In his October 5th column for The New York Times, David Brooks writes:
Over the past six years, the Republican Party has championed the spread of democracy in the Middle East. But the temperamental conservative is suspicious of rapid reform, believing that efforts to quickly transform anything will have, as Burke wrote, “pleasing commencements” but “lamentable conclusions.” The world is too complex, the Burkean conservative believes, for rapid reform. Existing arrangements contain latent functions that can be neither seen nor replaced by the reformer. The temperamental conservative prizes epistemological modesty, the awareness of the limitations on what we do and can know, what we can and cannot plan. Over the past six years, the Bush administration has operated on the assumption that if you change the political institutions in Iraq, the society will follow. But the Burkean conservative believes that society is an organism; that custom, tradition and habit are the prime movers of that organism; and that successful government institutions grow gradually from each nation’s unique network of moral and social restraints.
Brooks, who is not only an excellent columnist but also a fine and deep thinker, is raising a fair caution. The world is complex and change is often harder than we think—and rapid reform can often lead to “lamentable conclusions.” But let me raise a caution the other way as well.
In the mid-1990′s, some prominent conservatives opposed welfare reform on Burkean grounds. For example George Will, who traces the pedigree of his philosophy to Burke (as well as Newman, Disraeli, and others) chided welfare reformers as being “designers of a brave new world.” He praised Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s opposition to welfare reform, writing
Moynihan warns that welfare reform could produce a similar [to the "deinstitutionalization" of the mentally ill] unanticipated increase in children sleeping on, and freezing to death on, grates. . . . “There are,” says Moynihan, “not enough social workers, not enough nuns, not enough Salvation Army workers to care for children who would be purged from the welfare rolls were Congress to decree (as candidate Bill Clinton proposed) a two-year limit for welfare eligibility.”
George Will concluded his September 14, 1995 column this way:
Conservatives say, well, nothing could be worse than the current system. They are underestimating their ingenuity.
Here is the late, great Senator Moynihan, expressing (on August 4, 1996) his opposition to welfare reform:
[O]pponents of this legislation were conservative social scientists who for years have argued against liberal nostrums for changing society with the argument that no one knows enough to mechanistically change society. Typically liberals think otherwise; to the extent that liberals can be said to think at all. . . . They [the Clinton White House] have only the flimsiest grasp of social reality, thinking all things doable and equally undoable. As, for example, the horror of this legislation. By contrast, the conservative social scientists . . . have warned over and over that this is radical legislation with altogether unforeseeable consequences, many of which will surely be loathsome.
So we see that some “temperamental conservatives” opposed on Burkean grounds what turned out to be perhaps the most successful social reform of the last half-century (forgetting perhaps the fact that Burke, a Whig, was himself a reformer of some note). The unforeseeable consequences were not loathsome; they were, in fact, enormously encouraging.
When it came to welfare and the underclass, the world was not “too complex” for rapid reform—and those who argued we should reject welfare reform on grounds of “epistemological modesty” and the “awareness of limits” were wrong. The reason they were wrong is that the poor (as other conservatives argued at the time) were fully capable of responding to rational incentives. They were not helpless and in need of a paternalistic state. They were actually able to get and keep jobs. And their children were not “collateral damage in a bombardment of severities” (the phrase is Will’s).
Perhaps the lesson to take away from all this is not to draw grand, sweeping conclusions when it comes to reforms. Maybe “epistemological modesty” should be directed not at reforms per se, but at those who think they can anticipate the outcomes and assume that success (or failure) in one area will lead to success (or failure) in another. (I would add that it’s still too early to declare that the effort in Iraq, which has been very difficult, is irredeemably lost. And Brooks fails to mention that foreign terrorists like al Qaeda in Iraq, and countries like Iran and Syria, have been the loci of many of the problems we’ve encountered. The ethnic tensions and cultural divisions in Iraq are real enough—but the situation there is far more complicated than Brooks presents in his column).
It’s worth recalling, too, that those who take the rigid view that “society is an organism” and that “custom, tradition, and habit are the prime movers of that organism” would in all likelihood have found themselves, intellectually at least, on the side of Calhoun and not Lincoln on the matter of slavery and the culture of the American South. And, by the way, on the opposite side from Burke, a committed abolitionist.
“Not okay: small town, funny accent, overt religiosity, non-tony education.” –Jennifre Rubin
Try this:
Not okay: dumb as a stump, flip-flopping, power abusing, theocratic, clinging to a failed ideology, and stuffed to the gills with government pork.
Jacob:
Right on! What a delightfully perceptive description of the VP candidate! You have Biden nalied!
Ms. Rubin probably means “discreet” attire, not “discrete,”
It was an act of “courage” for Caroline to ask for the seat given her qualifications and lack of prep work for the interviews.
George Crosley — I kind of liked the visual with “discrete attire,” though. Or perhaps I should say, the counter-visual.
I guess we do have to keep talking about the potential CKS appointment. I have to admit to being bored out of my skull by it, though. The left-wing media are constantly proving themselves biased, immature, and injudicious, and nothing seems to make them go away. Revealing them for what they are, yet again, as they contemplate Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, would appear to be another exercise in futility.
But I guess someone’s got to do it. At least JRub makes it peppy and readable.
“dumb as a stump”
It really is an effective way to assay a person’s intelligence: evaluate the edited interviews of adversarial moderators, scripted speeches and the prattling of the antagonistic media. Why not make that the new technique for IQ testing for everyone?
Of course, what #1 forgets to mention is that the only failed ideology is the one that the Left continuously tries to heap on the rest of us. But they’ll never admit that.
That said, it’s kinda ironic how Maureen Dowd beats up on Sarah Palin and defends Caroline Kennedy. According to wikipedia.org, Maureen Dowd is as much a self-made woman as Sarah Palin is, right down to the fact that both attended public universities. One wonders what in common Caroline and Maureen has other than their flawed liberal ideology.
Like the sun rising in the East you can count on the hypocrisy of libs when it comes to supporting like minded liberals. If I get to 51 and have never done anything of note beyond sitting in classrooms getting passed thru because of my last name would I be qualified to be a Senator too?
“According to wikipedia.org, Maureen Dowd is as much a self-made woman as Sarah Palin is, right down to the fact that both attended public universities.” Chris Bolts Sr.
Shhhhh. You’ll puncture Jennifer’s paper-thin “Just like me” argument.
Is she qualified to be in the Senate? She meets the requirements as established by the constitution, and the governor has the right to name whoever he wants. SO drop it already. Could she win in 2010, based upon her current performance probably not, but what difference does it make.
Is Dowd one of the most intellectually dishonest people on her defense of Kennedy? Absolutely. I enjoy them tripping over themselves trying to sound smart. What will she do when the NYT goes under?
Dowd, however, is bitter about not being able to fund a hubby and her excuse is that men find her “intimidating” now that she is successful. Older men at least.
All serving now both executive and congress lack experiences. We got erratic Biden as the most experience one.
Jackie has no qualifications. Maureen fashion herself as an elite better known as social climber.
Caroline is a sweetie pie even if Palin would probably eat her (and Jacob) for lunch. (In your dreams, Jacob.) Dick Morris is hawking the Sarah Palin Calendar, btw. $15.95. Feh. Seriously, women resent that sort of thing. Really. They feel cheapened by Palin’s flirtatiousness.
Certainly Maureen Dowd feels that her life has become cheapened when Sarah Palin got herself a family, a husband, and a career exceeding Dowd’s. What did Dowd sacrifice all that for, eh?
Seth,
What you say is certainly true of some women, but judging from those I know in the effeminate wards of the Left Coast, they are the ones who are unlikely to vote Republican anyway. (I am, in fact, so naive that I am still amazed at the tolerance, bordering applause, these ladies offer to women who exercise their “freedom” to dress and act like cheap public prostitutes while damning an innocent wink in a political speech.)
But get out into “real” America, as I am occasionally privileged to do. The women folk out there are much more likely to feel empowered by Sarah. To very many of them, she’s what a “real woman” should be, “flirtatiousness” and all.
Sarah Palin’s big mistake in her convention speech was actually attacking Barack Obama–something few people had done before or since. What! Make jokes about his lack of experience, his self-conceit? It’s not so much the cuteness, it’s the disrespect.
i think the word we’re looking for here is ‘snob’….
maureen delights in being a snob – i would bet (hope) that caroline kennedy schlossberg is more than a little embarrassed by this sort of championing…
…that said, if cks truly wished to offer a profile in courage, she might publicly say more than a few complimentary things about sarah palin – just as sarah palin said more than a few complimentary things about our new secretary of state…
I’m glad someone else caught the ‘profiles in courage” thing. Dowd loves all things Kennedy so it makes sense that she would be on the Caroline bandwagon.
Chris Botts
Point of order.
If you go to Wiki, you’ll see that MoDo attended Catholic U., not a “public” U.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
MoDo is a definitely, to French-ify as she is wont, a poseur deluxe. With little to be posing about.
And to engage in a Latinism: MoDo does not practice suaviter in modo.
But, picking on her is easy. As easy as picking on, you know, Caroline Kennedy (what’s he name). MoDo is incapable of substantive reporting, much less substantive analysis. She belongs to what we called in college the Silver Fork School of writing (now, I suppose, Silver Spoon).
College? Try HS. MoDo’s idea of being the baddest girl on the RC HS newspaper would be to scribble that the Pope prayed to St. Versace, the patron of designers, to place him in gold chains & lame (I can’t remember if she actually wrote that or if I invented it to make fun of her).
What qualifications do you need to vote “present”?