What is Conservatism to you?

[404.livejournal.com]

I have started on Dr. Alitt's excellent primer on the Conservative Tradition, through The Teaching Company (available @ http://www.teach12.com/ttcx/coursedesclong2.aspx?cid=4812 for those who are interested, it costs money though, but not too much, especially when compared to university level classes), and it got me thinking about what I feel Conservatism as a political philosophy really is. Obviously given from the word that is used: Conservative, which denotes careful planning and rational development, but is that all it is? I am curious in what y'all think it means. Maybe this will spark a conversation that does not break down into name calling, but we shall see.

Comments

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Except that this presumes that all societies see conservatism and the like on an axis solely geared towards the West. Let me ask you this: is the Islamic Republic of Iran Right-Wing or Left-Wing? In cases like the Third World what amounts to conservative nationalism and Right-Wing impulses to that society can come across to the USA as against its interests and therefore Left-Wing radicalism. But guys like Mossadeqh and Saddam Al-Majid were not necessarily Leftists so much as nationalist and cultural puritans on completely different axes.

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

I don't see in that as a failing of Agre's definition of “conservatism;” rather, you've demonstrated that the ever-problematic left-right axis is a dull instrument with which to understand politics outside the West — or rather, an even more dull instrument than it is in understanding the politics of the West.

I certainly agree that the US tends to misread nationalist movements in the Third World as reflecting some kind of alignment or opposition to what American commentators regard as our interests. The signal example of this is of course the Cold War framing of Third World politics as either pro- or anti-communist ... a perspective persistent enough that we still see national and sub-national liberationist movements misidentified as “leftist,” as you say.

You ask about the Islamic Republic of Iran, and I don’t claim to be well-equipped to unpack the nuances there. I do know that Iran sees itself as turning to Muslim law as a nationalist alternative to Western traditions. Being a child of the Western Enlightenment myself, I tend to see that move as throwing out the open society baby with the colonial bathwater, which is perhaps a bit conservative in Agre's sense, as it reïnforces the institutional power of the clergy et cetera and the social power imbalances along lines of religious and political affiliation and gender. But I also recognize that the current political order born of the ’79 revolution is a significant liberalization when contrasted with the authoritarian society under the Shah ...

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Where I do is that Agre's definition of conservatism is rooted entirely in that of the liberal democracies. In the case of both the Islamic Republic and the USSR in its final days one sees conservatives and progressives whose definitions vary immensely from that of liberal democracies.

I think we certainly are agreed that the USA had a tendency to misinterpret national liberation movements and attributed their turning to the USSR for aid as ideological rigidity when in fact it had as much to do with trying to find *someone* who would back the movements.

My point about the Islamic Republic was that while in some ways Khomeinism was very much a conservative movement of Shia Islam it was also a radical revolutionary movement even for the time. When groups like Turkish Kemalists or the Shah's dictatorships create forced areligion the long-term results poison all of the society there. As the Islamist movements will gain adherence of most of the population and will carry at the best case scenario prejudice against religious minorities and at the worst.....and will associate references to secularism with the harsh dictatorships that were really puppet states of distant foreigners. Thus a vicious feedback loop is created.....