Conservative Home on "proper conservatives" vs. "The Economist"
I usually enjoy reading "The Economist" even though I often disagree with it. Particularly when it endorses left wing candidates in elections.
There is a fascinating "Heresy of the week" piece on Conservative Home today which examines and critiques why the Economist magazine might be tempted to do so, which you can read here.
I can't find a signature on the article but from discussions I had with him thirty years ago when we were both students I recognise the philosophy as very distinctively either that of Paul Goodman (now editor of Conservative Home) or someone who thinks very, very much like him.
The article includes a fascinating attempt to define what a "proper conservative" is - as someone who believes that
"humanity is fallible in every respect"
and that
"Only conservatism – true conservatism, that is – sees that the flaws in human nature compromise everything that we do and think. This is a hard truth to accept, which is why almost all of us carve out exceptions and place them on a pedestal they don’t deserve."
There is at least one problem with the analysis the author of the Conservative Home article derives from this - there appears to be an unspoken implicit assumption that "proper conservatives" as defined above will be at least to some extent socially conservative and economically liberal.
In my own case this doesn't apply because I would count as a "proper conservative" by the above definition - I agree with the statements in bold above - but my "political compass" type scores are consistently "bottom right" e.g. both economically and socially liberal.
This is because my distrust of flawed humanity leads me to want to place limits on the powers of any human authority because I do not trust such authorities, either in the economic or social sphere, with unlimited power to tell other people what to do.
There is a fascinating "Heresy of the week" piece on Conservative Home today which examines and critiques why the Economist magazine might be tempted to do so, which you can read here.
I can't find a signature on the article but from discussions I had with him thirty years ago when we were both students I recognise the philosophy as very distinctively either that of Paul Goodman (now editor of Conservative Home) or someone who thinks very, very much like him.
The article includes a fascinating attempt to define what a "proper conservative" is - as someone who believes that
"humanity is fallible in every respect"
and that
"Only conservatism – true conservatism, that is – sees that the flaws in human nature compromise everything that we do and think. This is a hard truth to accept, which is why almost all of us carve out exceptions and place them on a pedestal they don’t deserve."
There is at least one problem with the analysis the author of the Conservative Home article derives from this - there appears to be an unspoken implicit assumption that "proper conservatives" as defined above will be at least to some extent socially conservative and economically liberal.
In my own case this doesn't apply because I would count as a "proper conservative" by the above definition - I agree with the statements in bold above - but my "political compass" type scores are consistently "bottom right" e.g. both economically and socially liberal.
This is because my distrust of flawed humanity leads me to want to place limits on the powers of any human authority because I do not trust such authorities, either in the economic or social sphere, with unlimited power to tell other people what to do.
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