Really? Zero? Looking only at losses, sure, that seems to make sense, but look around—broader than that.
“There is still good in the world, Mr. Frodo.”
Why is that good still there? Is it because its enemy is faint or doesn't want to destroy it? Have things suddenly stopped falling apart? No. When Mordor kept gaining ground, despite the efforts of its resistance, did the resistance thereby conserve nothing? No. They conserved all that was left.
To anyone not drowning masochistically in newspaper headlines, much much good remains today, including much of the long‑inherited good that conservatives love. Had the likes of Kamala or Clinton encountered no resistance, much of it would be gone.
Now, I’m not praising political conservatives. I’m only saying there’s this thing, the long‑inherited good. It’s neither the novel good nor the inherited bad. And much of its endurance is due to those who love it: conservatives. Yes, conservatives can do much better. I did a podcast episode on that with @iowancapreborn, so I agree. But so what? Thinking it means they’ve conserved nothing only means someone is dwelling on the losses.
Penjammin grew up in a labyrinthine cavern. Later he ran with the wolves and lived every moment marinated in the sweet scent of his game, until pirates landed and… See About for full story, and get his eletter at penjams.com/subscribe.
This is a bit of my episode with Iowancap in which we discuss how Libertarianism might be served by considering how various schools of ethics relate. Hear the whole episode below. Enjoy. -P
Penjammin: I was just reading For a New Liberty by Rothbard, and his last chapter is a strategy for liberty . . . He makes one caveat in there that I thought was really fascinating and perhaps a little controversial, which is really what you're saying. The idea that– well, a conservative in Congress might prefer some sort of a policy compromise or a trade where they get a little bit of this, a little bit for that. Whereas a libertarian who might want agree with the conservative on the boon, you know, that's to be had (maybe lower taxes or something), but they won't also say, “okay, but for this, what we're going to do is we're going to introduce a new act of aggression by Washington, DC against the people.” I'm not going to positively support that. I'm going to hold principle. The goal is always not to be incrementalist or gradualist, but to have the whole thing now. But with that hope, you know, firmly in place, there's you accept gains as they come. You're not going to tell them no. But he always had that caveat. It's like, “but I'm not going to vote positively against my principles. I will accept gradual movement towards them, but I will not vote against them.” . . .
Iowancap: Yet, I think there there is also an idea where, sometimes you do go for less bad. Sometimes that is the move. I think. In fact, I suddenly realized, Pen, that this all worked out perfectly because I realized that it was that phrase that I told you that I really loved, that you said, that actually launched all this thinking for me.
Penjammin: Okay.
Iowancap: And that is when I saw it, it was in a in a group chat, I saw that you made the statement: The means must be worthy of the ends.
Penjammin: Yeah.
Iowancap: And I think that is really what I'm talking about. Yes, we should keep in mind the ends. We need to keep the goals in mind. And, we shouldn't live purely principally and say, “but let's not look at what works. Let's not look at strategy, let's not look at tactics. Let's not look at reality.” At the same time, we have to always keep our principles in mind because if the means are not worthy of the ends, then you could start asking the question: “Are we really going where we think we're going?”
Penjammin: Yeah.
Iowancap: Especially as a Christian, I think that's very important because obedience to the law of God, obedience to the gospel and to Christ's commands, that is ultimately a winning strategy, even if short term it is not.
Penjammin: Right. I mean, we've already won.
Iowancap: And so I think that's really where this whole tension of principles and strategy is so important. Yeah, let's look for strategic ways to get the gospel to go out. Let's look for strategic ways to accomplish and to carve out the freedom to do the work that the church needs to do. And yet, if we at any point find ourselves going against the law of God with a sort of ends justify the means sort of mentality, then– if the means are not worthy of the ends, then we should question whether or not the means are actually going to get us to the ends that we think we're going toward.
Penjammin: Yes, because that's how you trapped. I think when you play the game, you get played by the game. It doesn't work in the long run. And, that's how I think about third-party voting as well. But I'll leave that for another time.
Penjammin grew up in a labyrinthine cavern. Later he ran with the wolves and lived every moment marinated in the sweet scent of his game, until pirates landed and… See About for full story, and get his eletter at penjams.com/subscribe.
This is a bit of my episode with Iowancap in which we discuss Trump and conservatism. Hear the whole episode below. Enjoy. -P
Iowancap: At the Flyover Libertarian, which is the parent podcast, I guess you could say of The Anarchist Bible Study. On that show, we did an episode 23, Trump is a bad conservative is the title of it, but we kind of generally talked about conservatism broadly. And Penjammin, when we talked about getting him on the live stream tonight, he said he wanted to talk a little bit about what I said on that. I think that's what you were saying, right?
Penjammin: Yeah because I'm, you know, just such a bad fan that I haven't got to watch it yet. So now, if I have you here personally, I can get the scoop straight from the horse's mouth or whatever. It's an interesting subject to me in general, so I'd love to hear what your thoughts were.
Iowancap: Yeah. Just to give a brief kind of overview of that (and I recommend any anyone who wants to hear more to go over to The Flyover Libertarian podcast on — well, pretty much any app that you find, the anarchist Bible study, so whatever you're listening to this on or watching this on, go find the flyover libertarian on that same platform and watch episode 23 or listen to episode 23) — kind of the overview is we started by talking about how Trump had put up a page with his achievements, and we looked at that page and asked, so how many of these things are really things that . . . classical conservatism would really be excited about? And we said there's not a lot. But really, it got into some of my concerns, I guess, with conservatism in general . . . and ways in which I think libertarianism can help conservatism to be better.
Penjammin grew up in a labyrinthine cavern. Later he ran with the wolves and lived every moment marinated in the sweet scent of his game, until pirates landed and… See About for full story, and get his eletter at penjams.com/subscribe.
Often, I see my takes as not only conservative, but super conservative. Other conservatives may disagree from time to time, but that seems due to their accepting the compromise of yester year. Let me explain.
There's this article I read long ago: Why True Conservatism Means Anarchy by Alexander William Salter. The article ended with this line: “[T]he state is constitutionally hostile to conservatism. For the sake of preserving ordered liberty and protecting inherited faith and folkways, conservatives should reject the state’s legitimacy. Failure to do so is fighting a war on the enemy’s terms.”
Salter sees conservativeness as more of a preservation-orientation than a creed. This frees him up to sort inherited wheat from chaff. He makes two points regarding the modern state: (1) that it is a relatively new institution and (2) that conservatives, in defending the state, make a concession to the left of yore- something that they should draw from rather than concede. He explains: “The polylegal system of the High Middle Ages, in which the authority of kings, local nobility, trade guilds, free cities, and the Roman Catholic Church competed and often checked the abuses of each other, is an important example and one that should be of obvious interest to conservatives.” How many present-day institutions revered by conservatives (but not by anarchists) are compromises to leftists of long ago?
Well, to Salter, governing institutions need not include the pretended monopoly of legitimate force of the state. He also argues that such a monopoly makes the state particularly useful to anti-conservatives because those of a small exogenous culture might find forced influence of the common folk from on top to be easier than persuasion. And, well, there's more in the article: Why True Conservatism Means Anarchy over at theamericanconservative.com.
Penjammin grew up in a labyrinthine cavern. Later he ran with the wolves and lived every moment marinated in the sweet scent of his game, until pirates landed and… See About for full story, and get his eletter at penjams.com/subscribe.
This is an excerpt from my interview with Dr. Brad Birzer in which we discuss the definition of conservatism. -P
Penjammin: Let's talk about mischaracterizations, what conservatism is and what it's not. So we've kind of been looking at [conservatism] from a bunch of different angles. I was kind of trying to identify the thing and then try to analyze it, see what it is that makes it conservative and what's more accidental. Now let's try to do some contrast. What is conservative accused of being, compared to what it is?
Brad: Yeah, I think the biggest thing, and this would be in terms of conservatism as well as libertarianism, I think the biggest criticism is that we're selfish, that we're only thinking about the self and we're not thinking about others. And to me, when we look at everything from the American founding all the way up to Russell Kirk, we're really looking at our relations with one another. So it's not just Brad and Pen. It is two human beings who are interacting with one another, and we bring out the best hope in one another. That's what we're trying to do. So when I engage my daughters or I engage my students, I'm not trying to make them little Brad's. I'm trying to make them who and what they were meant to be . . . We make them better for what they are meant to be, which either God or nature (or both probably) has defined.
Penjammin grew up in a labyrinthine cavern. Later he ran with the wolves and lived every moment marinated in the sweet scent of his game, until pirates landed and… See About for full story, and get his eletter at penjams.com/subscribe.
