Michael Oakeshott on Conservatism

``To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss.

No it isn't, it is to protect the haves against the tiresome importunacies of the have-nots. It is to enforce what Michael Frayn calls the Tyranny of the Fortunate.

This is the kind of thing that really annoys me. Tories are forever coming up with crap like this. The Olympian, sagacious pose; the frivolous refusal to engage with the legitimate concerns of the people with whom you are contrasting yourself. Look how cool and sane and reasonable I am. Narcissistic twaddle. Self-congratulation masquerading as philosophy. Enough to make a man Wallace.

Apologias for conservatism always do this. Trying to annex universal virtues as their own distinctive contribution.

And yet, wouldn't it be wonderful to live in a world where the view depicted above was a sensible and moral view to take? As my Otago colleague Charles Pigden says

``I'd love to be a tory.''

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