Peter Copeland: A governing disposition for conservatism

If conservatism in Canada wants to be a governing movement rather than a protesting one, it must attract, uplift, and model the common good.

(Effects of Good Government in the city - Ambrogio Lorenzetti, 1339.)

Our culture suffers from a sickness of unbridled expression, and a habit of treating the outcomes we seek as though they are unaffected by attitude, intention, and character. It is an illness that crosses party and ideological lines in our social media-infused world, and preys on our baser instincts to foment division.

Pope Leo clearly senses the signs of the times, and gave a Lenten call to “disarm language”, refraining from wounding words and to cultivate kindness and respect in all spheres of life. It is a reminder that our comportment and manner of speaking are not separable from the kind of society we are trying to build.

This phenomenon is common across the spectrum, but it is especially acute in the conservative movement, which has a tone and comportment problem connected to deeper philosophical issues with different sides of its coalition, the ‘leave me alone’ spirit and an angry populism.

Conservatives are seen by many as oppositional, rhetorically forceful, distrustful of institutions, focused on individuals, suspicious of collective aims, and more skilled at critique than at governing. They need a posture that is at once attractive, more socially and ideologically distinct from liberalism, and in line with the Canadian communitarian ethic of shared responsibility and mutual regard, but in a properly conservative way, ordered to substantive goods rather than diffuse openness.

The freedom-first disposition and the angry populist reaction

For much of the modern era, conservatism in the anglosphere has been shaped by a belief that the central political task is to secure individual freedom, restrain the state, and allow markets to do their work. To a point, this is right. Limited government, realism about bureaucracy, the role of incentives, and curtailing crime in pursuit of public order are part and parcel of good government, social order, and a prosperous society. These commitments guard against the threats of overreach, waste, and state-led coercion, with which history is littered.

Though as a comprehensive political philosophy, it is remarkably thin. It assumes, and perpetuates, the citizen as an atomized individual, and views institutions primarily as obstacles and threats to an unrestrained conception of freedom. It imagines social order as something that spontaneously emerges once a relatively simple and bland recipe of rule of law and few other ingredients are in place, government is reduced, and people are left alone.

The issues with it are both the conception of key principles, and their overemphasis at the expense of other, arguably more important things. Suspicion of government has become a default stance for conservatives, where slippery slopes to socialism lie perilously around every corner, and attempts to promote social cohesion are viewed as close to communism.

When unrestrained freedom is treated as the highest good, collective aims and even higher standards of conduct, from duty to obligation and responsibility, are greatly diminished, as through this lens they are cast as a kind of external imposition rather than constituent elements of human flourishing.

When markets become the dominant moral imagination, the citizen is reduced to a homo economicus, which is not at all her natural or ideal state, a chooser, a consumer, a rights-bearer whose primary political demand is to be left alone. Such is the worldview of a sulky adolescent, not a responsible adult.

Many Canadians already understand this; they don’t like unrestrained markets plus social liberalism, but common goods and social and cultural conservatism.

One cannot look around at the state of our culture, its loneliness, fragmentation, and loss of shared purpose, and conclude that what we need is yet more autonomy, rights without duties, and freedom without a substantive account of what freedom is for, and a willingness to pursue it in politics and policy. Many of these principles are good and worth conserving, but in their current form they are increasingly unmoored from the thicker moral ecology that makes them livable.

The antidote to this illness lies in a subtle rebalancing toward common goods and collective aims, but those who understand the diagnosis often prescribe anger, contempt, and derision. This unhealthy form of populism is preoccupied, rightly, with cultural issues, but suffused with an anger that is tribal, and offers little in the way of positive propositions, or a demeanour that is attractive. It may yet make the patient even sicker.

Especially adept at identifying problems, it is poor at cultivating a disposition that is positive, mature, and suited to governing. It is often effective in the short term, emotionally satisfying as it is to engage in out-group demonization that can mobilize a base. This aggressive mode operates under a zone-flooding logic preoccupied with discrediting opponents, and making politics feel like a war of tribes. But it is ultimately corrosive because it teaches and thrives on contempt, adopting the very postmodern lesson that was yesterday the object of conservative critique, that politics is not about truth, moral reasoning, and persuasion, but power, narrative control, and domination.

Canada’s peaceable communitarian inheritance

Both of these postures are strikingly un-Canadian. We are not like the United States, a country that is founded on a revolutionary liberal rejection of continuity with key elements of the past, with freedom-as-licence as a kind of civic religion. Whatever Canada’s present confusion, at its best it is a nation of nuance and balance, which is the proper antidote to ideologies that reduce the world into simplistic models and apply principles formulaically where they no longer fit, like the classical liberal formula that is in need of a major makeover.

Canada has long been animated by a quiet communitarianism, oriented toward peace, order, and good government. The Canadian temperament, when healthy, is hospitable as it prizes stability, decency, and a certain civic warmth. It is not today’s multiculturalist ethos that sacrifices unity and common purpose for an empty diversity, but one that welcomes, and accommodates, under the framework of clear commitments and principles.

This Canadian inheritance requires a temperament and moral ecology to go with it. That ecology is shaped by the means it normalizes, which is why demeanour is so important and a politics that ignores it so destructive.

The means must be conducive to the ends

There is a deeper philosophical error common to the ‘leave me alone’ conservatism, the more egalitarian progressive type of liberalism, and the angry kind of populism alike. Modern politics is suffused with instrumental rationality, the belief that what matters is the outcome, and that the means are secondary.

This utilitarian mindset measures success by aggregate results and deemphasizes the importance of right intention, of the effect of our demeanour and the way in which we comport ourselves and act, failing to see its crucial connection to the attainment of those outcomes. It produces a kind of schizophrenic approach to politics and life, one that is ruthlessly technical all day, treating institutions and persons as tools in service of some impersonal objective that does not require kindness, interpersonal interaction, or care and concern for others, and yet desires these things in private life.

There is no way to achieve these great goods that we all strive for, if the means taken do not embody that same spirit. You do not produce a healthy society by rhetoric that deepens resentment, or foster trust and social cohesion through contempt and a steady diet of mistrust.

An attractive demeanour

Newer conservatives have rightly sensed that the old fusionist synthesis is exhausted. Our problems are not merely economic. They are cultural, moral, and spiritual. The ideals that increasingly animate the new right, common goods, objective values, patriotism, reverence, responsibility, family, and a commitment to place and people, are serious and worthy. But they carry a demand for a comportment and demeanour that reflects them. One that does not thrive on the cheap thrills and sugar highs of constant critique.

If conservatism in Canada wants to be a governing movement rather than a protesting one, it must recover an attractive witness, a posture that is at once appealing, more socially and ideologically distinct from liberal ideas, and in closer alignment with our communitarian inheritance. That requires something different from both the adolescent freedom-from stance and the angry populist habit of constant denunciation. Neither can build a country marked by order, reverence, and the common good.

It should be a movement that is concretely anchored in the promotion of the goods that contribute to human flourishing, these are thick, not endlessly diverse, ideas about the importance and structure of the family unit, the place of Christian faith in Canada’s past and present; a recognition that rights come with duties, and that human flourishing requires not only freedom but virtue, truth, and the common good, all actively promoted through institutions with thicker value frameworks by civil society and government alike.

In policy, it means making stronger critiques of multiculturalism, ‘civic’ nationalism, DEI, delusions of gender identity, weak approaches to public safety, and the ‘destigmatization’ of addiction and countless other objectively harmful behaviours.

But each critique must be paired first with a positive recognition of some aspect of what each perspective affords, followed by a more positive ideal. This is the essence of charity, and makes people open to alternative perspectives.

That means speaking warmly of the aspirations to inclusivity in multiculturalism and DEI, and the commitment to ideals in ‘civic’ nationalism above narrow identity categories, the desire for compassion and mercy where public safety and vulnerability are in play, while stating strongly why each falls short.

Multiculturalism is a diversity without unity. Inclusivity must be based in mutual respect and charity, but never a denial of the truth about what is objectively right and good for people. In public safety and areas of social policy, conservatives must have smart, credible proposals aimed at offender rehabilitation, and those caught in the traps of addiction and social welfare that go beyond the bootstrap rhetoric.

It simply won’t do to just advocate for removals or returns, without a charitable and understanding tone. This is the same simplistic approach that is taken on economic issues, where tax reductions, deregulation, and unrestrained trade are normative.

It is good to remember that politics is in service of some higher aim. It is not an end in itself. You do not want to be like Satan, who in Dante’s telling finds himself in the deepest part of hell, not consumed by a dynamic, churning fire, as many often mistakenly think, but frozen in ice, completely wrapped and turned in on himself, wishing to be left alone. Full of mistrust in people and in collectives, he is ultimately unable to love, which is what it is to be ‘in hell’. Such a posture stands in stark opposition to a communitarian, generous conservatism.

Whether you practise Lent or not, we could all do with a softer, kinder, gentler tongue. And a disposition that is self-forgetting, looks to dependence and responsibility to others as the highest calling, and shows that, and speaks of it in positive ways, in our politics. It is the path to personal and collective peace, as well as to victory by winning hearts, not just minds, by embodying the very goods it claims to defend.

Peter Copeland is deputy director of Domestic Policy at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. He worked as a director of policy and senior policy advisor to multiple ministers in the Ontario government.