Conservative Process Leads To Conservative Results

I’m a bit surprised at the disagreement today between two of my best friends in the rightosphere. I usually admire their clear thinking, but both seem to miss an essential – indeed, the core -- point of their usual agreement, and mine with them. They're both correct, but too limited in their reflections.

Mark Tapscott, editorial page editor of the Examiner, recovers from “mulling a post asking if the time had come to declare the conservative enterprise a failure.” Mark credits, in large part, the turnback against the hastily drafted, swiss-cheese, forcedown immigration grand design, of excessive racial determination of school attendance, and of government interference in free airwaves to “that the Internet can change the course of public policy in America. Conservatives simply must understand and perfect this amazing tool.”

At CaptainsQuarters, Ed Morrissey counters that, “While Mark is correct to celebrate these events, with one exception they do not really represent victories for conservative governance as much as reprieves from the alternatives.” Ed argues, “None of them represent a victory for conservative policies, because conservative policies haven't been applied in most of the cases.”

Conservatism is not about transitory results or means. Conservatism is about process. As I wrote yesterday, conservatism requires that we “move forward based on solid evidence, means, plans, purpose, and competence.”

When one has that process, the results that merit survival will survive. That is essentially conservative governance. It entails more the avoidance of poor choices than, even, the making of good ones. It recognizes that grand designs are most often not so grand, as they fail to encompass the very diversity of legitimate means and ends of a democratic and free society, particularly one so large and vibrant as ours, and instead stifle individuals’ circumstances and, thus, the adaptation and ingenuity upon which continued personal and national success depends.

Mark is correct to point at the Internet as an embodiment of that civic discussion, serving to remind otherwise imperious legislators. Ed is correct to bemoan the extent of intrusion into our daily affairs by such legislators and seek their reversal.

Mark and Ed are invaluable resources in those struggles. Both, however, miss that it is process that matters more than results. Rich Lowry, of National Review, reminds us that, “Now, there is really no such thing as an "inside game" anymore, since bloggers make sure it gets "outside." Both the right and the left will take advantage of this, for good and ill policy ends. But it's clearly an enhancement of democracy.”

Conservatives, and America, can survive the openness of democracy, and rise with it even when disagreements or disappointments occur. We can’t survive the absence of democracy, which rests upon and is bereft without an informed and active citizenry and an open process. This past week was a triumph for democratic process, which is what is most beneficial to conservatives and which we should care most about.

The results may not always be consistent with a conservative's desires, but they will have been arrived at in a conservative way -- meaning respectful of true diversity as the well-spring of progress, compared to the stultification, and in totalitarian extremes the bloody repression, from imposition of self-serving and grand designs.

Update: Winfield Myers discussed this topic this afternoon with Mark Tapscott and host Ed Morrissey on the Captain's podcast radio talk show.