What exactly is a conservative, and what is a liberal? We like to squabble about such things. Partly we want to separate the sheep from the goats, and partly we want to flatter ourselves, to define our chaps on the side of the angels, and the others... well, they are on the other side.
Young and brilliant Ross Douthat takes a swing at the definition in The American Conservative, and reminds us that the “liberals” have always had the winning hand.
Liberals are Baconists: they believe in Francis Bacon’s dictum that the ends of politics are “the conquest of nature for the relief of man’s estate.” A conservative, meanwhile, is anyone who either says no to Baconism, or who says yes, but only up to a point — and so conservatism embraces anyone who has jumped off liberalism’s fast-moving train at any point over the last five centuries.
More crudely, Douthat suggests that liberals (or progressives as they prefer to be known) are those who respond to the whisper first made in the Garden of Eden: “ye shall be as gods!” Conservatives have always balked at that one.
The thing is: it’s not as simple as that. Today’s liberals want to go full ahead on embryonic stem cell research and its veiled promise of immortality. Yet they also oppose genetically modified crops and declare that we must stop trying to dominate Nature in order in order that we might Save the Planet.
Conservatives, while supporting traditional marriage, are mostly devotees of capitalism and freedom, radical secular notions that exactly fit Bacon’s dictum about the conquest of nature.
So which side are you on?
No comments:
Post a Comment