I promised a series on the dogmas of deep conservatism. The following reflections draw on Arnold Kling’s concise summary.
First principle: Man is fallen.
For a fuller exposition, readers may recall Roman Joch’s oft-repeated lecture The Political Consequences of Original Sin. In his account, man is a creature with a strong tendency toward evil, and the primary mission of the state is to restrain these impulses. In practice, this mission is said to involve three main tasks.
First, the state should support conservative institutions, above all the family and religion—though what precisely counts as “the family” tends to remain somewhat vague within deep conservative thought.
Second, the state should grant maximum freedom to the market. The market, after all, creates an anonymous and unforgiving environment that punishes laziness, idleness, carelessness, and similar human failings. From this perspective, that disciplining function is more important than the market’s efficiency as such. It is striking, however, that this harsh discipline is generally deemed necessary only for the poor. Those born into sufficient wealth are curiously exempt.
Third, the state should wage many wars, thereby restraining the evil inclinations of foreign rulers.
One may reasonably ask whether these neoconservative prescriptions truly follow from the doctrine of original sin. It is entirely possible that the same theological premises could support quite different political conclusions, but that question need not detain us here. What matters is that this framework highlights a fundamental divide between conservatives and socialists.
Socialists tend to believe that human beings are capable of acting well, and that if social institutions were restructured so as to discourage evil behavior and encourage good behavior, the world would be a far better place.
Conservatives, by contrast, are deeply skeptical of appeals to virtue. Encouragement toward the good, they argue, cannot work, because man is corrupt to the core. Only punishment is effective. This way of thinking is also marked by a fear of the human interior. Once people are allowed to follow their tastes, desires, and longings—once they seek their own happiness—the worst is bound to surface. The great advantage of this worldview is that it is never disappointed: it expects nothing but the worst from people, and therefore is never surprised.
What do contemporary social psychology and evolutionary psychology have to say about this? Both fields suggest that the human brain comes equipped with predispositions for altruism, self-sacrifice, and helping behavior. At the same time, it also contains predispositions for aggression and ruthlessness. Which tendencies manifest themselves depends on the individual, the situation, and—crucially—the system of norms and rules within which people operate. In this sense, the conservative view is simply mistaken.
Moreover, we know that positive motivation works better than negative motivation. It works better in the sense that positively motivated individuals perform better, and do so without the constant supervision of a watchful overseer. Here, conservative dogma stands in stark contradiction to empirical reality.
There remains, however, the problem of free riding. If a society establishes conditions under which bad behavior pays better than good behavior, more people will behave badly. Over time, this will shape their character, and the number of bad actors will grow. Eventually, they will even develop a moral code of their own—one that justifies their conduct as virtuous. Thieves will come to see themselves as more moral than honest people. This is precisely what we are witnessing in our own time.
Under such conditions, calls for greater morality are, at best, futile.
Conservatives are therefore right in one important respect: it is essential that rules be enforced in such a way that bad behavior does not pay.
To sum up, the conservative dogma contains a kernel of truth. But it is also a crude simplification, and there is no compelling reason to believe that it leads to better outcomes than the rival dogmas with which it competes.