Conservative Guilt

I’d like to introduce you to a thought experiment. I stole it from a university class I took a while ago and it really has nothing much to do with what I want to talk about, except in one critical detail. In a sense, it represents the case for conservatism.

Imagine you’re Jesus or Mohammed, Mother Teresa or Moses, or some other person you think is particularly wise and virtuous. Suppose that you are contemplating what to do with your aged parents. Since you’re only concerned with the most just and virtuous course of action, whether leave them in state care or handle it yourself will be decided strictly by ethical considerations. Suppose that the most just course of action would be to place them in a home where they can receive medical attention, nutritionally balanced meals, constant supervision and the like. However, doing so could be ethically wrong. Suppose you live in a country with no such state program (China for example), then this choice might allow them to suffer and die since they cannot care for themselves.

The point of the thought experiment is to demonstrate that sometimes perfectly admirable ideals cannot be ratified without significant moral sacrifice. The best scenario does not imply the best decision. When applied to socialistic-liberal ideologies, it means that some of the agendas it advocates are not intrinsically justified. State health care, for example, is a perfectly salient object for such a discussion. Sure, it’s great that everyone has access and is guaranteed care regardless of their financial situation. And, ideologically, our system espouses all the ideals of equality since money and resources cannot secure any improvement to the services provided. But then of course in practice, this reality is artificial. People with money can fly down to Mexico and partake of its burgeoning health-care industry if they so desire. But never mind that. As long as state health care guarantees that even the worst-off can’t slip though the cracks of our extensive social net, then we don’t have to sweat the details.

But is it virtuous to deny the wealthy extra privilege in the name of equality? It would certainly be justified if it came at the expense of the worst-off, but this doesn’t seem to be the case in the health care system. We’re just encouraging the wealthy to take their money elsewhere, when they could be dragging up the level of well-being for the worst-off, whether they will it or not. Why not keep their resources for ourselves by keeping their expenditures domestic? Instead, we fear that a “two-tiered” system would rob the poor of the talented and qualified doctors they have now. Again, never mind the stress we might relieve to the public system by allowing efficient specialist operations to exist outside the public sphere.

The problem with the conservative policies is that they are unmarketable. How do you explain to the average Canadian the virtues of free-choice and capitalism, when they have become synonymous with egotistical anarchy in the deceiving rhetoric of astute politicians? Jack Layton’s simple sound-bites are cleverly conceived, but they do real damage to our societal structure by impeding the rational conversations we ought to have regarding these meaningful issues. With a simple quip, conservative policies are made to appear selfish and evil without authentic consideration of their value –both for the general society and the worst-off. Ideally these politicians would be accountable for deceiving the public when they promise the world but delivering nothing. But unfortunately, everyone’s a millionaire where promises are concerned. “The ends may be “unarguably good” but they lead to other ends that are unarguably bad” (Mark Steyn).