One of the best comments on politics anywhere is a comment on a blog post. Slightly less astonishing since the post — good in itself — is on Crooked Timber, one of the one of the few websites where the people running it have cultivated a comment section which is often even more intereesting than the posts.
The key bit is much-quoted …
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:
There must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
… but the whole comment is very illuminating, so I am reproducing it here for convenience:
There is no such thing as liberalism — or progressivism, etc.
There is only conservatism. No other political philosophy actually exists; by the political analogue of Gresham’s Law, conservatism has driven every other idea out of circulation.
There might be, and should be, anti-conservatism; but it does not yet exist. What would it be? In order to answer that question, it is necessary and sufficient to characterize conservatism. Fortunately, this can be done very concisely.
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:
There must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time.
For millenia, conservatism had no name, because no other model of polity had ever been proposed. “The king can do no wrong.” In practice, this immunity was always extended to the king’s friends, however fungible a group they might have been. Today, we still have the king’s friends even where there is no king (dictator, etc.). Another way to look at this is that the king is a faction, rather than an individual.
As the core proposition of conservatism is indefensible if stated baldly, it has always been surrounded by an elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, amounting over time to millions of pages. All such is axiomatically dishonest and undeserving of serious scrutiny. Today, the accelerating de-education of humanity has reached a point where the market for pseudophilosophy is vanishing; it is, as The Kids Say These Days, tl;dr . All that is left is the core proposition itself — backed up, no longer by misdirection and sophistry, but by violence.
So this tells us what anti-conservatism must be: the proposition that the law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone, and cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.
Then the appearance arises that the task is to map “liberalism”, or “progressivism”, or “socialism”, or whateverthefuckkindofstupidnoise-ism, onto the core proposition of anti-conservatism.
No, it a’n’t. The task is to throw all those things on the exact same burn pile as the collected works of all the apologists for conservatism, and start fresh. The core proposition of anti-conservatism requires no supplementation and no exegesis. It is as sufficient as it is necessary. What you see is what you get:
The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.
This piece is one of the key resources from the American Conservatism section of my Understanding American Politics index.
Hat tip to Jeff Miller for the perfect term “Wilhoit’s Axe”.
Nome has an funny reminder:
Interestingly, despite the fact that Frank Wilhoit was a political scientist who was an advocate for progressive politics and a vocal opponent of racism, who made waves calling out the hypocrisy of right-wing figures … it’s not his quote. It's an entirely different Frank Wilhoit.
The former, Doctor Francis M. Wilhoit, a lifelong fan of opera, died eight years before that post was made, by Frank Wilhoit, composer of classical music, in a comment on a blog about right wing politics in the United States.
Which is just one of those things that frustrates historians.
Corollaries
Korman’s First
Conservative policy consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:
There must be in-groups who benefit from public goods without taxation or regulation, alongside out-groups subject to strong governance who do not benefit from public goods.
This is the agenda of the Twin Insurgency:
Unlike classic 20th-century insurgents, who sought control over the state apparatus in order to implement social reforms, criminal and plutocratic insurgents do not seek to take over the state. Nor do they wish to destroy the state, since they rely parasitically on it to provide the legacy goods of social welfare: health, education, infrastructure, and so on. Rather, their aim is simpler: to carve out de facto zones of autonomy for themselves by crippling the state’s ability to constrain their freedom of (economic) action.
Korman’s Second
Libertarianism is a species of conservatism because it consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:
“Freedom” requires that rich people must be able to buy advantages while poor people are deprived of essentials.
Consider this Twitter exchange:
Keith Wasserman
Does anyone have access to private firefighters to protect our home in Pacific Palisades? Need to act fast here. All neighbors houses burning. Will pay any amount. Thank you.Jeff Wright’s
That’s not how firefighting works or prioritize which areas to attempt to save in a large wildfire. Best advice is to evacuate with as many valuables and irreplacable items as you can and don’t waste time tweeting.Wasserman
We left hours ago. Trying to protect homes.
More context:
Donald J. Trump
Your Automobile Insurance is up 73% — VOTE FOR TRUMP, I’LL CUT THAT NUMBER IN HALF!Wasserman
Property taxes too please 🙏
Adam Serwer’s
Conservatives believe free speech is when they can say what they want and when you can say what they want.
Internet Hippo’s
As a conservative, I believe in a limited federal government whose only power should be to arbitrarily do whatever it wants to the people I don’t like.
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