Sunday, September 23, 2012

Jerry Z. Muller on Conservative Themes

Jerry Z. Muller on Conservative Themes:
Jerry Z. MullerAlthough conservatism is characterized above all by its historical utilitarianism and by its recurrent assumptions and arguments, the range of institutions defended by conservatives is not unlimited, and a few have been the special object of conservative solicitude. The recurrent substantive themes of conservative social and political thought include:
1. a skepticism regarding the efficacy of written constitutions, as opposed to the informal, sub-political, and inherited norms and mores of society. For conservatives, the real "constitution" of society lies in its historical institutions and practices, which are inculcated primarily through custom and habit;
2. the central role of cultural manners and mores in shaping character and restraining the passions, and hence the political importance of the social institutions in which such manners and mores are conveyed;
3. the need of the individual for socially imposed restraint and identity, and hence skepticism regarding projects intended to liberate the individual from existing sources of social and cultural authority;
4. an emphasis on the family as the most important institution of socialization, and despite considerable divergence among conservatives over the proper roles of men and women within the family, the assertion that some degree of sexual division of labor is both inevitable and desirable;
5. the legitimacy of inequality, and the need for elites, cultural, political, and economic;
6. security of possession of property as a prime function of the political order;
7. the importance of the state as the ultimate guarantor of property and the rule of law, and hence the need to maintain political authority;
8. the ineluctability of the possibility of the use of force in international relations. [sic; period in original]
9. Conservatives [sic; capitalization in original] have a propensity to assert that the successful functioning of a capitalist society depends on premarket and nonmarket institutions and cultural practices. Anxiety over whether the cultural effects of the market will erode these institutions and practices is the most consistent tension within conservative social and political thought.
(Jerry Z. Muller, "Introduction: What Is Conservative Social and Political Thought?, in Conservatism: An Anthology of Social and Political Thought from David Hume to the Presented. Jerry Z. Muller [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997], 3-31, at 18-9 [italics in original; footnote omitted])