What I Learned From Conservatives –And What They Seem to Have Forgotten
Anthony Mansueto
I am not a conservative, at least not in the sense that the term is currently used in US political and cultural discourse.
But I came of age politically and intellectually during the period when Conservativism was on the rise, and honed my
skills in debate with the emerging conservative majority of the 1970s and 1980s. In the process I learned some
important lessons, lessons which now define the way I approach the political and cultural debates of our time. With the
recent victory of Barack Obama and the Democratic Party in the 2008 General Elections, there has been a great deal of
soul-searching among conservatives regarding the direction of their movement and of the Republican Party. As an
outsider the reasons for the current crisis among conservatives is clear: they have forgotten the lessons they set out to
teach the Left. Perhaps this reminder will help conservatives forge the kind of loyal and constructive opposition which
any government needs and help President Obama and the Democratic Party avoid some of this historic errors of the
Left.
Perhaps the best way to describe the lessons I learned from conservatives is as a cluster of insights regarding the
conditions for human flourishing and human excellence. Many of these lessons are economic. Conservatives reminded
us that redistribution, while it may sometimes be justified, cannot replace creativity and entrepreneurship. And with
regard to the latter, while the State is good at managing big projects (e.g. public works or space exploration), it has
difficulty mobilizing the creativity of those who are not involved in these projects and in tapping into the ordinary problem
solving capacities of individuals and small organizations, capacities which are fundamental to identifying and taking
advantage of economic opportunities. Our response to poverty, in other words, may include state spending on welfare
or public works, but it must be centered on efforts to help impoverished communities discover and take advantage of
untapped economic potentials. Similarly, just as social liberals have stressed that while it is a good thing to have high
standards for the way we conduct our personal and especially our intimate relationships, imposing those standards on
others rarely works and at the extreme can become repressive and life denying, conservatives have reminded us that
while we can restrict brutal exploitation and rapacious profit-seeking, there is such a thing as over-regulation that in the
name of justice squeezes the life out of an economy.
At the political level, conservatives have issued two warnings. On the one hand, they have rightly challenged the
presumption, so prevalent on the Left, that because of our dedication to social justice, we know what is best for other
people and that when we do we have not only the right but also the obligation to impose it, at home and abroad. They
have reminded us that while there are universal principles, local conditions vary, and problems are best solved and new
potentials tapped close to home, by those who understand them best. In the Catholic tradition we call this the principle of
subsidiarity. This means relying on the institutions of civil society, such as civic organizations and local religious
institutions to solve problems when they can. It also means recognizing the authority of humanity’s most important
political communities –villages and towns, neighborhoods and cities, vis-à-vis the nation state. And conservatives,
drawing on the stark lessons of the past century, taught us that while it is important to stand up for and act effectively on
behalf of moral principle, we cannot simply remake the world, and often do more harm than good when we try.
At the same time, conservatives historically have resisted, and urged the rest of us, to resist making a fetish of
democracy. It was the genius of the Founders to craft a system which integrated authentic popular political participation
with the restraining influence and dedication to principle which is embodied in institutions such as the Senate and the
Supreme Court.
At the social and cultural level, conservatives have reminded us reminded us that while liberty and democracy are
fundamental to the good life, the capacity to exercise them must be cultivated. Thus the importance of an intact social
fabric of families and communities which nurture our basic capacities to reason and build relationships with other human
beings. Thus the importance of the classical liberal arts tradition, one of the great achievements of the West (and
authentically alive if not exactly well only in the United States), which cultivates the capacities necessary for life as a free
human being and a citizen. Thus the importance of religious institutions which hone our spiritual aspirations into real
spiritual capacities. Finally, conservatives pointed out that the claims the Left made on behalf of justice simply can’t be
sustained in the context of a relativistic ideology. Judgments of value require –well, values.
If the conservative movement and the Republican Party are in crisis, perhaps it is because none of these concerns are
reflected in their current agenda. Instead, we see a continued commitment to tax-cuts for the rich but no money to seed
inner-city entrepreneurs or to compensate them for the risk of going into business for themselves (e.g. by making health
care more affordable). Local control for Republicans never meant respect for neighborhoods and cities, and most
conservatives invoked “states’ rights” only to resist the struggle for civil rights. And now even the rights of states in such
critical areas as education are being stripped away as well and transferred to a Department of Education which the
Republican Party once vowed to abolish –and which recently lost its Assistant Secretary for Higher Education, who
resigned in protest over “accountability” measures which she rightly believed would hurt the cause of liberal arts
education. Conservatives have become the leading proponents and beneficiaries of plebiscitary democracy (referenda)
and of the rights of legislatures over courts and the Constitution they defend, suggesting an underlying ideology closer
to that of Rousseau than of Burke. And the Bush administration has undertaken a foreign policy that can only be called
utopian –with predictable results. I see no plans to temper the rapacious demands of the market for our labor time
(which is what is really destroying our families) or to conserve working class neighborhoods and support the New
Urbanism, which proposes to restore civic life to the suburbs.
It is little wonder that Americans, left, right, and center, wonder what, if anything, Republicans really value.
I am not a conservative. But I do believe that helping poor communities tap latent economic potentials is better than
mere redistribution. I believe in subsidiarity, in balancing democracy with wise deliberation, and in a realistic foreign
policy which recognizes the limits of intervention. I believe strong families, strong neighborhoods, strong churches,
synagogues, masjids, and temples, and in the classical liberal arts tradition. I believe in these things because they
promote human flourishing and human excellence. I know what I value.
For me these insights into what supports human flourishing serve primarily to temper the way I pursue a vision of the
good society which reaches back to Plato and Aristotle, and which runs through the medieval Aristotelians up to the
modern left. This tradition is more optimistic than most are most conservatives about the possibilities of joining wisdom
and power and about the capacity of humanity generally for building a just society. But I also believe in the necessity of
a vigorous and principled opposition and in the alternation of parties in power. And the insights which I have identified
above could easily for the basis for one or more alternative Republican visions for the country, united in their stress on
entrepreneurship, subsidiarity, a principled realism in foreign policy, and support for the institutions which foster
excellence, divided, perhaps, in whether their principal loyalty lies with the liberating potential of markets or the
importance of conserving the social fabric. A revitalized Republican Party would, in other words, have both Ripon wing,
and a social-conservative wing tempered by a re-engagement with conservative principles.
But there is more. While I first learned about many of the conservative insights regarding what supports human
flourishing from my teachers at the University of Chicago, I became convinced of them as a young organizer working on
the South Side of Chicago, and later on in the barrios of Dallas. Our new President shares these experiences and I think
that he will be inclined to listen to both conservative insight and conservative prudence. The Republican Party which I
am describing could have the option not only of forming a loyal opposition; it could become part of a real government of
national unity committed to addressing the serious challenges which face our country and our planet.
The principles are there. It is a question of actually owning them and acting on them.