Reagan and Salisbury

Various people associated with this blog have a definition of conservatism that excludes most conservatives. But surely no account of the nature of conservatism can give enough attention to the most loved conservative of the 20th century—and arguably the most loved conservative of all time: Ronald Reagan. Fortunately, The Gipper makes the task easy. No real-life politician could have been clearer, more consistent or more emphatic about what he stood for than the Great Communicator. Very little more is needed than simply quoting him. Let’s start with just two small excerpts from the many cutting points he made in his famous 1964 speech in support of Barry Goldwater:-

“And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man’s relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves....

Well, now, if government planning and welfare had the answer and they’ve had almost 30 years of it, shouldn’t we expect government to almost read the score to us once in a while? Shouldn’t they be telling us about the decline each year in the number of people needing help? The reduction in the need for public housing? But the reverse is true. Each year the need grows greater, the program grows greater....”

And from a 1975 interview:-

“If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals-if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.

Now, I can’t say that I will agree with all the things that the present group who call themselves Libertarians in the sense of a party say, because I think that like in any political movement there are shades, and there are libertarians who are almost over at the point of wanting no government at all or anarchy. I believe there are legitimate government functions. There is a legitimate need in an orderly society for some government to maintain freedom or we will have tyranny by individuals…

So, I think the government has legitimate functions. But I also think our greatest threat today comes from government’s involvement in things that are not government’s proper province. And in those things government has a magnificent record of failure.

Q: Are there any particular books or authors or economists that have been influential in terms of your intellectual development?

REAGAN: Oh, it would be hard for me to pinpoint anything in that category. I’m an inveterate reader. Bastiat and von Mises, and Hayek and Hazlitt-I’m one for the classical economists....”

And from his 1984 speech accepting the Republican Presidential nomination:

Isn’t our choice really not one of left or right, but of up or down? Down through the welfare state to statism, to more and more government largesse accompanied always by more government authority, less individual liberty and, ultimately, totalitarianism, always advanced as for our own good. The alternative is the dream conceived by our Founding Fathers, up to the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with an orderly society. We don’t celebrate dependence day on the Fourth of July. We celebrate Independence Day.

Individual liberty versus government authority was from the beginning clearly the conservative message to the great conservative communicator. And he had the same message in his farewell speech as President. He makes it clear there that there is just ONE thing he stood for above all: Individual liberty. Some excerpts:

“And in all of that time I won a nickname, “The Great Communicator.” But I never thought it was my style or the words I used that made a difference: It was the content. I wasn’t a great communicator, but I communicated great things, and they didn’t spring full bloom from my brow, they came from the heart of a great nation - from our experience, our wisdom, and our belief in principles that have guided us for two centuries.... Almost all the world’s constitutions are documents in which governments tell the people what their privileges are. Our Constitution is a document in which “We the people” tell the government what it is allowed to do. “We the people” are free. This belief has been the underlying basis for everything I’ve tried to do these past eight years.... I hope we have once again reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.... We’ve got to do a better job of getting across that America is freedom - freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise. And freedom is special and rare. It’s fragile; it needs protection”.

It is sometimes held that Reagan transformed American conservatism but we see that Reagan himself says that he simply reasserted America’s founding values—values that the early Americans inherited from their English past.

And an integral part of those values was trust in the wisdom of the ordinary people as a whole—something Reagan was famous for. He constantly said that the great achievements of his era were not his but those of the American people as a whole. Trust in ordinary people and a belief in giving them large liberties are integrally related.

Conservatives from Burke through Disraeli and Hayek to Reagan have of course always trusted the people as a whole to come up with better decisions than elites do. Burke looked to the wisdom of the people of both the past and present combined; Disraeli saw the ordinary people of England as “angels in marble” and Hayek saw the information available to the population as a whole as infinitely superior to any other information source.

And we all know that, despite great political difficulties and the inevitable compromises that practical politics require, Reagan managed to translate his words into deeds time and time again. So just one small example of that may suffice. As Thomas Sowell put it:

“During the gasoline shortage that began in 1979, motorists were often waiting in long lines of cars at filling stations—sometimes for hours—in hopes of reaching the pump before the gas ran out. The ways that Ted Kennedy and Ronald Reagan proposed to deal with this situation speaks volumes about the difference between the left and the right.

Senator Kennedy said: “We must adopt a system of gasoline rationing without delay,” in “a way that demands a fair sacrifice from all Americans.”

Ronald Reagan said that we must get rid of price controls on petroleum, so that there won’t be a shortage in the first place. One of his first acts after becoming president was to end federal price controls. Lines at filling stations disappeared. Despite angry outcries from liberals that gas prices would skyrocket as Big Oil “gouged” the public, in reality prices came down within months and continued falling for years”.

SALISBURY

A more substantial criticism of Reagan is that he was really too radical to be a true conservative. He was really a libertarian masquerading as a conservative. And as we have seen, Reagan was not at all shy of the libertarian label. And Reagan does of course stand in stark contrast to the pussyfooting that has always been too common among conservative politicians. Conservative moderation and search for compromise can too often lead to an appparent complete lack of principles. But the principles are there nonetheless and Reagan was in fact not at all outside the tradition of other great conservative leaders. Long before the word “libertarian” was invented, one of the most articulate spokesmen of such views was in fact Lord Salisbury—one of Imperial Britain’s most distinguished Conservative Prime Ministers, who held office in the closing years of the 19th century. To take just one tiny excerpt of what could be said about Salisbury:

“By a free country,” he told the Kingston and District Working Men’s Conservative Association in June 1883, “I mean a country where people are allowed, so long as they do not hurt their neighbours, to do as they like. I do not mean a country where six men may make five men do exactly as they like.” His attitude towards freedom of contract was fundamentalist: “When it is a question of what men should commercially gain or lose by a bargain, Parliament had better let grown-up men settle with each other their own bargains,” he pronounced in Edinburgh in November 1882, adding that although the Whitehall civil servant generally believed “he himself is the best person to decide”, he was usually wrong, and over-centralisation of power was inimical to liberty. “You can no more act against the operation of great economic laws than you can act against the laws of the weather”, was his laissez-faire philosophy, believing that “all Parliament can really do is to free the energies and support the efforts of an intelligent and industrious people”.

I think that speaks for itself. More here

Posted by jonjayray on Friday, May 20, 2005 at 05:28 AM in Conservatism
Comments (11) | Tell a friend

Comments:

Posted by Guessedworker on May 20, 2005, 10:11 AM | #

John,

Salisbury was absolutely not concerned with individual freedom but with defending the country against the threats of Trade Unionism and the extention of the franchise. Thus he wrote of working class enfranchisement:-

“If you apply to any class of the community special temptations, you will find that class addicted to special vices” and “Mobs demand a flattery more gross, and a servility more pliant, than the flattery and servility which flourish in despotic courts ...”

... and of Trade Unionism:-

“The fearful sacrifice which their leaders exact and the implicit obedience of their members indicate a vigour and tenacity of which the associations of the middle and upper classes are utterly destitute.”

(Both quotes from Martin’s Great Conservatives, drawn from the Quarterly Review and from AJP Taylor).

Sorry, but Salisbury was NOT a proto-Popperian freedom-junkie (he voted against Disraeli’s 1858 measure to give full civil rights to Jews, btw). It is risible to suggest that he was.

As for Reagan, he is a very good example of what, under the liberal hammer, a man of otherwise good political instinct may become - and what, in fairness to him, an American Conservative, being denied organic historical roots in the real thing, may have very little opportunity to avoid.

As President, Reagan was essentially reactive to the advances and predations of Soviet power abroad and big government at home. His philosophy was right liberalism which he leavened, Conservatively-speaking, with religious conviction. This might be as good as it gets in a liberal political universe. It is certainly Conservative relative to left-liberalism. But it is a most diluted Conservatism, the offending solvent being, once again, the liberal tennet of individual freedom.

John, your Conservatism does not do sufficient justice to liberalism as an over-arching political context, and therefore you do not give sufficient thought to the bounds that liberalism may impose upon your own political philosophy. Being a fierce individualist you oppose left-liberalism (more than anyone here, I might add) and, opposing left-liberalism, you find yourself inevitably both libertarian and Conservative. It is not a wholly amicable marriage.

My aim in discussing Conservatism is to encourage people to reach back beyond liberalism’s conquest and find the ideas to defeat it there. I do not claim that this is a strategy shared with other Conservatives alive today or of the past, only that it is right. Conservatives must free themselves from liberalism - meaning the freedom of the individual - and the franchise from OMOV if they are ever to rescue the rest of us from liberalism. Note, I do not say merely left-liberalism.

Posted by Effra on May 20, 2005, 11:46 AM | #

Salisbury was blisteringly contemptuous of the British move towards political democracy begun by the Reform Act and abetted by the vainglorious Disraeli; but being a conservative rather than a reactionary he tried to mitigate rather than reverse it.

His writings on politics in the mid-19th century, when he was estranged from his father and had to earn a living as an upmarket journo, are among the most wickedly funny and shrewd dismemberments of liberal and egalitarian pretensions ever put into print.

In this Salisbury had cross-party links with the Adullamites, such as the great Robert Lowe, who had developed a horror of democracy as the result of spending (where else) some years in Australia.

The Primrose League and other Tory-democracy associations were designed to corral the newly liberated energies of lower-middle and working-class voters into respectable channels. Salisbury, like Baldwin after him, rightly saw that most Britons were not revolutionaries and would work through the traditional institutions. But he became more and more gloomy about the proletariat’s appetite for expropriation growing by feeding: fears which the shift within Liberalism from Gladstonian laisser-faire to intervention did nothing to assuage. Salisbury foresaw that party politics would become a bidding war for featherbedding the mobocracy with their own (but worse, the governing class’s) money.

At the end of his life-- with the semi-humiliation of the Boer War and the continental settlement he and Dizzy had fudged up in Berlin beginning to unravel towards the horrors of 1914-- Salisbury was full of gloom. Fortunately only his crown prince and nephew, Balfour, lived to see the death of old Europe. One can admire Salisbury for holding the line as long as he did while feeling that a bit more of the Chamberlainite common touch, a more active determination to hold back the inrolling polluted tide of statist populism, would have served the Empire better. Pace Harcourt, we were not yet all socialists in 1894, but Salisbury seemed to accept we were bound to become so.

Reagan I think did a remarkable job of damage limitation. The USA was way too far gone in warfare/welfare statism by 1980 for the Gipper to have made a big difference. Still, he kept the republic out of big wars-- the real force propelling it further down the slippery slope into tax slavery-- and he trimmed it back in a few useful ways at home. But one White House occupant never has enough time (a paltry eight years maximum, two or three as a lame duck) to do more than chip at Leviathan’s facade. Reagan did not found a movement to carry on his work, as the failure of the Contract with America showed.

Much of the US president’s importance is a matter of presentation, since he is a living symbol of his country as a temporary monarch. Reagan had a kingly air. His patience, geniality, masterly inactivity and posture of knowing nothing were a good combination for baffling liberals without giving them a moral hobby horse to bestride-- unlike Chimpoleon, who has all the dignity and grace of a freshman waiting to be fined for breaking curfew, combined with a silly, empty belligerence and lockjawed speaking style.

Posted by Martin Hutchinson on May 20, 2005, 12:20 PM | #

All very well put; johnjayray I’m glad you like Reagan and Salisbury—your other favorites of Disraeli, Churchill and even Heath I fear leave me cold. Splendid stuff from all on both heroes.

In the U.S. I would add Coolidge to the rank of Conservative Presidents, maybe McKinley and, with hesitation Buchanan, a much misunderstood man who needs a good ideological biography. Preventing the Civil War and allowing slavery to wither on the vine was a perfectly reasonable strategy, and might well have worked—he needed a couple of years of quiescence to damp down Southern paranoia, however, and Lincoln/Douglas and John Brown ensured he didn’t get them.

For those who haven’t read it, I recommend Andrew Roberts’ review of McCullogh’s “1776” in today’s WSJ. John Adams was “the V.I.Lenin of the American Revolution.” Wonderful stuff!

Posted by jonjayray on May 20, 2005, 12:53 PM | #

As a libertarian, I LOATHE Heath but he WAS a conservative—like Dizzy he just tried to keep the peace

I did not of course mean that Salisbury was a modern libertarian tout court—just that he had many elements of that

“Preventing the Civil War and allowing slavery to wither on the vine was a perfectly reasonable strategy”—Hear here!

“Reagan had a kingly air. His patience, geniality, masterly inactivity and posture of knowing nothing were a good combination “—Spot on!

The idea that there was conservatism BEFORE there was liberalism is nonsense. Pitt the younger was in some ways the first modern conservative PM and yet he was allied with the Whigs at various times. Conservatism has ALWAYS had an element of trusting the individual. The 19th century Leftists (the liberals) pushed liberty ideas to extremes—as Leftists push any idea to extremes—but that is PRECISELY because general ideas of English liberty were already prevalent and accepted.

19th century liberalism was in fact a maliciously exaggerated form of conservatism. Conservatives haven’t caved into liberty ideas. They were always there—always part and parcel of traditional English beliefs.

Aaargh—I should have made this a post!

Posted by Geoff M. Beck on May 20, 2005, 01:32 PM | #

Does the record match the reality.

1) Passed the first illegal alien amnesty, which set the pattern for others. In fact, under Reagan’s 1986 Amnesty people are still being given citizenship to this day.

2) He not, Jimmy Carter, let the neocons into Washington: Perle and the rest of the cabal where first given posts in his administration

3) He did not downsize government, close departments, but did raise taxes, nor did he kill affirmative action, and etc…

Reagan like all post-war presidents was a Ceasar (oh, but a better one, sure), but a tyrant and failure.

If you read National Review - or watch gov’t controlled television - then I can only understand such fawning.

I’m a bit disappointed that Effra didn’t cut through this Reagan tripe.

Posted by Guessedworker on May 20, 2005, 01:45 PM | #

John,

Freedom IS a Conservative idea, which had its roots in the stability bestowed upon England by good King Henry V11. However, the notion of free men was detached from the Conservative organum by John Locke and thence reified into a kind of political logos.

That’s the order of things, John. Freedom had its place at the very beginnings of Conservatism.

Furthermore, I would state yet again that from the five decades from Pitt to Peel liberalism (Whiggism) did not obtain. Both Whig and Tory Ministries followed the golden mein first trowed by Pitt. This brief period was as completely Conservative in character as our own is liberal.

What you observe in 19th Century Conservatism (ie Peelism, Disraelism) are the beginnings of Relevancy Politics, practised domestically by all post-War Tories - including Winnie but with the singular exception in the economic and industrial field of our Mags. Relevancy only obtains because, by benefitting from the extention of suffrage, liberalism essentially took control. Relevancy is the meta-politics of Conservative failure

My perpetual song is that liberalism quickly turned its control into absolute control. Given that Salisbury retired in 1902 I think it’s fair to say that this process was finalised by 1918 but really only began to bear down upon the British people (as, indeed, it did in local form upon European peoples everywhere) after WW2.

Posted by Andrew L on May 20, 2005, 09:40 PM | #

It is amazing, when you read and studdy others work, in expaining leftism, they Deconstruct the entire network, then reconstruct the whole thing, and they still are leftoids, a common bias, so you can absorbe johns work and 80% correct with a 20% bias,Much like Revelo Oliver take 75% of exellent work and 25% bias Crapp.Peter Myers work exellent,99% explination but take 100% about turn and becomes a sect that they just denounsed, Don’t figgure, But denotes just how many levels of Leftism and Bias there are, mamazing
I think I have figgured it out, Just kidding, Impoosible.

Posted by Effra on May 21, 2005, 10:50 AM | #

Geoff Beck: I did say that I thought Reagan’s legacy included a failure to return the Republican coalition from Goldwaterite vagaries to its Taft-era bedrock: isolation in foreign policy, non-hysteria about communism, small federal government (though this was always compromised by its Clay/Lincoln origins) and socially conservative instincts. Gingrich dropped the ball and GW Bush is the burlesque consequence: the least authentic GOP president of all time, Teddy Roosevelt without the eloquence or human interest.

But I dispute that neocons had their way with the Gipper. Witness his unilateral pullout from the Lebanon and his underlings’ hamfisted attempts to repair relations with the Khomeini regime. For all his private Armageddonish leanings, Reagan resisted the Amen Corner. Grenada was his biggest war.

Yes, he was weak on immigration. But the full threat of the brown floodtide was not yet recognised.

Yes, he failed to roll back Washington. Education, for example, could have been de-federalised. But this, as I said, is a problem of only having five or six years in effective power. (Reagan did call for the two-term limit to be scrapped, IIRC.)

I also think his blitz on the air traffic controllers was superb, entirely legitimate for a conservative C-in-C. It’s a pity he did not use the auctoritas it gave him to hack away harder in other departments.

But I am not a Gipperolator. My verdict is ‘pretty good, considering’… not that different from the great man’s own ‘not bad, not bad at all’. (We Limeys appreciated his understatements and quiet good humour.) And that mildly approving verdict involves recognising how hopelessly statist the DC consensus had become. Ike warned about the power of the military industrial complex in his valedictory; Reagan at least reined it in somewhat.

I also agree that National Review revisionism about Reagan as a forerunner of Emperor Chimpoleon is farcical. It shows up their bad faith like few other historical comparisons, even their adulation of Churchill. They know most Americans, absent propaganda scares, are quiet, live-and-let-live, decently tolerant types like Ronald Reagan. So they have to try to co-opt him, but he had more milk of human kindness and common sense than those war-shriekers can amass between them.

Posted by jonjayray on May 22, 2005, 01:08 AM | #

Don’t forget that Reagan’s bombing of Gaddafi seems to have been a mind-changing event for Gaddafi. And that was only in response to a bombing in a German nightclub. What would Reagan have done in response to 9/11? Nobody knows but it unlikely to have been as pissweak as the “do nothing” response that seems to be advocated by critics of “Emperor Chimpoleon”

Posted by Geoff Beck on May 22, 2005, 02:01 PM | #

> Libya

Ok, he sent a squadron of f15s and bombed in retalliation. He didn’t send in an invasion force, occupy the country, and then steal their oil and gas.

Reagan was very Clintonesque in that regards, lots of small attacks against insignifigant foes: Grenada.

In this regard he was smarter than Emperor Chimpoleon.

Remember what he did in Lebanon, JJR? He got the hell out!

Posted by Geoff Beck on May 22, 2005, 02:56 PM | #

Effra:

I agree with your Reagan assesment.

This may sound ridiculous, being so out of context, but what is your opinion of the Reformation. I’m beginning to think it is a great tragedy for Western civilization.

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