Friday, January 21, 2005
Conservatism, Technology, and Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg' National Review column today has his usual, and entertaining, style of tying together an important idea with trivial pop culture references. The pop culture reference is a comparison of the college movies Old School and Animal House. I will ignore that important debate.
His philosophic idea is a short discussion of technology, change, and conservatism. Conservatism is a project in which the traditional persuasions are challenged by the love of freedom. At least that is the dichotomy of the American strain of the movement. Goldberg never seems to delineate the fact that American conservatism is far different from European conservatism. He may find that this would challenge his love of Edmund Burke or he may just not feel that it is an unimportant point.
But the difference is important because American conservatism is a project that defends the ideas of the Constitution, which strictly speaking are an early variant of what is now known as classical liberalism. By protecting our freedoms, natural society will develop, well naturally. So American conservatism is a political project. And as a political project it should not use the government to oppose the development of the vast majority of technologies and the social change they create (birth control), but that it should oppose social change by government fiat (i.e. gay marriage legalized by judges and not be legislatures.) The conservative tactically accepts Hayek's point (Dough! A European.) that society will evolve spontaneously when not coerced.
Which leads to Goldberg's examples of technologies that have damaged our social fabric: Cars, the birth control pill, the Internet, and television. While there is a lot of truth in his point, his example sows the seeds of his argument's destruction. The newest technology with the biggest impact is the Internet. But the Internet is not destroying the fabric of society as much as it is mending it. Thousands of people online have reached out and found friendships and interests through their computers. Yahoo! Groups, The Dean campaign, MoveOn.org, the blogosphere, EBay, and countless personalized homepages have created connections between people who may never have met. And these connections are the basic building blocks of communities that will develop in ways that the older, and better, Sociologists would recognize.
The dominance of the Internet is greatly exaggerated. But it is a tool. It is a small tool, but an effective one that will help our social fabric. And the conservative point here is that the best thing the government ever did regarding the Internet was deciding to do nothing regarding the Internet. Surely, we can agree on that.
His philosophic idea is a short discussion of technology, change, and conservatism. Conservatism is a project in which the traditional persuasions are challenged by the love of freedom. At least that is the dichotomy of the American strain of the movement. Goldberg never seems to delineate the fact that American conservatism is far different from European conservatism. He may find that this would challenge his love of Edmund Burke or he may just not feel that it is an unimportant point.
But the difference is important because American conservatism is a project that defends the ideas of the Constitution, which strictly speaking are an early variant of what is now known as classical liberalism. By protecting our freedoms, natural society will develop, well naturally. So American conservatism is a political project. And as a political project it should not use the government to oppose the development of the vast majority of technologies and the social change they create (birth control), but that it should oppose social change by government fiat (i.e. gay marriage legalized by judges and not be legislatures.) The conservative tactically accepts Hayek's point (Dough! A European.) that society will evolve spontaneously when not coerced.
Which leads to Goldberg's examples of technologies that have damaged our social fabric: Cars, the birth control pill, the Internet, and television. While there is a lot of truth in his point, his example sows the seeds of his argument's destruction. The newest technology with the biggest impact is the Internet. But the Internet is not destroying the fabric of society as much as it is mending it. Thousands of people online have reached out and found friendships and interests through their computers. Yahoo! Groups, The Dean campaign, MoveOn.org, the blogosphere, EBay, and countless personalized homepages have created connections between people who may never have met. And these connections are the basic building blocks of communities that will develop in ways that the older, and better, Sociologists would recognize.
The dominance of the Internet is greatly exaggerated. But it is a tool. It is a small tool, but an effective one that will help our social fabric. And the conservative point here is that the best thing the government ever did regarding the Internet was deciding to do nothing regarding the Internet. Surely, we can agree on that.
