Hans Andreas Zeiger is a young and serious public intellectual trying to make sense of conservatism in the new age of Obama. He makes a useful start with an article in Crosscut. He could write the same message, more or less, however, about other regions with a distinct identity.
It seems to me that one of the strongest advantages of conservatives in any region, or nationally, is public frustration with bureaucratic micro-management of the economy, the environment and our lives. Disraeli said that the biggest difference between conservatives and liberals (I paraphrase) is that conservatives make you fill out less paper. That is not a small matter. To prevent anything from ever going wrong, the left tyrannizes us with unreasonable regulation. Short term victories in security are won with long term losses in freedom and progress.
For example, Seattle pettifoggers who decided that this week's ice-ridden streets should not be subjected to salt treatments operated out of what even some environmentalists regard as an excess of political correctness. People had accidents in cars and on foot. They couldn't get to work. They didn't shop. Stores were hurt at the most crucial time of the year. And--do I finally have your attention?--revenues from the sales tax went down. Some of that would have happened anywhere, but here a bad situation was made worse. Public Pecksniffs can only see what is written in their policy manuals and not the reality of life as people live it.
Conservatives should protest rule by wasteful and destructive abstractions and speak up for common sense. They are closer, usually, to the inherited wisdom of a people. They have been spared the studied ignorance of career academics.
So start with common sense writ into law and governance. When you combine that with an imaginative vision for how traditional principles can be employed creatively to improve our world, you have a winning political proposition. Apply to transportation, health care, the environment, trade and commerce, taxation, foreign aid, education and culture (broadly defined). Include the conduct of politics, where would-be reformers have made honest politicians the goats of government scolds, while true crooks like Gov. Blagojevich get away with old fashioned corruption for years.
Some liberals can get the common sense formula right on certain issues, but their problem is that they are bound to government-first answers and tied to the vocational imperatives of public employee unions. The public employees themselves are often realistic and dedicated individuals, but their unions are just as often rigid and purblind. The danger of liberalism is not just governmental bigness, but a change of de facto emphasis from that of Lincoln ("government of the people, by the people and for the people") to government of the government, by the government and for the government. Breaking the hold of that dispensation is the challenging hope of regional conservatism--that, and, as I say, a firm commitment to amelioration through proven principles that are re-stated for the present.
People like Hans Zeiger will be in the forefront of conservatism's revival. I'm glad he's on the case.
