Conservatism as I Find it Compelling

Over at NiT, it was mentioned that the elements of “good conservatism” are not often discussed or celebrated. I assume that the gist of Tman’s complaint is that I defend liberalism as not what Will characterizes it, say that he describes an impoverished conservatism, and then leave the matter as to what better conservatism looks like totally unsaid. Fair enough. Here is a brief elaboration of the principles in conservatism I consider reasonable, challenging, and even compelling (Note: I have The Best of Burke on my bookshelf and leave my views subject to revision upon taking in a serious read of such a serious conservative mind):

• Conservatives take mores and traditions far more seriously than liberals and libertarians tend to. I think that this is a good thing. I think anyone who picks up Machiavelli, Montesquieu, and Tocqueville cannot help but notice how important mores are for the maintenance of a public that serves the public good.
• I think that good conservatism recognizes both the importance of the functions that traditions serve and the ability to realize that traditional arrangements are not and cannot be permanent. An example I was taught comes from Tocqueville. Tocqueville argues that women in the domestic sphere are the “guardians of moral virtue” in the mid-nineteenth century America. It is the case that being the “keepers of moral virtue” is an important social job and it is the case that women staying universally and exclusively in the home is utterly dead. The question for conservatives in such a case is to either a: fight the inevitable or b: save the social good by housing it in modified or entirely new traditions. Obviously, option b is preferable.
• If liberalism is suspicious about the government’s role in the Homestead strike, Jim Crow, Corporate welfare, etc.; conservatism reacts most strongly against the two colossally failed revolutions in France and Russia, which both have similar patterns. Conservatives are skeptical of the panacea promises of the “mass social movement.” While many on the left have believed all to naively in “the cause,” they have often been entirely naive of Michel’s “Iron Law of Oligarchy,” which states, simply, that all movements end up with leaders and elites. Leftist thinkers like Sartre steadfastly refused to see Stalinism for what it actually was for an inexcusably long period of time.
• Conservatives are more willing to harness the important regime-building powers of the free market commercial economy. Whereas liberals are skeptical that money does anything good in the hands of the wealthy, the conservative recognizes the way that commerce concentrates ambitions and confrontations in non-violent ways. Good Conservatives, as I consider them, are not blind defenders of “free market” economics as a cover for corporate malfeasance, and believe that the state should be involved in correcting public choice dilemmas, but are still vigorous defenders of the commercial economy and have a well-thought out justification of fair exchange.
• Conservatism does not believe in expansive governmental powers because they believe that leaving as much as possible to civil society and the economy diversifies holdings of power and this diversity protects pluralist democratic society more than anything else. Conservatives are thus suspicious of military intervention and certainly are suspicious of military interventions for “causes” like “freedom” (which, really, could not be more French). This is why Neo-Cons are not “old cons.”
• All Conservatives trumpet individualism and freedom (as Will notes in his column), but individualism and freedom were not on the level of inviolable philosophical categories really until the writings of John Stuart Mill. I think that the wiser position is that individualism and freedom are made in contrast to what came before it, specifically theologic dictum and divine political authority figures. Both groups were very fond of saying that only they truly knew the public good and that everyone else were compelled to serve their interests at the cost of their own personal values and judgments. Conservatism does not necessarily believe that the individual cannot be subject to civic duty, but that the appeal for judgment must, at the very least, be the majority of opinions of his or her fellows who serve as equal citizens in the state. Even so, such duties should be both rare and necessary, so as to once more avoid the concentration of so much power and wealth in the state itself. This, by the way, is something that one cannot help but notice living temporarily in downtown Washington, DC. The foul stench of those who hover around the state and draw out government contracts like mosquitoes upon a great elephant so discolor the character of parts of my beloved District that it makes one very desirous as to embrace the first conservative who would have the courage to stand up and say they would have them banished.
• To dovetail the last point with the foreign intervention point, while today’s Republicans are militaristic and today’s left is characterized as pacifist, liberals are more into violent revolution as a general group and historically, major wars have been started or escalated by Democrats this century (Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, Johnson), and it was a conservative Cold War President, Dwight Eisenhower, who warned us about the Military Industrial Complex and government funded research dominating higher education.