The Litte Green Book

One of the biggest crimes with our education system - especially in history and social studies - is the lack of explanation about what could be called basic conservatism and basic capitalism. Instead, our history is mostly taught around personalities, not principles. This might be because younger minds do not understand such abstract concepts or see their application to the world. It could also be that we are lazy and prefer to make history into fun stories.

What I would define as true conservatism is perhaps more like libertarianism. It is the idea that the focus on individual rights and freedoms should be the foundation of society. This train of thought is apparently fundamental in the Federalist Papers and perhaps more so the Anti-Federalist Papers. The idea is that the founder fathers, when forming a new government, decided to make the individual the focus rather than the state or someone who represented the state. This was a fundamental change in Western Thought, which, although based on earlier philosophers (Locke, Hume, and Hobbes), was tried for the first time in practice with the United States.

I call this idea of the focus on the individual true conservatism for two reasons: (1) it hearkens back to the philosophical origins of the nation and (2) it repeats the sentiments in Goldwaters's Conscience of a Conservative.

Dovetailing into this is the capitalism propounded by Adam Smith which could also be accurately characterized as philosophy focusing on the individual. Pure capitalism, however, has taken much of a beating in the 20th Century in the form of the welfare state, the creation of the Federal Reserve, Social Security, and the advent of Keynesian Economics. What we have now is the freedom to engage in capitalism within the confines of a welfare state that takes a substantial portion of our earnings no matter how we choose to earn a living. This does not prevent some from amassing great fortunes, but many of those fortunes are made on the back of the masses in the form of coerced spending from the government (such as military spending) or monopoly created by government fiat (such as cable TV companies).

But here is my point. Conservatism and Capitalism, as I have defined them above, based on the focus on the individual, appear to have a tough time making converts in the U.S. The democratic party, has more or less become hostile to the free market in every form decrying every problem that occurs as a result of the "excesses of capitalism". The Republican party claims to be for both of these items, but in recent years has done the exact opposite on nearly all fronts. What's more, is that many regular people registered as Republicans do not understand the ideals of capitalism or conservatism as anything more than a platitude. The Republican party has, in reality, become the party that professes to keep taxes low and to support the pro-life movement. It does nothing else to forward the ideals of capitalism and conservatism, and often acts against these interests to steal issues from the democrats by either expanding government programs or bringing home government pork.

What struck me most recently about all of this is that my sentiments are neither new nor original nor recent. What is written above is basically a paraphrase of the opening of Conscience of a Conservative by Goldwater (or his ghostwriter actually). These sentiments are repeated today in the Ron Paul campaign as well as by the Austrian School of Economics with its emphasis on individual behavior and pure capitalism. These sentiments are also found in Ayn Rand's Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. To my great misfortune, I have only starting to embrace the ideals contained in the books recently. To my horror I realized that most people in the U.S. have no real concept of any of these ideas, even the few that are informed about them, because the ideals of conservatism are either loathed because of the label, or not understood by their supposed supporters.

As much as I have enjoyed reading portions of these works, I have to admit that they can be tough reading. They are written with passion but they are not passionate reads. Even Atlas Shrugged, which attempted to turn these ideals into a more enjoyable novel format, was not something I was able to finish - and I have read Moby Dick at least three times. In my mind, the problems is perhaps one of formatting. Essays to a great job of explaining how you reach your points, but the essayist often forgets to concisely summarize these points, obviating the need to constantly reread these works to try and understand their conclusions.

I would propose that modern capitalism and conservatism really need a sort of new "little green book" or something similar to a short Bible to help spread the message. The message has to be one of simple, short sentences, organized by topic or along some other lines that clearly expose the basic tenants of modern conservatism. Perhaps literary stories or actual history could be used to illustrate points. The point is that we need a work that either gives basic principles to help define modern conservatism and also to help shape arguments whenever a question arises as to "what is best" for a particular situation. A work that can be quoted as chapter and verse - even if only guidelines. In addition, it is probably a good idea to have a work of literature that is really enjoyable and relatively short that exemplifies these tenants. It can be an historical novel. It could be pure history. Both these philosophical/economic and literary works could even be combined just as the Bible combines Genesis with the laws of Leviticus. There may be such a book out there that explains conservatism so succinctly, but I have not seen it.