Hawkins' Conservatism

I wrote this a while ago and never bothered to post it.

John Hawkins on Conservatism

I love this style of piece, mostly because I like to compare myself to the various statements. Hawkins made a list of statements about his own reasons for becoming a conservative. As a self-proclaimed conservative, I would like to examine them, and then I would like to add a little bit.

I don't think some politician in Washington who has never held a job outside of politics in his entire life, has a better handle on what to do with my money than I do.

Agreed. I think he's being a bit harsh to politicians; my district's representative was a friggin' nuclear physicist and 5-time Jeopardy champion, so he's got some game. But I think the point in this is ownership and the responsibilities of ownership. We own our money and should have as much freedom with it as is practicable.

I don't resent wealthy people. To the contrary, I want to become one of them one day.

Agreed. I don't have any particular ambition to become wealthy (I have desires for wealth, but they cannot really be expressed in monetary terms), but I have no problems with people who do aspire to be wealthy. Wealth is good. If I managed to make a lot of money in my life, I'd be cool with that, though.

Government policies should be based on whether they work or not and whether they are constitutional, not on whether they make the people advocating them feel "nice" or "mean."

Agreed. He's hitting with a simplified version of the legal underpinnings of conservatism here. It seems a bit more snarky than genuinely based in a profound respect for the law.

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings." In other words, I'm not a victim, you're not a victim, and 99 times out of a hundred, the person on TV screaming about how he's a victim, isn't a victim either. If you're not happy with your life, it's your responsibility to fix it, not the government's responsibility.

George Will likes to write about this a lot, this "culture-of-victimhood," as he would probably call it. I probably would agree with this, but I think that conservatives sometimes have a tendency to downplay legitimate cases of "victimhood." There's a fine line you walk here.

I don't get upset that the federal government "doesn't care about me." In fact, I'd be pleased if it forgets that I exist.

Agreed. I would also like it to forget about the money I owe it, or, for that matter, to be more discriminating about student loans (the government might, for instance, grant more favorable loans to particular institutions that actually work to keep costs down). I do believe in contracts, though.

Human beings are inherently superior to animals. That doesn't mean we should mistreat them or take them for granted, but it does mean that what's good for humankind is more important than what's good for animals.

Whether or not this is true, there are a couple of problems with the sentiment. We know that carelessness often destroys things like food chains that help sustain us. Overall, though, I would lean "human" in a dispute, but you have to at least be cognizant of the environmental ramifications of things you do. Ideally, it would be internalized into economic evaluations of situations.

I am a citizen of the United States, not a citizen of the world. As such, my loyalty will always belong to this country and its people, not to any other nation, group of nations, or any sort of world governing body.

This is crass, but I agree. The nation-state is the organizing body of the planet. We should be sensitive to the needs of others, when possible (which is also often good for us, b/c it's not good to have billions of people pissed off at you), but we need to prioritize correctly.

I believe women and men are different, should be treated differently, and are not interchangeable. There are jobs women tend to be better at than men and vice-versa. There are ways a man behaves that women shouldn't behave in and vice-versa.

I agree that men and women are different, but I do not believe that the two sexes should be excluded from any opportunities. Perhaps there are jobs that women are better than men at, and vice versa. But what, pray tell, is your distinction here? Conventional wisdom? That's not strong enough here, for me. Biology should not be censored from the discourse, but we cannot accept biological determinism as an answer for gender inequity.

There are no fantastic new programs left for the federal government to implement.

I'm pretty sure I agree with this. Someone might come up with something, but I think that generally, programs and laws need to be cut and repealed (Sarbanes-Oxley, for one) before we start thinking about new programs. The federal government has a function and a place, but it's oversized right now.

It isn't the job of the federal government to make us successful; it's the job of the federal government to create an environment that allows us to make ourselves successful.

This is a little soundbyteish (moreso than the other ones, even!), but the point is sound. Government should ensure a level playing field. The rest is in our hands.

I believe that citizens of the United States have more to be proud of than the people of other countries and that every one of us should cherish this country and should thank God that we've been given the privilege of being part of such a great nation.

I've gotten a lot of flak from some for buying into this ideal, and there is a deep philosophical question about patriotism that has legs, I think: why should we take pride in the accomplishments of the Founding Fathers when we had nothing to do with them at all? The short answer to this is that we must take pride in our own ability to perpetuate what they created, moreso than what they did, but failing to understand, respect, and honor what they did makes it much harder to perpetuate it.

The market and private industry almost always do a better job of allocating resources than the federal government could ever hope to do.

I disagree with his phraseology, because governments have proven themselves to be fairly adept at lessening income gaps by simply reducing overall levels of wealth through tax policy, welfare, and confiscation. I like the "making the pie bigger" way of describing this aspect of conservatism more than his version. But I do believe that the market and private industry are more efficient than government.

Morals do matter. "If America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great." If that ever happens, it would be a tragedy not just for us and our children, but for the whole world.

Nice line, but what does it mean? What are you advocating here? I will not accept this as a pillar of my conservatism on faith, without more explanation.

"Out of every hundred new ideas ninety-nine or more will probably be inferior to the traditional responses which they propose to replace. No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for those are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history." - Thomas Sowell

I like the sentiments, in general, but that doesn't mean that we can't do better than we did in the past. The quote, as it is presented, is his first argument in favor of Burkean Conservatism. He fails to take it to the Robert Peel level: sometimes, changes and improvements must be made in society in order to preserve the customs and institutions of that society. Moreover, sometimes, positive changes need to be made. The way in which we pursue those changes should be sensitive to tradition and should, if at all possible, avoid a revolutionary approach.

People of all races should be treated equally and any laws, whether we're talking about Jim Crow laws or Affirmative Action, that do otherwise are immoral, unconstitutional, and un-American.

It is ridiculous to equate Jim Crow with affirmative action, so I reject this statement out of hand. I do believe, however, that race-based affirmative action is a net negative, in that it creates an environment for unwarranted resentment. Simply accounting more for a person's prior circumstances in evaluating their future potential would have a similar effect without being as degrading as having people wonder if you should even be where you are.

Having a government that is too involved in our lives is far more of a threat than a government that isn’t involved enough.

Agreed wholeheartedly. Tyranny comes from too much government, not too little. The unrepublican (small-r) "tyranny of the majority" can be effectively prevented with limited government.

My priorities are God, family, and country, in that order.

I don't think having your priorities ranked as such are required to be conservative. Hell, I don't think you need to believe in God or to have a family to be conservative. I also think those could be your priorities, and you could be liberal.

Our tax rate is too high as it is and if it's not producing enough revenue for Washington, D.C. then they should start trying to live within their means instead of asking us to pony up more money.

It would be nice to see government simply cut programs that they couldn't pay for. Some national debt is OK, but generally, tax cuts should be offset by budget cuts, or at least spending freezes.

Life begins at the moment of conception and we have an obligation to speak up for the children that are being exterminated via abortion since they can't speak up for themselves.

How do you know that? What difference is there between a human fetus at two weeks old and an elderly cat that you decide to euthanize, as far as thinking capacity or living capacity? Indeed, we have an obligation to work to prevent abortions, particularly late-term abortions. But we also must be practical, and there are a lot of fully-human lives that would be harmed greatly by Draconian abortion laws.

I believe the point of allowing people to emigrate to this country should be to benefit the people who are already here. With that in mind, everyone who wants to become an American citizen should come here legally, should learn our national language, which is English, should assimilate, and should pay his own way and be ineligible for programs like welfare and food stamps.

Generally, I agree with this. Immigration should be mostly open, and some of the quotas systems should be revised. Learning English is important for immigrants, but it is far more important for their children. I do not believe it is wise to require everyone who immigrates to the US to learn more than basic English, which I suspect most would try to do anyway. It is their children, however, who must learn English. Based on the positive US immigrant tradition, I would reject out of hand any attempts at establishing Spanish or anything else as a national language.

I believe in equality of opportunity, not equality of outcomes.

Agreed.

The debt we have in this country is not because you haven't given enough of your money to Washington; it's because the politicians in Washington have spent too much money.

Agreed.

I believe that Southerners, white males, the rich, business owners, Republicans, Christians, and the other groups that the Left looks down its nose at deserve every bit as much respect and protection under the law as the Left's favorite protected classes and minority groups.

Agreed, particularly about the rich.

There is a meaningful difference between tolerating behavior and deeming it to be acceptable or good.

Agreed! South Park did a great episode where they discussed the difference between tolerance and acceptance. We have a responsibility to be tolerant of different lifestyles. Government would be too heavy-handed, however, if it forced people to accept various lifestyles that they did not support.

If we lose our freedom in this country, it won't be because of a foreign invader; it'll be because our own government took it away from us a bit at a time with one law after another designed to "help" us.

Probably true. A foreign invader seems particularly unlikely, as does a total "loss of freedom," particularly in a country with free and fair elections. It's a bit alarmist, but Abe Lincoln was onto the same thing back in the 1830s.

We have a moral obligation to leave a better America to our children than our parents left to us.

I suppose so.

While Hawkins hits on some good points, his list is a little mean and a little bit off in places.

Hawkins did not offer any of his own words in favor of a Burkean conservatism, where tradition is respected and organic change is favored over government-driven change. It's best not to be dogmatic about these things, of course, but I think it is a good goal, along with most of these principles.

Someday, I will lay out my own political manifesto. I'm sure it will be better than Hawkins'. Of course, mine may well be based on flexibility, so perhaps I shouldn't write a manifesto at all.