by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse
We have never embraced political conservatism. However, we also think that the conservative tradition in American politics is intellectually formidable. We find the best representatives of that tradition to be rigorous, insightful, and philosophically astute. They are political commentators for whom ideas matter. In their best work we find proposals and principles that we think are incorrect, but never merely stupid.
And this is as it should be. The entire system of American democracy is based on the premise that reasonable, intelligent, and well-informed citizens of integrity and good-will might nevertheless disagree deeply and sharply about fundamental moral, social, and political matters. Many of the most familiar political and constitutional mechanisms of our politics are aimed at managing such reasonable disagreement among citizens in a way that all disputants could be expected to recognize as even-handed, fair, civil, and rational. What's more, reasoned yet deep disagreement among intelligent and sincere citizens is not some unfortunate obstacle that democratic citizens should wish could be surmounted; working through such disagreements while sustaining conditions of civility and stable governance simply is what modern democracy is all about.
In this way, a modern democratic society needs there to be combating traditions of political commitment. Those who tend to find conservatism lacking need there to be stalwart defenders of conservative views that are articulate and smart. And the same goes for those who tend to reject various forms of liberalism and progressivism; they need there to be formidable exponents of the views they oppose. As we have written in previous 3QD posts, and have argued in our book Why We Argue (And How We Should), the only responsible way to oppose a view is to oppose the best version of it, and this requires one to know the best arguments in its favor. To put the point dramatically, modern democracy is an intellectual ecosystem that thrives only under conditions of civil disagreement among sincere and intelligent citizens. Were one of the many longstanding and noble traditions of democratic political thought to disappear from the public debate, the entire system would suffer.