Leigh in Azerbaijan

Geoff Robinson’s commentary on John Howard, Australian Conservative, gave me a new insight into the conservative philosophy of our evicted Prime Minister. Howard was the first Aust. PM to identify himself as a conservative. With a little research I’ve discovered that conservatives believe, not in the self-determination of liberalism, but in authority, order and tradition as the time-tested best way of moving forward.

Conservatives scorn liberals for not being strong enough. Robinson points out that, “Howard’s intellectual supporters, such as Keith Windshuttle, looked back with admiration to the 19th Century frontier where hard men made hard decisions untrammelled by doubts.”

A critic of liberalism in the 19th Century, James Fitzjames Stephens, reveals conservative thinking on the use of force within democracy (I’m thinking of Howard’s decision to join the Coalition of the Willing, sending the troops into war without telling the people, not listening to the vast populace calling for aboriginal reconciliation … ) :

• Persuasion, indeed, is a kind of force. It consists in showing a person the consequences of his actions. It is, in a word, force applied through the mind.
• If… it is said that [Pontius] Pilate ought to have respected the principle of religious liberty as propounded by Mr. Mill, the answer is that if he had done so he would have run the risk of setting the whole province in a blaze… If this should appear harsh, I would appeal again to Indian experience.
• Parliamentary government is simply a mild and disguised form of compulsion. We agree to try strength by counting heads instead of breaking heads, but the principle is exactly the same… The minority gives way not because it is convinced that it is wrong, but because it is convinced that it is a minority.
• To try to make men equal by altering social arrangements is like trying to make the cards of equal value by shuffling the pack.
• In a pure democracy the ruling men will be the wirepullers and their friends; but they will no more be on an equality with the voters than soldiers of Ministers of State are on an equality with the subjects of monarchy.
• To say that the law of force is abandoned because force is regular, unopposed, and beneficially exercised, is to say that day and night are now such well-established institutions that the sun and moon are mere superfluities.

Fitzjames Stephen also declared that ‘the first idea of all is force, the power to reward and punish. The next idea is command’.  That fits in with Howard’s style over his period as PM.

I find it fascinating that another philosophy gaining traction at that time (19th Century) was Social Darwinism, where the destruction of ‘inferior’ peoples was justified on the basis that the weakest peoples were destined to extinction anyway. Effectively, for both Social Darwinism and Conservatism, the view is that the people don’t know what is best for them. Decisions must be imposed by a ruling class.

It’s also interesting to view conservative understanding on gender roles (from www.ozconservative.com). It helps make sense of who Howard was as PM of Australia.

It is interesting to see the same philosphy within the church where conservatives will shed blood for upholding safe tradition, including traditional gender roles, rather than reinterpreting scripture in today’s context.

Anyway, it all helps me ponder the conservative phenomena of Howard.