I was in Half Price Books today, and for whatever reason every hipster in town seemed to be there. I am told those disks people put in their earlobes are called “gauges”, and there were a lot of them. I could certainly be mistaken, but in general I don’t think there would be much use asking people like that their politics. I’ve met pot smoking conservatives (who usually self identify as libertarians) but no true conservative hippies.
And I was thinking about it: in general, I associate bookstores with leftists (again, I reserve the word Liberal for people whose main aim is protecting liberty). Why is this, I wondered?
And as I thought about it, it occurred to me that conservatives know what they believe. They have a consistent worldview, that really doesn’t change with the latest study or poll. They tend to believe in the Bible, limited government, the importance of family and marriage, the right to keep and bear arms, etc. Most of them could write their core beliefs on a poster on the wall, and not find them significantly changed 50 years later.
For example, take the following from William Boetcker, first penned in 1916:
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.
You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatreds.
You cannot establish security on borrowed money.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man’s initiative and independence.
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.
Let me say I had posted that on my wall at age 16, and was now 94. Could I not still believe it? Would I have had to alter any of those beliefs in the interim?
Good principles are eternal, even though their time-delineated iteration may differ: this is foundational Conservatism.
Leftists do not think like this. Being “modern”, they depend for their worldviews on science, and “science” changes constantly both for valid and corrupt reasons. When someone says to eat soy, they eat soy. When someone says to stop eating soy, they stop. When someone says the Earth is warming, they vote to get rid of 100 watt lightbulbs. If and when those same people say they were wrong, we will get them back.
And they have to spend a lot of time reading since they are incomplete. They don’t know who they are. They “know” they are the good ones, who want to help the poor, minorities, the Earth, animals, women, and everyone else who is “oppressed”. They are just not always sure why and how. They need to be told. They have to spend a lot of time synchronizing amongst themselves.
I would suspect leftists DO read more books than conservatives. They have to. The reality is that core realities about the human condition really don’t change. The core elements of politics and economics don’t change.
Thus, they are the only ones who listen when someone “proves” that you CAN in fact strengthen the weak by weakening the strong; or that you CAN help small men by tearing down big men; or that you CAN help the poor by destroying the rich.
As I see it, conformity to the herd, and conformity to principle are the only two options, and only one of them is suitable for a free and dignified nation. Yes, conformity to principle is a conformity to tradition–that of Rationalism–but that is the only human tradition which has enabled sustainable self governance and freedom amidst a multiplicity of worldviews, and in radically changing circumstances.