Andrew Sullivan is my blogfather; it was reading his original blog back in early February of 2002 that prompted me to start Shot In The Dark.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I stopped reading Sully about the time that Gay Marriage became the Most Important Issue Ever to him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But a decidedly non-conservative friend of mine<\/a> sent me this piece<\/a>, in which Sullivan asks conservatives which of (what he deems, largely correctly I think, to be) the ten overarching first principles of conservatism to which they adhere.<\/p>\n He follows the piece with a poll asking for people to check off which of the principles they adhere to.\u00a0 Of course, that’s way too simplistic – the deeper answers are much more interesting, I think.<\/p>\n So let’s try it both ways.\u00a0 I took the poll.\u00a0 And I’m going to try to go for the real <\/em>answers, too:<\/p>\n SULLIVAN:\u00a0 The conservative believes that there exists an enduring moral order<\/strong>. That order is made for man, and man is made for it: human nature is a constant, and moral truths are permanent. … A society in which men and women are governed by belief in an enduring moral order, by a strong sense of right and wrong, by personal convictions about justice and honor, will be a good society\u2014whatever political machinery it may utilize; while a society in which men and women are morally adrift, ignorant of norms, and intent chiefly upon gratification of appetites, will be a bad society\u2014no matter how many people vote and no matter how liberal its formal constitution may be.<\/p>\n SULLIVAN:\u00a0 The conservative adheres to custom, convention, and continuity<\/strong>. … Conservatives are champions of custom, convention, and continuity because they prefer the devil they know to the devil they don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n SULLIVAN:\u00a0 Conservatives believe in what may be called the principle of prescription<\/strong>. Conservatives sense that modern people are dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, able to see farther than their ancestors only because of the great stature of those who have preceded us in time. Therefore conservatives very often emphasize the importance of prescription\u2014that is, of things established by immemorial usage, so that the mind of man runneth not to the contrary. There exist rights of which the chief sanction is their antiquity\u2014including rights to property, often. … The individual is foolish, but the species is wise, Burke declared. In politics we do well to abide by precedent and precept and even prejudice, for the great mysterious incorporation of the human race has acquired a prescriptive wisdom far greater than any man\u2019s petty private rationality.<\/p>\n SULLIVAN:\u00a0 Conservatives are guided by their principle of prudence<\/strong>. … Any public measure ought to be judged by its probable long-run consequences, not merely by temporary advantage or popularity. Liberals and radicals, the conservative says, are imprudent: for they dash at their objectives without giving much heed to the risk of new abuses worse than the evils they hope to sweep away. …<\/p>\n SULLIVAN:\u00a0 The only true forms of equality are equality at the Last Judgment and equality before a just court of law<\/strong>; all other attempts at levelling must lead, at best, to social stagnation.<\/p>\n SULLIVAN:\u00a0 Human nature suffers irremediably from certain grave faults<\/strong>, the conservatives know. Man being imperfect, no perfect social order ever can be created. … All that we reasonably can expect is a tolerably ordered, just, and free society, in which some evils, maladjustments, and suffering will continue to lurk. … The ideologues who promise the perfection of man and society have converted a great part of the twentieth-century world into a terrestrial hell.<\/p>\n\n
\n
\n
\n
\n