How to Stop Them

 

As "progressive" Canadians we're faced with many challenges. (For me, "progressives" range from centre-left Liberals to NDP'rs, to left-Greenies, to socialists, to communists, to anarchist-socialists.) We are living in a society we are opposed to. (In my opinion, left-Liberals are deluded about the nature of this society. They don't believe it is as nasty as it actually is and they labour in the mistaken belief that the shining Liberal Party can be made to understand how abhorrent the unfortunate aberrations from decency are and to do the right thing to rectify the situation.) This is a society that is centered around the capitalist profit-motive and not by any actual moral humanity. Other human beings, the environment, are all secondary to individual profit-maximization.

In this society there are two dominant contenders for power: Liberal (liberal) capitalists and conservatives. Generally speaking, liberal capitalists tend to dominate. Why? Because, for the most part, conservatism is about preserving the status-quo and it's usually the case that the status-quo leaves a lot of people unhappy. 

During the liberal-capitalist "golden-age" from 1945-1972 it was the case that conservatives had been forced by harsh experience and the sheer preponderance of evidence to moderate their views in order to accommodate the new social order and thereby became seen as far more reasonable and acceptable than they are now. That was the era when Eisenhower rejected the "stupid" conservatives who wanted to destroy unions and social security, when Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency, and when Ontario Premier Bill Davis built TV-Ontario and the community college system.

But conservatism also contains the seeds for its eventual degeneration in its grassroots membership. This is something that I think about more and more lately. That self-identified conservatives have different mental wiring from liberals and socialists. For one (and nothing I'm about to say is meant to imply that conservatives can't be good people, especially once you've gained their trust) conservatives have been shown to fixate more on threats than other people. Secondly they have stronger "fight or flight" instincts that can sometimes impede rational thought. 

So, think about people who respond to changes as if they're inevitably threatening. People with a different skin colour/culture moving into the neighbourhood? They might be a threat! They might swamp our culture! Let's push them out! No? Okay! Let's move away from them to a place where more "old-stock" Canadians still dominate!

A progressive will see people living in poverty and think about how to help them. A conservative will respond by thinking that the poor are a dangerous rabble who are trying to rip them off. Social programs only serve to subsidize their bad decisions and their reproduction ("welfare moms").

Now, the following is NOT meant to imply that all conservatives are stupid. But if you think about it, stupid people will have a hard time understanding how the world works. They will also make a lot of mistakes and earn the contempt of many of those around them. If people are constantly sneering at you and you constantly feel lost and adrift, you will be insecure. You will see things as threatening. You will struggle to understand your society to try to fit in and you will feel elated when you do grasp things. You will be told that God the Father watches over the world where men are men and women are women and men earn the money and women are homemakers and baby makers and the police officer is your friend and the businessman gives you jobs and your country is a force for good in the world and etc.

People of normal intelligence absorb all of this and depending upon their mental capacities/frameworks they reject some or all of it, generally with a healthy dose of cynicism. But a conservative will cling to this in desperation and feel threatened by theories that challenge it. Because it is simply beyond them to incorporate critiques based on reality into this worldview. And so they reject these challenges and cling to their delusions.

Everything I'm saying now has already  been said by English liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill over a hundred years ago:

Mill was not, however, all pure reason and moral elevation. In reply to an attack made upon him by Sir John Pakington for calling the Conservative party “the stupid party,” Mill, admitting the phrase to occur in his Representative Government, went on to say, “I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it. Suppose any party, in addition to whatever share it may possess of the ability of the community, has nearly the whole of its stupidity, that party must, by the law of its constitution, be the stupidest party; and I do not see why honorable gentlemen should see that position at all offensive to them, for it ensures their being always an extremely powerful party. I know that I am liable to a retort, and an obvious one enough; and as I do not wish to allow any honorable gentleman the credit of making it, I make it myself. It may be said that if stupidity has a tendency to Conservatism, sciolism, or half-knowledge, has a tendency to Liberalism. Something might be said for that, but it is not at all so clear as the other. There is an uncertainty about sciolists; we cannot count upon them; and therefore they are a less dangerous class. But there is so much dense, solid force in sheer stupidity, that any body of able men with that force pressing behind them may ensure victory in many a struggle, and many a victory the Conservative party has gained through that power” [xxxiii/xxxiv].

Bibliography

Mill, John Stuart. The Philosophy of John Stuart Mill: Ethical, Political and Religious. Marshall Cohen, ed. New York: Modern Library, 1961.

So, what do we do about this? I guess I'll write more tomorrow. Because blogging is a career-killing waste of time.