The Problem with Conservatism

Ideologies are calls to action. They demand a revolution that actualizes a utopian vision. By contrast, conservatism is a call to inaction. It demands that we keep things the same by doing nothing.

The problem with conservatism is that things won’t stay the same if we do nothing.

The conservative values things as they are, or as they were in his childhood. He has a utopian vision, but it is the Kingdom of God, and he doesn’t expect it to be actualized in his lifetime. So, he does not want to radically change the world. Instead, he wants to prevent harmful change.

The conservative views the current state of the world as a pragmatopia: not the best imaginable state, but a good attainable state. That is his political ideal: things as they are. Because his ideal is already actualized, he is concerned with preventing change. He believes that change will make things worse, so it is best to avoid change. He believes that this can be accomplished with inaction. We should not try to act into history. Instead, we should trust in history, and focus on ordinary life. His motto is “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.

Although the conservative has a pragmatopian political ideal, he is not pragmatic, because he is not realistic. He believes that the status quo is natural and stable, so it can be preserved with inaction.

The Shire in The Lord of the Rings represents the conservative political ideal. The hobbits live a peaceful, comfortable life. They are conservative by nature. They do not have great ambitions, as individuals or as a society. They do not want to radically transform or conquer the world. They just want to preserve their way of life.

Let’s imagine how the Shire might work in reality. Hobbits are organisms. Like all organisms, they have evolved to reproduce to excess. So, we should expect them to produce far more children than are necessary to maintain the population. Also, if they just had enough children to maintain their population, they would eventually go extinct due to the accumulation of harmful mutations. Excess reproduction and selection are necessary to maintain a healthy population. So, the hobbits would have lots of little hobbits, and most of the little hobbits would die young, before reproducing. That’s how nature works. What would kill them? Well, since hobbits are apex predators, presumably it would be some combination of war, disease and famine.

The Shire would have brutal infanticidal warfare, mass starvation (which usually leads to war), or recurring plagues — possibly all three. The best-case scenario for a peaceful, stable society is that roughly 75% of children die from disease. Deadly diseases could stabilize the population without destroying the civilization.

That’s what a natural pragmatopia would be like.

We can also imagine how the hobbits got the Shire. Maybe they genocided the indigenous orcs, pushing the few survivors into the mountains or underground. We would expect the hobbits to have myths in which they are the good and rightful owners of the land, and the original inhabitants were evil and thus worthy of being dispossessed. Or perhaps the hobbits would believe that God gave them the Shire, or that they sprang into existence from its green hills. But the truth would be much more bloody.

Suppose that the Shire was in a stable equilibrium, due to endemic diseases. Now, suppose that some clever hobbit discovered a panacea, such as vaccination, that could reduce childhood mortality from 75% to 25%. Would a conservative hobbit stand in the way of progress? It would be hard to condemn your people to the endless scourge of disease. It would be hard to tell your fellow hobbits that they must accept their children dying, to preserve their way of life. So, progress would win.

And then the population would explode, creating a problem of hunger, which could only be solved by going to war, either amongst themselves, or with other races/societies. Or perhaps they could change their way of life, to produce more food. Eventually, however, population growth would exceed the limit of food production. And then most children would die from hunger or war, instead of disease.

The modern way of life, with low mortality from war, disease and famine, is not stable. It is a transient condition, caused by rapid progress outpacing population growth.

The conservative believes that the status quo could be preserved with inaction. He believes that it is a natural and stable outcome of the historical process. He assumes that history is on our side, so things will only get worse if we make them worse. He blames leftists or bad ideas for things getting worse. He believes that if we just stop making things worse, they will get better and stay better. But things are changing because of historical forces, and history is not on our side.

Inaction cannot preserve what is not stable. Modern civilization is not stable. To preserve it, we must change it. We must act into history.