William Reville
Spokespersons for conservatism, and for Christianity, find it difficult nowadays to gain traction in the mainstream media. Left-liberal positions are in the ascendancy across a wide range of issues – reproductive rights, euthanasia and assisted suicide, religion in schools, immigration policies and more.
Liberalism, as opposed to conservatism, traditionally prided itself on its greater tolerance of dissenting opinions. However, modern left-liberalism has become intolerant and smug, hostile to religion and incapable of seeing any flaw in the liberal vision or any merit in the conservative vision. This is amply demonstrated in current public debates in Ireland. Of course, unfortunately, the Catholic Church in Ireland doesn’t have a great history of tolerance either throughout much of the 20th Century.
Let me illustrate my case with an example. I see myself as a conservative situated around midway on the political spectrum from left to right. I am opposed to abortion. My position is principally informed by the biological fact that the developing foetus is a human being from the moment of conception.
A baby doesn’t pop out of nowhere at birth, but has a preceding nine month’s history of development. I believe human life is special and is endowed with the natural right to life.
Most left-liberal people do not share my opinion on abortion. They argue that the foetus is not yet a human person and therefore it is permissible to kill the foetus in certain circumstances. I recognise this as a permissible and significant argument but, nevertheless, I remain confident in my own position.
Inappropriate
The left-liberal argument gains extra traction in the difficult cases of pregnancy resulting from rape or incest. However, I believe the sanctity of life is so fundamentally important that abortion is inappropriate even in these cases, just as we no longer execute murderers even for the most horrendous crimes.
Also, abortion in difficult cases doesn’t necessarily ease the mother’s burden and can have serious negative psychological repercussions.
When I publicly argue my case on abortion I receive reasoned opposition from some left-liberals and I respect this. But most liberal-left reaction simply labels and dismisses me as a “brainwashed Catholic”, making no attempt to analyse my argument.
As regards this Catholic taunt, my position on abortion parallels Catholic teaching rather than being primarily derived from this teaching. The cornerstone of my position is the biological fact that an individual human life begins at conception. If the Church decides to approve of abortion tomorrow I will continue to hold my position. We should each, liberals and conservatives alike, be allowed to publicly articulate our reasoned convictions on social and moral issues without being shouted down, and we should each extend the same courtesy to others who hold reasoned contrary positions.
Other issues on which very many left-liberals are dogmatically intolerant include:
(a) Father and mother based families. Despite the copious evidence that children do best, on average, when raised by both a father and a mother, if you point this out you are accused by the liberal-left of being ‘prejudiced against single mothers’.
(b) Immigration policy: If you express concern about the consequences of loosely regulated immigration from areas culturally at odds with the host country, you are called a ‘racist’.
(c) In every conflict between protagonists of unequal power, the less powerful protagonist is automatically right in the eyes of the liberal-left. A current example of left-liberal intolerance is the banning from UK university campuses of speakers who represent certain views not approved by left ideology, e.g. supporting Israel.
Barbara Kay makes an analogy in Canada’s National Post between the mindset of the committed left and a neurological condition called ‘hemispatial neglect’. People with hemispatial neglect lose recognition of space on one side of their body.
They only see one side of the field of view and have no awareness of the other side. They will only eat from the side of the plate they see and then believe they have eaten everything on the plate. Analogously, left-liberals see inherent flaws only on the conservative-right and cannot conceive of inherent flaws residing on the liberal-left.
Thus, the European left had very little to say about the grievous wrongs perpetrated under communist regimes throughout the 20th Century. When occasionally forced to admit that the left has done something wrong, they will trace the root cause of that wrong back to an inherent flaw on the right, e.g. imperialism, racism, etc.
Left-liberalism has successfully inoculated much of popular consciousness and the opinion forming media with the false impression that it represents all things bright and good and that the conservative-right represents privilege, inequality and backwardness.
The truth is that left-liberalism and right-conservatism are just different approaches towards achieving the same goal – the common good of all. Their relative strengths and weaknesses are discussed by philosopher Roger Scruton in his book How to be a Conservative (Bloomsbury 2015).
In my opinion the conservative-right approach is much superior because liberalism is based on a basic misinterpretation of human nature. Liberalism assumes that humans are born inherently good and therefore it makes sense to give people all possible freedoms and to impose few if any restrictions. Liberalism confers freedom without responsibility.
Guidance
This approach has done much damage, e.g. erosion of the traditional family. On the other hand evolutionary science and genetics, not to mention common sense and experience, show us that human beings are born imperfect and need guidance, moral codes and boundaries in order to flourish. This freedom with responsibility is the conservative approach.
Left-liberalism is corrosive of many supporting pillars on which our society rests – pillars that took much time and effort to build. The conservative-right is badly in need of courageous leadership. Conservativism must fight its cause much more vigorously and must call out the liberal-left every time the left claims exclusive ownership of concern for the common good.
William Reville is an Emeritus Professor of Biochemistry at UCC http://understandingscience.ucc.ie