Professional Documents
Culture Documents
By Sally Morem
---Henry Grunwald
From the Bicentennial Edition of Time Magazine
Page 1
I am an American conservative.
And as such, I most especially love and admire the concepts worked out
elucidating the power of freedom and the danger of servitude in Hayek’s
writings, especially in his greatest works, The Road to Serfdom and The
Constitution of Liberty. His works on self-organizing systems in economic
and political systems are some of the most original, important, and thought-
provoking writings in the history of intellectual ideas. They upend our
natural human assumptions about the necessity of centralized design and
planning in order for large, complex systems to do what they need to do in
order to survive and flourish.
He did, however, admit to the possibility of confusion that his use of the
word conservative would create within the essay itself:
Page 2
alien to the American tradition, has acquired a somewhat odd character.
And some time before this, American radicals and socialists began calling
themselves "liberals." I will nevertheless continue for the moment to
describe as liberal the position which I hold and which I believe differs as
much from true conservatism as from socialism. Let me say at once,
however, that I do so with increasing misgivings, and I shall later have to
consider what would be the appropriate name for the party of liberty. The
reason for this is not only that the term "liberal" in the United States is
the cause of constant misunderstandings today, but also that in Europe the
predominant type of rationalistic liberalism has long been one of the
pacemakers of socialism.
This story illustrates the need when dealing with political ideologies to learn
to make vital distinctions between superficially similar concepts, especially
concepts that use the same name. There is a vast difference between
European conservatism and American conservatism as Hayek admitted.
Page 3
cousins of European liberals, who, being members of traditionally
aristocratic societies, wished to change those societies to more closely
resemble a classically liberal order.
Page 4
Technoconservatives—Again, ironically or not, these favor the
development of technological answers to problems, thus triggering
widespread societal change. The more advanced technology, the better.
Even though they are political conservatives in economic matters, they have
no interest in conserving the status quo ante in science, technology, and
economic development. Technoconservatives view the technological
revolution as an almost wholly positive process in human history. Newt
Gingrich is their most significant spokesman in the political world. I am a
whole-hearted technoconservative.
Setting such important differences aside, here are the core beliefs we
American conservatives agree on. These express our shared understanding
of how free societies work and can’t work:
Page 5
hierarchical forms of decision-making are most efficient and effective. They
aren’t.
As the quotes at the top of this essay indicate, we Americans love freedom.
Individual freedom. Since human individuals are the only entities that we
know of who envision, plan, and deliberately act, it makes sense for them to
have the freedom to do what they believe needs to be done, within
reasonable safety limits. And since there is no test we can envision, except
possibly age, that will permit us to choose those who are naturally fitted to
rule and decide, and raise them above those who are not, we Americans
believe individual freedom is the inherent right of every human being.
Freedom to succeed, to fail, to try again. When government engulfs more
and more of society, individual freedom is rendered moot. Outrageous
amounts of taxation and regulation stop free citizens from freely making
their own plans and carrying them out. As individual freedom ebbs, so too
do the values of American civilization.
We are opposed to raising tax rates. We support tax rate cuts. We are
convinced that government by necessity wastes a great deal of tax money
Page 6
and also spends money in areas it shouldn’t. Also, huge government
expenditures drain the investment pool, taking money away from private
investors who would do a better job making financial decisions than
government bureaucrats. The latest housing finance debacle (October 2008)
was a direct effect of Democrat Congressmen using their power over lenders
in an outrageous manner, ordering them to make loans to poor people who
couldn’t possibly pay them back…and knowing they couldn’t. The resulting
distortions ramified throughout financial systems, bringing the whole
structure close to crashing down on our heads.
We like to remind those who “loathe the rich” and want to tax them unto
death that almost all jobs are created by wealthy private individuals and
corporations who are willing to pay others to get needed work done. No
poor person has ever hired anyone. Government confiscates and
redistributes and ruins the dreams of would-be entrepreneurs, and in its bull-
in-the-china-shop manner, that’s all it is capable of doing. It doesn’t
participate in freely chosen forms of exchange and doesn’t create new
wealth because by its very nature as civilization’s coercive force, its
enforcer, it is wholly incompetent in the realms of free exchange.
Page 7
What stands on specific issues do American conservatives take
and why?
Page 8
but were actually deeply hurt by being given loans they couldn’t
possibly repay). Here’s our simple suggestion to Democrats: Get Out
of Our Way. Stop scrambling our markets in the name of socialistic
shibboleths.
Page 9
can never afford to indulge in flights of pacifistic fancy or “fortress
America” isolationism ever again.
Page 10
soldiers over to their tender mercies of that court on trumped up
charges of “genocide” is laughable in a horrifyingly disgusting way.
There is no such thing as a world constitution or a world legislature
that has enacted world law, and so, there can be no such thing as a
genuine world court. We conservatives urge the federal government
to not cooperate with the ICC in any manner, shape or form. Until
such time (centuries from now, possibly?) there arises a genuine world
society operating under a constitutional government worthy of
American respect, America must retain its own sovereignty in order to
keep itself and the world safe from tyranny and plunder. We
Americans may, in the meantime, find it necessary to provide the
world as a whole with some forms of informal governance, but these
will be acts of both kindness and American self-interest, not acts
directed by some world sovereignty.
As you can tell by this list of axiomatic beliefs and political stands,
American conservatism differs radically from American liberalism. Any
voter foolish enough to believe that politicians are ‘all alike’ has failed to
pay attention to a large amount of very pointed, even rancorous political
debate that has occurred over the last few years. I hope you’ve found my
essay useful in clarifying the ideological differences in American political
life as seen from the conservative point of view. And I hope American
conservatives of all stripes will join forces to convince millions of
Americans who votes otherwise this year to give serious consideration to
conservative values and beliefs.
Page 11