Conservatives, Liberals, and conservatism

[thefuturemesozoic]

When discussing politics, we often speak of Conservatives and Liberals. The idea behind this appears to be that Liberals want to forge ahead, to solve problems, to embrace change and make things better, while Conservatives want to take a cautious approach, to consider possible unintended consequences, to avoid throwing out the baby with the bath water. Yet there is a dichotomy between Conservative vs. Liberal politics, on one hand, and conservatism and liberalism as ideas, on the other. Liberals often embrace change in some contexts while holding conservative positions in other contexts, and Conservatives cannot escape the paradox in which preventing change in one context can accelerate change in another.

Recently, on my neighborhood association's discussion list, there was discussion about a property where the owner appears to be trying to do something that is not allowed by that property's zoning, hoping to fly under the radar. One of the neighborhood association's leaders commented that, while what the owner wanted to do might seem innocuous, it would set a bad precedent. He felt that the owner needed to apply for a rezoning, yet we should keep in mind that rezoning the property could open the door for a future owner to use it in all sorts of ways that would be incompatible with the nearby single-family housing. If I were to say that this person was a conservative, then I imagine he would feel offended. Yet he was expressing a conservative position here, wanting to be careful about making changes that could possibly have negative effects down the road. I have seen such people referred to as neighborhood conservatives. Regardless of whether they consider themselves to be Conservatives or Liberals, they take conservative positions with regard to their neighborhood, not necessarily in the sense of being aligned with Republican politics, but, rather, in the sense of seeking to preserve the status quo. As I discussed here, some of them see protection of local zoning as an extension of their Liberal politics, as a defense of the people against the powerful, while others take an identical position and see it as an extention of their Conservative politics, where they feel that local self-government should not have to be set aside in service of some grand Liberal vision of affordable housing and getting people out of their cars.

Protecting the Earth and its resources is another area in which Liberals hold conservative positions, where US political Conservatives do not. The quandary here is that taking a cautious attitude towards change requires the balancing of multiple considerations. Paradoxically, preserving the stability of the system as a whole will sometimes require accepting change within a given area of the system. Preserving the idea of limited government can come at the cost of inhibiting our ability to address climate change. Given that technology has evolved since our country was founded, even the goal of maximizing stability requires that the cost of environmental regulation be weighed against the cost of the absence of such regulation.

The handling of the 2020 election, and Trump's Presidency in general, is an area in which, by attempting to guard parts of our system while ignoring other parts, Conservatives have taken actions that undermine the stability of our country. Some Conservatives feel that, if left unchecked, the left is going to turn America into something that is no longer America, so they want a leader who they believe will stand up to the left. However, in embracing Trump, these Conservatives are supporting a leader who himself poses a danger to our country. In How Democracies DIe, Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky attempt to answer the question of what factors lead democracies to transition towards authoritarianism. They argue that, while it might intuitively make sense to point to our Constitution as having protected us while other democracies failed, some of these democracies have had Constitutions similar to ours, yet they fell to authoritarian leaders. Thus, they argue that, for most of our post-civil-war history, we have had norms that, more than our Constitution itself, have served us well in terms of protecting our system of government. The two parties regarded each other as legitimate rivals and resisted the temptation to use whatever temporary political advantage that they held as a means to consolidate power. They argue that, when politicians play what they describe as Constitutional hardball, taking actions that adhere to the letter of their Constitution but violate its spirit, then democracy is weakened. This has been happening in the U.S. over the past several decades, and Trump has contributed to this trend in a number of ways. By characterizing career civil servants as part of the deep state, needing to be replaced by people who would be loyal to him, he is making it difficult for future Conservatives to denounce this behavior if it is similarly done by a leader who they do not support. In attempting to overturn the result of the 2020 election, Trump is paving the way for future Presidential candidates to behave similarly in the future. Our democracy has benefited from peaceful transitions of power where the loser accepted the legitimacy of the process. While irregularities should be investigated, as part of ensuring the legitimacy of the results, baseless claims of fraud also do harm. As of today, Trump has lost 60 out of 61 court cases that he has filed to challenge election results. His director of cyber-security stated that the election was secure, with no evidence that voting machines altered any votes (Trump responded by firing him). His Attorney General, who has generally been loyal to Trump, has stated that there is no evidence of irregularities that would alter the result of the election. The election was not particularly close. Taken together, all of this should lead us to the conclusion that Biden legitimately won the election, yet Trump continues to assert that he won, and many of his supporters believe that he won.

This points to the importance of making decisions based on good information. From 1999 until 2008, South Africa had a President who believed that HIV did not exist, or, if it did exist, then it was not causing AIDS. He argued that people were dying because of poverty and malnutrition, not because of AIDS. A Harvard study estimated that South Africa's policies stemming from Mbeki's AIDS denialism were responsible for 330,000 excess deaths. It is true that science is sometimes unsettled, and scientific consensus can shift over time. However, Mbeki's handling of the AIDS crisis illustrates that starting from a position at odds with the scientific mainstream can lead to peril. The 1986 Challenger explosion arose from a somewhat similar situation; engineers warned that a launch would be unsafe due to unusually cold temperatures but were overruled by NASA. The Republican position on climate change, like Mbeki's position on AIDS, is not in line with the scientific consensus. If, out of a desire to defend laissez-faire capitalism and protect the economy, members of a political party make a decision based on the idea that the mainstream scientific consensus is incorrect, then, in the long term, they risk undermining not only the economy but also the idea of laissez-faire capitalism that they seek to defend, as younger generations will come to see it as incapable of addressing the issues of our time..

If we want to defend things, then it is worth asking what we want to defend. For people concerned about defending the idea of America, then does this include our natural resources and our democratic values? Do we want our children and grandchildren to be able to enjoy the planet as we have been able to? Do we want to guard against our coastal cities falling into the ocean? For people wanting to defend their neighborhood or their city, then what does this mean? Is it our single-family zoning and our 5,750 sq ft minimum lot size and minimum parking regulations and compatibility requirements and virtual tents that make Austin what it is, or is it our people and our culture that give our city its character? Given that, at present, our world is not static, defending the totality of what we like requires that some aspects of our system will need to evolve.