Conservatives want to conserve. Certainly this is ostensively true. The question of conservatism comes when the object of conservatism is explicitly posed. For example, conservatives are fond of talking about the past. They believe that their notion of the past is ‘real’. However, an objection could be made that their interpretation is ideal and therefore, as an example, a return to the conservative past is not only impossible as it never really existed but could be used for voter manipulation (please see the addendum below to illustrate this point).

In philosophy we would say that history is hermeneutical; that is, it lends itself to interpretation. Are there historical facts that are more certain than others? –Absolutely. Hitler existed. However, there are mainstream Republicans that believe Hitler was a liberal, socialist since Jonah Goldberg (see https://www.mixermuse.com/blog/2010/01/03/fascism-is-liberal-and-squares-are-circles/). While the vast majority of historical scholars disagree with Goldberg’s conclusions, it does demonstrate the susceptibility of history to interpretation. The Bible is another clear example of how history can interpreted differently viz. all the different Christian denominations. Of course, there are multiple attempts to define the ‘true’ history but that is beyond the scope of this discussion. The point is that history has empirically demonstrated a propensity for radically different interpretations.

Since there is an interpretive variability to history, it makes conservatism more problematic. The argument gets turned into a struggle for defining or perpetually having to redefine what we need to conserve. A more skeptical view of conservatism is that it lends itself to propaganda – in this case, a re-creation of the past that is repeated enough times to manipulate public opinion into believing it is true – marketing is proof that propaganda works. Nietzsche would be in perfect agreement with the notion that the past is a story told by the victors. I would in no way imply that liberals are immune from the criticism of propaganda. However, the criticism of liberals and propaganda is not from ‘conserving’ the past but generally from different directions.

The obsession with the past that needs conserving is what many philosophers call reactionary. That is, it sustains itself by trying to establish a ‘true’ understanding of the past. It must therefore react to every challenge to the ‘true’ understanding. If conservatism could establish a ‘true’ history, it would justify its existence, its essence or in philosophy, its origin (arche in Greek). This task is a bit like the myth of Sisyphus who had to eternally roll a stone up a hill only to have it roll down again. Conservatism, not unlike Christianity, depends in part on the monumental task of preserving or trying to establish an interpretation of the past. The struggle then in conservatism is a struggle for the ‘true’ and the proper.

In current philosophy there is much discussion about the ‘proper’ and its essential reciprocity to the ‘improper’. The proper is indentified with essence, origin, history, sacred, eternal and true. The improper is identified with accidental, contingent, insignificant, profane, finite and false. The truth claim as what is proper is not so much in question as how the dynamics of proper and improper depend on each other to be, to exist as what they are. Many philosophers, Hegel not the least, have exhaustively shown that the true could not even be thought without the errant, the not-true. In philosophy there is something called a tautology; something that is absolutely, necessarily true. For example, A = A is an identity and therefore a tautology. A proper identity in philosophy is always true and a tautology. However, the set of all not-As has just as much to do with A being A as the positive statement. Without the not-A, the A not only would not ‘exist’ but it could not even be thought. Likewise, in any hermeneutic of history a canon, a dominant narrative that gets established as ‘true’, must perpetually topple any counter narratives, any themes that oppose or contradict the dominant narrative. The very fact the task is continual shows that the counter themes are never extinguished completely. A symbiotic relationship exists in which both canon and not-canon must preserve each other in order to ‘be’, to even ‘be able’ for thought. So, the proper cannot do without the improper. The proper must, of necessity, sow the seeds of the improper. It must provide the themes for its destruction as it insists on its proper-ness. In the context of this essay, conservatism owes its existence to what it cannot and does not want to maintain – the nemesis of historical truth – hermeneutics (historical interpretation). Regular folks call this relativity or relativism.

Relativism as commonly thought means that tautology is impossible. However, to suggest that true is not true is utter nonsense. What gets conflated in the common notion of relativism is historical and moral uncertainty, viz. the play of hermeneutics, is tantamount to no absolute, no tautology, no truth. This is an unfortunate equivocation of the legitimate direction of ‘relativism’. Even Einstein, the father of modern relativity, was harshly criticized for overturning the absolute time and space of Newton. However, Einstein did not mean that all is falsity, or ambiguous mush. For Einstein there are ‘truths’ but they are relative to each other not to some absolute, metaphysical construct of time and space or ether. The tension here is one of habit. Up until Einstein, we had a historical tradition of understanding time and space as absolute. Our ‘common sense’ was a habitual and linguistically enforced ‘filter’ for making sense of ‘reality’. Anytime a habit is uprooted, whether it is personal or sociological, there is tension, the compulsion to adapt, the loss of a ‘past’ and the ‘thrown-ness’ toward an uncertain future. The future is shown in the need to reinterpret the past according to some new paradigm and therefore, the past itself shows an almost ‘movie-like’ projection screen whose projector has the lens of the future – the uncertainty of what will be taken into the showing of the past.

For Martin Heidegger, a contemporary philosopher, the uprooting of our previous historical constructs (historicity) was the very possibility for authenticity. In other words, the need for fundamental change, adaptation, reflection was anxiety. He called this being-toward-death. He wanted to identify my death, my end, and the anxiety it induces with the absolute requirement for the possibility of ‘truth’. He interpreted ‘truth’ as aletheia – unconcealedness or what shows itself as itself as distinguished from concealment. So, for Heidegger, the ‘truth’ of human being is in our capacity for being-towards-an-end.

Our truth is not gained from some apriori, metaphysical understanding of the ‘truth’ but from our ability to stand in the face of our end. In the context of this essay, this would mean not having to ‘conserve’ the past but living in the uncertainty of the past and our dogmatic notions of what its ‘truth’ really was. This is not to suggest that there was no truth as Einstein was not suggesting there wasn’t truth but to try to get us to think differently about what a ‘truth’ could be; not absolute time and space but space-time continuum.

In conclusion (please don’t applaud), I believe that the dilemma of conservatism does not necessarily have to be viewed as some kind of relative gaping void from the absence of truth. The alternative to conservatism is not relativistic mush and nihilism. Fundamental change is not necessarily bad and improper. It certainly creates anxiety in the openness of the question but the openness itself is what makes one young, engenders the notion of freedom, the possibility of change to something more authentic. What is more, it resists the heaviness of banality and empty repetition, the slow decay of the novel and passion. The transform that I alluded to with Heidegger is not to another movie for the projector but taking the step back to see the wonder of truth and its showing – and the ways that it continually thwarts our insistence on the ‘final’ showing. In my opinion, conservatism is an illusion that we sincerely feel like we need but carries an essential downside that must of necessity reappear – why not give up that Herculean struggle and just take a look around?
 

Addendum:

Let’s take a recent example:

Mitt recently stated, “The president says he wants to transform America, I don’t want to transform America into something else. I want to restore it.”

Let’s see, restore it to…

…the Bush administration
During the Bush administration two wars were started and the economy was bankrupted. The national debt increased twice as much as the current administration. During the Bush administration unemployment went up 77% more than during the Obama administration.

Bush administration increase in debt: 85%
Obama administration increase in debt: 43%
Bush administration increase in unemployment: 86%
Obama administration increase in unemployment: 9%
Transition Date: January 20, 2009

Note: The latest unemplyment rate is 8.5%.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

For more details see this:

https://www.mixermuse.com/blog/2012/01/06/all-you-need-to-know-about-politics-1-6-12-2/

Note: The debt numbers are a bit of a broad brush as it does not break down discretionary and non-discretionary parts of the budget and the contribution of each administration to both of these types of spending.

From the graph below you can see that the unemployment rate exploded just as President Obama got into office. I think this explosion arguably was not due to anything President Obama did in his first few months (just 4 months later the rate was 9.4%) as the national unemployment rate does not turn on the dime. Given this, the difference would be a 134% increase in unemployment during the Bush administration over the Obama administration.

Bush administration increase in unemployment: 124%
Obama administration decrease in unemployment: 10%
Transition Date: End of May, 2009

http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/lns14000000
Note: For some reason, you may have to do a couple refreshes on this link to show the graph.

Also, see:
https://www.mixermuse.com/blog/2012/01/11/the-great-recession-how-the-free-market-got-rigged/

…prior to Medicare and Medicaid?
“Before Medicare, only 51% of people aged 65 and older had health care coverage, and nearly 30% lived below the federal poverty level.”
http://www.usgovernmentbenefits.org/hd/index.php?t=define+medicare

…before women had the right to vote and blacks and gays were hung for entertainment?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_in_the_United_States

…before Social Security?
“the best estimates show that the elderly poverty rate in 1935 was probably somewhere in the range of 70 to 90 percent.”
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/aug/17/eddie-bernice-johnson/texas-congresswoman-eddie-bernice-johnson-says-soc/

…before the civil war
Slavery

…from the beginning
In 1800, the mean life span in the United States was about a quarter century
In 1900 the mean was about 50 years
http://www.longevity.ca/info_life_expectancy.htm

Do you REALLY want to go there?

The Republicans are painting a fantasy picture for voters that need to believe fantasies of the past – it NEVER happened. The fact is that we have progressed from a dark past albeit in a bumpy and messy way. It is absolute insanity to want to go back to the way it really was. There was no earlier, greater time than now for the United States. Yes, a few things may have been better but don’t let them fool you, things are better now than they have ever been for folks.

So, here is the question, do you want to transform our future or restore our past?