(Part 1 of this post available here.)
Conservatives have a lot of good instincts, I'd say. But really, the progressive instinct is the better one.
Even as a conservative, I believe that. Why shouldn't we admire those of us who see oppression and demand its end? Not everyone does. I daresay the average person is not a progressive; it takes a certain disposition to the world to identify oppression, particularly when you come from a position of privilege, as many white progressives do. As a non-progressive, this stuns me: many progressives grow up in a position of wealth, with their parents making six figures and living in a safe neighborhood with great schools. The world is their proverbial oyster; they are some of the wealthiest people in the history of mankind. But they don't cling to their comfortable lives. They insist that we can make the world better for other people, even at cost to themselves.**
Or look at once-disadvantaged progressives. Many have pulled themselves up from incredibly difficult circumstances. But they can't take... perhaps the obvious advice: don't look back. They must look back; they care too much about where they come from.
Or the still-disadvantaged progressives. A thoughtful progressive who grew up in poverty and remains in poverty, but still has the passion to agitate, to challenge, and to think about the structures of inequality is doing something remarkable. It would be perfectly reasonable to drop out of the political conversation altogether, or to lose hope in our ability to improve the world around us. But they do not.
These are good, decent, kind-hearted people. It is unfortunate that many conservatives do not seem to share this instinct for seeing oppression and desperately wanting to root it out. For me personally, that is not a natural way of thinking, as a conservative; I see the need for charity, but I have to work to see structures of oppression, even though I am pretty well convinced that they exist. And I see it is a weakness in conservative thought.
So, why am I not a progressive? Because that instinct about oppression is good and important, but it's not enough.
Conservatism is a series of balancing tests, essentially, as its practitioners grapple with living in complex, hard world. Its foundational principle, above all, is that people are flawed, and that institutional structures and habits are the best way to prevent those flaws from swallowing society. It is, when practiced right, a philosophy of humility: humility about what we can and cannot know, humility about what we can and cannot do, and humility about we can and cannot see. Conservatives have goals, but their adherence to process inevitably limits what they can accomplish. And this is, by and large, a good thing.
Progressivism, on the other hand, recognizes few, if any, limits, in seeking its goals. It will go to any practical length in its quest for social justice. It must immanentize the eschaton. But it charges boldly into a world that it cannot understand--that we cannot understand. It is the proverbial bull-in-the-china-shop in public policy. Even if the bull came in because it wanted to buy crockery, it's still going to cause damage.
Ultimately, its flaw is in its lack of humility: the structures that conservatives support are built to protect us from ourselves and our own weaknesses. But progressivism, in its triumphant view of what can and must be done, simply has no room for that posture, and all-too-human failings--pride, hubris, greed, corruption--sink its good and decent intentions. While conservatives are just as guilty of those human failings, their ideology accounts for them. Progressivism does not; it wishes for better men and better women in positions of power and influence, but it never gets them.
And so it always seems to fall short; its governments simply cannot do what it asks of them. Its social problems are more intractable than anticipated. Its solutions often cause unintended consequences that cascade far beyond what could have been reasonably anticipated. (And, in the ultimate irony, the structures it sets up to solve problems become the most conservative institutions in the world: stagnant, collectively-bargained government agencies.)
My "solution," such that it exists for these flaws, is fairly simple: in an ideal world, progressives would set the agenda, and conservatives would drive policymaking and governance. If conservatives were compelled to generate policy solutions to solve the various problems that progressives identify, the solutions would be significantly better than what we get today. But conservatives have squandered those opportunities, and when progressives attempt to borrow conservative ideas, they do so clumsily and without an understanding of core conservative insights. (Moreover, such a setup does not fit in with our model of government.)
I suppose that I would be more willing to entertain progressivism if it accepted precautionary limits on power when it was in power. But I'm not holding my breath.
**I have less sympathy for the "limousine progressive" who would refuse to sacrifice anything themselves for their progressive aims. But I'll be charitable and suggest that this is a small minority of an otherwise-honorable population.
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