DMI 2013 Round-Up

While there have been no official DMI updates in a very long time, research has continued apace — although very slowly due to various computer malfunctions and interruptions. Nevertheless, here is a round-up of essays published this year:

• ‘If elections have consequences, then so does economics’ — A look at the Laffer Curve, when high marginal tax rates result in lower revenues, not more.


• ‘Depardieu bids French statists “Adieu!”’ — More on the Laffer Curve, when high marginal tax rates entice wealth creators to flee to more amenable tax jurisdictions.


• ‘March out the vote!’ — Does the State have the right to force individuals to vote, or does such action confuse which demands deference and precedence, citizens or their government?


• ‘The inexorable lessons of currency debasement’ — On the evils of inflating the money supply.


• ‘Median voter theorem: why mainstream parties adopt similar policies’ — Why do opposing political parties so often cling to the centre and present similar policies to the electorate? What does this mean for principled ‘ginger’ groups embedded within such larger organisations?

Several projects-in-hand will continue in the new year: One example is the paradox interwoven in F.A. Hayek’s economics and politics; another involves the phenomenon of ‘liberal Toryism’ — the dynamism between classical liberal laisser-faire economics and the traditional Tory belief in ‘limited paternalism through the State’, ideas which have overtones in the work of Adam Smith and Edmund Burke, and find continuing expression in the 21-st century through various British and American theorists — more to come!

Another experiment in the coming months will be #DMI_Reads, where I will ‘tweet’ my current reading lists and ask for feedback and complementary book recommendations.

As always, remember to follow DMI on Twitter, on Facebook, and (here) on its dedicated page.

All best wishes for 2014!

‘Mediaeval Toryism’: Anglo-Canadian Conservatism and Its Mediaeval Sensibilities

A long time ago, when I entertained thoughts of pursuing a doctoral programme in political philosophy, my aim was to examine the roots of a species of British Toryism that were exemplified by Benjamin Disraeli and his Young England colleagues, and that were echoed, to a significant degree, by Canada’s first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald.

Many of the tenets of this Toryism — known in some quarters, with more or less accuracy, as ‘One Nation Toryism’ or ‘wet’ Toryism or ‘progressive conservatism’ — owe their origins to a mediaeval sensibility of organic obligation and reciprocal responsibilities that grew up in the fertile soil of feudal society. To acknowledge this debt to the Middle Ages, I termed my particular approach ‘Mediaeval Toryism’.

One correspondent to whom I broached the viability of my thesis pointed out the anachronistic nature of my appellation: there being no ‘Tories’ cognisant of that description in that period. Upon reflexion, revisions were made and, given the particular ‘Victorian’ nature of the time frame I wished to explore, a working dichotomy was established between ‘Disraelian Toryism’ and ‘Peelite Conservatism’, the former taking its exemplars from the ‘communal’ Middle Ages, the latter from the ‘individualistic’ Enlightenment period. Over time, as my reading became more comprehensive and analytical, the Victorian backdrop became less prominent and a new nomenclature reflected that shift in emphasis: ‘Organic Toryism’.

My focus was on the tried-and-true, and revolved around the familiar themes of the individual, civil society, and the State — each with the aim of realising the Common Good. For me, the State was a far more amenable (and less odious) character in the triad. Catholic Social Teaching was an additional avenue to discover feudal impulses (along with their religious and ethical underpinning) in modern political thought and action.

In the new year I re-read Joseph Rickaby’s slim volume on mediaeval thought, Scholasticism, and my desire to limn conservatism’s antecedents was rekindled. I resolved to see if I could bring a fresh perspective to the reigning orthodoxy, or at least challenge the prevailing zeitgeist.

In many ways the political beliefs of Disraeli and Macdonald still influence my approach, but mediaeval philosophy comes more to the fore, whether in the form of individuation, or personalism, or natural law. Likewise, political economy has assumed a larger role in my thinking — thanks to the Austrian School of Economics — with what is called the market economy or ‘the free economy’ being no longer restricted to an Enlightenment foundation. Instead, many of the themes often credited to the study of economics originating with Adam Smith can trace their provenance at least to the Late Middle Ages (if not before), attaining their apogee in the scholastic economic treatises of the School of Salamanca.

The original Disraeli and Macdonald template also adheres with respect to politics proper, observable in the development of constitutionalism (as understood, for instance, in the CST principles of ‘subsidiarity’ and ‘solidarity’). The British North America Act, 1867 is a fine example of Anglo-Canadian conservatism at work. In contrast, the Enlightenment liberal (or libertarian) values which serve so well as opposites to this mediaeval mindset find their best expression in the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, so an element of American political theory will also have a role to play.

While the State no longer assumes as prominent a part in my thesis — due to the influence of public choice economics or the theory of ‘government failure’ — it has come to resemble not the laisser-faire State of classical liberalism but what I consider the pis-aller State: intervening in affairs of personal independence only as a ‘last resort’.

Thus outlined, this is quite an all-encompassing topic, too broad to do it justice. As such, much narrowing of the field is necessary. My hope is to focus on specific questions and to write about them for The Organic Tory and, with luck, for publication in journals and periodicals, seeing what ideas will develop both during the writing process and in relation to public reaction.

Much of the research will overlap with this blog’s regular themes of organic Toryism, although it will have the dimension of a concerted effort to link aspects of Anglo-Canadian conservatism to a patrimony located in the Middle Ages. And so, to distinguish this added feature — with apologies to scholarly pendants! — essays in this bent will be labelled ‘Mediaeval Toryism’.

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Is Organic Toryism the ‘Bat’ of Politics?

It is difficult for an organic Tory not to become glum and despondent while reading newspaper accounts of political events, and assessing partisan commentators who dissect national and international politics. His allegiances are torn, his judgements conflicted. He must feel like the bat in Aesop’s fable of the ‘Battle between the Birds and the Beasts’.

From the media the organic Tory learns that the ‘left’ calls for continued and more generous government spending in areas of social policy, while the ‘right’ condemns most all State activity that touches upon the personal and the private, concluding with the refrain that ‘government is best which governs least.’ Similarly, in Aesop’s tale, Birds and Beasts come to blows, each warring faction entreating our friend the bat to join its side. But the bat, as a winged mammal, was at a loss: With which armed force was it to enlist? The indecision accounted for, in part, because the bat considered itself above the fray and aloof from the travails of the combatants, telling the Birds that he was instead a ‘beast’ and, to the Beasts, a ‘bird’. The bat, as it were, had ‘no dog (or crow, apparently) in this fight’.

(For even more anthropomorphic atmosphere, one can imagine that Birds—due to their vegetarian habits and mild disposition, perch upon the left in the wild kingdom, while Beasts—‘red in tooth and claw’—form upon the right. While not a perfect analogy, the bat is the misplaced omnivore in this slipshod analogy.)

The organic Tory, however, far from seeing himself untouched by the debates between left and right, is able to agree and disagree with the tenor of their arguments, assessed upon their strengths and not their ideological origins. Though by temperament he favours conservative attitudes, by being ‘organic’ he is amenable to the claims for evolution (though not revolution), improvements (less so innovations); ‘Tory’ serving as a shorthand for a traditionalist’s scepticism toward contemporary conservatism’s affinity for libertarianism. He listens to all the points made, for and against, and weighs them on their merits. He appreciates the benefits of State action and the virtues of individual liberty. His stance, rather, is one of moderation and compromise—the classic via media—adapting the better elements of each position and melding them into a complementary whole.

Well, not exactly—at least not if an organic Tory is to have a practical, principled programme to call his own, and not a pastiche of ideas cobbled together for the sake of ending antagonistic squabbles and not for a larger, more ennobling outcome. Policy wonks will often exclaim, usually proudly and by way of explication, that if liberals and conservatives equally excoriate their plans, then they must be doing something right ... err, correct. But for Aristotle, the aim of moderation was ‘the right course’, not the least common denominator nor a compromise that ‘all could live with’.

In the Nicomachean Ethics (London: Kegan Paul, 1893), Aristotle asserted that ‘the middle character is in all cases to be praised, but that we ought to incline sometimes toward excess, sometimes towards deficiency; for in this way we shall most easily hit the mean and attain to right doing (ii, 9).’

The objective was never the popular or the politically expedient, but always ‘right doing’.

And such should be the programme of an organic Tory, taking circumstances as he finds them, and calibrating between excess or deficiency as necessary; in this case, between liberalism and conservatism, respectively, in order to achieve the best humanly possible action available—with principle his North Star.

There may be times when the State should use its legislative and executive powers to set in motion events to help people achieve the common good, and others when individuals and civil society, more intimately connected with the issue at hand, can themselves solve their problems without the intervention of an external authority ‘removed’ by time and place.

Of course, Aristotle argued that ‘it is not all actions nor all passions that admit of moderation (ii, 6)’: Can a ‘little bit’ of murder be the right thing to do? What of theft? Of adultery? Politically speaking, there may be areas of private action where any role for the State is unwarranted and obtrusive; similarly, the State has its own legitimate sphere of activity where private involvement is wrong, such as in the establishment and execution of law and order.

All of Aesop’s fables end with a moral: For the bat, ostracised by both Birds and Beasts when peace was won, its lesson was that ‘He that is neither one thing nor the other has no friends.’ Is the organic Tory likewise so isolated? Unlike the bat, he feels himself very much invested in the outcome of events, seeking to contribute and to steer them toward a just and equitable politics. Aristotle well knew that the pursuit of the right course was never easy, since ‘on this account it is a hard thing to be good; for finding the middle or the mean in each case is a hard thing (ii, 9)’. Nevertheless, it was worth the effort.

Unlike the bat, the organic Tory must take sides and defend his understanding of the via media that will lead to the right course. Unlike the bat, the organic Tory must join in the fray and contribute to the harmony that is the aim of any politics of the common good.