Inventing The New Conservatism Education - Road to the Middle Class

WE CONSERVATIVES are running around wondering what the new conservatism means. And we at Road to the Middle Class are doing our part. You can read the latest effort here. It’s a riff on David Cameron’s speech in Manchester on co-operatives.

The transplant American Janet Daley was listening to David Cameron too, and she’s just as jazzed as we are. The argument that is slowly emerging into mainstream politics in this post-Clinton and post-Blair age is a big one.

It is nothing less than the question of who should have the real power in a free society - a government elected by the people, or the people themselves through their own direct agency.

Up to now it’s all been about generalities. The pundits in their helpful way have been yelling for specifics and accusing Cameron of being a lightweight.

But now we are seeing specifics, starting with education. In the Cameron plan,

You and your neighbours who are fed up with inadequate local schools could band together and form a cooperative to open a school (or take over an existing one), and lay claim to the funding allowance which the state provides for the education of your children to finance it.

The argument against the plan, of course, is an old one. It’s the paternalist pat on the head. All very well for you, old sport, but what about the people who don’t have the ability to take advantage of the new system? What about the people left behind?

What about those who will not, or cannot, take up the offer of real power because they are indifferent or benighted or so disadvantaged that the challenge is more than they can comprehend? Surely there must be uniform provision of schooling by the state precisely to balance this inequitable distribution of parental concern?

The answer is a simple one.

The point about community "cooperative" power is that not everybody has to participate actively for everybody to benefit from it.

It’s the same as consumer power in business. You do not have to be a genius yourself to make cars or iPods or houses. You can rely on other people to do that. But the benefit of their work comes to you in the form of low prices and high quality, not to mention the rank-and-file jobs that are available to average people.

And, let us not forget, if you don’t like it you can get your money back. Now there’s a concept!

So it could be in education and other social questions. Activist parents and social entrepreneurs will set up the new institutions. Average bears like you and me can then come along and take advantage of their work.

That’s not so hard is it?

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

Comments:

Posted by: Walt Lucken on 11/13/07 1:56am

This is great, And the non-critical thinking citizens will like the "Special word", "Co-op", they have programed into their minds and unwittingly send their kids into the world of ideas. Read you every day Chris,

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Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches� they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Drang nach Osten

There was nothing new about the Frankish drive to the east... [let] us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.
Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

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