Tampa-ring with conservatism

If conservatism is to be a positive political force in the 21st century, it will be because it is at its root far less an ideology than a disposition. Russell Kirk, the prophet of American conservatism, described it, in fact, as the negation of ideology; a state of mind, a type of character, a way of looking at the civil social order, a deference to the historic continuity of experience as a better guide to policy than abstract designs.

There should, of course, be a little of the ideologue in each of us. Progress rarely comes except that people start with an idea about it. But in everyone's political wardrobe, alongside the Che t-shirt and the Mao suit, there also should hang at least one tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows. "The mob can never rebel," as G.K. Chesterton said, "unless it is conservative, at least enough to have conserved some reasons for rebelling." We should acknowledge and embrace that inner conservative, the spirit that informs us that even the most vehement philosophers have the entirely human tendency to sit at the same table at the same café. Our inner conservative reminds us that we prepare best for the future by paying respect to the past. It reminds us to not throw the baby out with the bath water.

The willingness of senior government ministers a year ago to believe asylum seekers would throw their own babies out was but one of an increasing number of signs pointing to a crisis in this country in, if not conservatism, then at least the clichés of conservatism, the ones propagated through the simplistic language of national parliamentary discourse.

What labels Peter Reith and Philip Ruddock would wish to have hung on them in the history books I do not know; something other than "recidivist liar" and "heartless trigger boy", I suppose. But John Howard at one stage laid claim to being the most conservative leader of the Liberal Party since Robert Menzies. Few have sought to disagree. Never mind the fact that his mix of social and political conservation with an economic agenda of radical market reform represents a fundamental philosophical inconsistency; he has the upward sweep of his eyebrows and the same holiday spot to support his claim. Opposition Leader Kim Beazley obligingly called him at the end of the last Parliament "the most considerable conservative politician of his generation". But if that is the case, then conservatism is in as bad a way in Australia as "progressive" politics.

For conservatism is only as good as what it conserves. Friedrich Hayek observed in his 1960 book The Constitution of Liberty that conservatism in Europe had tended toward the perpetuation of the aristocratic order, while in the United States it had tended to support institutions that happened to be fundamentally liberal. Hayek therefore chose not to regard himself a conservative at all; to avoid all confusion, he described himself as "an Old Whig", along the lines of Edmund Burke.

Burke's own standing in modern conservative thought is acknowledged by Kirk in his 10 principles of conservatism, the articles of belief he regarded as reflecting the emphases of modern conservatives. "Burke agrees with Plato that in the statesman prudence is chief among virtues," Kirk wrote. "Any public measure ought to be judged by its probable long-run consequences, not merely by temporary advantage or popularity. Human society being complex, remedies cannot be simple if they are to be efficacious. The conservative declares that he acts only after sufficient reflection, having weighed the consequences."

I do not know if Kirk numbered his principles in order of importance but he put the principle of prudence fourth, after the principle of prescription (Modern people are dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants, able to see farther than our ancestors only because of the stature of those who have preceded us in time) and before the principle of variety (The only true form of equality is before a just court of law; all other attempts at levelling must lead, at best, to social stagnation).

The principle of prudence suggests a conservative should, on being told at the beginning of a khaki election campaign that boat people have thrown their children into the water, proceed with caution. The conservative, knowing the family to be the building-block of society, should be unwilling to believe the worst of people without proof. The conservative, appreciating the imperfectability of humanity, should recognise that such desperate actions, even if they occurred, might be open to interpretation, particularly in the context of a much longer event. The conservative would want evidence before taking to the airwaves with hardline denunciations that rendered asylum seekers as less human than himself.

This, alas, was not the approach the most considerable conservative politician of his generation took in October and November last year. Then, Howard seemed a willing enough player with Reith and Ruddock in their act of the three blithe monkeys, hearing only what they wanted to hear, seeing only what they wanted to see and saying only what they wanted to say.

A more considered conservative government might have controlled the moral tail-spin into which they headed in the heat of the election-campaign moment by expeditiously moving, in light of the evidence coming to hand, to correct the error and close the story down, probably coming out no worse for it in the polls; instead, the Howard crew decided to hide behind the lame defence that there was a bad telephone connection or a crossed line or something but everyone really did act on good faith.

Kirk's first principle of conservatism is belief in an enduring moral order. "That order is made for man, and man is made for it; human nature is a constant, and moral truths are permanent," Kirk wrote. "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 honour, will be a good society."

There is, unfortunately, little regard for this principle in Howard's argument that the "key issue" is "whether the original statements was based on advice properly given and whether at any stage he was told that original advice was wrong". The basis of his defence seems to be that it is good enough to accept a lie so long as the truth isn't banged over your head. Truth is not something to seek. Being right and honourable is just something that comes with the job title.

So long as he wasn't doing anything Nixonesque like having all his conversations secretly taped, Howard might be confident no-one will contradict his claim of ignorance. Certainly none of the political advisers, kept on the payroll when the backwash from this affair should have seen their careers washed up, have much incentive to publicly disagree.

But the boat of Howard the substantial conservative has been holed below the water line, and by his own hand. There is something wrong in this picture of an ostensibly conservative Prime Minister taking succour in admissions that some of the most significant institutions of the state are rotten; that the bureaucracy cannot be relied upon to provide frank and fearless advice, and that the heads of the public service and the defence forces are incapable of distinguishing fiction from fact unless they get authorised confirmation from the correct channels and a PowerPoint presentation.

The government's spin on the events of the last election campaign was a novel translation of politics as the art of the possible; but it was a most vulgar rendering that missed the conservative's mark. For conservatism, the possible is not whatever you can get away with but defined by the potentialities and limitations of human nature, defending order, justice and freedom.

There used to be, or so it seemed, more of such an overt conservative ethic in Australia, a general consensus of belief based on principles compounded in the crucible of Cold War politics. Facing off against Marxist materialism, in whose moral realm the ends justified the means, those of the conservative ilk defended the institutions of a free society of freedom of political and economic association, the spirit of individual enterprise and the extension of the democratic impulse through representative, accountable government. But more than anything else, they defended a way of going about things, an approach that emphasised caution, the primacy of first principles, a deference to the lessons of the past and a sense always that civilisation is furthered by taking a long-term view and adhering to fundamental moral laws.

It is said that all civilisations die from within, corrupted by their own success; they grow rotten at the core long before they are susceptible to external attack. This may also be true of conservatism as a political force in Australia. While politicians who fly the conservative banner maintain the white-picket fence, their house is being white-anted.