Constant Conservative

Conservatives are often accused of seeing things in black and white, rather than the shades of gray (nuance) which the real world requires. A University of California at Berkeley study went so far as to claim that as conservatives, we have the following psychological factors:

Fear and aggression, dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity, uncertainty avoidance, need for cognitive closure, and terror management

Further, they have even explained the basis for Stalin and Castro’s behavior (in part) by saying that:

these figures might be considered politically conservative in the context of the systems that they defended.

While I find the source and specific conclusions of the study (as stated above) more than a little suspect (not to mention the frankly offbeat idea that dyed-in-the-wool Marxist ideologues can somehow morph into conservatives), I’m willing to admit that we, as conservatives do tend to view things in black and white. However, I fail to see that as the drawback which some might anticipate.

These days, when so much of our world (including these very words) are represented as an astoundingly precise collection of zeroes and ones, I find it strangely incomprehensible that people would say that things just cannot be described without using a lot of gray.

This is not to say that life is not complex, nor that every crisis I encounter may be quickly and simply resolved by application of Conservative Principle 17B, subsection 22, paragraph 4. Conservatism is, nonetheless, quite capable of what I would term a modern application of Occam’s Razor: we are interested in keeping solutions as simple as possible.

Let me present a present-day example. Though I fail to completly understand why the private sector could not have bailed out Bear Stearns, (or let them fail, if that was the better route) I was more than a little discouraged when the Federal Reserve stepped in. Why? Because it reinforced the very bad precedent of government being available to catch anyone who falls (whether the guy who just lost his job, or the multi-billion dollar corporation which lost its ability to do math). Two days ago, the news broke that Lehman Brothers was going under. Yet, this morning we hear that matters may not be as dire as previously understood. For whatever may be the reason, I am glad that Lehman Brothers was not rescued by the Federal government (and the Federal Reserve). Will this current problem with Lehman Brothers have a huge negative impact on its employees, investors, and even the average Joe with a 401k? As they say over in Minnesota, “You betcha.” However, black and white thinking says that they messed up; therefore, they get to pay up. Do you think for a moment that other investment houses and banks are not buckling down and paying closer attention to their own zeros and ones, now that everyone doesn’t qualify for a Bear Stearns style safety net?

Call me old-fashioned, but I think black and white thinking has a much greater applicability to life in these United States (or anywhere in the world, for that matter) than many would think. There is a place for nuance–in the shades of leaves on an autumn tree, the cascading curves of a rainbow, even the brief and understated sunset of a cold Dakota winter night.

Beyond that, we should stick with letting our yes be yes and our no be no, something which some are still struggling with, even in these enlightened times. Now if the presidential candidates would only stop saying that we need more regulation (translation “goverment is the answer”) to fix all of this instead of getting people to own up to their actions, then I’ll know that Occam’s Razor has not entirely lost its edge.

09/17 Update

AIG is getting a bailout. It does not make sense to me. Why not let me simply find someone else to insure me (since I do have a policy with AIG) instead of putting me on the hook for my share of an 85 billion dollar loan? Time for change, indeed.