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by Auralia. . 717 reads.

Traditional Conservatism in the General Assembly

Note: This essay was first published during the Link2017 NationStates World Fair.

The purpose of this essay is to give a brief overview of traditional conservatism1 in an Anglo-American context and to discuss what role it has played and continues to play in the General Assembly, in the context of my own experiences as a Catholic legislator.

What is traditional conservatism?

Traditional conservatism, also known as classical conservatism, is fundamentally a worldview rather than an ideology. In fact, LinkRussell Kirk, one of the great conservative intellectuals of the 20th century, Linkdescribed conservatism as "the negation of ideology...a body of sentiments, rather than...a system of ideological dogmata".

As a result there are many people who identify as conservatives and who hold a wide variety of beliefs, some of them contradictory. This makes the concept somewhat difficult to define. However, Kirk has outlined several general principles of conservatism in Linkseveral of his works. LinkGerald Russello, a Catholic academic, Linkdescribes Kirk's six canons of conservatism as follows:

1. A belief in a transcendent order, based in tradition, divine revelation, or natural law.

2. An affection for the variety and mystery of human existence.

3. A conviction that society requires orders and classes that emphasize natural distinctions.

4. A belief that property and freedom are closely linked.

5. A faith in custom, convention, and prescription.

6. A recognition that innovation must be tied to existing traditions and customs, which entails a respect for the political value of prudence.

Point one is easily the most important of the points. The key insight to take from it is that we are not free to define our own ultimate purpose. We are not the authors of the moral order. To paraphrase Kirk, the moral order was made for man, and man was made for it. LinkEdmund Burke, an Irish statesman and the father of traditional conservatism, Linkclearly articulates the limits of human choice:

[The] author of our being is the author of our place in the order of existence; and that having disposed and marshalled us by a divine tactic, not according to our will, but according to his, he has, in and by that disposition, virtually subjected us to act the part which belongs to the place assigned us. We have obligations to mankind at large, which are not in consequence of any special voluntary pact. They arise from the relation of man to man, and the relation of man to God, which relations are not matters of choice.

This stands in clear contrast to the metaphysical liberalism described best by U.S. Supreme Court judge LinkAnthony Kennedy in LinkPlanned Parenthood v. Casey: "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life."

Conservatives hold that this relativistic conception of liberty is fundamentally flawed. In actuality, liberty is our capacity to understand and accept the ends for which we have been created, for it is only in the pursuit and realization of those ends that we will be truly happy. Catholics in particular hold that our end is to know, love, and serve God, who created us not because He needed us but simply because He loved us, even before we were created, and desired to, as the LinkBaltimore Catechism put it, "show forth His goodness and to share with us His everlasting happiness."

Discernment of the natural law and how society should function in the light of the natural law is not an easy task, which is where points five and six come into play. Conservatives understand that a society needs customs and conventions in order to function. They facilitate trust, provide stability, and allow knowledge and insight to be passed from generation to generation far in excess of what could possibly be achieved by a single person. Kirk Linkobserves:

Conservatives are champions of custom, convention, and continuity because they prefer the devil they know to the devil they don’t know. Order and justice and freedom, they believe, are the artificial products of a long social experience, the result of centuries of trial and reflection and sacrifice.

[...]

Conservatives sense that modern people are dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, able to see farther than their ancestors only because of the great stature of those who have preceded us in time...The individual is foolish, but the species is wise, Burke declared. In politics we do well to abide by precedent and precept and even prejudice, for the great mysterious incorporation of the human race has acquired a prescriptive wisdom far greater than any man’s petty private rationality.

This is not to say that conservatives are opposed to change, but that change must be gradual, prudent, and evolve naturally from existing customs and conventions, such that the best things from them might be preserved.

Point four is an acknowledgement that private property is an extremely important custom and convention of the Anglo-American tradition, perhaps the most important (with the exception of the Christian religion). Kirk Linkquotes LinkSir Henry Maine, a British judge and historian, defending this institution:

For the institution of [private] property...has been a powerful instrument for teaching men and women responsibility, for providing motives to integrity, for supporting general culture, for raising mankind above the level of mere drudgery, for affording leisure to think and freedom to act. To be able to retain the fruits of one’s labor; to be able to see one’s work made permanent; to be able to bequeath one’s property to one’s posterity; to be able to rise from the natural condition of grinding poverty to the security of enduring accomplishment; to have something that is really one’s own—these are advantages difficult to deny.

Note that the emphasis is on the widespread distribution of private property, which is quite distinct from the wealth concentration and income inequality that we see in modern economies.

Point two is the realization that human beings necessarily achieve knowledge about universal truths through particular experiences that will vary from person to person and from community to community. LinkTed McAllister, a conservative academic, Linkexplained the point as follows:

Burke stressed that the love we have for more abstract entities, like nation and humankind, is properly cultivated through local affections. It is love of a real neighbor, with all his flaws and peculiarities, that makes it possible for one to love one’s neighbor (understood abstractly) as one’s self. It is affection for one’s community that makes it possible to love one’s nation, recognizing by participation in the part that it, in turn, participates in a greater whole.

[...]

Those who seek to reverse it, by proclaiming that they are citizens of the world, love an abstraction without feeling any kinship with the particular human standing next to them. To love mankind abstractly makes individual humans expendable...to cultivate a love for an abstract concept of humans, human potential, and human community, is to breed intolerance for those who fit not the mold.

Finally, point three is closely related to point two. It is a recognition that class, hierarchy, and generally speaking certain kinds of inequality are a natural and unavoidable part of human society. Some arise out of natural distinctions between people, while others are simply the result of a fallen human race. Again, Kirk Linksays:

[Conservatives] feel affection for the proliferating intricacy of long-established social institutions and modes of life, as distinguished from the narrowing uniformity and deadening egalitarianism of radical systems. For the preservation of a healthy diversity in any civilization, there must survive orders and classes, differences in material condition, and many sorts of inequality.

[...]

Human nature suffers irremediably from certain grave faults, the conservatives know. Man being imperfect, no perfect social order ever can be created. Because of human restlessness, mankind would grow rebellious under any utopian domination, and would break out once more in violent discontent—or else expire of boredom. To seek for utopia is to end in disaster, the conservative says: we are not made for perfect things. All that we reasonably can expect is a tolerably ordered, just, and free society, in which some evils, maladjustments, and suffering will continue to lurk.

What role does traditional conservatism play in the General Assembly?

It is not surprising that there are few traditional conservatives who participate in the General Assembly, a reflection of the fact that few members of the primary NationStates demographic (that is to say, Western, English-speaking millennials and Generation Z-ers) are traditional conservatives.

I've been told about and occasionally witnessed players voting against legislation authored by a conservative simply because it was authored by a conservative. I think this is unfortunate because the record shows that conservatives and modern liberals share a great deal of common interests and values and that conservatives have made and continue to make valuable contributions to the Assembly. For example, Christian Democrats and I are both Catholic conservatives and together we have passed legislation covering a wide variety of issues, including free trade, government transparency, voting rights, privacy rights, and social welfare. However, the record also shows that there are clearly enough open-minded people in the General Assembly electorate such that you can be a successful legislator that happens to be traditionally conservative.

However, it remains quite difficult to actually legislate in a conservative manner on several key issues where the divergence between traditional conservatism and modern liberalism becomes apparent, such as abortion. In these areas, the Assembly tends to be hostile not only to a traditionally conservative approach but actively seeks to prevent member states from independently choosing a such an approach for themselves.

This is troubling because the General Assembly possess no genuine sovereignty. Member states have the right to revoke their membership at any time, nullifying the legal effect of all General Assembly resolutions. The Assembly should therefore act in a manner consistent with its limited authority and seek compromise wherever possible. For matters of significant controversy in particular, the Assembly should seek to adopt a pluralistic approach that is accommodating of diverse views.

I think abortion, as well as euthanasia and assisted suicide, are two excellent case studies for the application (and non-application) of these principles:

Abortion: For context, Catholic conservatives oppose legal abortion for two main reasons: because it frustrates the primary end of the sexual act, which is procreation; and because it constitutes the intentional killing of an innocent life in violation of the parental duty of care.

The World Assembly presently has not one, but two resolutions governing the practice of abortion (On Abortion and Reproductive Freedoms), since the first was considered to be insufficiently pro-choice. Taken together, these resolutions require member states to legalize abortion-on-demand with no restrictions and to make abortion facilities available for certain cases such as rape and fetal abnormality. Repeated attempts to repeal these resolutions in favour of a more neutral approach have failed. Such attempts continue today and show no signs of abatement. Several member states have declared that they will simply not comply with these resolutions, regardless of the consequences to their foreign relations.

This is not the model the General Assembly should follow.

Euthanasia and assisted suicide: Again, for context, Catholic conservatives oppose legal euthanasia and assisted suicide because it constitutes the intentional killing of an innocent life. Catholics recognize that our lives ultimately belong to God; we do not have the right to simply dispose of them as we see fit.

The current World Assembly legislation on euthanasia and assisted suicide is Assisted Suicide Act, which takes a neutral position on the practice and permits member states to freely regulate the practice. It requires member states to permit individuals to leave the country to be euthanized but guarantees conscience rights for physicians and prohibits the World Assembly funds for the practice. This resolution replaced an earlier resolution, Dignified End of Life Choices, which mandated legal euthanasia in all member states. As far as I know, there is no significant opposition to the current legislation and it will remain in place for the indefinite future, allowing the Assembly to direct its focus away from this contentious issue and towards more productive areas of discussion.

This is the model that the General Assembly should follow.

Notes

1This essay was originally going to be titled "Social Conservatism in the General Assembly", but I decided to use the term "traditional conservatism" instead in order to avoid some of the negative connotations and the limited scope associated with the former term.

The intent of qualifying the term "conservatism" was to distinguish the conservatism I wanted to talk about from fiscal conservatism, also known as economic liberalism. There is really nothing fundamentally conservative about the hyper-individualistic and consumerist approach of economic liberalism, except for a shared respect for the concept of private property and a healthy skepticism of state intervention, especially in light of the various historical examples of tyrannical communist regimes.

Most traditional conservatives are not laissez-faire capitalists. For example, many are Linkdistributists; distributism is a kind of small-scale capitalism where the means of production are distributed as widely as possible. Family businesses and cooperatives are good exemplars of this economic approach.

Auralia

Edited:

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