This is a question I haven’t asked myself. I have long looked for reasonable and reasonably honest conservatives. It is frustrating, because I have found many, but few are still conservative. I don’t want to get distracted from my distraction; but there is a pattern of me finding a conservative whom I consider reasonable, then that guy breaks with the conservative movement within a year.The new topic is conservative ideas. The question is, is there any conservative thought which is worth consideration, which they hadn’t already written and which not been said by 1900. I suppose this might be considered an unfair question, since I demand something new from a school centered on suspicion of the new. However, they have embraced many new and worthless ideas and proposals (see below) so I don’t think I am being unfair.
This is a long very self indulgent post. It is twitter overload. I am going to:
1) bring a twitter discussion over here,
2) try to think of worthwhile 21st century conservative ideas, and
3) try to think of worthwhile 21st century non-conservative ideas (to be fair — it might just be that my effort under 2 fails because of my ignorance or my interpretation of “worthwhile” and “2st century”).
OK the twitter thread (which will make it painfully clear why I surfed over to blogger I mean “4.1/3” really ???).
It starts with this very interesting post on challenges to liberalism and liberals’ responses.
Ross Douthat asked a constructive and interesting (implied) question
Ross Douthat @DouthatNYT
18h
The question I’m left with at the end of this interesting @zackbeauchamp crisis-of-liberalism survey is whether he thinks there’s anything that liberalism can learn or drawn on from the *right* in order to survive and flourish anew?
I replied @robertwaldmann
Obviously the reason you are left with that question is that neither he nor you can think of anything useful that anyone can learn from conservatives. The reason is that all alleged conservative insights have been disproven by massive evidence.
In fact I challenge you. I suspect the answer will be to claim for conservatism universal values and widespread beliefs or to pretend that the only alternative to conservatism is something like Marxism. I say conservatism has the same epistemic standing as astrology.
Dilan Esper contributed reasonable thoughts aiming for constructive discussion. I want to thank Dilan Esper for being helpful and constructive. I fear my tone on twitter and here does not communicate my sincere appreciation of a good faith effort. Also MuchTL:DR , his effort confirms my prediction.
@dilanesper
9h
When you get away from electoral politics and into more abstract areas, I can think of some conservative ideas that have quite a lot of epistemic value.
Examples . . . the law of unintended consequences; foreign policy realism; the importance of developers in cities; etc.
I overflowed
Robert Waldmann @robertwaldmann
1/3)The law of unintended consequences has, I think, always been universally recognized (in theory often by people who ignore it). This is one of many examples of conservatives claiming as their own ideas, which belong to everyone.
2/3) I have never understood what “foreign policy realism” means. I note that neoconservatives are conservatives too. I think realism vs whatever else is possible is a division among conservatives and non conservatives.
2.1/3) If there is a yes or no question, both conservatives and non conservatives are divided, and the correct answer is yes, that answer is not a contribution of conservatism to thought.
3/3) I agree you can’t have decent housing without developers. Just look what a hell hole Singapore is. I think your point is that there are NIMBYs who argue against development because developers seek profit. Not all people who accept profit as non/theft are conservative.
4/3) I think we can agree that FDR was not a conservative. In foreign policy, he worked with Stalin and the Mafia. Realists have nothing to teach him. He also worked with profit seeking developers. He was a human being so he knew of the risk of unintended consequences.
4.1/3). Give me an explanation of what useful thought conservatives have contributed which does not imply that F. D. Roosevelt was a conservative?
Also, My question here was about the 21st century conservative thought. “I guess this isn’t the place to ask for an indication of any useful contribution of 21st century conservatism, but I ask here too.”
What has conservatism done for anyone in the past 19 years ?
Ooops I asked it only there and not on twitter. Anyway it’s the question I address here.
To go on even longer on the twitter thread, I really think conservatives regularly claim that ideas, principles, and values which are widely to universally shared belong to conservatism. This is a form of the straw man argument. I think of Tom Lehrer on the folk song army “join the folk song army . . . We’re against poverty war and injustice/ unlike the rest of you squares.” I note in passing that, for a penetrating critique of a fault of conservatives, I quote a liberal mocking other liberals and (above all) himself.
There can be unintended consequences is both totally obvious and also (if related at all) the definition of conservatism. Esper’s first polite constructive effort to answer my question amounts to saying “you ask if conservatism has anything to offer which isn’t obvious to non conservatives, well conservatism by definition, has something useful to offer to all those squares who think actions can only have their intended consequences”
That’s better than “foreign policy realism” which is, as far as I can tell, a meaningless slogan roughly equally likely to be uttered by conservatives and non conservatives.
Finally the other defense of conservatism — the claim that every non Leninist is conservative. The claim is that the quest for profits is not always harmful, that profit seeking entities can sometimes do something useful, that we should make peace with at least some traces of capitalism. Hell really any non Stalinist as even Lenin accepted the New Economic Policy (NEP).
Here I think the issue is also a bit of motivated reasoning (OK interested error) where people who own homes and want to get a high price declare it is virtuous for them to attempt to block competitors and also people act as if they have a right not only to their own property but to everything else they want like nice views and plenty of parking and other people can just go live in tents (or suburbs). The point is that one doesn’t have to be conservative to be NIMBY and it isn’t true that only conservatives accept the quest for profit as sometimes tolerable.
I’d say the sincere effort consists of 3 thoughts which fall into 3 categories.
1) “to claim for conservatism universal values and widespread beliefs”
2) two words above which together mean roughly nothing and the use of which has almost zero correlation with conservatism.
3) “to pretend that the only alternative to conservatism is something like Marxism.”
OK useful conservative contributions to thought in the 21st century. I draw a blank.
Harmful conservative ideas. I will leave Trump out of it. The response of some conservatives to Trump has been dismal while others have bravely stated the obvious. In any case, I don’t blame conservatism for Trump.
1. Social security partial privatization. This was a way to allow people to bear more risk and send lots of money to financial service providers. As widely perceived, it had no redeeming social value.
2. Medicare privatization. This builds on the 20th century conservative failure Medicare Advantage which served to privatize public money. It was based on contradictory promises that it was guaranteed to cost less and to provide at least as good insurance. This was a case of Paul Ryan ordering the tides to stop.
3. Privatizing the Veterans administration the VA. Heard there was a VA scandal because the VA did not keep a promise that no other health care provider ever makes. It was a scandal, because it was a matter of public and congressional interest because the VA is public. The VA ranks at the very top in patient satisfaction and estimates of outcomes. These are published facts which conservatives sincerely perceive as absurdities.
4. The deficit will eat your children. We are turning into Greece.
5. Deficits don’t matter and/or tax cuts lead to higher revenues.
6. The Fed is degrading the currency. There will be high inflation maybe hyperinflation.
7. The limits on presidential power should be completely ignored 2001-2009, strictly enforced 2009-2016, and ignored 2017 – now.
8 Federalism and the Supreme Court should design Seattle school districts and welcome anyone who says “federalism” is bullshitting.
9 Reform the tax code to introduce a distinction between business income (taxed at a low rate) and labor income disguised as business income (taxed at a high rate). I have to give them credit. It is very hard to make the US Tax code messier than it was.
10 2001 is time for a “kinder gentler” SEC
11 Invade Iraq
12 Repeal Obamacare and figure out a replacement written in secret in McConnell’s office; but, this isn’t our plan it’s just a placeholder to get to the conference committee which will write an excellent bill.
OH hell I am ignoring all space limits, but I just can’t list all the horrible 21st century conservative ideas. Many were opposed by some conservatives. Many were supported by many non conservatives. Most have nothing to do with caution, respect for tradition or awareness of the risk of unintended consequences.
Good 21st century ideas
1) Hawaii hope. The idea is swift sure punishment works better than rare severe punishment. This is not a new idea, Cesare Beccaria made the argument in the 18th century. It is a new idea to test parolees with drug problems once a week and lock them up for a night if they fail (or skip) a test. It worked.
2 Also 24/7 sobriety.
3 Also grow your own marijuana laws.
That’s 3 and I learned all of them from one non-conservative Mark Kleiman.
4) Moving to opportunity works. A 2oth century experiment but the proof only was collected in the 21st century.
5) Access to birth control pills at ages 18-20 without parental permission makes a huge difference.
6) High rise public housing causes crime.
3-more I learned from one non conservative Larry Katz.
7) Higher minimum wages cause tiny to surprisingly significant effects on employment (started 20th century I guess)
8) Low skilled immigration has small effects on the wages of the few domestic workers who aren’t helped.
9) There sure isn’t a labor demand curve see 7 and 8.
Those are all from Card and Krueger.
OK so I am getting to economists, but there are super genius conservative economists. Why do they waste their brains defending the indefensible?
Look I really really can’t list good ideas of the 21st century. But there are many of them. I can’t think of any which are in any way a fruit of conservatism. Really not one. I draw a blank.
Hey Robert,
Tweaked the post Dan put up. I think I got what you intended. The distance is great and my Vulcan mind-meld waivers with all the tropical storms out there. Question, The Seattle scheme of integration was pretty successful. Up till 2006 with its many roadblocks, school integration was working. It worked in Louisville also. It worked at my high school, a magnet school, in the sixties in Chicago. Almost 5000 teenage boys in one building? Imagine the diversity before Vietnamese arrived after the war.
I live in Michigan in a county where the local paper posed a question asking if we all thought our police departments had good interactions with minority or African Americans. I laughed and wrote them back in the commentary. The population of African Americans or black Americans was less than 1% of the county’s population. To get an opinion, they would either have to find one African American or import one from nearby Detroit. The editorial disappeared.
As I implied, I live outside of Detroit. Believe it or not, the city of Detroit provides 40 – 50% of the states GDP without which the rest of the state would be vegetable farming or providing road salt. “The Continued Demise of Detroit Under Governor Snyder and Michigan” Those gains are used by the rest of the state to build it up and to wall of Detroit’s population economically. There was a plan afoot to put in place a light rail system from Detroit to Ann Arbor up to Howell (former home of a Grand Wizard). That died.
Around Detroit is a great white wall which has its own school district of which many are well funded, funded well beyond what Detroit schools are, and have in place fully accredited teachers. The city schools are segregated by the surrounding wealth and incomes. Two major highways come out of Detroit and cut the state into thirds heading west. Over time the population of Detroit is moving west and their progress is unavoidable. The white majority will succumb to minority population in time. The latest threat to integrating schools are Charter schools as sponsored by the DeVos family. They get to pick and choose who they want and those left over remain in the public school system.
I am waiting for the courts to decide they must integrate also as based upon the tax dollars received from the state and federal governments. It will come.
Nice post and a good read.
“conservative failure Medicare Advantage”
I have Medicare Advantage with Kaiser and think it is great! I have “tested” the system with colon cancer (surgery, chemo) and with a perianal abscess (3 surgeries).
My colon cancer cost me $2500 and the abscess $1000. I consider these costs as more than reasonable.
DB:
Medicare is battling the insurance companies which supply Advantage insurance for $billions in over charges. “Health insurers that treat millions of seniors have overcharged Medicare by nearly $30 billion over the past three years alone, but federal officials say they are moving ahead with long-delayed plans to recoup at least part of the money.” Medicare Advantage Plans Overbill Taxpayers By Billions Annually, Records Show.
“The GAO report, released this spring, reviewed 126 Medicare Advantage plans and found that 35 of them had disproportionately high numbers of sicker people dropping out. Patients cited difficulty with access to “preferred doctors and hospitals” or other medical care, as the leading reasons for leaving.
People who are sicker are much more likely to leave (Medicare Advantage plans) than people who are healthier,” James Cosgrove, director of the GAO’s health care analysis, said in explaining the research.” As Seniors Get Sicker, They’re More Likely To Drop Medicare Advantage Plans
Even Medicare overpays for some healthcare and all pharma. Former Director of Medicare Donald Berwick: ““20 to 30 percent of health spending is ‘waste’ that yields no benefit to patients, and that some of the needless spending is a result of onerous, archaic regulations enforced by Medicare and Medicaid.
He listed five reasons for what he described as the ‘extremely high level of waste.’ They are overtreatment of patients, the failure to coordinate care, the administrative complexity of the health care system, burdensome rules and fraud.
Much is done that does not help patients at all and many physicians know it.”
With Medicare, you can go anywhere. With Medicare Advantage, 1/3 of the plans had narrow networks and another third were greater and still limited. There are other limitations also. I am on regular Medicare with Plan N supplemental and Part D. I have had no problems and my out of pocket has been small. The movement is to reduce insurance as it typically pays more than Medicare and up to 180%. One advantage and disadvantage of Advantage Plans are the narrow networks which insurance can squeeze on cost.
On balance, I think the all voluntary military was a useful conservative contribution.
But, at times I do have doubts about it. I especially like the idea of exposing the sons and daughters of the elite to the rest of society. I do not think that the political leaders having a child serving in harms way makes much difference.
I’ll give conservatism credit for (a) drawing pictures of settled communities, (b) pointing to the virtues of happy two-parent families, (c) establishing market economies and international trade, (d) taking a caustic view of crony capitalism, over-bearing central governments, and mindless bureaucracies.
That brings us to about 1820. Since then …. world population has risen by a factor of 7, corporations have increased in size to hundreds of thousands of employees, science and technology have transformed economies and our manners of living. Moreover new social ideals about social and economic egalitarianism, in particular equal legal status for men and women, without regard to sex orientation and race, have transformed the very way we look at society and history. The contribution of conservative thinking to all this is zero.
Dave Barnes — I also have medicare advantage HMO through Tufts in Middlesex county, Mass. and really like it.
But I think it may be the model of how medicare for all will actually evolve.
Medicare will be some bare bones service that will be barely adequate.
But the more prosperous of us who want better health insurance will be able to “top up” the basic medicare with private supplementary insurance.
I know this is not the best place to write about this idea, but I’ve never advanced that thought elsewhere. So for what it is worth.
@Davebarnes,
Good on you. But you are an anecdote, not data.
“Just 40 percent of Americans could pay an unexpected $1,000 expense, such as an emergency room visit or car repair, with their savings”
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/23/most-americans-dont-have-the-savings-to-cover-a-1000-emergency.html
@Joel,
Anecdote, yes.
But, how is “conservative failure Medicare Advantage” data?
@Davebarnes,
I refer to the quote, which is based on data. You posted: “My colon cancer cost me $2500 and the abscess $1000. I consider these costs as more than reasonable.” *You* consider them reasonable, but what about a person for whom a single $1000 medical bill would have to go on a credit card or require some other form of loan? The data say that you are not representative of most Americans.
That’s my point.
The problem with “conservatism” is that the contradictions of bourgeois society hurt it. You can’t go back or the ponzi scheme ends. Yet, they can’t go forward. This is where the Victorian Socialists and indeed what the Marx/Engels duo pirated from it, understood.
As Tyler Durden would say: A real man doesn’t chase property or marriage. He chases tribal and communal control. They face the fact bourgeois society is a beta male construct, just terrifies them.
Between their failed debt based ponzi schemes, they must emasculate women and men into the “legal” structure they need for societal control.
Haven’t looked it up recently, but wasn’t the overall story on medicare advantage “what if we let private companies run medicare with 10% more money and the ability to tailor their plans to cherry pick healthier seniors a bit”.
Which means I don’t expect it to be a dystopia for its customers, but simply evidence that if you spend somewhat more money you can provide somewhat better benefits.
The Seattle school district reference is a strange one. The decision in the case was not conservative. Seattle and Louisville districts each elected to make school assignments based on students’ color. You can believe the districts meant well in doing so, but the extent of the interference by the court was to decide that where the post-Civil War amendments barred this practice. Shocker for sure to some, but guaranteed rights even apply to kids who are white.
Well Eric:
Some citizens are more equal than others and the history of America has supported white America to the detriment of black America. History proves this to be true in the economy, in politics, in the community, in healthcare, etc. Why is it the maternal mortality of minorities is higher than that of majority white America? As I wrote, the maternal mortality rate for the US is 26.7/100,000 and more than 3 times what it is in Canada. The black maternal mortality rate is 4 times higher than white maternal mortality. Prenatal care is one issue; but in order to have prenatal care, you must be insured. Representing 32 percent of women in the USA, women of color make up 51% of uninsured women. After the birth and the few days later a woman goes home. Medicaid will cover two month of care for a woman after birth if they have Medicaid. Much of majority white America has private healthcare insurance which will cover a woman for up to one year. One year is the standard.
As I was ripping on one Facebook idiot and pointing out to him we live in a community. His individual rights are important as long as his rights or actions do not impinge upon the community causing harm. White America has been purposely impinging on the rights of minorities and native Americans for decades and even a couple of centuries and they are a part of the community.
The story about Seattle and Louisville are dissimilar. Louisville found a way to continue integrating schools. The Seattle white majority fought integration from day one and they were the cause of segregation. Even so this one man’s story talks about how it was when the Seattle schools were integrated and the success he saw. And when it ended in Seattle, how it degenerated. I am curious as to what Robert was thinking about Seattle as it is not clear to me. I know he has a reason for mentioning it.
Twenty or so years from now, the white majority will be in the minority regardless of what trump does, the Nazis marching, racists segregating themselves, etc. Hopefully by then, white America will give up its racist tendencies and embrace the community it created.
Multi-level marketing applied to political campaigns.
@Run,
Indeed.
Twenty or so years from now, the world will be confronting the violence occasioned by the fact that teh brown people are being starved out of their homelands by global warming and the know where all the white folks live and what they have. Nature red in tooth and claw. H. sapiens fancies itself exempt, but it isn’t. I’ll probably be dead by then. Our kids and grandkids won’t.
Is a 40 hour work week a liberal idea? sure it came out of the left labor movement, but since it’s a commonly accepted idea, you can’t really call it liberal. Or can you?
My point is that claiming ideas aren’t conservative because a nonconservative hold them or because a whole bunch of non-conservatives also hold them is just moving the goal posts, a kind of no true Scotsman.
I have a hard time accepting that this argument is in good faith.
I have used this question with conservatives for decades. They really have very little to show for their efforts other then some misdirected credit to Reagan and some mythology about America in the 1800s. Conservatism is really about morality. Its an outgrowth of a mindset that believes property is more important the people. Everything flows from this concept. When it was merged with theocracy in the late 70s, it took on the mantle of what we know think of as conservatism. Prior to that, Buckley was its champion. Ronnie made it sound like being a conservative was about being a real American. The left had no answer at that point, we were exhausted by Vietnam, the Civil Rights era and basically ran out of ideas to counter this once ridiculed dogma.