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Conservatism, then, is characterized, in the first instance, by opposition to the idea of total or radical change, not by the absurd idea of opposition to change as such, or by any commitment to preserving all existing institutions. p. 9  Term first used by Chateaubriand, after the revolution, when he gave the name Le Conservateur to a journal he issued to propagate the cause of a clerical and political Restoration in France. Thereafter name is rapidly adopted by many other groups opposed the progress of the Revolution. American Republicans and British Tory's are calling themselves 'conservatives' by early 1830's. p. 9-10  Precursors to the attitude of the revolutionaries where: two centuries preceding Revolution see increasing tendency to abandon the traditional pessimism about the human condition reflected in the Christian myth of the Fall and in the idea of original sin. The new optimism emerging with the Renaissance is then bolstered by the growth of scientific knowledge and the world comes to be seen as intelligible to human reason (without the need for divine revelation) and responsive to human will once comprehended. The world now came to be regarded as a huge machine or watch which could in principle be dismantled and reassembled. The world is seen to be far more malleable than it had previously. Story of the Fall is gradually discarded as a means of explaining human suffering and in place of Adam Rousseau offers society as the source of human misery. Reform society and suffering will disappear, he argued. p. 10-11  Such sentiment called for a statement of conservative principles. The incipient conservatives had to show that the world imposes limitations upon what either the individual or the state can hope to achieve. Conservative ideology, accordingly, may be defined as a philosophy of imperfection, committed to the idea of limits, and directed toward the defense of a limited style of politics. By a limited style of politics is meant one which has as its primary aim the preservation of the distinction between private and public life (or between the state and society). This distinction is threatened by the ideal of radical change – which in practice has meant the constant extension of state power into every sphere of life, in the name of equality, social justice and welfare. p. 11-12  'reform' rather than 'change' preserves the essential good. p. 12  Liberalism, which over the 19th century, came increasingly to value 'progress' and the 'improvement' (quotation marks in place in text) of mankind is thus distinguished from conservatism for ultimately such notions are incompatible with conservatism. John Stuart Mill made clear that progress or improvement might even mean interfering with the inner life of man - through social welfare programs, etc. p.13  Positive assertion that "the idea upon which all conservative thought depends…is imperfection." p.14  Conservatism is distinguished from the radical right in that like the humanists of the French Revolution Nazism and fascism allow far more potency to the human will and accordingly present the world and social order as more malleable than is compatible with conservative ideology. p. 14  The radical left also does not treat imperfection as inherent to the human condition but rather the product of a particular organization of society. "Marxism, then, is no exception to the generalization that all radical ideologies maintain that imperfection can be removed (in principle at least) from the human condition by radical social and political change." p. 15-16  The rejection of imperfection has found its way into all modern democratic ideology, in the seemingly innocuous guise of the doctrine of popular sovereignty. This correlation may be traced back to Rousseau's insistence upon man's natural innocence. Since man is naturally good the only acceptable restraint upon the human will is a self-imposed restraint for external ones must necessarily be incompatible with the freedom and majesty of creatures who are naturally good. In liberal democracies the rejection of imperfection is more familiar in the form of the ideal of self-imposed restraints as the condition for moral and political obligation than in the form of utopian dreams of a communist millennium or a thousand-year Reich. p. 16  In the Social Contract Rousseau outlines the conditions in which one could justifiably "render obedience" (explanation p. 17 [of O'Sullivan]) yet concludes that no major European country has ever found such conditions and thus none of them could rightfully claim the obedience of their subjects. Rousseau's view provides the basis of the doctrine of popular sovereignty, which was later enshrined in the French Constitution of 1793, and has later been passed down in a variety of forms to all Western democratic ideologies. P. 17 - Conservatives see disastrous implications in the idea that only self imposed restrictions can create a duty of political obedience. Firstly, if the individual is bound only by his own will then only laws and institutions that which accurately reflect his wishes are politically and socially acceptable, and further, with whimsical change of ones wishes so to changes the set of institutions to which one pays respect. With a sea of individuals and their myriad and clashing values the ideal of the rejection of imperfection expressed through the doctrine of popular sovereignty gives anarchy. Secondly, the idea may lead in the opposite direction and be used to defend despotic government. For the ideal of self government (or popular sovereignty) shifts attention away from the exercise of power to its origin and thus a government may defend, without absurdity, any policy at all by merely claiming that it acted on behalf of the people. Finally, the idea leads to the rejection of institutions and authorities, not because they have been tried and are found wanting, but simply because they are not self-imposed. P.18-19 - French revolution sees the rejection of God for not being self-imposed. P. 20 - Immanuel Kant agrees with Rousseau that man could only be bound by self-imposed restraints. Kant asserts that "no prince has contributed one iota to the perfection of mankind, to inner happiness, to the worth of humanity." He writes further that men require "the authority, not of governments, but of conscience within us…" p. 20 - Regarding how conservative thinkers defend the idea of man as an imperfect, dependent and limited creature incapable of regeneration there are three schools. - The first school characterized by the thought of Burke, de Maistre, and Bonald holds that change disrupts the original perfection of the creation of God. For Burke, the English Constitution of 1688, provided a formal set of values that most closely conformed to the divine plan, or "the natural order" of the universe, as he put it, and thus afforded a yardstick by reference to which judgment could be passed on proposals for change. (p.22-23) - The second school of thought is characterized by the search for limits upon man's will being directed toward the discovery of laws of development and change in history itself. It is a search for a relative principle of order, in contrast with the absolute one pursued by the first school. This form of conservative thought is most evident in the German school of romantic conservatism, but also played a role in the thought of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Thomas Carlyle. This school, drawing its inspiration from a philosophy of history (as with Marxism) stresses the fact that people are confronted by an extremely limited range of possible ways of changing the social and political order which they find in any particular historical period. "This conservative application depended, in particular, upon maintaining that the existing order is a more complete and more profoundly rational expression of the human spirit than any deliberately contrived social order could ever be." "…stressing the superiority of the work of nature and time over 'artificial' human creations…" "Time or history, in other words, was now made the true locus of rationality, instead of the wild visions of revolutionary reformers." Maybe there's room for some "wild visions" - you know a bottle of Wolf Blass and maybe a little something else - eh, Dunk? P. 23-25 - The third and last school is marked by skepticism about the possibility of chaining down the will either by invoking the existence of a divine plan to which man must conform, or else by discerning some underlying pattern and meaning in history. This third theory of imperfection (although less easily defined) rests in the idea that "the world precludes the fulfillment of men's loftiest dreams and projects because not all the goods that they desire are compatible with one another." "In its simplest form the new doctrine consists of the proposition that liberty is indivisible. The idea behind this seems to be that men forget that they must take the rough with the smooth, and assume too readily that they can have the smooth by itself. 'The smooth', in this context, means limited government, individual liberty, and a pluralist social order, whilst 'the rough' is identified with the hardships and inequalities associated with a capitalist economic system. The proposition that liberty is indivisible may therefore be translated into the assertion that too much state intervention in social and economic life is incompatible with a liberal-democratic political order, and will end by creating totalitarianism." The most novel feature of this new formulation is the stress laid on the connection between the economic and political organization of society. P. 26-27 - The third school's characteristic argument is that the pursuit of perfection in politics means the destruction of liberty. This is founded more on common experience and prudence than upon theology or upon the metaphysical significance of history. P. 28 -As soon as particular thinkers are considered it becomes evident that few are easily slotted into one or other of the three schools of thought, as in many cases thought involves arguments drawn from more than one of them. Indeed, since World War one the different characteristics of conservative thought have been much less apparent. Conservatives everywhere have come to recognize a common external enemy in the Soviet Union and a common internal enemy in the rise to power of organized labour and the growth of state intervention. This uniformity of concern make it possible to deal with 20th century conservative thought in supra-national terms which would be inappropriate when considering the divergent lines of its development during the nineteenth century. P. 28-29 - Prior to this century conservative thought and energies centred around defense of the state in confronting the threat of destruction, in the name of liberty, of all authority, of law, of property, of personal security, and of liberty itself. In the present century liberalism has been replaced by socialism as the principle threat to conservative values. Thus, the danger now comes not from excess individual power but state power. In response some conservatives have reversed their traditional support for authority and have thrown their weight behind the cause of individual liberty, and thus resemble the classical liberals (although crucial differences remain). Even if many conservatives had not actively supported this centuries move in a semi-socialist direction (which they have), it could still be argued that the dominant pattern of social change has been in an increasingly corporatist direction, so that the conservatives would in any event have been compelled to come to terms with many semi-socialist facts of life. P. 30 - In conclusion of this first chapter O'Sullivan iterates what has been his underlying point which is "that a conservative political commitment is just as capable of being defended in the light of a philosophical view of the nature of man, of society, and of the world as is a liberal or a socialist one." Bibliography: Congress then dissipated rapidly. The new CBC not only can criticize but also has the votes to inflict pain. On the House side, this means the 38 black representatives (Eleanor Holmes Norton is a nonvoting delegate from Washington, D.C.) have clout. On the Senate side, Carol Moseley-Braun (D-Ill.) has only one vote, but often only one vote is needed to pass or block a bill that affects millions. This new black power leads some Afrocentric political insiders to rejoice and grow paranoid. First, they see the CBC's powerful swing vote potential and the impact it could have on addressing the problems of African-Americans. But these analysts fear a white backlash, which some say began last summer with the Supreme Court ruling that minority-designed congressional districts may violate white voter rights . Most of the CBC's new representatives hail from newly created black districts in Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana and Alabama. The new Black Caucus. Source American Prospect. 11(10):16-19. 2000 Mar 27-Apr 10. Congressman James Clyburn has built his political career hammering out compromises behind the scenes. He has worked for economic growth in his eclectic South Carolina district, lobbying successfully for a Honda plant in Timmonsville, a significant increase in the state's share of federal highway funds, direct flights from Charleston to Chicago, and the deepening of Charleston Harbor. In Washington he has earned a reputation as a talented negotiator. "If the distance between you and the other person is five steps," Clyburn likes to say, "then you damn sure ought to be willing to take two steps.' Plenty of representatives do their jobs according to the Clyburn model, but in addition to being the first black congressman from South Carolina since Reconstruction, Clyburn is also the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC). And that makes him very different indeed. The contrast between Clyburn and his immediate predecessor, the brash and outspoken Maxine Waters of Los Angeles, is perhaps the clearest indication of the changing nature of the CBC. But as a rural southerner, Clyburn also differs from other heads of the CBC-Kweisi Mfume, Donald Payne, Edolphus Towns, and Ron Dellums in the 1990s-all of whom came from urban, economically depressed, and overwhelmingly black districts outside the South. The switch to a rural southerner is no accident. Before the 1992 elections that sent 17 black freshmen to Congress-most of them from newly majority-minority districts in the South-the caucus drew almost all of its membership from big cities. Now the CBC is nearly twice the size, almost half southern and half female, and significantly rural and suburban. Layered upon this demographic transformation is a generational change, an influx of younger members who learned their politics in the post-civil rights era. Together these changes have made the caucus of today quite different from the caucus of 10 years ago. The tension between pragmatism and ideology is nothing new in the CBC. As far back as 1974, only three years after it was founded, St. Louis Congressman Bill Clay told his colleagues that the caucus could not be both a legislative organization and a civil rights organization. To Clay, the conclusion was evident: Members had to be legislators first. But, if only by necessity, the CBC has a long tradition of focusing on the politics of moral resistance. The caucus has cast itself as the conscience of Congress, making up for a lack of votes with claims to legislative purity. For years its primary focus was its alternative budget, ignored by the rest of Congress. The idea wasn't so much to pass a budgetor even directly affect the legislative process-as it was to articulate a vision. And to do this, black representatives had to maintain a certain ideological purity. So members of the caucus didn't want to wrestle in the political mud for two reasons: It would weaken their moral authority, and they couldn't get what they wanted anyway. But with 37 members, the caucus is no longer isolated from power. During the 103rd Congress, after the caucus's expansion but before the Republican take-over, the CBC vote was pivotal on 21 pieces of legislation. If the Democrats win back the House in November, black representatives will likely chair three full committees and 19 subcommittees. Now that they are almost fully integrated into the institution of Congress, CBC members can form coalitions and leverage votes as everybody else has for years. Albert Wynn, who represents suburban Prince George's County in Maryland, is one of the new black representatives trying to swim more in the mainstream. I didn't come here to be anybody's conscience," he said when he took office in 1993. "I came here to negotiate, " Harold Ford, Jr., who took over the Memphis seat from his father in 1996, also symbolizes a new pragmatism. With statewide ambitions, he has been careful not to seem as doctrinaire as his father and has bucked the rest of the caucus on some key issues, including national education testing. According to Frank Watkins, who worked for Jesse Jackson, Sr., and is now on the staff of Jesse Jackson, Jr., the younger Jackson is more liberal than his father but is also "much softer" stylistically. The changing political style of the CBC reflects a number of distinct developments: generational turnover, the increasingly moderate turn of the Democratic Party, and the larger size of the caucus. But perhaps the most important factor is the diversification of the constituencies CBC members represent-a development largely brought on by redistricting in the early 1990s. Before 1992 most members of the CBC came from districts with relatively unitary political interests: economically stressed inner cities with overwhelmingly black populations. Because the interests of the Cleveland district were similar to those of the Newark district, the pre-1992 CBC was unified not only in the belief in activist government but also in the particulars of what it should be activist for. The caucus could put forward a very black- and urban-centric political agenda. But now that it encompasses a new range of demographics, there is by definition less agreement about the particulars as well as an increased need to represent districts that are more diverse. If all politics is local, then the proliferation of different kinds of local within a caucus is bound to change its politics. More than ever before, black representatives are being pulled in different directions by a multiplicity of constituent interests. There is, for instance, now a bloc of about 10 southerners who vote against the rest of the caucus on agricultural legislation. Some of them, including Clyburn and North Carolina's Eva Clayton, are even outspoken defenders of tobacco farmers-something that sets them apart from their colleagues who rail against the tobacco industry for questionable marketing strategies that target black neighborhoods. The black representatives from Florida and Texas are unique among CBC members in their support of the air and space industry. Bobby Scott, whose Virginia district includes parts of Newport News and Norfolk, is the leader of a 12member pro-defense minority in the CBC. Jacksonville's Corrine Brown casts aside liberal orthodoxies when they conflict with her pro-military constituency. In her 1998 campaign, she told a constituent, "When it comes to military facilities and the safety of the United States ... we need to check our parties at the door." The expansion of local interests within the CBC has similarly led to a change in the kind of committee assignments caucus members lobby for. Since 1992 black representatives have increasingly opted to serve on constituent committees that give them access to pork instead of the policy and prestige committees to which members of the CBC had heretofore tended to gravitate. These interest-based divisions revealed themselves most clearly in the recent debate over the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act, free trade legislation co-sponsored by Charles Rangel, the longtime congressman from Harlem. The issues were very similar to those surrounding the World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle: What will free trade cost everyday Africans and Americans? Rangel and his supporters voted for the legislation because it provided new money for Africa and most African governments supported it. Maxine Waters voted against it because, she said, it would open Africa to exploitation by multinational corporations. The threemember Chicago black delegation voted against it in part because labor unions opposed it. (Jesse Jackson, Jr., proposed alternative legislation based on loan guarantees to African countries.) Seven southerners voted against it to protect textile workers in their districts. Sanford Bishop from Georgia made their case very simply during the floor debate. "Let's help workers in Africa, " Bishop said. "But in so doing, let's not hurt workers in America." North Carolinians Mel Watt and Jesse Helms don't agree on much of anything, least of all their vision for the fature of Africa, but they voted together in regional solidarity against a bill the CBC ended up supporting, 20-14. A central element in the changing political dynamics of the CBC is the increasing importance of biracial politics and political coalitions. In his recent book Race, Redistricting, and Representation, University of Wisconsin Professor David T. Canon argues that contrary to the predictions of racial redistricting's critics-that it would engender "political apartheid I" in Justice Sandra Day O'Connor Is words-redistricting has in fact spurred the growth of "a politics of commonality" distinct from "a politics of difference." The 1992 majorityminority districts were some of the most integrated districts in the country. And after most of them were scaled back in response to the Supreme Court's Shaw v. Reno decision outlawing racial redistricting, they became even more integrated than before. That means many new members must appeal to a significant white constituency, something that was never a consideration for most old members. Not that whites didn't ever turn elections in majority black districts in the past. White voters in black districts have sometimes decided Democratic primaries (and thus, in effect, general elections) on the basis of which black candidate has the stronger biracial appeal. For example, although Georgia's fifth district (Atlanta) is 62 percent black, when it was created in 1986 John Lewis beat Julian Bond in the Democratic primary because he won some 80 percent of the white vote. The same thing happened in Houston in 1994, where Sheila Jackson Lee defeated Craig Washington in the primary by appealing to white and women voters, something Washington had conspicuously failed to do. But redistricting, and even more the re-redistricting that took place in the middle 1990s, has amplified the effect of white voters on black candidates and thus has indirectly affected the character of the Congressional Black Caucus. Several southern CBC members have had their districts redrawn so they are no longer majority-minority. Almost all these representatives, with the possible exception of Cynthia McKinney (who is strong among women voters), have reached out to white voters in one way or another. And all of them, including McKinney, have won re-election. There is considerable debate over whether these victories are evidence of a new white willingness to vote for black candidates or just the power of incumbency. But the real story seems to combine both of these factors. Majority-minority districts allowed black candidates to gain the toehold of incumbency, which has in turn had a small but discernible transformative effect on white voting patterns. Sanford Bishop is perhaps the most dramatic example. Bishop, who had served as student body president of Morehouse College in the late 1960s, was elected from a majority-black district in rural Georgia in 1992. When his district was redrawn with a 60 percent white majority, Bishop looked to be one of re-redistricting's most likely victims. But he moved right on a number of issues (even joining the Blue Dogs, the conservative Democrat caucus). He lobbied hard for peanut subsidies, which both his white and black constituents needed, and was instrumental in ramming them through Congress. In November 1998 he was re-elected with support from many white peanut farmers who had Word Count: 2018
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