Conservatism Now

Andrew Coyne, national editor of Maclean’s, delivered the following remarks to the Progressive Conservative Party of Manitoba on April 20.

After some of the things I’ve been writing lately, I imagine I must have struck some of you as an odd choice for guest speaker at a Conservative fundraiser. I’m guessing I’m off Stephen Harper’s Christmas card list, at any rate. So I probably don’t need to add, but will for the record, that my appearance here tonight should not be taken as an endorsement. The good news is that I might tell you a few more hard truths than a more partisan speaker would.

Indeed, I am not a Conservative, nor even a conservative, small-c, really. I know I get pigeon-holed as one, usually by people who aren’t themselves conservative, but I don’t find the label terribly useful. Frankly, I’ve always found it strange that anyone would wish to define themselves in such narrow terms — to answer every question by first asking themselves, I wonder what the conservative response to that would be? Surely the proper criterion is: what’s the right response?

Still, I don’t wish to deny that these labels have some utility, as a way of organizing our views about politics. Here I am guided by the immortal words of G. K. Chesterton. “The whole modern world,” he explained, “has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of progressives is to go on making mistakes. And the business of conservatives is to prevent those mistakes from being corrected.”

I’m just saying I don’t find it personally useful to describe myself in that way. It isn’t that I am opposed to “ideology,” as such, like those self-styled pragmatists who fancy themselves unbound by such things, but devoted only to “what works” — as if there were some way to define “what works” that was not itself rooted in some sort of ideology. No, quite the contrary: my complaint with liberalism and conservatism, at least as they have evolved in this country, is that they are not nearly “ideological” enough.

People tend to form their views in opposition to what they imagine others believe. Usually, these are caricatures. As in: “Liberals believe in the perfectibility of man, but as a conservative I understand that mankind is immutably flawed.” Or: “Conservatives think that life is about shopping. But as a liberal, I know that we are not only consumers — we’re also citizens.” And having thus fortified ourselves in our self-regard, oblivious to what the other side is actually saying, we become unable to see the possibility that on any given issue, the other side might be right — or indeed, that they are not “the other side” at all.

If we really wanted to be “ideological,” if we were trying to construct a coherent philosophical framework from the ground up, we might find that ideas we are told are opposed to one another, like freedom and order, efficiency and equity, growth and environmentalism, have more in common than we realize: that we do not inevitably have to choose between them; that the choice, most often, is between both, and neither.

This is worth bearing in mind, I think, as we consider the present crisis in conservatism.

In part, it is an outgrowth of the economic crisis, which has been widely blamed — unfairly, in my view — on conservative economic policies, and which to many, including some prominent conservatives, calls for a fundamental rethink of conservative principles. But in part it is self-inflicted.

In the United States, a defeated Republican party has grown increasingly angry and inward-looking, insisting with ever greater rigidity on hewing ever closer to orthodoxy consumed with rage at elites it believes, with some justice, hold it in contempt, but also cutting itself off more and more from mainstream American voters. In Canada, we have an altogether different situation. Here, a victorious federal Conservative party has made numerous compromises in its quest to win and keep power, to the dismay of many of its followers — and without appreciably expanding its base.

The two together define the boundaries of an age-old debate, one that I am sure you have had amongst yourselves. Should a party be true to its principles, at the cost of political irrelevancy? Or should it adapt its policies to the pursuit of power, at the cost of its raison d’etre? The simple answer, of course, is neither. If doctrinaire orthodoxy is one pitfall to be avoided, so is unprincipled opportunism. 

I only wish more people in politics saw things that way. All too often, they see the dangers as lying only to one side, that is of being too rigid, too doctrinaire. They fail to see that pragmatism can be its own form of dogma. They become infatuated with compromise, with getting the deal, to the exclusion of any other consideration. They become addicted to cynicism, that intoxicating rush that comes from having put away childish things and joining the grownups. They lose sight, in the end, of what it was they were compromising for. Yes, compromise is a virtue. But it is not the only virtue.

I’m aware that, as a mere commentator, unsullied by actual political experience, I may be accused of having a bias in the other direction: towards an impractical idealism. But they’re not such different games, politics and journalism. Each of us, in our own way, are in the business of persuasion. We’re trying, or at least we ought to be trying, to bring people over to a point of view they don’t already hold. If that’s not what we’re doing — if all we do is confirm people in their own opinions, or yell “boo” at those who disagree with us — then we’re not changing anyone’s minds, and we’re not doing our jobs.

All of us in the persuasion game are obliged to ask ourselves three questions, three reality checks:

One, obviously, is it right? Is it possible we could be wrong? Or could policies that were once right need adjusting, in light of changing circumstances?

Two, is it relevant? It may be the right answer, but not to a question the public is asking. To be sure, leadership sometimes means putting questions to the public that had not occurred to it until now. But a party that prefers its own hobbyhorses to issues the public cares about will soon find no one is listening.

Three, is it a priority? There are always lots of things that need doing. But there is only so much that can be done at one time, and the public’s appetite for change is not infinite.

But clearly that only takes us so far. It gives us a compass, but not a map.

How, then, do we steer between these two treacherous shores — too devoted to principle, such as to put power beyond reach, or too quick to compromise, such as to empty power of purpose? My answer is that it’s a false choice. The notion that there is an absolute contradiction between principles and power, that you can have one only by discarding the other, is a comforting falsehood, as beloved of ideologues as of opportunists: indeed, it is the one thing they agree on.

I think, rather, it depends what your principles are: whether they pass those three tests I just mentioned, for starters. If you are trying to sell policies that don’t work, or aren’t relevant, or fall down the list of priorities, then yes, you will probably have a hard time winning elections. But if the proposition is that the public cannot be persuaded of sound policies on issues that are relevant and important to them, I say that’s a cop-out. That is the language of losers.

I see it all the time in my business: “oh, that subject is just too hard to explain.” Or, “no one’s interested in that.” Nonsense. Explanation is your job. Making things interesting is your job. Find a way. Work harder. Get inside your readers’ heads. Figure out what it takes to get your point across. But don’t blame the public for your own failings. Everything is explicable. Or as an old editor of mine used to say, “nothing is ‘indescribable.’”

For conservatives, this has a painful relevance. Conservatives, especially at the federal level, are accustomed to telling themselves, “well, you know, this is a left-of-centre country.” The media are against us. The courts are against us. The bureaucracy is against us. And so it becomes all too easy to fall into one of those two traps. Either, “we can’t afford to be conservative” — not openly, at any rate: opportunistic conservatism. Or else, “bloody well right we’re conservative, and to hell with public opinion”: tribal conservatism.

I want to propose a different approach. What I want to suggest to you is that the problem holding Conservatives back is not conservative ideology. Or more precisely, that many of the policies traditionally associated with conservatism have nothing to do with conservative ideology — or at least, with a conservative ideology that was based on principled foundations. They weren’t adopted as conservative policy because they were right. They were deemed right because they were “conservative.”

A conservatism that goes deeper within itself, that figures out exactly what it believes and why it believes it, that is both more confident in itself and therefore more open to changing things about itself, has a better chance of winning than either its opportunistic or tribalistic variants. It is a vision of conservatism that combines old and new, one that could rally and inspire conservatives, yet at the same time appeal to a broader base. 

What is this conservatism I’m talking about? Let us start by going back to first principles. And let us acknowledge that, whether we call ourselves conservatives or liberals, we are all inheritors of the same western liberal tradition. (There is a pessimistic strain of conservatism that predates liberalism, but in our time it is very much an outlier.) Rather, we are either conservatives or liberals depending on where we see the zenith of liberalism’s progress as having been reached.

At the heart of the conservative vision, then, is the liberal idea that each individual human being has the right to pursue his or her vision of the good life, for the short time that he has on earth, so far as this is consistent with others’ pursuit of the same. Each individual is the best judge of his own welfare. No other person is in a position to substitute their own judgment for his. That is, whatever our varied courses in life, we are fundamentally equal in this respect.

The state is, in this view, the creation of the people, and not the other way around. It has such powers as we choose to give it to regulate our lives, and no more. The burden of proof is always upon the state, therefore, to justify why it should restrict the freedom of its citizens, never on the citizen to prove why he should be allowed to keep it. Conservatism never forgets that the state’s methods, whatever its lofty objectives, are two: taking people’s money and bossing them about. However necessary that may sometimes be, we should want no more of it than is strictly necessary. Or as I like to put it: government should only do what only government can do.

This is not anti-government. It is not even about “less” government, per se. It is about limited government: government that stays within certain known boundaries, that behaves in a predictable, rules-based fashion, that minds its place.

Nor, properly considered, is the conservative ideal of individual freedom at odds with the interests of the collective, of society as a whole. It is true that freedom is impossible without order, without a system of laws and contracts that protects the rights of each from the violations of each. But it is also true that order — true, lasting order — is impossible without freedom. A society built on oppression is a powder keg waiting to go off; it’s only a matter of time.

Likewise, far from the communitarian caricature of a society of alienated, atomistic individuals, with little connection to each other, the individual is in fact the best guarantor of social cohesion. In a society riven with mutually hostile identity groups, our uniqueness as individuals is the one thing we all have in common.

And so to the free market —  essentially the application of these principles in the economic realm: an economy based on the choices of millions of individuals, in our various roles as consumers, workers, or investors, informed and guided by price signals, not planners’ dictates. The fundamental social challenge here is not to subordinate these choices to a single idea, as in wartime, but to coordinate them, such that each is in harmony with the rest. And the fundamental principle at work is cooperation. 

What distinguishes a market economy, more than anything else, is the absence of coercion — its reliance on cooperative, voluntary arrangements between willing partners in exchange, each of whom benefits from the transaction (otherwise the exchange would not take place!). It’s more usual to see it defined in terms of competition. But competition is only the means by which this cooperative regime is enforced, ensuring that economic relationships, between buyers and sellers, workers and employers, savers and investors, are indeed non-coercive, and non-exploitive. 

But be in no doubt: the market system is all the stricter in its enforcement of a collective interest for being built on individual choice. As an illustration: there can be no black market in a free market. A regulated price, set without regard to supply and demand, is a standing invitation to sharp operators to find a way around it. But how do you get around the market price? Try to buy for less than the market price, and no one will sell it to you. Try to sell for more, and no one will buy. Whether we like it or not, the market price is inescapable, precisely because it is the only price that buyers and sellers can agree on.

And this is the point, I think, at which conservatives tend to get it wrong. 

Conservatives tend to make the case for markets in libertarian terms, as instruments of individual economic freedom —  unleashing entrepreneurial innovation, offering greater consumers greater choice, and so on. That’s fine, except the people those arguments are likely to convince are already voting Conservative. 

I am struck, when talking to people who are unfamiliar with market economics — which is to say, most voters — how many of them view the market as, in essence, a nullity: as simply the absence of government. To those who place a primary value on order in human affairs, this is profoundly disturbing, implying the abdication of important social responsibilities.

So by talking about markets only in terms of economic freedom, conservatives weaken their case with the people they most need to persuade, if they are to broaden their base.

In fact markets are not about liberating individual wills, or not only that: they are about integrating individual wills into a socially beneficial order. Greed is a constant in human affairs, but the discipline of competition tempers its reach and channels it to other-directed ends. Prices, likewise, are ruthless enforcers of the common good, forcing each, in his consumption of the scarce pool of resources available to society, to take account of the claims of others, whether he wants to or not. In short, markets are social institutions, no less than governments, and should be defended as such.

The market is not properly conceived as the absence of social institutions. It is one. Its role is not to liberate self-gain, but to contain it; not to reward private interests, but to subject them to the needs of society at large. It is, in its way, a profoundly collectivist idea. 

The difference with more statist approaches is in the instrument by which the collective interest is enforced: competition, rather than coercion; prices, rather than police. But the company in a market economy that cannot make a product people are willing to buy at a price they are willing to pay — that does not, in short, serve the collective interest: for consumption is, after all, the sole end and purpose of production — that company is driven out of business just as surely and as ruthlessly as if the matter were decided by state diktat. Or rather, much more surely and ruthlessly. 

We call it private property, but it’s really just a system of markers. The resources we use, the goods and services we consume, though privately owned, are still in a sense ultimately society’s, in that everything we produce or consume must come out of the same pot of scarce resources. But we have learned from long experience that people tend to take better care of things — houses, companies, forests — when they are assigned title to them, together with the right to appropriate the returns from their use. 

But they do so under license. If they do not make something that is of greater value to society, measured by the price consumers are willing to pay for it, than the value of the resources it took to make it, measured by the company’s costs of production, they must cease to produce it. Profit is in this sense not so much a private reward as a social obligation.

Conservatives have to learn to make the case for markets as social institutions in their own right, instruments of the collective good. As important, however, they must be equally appreciative of the necessity of government, where government is in fact necessary: that is, where markets fail. If they want to get a hearing in making the case for the market’s enduring strengths, they must also be willing to acknowledge its failures. They must be prepared to make the case for government as a social institution, as well.

Finding the right balance between the two is not, as the moderate fancies, simply a matter of being “a little bit” market and “a little bit” government, in half-measures of each. That way lies mush and confusion. Rather, it is to sort out which is appropriate for which tasks, and let each get on with it.

That is, to leave questions of allocation — what gets produced, in what quantities, for whom, at what price — for the most part to markets, and to leave questions of distribution — who gets to keep how much of what they produce — to the state. Individuals are the best judges of their own welfare, which is why we trust the choices of consumers to decide what goods and services are produced. But what is a just distribution of income is the kind of question that can only be decided collectively.

But — and this is also key — while these two institutions have different purposes, they also have different means appropriate to each. It is critical to keep these separate. This is particularly true with respect to the question of distribution, where we are forever trying to shuffle income from one part of society to another — not openly and directly through the tax-and-transfer system, where it is very clear who pays and who benefits, but stealthily, inefficiently, and as often as not unjustly by fixing prices or legislating wages or setting quotas or otherwise messing with market processes.

Prices are market instruments, appropriate to allocation. Taxes and transfers are political instruments, appropriate to distribution. When instruments and objectives are crossed, when market prices are bent in the service of distributional ends, and taxes and transfers influence how resources are allocated, it only ensures a distribution based on market power, and an allocation based on political power. Which means we get neither efficiency nor equity.

But once these principles are understood — once it becomes clear there are ways to intervene, as it were, without intervening —  there is no reason why conservatives should take a back seat to the left on social issues. Conservatives have been far too willing to concede issues such as the environment and social justice to the Left, contenting themselves with denouncing their opponents’ proposals as too costly, or poorly designed. What they haven’t done is get out in front of these debates. 

Conservatives have to make these issues their own — not by aping the left,  not by pledging allegiance to the status quo, not by promising never to touch this or that sacred cow of big government, but by proposing their own solutions, grounded in a market-based, smaller-government approach: a model that  is sometimes called the social market.

What do I mean by the social market? It is one based on the following principles:

1) Redistribute market results, don’t distort market processes. Don’t try to achieve distributive goals by allocative means, i.e. regulating prices and blindly hoping the benefits accrue to the poor. They don’t, usually.

2) Public finance, not public provision. Because the government pays for the schools or the hospitals does not mean the government has to run them. Contract out to private firms. 

3) Benefits in cash, not in kind. Vouchers, etc. Instead of giving public money to producers of social goods, give it straight to consumers. Maximizes choice, competition, reduces potential for political interference, producer capture. Model can be applied not only to schools, but in health care, social housing, daycare, etc.

4) Maximize the minimum. Here I am borrowing directly from John Rawls, the philosopher, a figure more usually associated with the left. The idea is that policy should be judged by whether or not it raises the lot of those worst off in society. This sounds anodyne, but properly understood, it has radical implications: for example, it would suggest favouring the interests of those without jobs, if necessary, at the expense of the privileges and protections of those who already have jobs. 

And it focuses us on the proper distributional question. The only moral basis for redistributing income is from rich to poor: not from young to old, or from west to east, or from city to country, or from consumers to producers, or any of the countless undeclared redistributional schemes in which governments are constantly engaged.

I repeat: There are ways to promote a conservative agenda that don’t leave listeners with the impression that Conservatives don’t care about the environment, or poverty or other issues now owned by the Left.

The environment is of particular importance, not only because environmentalism has become, especially among the young, the universal religion of our time, but because free markets and the environment are such a natural fit. 

Conservatives, after all, are commonly supposed to believe in personal responsibility: the notion that each of us is responsible for our own actions, and should bear the costs these impose, on ourselves or others. 

That’s obviously important for efficiency: when people bear the full cost of things, they tend to use them more sparingly. But it’s no less important for the environment, and for much the same reason.  — because the economic problem and the ecological are the same. Whether your concern is creating wealth or saving the Earth, the objective is to minimize waste. And the instrument is true economic pricing: prices that reflect the real economic costs of producing a given good or service, including the environmental costs.

Indeed, a whole generation of free-market environmentalists has grown up around this principle, which is why there has been such interest of late in market-based incentives for wiser resource use, like tradable emissions credits. 

This is the great missed opportunity for conservatives, and Conservatives. It isn’t just that, by championing a free-market approach to the environment, they could have taken ownership of that particular issue. It is that the environment could have served as the beachhead to advance a broader free-market agenda. They could have used what is now acknowledged as the market’s essential role in cleaning up the environment to make the case for markets, and for market mechanisms — prices, competition, private ownership — more generally. In other words, if you like what the market can do for the environment, can I interest you in what it can do for your schools, or your health care?

By now you will see where this is going. It is emphatically not a call for a more hard-line, purist, no-prisoners conservatism. Yet neither am I suggesting that conservatives need to water down their principles, move to the middle, become more like the Liberals or NDP. 

Rather, it is an approach that starts from traditional conservative principles, yet applies these to different questions, speaks in a different language, addresses itself to different audiences, than has traditionally been the case. Essentially, you broaden the base by deepening it.

And broadening the base is, quite simply, critical. Conservatives in Canada cannot win, a la Karl Rove, simply by “getting out the vote” — by generating a higher turnout among their base than among their opponents’. Indeed, it’s increasingly clear they can’t win in the United States with that strategy. They just don’t have the numbers. So Conservatives have to appeal to a wider array of voters than their traditional approach has allowed. 

What does that mean? It means breaking through in urban Canada, among women, young people, and the higher educated. Getting serious about the environment is one key. Let me suggest another — another missed opportunity — and that is gay marriage.

I respect the views of those who maintain a principled opposition to gay marriage. But let me respectfully disagree, on three counts. One, I simply do not see evidence of any harm that has arisen or could arise to society or the institution of marriage by letting a small number of gay people  — a few hundred a year at most — solemnize their vows. 

Two, it strikes me as particularly consonant with social-conservative principles to let those who wish to enter into the house of marriage do so. The more flamboyant expressions of the gay lifestyle that conservatives find so upsetting are, arguably, a response to their marginalization in society. 

And three, it’s killing you in urban Canada. Gay marriage has taken on a symbolic resonance far beyond the issue itself. It has become a signal, a test, of whether you “get” diversity in general. Even many immigrant groups, who might themselves come from cultures that are opposed to gay marriage, nonetheless have resisted voting Conservative in large numbers — because the vibe Conservatives give off does not suggest openness.

It is both necessary and possible, I’m saying, for conservatism to expand its base, to build a new coalition — free marketers, environmentalists, urban liberals — without abandoning the old. If that sounds familiar it should: it’s exactly the coalition Gordon Campbell has put together in B.C., based on deep cuts in personal income taxes, a generally free market approach, carbon taxes, and a tolerant social agenda. Last I checked, he was 17 points ahead.

Why am I so insistent on starting from principled foundations? Why have I gone to such great lengths setting out my own? Because that, in the end, is how to square the circle of principle and power. 

People need to know where your polices come from. They need to be able to set them in some context. They need to know who you are, what moves you, whether you have some sort of, yes, hidden agenda. And the only way to disarm those suspicions, to get them to listen to you — in politics, in journalism, I dare say in other fields — is full disclosure. 

What I’d love to see is a party that would set out its broad principles first, in some detail. Really spend some time burning these into the public mind. Then tell us the policies that flow from it. For example, rather than just drop a policy like, I don’t know, abolishing supply management on the public out of the blue, start by establishing as a broad principle that in everything you do you are going to put the consumer interest first — since the whole purpose of production, after all, is consumption — or, a la Rawls, that you are going to put the interests of those worst off first. Let people see and absorb the rationale for the policy before they actually see the policy. 

The other thing I’d like to see a party do is set out a long-term vision of where it would like to take the country or the province, coupled with a short-term agenda for what it would like to achieve in the next mandate. Its supporters can thus be reassured, amid the inevitable compromises of politics, that it has not lost sight of its overall goals, while those less favourably disposed can be reassured that they will not be subject to some radical experiment they cannot easily get out of.

That is a very different kind of moderatism than you usually hear about. So let me close by talking a little about the meaning of moderatism.

The moderation that matters to most voters is moderation of tone. Most voters are not terribly ideological. They’re surprisingly open to persuasion, if you approach them the right way. Whatever your views, what they really want to see is whether you have come to them by a process of mature reflection, or whether you’re just parroting party slogans. 

So the advice that my colleagues in the pundit business like to dispense — that you win elections by “moving to the middle” — is only partially true. Yes, you win elections by capturing the middle, as a matter of arithmetic. But the middle is not some fixed meridian. It moves. More important, you can move it. The truly successful politicians are not the ones who move to the middle — for as often as not the middle recedes as fast as they chase it — but the ones who move the middle to them.

What I am describing is a kind of political entrepreneurship: neither pandering to public opinion, nor ignoring it, but persuading people to a point of view they did not previously hold. The entrepreneur in business knows that the greatest rewards accrue, not to those who simply give people what they already know they want, but who make them want things they never knew they wanted before. So it is in politics. The task of political leadership is not only, as it is sometimes said, to do unpopular things. The real business of a political leader is to make the things he does popular.

For politics is not, in the end, simply “the art of the possible.” It is the art of enlarging the possible.