“Conservatism” means many things these days, but one very useful and important definition is this: intellectual humility. That is, conservatism properly understood aims for the wisdom of which Socrates spoke, which is knowing what it is you don’t or cannot know.
Many conservative policy prescriptions follow from this sort of humility. Conservatives greet radical social change with skepticism because dramatic changes to large complex systems are very risky. Conservatives resist government interventions because unintended consequences are ubiquitous and often hard to predict — there are too many unknown unknowns.
“Conservatism is not an ideology,” commentators and thinkers from Michael Oakeshott to Barry Goldwater to Pat Buchanan to Mark Levin have said. It’s a disposition, an approach to problems rooted in this intellectual humility. It should go without saying that not all conservatives possess or practice this humility, and none of us do so consistently.
One duty of a conservative, if he or she really is to shed ideology, is to also be careful to avoid hard-and-fast rules when approaching policy questions.
Former President Barack Obama, thoroughly unconservative in many ways, is happy to say, “We know what works. We know what we have to do. We’ve just got to put aside the stale and outmoded debates.” A conservative, instead, knows that the past is a deep and rich source of wisdom, but that Obama’s “stale and outmoded debates” are in fact a proper and prudent exercise of intellectual humility. Let’s not presume we already know the answer.
Today, America is looking at very familiar situation: A brutal dictator in the Muslim world, who declares the U.S. his enemy, is actively killing his own people. Once again, politicians in both parties are calling for a war to depose the dictator.
When former President George W. Bush did this in Iraq, it was a mistake. When Obama did this in Libya, it was a mistake. In both cases, decapitating the state created a vacuum that strengthened terrorist organizations like al Qaeda and ISIS.
Presented today with a call to drive out murderous Syrian ruler Bashar Assad, it’s tempting to invert Obama’s line and say, “We know what doesn’t work. We know what we have to avoid. We’ve just got to put aside the stale and outmoded debates.”
But that’s not true. Intellectual humility requires us to examine this case anew. Eschewing ideology means avoiding easy answers.
At the same time, though, it’s shocking that otherwise conservative lawmakers are so confident in our ability to depose Assad and replace him with something better.
Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., is a good conservative senator with a generally conservative disposition. He opposes industrial policy such as corporate welfare because he thinks the government lacks the capacity to invest wisely. As chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, he’s staying out of primaries (unlike some of his predecessors), because he doesn’t think the party should have a top-down system of picking the best nominee — that’s up to voters.
Yet in Syria, Gardner has confidence that U.S and its allies can depose Assad and replace him with someone who can lead the country as a peaceful, pro-Western, stable leader.
“The administration,” Gardner told my colleagues and me in a recent editorial board interview, “needs to develop a concrete plan” to ensure that “there is no future for Bashar al-Assad.” Together with allies, we need to lead a transition to “a peaceful Syria.”
Isn’t he worried that forcible regime change in Syria would have the same problems as forcible regime change in Iraq and Libya? Is he not mindful of unintended consequences of U.S. intervention? Doesn’t he fear that regime change could create chaos, or replace Assad with something even worse, as it did in Libya and Iraq?
“We have to make sure we get that right,” Gardner responded. “Identify that person, and have the support of the nations of the Middle East.”
This is the standard line from hawks in both parties, as it was during the Bush era. Careful enough planning by our government and other governments can stave off chaos and terrorism after regime change.
This conviction is deeply unconservative. Why would any conservative have such confidence? We asked Gardner, and he replied, “Half a million people are dead under this regime.” “We will not stand by”
I pick Gardner, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, as an example of a common mindset on the American Right. But it is the same reasoning the Left uses to justify Obamacare, welfare expansions, gun control — bad things are happening, and so the U.S. government must act.
Conservatism requires humility. That means the war skeptics can’t say with certainty what will happen if we leave Assad in or if we take Assad out. But we can be sure of this: The best laid plans of the confident central planners will go awry.
