The lowly state of public discourse in our country is a concern for anyone who cares about civility and democracy, but one obvious source of the mean spiritedness so prevalent today is hiding in plain sight.
It is the philosophy of conservatism and its effect on people who embrace it.
While anyone can be judgmental, if you are a conservative, the likelihood that you are goes up dramatically.
That’s the effect conservatism has on people. Think about it.
The word conservative means “believing in the value of established and traditional practices in politics and society; not liking or accepting changes or new ideas; tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions.”
Being conservative means you don’t like change. You want things the way they are because you don’t want to alter your beliefs, circumstances, institutions you hold dear, or your way of life.
Anyone who thinks this way is more likely than not to be highly critical of anything that challenges tradition or undermines life as it now exists. In the realm of politics and religion this resistance takes the form of judgmentalism.
But let me be clear. The judgmentalism to which I am referring is not a matter of differing opinions or points of view. No, judgmentalism goes beyond such differences and attacks the person with whom one is disagreeing. Name calling or questioning an opponent’s patriotism or religious sincerity are some of the obvious signs of it.
That conservativism produces judgmental attitudes is why conservatives don’t simple disagree with liberal views. They consider liberals themselves a threat to what conservatives hold sacred.
To political conservatives, for example, liberals are not true patriots. Instead, they are socialists undermining the free enterprise system, which also means they just don’t love their country like they should. (For example, see the February online article by National Review editor, Rich Lowry, who says liberals are not the same kind of patriots conservatives are, which, according to his definition of patriotism, makes them less patriotic.)
In a similar way, religious conservatives don’t just see liberal beliefs as wrong, they believe liberals themselves are the enemy of faith. For them the line between the “saved” and “lost” is clear, and the stakes are too high not to use whatever means necessary to stop liberals before they destroy the fabric of our society.
Liberalism, on the other hand, is not compatible with judgmentalism. Its nature is to welcome new ideas or ways of behaving that challenge tradition or established points of view. A liberal mind sees broad-mindedness and diversity of views as virtues, but authoritarianism, orthodoxy, or traditional forms of thinking as stumbling blocks to progress.
To liberals, politics is the art of the possible, believing as it does that no one has all the truth, making compromise a necessary tool to progress. Conservatives see compromise as a betrayal of principles.
Religiously liberals may accept the existence of ultimate truth theoretically, but reject the notion that it is a realistic possibility practically. All beliefs, then, are by nature relative and should be treated as such.
Of course, what I am saying does not mean there are no judgmental liberals, not least because some people are predisposed to that kind of attitude whatever their philosophical persuasion may be.
But at the end of the day, conservativism is more likely to spawn political and religious judgmentalism than is liberalism, despite the widespread notion that in the current toxic climate of public debate both sides act the same way.
Liberalism has its own faults, but spawning and nurturing judgmentalism is not one of them. That fault lies solely with what it means to be conservative.
Sadly, I’ve met with people of this cast of mind too. The best decision I ever made was to be a Christian, but one of my wisest decisions, I believe, was to walk away from a certain aspect of Christianity. So, how to deal with people who think I’m Hell bound because I accept evolution, that I’ve taken communion from Women Priests (since Women were ordained in the Church of England from 1994), and accept the ministry of Women as Bishops (from this year)?
I think of these lines by Edwin Markham, a poet of yours:
“He drew a circle that shut me out; a “heretic”, a “rebel” – a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win,
we drew a circle that took him in”
Great comment, Nigel. Thank you.
You have made a very clear and concise distinction here of basic conservative and progressive mindsets, Jan. The issue for both, especially in their extremes, is how to “get along”; create a civil and growing community together. It seems to me that the discomfort, even fear, that the conservative harbors toward change, nuance, the abstract and the un-categorical drives their fierce actions to maintain traditions and beliefs which are both stabilizing and stagnating. My “big picture” concern is that when those traits are pervasive in a society’s dominant minority the inherent stagnating qualities inevitably leads to that society’s collapse. The society is not responsive to the real life impulses of evolution, metamorphosis, mutation or other realities involving change. My ultimate questions are whether the conservative mind is an evolutionary stage which no longer serves the highest good of the species and how will nature or nurture tend to that? Clearly, to me, the “growth and collapse” cycles no longer represent evolutionary learning or growth; especially with a warming planet now signaling such a pattern could end us all. Thanks for this blog and for “listening”.
Thanks, Bob. You see the implications of what I was saying clearly.
You write about Ultra-Conservatism here. There is a continuum of conservative to liberal on a scale of, say 1 – 10, with the extremes being 1 and 10. All else is gray, where most people are. Not all “Conservatives” are extreme; just as not all “Liberals” are extreme, true for both sides. It only looks extreme if it presented as extreme. If one posits an extreme position about the other group, like setting up straw men, then one can shoot down all straw men and make them stupid, ridiculous, and even evil. This goes for religion and politics.
So, what about liberal positions; whom you write up as change agents. I honestly do believe that conservatives welcome new things in our human history: the flushing toilet, the cotton gin, television and the smartphone, airplanes. Conservatives should not be painted as “against” everything new.
On the other end, liberals have opened the doors, noticeably in California with the 1960’s Hippie movement–sex, drugs, rock and roll; Woodstock. Accept everything, everyone with no restraints on behavior. Behaviors have consequences, and that needs to be reviewed before accepting liberal positions, without questioning.
Look at New York City: previous Mayor made a “liberal law” to cut back the size of soft drinks, because too much sugar in soda was bad for people. Dictating policy for everyone, no “freedom” there. The next Mayor cut back support for NYC Police in picking up illegal guns from people; now the City has increased crime because the rules of stop and frisk have been abrogated. Which issue is worse?
I hope that the True Liberals will sit down for coffee with the Conservatives and listen to their THINKING AND LOGIC about issues of disagreement. If a liberal is a TRUE liberal, he will listen to the reasoning that bring Conservatives to their positions. Being “open-minded” as a liberal SHOULD MEAN a willingness to regard another’s viewpoint with respect, not derision.
I consider myself a “5” on the continuum of 1 – 10.
Partisans, whether liberal or conservative, tend to be judgmental. It’s the nature of human personality. I just happen to cheer liberal judgmentalism more than conservative because it confirms my world-view.
Still, judgmentalism is endemic to conservativism, but not liberalism. It’s just the nature of the two philosophies.