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and moderation would dissolve the fevers and black humors of po–
litical choler . The difficulty is that the description is more fitting of
Lord Monboddo, the leader of the Common Sense School , than of
Ronald Reagan; of the Scottish Enlightenment than of American
politics .
If
one accepts the theorem that the market should be the arbiter
of preferences, the inevitable question arises: how far? Here the
boundaries become blurred. Does one admit the rampant sale of
pornography because this is what sells best in the market? Kristol
would say no, because the extension of individual choice to such
matters, and to abortion, would transgress common morality . And
what of sexual acts between "consenting adults"? Again, freedom
becomes a problem. So, subtly, one passes over into moral tutelage
on virtue , while upholding populism on "economic" matters, a realm
where virtue has lost its loveliness .
The difficulties of establishing a "conservative" doctrine are
notorious . One current of conservative thought, being empiricist ,
rejects the notion of a doctrine altogether, while another fixes its
gaze firmly on the
telos
of classical thought. Some are completely
libertarian, seeking to live only with a minimal state; others believe
in hierarchy and order and the instilling of family values in the
populace. But this is no different than the equally notorious diffi–
culty of establishing a coherent doctrine of liberalism. The more
troubling problems arise when one crosses the divide from philoso–
phy to politics.
Here I have to declare my interest. I was, with Irving Kristol ,
the co-founder in 1965 of
The Public Interest .
The hope was to tran–
scend ideology through reasoned public debate and the inquiry into
knowledge . "'Knowing what one is talking about,"' the opening
statement declared, "is a deceptively simple phrase that is pregnant
with larger implications... .we must admit- or, if you wish, as–
sert- that such an emphasis is not easily reconcilable with a prior
commitment to an ideology, whether it be liberal, conservative or
radical."
For Kristol, today, all politics is ideological, and the issue as to
"who owns the future" is which ideology we will be governed by. • As
he wrote in the 1983 preface to his
Reflections,
"Neo-conservatism has
the kind of ideological self-consciousness and self-assurance- most
of its original spokesmen, after all , had migrated from the Left- and
even ideological boldness which has hitherto been regarded as the
legitimate (indeed exclusive) property of the Left." For Kristol,
