, to have been embodied into a faction, accredited, and almost avowed.
In the end, the British leading thought was that if change must come in response to a need for the correction of the unjust, it must be grown organically in the institutions affected by inciting them to do the right thing through the use of public policies, taxation, public censure, etc. One was doing irreparable harm if one simply swept away all the public institutions and forfeited all their wisdom, expertise and practical experience accumulated across many generations and to replace it with the untried abstract design of amateurs who had no real experience in the industry under discussion. So the thought was grow change organically, do not impose it by governmental force. Give the ideas that propelled the perceived need for change some due time to air in public discussion with their opponents and mature as it was instituted voluntarily among the impacted leaders of industry.
There was also this mature respect between what we see now as liberals vrs conservatives. The life long friendship between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson is a perfect example of that sort of respectful disagreement and debate. It was the foundation of our society in the early Republic. And it was severely damaged by fringe fanatics among slave owning Democrats and their supporters vrs Abolitionist Republicans. But once the civil war was over, reconciliation and reuniting the country was seen as obviously of paramount importance.
Liberalism was understood generally to be the advocacy of the weaker but more numerous working class population and farmers, and to make progress in improving our society so that each successive generation of Americans left a better America to their children. For example we are now blessed with safer work conditions, safer cities, less violence in most of our country and we have hampered the spread of disease and filth. These are the boons of Classic Liberalism.
Conservatism was understood to be the brake on the stage coach, slowing the rate of change where too drastic and too fast, to question how change might be implemented and if all of it needed to be implemented as the liberals initially conceived of it. Conservatives grew our heavy industry through the use of tariffs of cheap British manufactures and saw to it that we had a respectable military establishment as well, something the more idealistic Liberals often saw as wasted money as America sat behind the largest Moat the world has ever seen. but most importantly, CC's moderated the excesses of the CLs and what usually emerged as public policy was based on years of experimentation, thought, debate, reform and public acceptance. When one contrasts this process with the process used in approving the Affordable Care Act, one can see the advantages.
And politically, the swing from CL to CC and back was part of the ideological dynamic, as the ascendant partner would run its course and then yield to their counterpart for a short time in turn. And back and forth it went for 200 years. Each respecting the foibles and forte of the other and that tolerance buttressed by the realization that one is always plausibly wrong about their own beliefs and so one must treat their opposites with respect for they might be your closest friends one day, as exemplified by Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan.
We need to restore this symbiotic ideology and return to a more sane form of discussion so that we do not lose our entire nation to anarchy and chaos.
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