Canadian Cincinnatus

The real lesson of fracking

After the 2012 Presidential Election, conservatives despondent with Barack Obama’s re-election predicted an economic collapse in the US thanks to Obama’s dirigisme.  So far it hasn’t happened. Not only that but all indications point to real economic recovery – at long last. It’s amazing what a $60 per barrel drop in oil prices will do for an economy. A conservative objection would be that low oil prices were hardly due to Obama, that their drop was precipitated by the fracking revolution – something that Obama’s policies actively hindered, and that Obama is only benefiting from forces that he actively tried to stop. Yes, this is all true, but that’s the point. Thanks to the decentralized, federal system possessed by the United States (in spite of a century’s worth of effort by progressives to centralize all decision-making in Washington), America is able to heal itself in spite of its leaders.

Taken as a whole, Obama, Biden, McConnell, Reid, Boehner, and Pelosi are probably the worst group of leaders that the United States has had in recent memory. And yet, there is a profound renewal going on at the state and local level where a group of new, young, energetic Republican reformers have taken over many governorships and state houses. Blogger extraordinaire Walter Russell Mead has extensively chronicled this phenomenon, which he has coined, The Death of the Blue State Model. The result has been a grass-roots rejuvenation. For every Bill de Blasio (currently screwing New York City into the ground), there are a half-dozen reforming governors, like Bobby Jindal, Scott Walker, and Nikki Haley. The great Liberal Justice, Louis Brandeis, said it best:

“A state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.”

What he meant was that competition between individual states ensures that the best policies win out while, at the same time, no individual has too much power to screw up. Will Bill de Blasio ever win another executive office again? Anywhere?

This phenomenon is best illustrated with a counterexample. Look at a country plagued by overcentralization, like Russia. On the surface, Russian strongman Vladimir Putin is powerful, exuding competence and glistening pecs. He made Obama look like a fool over the Syrian red-line fiasco. But in the long run, short-term victories don’t count. No man - no matter how tactically brilliant - is smart enough to run an entire country from a central location. (The governors of all its provinces are selected by the Kremlin). As a result, the Russian economy is a one-note song. Even when oil prices were $115 per barrel, Putin couldn’t maintain the road network he inherited from Yeltsin. It doesn’t matter if his American opponent is a lethargic golf-a-holic, promoting destructive policies. America is greater than that. Its wisdom is distributed and America is stronger and wiser for it. America is regenerating in spite of its worthless ruling class.

It is for this reason I am also not bullish on China in the long-term. The Chinese Communist Party’s Politbureau isn’t smart enough to run the entire Chinese economy. China’s explosive growth has been due to the fact that it has taken Chinese peasants, effectively living in the middle ages, and transported them into a ramshackled, semi-free, crony-capitalist simulacrum of a free economy. The growth rate has been up for so long because China has had a big supply of medieval peasants. These are beginning to run out. From now on, growth will be harder to achieve and will require real policy smarts. All the problems that the ChiComs have papered over, ignored, swept under the carpet, or simply not heard of, will need addressing.

As a result, I see a severe economic downturn and significant political instability in China’s near future and America will remain number 1, in spite of the bumblers inside the beltway. 

The Toronto Mayor’s Niece offers women better advice than the feminist movement

I can certainly see how the victims of the Bloor Annex groper could be offended by Krista Ford's infamous tweet. Nevertheless, the inescapable conclusion from a fair reading of her tweet is that Krista’s heart was in the right place but she worded it poorly. Unfortunately, she is the daughter of Councillor Doug Ford and the niece of Mayor Rob Ford, and the last thing the mayor’s enemies - which comprise the whole of Toronto's left – want to do is to interpret her statement charitably.

To see the truth of the matter, let us review what she actually said:

"Stay alert, walk tall, carry mace, take self-defence classes & don't dress like a whore. #DontBeAVictim #StreetSmart"

All good advice, but advice that feminists don’t appreciate, particularly the last bit.

Earth to feminism: nobody is talking about restricting the right of women to dress as they see fit, not Krista Ford nor the unfortunate cop at the York University safety conference (who unwittingly inspired the latest Childrens' Crusade of the left, the Slut Walk). You can dress any way you want. You can legally even go topless. But, as Krista Ford and the cop advise, there are certain precautions that you can take to make yourself safer from predators. And one of them is to refrain from dressing provocatively.

At this point feminists will object that women have a right not to be raped.

Actually, no. They don’t have a right not to be raped. Just like you don’t have a right not to be murdered. To be sure, we have stringent laws against rape and murder, laws that I and fellow conservatives would like to see strengthened, but laws against rape and murder are a prohibition on would-be criminals not a guarantee by the state to prospective victims that these things won’t happen to them.

And even if the government were so silly as to guarantee such things, what good would it do? Crime doesn’t happen in front of a police station at shift change time. It happens at the time of the predator’s choosing, when you and he are all alone and the deck is stacked as much as possible against you. As a retired police officer friend liked to point out, the police are not there to protect you, they are there to catch your murderer.

This sort of logic surfaced first in the French Revolution when the revolutionaries became obsessed with positive rights emanating from the government. They believed that the best way to solve problems was to hand out rights. Edmund Burke described this thinking best:

What is the use of discussing a man’s abstract right to food or medicine? The question is upon the method of procuring and administering them. In that deliberation I shall always advise to call in the aid of the farmer or the physician, rather than the professor of metaphysics.

People who look to the government for every solution are still governed by this logic. They - feminists among them - will be in for a rude shock when the confront a psychopath in the alley.

The advice of Krista Ford is much more practical – and empowering to everyday women: take sensible precautions, learn self-defence and “walk tall”. The only thing missing in her list is to carry a handgun – the only true equalizer between a woman and a rapist.

Oh, can’t get a concealed carry permit? I guess the feminists shouldn’t have supported Alan Rock and the Chrétien Liberals.

Tom Flanagan is wrong about the nature of moderation in Canada

In this analysis, Tom Flanagan - the former advisor to Stephen Harper (and also his former professor) - explains how the preponderance of moderate voters in the political middle ensures that the parties on the left and the right will converge ‘in the middle’ in a two party system. While some of his conclusions are not far off the mark, Flanagan’s analysis itself couldn’t be more wrong, mostly because he has made two serious errors: he completely misunderstands the nature of the moderate voter, and he has too much faith in the one-dimensional model of politics.

Lets look at the second error first. The one-dimensional model states that ‘political space’ can be described with one parameter, usually by a big government index. According to this model, the NDP is on the left, the Bolsheviks are on the far left, small-c conservatives are on the right, and Ann Rand objectivist are on the far right. But if this model describes the key features of politics adequately, how come Hitler’s National Socialists are universally considered to be on the far right? And how come socially conservative, big government populists like Pat Buchanan and libertarians - who believe in small government and personal freedom - are both classed as right-wing parties. If the one-dimensional model is right, shouldn’t Pat Buchanan be a lefty moderate while a gay libertarian is a right-wing extremist!

In reality, one parameter is nowhere near enough to describe important features of the body politic.

In science, there is a saying: all models are wrong but some are useful. What makes the one-dimensional model useful is that the parameter it uses – economic freedom – is usually dominant. But this is not always the case. Take Quebec, where politics is split on federalist-separatist lines. There the conventional left-right split occurs within the parties themselves. In the real world, all political parties are expedient coalitions of diverse interests and how they come together depends on specific circumstances.

Another place where the one-dimensional model doesn’t work is a blue collar riding like Oshawa where voters are socially conservative but economically socialist. Because the main parties are split along conventional left-right lines, there is no party that really services them. They alternate between Conservatives and the NDP, depending on whether social issues (like gun control or family values) or economic issues (like free trade and middle class entitlements) predominate. A conventionally moderate candidate who is socially liberal but economically conservative, like say John Tory or Scott Brison, are poison to them. The one-dimensional model does not explain the Oshawa voter.

Now lets tackle Flanagan’s first error, a misunderstanding of what political moderation is. As I explained in this post, the moderate voter in the middle is not somebody whose political philosophy lies in the statistical midpoint of politics space. Rather, he is simply an apathetic voter who doesn’t care about politics at all. What political scientists like Flanagan see as a preference for moderation is really just a sensible desire to not rock the boat when things are OK. These people believe that there are a lot more ways to break things than there are utopian schemes that will actually make things better.

The flip side of this sentiment is a preference for decisive action when they see the wheels coming off the machine. This is why Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Mike Harris and Rob Ford are popular, even though they were decisively to the right of the people who elected them. In serious times, the moderate voter wants – nay, demands - a leader who offers him a credible answer to the problem of the day and then boldly carries it out. A ‘moderate’ split-the-difference solution just repels him. Because Thatcher, Reagan and Harris offered convincing solutions that worked, they succeeded in moving the statistical middle towards them.

So when times are good, splitting the difference Median-Voter-Theorem-style works. But when the seas get choppy, you better have an answer that isn’t a weasely half-measure.

 

Who is the Strong Mayor Now?

"Unintended consequences" has become a buzz phrase lately, mostly used by left wing latte sippers.  It's an indication of a shift in power from left to right over the last few months, and Toronto's election of true conservative Rob Ford is the most dramatic example.

Four years ago David Miller won his second term with unprecidented powers, bestowed upon him by Ontario's libreral premier, Dalton McGuinty, who felt Toronto's mayor needed to be a "strong mayor," with powers like the mayor of New York, the power to push through a socialist (oops, I mean "progessive") agenda without needing the support of right wing councillors.

I warned friends, especially socialist friends, about the danger here: what if a right wing mayor were elected?  Would they be happy then?  I was no fan of Miller, and I was trying to get them to understand how I felt about the City of Toronto Act and Miller's new powers, which allowed him to have an executive council of his socialist buddies, limit debate on the budget and shut right wing councillors out of city government, giving key positions only to his loyalists.

My socialist friends scoffed.  David Miller was going to be mayor for years, at least until he annoited a successor.  No right winger could ever win Toronto.

In their defense, I envisioned Doug Holiday, Case Oates or maybe Denzil Minnan-wong coming to power.  Even I didn't see that the left's arch-nemisis, favorite council punching bag, and the man endlessly ridiculed by the Toronto Star could ever come to power.

But now Rob Ford is the strong mayor with power that McGuinty and the socialists unwittingly endowed him with.  He has already shut out the downtown socialist from his executive, and while the left wing councilors point out that Rob Ford is only one vote on council, they are quietly cringing that they gave him the power to corall many votes without the need to compromise.  The unintended consequences of the City of Toronto Act make it clear that it is a mistake to increase the power of government to support a particular ideology.  Governments must be contained and constrained.

I'm delighted about the election and Rob Ford's strong mayor powers, of course.  Rob will be able to fundamentally change the way the city works, and I'm looking forward to that.  But I'd still like to see the end of the City of Toronto Act, because I prefer it when the mayor has to build a consensus, something Miller always talked about but never bothered to achieve.

Unlike my socialist friends four years ago, I can see that a pendulum swings.  Rob Ford has more staying power than David Miller, of that I'm sure, but stuff happens.  One day, unexpectedly, a socialist mayor will be voted in, probably disguising himself as a centrist.  I don't want him to be a strong mayor.  I want him to have to include the right wing councillors.

But for now: Go, Rob, Go!

Mike Downtown

Finding prostitution unconstitutional

Speaking as a conservative with strong libertarian sympathies, I personally believe prostitution should be legal. Notice that this is not the same thing as believing that it is a social good. Prostitution is not a social good. Personally I believe it is a destabilizing force in society because it does an end run on the virtuous woman’s monopoly on sex with their men. It weakens that monopoly by providing the married man more options for sexual release and, in doing this, it weakens the bonds of marriage, the basic building block of society.

Having said that, many things with negative social consequences are nevertheless legal and must remain legal. Take alcohol. If one listed all of alcohol’s negative consequences to individuals and society the list would be long; but at the same time, how well did prohibition work out in the US? It was a disaster, mostly because the law is a blunt instrument. It is a sledgehammer. It smashes. The law is not a scalpel that can be employed in delicately removing an isolated social ailment. And it should not be employed thus – if we want to continue to live in a free society. The law should be reserved for generalized crimes with indisputable victims, not social engineering crimes where most of the identifiable victims are created as a by-product of the act itself being illegal. The number of laws should be few in number and easy to understand. A society functions better if it is governed as much as possible by free will, by binding contracts entered into freely by free men and by the consequences of personal responsibility than by cops, lawyers and judges.

Nevertheless, this is a debate for our citizens and their representatives in Parliament to have; it is not a debate for judges. Because we live in a constitutional monarchy there is of course room for judges to find laws enacted by Parliament unconstitutional. However, if we are to remain under the rule of law, the freedom of action of our judges to strike down laws must be narrowly proscribed by a direct reading of the constitution and by the ancient traditions of English common law. When judges start twisting constitutional phrases around like they are pretzels just to get rid of laws they don’t like, we cease to live under the rule of law and start to be ruled by a select priesthood who speak a language the common people scarcely understand. Canada would then be no different from ancient Egypt where an inbred class of priests ruled over the masses with obscure rituals. 

Getting back to Canada’s prostitution laws: it is true that prostitution itself has long been legal in Canada but that most activities surrounding it – communicating for the purpose of prostitution, operating a bawdy house etc. – are illegal. The Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled many of these laws unconstitutional because, “I find the danger faced by prostitutes greatly outweighs any harm which may be faced by the public.”

Really? This may all be true and I may even agree with her sentiments, what business is this of Justice Susan Himel’s? She is not a lawmaker. She is an unelected law interpreter. While a valid argument can be made that our elected officials do their best to avoid controversial moral issues, what of it? If the people want to be ruled by spineless trained seals and go-along-to-get-along influence peddlers, well that’s democracy isn’t it? As H.L. Mencken one said, “In a democracy, the people get what they want – good and hard.”

One sure sign that our government is too big, bloated and arrogant for its own good is that so few of our officials feel the need to be constrained by their job descriptions. If Justice Himel wanted to make laws, she should have run for Parliament.

 

The Inductivist: “Cherry-picking Nazi ideology for political reasons.”

The left loves to forget that the word ‘Nazi’ stands for ‘National Socialist’. Even more, they like to forget that ‘National Socialist’ is in turn short for ‘National Socialist German Workers’ Party’. Cripes! When you say it like that, Nazism sounds like a Teutonic version of the NDP.

But it is both true and important to remember that when Hitler came up with the ideology of his party, he explicitly made it a Hegelian synthesis of the right and the left. From the right he took nationalism, militarism and anti-Semitism. From the left he took socialism, totalitarianism, the organized extermination of the state’s opponents (Leon Trotsky invented the concentration camp) and eugenics (look at the early ideology of Planned Parenthood if you don’t believe me).

All of which makes a recent post by the Inductivist a must read. Some highlights:

“There are a number of problems with the argument that we shouldn't study the biological sources of behavior because such an approach led to Nazi atrocities against other races, but one criticism I haven't seen is that people arguing such a position are cherry-picking convenient Nazi beliefs. 

The core Nazi belief was public health--a healthy social organism in its proper relationship with nature. The social body will be healthier if people live healthier lifestyles; if they keep their bodies in shape through exercise and getting fresh air; if they eat wholesome, natural foods that are free of additives, preservatives, and other man-made toxins; if they avoid tobacco, alcohol, and meat; if air and water pollution are eliminated; if there are advances in private and public hygiene, advances in medical science, and access to current treatments.”

“As people who were focused intensely on nature, Nazis believed in respecting the ecologies they lived in. (Ernst Haeckel, a scientist whose ideas inspired Nazism, coined the term ecology). Nazis were conservationists. They advocated the preservation of fauna and flora. They fostered a love of nature. They passed laws against cruelty toward animals. Vegetarianism was encouraged. Researchers were forbidden from doing certain kinds of animal testing. The penalty for killing an eagle was death. The social body could not be healthy in a sick environment. The overall theme was health through harmony with nature.”

I can only add that Leni Reifenstahl, the director of the famous National Socialist propaganda film, Triumph of Will was a devout member of Greenpeace.

So there you have it. The next time some leftist calls you a Nazi (never a National Socialist!), ask them if they are an environmentalist.

Why I am more optimistic about the future of conservatism than ever before

While this is a thought I have had for a while, paradoxically, my recent brush with defamatory libel has made me more optimistic than ever that our side is winning the political war. I don’t arrive at this conclusion from public opinion polls or election results but through a comparison of the respective attitudes.

For starters, these days, conservative (and libertarian) arguments tend to be direct and logical, while left-wing arguments tend to be evasive, emotional or derogatory. Mark Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny is a typical example of positive conservative argument. In contrast, I am constantly amazed at how often left-wing arguments tend, at the root, to be little more than ad hominem attacks, e.g. “You’re racist! Boo. Hiss.”

It wasn’t always this way. Prior to the Great Depression, it was felt that the chaos of capitalism was hopelessly antiquated and needed to be replaced by rational, centralized planning that could not but be more efficient and better directed to benefiting the Greater Good. I am not talking about what shadowy, violent groups like the Bolsheviks thought but what was circulating in mainstream western society. Look at the correspondence between President Teddy Roosevelt (a Republican) and the progressive sci-fi writer H. G. Wells. Roosevelt cheerily agreed with Wells’ centralizing proscriptions. And so it must have seemed to many other respectable figures in the community. In contrast, the counterbalancing forces of the right generally could do little better than appeal to the ancient cords of custom and tradition.

Of course, from the turn of the century to now a lot has happened to discredit rationalized centralized planning. From our various country-sized experiments that people have conducted, we have learned empirically that centralized planning on a large scale doesn’t work. From recent advances in chaos theory and nonlinear dynamics, we have the theoretical foundations to explain why complex adaptive systems like nation states and economies cannot be managed bureaucratically.

In addition, the social revolutions of the 1960’s and the triumph of the new morality have only demonstrated how much heavy lifting customs and traditions (some of which we are scarcely aware of) do (or, more precisely, did) in our society. Try to replace these things with laws and regulations, and the government ends up oscillating between permissive anarchy and zero tolerance authoritarianism.

One of the pet causes of the left back in the good ‘ol days - eugenics (see the disquieting history of Margaret Sanger and her group Planned Parenthood and Tommy Douglas’ MA thesis at McMaster entitled The Problems of the Subnormal Family) - was thoroughly depopularized by the National Socialist German Worker’s Party in the early to mid 1940’s. Many of Planned Parenthood’s solutions that had been adopted in Canada, like enforced sterilization, were quietly dropped once World War II ended. In the 1930’s, the only organized opponents of this policy were Alberta’s evangelical Christians; the sort of people H. L. Mencken called the booboisie. It seems the mystic chords of custom and tradition is good for something after all!

The intervening decades of failure have had the effect of scarring the psyche of today’s leftist. One way this manifests itself is how leftists use anger vs. the way conservatives (and for that matter, everyone else) uses it. We all get angry from time to time, and this is normal - as long as our anger is directed at some negative but concrete circumstance in our lives. For example, American conservatives are very angry about the Democrat’s plans for health care reform (though polling data indicates that many of the opponents are not ideologues of any stripe but rather senior citizens scared that the government is going to start rationing their health care to save money), but it is an anger that is purposeful and directed at a specific source. Very often, the anger of the left isn’t directed at any particular thing but is rather a constant state of mind. On more than a few occasions, leftists proudly even proclaim that they are ‘angry’, without elaborating at what they are angry about. I think this ever-present emotion is a surface manifestation of a deep seated realization that the salad days of their movement are over.

To give a concrete example, Rush Limbaugh pointed out around the time of Obama’s inauguration that even though the left had won everything – the House, the Senate and the Presidency after completely shellacking the GOP – they were still angry, in fact, angrier than conservatives who had just received their biggest electoral drubbing in a generation. I think this is a perceptive comment and while the left likes to characterize Rush as ‘angry’ and ‘spewing hate’ (mostly from quotes taken out of context – hmm, sounds familiar), they cannot explain why he begins his radio show with the proclamation, “I’m having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.” It is an instructive contrast that while he always refers to his optimism about the US and the American people, the left wears their anger like a badge of honour.

 

Relativism and speaking ‘truth’ to power

The whole kafuffle between myself and Canadian Cynic over his fraudulent quotation of me has gotten me asking the following question: why is socialism such a nasty movement? Oh, I know, there are plenty of trolls and thugs in the right, but it seems that the number of goons per capita is much higher on the left side of the spectrum. And what’s more, those that are on the left tend to be respected their more moderate peers while right-wing goons are almost universally shunned by the mainstream right.

I think part of the reason of the disparity is that today’s mainstream, small-c conservatism is a movement designed by and for middle class westerners. These people – with families, jobs, businesses and mortgages – are not the type to dedicate their spare time to ‘activism’ – i.e. name calling and politically motivated violence. As Eric Hoffer has pointed out, the sort of person who is consumed by a political movement tends to be a frustrated ‘artsy’, who looks for intellectual gratification in a political ‘ism’ because he lacks the talent to make good art. These people also lack the worldly responsibilities that can have a moderating effect on behaviour. I think this explains part of the ‘nastiness’ disparity but not all of it.

One of the key intellectual foundations of the left is the idea of relativism. In the first part of the twentieth century, it was moral relativism that predominated. This was the idea that there is no such thing as absolute morality but only relative morality, relative to your class or relative to your status as a superman. Marx and Nietzsche taught this type of relativism and it was one of the root causes of the murder sprees of Communism and National Socialism. The left want to blame all the sins of the Soviet Union on one man - Stalin, but even a cursory examination of some of the bloody-minded quotes from Lenin and Trotsky in the early phases of the Russian Revolution are enough to dispel that excuse. In addition, Stalin can hardly be blamed for China’s Great Leap Forward and the Killing Fields of Cambodia.

But from the mid-twentieth century onwards, a different kind of relativism became dominant in left-wing thought, the relativism of truth. Existentialists like Jean Paul Sartre proclaimed there is no objective reality, only human feelings. Deconstructionists like Jacques Derrida taught that there was no such thing as objective scientific truth – in other words, even the laws of physics are relative depending on who you are socially. This has led to intellectual absurdities like feminist physics. Michel Foucault has taught that truth could only be understood in relation to power.

It is easy to see where this kind of thinking can take you if you really believe this stuff: If even the laws of arithmetic are sexist, then what truth can there be in politics? If there is no truth then all political discussion is by definition propaganda. Therefore lying is moral as long as your motivations are good (i.e. you are a leftist). Getting back to my own case, this is the reason why I believe that when Canadian Cynic is alone by himself at night, in his parent’s basement, he well and truly believes that he didn’t do anything wrong by falsely attributing an incendiary quote to me. This would seem imply that he has a clean conscience, but as William F. Buckley once said, “True corruption is not knowing the difference between right and wrong.”

But that is not what the leftist thinks. He believes that because speaking ‘truth’ to power is such an exalted activity, there is nothing wrong when the truth you speak is a lie.

UPDATE: Judging by the comment section, this post seems to have touched upon a raw nerve. Ouch.

 

 

Why conservatism is right and will triumph in the end

In a recent post I had said, “conservatism is less a dogma than an approach to life, one based on custom and tradition, i.e. the lessons learned from the school of hard knocks.” This is why Mrs Thatcher was able to say, “The facts of life are conservative.” This is also why conservatism will win. To oppose conservatism, you must oppose reality, and if you do that, sooner or later reality will win and you will lose.

The problem with all other ‘isms is that they are derived from abstract principles. And no matter how good the principle, no clearly defined doctrine can explain all the countless facets of human life. Life is just too complex. Some principles are closer to the truth than others. For instance, the laissez faire principle of classical liberalism (i.e. libertarianism) - that he who governs the least governs the best - is a much better governing standard than the principle of socialism – that society should be controlled top-down rationally. This is why classically liberal countries generally fare much better than those ruled by socialists. But even with the principle of freedom, libertarian academicians will sooner or later tie themselves into knots trying to explain away an absurd consequence of this otherwise fine principles. For instance, gun control as a general principle is bad. But if so then shouldn’t Mohammed Atta be allowed to own a backpack nuke? The problem for libertarians is that all principles, even the good ones they hold, have impractical consequences. This fact does not bother conservatives. We simply apply our principles with common sense. For instance, I once read a libertarian who argued with total seriousness that voting in elections was equal to slavery because it was an imposition by the government on the people. A conservative would never say this.

Conservatism has been criticized as lacking a defining principle. This is true, but this is also its strength. However, if it has one principle in common it is that all political, social, ethical and moral principles must conform to the constraints of reality. For instance, what is the common thread behind these conservative principles?

Free markets are better than central planning.

Monetarism is better than Keynesianism.

Saving is better than spending.

People shouldn’t be shielded from the bad consequences of their behaviour.

Work is good.

Democracy is better than authoritarianism.

A constitutional republic is better than a pure democracy.

A legal system should be based on the British common law tradition.

If you want peace you must prepare for war.

War is an unpleasant fact of life that cannot ever be completely done away with; it can only be forestalled by good statecraft backed up with military force.

Private charity works better than welfare.

Giving people money to do nothing rots their character.

A separation of church and state is better than an official religion.

Privately held faith is better than aggressive atheism because religion can have an important regulating effect on individual behaviour.

The traditional family unit is the fundamental building block of society.

Respectable children are most likely to be raised by both parents working together.

Sexual freedom has bad consequences.

Patriotism is an essential glue that holds a society together.

Self-sacrifice needs to be acknowledged, and where possible, rewarded.

Incremental change is generally better than revolution.

Big ideas, especially those freighted with heavy consequences (e.g. ending global warming) must be approached with scepticism and caution.

Mass migration profoundly disturbs the existing order.

Criminals must be punished.

Most social order is regulated by unwritten custom and tradition, not written rules.

What brings these disparate principles together is reality. That is, all of these things have been found to work in real life, i.e. by the school of hard knocks.

While it may be possible for some theoretician to come up with an all-encompassing theory that captures the entire essence of the human experience better than tried and true principles, the smart money bets against this happening.

Take the French Revolution. Many of the ideas leading up to 1789 were very good: the economic liberalism of the physiocrats and the replacement of an absolute monarchy with a constitutional republic, the totalitarian obscurantism of the Church with rationalism and feudalism with equal rights (i.e. equal opportunity). The trouble was that by doing too much at once, the revolutionaries created a whirlwind of chaos instead of progress.

And if the principles of the revolution happen to be bad instead of good, like they were in Russia, then the result is catastrophic. The Russian Revolution was nothing more than large-scale mass murder. It completely lacked any redeeming features.

That is why one should beware of conservative politicians who jettison conservative principles for expediency. It might seem a clever ploy at the time but, in time, reality will rear its head and bite them in the arse. Take Arnold Schwarzenegger. He thought it was politically smart to abandon fiscal conservatism in favour of liberal spending. Now that compound interest is barrelling at him like a freight train, I don’t think he thinks it is such a good idea any more.

This also explains why conservatives are generally antithetical to central power.

Central authorities like ‘grand ideas’ they can apply on a large scale. Hard knock solutions, being bottom-up answers, tend to empower grass roots institutions the most. This is why large corporations are often sympathetic to socialism and big government even though, ‘theoretically’, they should support free markets and oppose government intrusion – ostensibly their worst enemy. When a company is big enough, it finds that it is easier to petition the government than to compete against a competitor.