Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Thank you for joining us here. I'm Scott Schiff with the out society. And we're pleased to have senior scholar professor Richard Salzman talking about conservatives on their heels. What do they hope to conserve? And after Richard's opening remarks, we'll be taking questions from you. So if you want to ask a question, just click request to speak, and we'll try to get to as many of you as possible.
Richard, thanks so much for doing this topic.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: Thanks, Scott. And let me just dive in, and I think we have an hour. Right, Scott? So I will speak for, as usual, I'll go for about 20 minutes, maybe 25, no longer than that, and then invite your questions and comments, criticisms. Let me read the description of what I gave for tonight on conservatives on their heels.
Unlike liberals, Democrats, libertarians, Republicans, and even objectivists, conservatives have no distinct name brand to suggest what they actually stand for, what they actually would fight for, other than what rivals have instituted in the past. Conservatives can't gain ground either morally or politically because they're always on their heels. They're always reacting. They're always helping their foes consolidate their gains. So my argument tonight is going to be that conservatives should cease being so ideologically promiscuous. They need to pick a lane. They need to have a brand name. They need to adopt what amount to the kind of, the absolutist kind of rock rib principles which promote and sustain reason, liberty and capitalism. Now, just the wording I used, that's the summary, just the wording I've used here will alert some people to the idea of, wait a minute. I thought conservatives were the rock ribbed, absolutist, stick in the mud types opposed to the relativism of their foes. I'm going to argue tonight. No, that's not true, actually. And here's why. Let's start with what is conservatism?
In other words, what does it actually mean to be a conservative? Now, you could say, like, either personally or politically. You can go either way. I'm going to focus most on the political, but people are more or less conservative personally as well.
Now consider the root of this term, conserve.
To conserve or preserve something is to maintain it in a relatively unchanged state.
That's the point, to keep it from either deteriorating, but actually, when you think about it, also keeping it necessarily from improving.
Now, in contrast, as I suggested, consider terms like liberal, progressive, democratic, republican, socialist, capitalist, even bad stuff like nihilist, hedonist. Now some good stuff, objectivist, libertarian, even vegetarian.
Notice each of those terms expressly conveys the meaning of what's being endorsed. So, for example, liberalism obviously pertains to liberty, and progressive implies some kind of love or admiration or progress.
Hedonists seek what's hedonic? Look it up. Hedonic means pleasurable.
Nihilists want nihilo, which is Latin for nothing.
So they want destruction. So whether good or bad, notice in all these cases, the branding is so clear.
Objectivists want objectivity through and through.
So they all have branding, which is very interesting, whether they succeed in the marketplace of ideas or not, even though their terms can be misrepresented. The liberals today are ill liberal. I get that. But now here's the question for tonight. What is the brand called conservatism?
What essence is captured by conservatism? What are conservatives conserving exactly, and why? Maybe more importantly, why? But first we have to identify what are they trying to conserve? Let's put it this way. If something of great value in your life or in your society is worth preserving, why not simply brand yourself, or in this case, rebrand yourself as valuing that thing? In other words, to make it clear, crystal clear, to the rest of what you stand for. Now, in the case of conservatism, is it liberty? Is this thing liberty? Is it security? Is it family?
Is it morality?
Is it constitutionality? Some of the conservatives will say refer the constitution. But what constitution? The Soviets had a constitution.
Is it humanity? Is it all or some, or none of these things? You'd be surprised what the conservatives say.
I'm saying they have a branding problem. And so that's why they also have a problem of losing debates, of losing policy preferences.
Why? Because they don't set the terms of the debate like a football team that has no offense, they just have defense.
They lack fixed principles that they're moving toward. There's no end zone for them. They're moving toward or whether they're fighting for. They don't have a game plan in the sense of the off. They're not too bad at defense, but no football team can win by just fielding a defensive team. So the conservatives are reacting to the terms set by their foes. They're acting defensively and feebly.
So, by the way, that's why they're so easily painted as backward looking reactionaries.
Yes, because they're reacting to some other team's game plan.
They're portrayed as fearful of the future, fearful of change, fearful of progress.
I mean, in all those cases, they're kind of anti american. Americans love the future. Usually they love change. Dynamism progress.
By the way, if you notice, please take note of this. The next podcast you listen to or the next article you read by a conservative, 99% of it is them describing the other team winning.
That's what they do.
Now think closely about what they're saying. They're like a coach at the end of a game that he's lost, and all he's doing is describing how great the other team is. He doesn't like it. He doesn't like the fact that he's lost. But he's very good at meticulously describing their game plan, how they affected it, how they won.
I mean, at some point you'd fire that coach. But that's what a lot of the conservative commentary is, and that's very revealing that their commentary is mostly 99%.
Look what the other team is doing. They're killing us.
Conservatives have this reputation for being kind of rock rib stubborn, obdurate, intransigent, dogmatic, absolutist principle. Everybody knows that. Right?
But my argument is that's true only in their initial resistance to change.
In other words, it's only true regarding their method or, if you will, their style.
It's not true regarding the substance of what they end up endorsing.
I'll give you examples soon. But on substance, on principles, on policy, they're almost as promiscuous as a prostitute dressed up as a nun reciting the Lord's prayer.
They're not principled. I wish they were. I'm going to say some nice things about them at the end. So if you're a conservative listening to this, don't bow out yet.
The conservatives, I think, only seem rigid and uncompromising today because it's easy to compare them to today's moral political relativists. The relativists are all over the place. Anything goes. Subjectivism, relativism. And of course, many conservatives are religious.
So if they're religious, they're going to emphasize faith in their arguments. They're going to emphasize altruism or self sacrifices in their morals.
They're going to cite God as an alleged source of rights. And I think precisely because the case for capitalism is secular, it's rational, it's egoistic, it's naturalistic. The case for capitalism and rights, then religious conservatives are going to be reluctant to defend it. They might actually hate it as much as the left.
So my argument is in the end, and I'll give some history soon, which will shock you. In the end, the conservatives end up conserving moving targets.
What do I mean by that? It's actually worse than that. They're like targets set in advance by their foes, by their enemies they end up endorsing. Actually, what they end up endorsing depends mainly on how far back they look or for what purpose. They look to the past or tradition for guidance.
In essence, conservatives assume that things are more likely to be true and institutions good if they're old.
That's actually not implausible as an interpretation. Like suppose if I said these institutions are time tested or they're tried and true, they have a practical, this is an important thing, actually supported my experience.
In other words, not some hairbrained scheme or untested novel scheme detached from reality. Utopian theories. That's the good part of conservatism. To the extent they say, could we please look at history and see what works?
But they're also religious, so they're not really tied to reality in that way. But here's the key thing. Nothing is necessarily true or good for man merely because it's new. But also, nor is it true merely because it's old.
Those are just not objective standards. Old versus new is not objective standards. So when Obama stands up and says hope and change, that's my model. There's no substance there, is there? It's the idea of I'm hopeful and let's change things, and so therefore I'm progressive. No, that doesn't follow. That doesn't follow.
There's nothing older in man's history, in man's long history than slavery, but it's evil. And I would say there's also nothing much newer in our history than fascism. Fascism is fairly new, last hundred years or so, but it too is evil. So that's not the standard. That can't be the objective standard, can it? Now let me give you some very crazy historical examples of how conservatives are promiscuous. If a conservative in 1776 were to want the status quo, that's the point of conservatism, right? To preserve the existing state of things, then if he read Adam Smith's wealth of nations, he'd be against it. Because Smith is saying, we need to adopt free markets. We need to get rid of this mercantilist, protectionist, anti capitalist system.
I mean, anyone who wants a status quo would be anti Adam Smith.
Or take a conservative around the same period in a colonial America. He'd oppose the revolution.
He'd oppose the very revolution that made America possible. He'd become a loyalist to the crown. Right, because he doesn't want change fast forward 1860. Why did I pick that right before?
Right when Lincoln's elected a conservative in America in 1860 would oppose abolishing slavery.
The Lincoln Republicans were the radicals.
Fast forward another 30 years. In 1890, the american conservative would oppose plans for antitrust laws.
Today's conservatives support antitrust laws.
Fast forward another 20. In 1913, the conservative at the time would oppose adopting the federal income tax.
That's when it was adopted.
Having the federal Reserve system, central banking, that was adopted.
But, you know, if you pull them. For decades, conservatives have condoned both of those. How many conservatives today say, get rid of the Fed and abolish the income tax? Libertarians do, but conservatives don't.
Continuing on now, in 1935, the conservative would oppose the Social Security act.
In 1962, he deposed the discovery and distribution of the birth control pill. In 1965, he deposed the adoption of Medicare and Medicaid. In 1971, he deposed the abandonment of the gold standard.
In 2010, he deposed socialized medicine via Obamacare. You see what I'm getting at here? We know, of course, today, if you conservatives today endorse or support all of these things.
So where is the fixity of purpose? Where is the intransigent, principled conservative?
There are nowhere to be found.
Who's winning in all these decades? Who's winning? Not conservatives. Why are they winning? Why are these other people winning?
It's just a quick foreign case. Imagine an establishment political leader in Russia.
But I have two cases. The first is from 1917 and the second is from 1990.
They're both conservatives, but they're near opposites ideologically, absolutely opposites. In 1917, that conservative. What? He wants to retain the tsarist system, and he opposes the imminent Leninist communist rule, right? That's what a conservative does. No change, please.
Now, the second case, the second conservative, 1990 in Russia, wants to retain the communist system and opposes the imminent shift to democracy.
You see how weird this is? Being a conservative does not mean you're anything particularly substantially, which is really crazy when you think of it, given the reputation.
So I would say I put it this way. Both logically and historically, conservatism seems to say nothing or little about the substance of things. And that's mostly shocking, I think mostly shocking to people.
In 1955, Bill Buckley started national Review, and he said, conservatism means opposition to change, but then, quote, making peace with the change after it happens.
If you go through the history, as I just did, this is done repeatedly.
Your foes propose and you merely dispose.
They first make gains, and then later, you help them consolidate their gains. In effect, after the fact you sanction them but with a lag, how crazy is that? As a strategy, you're going to lose.
I'm going to quote from Buckley. Buckley said, this is the opening issue of National Review in 1955. It's called the publisher's statement or something. His aim is to stop or slow not just liberalism or liberals and communists, but history.
Quote, this is Buckley, 1955. On college campuses, a number of energetic social innovators plugging their grand design succeeded over the years in capturing the liberal intellectual imagination.
Now get this. And since ideas rule the world, the ideologues have won over the intellectual class. They've simply walked in and started running things.
Many conservatives in this country have made their peace with the New Deal.
Let me repeat that, Buckley. Many conservatives in this country have made their peace with the New Deal. This is 1955, which is about 20 years after the New Deal only took them one generation, too. It's okay with us.
And there is serious question whether there are any or others in conservatism other than the ones who sanction the New Deal.
So what's the purpose of National Review? We wish to encourage a responsible dissent from the liberal orthodoxy. That's it? They're just going to dissent? Quote, the launching of conservative weekly journal of opinion in a country widely assumed to be a bastion of conservatism. At first, this looks superfluous. That's quite an admission. During the Eisenhower years, Buckley is admitting that the country is already conservative. So why do we need this conservative journal? So he's not moving events. He's reflecting them. Quote, but if National Review is superfluous, it is so because it stands a thwart history yelling stop.
Unquote. Wow, what an inspiring new magazine. This is our mission. Stop the movement of history.
It is so ridiculous when you think about it.
That's it. I stand to thwart history yelling stop. By the way, he capitalized St op.
I think it was a musical at the time, in the 60s, later in the 60s called stop the World. I want to get off.
That's Bill Buckley. The world is spinning. It's moving, it's progressing.
Please let me get off.
Now, here's another conservative take. In 1944, Hayek, Frederick Hayek famously published a bestseller, the Road to Serfdom.
What was the road to serfdom?
He was right, actually warned that if you have mixed political economic systems, they're unstable.
They're not going to stay as that mix. They're prone to becoming socialistic or fascistic.
Yet 16 years later, he publishes a book called the Constitution of Liberty.
And if you read the Constitution of Liberty, there's a final chapter actually titled why I am not a conservative. That sounds promising.
That sounds very promising. Hayek is saying, I'm not a conservative, but the book argues for a mixed political economic system.
So I'm thinking, like, when I read this first time, I read road to serfdom first and then constitutional liberty in the late 70s. I'm thinking, has he forgotten what he said in 1944? What's going on here? Like most conservatives, he really wasn't fundamentally pro liberty. He's not a pro liberty intellectual.
It's like these conservatives want, like, a few speed bumps placed on the road to serfdom. They want to slow the movement toward serfdom. But the movement continues, as you know, to threaten and shrink liberty. We have the benefit of hindsight, of course, to see that today.
If you offer no viable option, no kind of off ramp from the road to SERP, if you have no alternative freeway that true liberty lovers can traverse, you're not going to succeed. You're just helping the other side.
All right, a conservative hero. Here's a quote from Russell Kirk. Russell Kirk wrote something called the conservative Mind, 1953. So he was part of that 1950s kind of Bill Buckley group trying to promote conservatism.
But here's what he wrote in 1986, based on a lecture at the Heritage foundation. Now, this is interesting because 1986 is, what, 33 years later, and the Reagan Ikes are in the White House.
Here's how Russell Kirk, the great theorist, and he did, by the way, he was a professor of Michigan. He was no slouch in terms of being an intellectual. He wrote, quote, this is, quote, being neither a religion nor an ideology.
The body of opinion term conservatism possesses no holy writ. We have no dos capital to provide dogmata.
So far. It is possible to determine what conservatives believe.
The first principles of the conservative persuasion are derived from what leading conservative writers and public men have professed during the last two centuries. Wow.
Do you get that? Conservatism is no particular set of ideas. It's whatever, quote, unquote, conservatives have written, quote, I'm continuing now. Perhaps it would be, well, most of the time to use this word conservative as an adjective, chiefly for there exists no model conservative. And conservatism is the negation of ideology.
It's a state of mind.
It's a type of character. It's a way of looking at the civil social order.
The attitude we call conservatism is sustained by a body of sentiments, of feelings, rather than by a system of ideology.
It is almost true. I'm still quoting Kirk here. It's almost true that a conservative may be defined as a person who thinks himself conservative.
The conservative movement or body of opinion can accommodate a considerable diversity of views on a good many subjects. There being no conservative creed, it is not possible to draw up a neat catalog of conservatives convictions. In essence, the conservative person is simply one who finds the permanent things more pleasing.
Now, here's my favorite part. He talks about his own work. Listen to this. It's so chameleon. Quote. In various editions of my book, the conservative mind, I've listed certain canons of conservative thought. The list is differing somewhat from addition to edition.
Wow. In my anthology, the portable conservative reader, I offer variations on that theme.
Now, by now, he means 1986 and 30 years later. Now I present to you a summary of conservative assumptions differing somewhat from my canons in the two books.
In conclusion, I'm still quoting him. The diversity of ways in which conservative views may find expression is itself proof that conservatism is no fixed ideology, unquote.
Wow.
Fast forward. A couple of years ago, Wall Street Journal, Barton Swain was trying to review two books on conservatism, and he couldn't do. Couldn't. Well, he couldn't do it with any lucidity. I love this opening, he says. This is Barton Swain.
The american right finds itself once again in the position of trying to remember what it wants.
We've seen why they should be so principled. Right? We have seen versions of this situation before.
One sort of conservative blames another sword for what appears to be the unchecked advance of the left.
Things are far more confusing this time because the present discord didn't arise from a punishing electoral loss like in 1964, that was Goldwater. Or 2008, that was Bush, but from the republican victory of 2016.
Nor have today's quarreling conservatives fallen out, mainly over a discrete set of policy differences. Now get this last line. This is beautiful.
Conservatives in the 2020s disagree about what they're trying to conserve, unquote.
That's basically my theme. And Barton Swain got it. Just want to end a couple more minutes with something Ayn Rand said about conservatives. And then on the positive side, six, five or six different varieties of conservatism that we're seeing today competing with each other. And I think it's very revealing what the adjectives are. But first of all, just to put on the record, very presciently, I think Ein Rand wrote a chapter in capitalism, the Unknown Ideal, 1966.
There's a chapter in there called conservatism an obituary. Now, if you know your history, 1966 is two years after Goldwater, who she liked. The republican candidate lost in a landslide to LBJ. I think it's fairly obvious in hindsight to see that LBJ not only was a disaster, complete disaster, starting the, quote, great society program, Medicare, Medicaid, keeping us in Vietnam forever, just a disaster, and yet Goldwater was condemned as, like, too capitalist. Anyway, in that essay, which is very prescient and very philosophically astute, she basically says, and now this is before Reagan, too, right? The rise of Reagan and Thatcher. But then she writes, quote, that. I'm not quoting here, but conservatism fails, she says, in three ways. In other words, it fails to successfully defend liberty or capitalism on three main false premises. Now, think about these, because they really are the essence of what even conservatives today would say. Yeah, that's our view.
One, that faith is a way to acquire knowledge, including knowledge of moral know. Rand's view is that faith is not a means of knowing anything.
Second, they believe that tradition, or the past per se validates truths.
And then the third, maybe the most important, that man is morally depraved, that he's burdened with inherent original sin. He's sinful.
There. The argument she said, was something like Madison. Madison at one point said, if men were angels, we wouldn't need government.
What does that mean? If men were angelic, if they were selfless saints, if they weren't selfish little greedy materialists, we wouldn't need government.
What a nasty view of human beings that Smith had already taught that self interest is the cause of the wealth of nations. He didn't say it was moral. We didn't say it was immoral either. But you see, that idea of if humans are morally depraved. So she's saying conservatism, she says, basically implies that the opposite of capitalism, that socialists, that socialism. According to the conservatives, by implication, socialism is based on reason, not faith. Science, a modernistic, futuristic outlook, not a backward looking one.
A love of mankind, not mankind's as swine. A belief that man can become still better, can perfect himself. I mean, which side is going to win? What side is going to win among truly human beings? Reason? Science. Modernistic, futuristic love of mankind. Belief. We can come better. Why aren't the conservatives advocating that? No, the opposite. The opposite. The claim, of course, the socialists are claiming to promote the opposite. They're not, of course, but let me end positively and then open it to questions.
Objectivism has a lot to offer conservatives. I grew up as a conservative. I was raised a catholic conservative. I got over it pretty quickly. But I know where this comes from and I know how to be converted in the good sense. I believe today's conservatives, the better ones, are convertible.
Here's the first thing they want. Absolutism.
I believe I basically said in metaphysics, the nature of God as the dictum, and in morals, with their commandments, they like absolutism. That's the good part. But a lot of what I've recounted tonight is relativism. They've been very relativist politically. They've put up with a whole bunch of violations of liberties and rights on the political side, which is a kind of a paradox, because on the metaphysical ethical side, they're absolutists. Why aren't they absolutists politically and economically?
Meanwhile, the status, their opponents, whatever statism form it takes, socialism, fascism, various form. Notice the statists are relativists. In morals, anything goes or metaphysics, whatever. But they're absolutists on the state, literally. They're authoritarian, they're vicious, they're nasty, they're totalitarian.
I don't think that's coincidental.
So here's the appeal. Objectivists are also absolutists. We believe that human beings are what they are. We believe that there's no afterlife, that we believe that there's a certain ethic and no other rational egoism. That's proper. We believe there's no varieties of capitalism, but only the true, pure form, less a fair. So to the extent conservatives are looking for absolutism, we do have it, but it's based on reason, it's based on reality. Then Ein Rand said years ago, she used to be asked about religion all the time. What do you think of religion? And very interestingly, she would say religion is a primitive form of philosophy. Now you know that Ein Rand loved philosophy. Philosophy is important to human beings. The key word here, primitive. They're not nihilists, they're not people who dispense with philosophy entirely. Those, to her, were the worst possible people. They were inhumane. Inhuman, inhumane, nihilism, bling, and nothing at all. But if religion is a primitive form of philosophy, it is at least a form of philosophy. And if it can be taught that, listen, we need a rational, enlightened, scientific form of philosophy. Then there's room for common cause there. I'll just end with the idea that I think it's very interesting today, if you look up the four or five different forms of conservatism. I do believe the conservatives today realize some of the problems I'm talking about. But if you look, you'll see examples like compassionate conservatism. That was popular in the George Bush days. Neo conservatism, or the neocons, traditional conservatives, they call them the tradcons. Freedom conservatives, they call them the free cons. Isn't this weird? It sounds like a Star Trek episode. National conservatism called the Nat Cons.
There's even something called the paleo conservatives. There's something called fusionism, which was what Reagan tried, bringing conservatives together in morals and libertarians together in economics. I mention these not to go into them in great depth, but to tell you I do believe this means that the conservatives are groping, trying to add adjectives to the word conservatism because they recognize that conservatism straight up means nothing, means absolutely nothing, and they're losing. So I think it's a positive competition going on. But objectivism has a lot to say about should it be nationalism, freedom, traditionalism, fusionism, deek neoconca? We would obviously go toward the freedom side of it, but I just want to kind of end on that up. Note that there are conservatives trying to distinguish types of conservatism, and the fact that they're battling each other maybe is a good thing. All right, I'll stop there.
[00:34:54] Speaker A: Great. Thank you. And if you have questions, I welcome you to request to speak. I've got some as well. So I like the part where you're talking about how it means different things at different times, and it's not so much relative, but it's contextual, just based on how good the system you live in is and what direction it's going, how bad it could get. And so to the extent that there is something going wrong, it just seems like there's a place, especially to the extent they don't necessarily believe in one specific thing. With the number of conservatives there are, do we need to necessarily convert them so much as just try to find some common cause on policy issues?
[00:35:49] Speaker B: Well, the common cause, I think, has to be principled. And my argument is they're not principled on substance. They're very principled on the idea of I don't want change. But since things do change, and not just that, if things change for the worse because the other side is statist, altruist, collectivist, then you really have a problem because you're not fielding an offensive team, you're fielding a defensive team, and you're going to get run over and blitzed every time. Now, it's interesting. Could you say something like, I think you said if something goes wrong.
Yeah, but when something goes wrong because the other side call it, the statists have wrecked things. Like take the border as an example. The border is absolute chaos.
What does the conservative do? The conservative gets up and describes in gory detail how bad things are. Okay, thanks for the journalistic report. They don't really have a policy. And the fact that the policy, or it's a bad policy, like put up a know instead of what I've described before as the Ellis island model, I think, Scott, unless you start with the premise of we want capitalism, here are the steps toward capitalism. God damn it. We're going to fight every day for this view. And the pillars, the ideological, moral, epistemological pillars of this thing, they don't do that at all.
Of course they don't, because they're not going to stand up and say, we're four square for capitalism. If they did, they'd be fielding an offense. They'd be fielding a team that has some offense with a strategy. And we might dispute and debate what the strategy is, but at least there'd be a goal. That is the end zone. The end zone on the other side is capitalism versus the end zone. On the opposite side is socialism. There is no capitalist end zone for these people. Their whole view is, please don't end up in the socialist end zone.
And it's a losing strategy. I hate to keep bringing up football analogies, but I think it might help.
The other thing is, if people think of a. I often use a two x two matrix. It might help people to know if you put on a matrix with just four quadrants on the left, morals as absolutist versus relativist, and then up top on the columns, politics as absolutist and relativist. The only absolutist, absolutist combo is objectivism. Objectivism is absolutist on morals. You must be rationally egoistic. Can't mix that same thing with politics. You can't have a mixed system.
But the conservatives are absolutist in morals and relativists on politics.
That's just not a good combination. They're relativists on politics. I just went through the history of how relativist they are on politics. Now, what group would be absolutist in politics but relativist on morals? The statists. The statists are absolutely absolutist on politics. They're authoritarian but if you look for their underlying morals, it's all over the place. And interestingly, the last group in the quadrant, southeast, relativists on politics and relativists on, I mean, anarchists are basically relativists, objectivists through and through. So I think objectivism occupies the only legitimate position of absolutism in politics and morals. But we can ally with conservatives because they do sense that we're onto something by being absolutist morally. They just don't get why we're so purists on laissez faire.
[00:39:58] Speaker A: And not only that, but I think as things have gone in the wrong direction, as the culture moves left, so does the right.
But I do want to get to JP. Go ahead, JP.
[00:40:11] Speaker C: Thank you, Scott.
Dr. Salzman, this is a conversation that I just had. And in the end, we all came to a conclusion that being conservative says precisely nothing about one's political stance.
If we go by history and all the examples you gave out, and we usually conflate the conservative status, which is more of a social construct. I hate that word, but I don't have a better one right now.
But is it true then it's conservatism.
It's only a social stance more than a political stance. And I have another question, but it's unrelated, so I'll wait for someone else, and then if there's time, you can come back to me.
[00:41:19] Speaker B: Thanks, JP. I mean, the first thing I think of is it's not a stance.
I like your question. Is it a stance? It's not a stance. Don't stand upright and forthright for any principles other than don't change. I mean, don't change is a principle, let's understand. But in the context of what we're talking about, don't change politically, economically, what if you have a bad system? What if you have slavery? You should change.
So if conservatism is don't change, preserve the status quo. That's my quote, stance. It's a bad stance.
By the way, I haven't even mentioned judicial in the judiciary. One of the things that's very sad in America is the conservative took the view of we're going to go with precedent.
That's a conservative thing to do. We're going to go with whatever the court said previously. And meanwhile, the other side would just like use the courts and change everything, just make up stuff. And the conservatives would say, well, we're not judicial activists. We're not going to do anything. Okay, then you're going to lose. Now the answer is not being as arbitrary as the left. The argument is defend the constitution actively. And if that means throwing out the new deal, throw it out. If that means throwing out Obamacare, throw it out.
Be actively, throw out illiberal stuff.
But I understand what you're saying. The fact that you guys, in your own conversation, JP, came to this idea that conservatism, odly, strangely, given its reputation, seems to be about nothing in particular is exactly my point. It's very OD, it's very weird. And we should, in a friendly way, remind conservatives of this, that they have a big problem on their hands and they know they're losing. So one way to motivate them is to say to them, you know you're losing. Do you want to know why? And you're spending 98% of your time explaining how the other team is winning.
Listen very closely. When you listen to Ben Shapiro or in the old days, Rush limbo or now Mark Levin or anyway Mark Hannity, if you listen closely, 80, 90% of what they talk about is how the other team is winning.
I mean, they're right. They're journalists. They're just reporting. And they're regretting. They don't like it. I don't either. But they don't ever say, this is what we should be doing. And that's very revealing. That's what a conservative does. A conservative is just trying to stop history. Like Buckley. I stand to thwart history and I say stop.
And how am I going to make them stop? Let me tell you how terrible they are. Okay? They are. They're terrible. You got any alternative for me? Their answer? No.
Why? Because I'm not for liberty. I'm a conservative.
[00:44:29] Speaker A: But there are some things worth reacting to.
[00:44:33] Speaker B: Yeah. It only goes so far, though.
I mean, if Hitler is on the rise in Germany, you can object to crystal knock, you can object to ripping up the constitution. You can object to burning down the Reichstag. Yeah. It's better than saying nothing.
But it's not a strategy.
It's a totally defensive. It's literally like a football team that has only a defense.
And when it comes to, you know, how it works.
The ball changes hands and then the defense comes on the field and then the ball changes hand and then the offense comes on the field. Imagine a football team that never fields an offense or fields an offense, which is so pathetic that it doesn't advance the ball. That team will lose every time.
And in the post game interview, the coach of the losing team, he could spend hours talking about how he lost. Look at, whoa. Look at what they did to us. And that's what I feel like most conservative commentary is. Most of it is a losing coach after the game explaining in gory detail how the other team had a better game plan than they did. It's pathetic that coach would be fired, but these conservative commentators and politicians keep getting reelected and subscribed to.
[00:46:07] Speaker A: Let's go to Brian. Brian, thanks for joining.
[00:46:12] Speaker D: Yes. Hi, Dr. Salzman. Thank you for coming on to. I'm sorry. Thank you for coming on and to.
I don't want to try and poke holes, but I do want to provide at least a justification.
I'm not a conservative, but I see where they're coming from sometimes. And I'd like to present. I guess they don't have ideals. I believe, but I don't believe that they're unprincipled. And just hear me out. I believe that they feel that reality is paramount or it supersedes human idealism. So they don't have ideals because they sit and wait and see what reality dictates. For some of them, I think they're confused about supernaturalism, where they believe that God's in control. Some of them believe that nature is in control. But the reason why I'm not a conservative is because they don't have ideas. They're very practical people. If it doesn't work, then it doesn't become a tradition. And the only reason why they lay back on tradition is because they don't know how to move forward other than to look at reality and let it dictate their rules. So let me just throw it back to you. I don't really have a fighting position in this, but I do feel that they're more practical than the socialists, who are purely idealists, who do not believe that reality should have any say in what humanity does on earth. And the reason why socialism always fails is because they reject reality. Sorry, go ahead, Brian.
[00:48:03] Speaker B: I love that. Brian, that is the best argument.
That is the best succinct argument for conservatism. You're absolutely.
Where the part of my presentation, Brian, where I said they do have this idea that the reason that we're not just saying know, like fiddler on the roof. Tradition. Tradition, they do give a reason. Tradition for them is what's happened in the past and has worked. And that is the best part of conservatism, the part of it that says these are time tested truths. Time meaning we actually tried these things and they worked. That is very good. That is a very good part of conservatism. And so when some crazy utopian neophyte comes up and say, hey, let's try something different, and it's crazed, they're wrong. They're usually wrong. That is a very good argument. Now, here's the problem. You mentioned supernaturalism. I think the conservatives are split ideologically, metaphysically, and otherwise, because on the one hand they look and say, I want to see practical success on this earth.
That's the more enlightened conservative view. But they also have 1ft in the supernatural world where they're know, I don't really trust this world. This world changes a lot. That's why they don't like change, Brian. I prefer the world I can imagine or think about or visit on Sunday in church, where everything is durable and there are commandments and there are scripture and God is running everything, and there's a kind of fixity to that that I don't see. I'm speaking like a conservative now that I don't see in my day to day affairs, and I get comfort in that and I get solace in that, and I feel anchored by that.
But if you know that that world actually doesn't exist, that is an imaginary non world, the supernatural world. And so if they can reject the dualism and bring their practicality down to earth, so to speak. Now, philosophically, there's a thing, Brian, called pragmatism, where it seems to be practical. It seems to be secular. It seems to be focused on the cash value of things. But the pragmatists themselves think we don't have any fixed principles. We're just going to try things and see what works. And I think the conservatives are caught up in that. That's why they like, well, at first they'll say, I'm against the income tax, now I'm for it. I'm against central banking, now I'm for it. I'm against Social Security, now I'm for it. That is what a pragmatist does. That is what an unprincipled relativist, a pragmatist, does in politics. So I'll stop there because I'm repeating myself a little bit here. But Brian, I just want to commend you, because that is exactly a very good argument for conservatism. The best of it, I think the way you put it, was they may not have ideals, but they are principled. Yes, in many ways they are more principled because they cared about things actually working in reality, which is definitely a principle. There's definitely a principle about things that work in reality are better than things that do not work in reality, are just in blueprint and are disastrous. That is definitely a good principle that we endorse.
[00:51:38] Speaker A: It's better than relativism.
[00:51:40] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:51:41] Speaker A: The rule of law is a.
[00:51:45] Speaker B: You.
[00:51:45] Speaker A: Know, when you're saying that conservative writers weren't tough, mean, that's part of the environment that Trump rose out of that conservatism maybe changes over time as the needs become different or a different level of fight.
[00:52:04] Speaker B: Well, it's very funny because no one prior to 2015 would describe Donald Trump as a conservative.
He was a New York liberal. He was even pro choice. So I consider the whole idea of one Trump picking the Republicans. Donald Trump could have very easily said, I'm going to run as a Democrat.
I think most people would realize what I'm talking about. He's not against the welfare state. He said right up front, I'm not going to question any of the entitlement programs he adopted, policies that in the past Democrats have adopted, like protectionism. That wasn't a republican policy. The Reaganites were free traders. So even on that issue now, the big issue he disagreed with was, I'm not going to have these forever wars that go on forever. Democrats love forever wars that go on forever, and then America loses. So I believe that's the main thing. But I don't think it's possible to classify Trump as conservative. And most of the conservatives, as, you know, the never Trumpers who are, they're conservatives who realize he's not conservative. I'm not endorsing them or not. I'm just saying he did not represent any particular wing of conservatism because he's a subset of conservatism. I would put him in the category. I mentioned a bunch of them before, but I would put him in the category of national conservatism. He's a natcon, and a national conservative is basically someone who, on the good side, would say something like, America first, America self interest first, make America great again. Here's a person who loves the country but doesn't realize that to truly love it would be to make it capitalist. And you don't make it capitalist by going protectionism. You don't make it capitalist by putting up a wall. You don't make it capitalist by not questioning the welfare state. So that's where he is. That's what he is. But he's in that category of people that they will support if they can beat the liberals, if they can use him to cudgel and beat the other side. But that's been a long kind of losing proposition for conservatives. If the goal is just to be anti Democrat or anti liberals or anti communist, see how the anti anti anti governs them. They're anti, they're not for anything. They're not for any particular, especially the things we're for. They're not for reason. Egoism, individualism, capitalism. They won't do that. They won't say that because it's against their philosophy. And as a result, they're just anti stuff.
[00:54:46] Speaker A: But is there no context when things get bad enough to say, well, let's just stop the bleeding for now?
[00:54:53] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's similar to what's the old story about the kid who sticks his finger in the holes in the dike?
Okay, that's okay. But you have to care about where the flood is coming from.
You know what I'm saying? Myopic view would be, I'm going to stick my finger in the holes in the dike. Okay. That's better than saying I'm not going to lift a finger to do anything.
But, Scott, all you're telling me is, wouldn't you commend the kid who puts his finger in a dike? Yes, but I think we can be bigger than this. The bigger thing would be to say, oh my God, look over the dyke. Where is this flood coming from? This flood of statism, this flood of tribalism, this flood of identity politics? And what are we saying about it? We're describing we the conservatives, we're describing it. We're hand wringing about it, we're complaining about it. But that's not the same thing as doing anything about it. And doing anything about it would be making a positive case in the other direction. So that you're the wave, you're the flood and you're flooding them. They're not flooding you, you're flooding them and they're running defensively to stick fingers in their dikes.
I think this only barely happened in America in the last 40 years. Under Reagan, it was brief. It didn't last long. But in terms of people looking for a model, it was true that in the left was on the run and they were scared. And people like Bill Clinton would say, the era of big government is over.
I'm like, Reagan, please vote for me or we're going to end welfare as we know it and the Soviet Union is collapsing. I mean, if anyone knows their history, this is an amazing 20 year stretch from 1980 to probably 911 where an advance was being made. And interestingly not even because it was objectivist. This was just objectivism light. This was Reagan with some objectivist advisors like Marty Anderson and others.
And the fact that so much was achieved and that so much socialism was killed in the is just an indication of what can be done if you just go even halfway or, I don't know, 20% of the way toward making a bold case for capitalism and denouncing the other side not as just impractical and utopian, but evil. The evil empire. You guys are evil.
It'd be one thing in 1917 to be for socialism, but to be for socialism in 1990, that's just vile because we know what it has caused. And now you guys are misanthropes. Now you guys can be classified as truly inhumane because you're still pushing this regime which has killed so many people.
It's such an easy argument to make today that it's astounding to me that we're not winning.
[00:58:07] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, there's socialists in Congress, JP, we probably won't have a chance to get to you, but I just real quickly just wanted to push back on Madison.
Look, I understand the original sin argument, and we should have a positive view of humanity, but we ultimately need government because not everyone is good.
[00:58:28] Speaker B: Yes, of course. That's the hamiltonian argument. Was that. And that's the argument against anarchism. Absolutely right, Scott. The fact that people are fallible, that they can be wrong and evil, that they have free will. Yeah, but the madisonian premise, which is opposite of the other premise that says everyone's great, and I have a positive view of humans, and no one does any wrong, that's equally wrong. It absolutely is the argument for government, but it's an argument for limited government.
But I do think this original sin idea does run through conservatism and does hurt the case for capitalism very much.
But I have another take, actually, that I want to just plug something I've written.
I only have a minute or so, but aside from the idea of humans are terrible, therefore we need government.
It's very interesting that back in the Romney Ryan election, against Trump, against Obama in 2012, Paul Ryan simultaneously said, I really like Ein Rand's philosophy, but he was a Catholic.
And very interestingly, Nancy Pelosi and others Catholics said, you're being unchristian because you're trying to cut the budget. And Paul Ryan's answer was, I'm not anti religion, I'm not anti Catholic, I'm not anti, and I don't endorse. So in other words, he backpedaled, and he realized that if you endorse Ayn Rand, you do have to somewhat seriously cut back the welfare state. Well, in Forbes at the time, and it's in my current book called where have all the Capitalist Gone? I wrote an essay called Holy Scripture and the Welfare State.
And holy scripture meant, quote, all the passages of money is the root of all evil, and a rich man will never get to the kingdom of heaven. And you must be your brother's keeper. The sad thing about the conservatives, to the extent they're religious, to the extent they're catholic like Paul Ryan, they are undermined by the other side who says to them, you're not being christian enough. And Christian means supporting the welfare state. And the conservatives, of course, will, no, no, I need to be an altruist voluntarily. It doesn't count if the government makes me charitable by coercion. That's just not a good argument because they're still accepting the idea that you are your brother's keeper. And then they just quibble about whether you're going to do it voluntarily through philanthropy or if you don't do it philanthropically, we're going to make you do it through the welfare state. So these are the kind of problems and difficulties I think conservatives are dealing with. They can't bring us toward capitalism because their ethic and their philosophy and their biblical injunctions tell them to be for the welfare state.
[01:01:37] Speaker A: We could probably do another hour on the subject. Thank you so much for doing this.
Wednesday, March 27, at 05:00 p.m., Eastern the Atlas Society asks John Lott, gun control specialist and expert. So look forward to that. And if you'd like to make a tax deductible donation to the Atlas Society, you can do so. Atlassociety.org donate again. Richard, thanks so much for doing this. Thanks to everyone who came in and listened and participated, and we'll look forward to seeing you at the next one.
[01:02:09] Speaker B: Thank you, Scott. Thank you.
