It's hard to decide if Rep. John Conyers's "what good is reading the bill" candor regarding the 1,018-page health care legislation is more refreshing than disturbing or more disturbing than refreshing. Watch the clip and decide for yourself.

Dan, try another link.

Like your explanation of your "conservatism is not an ideology" claim, the video is nowhere to be found. :)

The link works fine for me. If anybody else is having problems similar to Herman, let me know.

Dan, the link actually works for me now. Perhaps it was down for a moment.

Now, about this conservatism as an ideology issue. I bought WTLHA as a teenager. I respect your work a lot (even though I respectfully disagree with you on religious matters). I have all of your books, and have bought and given nine copies of your books (six WTLHAs and three IMs) to friends. You may be interested to know that WTLHA cured one of my buddies from his leftist ways. You are also responsible for one of my friends losing his respect for Noam Chomsky, and another recognizing Ayn Rand's human vices.

Now, of course that's peanuts since your career is blowing up for all to see. I wonder if you influence many of your readers as you did my friends. Nonetheless, consider this post an official guilt trip. For the sake of one of your youngest and most loyal readers, tell me why you regard conservatism as not an ideology.

There's a very simple explanation for this comment. John Conyers supports a single-payer health care system, which is what U.S. seniors have right now. The reason why he made that statement with regards to the health care bill was because he knows that the bill put forth by congress will be filled with perks, subsidies, and market-distorting and altering (what you and your mainstream conservative ideologues would consider the "free" and "efficient" market based on your market fundamentalism) benefits for the medical-industrial complex, because this bill will have been written by the medical-industrial complex, with the complicity of republican and democratic lawmakers. If we had a health care bill that truly attempted to reform the system, all members of congress would be able to read and understand the bill and make an informed decision, hopefully based on the will of the polity (if we had a functioning democracy).

It's a pretty straightforward comment.

In short, true conservatism is the negation of ideology. Instead of subscribing to abstract ideas, as the ideologist does, true conservatives rely on experience--not merely their own, but all of human history. In this sense conservative though develops (see Hayek's The Fatal Conceit) rather than springs up overnight, as numerous liberal schemes have done. Conservatives adhere to the tried and the tested over the experimental and untested. With regard to economics, for instance, this involves an eschewal of systems and an embrace of "hands off"--which is the anti-system system. In other words, rather than having distant managers direct an economy with more than 300 million moving parts, conservatives would allow those 300 million individuals to manage their own individual affairs, of which they have far more expertise than any group of "experts." I think conservatism is more attitudinal than any laundry list of policies. Many people who call themselves "conservative" may in fact believe in abstractions (the crusade for democracy in Iraq as exemplified by Bush's second inauguration speech would be an example of this), which may make it hard to mesh my definition of conservatism with what you see calling itself "conservatism." If you want a more complete account of what I am talking about here, read the opening chapter of Russell Kirk's "The Conservative Mind," on which I rely here.

A note to readers: Normally, I try to abstain from discussion in the comments sections, particularly when it's off topic. I do so here, and hopefully will not make a habit of it, because Herman did ask this question of me many years ago and hasn't really gotten a satisfactory answer. I had hoped to do a full post on the topic, but never got around to it. Perhaps I will in the future, Herman, but if not, I hope my brief answer above will suffice.

I think he was saying that bills are so complex it takes a team of lawyers to understand them.

"I think he was saying that bills are so complex it takes a team of lawyers to understand them."

Exactly, and the reason for this is because it was probably written by a phalanx of lawyers representing the medical-industrial complex.

What is the anti-sytem's mechanism for denying human rights to glbtqs?

What is the anti-system's mechanism for dealing with child labor and slave labor?

What is the anti-system's mechanism for dealing with skyrocketing health care costs that are outpacing inflation and wages by factors of 2 to 3?

What is the anti-system's mechanism for dealing with trusts and monopolies?

Dan,

If you do a post on the difference between conservatism and ideology, I would be interested to see a discussion of the notion of abstraction.

PMA, i thought just the opposite. I figgered it was a bunch of slip n fall lawyers tryin to make pay for lazy scumbag freeloaders.

My take is that Conyers, like many of his liberal ilk, don't really care what they vote for or what the content of what they vote for is as long as it forwards their agendas. These are dog and pony politicians who talk the talk without walking the walk and choose not to work that hard so actually reading and understanding legislation is secondary to the cause.

It's not that difficult for a guy like him to have a perpetual lock on a House seat coming from a district in Michigan who would vote for Santa Claus every time if he were the guy.

So it's ok for him to verbally parse legislation he decides is not worthy of reading and get away with it and for his wife to be guilty of and convicted for conspiracy and not get a ripple from the constituency.

Herman and PDA: The question is whether prudence -- rather than "ideology" or a system of universalistic beliefs that will tell you for each case what is right or wrong -- is the key to a decent politics. To try to redefine prudence as just another ideology is to misunderstand what prudence is. Ideology is an abstraction from what politics is, since ideology falsely tries to make all decisions about what should be done here and now ansered by deductive and universal claims. Thus, one nice thing about emphasizing prudence over ideology is that on every particular question it allows quite a lot of latitude and debate: so though true conservatism is not an ideology, you could have other styles of politics that are also not ideological. Knowledge of the history of this claim and of the word "ideology' might help make the point seem less naive to you.

Isn't prudence an intellectual virtue? And don't the higher levels of deliberation require definitions (say, of justice)? Surely experience cannot tell us what the definition of justice is. And without such a definition, how is the prudent man to determine which course of action accords with justice?

Ralph: the prudent man is familiar with what justice is, but that doesn't mean he has a perfectly satisfactory "definition" handy. And besides, to know what justice is about doesn't mean that applying it's "definition" is going to tell us what needs to be done here and now for the sake of the common good of the community.

Think of the topic of this post. According to its definition (which I do have handy), real laws need to be made by a proper authority and promulgated. If the legislators can't bother reading the laws they vote on, are _they_ really creating law? And how are the people who are supposed to obey the laws be familiar with them if the legislators cannot? This is a seriously bad situation.

The ideological mind makes this into a deductive syllogism about how this is not law and therefore we should ignore it, or worse ... The prudent mind (1) isn't so black and white, but tries to resist dichotomous thinking, and (2) considers the particular situation and what would be best for getting to the common good. There is no deductive universalist way to tell us what to do about the corruption of our government.