A Shared Feature, Used By the Twelve Points to Advance Conservative Principles

Francis Bacon, who lived during the 16th and early 17th centuries, was not only one of the leading contributors to the development of the scientific method, but also impacted the development of the law of England.  Among the achievements of his that worked to accomplish this was his creation and publication of certain legal "maxims."  (The advantages of maxims include that they are memorable, that in few words they can have a range of applications for many cases, and that they make it perfectly clear what, generally, their ultimate intended effect is to be.)

The maxims themselves were short and simple, intended to communicate as much information as possible at once.  However, Bacon knew how other, older maxims (of which many were from Rome) had been misinterpreted: by construing them to have a more limited application than intended, or by reading so many exceptions into certain rules that they lost most of their effect, or by construing them to have a far-reaching effect, alien to the true meaning of the maxim, people could prevent unobjectionable or important rules from having the positive impact that they were meant to have.

Rather than opting instead for complex and impenetrable blocks of text, however, Bacon chose to make a list of maxims, accompanied by exposition that explained their effect, combining the clarity and memorability of the maxims with the definiteness and detail of longer documents.

Of his plan for the maxims, Bacon wrote: "Lastly, there is one point above the rest, I accompt the most materiall for making these reasons indeed profitable and instructing, which is, that they be not set down alone, like short darke Oracles, which every man will be content still to allow to bee true, but in the meane time they give little light or direction; but I have attended them, a matter not practiced, no not in the Civill law to any purpose; and for want whereof indeed, the rules are but as proverbes, and many times plaine fallacies, with a cleere and perspicuous exposition, breaking them into cases, and opening them with distinctions, & somtimes shewing the reasons above whereupon they depend, and the affinity they have with other rules."

When I read this, I found it interesting, and also relevant to the Twelve Points.  There have been many documents released containing conservative principles, this year.  (Whether any of them were begun as early as the Winter of 2007 - 2008, or formed out of a shorter document from early 2003, I do not know.)  Some of these are focused solely on specific applications of conservative principles (or alleged conservative principles): on specific policy proposals.  These have their uses, but they have no application other than in the proposing of their proposals, and they certainly have no long-term guidance to offer the conservative movement, or to conservatives who are not active in the movement.  Other documents, like the proverbs referenced by Bacon as being "like short, dark oracles," are capable of applying in nearly any case someone might want to use them.  It is impossible to disagree with them, because they can be construed to include any exception and divergent applications.  As a result, it is possible that they are useful in rallying conservatives and uniting conservatives behind "conservative" candidates in an important election year, but they cannot win over those self-described "conservatives" who have embraced hostile, patently erroneous, or counterproductive and time-wasting views or views that are contrary to the basis of our philosophy.  They also cannot help to reconcile the warring constituencies of conservatives, whose differences, as reasonable as they may be, will necessarily prevent us from uniting in actual policy until we find a way to make them compatible.  Such documents, if they produce unity among conservatives, can produce only superficial unity.

The Twelve Points were written to avoid both of these outcomes.  They are not so dedicated to specific policies that they provide no guidance of broader applicability (or that they ignore the underlying philosophy of conservatism).  They were, however, written with enough specificity and exposition that their leading points could not easily be warped through misconstruction and creation of convenient exceptions to avoid the effect of the rules.  For example, while it is easy to convince people to support "Liberty" and the "Constitution," the Twelve Points use the most pointed terms available to state, among other things, that true support for Liberty and the Constitution is not the invoking of their names, or the capitalization of their names, and that support for them is a pretense unless it requires us to think about them and understand them, to support them in practice, and to recognize that defending them sometimes involves allowing people to do things that we do not want them to do, and, sometimes, that we will even have to defend such people in their right to act in ways that we would not.  Another example of this exposition is where the Twelve Points explain, substantially, the operation of those rules and how we can recognize the valid exceptions to the rules (including to the right to liberty), discouraging people from making up their own invalid, all-purpose exceptions.  Finally, the Twelve Points attempt to explain the reasoning behind the accepted doctrines of conservatism (which have been reduced to a low-resolution form, in many cases, as they have been squeezed into sound-bites and slogans and communicated primarily in that form), placing them back on their original, solid intellectual foundation.  The larger rules and themes are stated, of course -- they are the points of the Twelve Points -- but the supporting ideas, in 165 sub-points, reinforce and insulate those main points, protecting them from the forces that have taken such a toll on popular conservatism.

It is not entirely clear to me whether this plan worked for Bacon, but it will work for the Twelve Points.

Reagan

This is a well-known quote from President Reagan, but it isn't always quoted at length, and the source is not always given.  I remember even finding people online who questioned whether President Reagan ever said it.  (I found it on page 38 of "A Time For Choosing," a book published by Regnery Gateway in the early 1980s.)

"In this land occurred the only true revolution in man's history.  All other revolutions simply exchanged one set of rulers for another.  Here for the first time the Founding Fathers--that little band of men so advanced beyond their time that the world has never seen their like since--evolved a government based on the idea that you and I have God-given right and ability within ourselves to determine our own destiny.  Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction--we didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream.  It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States when men were free."

Reagan said something similar when he was inaugurated as Governor of California:

"Perhaps you and I have lived with this miracle too long to be properly appreciative.  Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction.  It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people.  Those who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again.  Knowing this, it is hard to explain those who even today would question the people's capacity for self-rule.  Will they answer this: if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?"

When Malice Is Popular

"As to the opinion of the people, which some think, in such cases, is to be implicitly obeyed; near two year's tranquility, which followed the act, and its instant imitation in Ireland, proved abundantly that the late horrible spirit was, in a great measure the effect of insidious art, and perverse industry, and gross misrepresentation."

"… When we know, that the opinions of even the greatest multitudes, are the standard of rectitude, I shall think myself obliged to make those opinions the masters of my conscience.  But it may be doubted whether Omnipotence itself is competent to alter the essential constitution of right and wrong, sure I am, that such things, as they and I, are possessed of no such power.   No man carries further than I do the policy of making government pleasing to the people.  But the widest range of this politic complaisance is confined within the limits of justice. I would not only consult the interest of the people, but I would cheerfully gratify their humours.  We are all a sort of children, that must be soothed and managed. I think I am not austere or formal in my nature.   I would bear, I would even myself play my part in, any innocent buffooneries, to divert them. But I will never act the tyrant for their amusement.   If they will mix malice in their sports, I shall never consent to throw them any living, sentient, creature whatsoever, no not so much as a kitling, to torment."

-Edmund Burke

The Good Must Associate

"In a connexion, the most inconsiderable man, by adding to the weight of the whole, has his value, and his use; out of it, the greatest talents are wholly unserviceable to the publick.   No man, who is not inflamed by vain-glory into enthusiasm, can flatter himself that his single, unsupported, desultory, unsystematic endeavours are of power to defeat the subtle designs and united cabals of ambitious citizens.   When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

"It is not enough in a situation of trust in the commonwealth, that a man means well to his country; it is not enough that in his single person he never did an evil act, but always voted according to his conscience, and even harrangued against every design which he apprehended to be prejudicial to the interests of his country.   This innoxious and ineffectual character, that seems formed upon a plan of apology and disculpation, falls miserably short of the mark of public duty.  That duty demands and requiress, that what is right should not only be made known, but made prevalent; that what is evil should not only be detected, but defeated.  When the public man omits to put himself in a situation of doing his duty with effect, it is an omission that frustrates the purposes of his trust almost as much as if he had formally betrayed it. It is surely no very rational account of a man's life, that he has always acted right; but has taken special care, to act in such a manner that his endeavours could not possibly be productive of any consequence."

-Edmund Burke

Emphasis Added, Obviously; It Is From A Speech

John Quincy Adams, and then Karl Born, on the states and the union

"Is it not strange again that it appears not to have been perceived by any one at that time that the whole of this controversy arose out of a departure from the principles of the Declaration of Independence, and the substitution of state sovereignty instead of the constituent sovereignty of the people, as the foundation of the Revolution and of the Union.  The war from the beginning had been, and yet was, a revolutionary popular war.  The colonial governments never had possessed or pretended to claim sovereign power.  Many of them had not even yet constituted themselves as independent States.  The Declaration of Independence proclaims the natural rights of man, and the constituent power of the people to be the only sources of legitimate government. State sovereignty is a mere argument of power, without regard to right — a mere reproduction of the omnipotence of the British parliament in another form, and therefore not only inconsistent with, but directly in opposition to, the principles of the Declaration of Independence." -John Quincy Adams, April 30, 1839

It is difficult for a person to quote a passage of any real length, on this kind of topic, without including material that he disagrees with.  Nevertheless, I have posted this quote because it helps to express an idea that I want my fellow conservatives and libertarians to consider: that though the "several states" of the United States have an important constitutional role and powers guaranteed to them by the United States Constitution -- a role and powers that they ought to keep or resume -- describing these by using the term "states' rights" is a mistake, and it would have been a mistake even if that term had not been associated with racism, discrimination, and injustice (due to its use in defense of policies associated with racism, discrimination, and injustice).

States do and should have, or were meant to have, definite and extensive legal rights.  However, they do not have those "rights" for their own sakes as legally-constructed, inorganic corporate entities; any rights that they have, they have for the benefit of the people within their borders.  Those powers and jurisdictions that they were meant to have were not reserved for them by our federal Constitution because states are necessarily more trustworthy, wise, humane, or just than a federal government tends to be; that authority was reserved for a combination of political and practical reasons, including the benefits of certain types of division themselves: the division into separate states making it unnecessary for every part of the union to have the same laws and government in every respect (in areas of law and government where the interests of effective government -- in its proper role -- and justice did not require uniformity throughout the union, and likely would have been difficult to establish) and the division between the state and federal governments allowing voters to elect different officials to address different types of subject-matter.

There was nothing sacred or inevitable about the state borders as they froze around the time of the Revolutionary War (over the relatively short course of their existence, the colonies were founded with highly variable forms of government and were then consolidated, broken apart, sometimes recombined, and occasionally fundamentally altered in their form of government; several of our current states were, in 1776, considered a part of other states), and there is nothing about the collections of individuals that those borders happen to contain at various times that gives them a greater right to govern themselves than Americans possess together.

There is a proper reason for conservatives to advocate federalism, of course, and it is the reason that I would prefer to hear conservatives use: the Supreme Law of the Land, our Constitution, guarantees it, and it is in the interest of the people of the United States to maintain it.

A Referral

Spend a little time over here, learning about conservatism.