Recently I have started, and failed to complete, several posts rather critical of recent trends in conservatism. (Not to mention my unfinished post on immigration, and another on the universality of rights, both of which will not sit well with many modern conservatives, though quite consistent with the thoughts of many founders, especially those concerned most with the rights of man.) I never intended such posts to be taken as insults, but more as constructive criticism. For instance, quietly ignoring the more intolerant fringe of Christianity*, rather than distancing ourselves from it, feeds into the liberal line that intolerant fundamentalists control the political right.  Or the anti-immigration rhetoric which, at times, sounds more rooted in ethnic hatred and the nastiest versions of nationalism than any sort of legitimate concerns for security. Or the periodic attempts to annoy the PC crowd by using intentionally offensive terms which, instead, come across as actually intolerant, even racist. What is most upsetting is that in many of these cases the words are actually giving the wrong impressions, and the speaker is nothing like the impression given.Yet, strangers, coming upon the quotes without knowing the speaker, or not seeing the sarcastic or other intent, take them at face value, and draw the wrong impression of conservatives**.

But, as I was considering this matter, it struck me that the interminable debate over who is a "real conservative" and who is not highlights one of the real problems with conservatism, the lack of any clear meaning. I complained about this before, many times, so it should not have surprised me to recognize it, yet somehow it did. For whatever reason, this time it made me think that perhaps the problem is not that some people call themselves conservatives who really are not, but the problem is that many of us try to claim the title conservative, yet, thanks to the many competing definitions, none of us can define precisely what that term means. Maybe, in trying to force the term to stick to one meaning, we are fighting a losing battle, and would better off starting over with a new term.

This is, as I said, not a new realization. "Reticent To Adopt a Title" was entirely about my difficulty finding a term to describe my philosophy. But even as I wrote that post, I harbored hopes that the "economic conservative" wing would win out int the definition wars eventually, and, following that, the government minimalist/strict libertarian faction within that wing would come out on top. But now, having given it more thought, I realized, while it may eventually come to that, it has really been too short a time for the term "conservative" to separate itself from its "country club" definition that was the sole meaning until the 1960's. ("The Political Spectrum", "The Best Historical Example")  That the original meaning is probably the least popular is a sign that the term is definitely undergoing a change, but, for now, I don't think the word "conservative" will have a clear and accepted definition for the next several years, maybe more***.

Realizing this, as well as a number of other things I won't bother describing here, I was convinced I had been right in "Reticent To Adopt a Title" to avoid dubbing myself conservative. While some of the definitions fit fairly well, the confused state of the term, and the lack of a single clear meaning, made the term useless as a means of clarifying my beliefs. After all, if we adopt a label it is in order to simplify the process of describing our political orientation. If the term is defined poorly, or requires lengthy clarification to impart such information, we are better off simply giving a wordy description of our beliefs, as the use of the label gives us no benefit.

As I already wrote at great length on my problems with other, similar terms, such as "libertarian" and "Republican", I will spare my readers those dissertations. Let us just say that, along with "conservative", the most popular political epithets, and even many of the more obscure, provided little advantage. Even the terms I thought might prove acceptable, such as "federalist" emphasized too many secondary aspects and too little of what really matters. The vocabulary of politics, and even philosophy, seem to have insufficient terms to allow me to describe my thoughts succinctly.

Which is what finally led me to the realization that there is a term for my beliefs. My problem had been twofold. First, concentrating on accepted terms from politics and philosophy, using only terms others thought fitting for describing political views while ignoring the many other words available in the English language. Second, by spending too much effort on defining the details of political organization, and even devoting more attention than necessary to the varieties of political action. What I needed to do was to find simple words, from any discipline, not just politics, which conveyed the basis of my thinking.

And so I finally decided to dub myself a humble rationalist. It sounds funny, as we are not comfortable with the use of "humble" in the formal disciplines of academia, and certainly not to describe political thought. But, when I considered what I believe, and the points that I choose to emphasize, "humble" seemed the best choice.

The second half of the description is easy enough to explain. In being a rationalist, I follow in the tradition of the thinkers of the Enlightenment, of the founder, and of the more recent advocates of reason, such as the Austrian school in economics.I accept the basic premises I have argued throughout my blog. The clear truth that others are much like myself, thus capable of whatever I am, including making reasonable choices, learning from mistakes, and recognizing their needs. Fro this I conclude many things, that the government should do only those things needed to guard individual rights, that interaction between individuals should be free and unrestricted, that there is nothing to fear from freedom, and so on.

What makes me different from those who have followed the rationalist branch of thought, besides perhaps greater consistency in limiting the scope of government, is a trait once common among rationalists, but long lost. That is humility****. I am willing to admit I am capable of error. More, I am happy to admit I do not know the answer to many questions. As a result, I am willing to accept some principles modern rationalists often are not. For example, I accept that tradition has value. The collected minds of all those who preceded me probably got many answers right I never would, and so, as a consequence, I am happy to accept their answers, at least as a starting point. Should it later prove wrong, I am also willing to reject tradition,  but until I can prove an error, I will accept tradition as more reliable than whim, guesswork, or even my own best guess.

The second consequence of humility is the rejection of government intervention. I know I already said rationalism argued for the same point, but there is an even greater argument for the humble. Assuming I am human, I am no better or worse than my fellows, then what is to be gained by substituting my will for theirs? Why would that produce better results? In fact, is it not likely, the more individuals whose wills I replace, the more likely my answer will be worse than the one one of them would have reached? If I substitute my ideas for those of ten people, it is likely I will force at least one into error. If it expands to one hundred, or one thousand, or one million, is it not even more likely? Unless I am a truly exceptional individual, is it not also likely I will force more into error than into correct behavior?

That last question shows where the two elements come together. Reason, saying that there is no single "right" answer, but differing answers for each individual, would propose that any single answer would likely do more harm than good. If we combine that with the humble assumption I will not even choose the least harmful of the one size fits all answers, we must assume that the outcome of any intervention will be a disaster. And experience shows us this is truly so.

And thus, though it is not an immediately pleasing description, and unlikely to catch on as a general appellation, I am going to describe myself as a humble rationalist.

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* Clearly, the Phelps-type Christians fall within this designation, but I also include others, some of whom may seem close to the mainstream. By this I do not mean those with strong beliefs, but rather those who argue that Christianity is a prerequisite for being conservative, or would even impose some manner of Christian litmus test for holding office. (Perhaps even requiring the office holder subscribe to their particular variant of Christianity.) I have no objection to holding strong beliefs, even saying that one's belief is the only true belief. That only makes sense if you have true faith in your religion and it claims exclusive possession of the truth ("Tolerance, Agnostic Prostelytizing and Liberal Activism"), but in political and social life, whatever our beliefs we need to exercise that minimal tolerance necessary for peaceful co-existence, which means no forcible conversions, no political disabilities due to religion, and certainly no political tests for holding office.

** To be fair, there are also, among conservatives a number of actual racists, hateful nationalists, and other disagreeable sorts. That is not a criticism of conservatism, the same is true of almost every political group I could name. (The only possible exceptions being groups so small their membership can't even contain a representative sample of humanity.) While the existence of such people in a movement is not an indictment of that movement, especially as loosely organized political parties, and even more loosely organized political philosophies (defined entirely by self-description), cannot control membership, while we cannot indict a movement for such members, it is worthy of criticism when the same group does not censure those members for their actions or statements. I said this about various nationalist and racist factions within the Democrats, I did this also after Ron Paul's failure to denounce racist supporters, and I would be remiss were I not to do the same for conservatives.

*** The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the confused state serves the purposes of many groups. The various factions vying to be called "conservative" benefit by the confusion as it allows minority movement to maintain a claim to a title they would lose by strict majority rule. And at times even the majority benefits, as they can deflect criticisms of conservatism by blaming them on the various competing beliefs, avoiding taking blame themselves. And, most of all, liberals benefit by being able to ascribe to more moderate factions the beliefs and actions of the most extreme, as the single term describing them all lends itself to such confusion.

**** I do not mean to imply rationalists are arrogant, or that I am in any way superior. What I suggest is that rationalists sometimes fall into a trap I saw in economics. When your model seems to be sensible, and behave mechanistically, you sometimes forget the underlying given is human choice, and so all the apparently mechanistic processes are nothing of the kind. But the models look so good, that economists and rationalists often fall into the mistake of thinking they can organize things better than chaotic freedom, and start drifting into the belief that "fine tuning" the economy, the political system, or society in general, is not just possible but desirable.

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POSTSCRIPT

I know the post before this ("Silent For Now") said I was not writing. And that is still true. The thing is, I had this finished for a few days and was simply unsure whether or not to publish it, as it seemed a bit too critical of conservatives. I was not sure if the tone might not be divisive enough that the rest of the post would get lost. I was also concerned the tone might give an impression I did not intend. But now, as I am about to go some time without writing, I decided I should put it out there and see what happens. I like the post, think the basic message is correct, and even the critical parts are more correct than not. And so, for my final post for a while, I figured I would publish this one.