What Makes A Progressive Or A Conservative? - The Tale Begins In Childhood

Progressives believe that with the right investment, continued commitment, passion, and a sense of righteousness, the world can become a better place.  Despite the lessons of history - perpetual, perennial wars, civil strife, palace coups, family jealousies, and the seeming ineluctability of human nature - Utopia is indeed possible. 

Conservatives claim that exactly because of these predictably similar millennia of history, and the hardwired, innate, unchangeable human nature within us, there is no such thing as progress.  Change, yes and by all means, but changing to something better, never.

While the two sides may quibble about superficialities - life expectancy, economic opportunity, social mobility - they differ fundamentally on the nature of human enterprise.  Conservatives say that faster cars, the Internet, medical advances simply mask the fundamental core reality of human nature.  That human conflict, competition, is not only fundamental but is the only way that the conditions of life - not its ethos or central purpose - can improve. 

Progressives dismiss this argument as self-serving.  Faster cars are indications of a better world, and that eventually the noble human spirit will find a way to harmonize ethos with material progress. 

These contrary beliefs do not simply define politics, but the way one behaves. One's  understanding of man’s relationship to God, secular institutions, society, and the geo-ecological environment are profoundly different. Our reactions to and sympathy/empathy for others is determined by a moral philosophy which either blesses and anoints others as brothers and sisters; or sees them as evolutionary competitors struggling for survival, dominance, and genetic longevity.

How did we become so different? We are both from the same socio-cultural milieu.  We both went to elite preparatory schools and universities; and although our immediate socio-cultural heritage was indeed different, there should be no reason why our political philosophy should have so dramatically diverged.

Some researchers have suggested that political philosophy has a genetic basis.  Although society, culture, education, and upbringing certainly have a role, it is bits of DNA which align in certain ways to produce conservatives or liberals.  John B Judis writing in The New Republic says:

Over the last two decades, political scientists, and psychologists have used genetics and neuroscience to claim that people’s political beliefs are predetermined at birth. Genetic inheritance, they argue, helps to explain why some people are liberal and others conservative; some people turn out to vote; and why some people favor and others oppose abortion and gay rights. The field itself has a name—genopolitics—and it is taking political science by storm. In the last four years alone, over 40 journal articles on the subject have appeared in academic journals 

Children are remarkable little creatures.  Before they are out of kindergarten they already have a sense of how the world works, not in any detail of course - no exogenous and endogenous variables, social conditioning, genetic predisposition, human nature - but the combination of inborn personality and character, a sharp perception, and native, uncomplicated intelligence are enough. 

It is clear from even a casual observation that children - too young to have been influenced by environmental factors differ significantly, and many of their emotional responses correspond to adult political philosophy.  Some children are born with both high intelligence and a well-defined sense of self.  They come to believe at a very early age that they are superior to other children and that they can do anything they want. 

Others are born with a sense of empathy - they are social beings rather than independent engines of activity.  Accommodation, consideration, collaboration are important elements for fostering and preserving this worldview. 

Progressives deny any such innate characteristics.  We are nothing more than the product of nurture which begins from the moment we are born; and yet no parent, no matter how progressive in outlook can ignore the indomitable will, demands, and insistence of young children.  They have come out of the womb combative, territorial, and self-defensive. 

There is a bell curve for everything, and within this central, inescapable paradigm, the reactions to it vary. Some, the highly intelligent children with a naturally highly honed sense of self are at one asymptote. Those less intelligent and with an inborn 'outer-ness' fall on the other end. 

As they grow older, these children do not lose these innate, inborn traits but express them in adult ways.  They become conservatives or progressives. 

Such evolution is not just political but philosophical.  It goes far beyond partisan politics.  A philosophical conservative will look at social dysfunction, harsh traditionalism, inequality, concentration of wealth and ability as natural expressions of human nature and human dynamics.  All revolve around the essential, unchangeable foundation of competition, territorialism, self-defensiveness, and aggressive demands for wealth, resources, and security. 

A progressive insists that there is no such thing as hardwiring.  These social characteristics are products of the environment and can be changed, modified, or eliminated. 

Kevin Fells was a very intelligent boy who mastered numbers, reading, and the chess board with ease.  He was impatient with the classmates and teachers who slowed him down, got in his way, impeded his development, kept him from understanding and achievement. 

From a very early age he instinctively understood the bell curve.  Some children were smart and others were not, and the way for the smart ones, like him, must be kept clear.  

He grew up at a time when cooperative learning had been introduced into primary school education.  The more gifted children were to help the slower learner even at the expense of their own progress.  Keven saw the unfairness of this.  Why should the scales be tipped in favor of those who would always be behind when students like Kevin - students of ability and promise - were held back?

In middle and high school, he saw the same imbalance; but now it was not simply unfairness but injustice.  The high standards of the private school he was attending were being eroded because of the admission of unqualified students simply because of their race. 

The school was devotedly liberal, proud of its long tradition of opposing racial segregation, and committed to educating students not only in advanced theoretical concepts but in moral posture.  To demonstrate this commitment, a black student was chosen to open every colloquy, every assembly, every graduation, and every matriculation. 

Neither Kevin nor any of his middle school classmates had parsed the issue.  Its antecedents, Quaker abolitionism, pacifism, and One World advocates were distant, unquestioned elements of their affirmative action stance; but all the students could see was disparity, unfairness, and injustice.  More importantly it consolidated the residual racial biases they already had. 

The community from which most students came was decidedly liberal and most parents accepted the school's policies without question; but affirmative action was an important milestone in his evolving conservatism.  The point was that despite an almost universal embrace of black-first preferential treatment. white guilt, and colonial shame, Kevin' natural, inbred, inborn, and undeniable political philosophy had never wavered.  The environment - nurture - had done nothing to sway him from his instinctively finely tuned perceptions. 

The same was true of those children born with liberal sentiments - those for whom compassion, empathy, sympathy, and unquestioning inclusiveness were hardwired.  These children considered the Kevins of the world arrogant, selfish, and proprietary. Kevin's accusers absorbed the liberal ethos of their parents, the school, and their neighborhood as received wisdom. 

The dynamics of adolescence - the primacy of belonging, the importance of conformity, and fear of censure - are hard for anyone to resist.  The liberal cast of the society at large is one thing, but when the neediness of adolescence is factored in, independence is rare.

Which is why Kevin was unusual.  His instincts, as valid as a teenager as they were as a young child went counter to such group censure and opprobrium; but such defiance had its price.  Being a conservative in a deeply-steeped liberal environment is not easy. 

As he grew into adulthood in the present day, his situation was even more precarious. It was hard for such an intelligent, incisive, compelling man to live within a culture of identity - one which not only did not value intelligence, will, ambition, and ability; but championed the reverse.  Idealism and Utopian conviction made objectivity impossible.  The country was not so much divided by Left and Right, but by idealism and fact. Progressives saw the world as what it could be, conservatives as what it was; and never would the twain ever meet. 

Was Kevin devoid of compassion and social concern?  Far from it; but because of his absolute conviction that all efforts must be calculated and planned within a competitive, natural selection, he shed no tears.  It was that which expelled him from the liberal community in which he lived more than anything.  No tears meant no love, no compassion, and no understanding. 

Kevin could not help being a conservative any more than his liberal colleagues could help their idealism.  It was a matter of character and personality - the particular configurations of the same human nature expressed in radically different ways. 

There are conversions - given enough time liberals will become conservative - but few and far between.  Nothing as hardwired as political philosophy - the very way one sees the world - is likely to change.