The Sun comes up every day in England. Sometimes it is
behind cloud, sometimes its light is hazy with dust. But it comes up every day.
The Earth rotates on a reliable schedule; its slight wobbles are unnoticeable.
Because of this reliability, we each are able to make certain decisions. None
of us has to form contingencies against the sudden loss of our orbit, or the
disappearance of the sun.
The rule of law, as a principle of civil society, has a
similar character. Laws being transparent to read and enforced in a consistent
manner allows people to make decisions about their behaviour and for the
future. People know what they may and may not do, and they know they are
beneficiaries of whatever benefits the law may provide. The consistent and fair
punishment of the proven guilty, for instance, prevents anarchy, allowing
family life to flourish, commerce to go ahead, property to be bought and
developed, art to be displayed. The enforcement of contract law is a brake on
that anarchy just as well as the enforcement of laws against theft.
“Proceduralism” is often derided by Philosophical
Conservatives as a cover for hollow, decadent liberalism. This charge is not
entirely unjust. That the beneficiaries of an order which slaughters the unborn
and neglects the poor then complain about their opponents being uncouth is too
much to bear. Predictable legal outcomes which are manifestly unjust render it
hard to plan anything worthwhile – one thinks of the very clear nature of
Ireland’s Popery Laws.
Yet this is not a reasonable basis for Philosophical Conservatives
to dismiss proceduralism entirely and embrace anarchy. There may be moments –
bloody, dark moments – where procedure must be set aside and action taken, but
who considers themselves equal to the task of defining those moments in any
detail? Who has the wisdom of Solomon and the cunning of Odysseus and the
brilliance of Hannibal, able to measure the times with the precision accuracy
of a Swiss watch? When the great civic foundation of the rule of law and
hallowed procedure is dissolved – even when it is the demon of liberal
proceduralism – there is every chance that ten demons shall take its place.
Democracy is a very flawed instrument. The modern form’s
constant drive to further egalitarianism, to instant access, to the
valorization of the mystic People – all these presage the Aristotelian
degradation of democracy into mob rule. Nor is it that democracy is
procedurally pure – electoral boundaries are manipulated, voters suppressed,
ballots stuffed. But in this fragile moment (as all moments are fragile, and
precious to those who inhabit them), it is the way we in the West regulate our
public lives, and create a way to live together. It is the way that polities
full of people with very different views accept that they may not get their
way. Other societies may have had God-Kings, or the Universal Church, or the
inter-tribal magic arrangements of the Dreaming – but we have democracy. To
intentionally cripple its legitimacy, to undermine its processes, is not you
saying you wish to live in a Catholic Monarchy or an Athenian Democracy or a
Limited Republic – it is you saying you would rather live in a howling
wasteland, where brute force is exercised as the only reliable currency, where
your children and mine are guaranteed nothing except what arbitrary power
whimsically grants them. For all its horrendous flaws, modern democracy is
vastly superior to the old Soviet Union or Cuba or Communist China. If you want
an evidence of the grimmest form, it is that child murder occurred or occurs in
all those countries, just as it does in the USA or UK – but in the USA and the
UK, the pro-life movement is moving from strength to strength, and in the USA
has won signal victories (in an arduous, awful war). Peace, predictability,
private liberty – these give much more hope for the unborn than the tiger of
arbitrary power, who consumes every rider.
Those of us sceptical – like me – of the flagrant excesses
of modern democracy, those critical of the imperial adventurism of complacent
liberal polities, those revolted by the unaccountable and unjustified arrogance
of elites, cannot replace their Gilt Palaces with Guillotines. Burning down the
wormy timbers of the family home with the unpleasant relatives still in it may
be satisfying, but leaves a poor inheritance to those who come after. The
Philosophical Conservative often converges with the Political Conservative on
this point: that stability and peace are the best conditions in which to
cultivate good things. The radical progressives did not have to overturn
proceduralism to capture our institutions; nor do we. Careful cultivation and
renovation is much slower than exploitation and devastation, but our children
can only thrive in the aftermath of one of those paths.
