Conservatism - the home for grown up libertarians

 Although you can't, of course, use the actual word 'conservatism':

Many of the failures of today’s America are failures of excess regulation, but many others are failures of state capacity. Our governments cannot address climate change, much improve K-12 education, fix traffic congestion, or improve the quality of their discretionary spending. Much of our physical infrastructure is stagnant or declining in quality. I favor much more immigration, nonetheless I think our government needs clear standards for who cannot get in, who will be forced to leave, and a workable court system to back all that up and today we do not have that either. Those problems require state capacity — albeit to boost markets — in a way that classical libertarianism is poorly suited to deal with. Furthermore, libertarianism is parasitic upon State Capacity Libertarianism to some degree.

This (and the rest of Tyler Cowan's article) describes what I'd call 'institutional conservatism' - if you want to maintain an effective system not only should it be allowed to evolve but it needs to be well managed. What's happened is that essentially liberal-minded people have realised, as Cowan comments, how "...it doesn’t seem that old-style libertarianism can solve or even very well address a number of major problems...". Cowan cites climate change (where a common libertarian response is simply to deny it) but, more importantly in my view, we should look at how the sociological evidence around social infrastructure, communities and families all leads away from a hyper-liberal approach and towards conservatism.

What's important here is that, unlike (almost all) the left, we need to begin with recognising that markets and capitalism remain an essential part of the solution to problems such as climate change but also need what Cowan calls 'state capacity' to ensure social outcomes - from good public transport and nuclear power through to welfare and health safety nets - are secured.

My instincts are impeccably liberal and I don't consider that government should be the first choice for delivering any service but it seems clear that the social damage done by ultra-liberalism requires intervention - from the growth of loneliness and the collapse of the working class family through to violent crime and class bias in educational outcomes there's a case for government to act in the interests of the working person rather than simply to follow the liberal, utility maximising imperative.

I've long thought that, to oversimplify, economics is liberal while sociology is conservative (and the academy for both of them is filled with socialists). And that the division in national priorities flickers between an emphasis on community, family, security - the conservative instinct - and one on growth, progress, wealth - the liberal preference. Moreover, conservatism is the only practical politics able, at its best, to marry these imperatives in a lasting manner. Sadly conservatives, especially in the USA, have become bogeymen to intellectuals - self-interested plutocrats or rednecks with bad teeth and guns. The former is conservatism as the merely the rich preserving their interests while the latter is a modern urban snobbery about those less well-educated folk outside the city.

Rampant liberalism, the 'Thatcherism' that great lady never believed in that young men with cash and good suits brashly proclaim, has damaged the idea of conservatism as much as has the endemic infections of reaction, racism and small-mindedness. Even if burning fifty quid notes in front of the homeless is a bit of a myth, the sentiment - that the poor are solely responsible for their poverty and for getting out of that poverty - remains too common. Just like absolutist approaches to individual choice (witness the trans ID debate), this hyper-liberal idea is a corruption of decency, moderation and good sense. Plus it denies duty, responsibility and community as central parts of our worlds.

So if you've read Tyler Cowan's "state capacity libertarianism" and find its argument persuasive, I'd like to welcome you to conservatism, to a world of compromise, consensus and good government. Then you can join in making better policy for the families and communities that make up the societies in which we live - get them better lives, safer communities and (as Tom T Hall would say) more money.

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