Where does Conservatism Go From Here?

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Gordon L. Anderson, Ph.D., The St. Croix Review Annual Meeting, the Lowell Inn, October 25, 2024

What is Conservativism?

Conservatism conserves the knowledge, principles, values, laws, and consciousness related to what Western Civilization learned that works over 5,000 years.

Like the human brain, civilization is neither right nor left but contains both sides. Just as the brain contains neuronal plasticity and develops from experience and education, using both the right and left halves, civilization develops and advances with the assistance of leftwing and rightwing components.  

Like the brain is a repository of our individual consciousness, culture is the repository of our social consciousness. And, as individuals learn first from following rules, mimicking the habits of family members, and later learning to reason and develop skills, civilization also develops as social rules, practices, teachings, and experiences are added to the repository of what should be conserved or changed. Thus “conservatism” is never fixed but evolves as civilization develops. As Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in Democracy in America, “When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.” (Book Four, Chapter VIII, 1840.)

The Right, the Left, and Conservatism

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The Durham Report: The Failure of Government as Referee

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Special Counsel John Durham’s “Report on Matters Related to Intelligence Activities and Investigations Arising Out of the 2016 Presidential Campaigns” provided evidence that the FBI failed to police itself and sided with the Hilary Clinton Campaign in 2016. The role of government is as a referee to treat everyone impartially according to the laws. The report indicates that the FBI and other US intelligence and law enforcement services investigated and prosecuted one side and ignored the violations on the other side.

The Durham report gives more support to recent claims of a two-tiered system of justice operating in the Federal government. From the January 6 political prisoners being held without due process to the dismissal of the Hunter Biden laptop, Federal agencies have been behaving like a referee at a Super Bowl game that overpenalizes one side and refuses to penalize the other, attempting to throw the game. The National Football League could not survive if referees behaved that way, and neither can the U.S. government. In an integral society, a primary role of government is to act as a referee and not a player.

Shortly after the release of the Durham report, the FBI issued a statement saying it had already implemented corrective actions, arguing that it could police itself. However, history shows that no organization, particularly one in control of police power or money, is able to police itself. Checks and balances on power were designed for this purpose. Banks have been unable to regulate themselves, and laws like the Glass-Stegall Act have been required to restrain the scope of their activity. Citizens should not accept the FBI’s word that they have reformed themselves.

US intelligence, justice, and security agencies have too long engaged in false flag operations, black ops, and acquired and spent “dark money.” Then these unethical activities are classified in the name of national security. Such power is a recipe for, if not the example of corruption of power. Such agencies need to be more transparent, limited in the scope of their activity, and suffer harsher consequences when they fail in their mission or abuse their power. This will not happen if they are allowed to police themselves.

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Reform of the Banking System

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“The great trouble is that money wasn’t allowed to develop. After two or three hundred years of the use of coins, governments stopped any further developments. We were not allowed to experiment on it, so money hasn’t been improved, it has rather become worse in the course of time. … Money was frozen in its most primitive form. What we have had since was mostly government abuses of money.

—F.A. Hayek, Interview by James U. Blanchard III, May 1, 1984.

Sound market-driven money

The banking system is the primary source of economic disparity and corruption in modern societies. Many people blame fiat currency or fractional reserve banking as the cause. While they are used to fund government money laundering schemes and to create a wealthy elite class, fiat currency and fractional reserve banking can be useful tools for creating economic justice and a large, prosperous middle class. They are money and banking tools that can overcome the limitations of a gold-backed currency and the lending of old money. They are tools that can be used for the market-based expansion of the economy and provide a level playing field for the ownership of capital.

Gold is traditionally exchanged because it has intrinsic value. But, the expansion of an economy is limited to the rate of expansion that gold is found. This prevents economic expansion when people want to borrow money to build houses or create businesses because gold has to be mined first. However, fiat currency and fractional reserve banking can enable the economy to expand because the banks can loan “new money” for homes and businesses. This new money can be printed by a central bank and provided to a local bank that has secured the loan with assets used as collateral. The practice of fractional reserve banking can be secured by requiring the bank to hold a percentage of reserves in deposit and have the deposits insured with a program like the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). Through this system, anyone can purchase a house or start a when they are ready. An economic system with a central bank and fractional-reserve banking has fuelled greater economic growth and prosperity than previous banking systems.

Current unjust practices

Unfortunately, most of the new money created in current systems goes to governments and financial industries, rather than being distributed to the bank depositors and borrowers. These are the people who work and save, producing assets, goods, and services from issued loans. This is because central banks have been players rather than referees. Instead of serving only as clearing houses and issuing money for productive loans, they lend money to governments and purchase securities taking wealth from citizens through inflation. And they charge interest on money that enters the economy through governments, causing large amounts of money to be based on debts rather than assets. These activities are methods used by social institutions to exploit rather than serve individuals. Wealth gradually shifts from the middle classes to elites that control the corrupt system. Central banks should only issue new money to other banks for a service fee, and not profit from interest themselves.

An ethical banking system

The solution is not to end fiat currency or fractional reserve banking but to hold banks and governments accountable through reform of banking processes and practices:

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How Government / Bank Cabals Take the People’s Money

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The great trouble is that money wasn’t allowed to develop. After two or three hundred years of the use of coins, governments stopped any further developments. We were not allowed to experiment on it, so money hasn’t been improved, it has rather become worse in the course of time. Menger, and before him Hume and Mandeville, named law, language, and money as the three paradigms of spontaneously occurring institutions. Now fortunately, law and language have been allowed to develop. Money was frozen in its most primitive form. What we have had since was mostly government abuses of money.—F. A. Hayek1Friedrich A. Hayek. Interview by James U. Blanchard III, May 1, 1984. Cato Institute Policy Report May/June 1984. https://www.cato.org/policy-report/may/june-1984/exclusive-interview-fa-hayek#.

The economic sphere has lagged behind the cultural and political spheres in institutional evolution. In the cultural sphere, the Protestant Reformation promoted individual sovereignty, freeing personal belief and thought from the control of the church. Modern liberal democracies responded to demands for personal freedom and sovereignty in the political sphere. In the economic sphere, private property ownership has been established, but the institutions of money creation and banking have not promoted equal opportunity

The Federal Reserve in the U.S. and the European Central Bank are systems of economic feudalism in which money creators control its distribution. In the Dark Ages, feudal lords controlled land distribution. New money distribution is a form of economic injustice not widely understood and referred to as a secret or mystery.2Murray N. Rothbard, The Mystery of Banking, Second ed. (Auburn AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1983). This economic injustice cannot exist in an integral society. Economic sovereignty needs to catch up with evolving cultural and political sovereignty.

Economic injustice is opposed by churches, Marxists, and movements like Occupy Wall Street. There are many slogans calling for the end of “capitalism” or “corporate greed” based on the effects of economic injustice. However, these are reactions to economic injustice without a functional vision of financial institutions that promote personal economic sovereignty. People calling for state-planned economies and taxing the rich appear oblivious to the injustices of government/bank intrigues that are the source of injustice.

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Individual Sovereignty: A Prerequisite for an Integral Society

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Individual sovereignty is a prerequisite of an integral society. Integral society begins with people who have an integral consciousness that transcends the self, respects the rights of others, and understands the nature of social institutions in a complex integral society. Individual sovereignty, nurtured by the Protestant reformation and significantly on display in early American society, reveals self-responsibility, self-direction, and self-sufficiency. Such people do not need to rely on the patronage of feudal lords or governments. Such people can sustain democracy by designing good laws and governance structures and supporting them financially.

These social conditions existed widely at the time of the US founding. While there were wealthy aristocrats and slaves comprising 25% of the population in 1790, the majority of people were self-sufficient farmers, tradesmen, and businessmen. These people had personal sovereignty and provided the demographic basis for democracy. It was this group of people who pushed to abolish slavery.

Individual sovereignty refers to self-ownership. In the cultural sphere, this means ownership of one’s conscience, ideas, words, and behavior. In the governance sphere, this means ownership of one’s life and body. In the economic sphere, this means ownership of property. While the middle-class is often discussed in terms of annual income, self-sufficiency is a better indicator of individual sovereignty, as people on farms raising their own food need less cash than people in cities.

The legal foundation for personal sovereignty is the right to life, liberty, and property. This was stated by John Locke in his Second Treatise on Government, written between 1679 and 16891John Locke, Two Treatises of Government: A Critical Edition with Introduction, ed. Peter Laslett (New York, A Mentor Book, 1960). The United States Declaration of Independence (1776) declared “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” as the foundation for a free society. However, the right to “property” was clearly stated in the 5th Amendment to the US Constitution:

…nor shall any person … be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Amendement 5, Section 12https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/fifth_amendment

The US Constitution only provides the opportunity for personal sovereignty. Just having a right does not make one a sovereign. Personal sovereignty requires responsibility, knowledge, and skills that can make the legal opportunity real. Parents, schools, and communities can help nurture those requisites, but they can’t make one successful. Each individual is ultimately accountable for their own life.

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New Money in an Integral Economy: From Economic Feudalism to Economic Democracy

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The Problem: Increased Wealth Inequality, Financial Bubbles, Inflation

Figure 1: The US Treasury Note Bubble from 2007-2022

Wealth inequality, financial bubbles, hyperinflation, and economic collapses are tied to current methods of printing and distributing new money. Millions of people have suffered terrible plights as a result of the mismanagement of new money, both in developed and less-developed countries.

“In early 1922, 160 German marks was equivalent to one US dollar. By November of 1923, the currency would depreciate to 4,200,000,000,000 marks to one US dollar.”1https://www.spurlock.illinois.edu/blog/p/1920s-hyperinflation-in/283 The stock market crash and the run on the banks impoverished millions of Americans in the 1930s. The collapse of the Russian Ruble in 1991 forced pensioners on fixed, now worthless, incomes to sell their lifelong possessions to survive. Hyperinflation reached 10,000 percent in Zaire in 1994. The announced $700 billion US TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) bailout had put liability of $16.8 trillion on the American government and its taxpayers by 2015.2https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikecollins/2015/07/14/the-big-bank-bailout/?sh=3fa8b6832d83 Then there is Venezuela. In October 2021, it took seven million Bolivars to buy a loaf of bread and Venezuela dropped six zeros off the Bolivar note. But this was not the first time: five zeros were cut in 2018, and three zeros in 2008. That is a total of 14 zeros. Tens of trillions of old Bolivars are required for a loaf of bread today.3https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/10/1/venezuela-introduces-new-currency-drops-six-zeros

It may not be obvious that the hyperinflations of Germany, Zaire, and Venezuela are rooted in the same problems as the Great Depression, the TARP bailout, and current worries about the collapse of central banks in many countries. But they have one thing in common: centralized control and corruption related to the creation of new fiat money by governments and banks.

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Institutional Consciousness and the Evolution of Society

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Social interactions have evolved from personal habits and family traditions to a complex array of national and global-level social institutions like religions, states, banks, and corporations. As with individual human beings, social institutions can be focused and productive, or dysfunctional, abused, and misused. To serve society as a whole, the institutional consciousness that guides institutional action needs to be focused on the institutional purpose and limited on its goals. Like the organs of a human body, they need to work together for the health of society. Institutional Value Transmission (IVT) is an emerging field of study related to institutional consciousness.1See, Don Trubshaw, “Institutional Resilience and Ecological Threats as Factors in Societal Peace and Conflict,” International Journal on World Peace, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 4 (December 2021), pp. 11-37.

The Wilber AQAL Model

In A Theory of Everything,2Ken Wilber, A Theory of Everything, An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science, and Spirituality (Boston: Shambhala, 2001) Ken Wilber outlined the evolution of the consciousness of individuals and society in his All Quadrant, All Level (AQAL) model. It captures the broad wholeness of human reality, with consciousness and activities at both the individual and collective aspects of human life.

Wilber’s diagram contains four quadrants, with the upper two quadrants related to individuals and the lower two quadrants related to collectives. The left two quadrants describe consciousness, values, and ideas, while the right two quadrants refer to structures and actions. Traditional religions, spirituality, and psychology have focused on the relationship of individual consciousness (Upper Left Quadrant) to functionality (Upper Right Quadrant). Rules such as the Ten Commandments have evolved to guide and limit individual behavior.

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Individual Sovereignty should Replace State Sovereignty

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Introduction

An important part of modern culture wars is the unresolved conflict between the idea of the individual’s sovereignty and the state’s sovereignty. The United States was founded on the principle of the sovereignty of the individual: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The United Nations, on the other hand, was founded on the principle of the sovereignty of the state: “The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.”1UN Charter, Article 2, Section 1. While the preamble to the UN Charter recognizes “to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and nations large and small,” it begins “We the peoples…,” indicating groups of people, not individuals, are the foundation of the organization. Historically, sovereign states have been ruled by force, by kings and dictators, while democracies are based on the concept of the sovereignty of individuals.2Many early democracies, as in Ancient Greece, were heads of “households” and not individual persons.

The difference between the sovereignty of the individual and the sovereignty of the state can be seen between the individual liberty promoted by the US Declaration of Independence and the lack of freedom in Soviet-style communism. The sovereignty of the individual stems from the protestant idea that all individuals are “temples of God.” Individuals are accountable to a transcendent Being before any other human being or social institution. The sovereignty of the state was promoted by the German philosopher Hegel, who argued:

The state is absolutely rational inasmuch as it is the actuality of the substantial will which it possesses in the particular self-consciousness once that consciousness has been raised to consciousness of its universality. This substantial unity is an absolute unmoved end in itself, in which freedom comes into its supreme right. On the other hand this final end has supreme right against the individual, whose supreme duty is to be a member of the state.3G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Part 3: The Ethical Life, Section iii: The State, No. 258 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977, p. 155.

For Hegel, the state was the embodiment of the march of the Absolute (God) in history. Hegel was writing 200 years after the rise of the modern nation-state in Europe. The state was viewed by many as a panacea for saving the world, replacing the ideas of salvation in traditional religion. Unfortunately, uncontrolled state leaders do not usually behave ethically towards their people, nor towards each other. Millions of individuals have been killed by states asserting uncontrolled power and by groups within states attempting to seize the power of the state to play a god and control others.

While the idea of the state is an evolutionary advance over the concept of empire, It should not be seen as a god that will save people. If a state is to serve its citizens and not pursue war, its sovereignty needs to be limited by definition and mission.

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The Role of Government is a Referee, Not a Player, in Economics and Culture

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In an integral society government is limited to its proper role.

The primary purpose of government is to provide security for citizens and serve as a referee when there are disputes between them. It is a legal operating system to allow citizens to pursue life, liberty, and happiness. It does this by protecting, policing, and adjudicating disputes when a citizen or group interferes in another citizen’s pursuit of happiness. The powers of government, especially in states, should be limited to these purposes.

The primary evils of government involve the use of the government for other purposes. These include using government force or law for (1) economic taking, (2) cultural indoctrination, and (3) territorial expansion. It is also wrong for governments to operate at an improper level. In other words, states should not impose their will on counties or federations impose their will on states. In the case this happens, the lower levels of governance should be guaranteed the right to secede. A peaceful society is based on voluntary cooperation, not force.

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Decoupling Nation and Economy from the State

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Definitions of State and Nation

Territorial and Cultural Entities

A state is a territorial unit, but a nation is a cultural identity unit. The coupling of the nation-with state is a holdover from feudalism, in which the cultural and economic values of the king or prince were imposed on everyone residing in a territory by its ruler. This caused a common “national” identity to develop. However, national identity, while formed on a territory, can be separated from that territory. German-Americans, Chinese-Americans, and Iranian-Americans retain cultural and economic values that shaped their identities in other territories, even though they move to a different territory.

Should immigrants from one nation-state be forced to drop their previous national identity and adopt a new one? Should they have the right to impose their national values on their new country and demand all the previous residents follow them? Or, should the cultural and economic values of a “nation” be decoupled from the domain of the state where pluralism exists on a territory?

Is the achievement of “e pluribis unum,” from many one, the motto of the United States, possible using the traditional definition of a nation-state? Or, is it only possible if many of the cultural and economic activities associated with a traditional nation-state are decoupled from the state? Under conditions of pluralism, the only viable national (territorial) values undergirding a state have to respect a plurality of identities.

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