Forward-Looking Conservatism

Modern conservatism isn’t conservative.  It is therefore time we stopped thinking of it that way.  Its partisans no more want to prevent progress than progressives always support advances.  The difference between liberals and conservatives is actually in how they want to make improvements—not whether they do.

Thus conservatives believe in smaller government, a capitalist economy, a stout national defense, stronger families, and personal liberty.  Liberals, in contrast, promote a larger federal government, a socialist economy, a weaker military, the dissolution of families, and total equality.

For the moment, let us set aside a demonstration of why the liberal agenda cannot work.  We will merely assume it is unable to deliver the prosperity and justice its advocates trumpet.  Let us instead concentrate what is necessary to bring modern conservatism to fruition?

If conservatives do not intend to freeze society in amber, which sorts of changes should they support?  What modifications are necessary to reduce governmental controls, strengthen the market economy, protect us from external enemies, reinforce the family, or preserve liberty?

As the conditions in which we live mutate, the mechanisms that once served our needs become less workable.  Our goals may remain, but the means of achieving them differ.  It is therefore necessary to look forward toward what might be successful.

Ours has become a mass techno-commercial society.  Most Americans are no longer farmers.  Nor do they live in small towns.  A majority are better educated, better fed, and better housed.  They also live longer, have fewer children, and interact with diverse strangers.

Their jobs have, as a result, changed.  Many more are professionals or semi-professionals.  As doctors, engineers, managers, nurses, and police officers, they must be self-motivated experts at the work they do.  More often than previously self-supervised, they must care about their assignments and be disciplined enough to perform them well.

The question then becomes: how do we produce the sort of person who can assume these responsibilities?  Without such folks, a techno-commercial market would falter from a lack of trust.   But where are they to be found?  Peasant communities and male dominated households are not the ideal cradle.  So what is?

Forward-looking conservatives may favor vibrant families, but these are not the families of our ancestors.  They are not places where husbands consider their wives servants or parents demand that children be seen and not heard.  The contemporary family is plainly evolving into something new.

Liberals, especially feminists, would have us believe that women should stand entirely on their own.  Men are depicted as brutes whose services became obsolete as women developed the skills to be self-supporting.  Unwed parenthood is, for that reason, deemed perfectly acceptable.

Except that it isn’t.  Research demonstrates that children raised by two committed parents do better than those who are not.  They are much more likely to acquire the attributes needed to become professionalized.  In short, fathers, mothers and loving relationships matter.

But if we are to look forward, we must also recognize that women now demand greater control over their lives.  Precisely because they are better educated and capable of participating in a technological economy, they refuse to be regarded as chattel.

This perforce changes the nature of heterosexual relationships.  Spouses must now be moral equals.  Although the radical feminists claim that androgyny is essential, this is absurd.  Men and women differ and hence denying this cannot be the solution.  What is required is fairness, not coerced equality.

The point is that the dealings required for successful intimacy are transforming before our eyes.  Men and women are, for instance, learning to better negotiate their differences.  This, however, is not a violation of conservatism.  It is evidence of its coming to fruition.

Conservatism does not mandate that tradition be untouched.  Rather it seeks to build on long standing customs.  The idea is not to reinvent the world, but to modify what has to be revised, while preserving what works.  Love works, whereas a male hegemony no longer does.

The future should not scare us; but neither should it erase everything that preceded it.  Accordongly, we must possess the wisdom to identify what deserves amendment and the courage to innovate prudently.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University