Technology, Privacy, and Small Government Conservatism

Tea Party Protest, Washington D.C. September 12, 2009 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What follows is some brief commentary on satire surrounding the Snowden leaks, e.g., this fairly characteristic bit by The Onion, pointing out that American’s generally don’t mind similar data mining conducted by private corporations. And while that studied indifference is fairly disturbing, I think the satire obscures important differences between data mining by companies and data mining by the state, when both operate within a state-centric political-legal framework. In particular, the legitimacy with which Americans view the state monopoly on coercive force justifies a greater aversion to government overreach than for corporate overreach. I believe that this respect and its effects are, counterintuitively, even more evident in conservative, small-government ideology than in the American left, traditionally the political wing more hostile to the defense and intelligence establishments. Indeed, this counterintuitive claim may help to resolve a central tension in conservative ideology – the desire for a decentralized domestic regime but a powerful, hegemonic state abroad.

The crucial distinction between private industry and the U.S. government is that the government-as-law-enforcer is the last protector of the citizenry against abuses. When a private corporation surveys private data, it is limited in modern society by the legal intervention of the state. Where the population generally appeals to, and therefore recognizes, the legitimacy of the state, that same population will believe that the government serves as a recourse against corporate abuse. When the government itself is seen to pursue potentially, even if not actually, abusive activities, no sense of recourse can exist, for no recognized authority beyond the state carries either the power or the legitimacy to forestall or repair abuses that the state commits. The tendency is thus to restrict the state more than one would restrict private enterprise, for the potentiality of private harm may always be balanced against government reparation in evaluating its desirability. Hence, we may find Target knowing about your pregnancy before your family does (partly) okay because we believe we can regulate away anything worse than diaper coupons. But the ability of a politicized agency in control of the military, federal police, international policy, the national guard, and hundreds of billions of dollars in ubiquitous public funding to gather such information seems decidedly less constrained. The potentiality of public harm may be seen only in the light of utter private ruin to those whose interests to not align with those of the empowered government regime.

Radical American conservatism is a response precisely to the apparent powerlessness of the the individual as confronted with the sovereign state. Stripped of faith in any authority providing earthly protection against state abuse, those without strong faith in the internal checks of the state recognize no recourse against intrusions except for brute force exercised in the name of self-defense. This self-reliance is a recognition of the world not as an orderly place subdued by society, but as a scene of violence. The capacity of any individual to abuse another with impunity, or of the government to do the same, recapitulates the state of nature and reconstitutes its corresponding mindset. The state must be constrained by the only power that remains to stop it – oneself.

Interestingly, the resultant ideology of “small” government depends precisely upon the existence of a powerful, centralized state. On the one hand, the demand that the state decentralize while private individuals may consolidate and incorporate power implicitly recognizes the legitimate authority of the state to intervene in private affairs. For he who is skeptical of unchecked abuse generally must believe that this private consolidation exists under external constraints if he is to support it generally. Only an anarchist believes that these external checks arise spontaneously, and modern American conservatism is not anarchistic. Hence, American conservatives recognize and respect a sovereign power, e.g., the state, as an authoritative limitation on action.

On the other hand, the characteristic support of conservatives for a militarily powerful and globally present United States demands precisely the public exercise of power within an international arena that contains no generally recognized universal authority. Where no external protection exists, protection must be internal. It must be drawn from the one source that can potentially represent the conservative’s interests within a violent international sphere – and that source is the modern state. Both the insistence on domestic decentralization and the desire for international hegemony thus result from the same set of basic beliefs: that the United States is generally good at protecting its citizens; and that it has the power, at any time, to humiliate, subjugate, and destroy them.

The move against surveillance must take the form of a public outcry precisely because of the weakness of the individual. In the face of state authority, it is only with broad support from the mob that one seeking to limit the reach of the state can succeed. Those who already possess power do not need public opinion. They can protect themselves silently (and yes, many of these may be corporations), without the uncertainty of openly entering political discourse.

Why Conservatives Are (Partially) Right About “Marriage Equality”

We are all biased by the particular experiences of our lives, experiences that shape our social roles, our self-perceptions, and our political agendas. Educated and socialized within a preexisting human context, we are at best only partly in control of our underlying beliefs. It should thus come as no surprise that I, studying at a notoriously leftist college preaching above all equality of condition, and taking for granted equality before the law, should favor the legal recognition of same-sex marriages.

We are not, however, automatons, and our perceptions of one another are as limited as our perceptions of truth. Presuming others’ motives risks fundamentally misjudging their characters. To collapse pro- and anti-marriage equality advocates into the broader categories of “liberal” and “conservative” is to devalue the subtlety of human thought and action. While we cannot all express it, we do in fact share a common humanity, a common perspective, insofar as our modes of experiencing and shaping the world remain much the same across space and generations. I therefore urge against this bifurcation, this belief in inherent difference based on political categories, which, in truth, reflect only a fundamental tension evident in all of our lives.

The push for “marriage equality” is misnamed, for true and universal equality of marriage rights would require the abolition of all institutions that govern marriages, both social and legal. Efforts to legalize same-sex marriage generally do not recognize the legitimation of polygamy or of repeated divorce. Rather, they denounce these practices as aberrations, which disgrace and de-sanctify marriage, in an attempt to justify the inclusion of same-sex marriage within the existing legal and social institutions of marriage. Their mission is not to destroy the “sanctity of marriage” as such, but rather to revise popular and legal conceptions of “sanctity” such that it no longer excludes same-sex couples but continues to exclude other forms of relationships. In other words, the movement towards legitimating same-sex marriage is not an effort to emancipate socio-legal institutions from intimate relationships, but rather an effort to emancipate marriage from sexual orientation.

Such emancipation challenges the institutional norms that provide reference points by which we constitute and through which we express our identities. The relation of a powerful institution to a particular behavior or characteristic provides such a reference point, as, for example, the denial of same-sex marriage both draws on and reinforces the naturalization of the nuclear, heterosexual family. Thus, members of nuclear families are described as such in part due to the powerful influence of the heterosexual marriage norm, and also can point to this norm to legitimize their particular familial structure and to firmly ground their social identities. As these reference points are eroded, either by elimination or by evolution, so too must social identities shift and change. The expansion of marriage rights is thus more than the extension of certain social privileges to a previously excluded group; it is also a direct challenge to the entrenched self-perceptions of an entire section of society raised with and judged by the standards of heterosexual marriage norms.

All emancipation of choice from institutional judgment similarly challenges traditional identity constructs, and the legitimate conservative fear is that the ultimate emancipation of institutions from all personal choices will eliminate all universal reference points for social identity, splintering society into only so many atomistic individuals with little or no sense of membership in, or responsibility to, a larger community. Common values and beliefs constitute the public space through which we relate to one another; social institutions are the permanent fabric against which our individual accomplishments are stenciled out. Without these permanent structures, the achievements of any one individual are as mortal as their creator, and each successive generation must start from scratch with the menial labor needed for mere survival. With a public space, we can transmit progress – in science, capital, or thought – across time and space. As the technological interconnectedness of humankind increasingly globalizes both our highest and our lowest potentialities, such communal bonds appear increasingly necessary at least to preserve our existence as a species, and at best to attain a higher plane of existence and a better life for each individual.

The mistake of modern conservatives has been their reactionary and populist rhetoric, playing on fears of the absolute destruction of traditional social roles without appreciating the limits and humility of the actual threat. What we today call “liberals” in America are timid relative to their name: they do not seek to liberate anyone from socio-legal institutions, but rather to include in, and therefore subordinate to those institutions, ever larger elements of humanity. At the theoretical conclusion of modern liberalism is the ultimate subordination of all humans to an ideal institution of humanity, the ultimate reference point being the ultimate vision of what a human is and ought be. The conservative can rightly object that this universalism in turn subordinates the human spirit and, totalizing in its vision, is antithetical to the very freedom and equality it seeks to promote. But instead of engaging emancipation on this ground, instead of reasserting the predominant importance of social institutions, modern conservatives turn to the state to defend traditional social roles by means of its monopoly on the use of force, all while imposing a counter vision of the ideal human, especially that of the religious conservative, as one inherently worthy of institutionalized respect. That is, modern conservatism seeks to use political and legal means to enforce societal expectations. This contradicts their populist-libertarian message. There is therefore no self-consistent conservative ideology in the American political mainstream. Instead, we have conflict between liberals (ironically) seeking gradually to delimit institutional power and conservatives (ironically) seeking its expansion, the former totalizing humans as such, the latter totalizing humans as they are seen to exist in the here and now.

At the end of the liberal ideology, however, there exists still room for pluralistic identities. For when the state is delimited, and its use of force confined merely to preventing systemic and societal violence, such questions of identity cease to be political in nature and instead become social, and, in turn, the lines between the two become blurred. The state ceases to be a totalitarian force in waiting and increasingly becomes an impartial referee between social forces, setting the terms of the debate, but having nothing to do with the content. This I find preferable to the enforcement, potentially violent, of a single vision of humanity, and therefore I advise that the emancipation of the law from social identities continue apace, as in the extension of same-sex marriage rights. To be self-consistent, and, indeed, to avoid the ultimate conclusion of a totalitarian regime, conservative movements ought shift their attentions from the legal to the social sphere, arguing not for the state to insert itself into the private affairs of citizens, but convincing citizens that they ought care and identify by a particular set of socially valuable, traditional norms. This apolitical, social conservatism would, true to its name, preach incrementalism, not institutional coercion; caution, not fear. In this way can conservatism engage modern issues at the core, not merely on their surface, and avoid its internal contradiction in ends.

—–

(Photo courtesy of thinkprogress.org)