On the Record | Ghosts of the Thatcher Coup

Please see my latest wire as Brexit diarist for The New York Sun, ‘Ghosts of the Thatcher Coup’:

As rumors swirl about challenges to Theresa May, the British press has been dogging a politician with first-hand experience in the art of ousting a sitting prime minister — Michael Heseltine. He infamously defenestrated Margaret Thatcher. Will it be déjà vu all over again, this time with Boris Johnson as the leading conspirator against the lady in power?

Lord Heseltine challenged Mrs. Thatcher in November 1990, arguing that the Iron Lady was no longer “fit for purpose.” There’s some irony that the row was ignited by the desire of some of the Conservatives to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. Mrs. Thatcher objected. I wouldn’t want to press the point too far, but that beef was an early seed of Brexit.

While successful in the overthrow, Lord Heseltine himself failed to emerge in the top spot. Those who “do in” their leaders rarely do. Yet he remains active in Conservative politics, both as a life peer and a prominent opponent of Brexit. He’s making the most of the efforts by the press to cast him as a wise man.

Asked about the career prospects of Mrs. May’s potential challenger, Lord Heseltine agrees that BoJo is adept at “playing the game of becoming leader of the Conservative party.” As to the larger issues of uniting the party and the nation toward finalizing Brexit, these are, Lord Heseltine harrumphs, “key questions about achieving power and my doubts and reservations are very substantial.”

Read more . . .

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My thanks to editor Seth Lipsky of The New York Sun.

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DMI wishes its American friends a happy ‘Constitution Day’!

On the Record | What Would Disraeli Do?

Please see my latest wire as Brexit diarist for The New York Sun, ‘What Would Disraeli Do?’:

What would Benjamin Disraeli do? And what would Britain’s great 19^th-century Conservative prime minister, born in the Jewish faith, say to Frank Field, the veteran member of Parliament who resigned the Labor whip prior to the autumn session, over the issue of anti-Semitism? Mr. Field warned his fellow Labor members: “We are increasingly seen as a racist party.”

It’s impossible to imagine Disraeli would have failed to address the anti-Semitism. One biographer calls him a lifelong booster of “one of the oldest races in the world.” Dizzy (as he was popularly known) boasted that a Jewish civilization was thriving when “the inhabitants of England were going half-naked and eating acorns.”

He would understand, too, that a fish rots from the head. So no doubt Disraeli would place much of the blame for the corruption of Labor with its leader. He would not be fooled by Jeremy Corbyn’s attempt to characterize his views as a quarrel with Israel.

Read more . . .

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My thanks to editor Seth Lipsky of The New York Sun.

Senate Reform: The Conservative Approach

With the May election of a majority Conservative government in Ottawa, I knew that the question of Senate reform — particularly, if the past is any guide, of introducing elected senators and term limits — would once more be on the political agenda, this time with more force than in the previous minority parliaments.

The Canadian Government has asked the provinces to weigh-in, notably with respect to establishing electoral mechanisms for Senate elections. Anticipating the response from Atlantic Canada, I wrote a ‘partial study’ as a quick guide: Reform of the Senate of Canada: A Progressive Conservative Perspective.

The study has four main sections:

• Progressive Conservatism and the Red Chamber
  
• Reasons to Favour the Appointed Chamber
  
• What Role for the Provinces?
  
• Some Modest Proposals for Senate Reform

There is an overview of the progressive conservative philosophy and how it relates to the Canadian Senate, along with arguments in favour of appointed Upper Chambers, as well as some of the unintended consequences of the elective option. The provincial context comes next — especially as laid down by the Fathers of Confederation — followed with a few ideas on making the Red Chamber an even more invaluable institution in the Parliament of Canada.

Though my study is addressed primarily to the Progressive Conservative parties of Atlantic Canada — and internet links were forwarded to each of the four parties — I hope that my personal defence will find widespread appeal from sympathetic Senate supporters across Canada.

My arguments on behalf of the Senate are by no means unique — and may be considered by some to be strangely idiosyncratic (particularly my perspective on the role of the provinces) — but one novel aspect that may entice is the attempt to defend the appointed Red Chamber by specifically conservative principles, especially when it has been Canadian Conservatives (comprising former Progressive Conservatives and members of the Canadian Alliance) who have been at the 21st-century vanguard for an elected Senate.

This study was written in some haste, as my intention was to provide a wide-ranging sketch lauding the Red Chamber, before its Conservative critics in Atlantic Canada dominated the field — hoping that my slight contribution might have some positive effect.

If the response is favourable, a more complete examination is planned for the autumn; meanwhile, I welcome your contributions, feedback, and constructive criticism.

Huzzah for Canada’s appointed, unique, and still fit-for-purpose Red Chamber!

The Conflicting Legacy of Sir John A. Macdonald

To-day, 11th January, conservatives in Canada celebrate the birthday of Sir John Alexander Macdonald (1815): principal author of the British North America Act, first Dominion prime minister, and enduring role model of Anglo-Canadian Toryism.

Yet while the general outlines of Macdonald’s legacy is clear, specific beliefs are less certain in the popular mind, particularly when it comes to charting a contemporary course. Thus he has been made the exemplar for every ideological and mutually exclusive position. Poor Sir John A! If he could find his way to a bar—or a bottle—in his present capacity, surely no angelic observer (I refuse to countenance the alternative!) would begrudge him.

With the merger of the Reform-Alliance and the Progressive Conservative parties in 2003, the dominance of the former has resulted in a Macdonald who is portrayed as a proponent of ‘provincial rights’ on the American states’ rights model and of an elected Senate, just to name two offences of the right.

On the left, too, Macdonald has been claimed as the guiding spirit of active government and the social and economic interventions of the welfare state.

Macdonald, his advocates notwithstanding, was by no means a supporter of greater provincial autonomy; every school child knows (or should!) that a unitary government was his first choice for Canada—indeed, his hope was that the provinces would shrink to little more than municipal entities, with the Dominion government eventually assuming the preponderance of authority. Sir George-Étienne Cartier and French delegates at the Quebec conference were instrumental in convincing him that without local guarantees of French religious, language, and cultural rights, there would be no Confederation.

Likewise, while Macdonald may have harboured early favour for an elected upper chamber, the experiences of the united Province of Canada in the 1850s soon soured his sympathies. As his colleague and biographer Joseph Pope remarked in his Memoirs of Macdonald,

It is true that, at an early period of his career, he favoured an elective Upper House, but eight years’ experience of this system was sufficient to change his views, and to convert him into a firm upholder of the nominative principle. Every year since Confederation strengthened the conviction of his matured judgment, and showed him more and more clearly the advantages of the nominative over the elective system. To his mind the chief among the objections to a Senate chosen by the popular vote, was the ever-present danger of its members claiming the right to deal with money Bills, and the consequent possibility of disputes with the House of Commons. The proposal that the provincial legislatures, whose members are elected for purely local purposes, should choose the senators to legislate on matters of general concern, was also objectionable, being opposed to the spirit of the constitution, which confined the local assemblies to a strictly limited sphere of action. He held that the system unanimously agreed to at the Quebec Conference had worked well, and should be undisturbed. A senatorship, in his opinion, was an important and dignified office, and a worthy object of ambition to any Canadian. [1]

The left is guilty of a similar story of dissimulation. The Liberal-Conservative party which Macdonald led in its formative years of existence and in the House of Commons as premier was not the social democratic party that is often betrayed by the sobriquet Red Tory. It was a merger of moderate Liberals and moderate Conservatives who were not, respectively, either Grits or ultra Tories. And, although Macdonald did speak of himself as a progressive conservative, he spoke much as did Sir Robert Peel in his famous Tamworth Manifesto:

...if the spirit of the Reform Bill implies a careful review of institutions [...] undertaken in a friendly temper combining, with the firm maintenance of established rights, the correction of proved abuses and the redress of real grievances,—in that case, I can for myself and colleagues undertake to act in such a spirit and with such intentions.

Indeed, the Liberal-Conservative label did not denote Progressive Conservatism per se, as contemporaneously understood, but simply the merger of like-minded Liberals and Conservatives. Think rather of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, or the Cunard-White Star line.

As such, the Liberal-Conservative party may best be considered a mix between Liberals of the ‘night-watchman state’ with the latter appropriating pis aller responsibilities—i.e., in addition to law and order oversight, welfare prerogatives as a last resort, when individual and voluntary associations are overwhelmed—and Tories who still have faith in the ability of the State to foster the Common Good: the ‘National Policy’ and the Canadian Pacific Railway were nation-building exercises undertaken in co-operation between government and the business community.

‘Free Trade’, then, was a fine principle in the abstract, and no doubt true, but the young Dominion—with fledgling business interests, her trade competing with powerful countries with varying degrees of protection and with strong robust industries of their own—was at a distinct disadvantage. Moreover, Macdonald had a nation to build on the North American continent, its very existence an irritant to the American behemoth to the south, whose siren call of wealth and opportunity was siphoning off Canada’s youth and future promise.

And so, in the economic depression of the mid-1870s that struck during the Reform ministry of Alexander Mackenzie, Macdonald raised a motion in the House of Commons:

...the welfare of Canada requires the adoption of a National Policy, which, by a judicious readjustment of the Tariff, will benefit and foster the Agricultural, the Mining, the Manufacturing and other interests of the Dominion; that such a policy will retain in Canada thousands of our fellow countrymen now obliged to expatriate themselves in search of the employment denied them at home, will restore prosperity to our struggling industries, now so sadly depressed, will prevent Canada from being made a sacrifice market, will encourage and develop an active interprovincial trade, and moving (as it ought to do) in the direction of a reciprocity of Tariffs with our neighbours, so far as the varied interests of Canada may demand, will greatly tend to procure for this country, eventually, a reciprocity of Trade (12 March 1878). [2]

If not exactly free trade, nor is it an unflinching nationalist programme: Macdonald would accept economic liberalisation, but only with reciprocal responsibilities. Free market adherents may deride Sir John’s protectionist programme, but its ‘open borders’ under-current can give no comfort to economic autarkists. [3]

Furthermore, if Macdonald wanted to campaign under the banner of social democracy, the works of Marx and Engels and their brethren were undoubtedly at his disposal, as were the theories of Rousseau’s collectivised general will. That he did not do so is an indication that he was first a believer in the free economy, if not necessarily a capitalism left to furrow the field unaided or unscrutinised.

Sir John’s legacy, then, provides challenges for his twenty-first century admirers. While a few of his ideas have fallen into disfavour and desuetude—such as the withering away of the provinces—many more remain resilient and key to Canada’s continuing prosperity. Strong central government with ‘holistic’ oversight over the country; the complementary, symbiotic roles of Ottawa’s upper and lower parliamentary chambers; accommodating and respecting the cultures of the founding peoples, while welcoming all immigrants who aspire to adopt the Canadian identity as their own; fealty to the monarchical principle and to the Commonwealth of shared history and traditions—all this, and more, we owe to Macdonald.

So long as the Dominion endures, Macdonald will live on. A supporter once cheered in a crowd, ‘Sir John A., you’ll never die!’ We echo those sentiments on his birthday.

For more on Macdonald and his legacy, see the Centre for Confederation Politics.

ENDNOTES

1. Joseph Pope, Memoirs of the Right Honourable Sir John Alexander Macdonald, Volume II (Ottawa: J. Durie & Son, 1894), 235 (emphasis added). Nor is this view of upper chambers in the Westminster parliamentary system antiquated; see the Parliamentary Campaign for an Effective Second Chamber and the excellent essay by Lord Norton of Louth, ‘Complementing the Commons’.

2. Quoted in Pope, Memoirs, 200.

3. Any serious student of contemporary Toryism—with its economic roots firmly planted in the soil of protectionism—must reconcile his beliefs with the free market critique of state intervention and its consequences. See Ludwig von Mises’s Planning for Freedom (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2008)—its eponymous first essay plus ‘Middle-of-the-Road Policy Leads to Socialism’.

A Royal Example for Progressive Conservatism

This week, the Queen began a week-long homecoming to Canada. On the 1st of July, she and the Duke of Edinburgh will be in the nation’s capital to celebrate Dominion Day, marking 143 years since the enactment of the British North America Act and Canadian Confederation.

Yet the United Kingdom and Canada have more in common than Queen Elizabeth II and constitutional monarchy: the rule of law, parliamentary government, and inter-twined histories are just a few political realities shared by these two Commonwealth members (and countless others). Both countries are also witness to the successful exploits of One Nation Tory politics—‘progressive conservatism’—of which the Victorian prime ministers, Benjamin Disraeli and Sir John A. Macdonald, were master practitioners.

The monarch, serving in Walter Bagehot’s ‘dignified capacity’, is above the hurly-burly of partisan politics, and offers to all parties the benefit of its accumulated wisdom, signified by its prerogatives rights to be consulted, to encourage, and to warn. ‘The nation is divided into parties, but the crown is of no party.’ Nevertheless, the monarchy represents two ideals that have especial resonance for progressive conservatism: limited government and the obligatory State.

Limited government, as historians will attest, is predominantly a Whig tenet. But when the alternative on the political spectrum is the all-encompassing State, setting limits to legitimate government becomes no less a conservative principle, too. King Louis XIV is rumoured to have boasted, ‘L’état, c’est moi’, setting up visions of material and financial rapacious as the ends of absolute monarchy, though this is not necessarily the case, according to Hans-Hermann Hoppe.

Professor Hoppe is a libertarian economist (or ‘anarcho-capitalist’) and, true, if he had his druthers, there would be no State at all, but simply free people co-operating voluntarily amongst themselves. That being said, he believes that monarchical government has a valuable lesson to teach democracies: ‘if one has to choose between two evils, a monarchical state or a democratic state, then monarchies have certain advantages.’

Because everybody knew I cannot become a king, there was resistance against attempts on the part of kings to increase taxes and to increase exploitation of their subjects. Under democracy, the illusion arises that we all rule ourselves even though it should be perfectly clear, of course, that also under a democracy there exists rulers and people who are ruled. But because of the fact that everybody can potentially become a public employee, the illusion of “we rule ourselves” arises and this then leads to a reduction of the resistance that existed vis-à-vis kings when it came to the attempt of increasing tax revenue.

A king sits on the throne with only the impediments of old age to curtail the longevity of his reign; he views public lands as personal property, to be passed on to his heirs, and tends it with care and with an eye for its future prosperity. Likewise, his subjects, knowing that they will never directly partake of the royal bounty, are jealous of their own property rights. A relationship of mutual (if wary) respect is established, which is reflected in restricted policies of appropriation and aggression: an overzealous king must always fear the loss of popular support and ensuing revolution. Monarchy thus inculcates, after its own fashion, the conservative beliefs in personal freedom, property ownership, and the modest State.

In a democracy, however, the tension between rulers and ruled is weakened, since it is widely held that ‘we are the government’. The limited government that constitutes the relationship of king and people morphs into the unlimited government of citizen legislators. Elected officials, holding office for the short-term—and with no concern for the circumstances of their political successors—more readily spend for immediate public gratification (and sometimes for the benefit of their associates and hangers-on). Furthermore, according to public choice theory, these leaders are more apt to spend on initiatives that will help them get re-elected. Citizens, meanwhile, who see themselves as possible office holders themselves one day, are less jealous in defending their rights. As many public works will benefit them, and with the tax burden spread among many, democratic welfare programmes are welcomed. Funding concerns are left to another day. Bagehot, in words that predate Hoppe, believed the Crown could provide a salutary counterweight:

But a wise and great constitutional monarch attempts no such vanities. His career is not in the air; he labours in the world of sober fact; he deals with schemes which can be effected—schemes which are desirable—schemes which are worth the cost.

These are the dangers of atrophied accountability and the evils of expanded government, that centuries of royal rule and experience can teach modern democratic States—but these lessons are wholly of a negative character: a caution against democratic government encroaching upon our rights. A more positive libertarian approach to the monarchy is to emphasis our natural rights as individuals, which no authority, royal or democratic, can morally infringe. ‘Governments are instituted among Men,’ in Jefferson’s immortal Declaration, ‘deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed’. This is the truest sense of equality under the law. As Seán Cronin argued in ‘A Libertarian Defence of the Monarchy’:

But the most important, if least tangible benefit of a constitutional Monarchy, is that if forces [the First Minister] to refer to himself as ‘Her Majesty’s Prime Minister’. He is Her Majesty’s servant, and not just him but all politicians. The constant reminder that there is someone set above them, that they serve someone else, must have a salutary effect on the most arrogant mind. It is true that these are only symbolic words, and real power lies with the Prime Minister—as is perfectly proper, because we exert some control at least over his excesses. But anyone who doubts the importance of symbolic words in politics is ignoring the reality of what is, in favour of what they believe should be. [...] Better for my freedom, and yours, that our Head of State be a constitutional Monarch, able to rein in politicians but not to reign politically, than the alternative.

Admittedly, the United Kingdom and Canada are both constitutional monarchies, yet each has seen exploding deficits and crippling debt accumulation—where is the royal reproach when we need it? Obviously, the virtues of limited government need additional proponents than the example set by the monarchical model. Still, the relationship between the Crown and the premier is a symbol of the limits of power—whether exercised by the Crown or its ministers—a lesson not to be forgotten by prime ministers in relation to their cabinets and backbenchers, and duplicated by governments toward the people.

This is the conservative element in royalty and politics.

The Crown also serves as a symbol of the obligatory State. What do I mean by the obligatory State? Libertarians, as exemplified by Professor Hoppe, view the State as a coercive institution, compelling people through its laws and tax policies to redistribute property from those who generate wealth to those who don’t. True concern for the least advantaged, they argue, is exemplified by voluntary charity, given freely and without force.

Under the obligatory State, however, our natural relations, arising from time immemorial—‘no man is an island’—are understood as embodying more than the voluntary associations of civil society, as valuable as they are. As members of society we have obligations that transcend the here-and-now. ‘As the ends of such a partnership cannot be maintained in many generations,’ insisted Edmund Burke, ‘it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.’

Classical liberals, for instance, make the case that it is quite legitimate to pool our resources to pay for security services (domestic and foreign) and to establish a legal system. Yet if it’s permissible to establish government services in these affairs, why not go a step further to support community initiatives, as well? Why be bound by arbitrary definitions of State action? Why not progress to a more inclusive, more organic, point of view?

The question of the degree of government support will always arise, and it is important to remain vigilant about the insidious growth of welfare statism—ever mindful to resist majority tyranny over the minority—but that is no reason to spurn using the levers of government altogether to achieve community-approved goals. Even Simon Heffer, a Gladstonian liberal, advances a template of government activity that hews fairly closely to the One Nation Tory vision:

The state’s functions, in a compassionate and ordered society, can be confined to relatively few things. It should protect the public with a police force and armed services. It should provide education and health care, while perhaps finding ways to incentivise people to use non-state provision wherever possible. It should give the support that the elderly and the disabled require to live with dignity. It should see that public hygiene and essential infrastructure are maintained; and that’s about it. This requires a revolution in our way of viewing the state’s relationship with us.

The Monarchy, in addition to its own charitable causes, patronises voluntary organisations and honours those selfless volunteers who give of their time and skills for the public welfare. And as Head of State, the Crown sanctions those government activities that aim to help the young, the aged, and the disadvantaged. These are obligations we owe to each other as inter-dependent citizens, obligations that are beyond the finite abilities or comprehension of civil society—obligations that are as ageless as civil society itself—which, as the overseers of government, we direct our elected representatives to undertake on our behalf.

This is the progressive element in royalty and politics.

In British political history, the monarchy has deep and long-lasting roots—a tradition that spread throughout the Commonwealth and is nowhere more evident than in Canada. The Tory tradition, too, is strong in both countries. Together, the Crown and Conservatism stand for government limited to its proper sphere, in service to the people who are its governors; at the same time, the monarch and the Conservative party are proof that government has a legitimate role in offering progressive legislation that aids and embodies society’s aspirations for the Common Good.

Our Queen’s presence in Canada to celebrate Dominion Day is an opportunity to remember our continuing blessing under the Crown and our glorious progressive conservative legacy.

Vivent la reine et le pays du Canada!

Happy Dominion Day!

Charting the ‘Right Course’ to the Mean

At the conclusion of a joint blog written with fellow New York Times columnist Gail Collins, ‘The Propeller Heads’ Dilemma (17 February)’, David Brooks confessed:

The odd thing is very few conservatives consider me conservative any more because I am so pro-government. But the events of the past few weeks have made me sound like a raving libertarian. The administration has taken its faith in government to such an extreme I’m turning into Ayn Rand. Help!

The Organic Tory has heard Mr Brooks’s plea, and aid is forthcoming. Not surprisingly, Aristotle and Aquinas prefigured the solution to his dilemma in explaining the roles of ‘the mean’ and ‘prudence’ in politics.

One may well ask: where on the political spectrum can you both take a ‘pro-government’ stand and yet also ‘sound like a raving libertarian’? I suggest—in the abstract, without putting any specific opinion to the test—that Mr Brooks has described what Aristotle called in the second book of The Nicomachean Ethics the mean.

The mean is ‘in relation to us that which is neither excessive or deficient’ nor fixed; the other mean, in relation to a thing, is ‘equidistant from the extremes’, as the six-inch mark on a foot ruler. As such, of this mean of human affairs, ‘every knowledgeable person avoids excess and deficiency, but looks for the mean and chooses it—not the mean of the thing, but the mean relative to us.’ Aristotle notes that this mean ‘is not one and the same for all’; it is variable both in respect to events and to people (one possible reason why, for Brooks, some ‘very few conservatives consider me conservative any more’).

Along the political spectrum, the two extremes of government action—of excess or deficiency—are statism and libertarianism, respectively. The mean lies somewhere between the two, not necessarily equidistant from either, but in the manner of a sliding scale, depending on the situation in hand. ‘I cannot stand forward, and give praise or blame to any thing which relates to human actions, and human concerns, on a simple view of the object, as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction,’ wrote Edmund Burke in Reflections on the Revolution in France. ‘Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour, and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.’

Not every event in human affairs admits of a mean, however. Examples Aristotle gives are adultery and murder; there is no case in which a little bit of adultery—but not too much, and at the appropriate time—hits the right mark:

All these, and more like them, are so called as being evil in themselves; it is not excess or deficiency of them that is evil. In their case, then, it is impossible to act rightly; one is always wrong. Nor does acting rightly or wrongly in such cases depend upon circumstances…

Yet in matters of State action, most people would admit that there are moments when intervention is inappropriate (Brooks as libertarian), and other instances when only the State has the resources at its disposal to preserve the common good (Brooks as pro-government). An obvious problem is deciding when these intrusions are legitimate and justified and when they are not. The answer lies in prudence.

Prudence, taught Thomas Aquinas, is ‘right reason applied to action (Summa Theologiae, II-II.47.2, contra).’ Once an outcome is chosen, it only remains to deliberate on the different ways to accomplish it—weighing their various merits, strengths, and weaknesses—to decide on the preferred method to obtain the ends, and then to act. This action may depend upon the levers of the State, or be left to the private initiative of civil society. Prudence was one of the highest qualifications for the politician, and the sine qua non of leadership.

Accordingly, since it belongs to prudence rightly to counsel, judge, and command concerning the means of obtaining a due end, it is evident that prudence regards not only the private good of the individual, but also the common good of the multitude (II-II.47.10, c).

David Brooks avowed the significance of prudence in an article written at the height of last year’s American Presidential elections. In ‘Why Experience Matters (NYT, 16 September 2008)’, he stated:

It turns out that governance, the creation and execution of policy, is hard. It requires acquired skills. Most of all, it requires prudence.

What is prudence? It is the ability to grasp the unique pattern of a specific situation. It is the ability to absorb the vast flow of information and still discern the essential current of events — the things that go together and the things that will never go together. It is the ability to engage in complex deliberations and feel which arguments have the most weight.

How is prudence acquired? Through experience. The prudent leader possesses a repertoire of events, through personal involvement or the study of history, and can apply those models to current circumstances to judge what is important and what is not, who can be persuaded and who can’t, what has worked and what hasn’t.

It is why men of experience—tested in the crucible of life and moulded by ‘epistemological modesty’ (Brooks’s term in ‘The Propeller Heads’ Dilemma’ for knowing what you don’t know)—are more invaluable in political affairs than those of mere theoretical abstraction: ‘When we are discussing actions, although general statements have a wider application, particular statements are closer to the truth,’ Aristotle advised in Book Two. ‘This is because actions are concerned with particular facts, and theories must be brought into harmony with them.’ Whereas Aquinas warned against overconfidence in a rationalism divorced from practical expertise: ‘The practical reason, on the other hand, is busied with contingent matters, about which human actions are concerned: and consequently, although there is necessity in the general principles, the more we descend to matters of detail, the more frequently we encounter defects (ST, I-II.94.4, c).’

What is true of the wisdom of individuals is also true of the collected wisdom of society, accumulated over generations:

We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason; because we suspect that the stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations, and of ages. Many of our men of speculation, instead of exploding general prejudices, employ their sagacity to discern the latent wisdom which prevails in them. If they find what they seek, and they seldom fail, they think it more wise to continue the prejudice, with the reason involved, than to cast away the coat of prejudice, and to leave nothing but the naked reason… (Burke, Reflections).

This naked reason bred hubris; to the contrary, Brooks remarked, ‘The idea is that the world is too complex for us to know, and therefore policies should be designed that take account of our ignorance (‘Propeller Heads’).’

And so the prudent politician is one of experience, of history, and of action, who weighs decisions against their likely consequences, while aiming for the political mean:

This much, then, is clear: in all our conduct it is the mean that is to be commended. But one should incline sometimes toward excess and sometimes toward deficiency, because in this way we shall most easily hit upon the mean, that is, the right course (Nicomachean Ethics).

The Organic Tory (and his fellow travellers) is apt to incline toward excess of State activity (by way of positive subsidiarity and programmes for the public good); the laisser-faire conservative’s comfort zone is inclined toward deficiency (relying on voluntary associations). But the shared ground and aims of both wings of Conservatism—the broad church approach—is still ‘the right course’ in realising the common good.

This dynamism, especially as it relates to the economic sphere, is captured in a passage from John Paul II’s encyclical, Centesimus Annus:

Economic activity, especially the activity of a market economy, cannot be conducted in an institutional, juridical or political vacuum. On the contrary, it presupposes sure guarantees of individual freedom and private property, as well as a stable currency and efficient public services. Hence the principle task of the State is to guarantee this security, so that those who work and produce can enjoy the fruits of their labours and thus feel encouraged to work efficiently and honestly. [...] However, primary responsibility in this area belongs not to the State but to individuals and to the various groups and associations which make up society. The State could not directly ensure the right to work for all its citizens unless it controlled every aspect of economic life and restricted the free initiative of individuals. This does not mean, however, that the State has no competence in this domain, as was claimed by those who argued against any rules in the economic sphere. Rather, the State has a duty to sustain business activities by creating conditions which will ensure job opportunities, by stimulating those activities where they are lacking or by supporting them in moments of crisis (§48).

The State is to provide the legal framework in which a free economy can thrive, while leaving primarily responsibility of the ‘invisible hand’ to individuals and organisations of civil society—the minimal requirements of laisser-faire conservatives (and the area into which Brooks fears the President’s advisers will trespass). However, acknowledging the claims of organic Tories for limited, temporary State assistance when required to assuage hardship (keeping a wide berth from dirigisme), the Pope argued (repeated for emphasis) that ‘the State has a duty to sustain business activities by creating conditions which will ensure job opportunities, by stimulating those activities where they are lacking or by supporting them in moments of crisis.’

So, David Brooks stands in good stead; he eschews robust ideological purity in favour of a scepticism and an appreciation for policies—the mean—that work, both for individuals and society. Moreover, he’s in good company: as Aristotle remarked, ‘For this reason it is a difficult business to be good; because in any given case it is difficult to find the mid-point.…’

The Liberal Conceit of Progressive Conservatism

In an article published yesterday on the New Statesman website, Oliver Letwin, chairman of the Conservative Research Department (UK) asks, ‘How liberal is progressive Conservatism?’ If nothing else, it’s very curious that the British have taken up this nomenclature several years after it was dropped—unceremoniously—in Canada.

Letwin describes progressive conservatism in glowing terms; as a purportedly novel undertaking within conservatism, one may well ask what it is meant to replace within the Tory lexicon? A natural response may be ‘Thatcherism’, but only if a form of 90s centralisation comes to mind, since economic liberalism is very much at the heart of what it is taken to be a progressive conservative. In this respect, then, ‘progressive’ seems to have less to do with conservatism per se than with the current state of British politics—notably, as Letwin remarks, an increasingly authoritarian centre-left—and may account for their motto of ‘progressive ends by conservative means’.

Addressing the ‘allegation that progressive Conservatism is illiberal because it emphasises the community rather than the liberty of the individual’, Letwin sets out to answer the eponymous question of his title in the affirmative. I won’t ruin the reader’s own pleasure in following the threads of the argument based upon recent speeches by party leader, David Cameron, but will provide an alternative viewpoint on the individual-versus-community from the perspective of Catholic Social Teaching.

A primary tenet of CST is that the person, created in the image and likeness of God—imago dei—is free, rational, and absolute. People do not exist in isolation, however, but are, as Aristotle famously said, political and social animals. We begin in families, that join together to form communities, that in turn grow to become the city-state. This ascending pyramid—in form, if not always in intent—is a common conservative starting point: A central Cameron belief is that ‘we achieve progressive aims through decentralising responsibility and power to individuals, communities and civic institutions’.

Thomas Aquinas, building upon these Greek ideas of the state as the culmination of political association, wrote that ‘it is evident that all who are included in a community, stand in relation to that community as parts to a whole; while a part, as such, belongs to a whole, so that whatever is the good of a part can be directed to the good of the whole (Summa Theologiae, II-II.58.5, c).’

Herein lies the apparent contradiction: the absolute person versus the relative individual who is the part in the whole—But only if one ignores the reality of everyday life, where one can be a member of a family, employed in a particular profession, co-operate in affairs of civil society, and still enjoy independent initiatives and actions. This is the essence of the personalist principle.

As Pius XII wrote in Mystici Corporis Christi,

‘In a natural body the principle of unity unites the parts in such a manner that each lacks in its own individual subsistence... Moreover, if we examine the relations existing between the several members and the whole body, in every physical, living body, all the different members are ultimately destined to the good of the whole alone; while if we look to its ultimate usefulness, every moral association of men is in the end directed to the advancement of all in general and of each single member in particular; for they are persons (§61).’

If the autonomy of the person is still in doubt, the principle of subsidiarity firmly establishes that ‘Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organisations can do (Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, §79).’

In Centesimus Annus, John Paul II further defined subsidiarity: ‘a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to coordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good (§48).’ These may be considered its negative and positive functions: i) no interference into matters that directly concern individual and local actors, and ii) intervening only in periods of distress (and then only until equilibrium has been restored). As an echo of subsidiarity, Cameron is in no doubt of the responsibility ‘for government to act wherever possible to strengthen the institutions of civic society’.

The organic strength of these principles, personalism and subsidiarity, is that both the person and the community are given free rein to develop and realise their potential collaboratively—without drifting into the extremes, respectively, of libertarianism or statism—for the common good.

This is, ultimately, Letwin’s own conclusion: ‘The answer is that progressive Conservatism does not promote the group over the individual; what it seeks to do, is to balance the liberty of the community and the liberty of the individual.’

Yet I cannot help but wonder, so earnest are the efforts on behalf of this liberal conceit—‘Liberals attach value to both of these kinds of liberty, and the fact that progressive Conservatism does so, places it in the mainstream of liberalism’—what it is that is specifically ‘conservative’ (or Tory) in the progressive Conservative mandate. Or, again, what role in the progressive Conservative programme is assigned to the state (save as a last resort).

CST acknowledges the legitimacy of the state in realising a more equitable society: an achievement of the pivotal document in the nineteen-century capital-labour question, Rerum Novarum. Nor is this untrod territory for traditional conservatism, whether in the practice of Disraeli’s ‘One-Nation Toryism’ or in the support for the fundamentals of the welfare state, such as universal healthcare and education, by Churchill and Macmillan.

Nevertheless, Letwin, Cameron, and their progressive Conservative approach are opening an exciting avenue for modern politics, one which shares many affinities with organic Toryism. While this Tory stance is more amenable to State action than is the norm at present, there is much room for ongoing dialogue about ‘progressive ends by conservative means’ and harmonising the individual and the community.