Some conservatives argue that "big ideas" about politics are generally bad, and that conservatism should instead focus on protecting tradition and avoiding big ideas. Steve Bainbridge, the outstanding legal scholar and conservative blogger, provides a good example of this view:
I can’t think of anything more contrary to the spirit of Burkean conservatism than a seach for the “next big thing"....
Instead, it is the Libertarians and the progressives who are Big Idea people. Despite their obvious differences in philosophy, they share the absurd belief that if only their big idea(s) came to pass, society would inexorably progress towards some ideal.
In contrast, I stand with Buckley ("Don’t let ideologues try to create heaven on earth, because they’ll deprive us of freedom and make things a lot worse") and Bill Bonner ("Traditional American conservatism was not a doctrine of world improvement, but a mood of skepticism toward all “isms” and empire builders").
Why? Think about the Big Ideas of the 20th Century: Compassionate conservatism, Objectivism, Deconstructionism, Freudianism, Nazism, Conceptualism, Socialism, Syndicalism, Minimalism, Communism, Functionalism, Postmodernism, Dadism, Fundamentalism, Fascism. All of them turned out to be basically bad ideas.
Bainbridge is right that there have been many bad Big Ideas. Nonetheless, generalized conservative hostility to big ideas is misguided for two reasons:
First, it ignores the fact that there are many big ideas that have turned out to be extremely good ones (at least relative to the alternatives). Consider Liberty, Free Markets, Democracy, racial and gender Equality, Privacy, Charity, and many more. Without these big ideas and others like them, we wouldn't have many of the greatest achievements of Western civilization. Bad big ideas are best countered with good big ideas, not with a blanket rejection of big ideas as such. The most compelling responses to the biggest Bad Ideas of the last century - Communism and Nazism - were the good Big Ideas of Liberty, Free Markets, and Democracy. I doubt we could have persuaded many intelligent people to reject communism or Nazism merely because they are "Big Ideas."
Second, conservatism hostility to big ideas is internally contradictory. It is itself a Big Idea. Like advocates of other Big Ideas, conservatives who argue for rejection of "ideological" ideas do so because they think that acceptance of this general principle will make society better. Same with the "Burkean conservative" respect for tradition that we recently debated here at the VC, and which Bainbridge seems to endorse. You can't simultaneously reject "Big Ideas" and defend the big idea of broad deference to Tradition.
UPDATE: There is a possible ambiguity in Bainbridge's post. It's not entirely clear whether he thinks we should oppose all Big Ideas or merely new ones ("the next big thing"). I suspect the former, but the latter is also a plausible interpretation of his post. Even if his criticism is limited to new big ideas, it's still misguided in my view. All the great big ideas of the past were new at one time, including the ones I listed above. We should not exclude the possibility that further new big ideas might be beneficial as well. Each new big idea should be evaluated on its own merits, not peremptorily dismissed on the grounds that big ideas are likely to be bad.
UPDATE #2: In the comments, Steve Bainbridge clarifies his position to some extent:
If I can elaborate just briefly, my basic gripe with Big Ideas is that people with Big Ideas generally want to convert other people to their ideas. And that's usually a bad thing. As the Iraq war's taught us, trying to convert people to even good Big Ideas like democracy can sometimes work out quite badly.
Thanks to Steve Bainbridge for his clarification. I think his initial post did indeed make it seem as if he wanted to condemn all "big ideas" and not just the attempt to "export" them by force. However, I disagree at least partially with the narrower anti-export point as well. Many efforts to export democracy and other good big ideas by force have succeeded. Consider the cases of Germany, Italy, Japan, Grenada, Panama, and others - all of which are relatively successful liberal democracies today because the US and allies overthrew their previous governments by force. That doesn't mean that all such efforts are a good idea as a general rule, or that Iraq was a good idea in particular. It does mean that we shouldn't categorically reject them.
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- McCain Dumps Hagee Over Holocaust Remarks:
- Are Big Ideas Bad Ideas?
Second:
Third:
Taken together, these principles suggest not a complete rejection of new ideas, but rather a deep skepticism about the untried. They also suggest a deep skepticism about the "big idea" when it becomes the lodestone of an ideology. All too often, as Kirk observed, the big idea evolves into a form of “political fanaticism” that is committed to “the belief that this world of ours may be converted into the Terrestrial Paradise through the operation of positive law and positive planning.”
And I reject the idea that this claim is itself a "Big Idea." As Kirk put it, what "we call conservatism is sustained by a body of sentiments, rather than by a system of ideological dogmata." "A people’s historic continuity of experience, says the conservative, offers a guide to policy far better than the abstract designs of coffee-house philosophers."
But, to the larger extent, the opposition should be to untested big ideas as well as big ideas that have been tested and failed, while accepting big ideas that have proven themselves to be of quality. (This goes hand-in-hand with a strong belief in Federalism, as it allowed untested big ideas to become tested ones while only putting a small portion of our national stake, like Delaware or Oregon, at risk, instead of betting the entire national bankroll on a metaphorical horse of unknown quality.)
Thanks to Steve Bainbridge for his clarification. I think that your initial post did indeed make it seem as if you wanted to condemn all "big ideas" and not just the attempt to "export" them by force.
However, I disagree with the narrower anti-export point as well. Many efforts to export democracy and other good big ideas by force have succeeded. Consider the cases of Germany, Italy, Japan, Grenada, Panama, and others - all of which are relatively successful liberal democracies today because the US and allies overthrew their previous governments by force. That doesn't mean that all such efforts are a good idea as a general rule, or that Iraq was a good idea in particular. It does mean that we shouldn't category reject them.
I covered the point about skepticism about "the untried" in great detail in the earlier series of posts on Burkean conservatism. As for "political fanaticism," I think it can evolve just as easily from excessive commitment to tradition as from other political ideas. Witness the anger and hostility some traditionalists show towards even small efforts at change.
And I reject the idea that this claim is itself a "Big Idea." As Kirk put it, what "we call conservatism is sustained by a body of sentiments, rather than by a system of ideological dogmata." "A people’s historic continuity of experience, says the conservative, offers a guide to policy far better than the abstract designs of coffee-house philosophers."
I don't think that "sentiments" can be separated from "ideological dogmata" as neatly as Kirk assumed. Deference to underanalyzed "sentiment" is itself a kind of dogma that might lead to the privileging of indefensible prejudices, oppressive traditions, and so on. As for "continuity of experience" vs. "abstract designs," we need theory, and yes ideology to analyze our experience and determine what it proves. The evidence of experience doesn't analyze itself. And sometimes, a good analysis of that evidence will strengthen the case for radical change.
Burke would have disagreed with this. In his view, societies grow as organic entities. It's only after the fact that we can describe them as incorporating "big ideas". They didn't start with the idea and proceed in that direction; rather, they simply developed into something we can now categorize.
Not saying I agree with this, but it's how Burke would have described it.
We didn't really "export" democracy to Germany by force. Germany was a democracy before Hitler, after all. I'm also not sure you'd really want to insist on Panama or Italy as examples (for very different reasons), but that's getting further afield.
I agree. But most old ideas are bad ideas too. This point follows directly from Will's. After all, most new and bad ideas eventually age and become old bad ideas.
However, I think the corollary is that progress can only be achieved by trying new ideas and discarding the ones that don't work.
Will's quote reveals a pessimistic outlook (even if literally true) and those who live by that type of thinking will find it very difficult to accomplish great things. I find George Bernard Shaw much more inspiring:
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
For all of 2 decades. Germany did not have a history of strong republican government (cf. England) which probably hastened their quick reversion to totalitarianism.
After all, 90% of everything is crap.
Most of it is just the plain old Jeffersonian yeoman farmer's desire to be let the hell alone: not to be drafted into grand schemes of government; not to have one's life, liberty, property, enterprise, or children destroyed to feed someone else's crazy ideal of Making The World Better.
All the formalizations of libertarianism, like the principle of the non-initiation of force, are attempts at constructing a rational basis for this underlying impulse towards non-coercion.
That's a complicated issue. Prior to WWI, Germany's government had a number of democratic features, including a legislature that had a substantial Socialist minority. It's executive was, of course, very authoritarian, especially in foreign affairs, but also in some domestic matters. Still, by the standards of the day, it was more "democratic" than probably 99% of the countries in the world.
Since this is really outside the scope of the post, I'll leave it at that, though.
"It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that so it was laid down in the time of Henry IV." ~Holmes
There are people who want to stand on top of history, yelling "Stop!" I want to kick them in the nuts as we all pass by.
Burke would have disagreed with this. In his view, societies grow as organic entities. It's only after the fact that we can describe them as incorporating "big ideas". They didn't start with the idea and proceed in that direction; rather, they simply developed into something we can now categorize.
Burke might have said this, but it would not be empirically accurate. Most of the big good ideas I list were conceived of as ideas well before they were implemented in public policy. If this invocation of Burke is meant to suggest merely that the ideas germinated for a long time before being implemented, then that describes virtually all major new political innovations - including Nazism and Communism, both of which had decades of intellectual antecedents behind them before regimes espousing those ideologies actually came to power anywhere. For example, communism as the result of close to a century of prior socialist thought and debate.
1. It seems to me that one might characterize libertarianism, much moreso than conservatism, as resistance to "big ideas," i.e. resistance to the impositions of tyrants and politicians: thefts and coercions almost always justified by grand, noble-sounding philosophies.
2. All manner of customary institutions may grow up around--in adaptation to--brute-force existing circumstances. These may be viewed as cultural capital. The insight of conservatism, I think, amounts to the fact that major change of the underlying circumstances will leave people with useless cultural capital--which can be very painful and disruptive to sort out. What conservatism may be missing is that if those underlying circumstances are fundamentally counterproductive (or even evil), then the necessity of fundamental change must take precedence.
This is somewhat similar to malinvestment in the conventional economic sense. That is, where there has been a massive investment in uneconomic or obsolete technology, the necessary capital restructuring can be very costly and disruptive.
I'm thinking for example of the endemic corruption that evolved in the USSR and other socialist countries. It was adaptive, under the circumstances. There may be no easy, gradual (conservative) way to get from a decades-old communist regime to a prosperous market economy. Sweep away the old regime and you have a situation in which people literally possess the wrong cultural capital--but is there a good alternative? It has been argued that the most successful post-communist economies have been precisely those which moved forward most quickly with reforms.
3. Libertarians would of course like to dismantle much or all of Leviathan. In that sense, libertarianism can be portrayed, I guess, as a "big idea." But the other way one can view libertarian philosophy is as a critical perspective on historical and current trends. If the path back toward smaller, less intrusive government could be a relatively gradual one in the US, the necessary first step down that path is to persuade people that the historical growth of government was misguided and ill-advised in the first place. Persuasion--that's pretty close to "conversion," just not at gunpoint, I don't see what's so bad about that.
What MarkField said. And as I said in an earlier thread:
http://volokh.com/posts/1143593913.shtml
(West) Germany was way better prepared for Democracy than Iraq, for diverse reasons:
First and foremost, the respect for the rule of law was deeply ingrained in Germans. In fact, it was one of the main reasons why the Holocaust could happen. Germans were brought up to follow "the law" (and orders based on it) whatever it's content. Psychologically, following the ordinances of the Allied Powers and the laws enacted after 1949 was therefore not too difficult for most Germans. Also, serious conflicts between neighbors used to be settled by means of civil procedure, not by clan feuds …
Second, democratic experience. Here I am not talking about the short intermezzo of the Weimarer Republic but rather the much longer experience on the regional and local level. Germans had been electing (state and federal) legislatures, city councils and mayors for a very long time even under constitutional monarchies. Most of the governing German elites after 1949 (mostly old men, including Konrad Adenauer, former Lord Mayor of Cologne) therefore could build on a longtime experience of democratic procedures, simply forgetting about the 12 "dark years" (as opposed to a 50 year ”break” after a short democratic experience in Iraq). The same applies - mutatis mutandis - to the availability of well trained journalists and lawyers.
Third, speaking of lawyers: After getting rid of the Nazi laws and most (?) judges who were active Nazis, Germany could build on a well functioning legal system (whose contents were not too different from those of the occupying countries) with conservative judges readily applying the law (please note that this point is not supposed to take a stand with respect to the question whether the degree of de-nazification in the judiciary was sufficient).
Fourth, while it is true that many Germans harbored "authoritarian thoughts", lots of those were communists who accepted liberal democracy as a first step (history was supposed to be on their side, after all) towards a later communist regime (and were later convinced that communism isn't so great, either). And after the catastrophe of WW II, those on the fascist side were not in the position to appeal to the "masses".
Finally: Sectarian or regional divisions only influenced but did not trump political affiliations. No part of Western Germany wanted to secede (the French tried to create a separatist movement in the Saarland but failed miserably). No important group after 1949 except maybe the communists harbored grievances against the ruling German elites after 1949 (there were not enough Jews left in Germany to be politically influential as a group), and the communist could wait (see point 4 above).
P.S. Did I mention the lack of clan structures in Germany?
When did "republic" stop meaning the opposite of monarchy?
Salvadore Dali on Picasso
Picasso is a Spainard, so am I.
Picasso is an artist, so am I.
Picasso is a communist, nor am I.
The problem is when the bad ideas are big ideas, involving large deployments of resources and state power. When big ideas involving these things turn out badly, the damage to society as a whole is much more extensive. That's why someone can be very conservative about new government programs and also very innovative about small business startups. Failure and constant churning are normal for the latter, but catastrophic for the former.
Karl Wittfogel, in his preface to 'Oriental Despotism,' made a plea for Big Ideas. The concept of oriental despotism itself seems unfashionable nowadays (Wittfogel went out of print in the '80s but he's back now), but at the very least it provided a template for a new, perhaps sounder analysis of early politial organizations.
Benjamin Whorf in linguistics provides another example of a Big Idea that is not widely held, at least unmodified, but has inspired a lot of hard thinking.
Anyhow, if we are compiling lists of Big Bad Ideas, let's put Market Wisdom on there. After the events of the past few months, I don't suppose anybody would disagree.
Again, I don't agree with Burke, but...
As I understand him, he'd say that society (including its government) operates similar to how we now see evolution: an entity (in Burke's case, a society) develops from a specific historical past without reference to any pre-conceived design (no big ideas). Only when it reaches a given stage can we come along and, after the fact, call it a species. In this sense, he'd agree with Hegel that "the owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the dusk."
This rules out Nazism and Communism. They may have had intellectual antecedents, but they didn't have societal antecedents. They were big ideas first, institutions second. In both cases, the specific point was to use the power of the state to remake the society. That's the very antithesis of Burke.
The issue is whether they were imposed or taken up in their entirety immediately once somebody promoted them.
Capitalism started, for example, among the combining-in-restraint-of-trade craft guilds.
The franchise in classical Greece and early republican Rome was originally restricted to those who could (and did) afford the panoply of a heavy infantryman and showed up for the wars. It was a long time before it was substantially looser.
Slavery was perfectly okay--sucked to be the slave, of course, but that was life--for a very long time, after which some thought it was a bad idea, but outlawing slavery came considerably after that.
A big idea taken aboard incrementally is different from a big idea slurped up instantly. As I said, a case could be made that our current Good Big Ideas were the product of incremental progress.
Dr Norman Borlag’s idea was huge. The revolution it caused swept the world in less than fifty years. But the conversion was voluntary, a recognition that his Green Revolution conferred immense benefits upon humanity, one of them being the prevention of starvation for at least a billion people.
Revolutions based on force, for instance the communist one, are far more problematical.
Where Bainbridge and other conservatives fail runs along the same road, use of force. There’s a lot of wisdom in being wary of big ideas, and it’s particularly important to resist the use of force to implement them. But when Big Conservatism gets into the mode of “we need laws and punishments to keep people from adopting new ideas” it becomes part of the problem.
The bottom line is this: If an idea is a good one it doesn't need force to spread.
Agriculture itself was a very big idea, as was mass production based on a factory system. Whole civilizations rise and fall based on ideas like that. Massive overhauls in how agriculture and manufacturing work (collectivization, state ownership) are only medium-big by comparison, but still plenty disruptive.
Other things that I'd put on the same scale as Borlaug's wheat are cell phones, refrigeration, and bicycles. They've all had huge social effects, but the ideas themselves are very limited in scope. Inventors and entrepreneurs put the products out there, and society snaps them up and invents the rules for using them.
A big idea involving refrigeration, by contrast, would involve not just putting refrigerators on the market, but also coming up with some sort of centralized plan for who would get them, how they should be used for maximum benefit, and how the food would get into them. Somehow I doubt the refrigerator in the convenience store in my building would have made it into anyone's central plan.
Dadaism is an art movement that arose out of the choas of the First World War. It was a reaction against the official government lines that war is glory, that there was a 'cause' they were fighting for, and all that awful propaganda. It included a philosophy that people in power don't always know what they are doing, are often incompetent and/or corrupt, and shouldn't be trusted. This sounds very similar to what some view as traditional conservatism.
Post modernism is awful? Sure, there are some post modernists that tried to define the movement, but I would think that PM is more an organic outgrowht of our society -- we were tired of certain things that existed in the modern society, and so irony became a basic element. It was a societal movement, and I'm not sure anyone could do much to stop or reverse it.
And besides, PM architecture is a hell of a lot better than the crap that went up in the 60sn and 70s, and lead directly to todays' spectacular renaissance in good design. I'm not sure why Bainbridge finds that so bad.
when he(Churchill) stated that his political philosophy was: "Look before you leap, and don't leap if you can find a ladder."
Seems to me that many, even most, of the greatest achievements of Western civilization preceded things like Privacy and racial and gender equality. Unless you really think that all the good stuff occured in the last fifty years.
This is right up there with the most idiotic comments I have ever read re: Iraq. If Prof. Bainbridge really believes this, he has completed discredited any opinion he has on any topic.