In many recent posts, I have made the case for maintaining traditions within our culture. (See "Hoist By Your Own Petard", "The Fascination with Change", "Trophy Spouses" and "Cranky Old Man?".) I have also made the argument several times that both economic conservatives and libertarian types have made a significant error in excluding cultural questions from their thinking and concentrating entirely on political questions. Unfortunately, thanks to certain struggles within the conservative movement, such tendencies seem to be becoming more pronounced, with the opposite side ("The Political Spectrum", ("Many Types of Conservatives", "The Need to Correct Ourselves", "A True Conservative Platform"), the social conservatives ( "The State and Morality", "A Bit More Explanation") and some paleo-cons ("Misplaced Blame and A Power Play", "Remember I Predicted It", "A Question for "Paleo-Conservatives"", "Buchanan and Obama", "I'm Sorry, Mr. Buchanan"), as well as the "pragmatic" conservatives ("The Shortcomings of Pragmatism", "Pragmatism Revisited", "Pragmatism Revistied, Again"), who tend to adopt the "culture war" terminology of the paleo-cons, more than willing to address social concerns, but taking the unfortunate stand that the liberals do, confusing cultural and governmental issues, and looking to the government to resolve cultural problems*.

But, then again, that is the root of the problem, the inability to separate government and culture.

Government and culture can be viewed in two ways, They are either complimentary aspect of our social structure, both providing different forms of the same benefit.("The Problem With Evolving Standards",  "Empathy" Threatens not "Justice" but Predictability", "Sotomayor and Empathy", "Interpretation and Activism", "Why Judicial Activism Hurts",  "The Problem With Tort Reform", "Red Herring", "The Fascination with Change", "Education And Testing") Government providing the security in our persons and property that is so necessary for stability and planning, while the culture provides a predictable social environment, which also provides for stability and predictability, not to mention allowing for the transmission of learning across many generations, providing a multi-generational stability, and also a means for a present investment in learning to continue paying rewards for generations to come. Viewed in this way, culture is the voluntary, individual means for providing intellectual and interpersonal stability, while government is the collective means of providing physical safety, also needed for stability.

On the other hand, that last sentence provides a means to view the two as in some ways inimical. Government is, first and foremost, a means of self-defense. Its main purpose it to punish those who try to violate our rights, or even to intercede and stop such a violation when it takes place. Government is not a constructive enterprise, but solely a responsive, protective one. On the other and, culture is both protective and productive. Culture provides us with prohibitions, rules which prevent us from coming to harm, but while there are some forms of shunning and other cultural means of disapprobation, in most cases cultural rules are intended to be adopted by the one whose behavior is being changed. In addition, culture provides not only prohibitions, but positive instructions as well, a means for transmitting positive and negative lessons from generations past. In those ways the two can be seen as contrasting with one another. Government is an external, involuntary means for preventing others from doing harm, while culture is a voluntary, individually adopted means of preventing ourselves from doing wrong, or even for directing us to do right.

However, modern society seems to have difficulty understanding either definition. Modern minds, outside of some of the aforementioned social conservative and libertarians, have a tendency to confuse government and culture, failing to cleanly differentiate between governmental power and cultural prohibitions. (e.g. "Private Versus Public Racism","Economic Versus Social", "A Question for Artists of the Left", "Utopianism and Disaster", "Private Versus Public Racism","Economic Versus Social", "A Question for Artists of the Left", "In Defense of Discrimination", "A Statute of Limitations for Race", "How to Handle Idiots", "Back Again", "Best of the Web gets It Very, Very Wrong")  The confusion has probably existed as long as there has been government, as I can think of no historical government which has properly limited itself solely to the protection of rights. ("Negative and Positive Rights", "Symmetry and Asymmetry in Government", "My Vision of Government", "My Vision of Government Part II", "Man's Nature and Government", "Prelude"). Since every government has been in some way involved in regulating voluntary human interactions, or even individual actions, especially in historical cases when state and religion were confounded, there has always been a part of the state which was involved in matters which other cultures saw as purely guided by tradition.

But it was modern liberalism which truly involved government in wholesale regulation of tradition. Or, I should say, modern liberalism is the first non-religious government to have done so. Clearly theocratic governments were involved in extensive control of matters of personal choice, arguing that the state needed to modify behavior to please the g-ds, or even to help the individuals save themselves, but liberalism is unique in arguing that secular, materialist, present needs demand massive regulation of individual behavior.

Prior to liberalism's wholesale involvement in religion, sexual mores, reproduction and the rest, regulation was limited to a few matters. The list may seem odd by modern standards, but it made sense. Most prohibitions were on interactions between individuals, such as the prohibition of prostitution, gambling, even the sale of alcohol. They may not seem the proper province of government to many, but at least they mirrored traditional government interests. Making an analogy to other criminal ventures, such as conspiracy or the sale of stolen goods, such actions could be sen as akin to traditional policing.

Liberalism took a different course. Rather than simply criminalize undesirable interactions, they sought to use government to change individual behavior. For instance, to end individual racism, they did not criminalize racist acts, but instead provided inducements and punishments to businesses in their hiring practices. When that failed to produce the sea change they desired, they began to promote affirmative action, forcing the preferential hiring of minorities. In addition, they began to spend money on propaganda of one form or another, attempting to change the ways individuals thought. In short, trying to make a change to our culture itself.

And that is what causes so many problems in the discussion of culture. Thanks to the government's involvement in education and the media, both through outright control of schools and the power licensing of television and radio brings, as well as the tremendous control their ability to disburse funds provides, as well as the ability to regulate behaviors on public property, and a host of other seemingly unrelated powers, they sought not to stop certain undesirable actions, but to actual shape the culture itself, to recreate traditions and force the individuals making up our society to adopt their new beliefs as the cultural norm. While that may have been the goal of the older theocracies, in practice they too were limited to preventing certain overt acts, they lacked the all-inclusive nature of modern states, and thus could not imagine shaping culture the way liberals try to do.

But I should not blame only the liberals. They might have created the situation, but both sides have come to accept it, and to embrace the government's involvement in culture. For example, the struggle over evolution, creationism and intelligent design ("Reforming Education", "You Don't Drown in a Glass of Water - Vouchers Revisited", "Why Vouchers are not the Answer", "Never Ascribe To Evil, A Discussion of Education"). Rather than seeing that the problem is that the government controls the curriculum, the right (as with the abortion debate**) fights the wrong issue and ends up arguing, effectively, over whose ideology will control the government propaganda machines, instead of fighting for an end of political control of education. Similarly, rather than end the left's "war on religion", the right all too often takes steps that seem almost a "war for religion." And so, though the right once saw the harm of government involvement in cultural matters, and even now pays lip service to opposing it, they all too often fail to fight the right fight, and instead simply end up debating who will control the government's intrusions, rather than fighting to keep the government out. (cf "You Lose When You Think You Win", "You Lose When You Think You Win")

But I did say there were some who understood this issue and saw the questions in the proper terms. So, does that mean there are some who argue the right points? Who fight for the right things?

Unfortunately, no.

The libertarians and economic conservatives may have problems as belief systems ("Why I Am Not A Libertarian", "Reticent To Adopt a Title"), but they are, for better or worst, mostly consistent in their beliefs. (For a few exceptions see "The FairTax's Liberal Assumptions", "Copyright as Politics", "The Failure of Wikipedia", "Some Libertarian Analogies", "Liquid Ice? Female Father? That's Nothing!", "Revelation From Bottom Feeding" and "The Libertarian Left".) They are, most notably, consistent is trying to exclude government from areas where it does not belong. Granted, in a few cases their philosophy seems to go too far ("Rational National Defense", "Rights Versus Laws", "Last Word on Defense", "Third Party Problems", "Some Libertarian Analogies"), but they are consistent in following through on their beliefs if nothing else. 

And in the case of customs and culture they are equally consistent. Seeing the liberals', and some conservatives', use of the government to meddle in cultural matters as improper, they are dedicated to avoiding any such principle. And so, to avoid charges that they are committing the same error, they tend to completely ignore cultural and social questions, limiting themselves to the purely political***.

But that too is an error. While the left, and some conservatives, are wrong to use government in cultural matters, it is just as wrong to completely ignore culture. Politics is not created in isolation. As I have argued many times ( "The Citizen Dichotomy", "In A Nutshell", "Cognitive Dissonance Part 2", "The Right Way", "The Danger Inherent in Banning "Bad Ideas"", "Contradictory World Views" , "The Inherent Disappointment of Authoritarianism", "Moral For Me, But Not For Thee") and continue to sow in my series "Liberalism, It Origins and consequences" (beginning with "Liberalism, Its Origins and Consequences - Preface"), politics is an expression of our beliefs, and those beliefs arise on not only our explicit philosophies, but our culture as well. So to ignore culture is to ignore the fundamental of politics. In other words, it is like treating the fever without curing the infection. ("The Single Greatest Weakness") It may give temporary relief, but the disease will always reassert itself. Similarly, when the culture is broken, fixing the political system will produce only temporary relief, as the defective culture will find ways to twist the political system. ("Defending Freedom?", "Don't Blame the Politicians", "What We Deserve", "What is Wrong with Us", "The Single Greatest Weakness", "Why We Lose", "Doing Something", ""Doing Something" Revisited", "Who Is To Blame?", "The Difficulty of Principle", "Selling Yourself Cheap")

What we need, put simply, is to make clear two things. First, that cultural matters are of significance, that they need to be addressed in order to remedy our political, and cultural, woes. ( "In Defense of Standards", "Addenda to "In Defense of Standards"") On the other hand, we need to make equally clear that cultural change is a persuasive, private process, one we must undertake individually. Part of that cure, admittedly, is getting government out of the culture, stop their meddling, their funding, their use of schools and other forums to press their cultural beliefs. But once the culture is free of government involvement, we need to make the remaining changes through example and argument, persuading our fellows, and not through coercion or other uses of government.

Which brings me to the final point, what our position should be.

I have argued again and again that tradition is essential as it represents the best thoughts of all the ancestors we have ever had. It can clearly be wrong, but we should hold it in esteem, as it is more often right than wrong, and ignoring it wholesale, or changing it too rapidly, is far more likely to produce damage than improvement. ( "In Praise of Slow Changes", "Predictability", "Conservatism, Incremental Change and Federalism") As I have argued in many of my essays ("Frightened for our Future", "The Adoration of Youth", "I Blame the Romantics", "Revisiting an Old Topic") we need to eliminate our modern iconoclasm and worship of youth and novelty, and replace it with a new paradigm, or rather a very old one, which sees in tradition and experience something worthy of respect.

Of course some will argue this is a destructive position, as it will result in stagnation. By honoring tradition, nothing will ever change, progress will stop, and all will become immobile and unchanging. But that ignores one fact, one we remove government from culture, there will be no coercive force pushing cultural standards. Individuals will be free to follow their own beliefs. if those beliefs prove superior, over time they may supplant the old cultural rules, allowing change. However, by favoring tradition, we also make sure only those who feel strongly will break with tradition. in addition, others will not rapidly follow new ideas, meaning change will be gradual, with much proof needed before a change is made. In short, the ideal system to ensure good ideas are retained, while better ones have a chance to become the new standard.

But to see this come true, we need to make two changes. First, we need to make sure that conservatives stop embracing those who would use government to manipulate culture. We cannot be seen as endorsing that sort of abuse of government. Second, we need to ensure that the rest of the conservative movement understands how important cultural matters are and does not abandon them to the left, focusing entirely on political matters. We need to cure the problems of both or else continue to face the same problems again and again.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

* I have argued in the past that these groups, and others, are not truly conservative. As the term "conservative" is poorly defined, this is a hard point to argue in most cases, but in this one it is easier than most. Paleo-cons have embraced a position best described as the 19th century Republican platform, which includes all manner of government intervention. The role of government in this view seems to be stepping in to resolve problems whenever reality fails to meet expectations. And so they expect government to restrict trade, to limit immigration, to force assimilation when immigrants arrive, and to enforce morality among the citizens. And that is fine if they admit that is their definition of conservative. The same applies to those social conservatives who embrace government as the arbiter and enforcer of morality. The problem is that both groups claim to embrace the popular understanding of "conservative" as one who defends individual rights and Constitutional government. I know some will disagree, but the whole foundation of the Constitution, especially when the Bill of Rights is included, argues against such an understanding of government. The Bill of Rights, and the limited scope of government argues instead for individual freedom in choosing one's path through life, including ethics. And so, the idea of enforcing morality through government (as well as many other positions embraced by paleo-cons), seems contrary to Constitutional government, and most definitely represents an intrusion upon individual rights. And so, I argue that by their own definition of conservative, these two groups are not conservative.

** I discussed this a few times in the past. By making the abortion debate a matter for federal courts, the right and left both make the entire decision hinge on the opinion of a single swing judge. In other words, there is no room for partial expression of the varying public opinions, but all or nothing victory based on five judges. Were the law to return to the states, we could have up to 50 different positions, allow for a competition of ideas, a slow victory and a gradual winning over of the public. Now it is a brutal, all or nothing battle to the death, as only one side can win, and win everything. (See "The Benefits of Federalism" and "Why I Am Not A Libertarian".)

*** The Objectivists are unusual in this regard, having an appreciation of the significance of philosophy and culture. On the other hand, I find some aspects of their philosophy questionable, as many of the assumptions seem to be a bit spurious. In several cases I have a feeling Rand simply took her own prejudices and claimed they were the only reasonable belief. Still, they are noteworthy as a group for understanding the way that philosophy, both explicit and implicit -- that is cultural assumptions -- controls one's political beliefs.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

POSTSCRIPT

In addition to the links above, the best summary of my concerns about cultural influences can be found in "Deadly Cynicism", "Self-Serving Cynicism and Our Cultural Immaturity" and "All Life in a Day, or, How Our Mistaken View of History Distorts Our Understanding of Events". There are probably many others, but the links there should lead to most. Readers may also find interesting reading in my as yet unfinished set of posts, "Liberalism, Its Origins and Consequences," beginning with the post "Liberalism, Its Origins and Consequences - Preface".