Conservatism Redefined: A Creed for the Poor and Disadvantaged by Patrick Garry

Author:Patrick Garry [Garry, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Conservatism & Liberalism, Political Science, Political Ideologies
ISBN: 9781594033476
Google: P2xBDhGIlBUC
Goodreads: 7744114
Publisher: Encounter Books
Published: 2010-01-15T07:40:55+00:00

CONSERVATISM AND THE ETHICS OF WORK AND MONEY

One way conservatism discourages dependency is through elevating the work ethic to the highest of values. For it is only through work that individuals can achieve some control over their lives and destiny. Work is a pursuit that yields many benefits, aside from simply financial compensation.

The contemporary focus is often more on money than on work itself, but this focus takes a very superficial view of money. Under this view, the mere amount is all that matters. But for the vast majority of Americans, money represents a lifelong process of earning a livelihood—day after day, week after week, year after year. This process shapes one’s values and imposes a code of discipline, perseverance, and responsibility on one’s life. Increasingly, however, the cultural elite has drifted away from this mindset, adopting an ideology of instant money. A hedge fund manager passes some investment vehicle across his desk and takes a million-dollar fee. Instant money. A Hollywood actress does a 30-second commercial and receives a $1 million check. Instant money.

With their material wealth being the result of large, one-shot infusions of cash, instant-money people tend to be focused primarily on the present, immersed in a cult of the now and susceptible to the hedonistic self-indulgence that such an immersion can bring. Consequently, they are less concerned with preserving what is valuable from the past, or with finding ways in which to carry the past forward. Someone living an instant-money lifestyle can dispense with many of the behavioral rules to which most people must adhere. In the pursuit of their livelihood, “earners” must abide by the discipline of going to work everyday, complying with rules set by their employers, providing service to their customers, and acting with the honesty that will command loyalty from their colleagues. Indeed, earners must act every day in a manner that ensures their future financial survival.

Receivers of instant money, on the other hand, need not impose any such discipline on their lives. They need not concern themselves with functioning harmoniously in a larger group. They preach rights without duties, individual entitlements without responsibilities to the larger community. They see only the ends of the money, ignoring any duty to the means of earning that money. They are blind to any moral aspect of money, refusing to recognize the character traits that the earning of money usually requires—traits like self-restraint, honesty, and a sublimation of self to the needs of a larger community.

Earners have to take responsibility for the institutions that make possible the earning of money. They know that no gain is possible without sacrifice, that no productive activity is without its risks. They know that life is a pursuit toward improvement, not an immediate attainment of perfection. They do not adopt the trial lawyer’s view that every disappointment or injury amounts to a violation of rights, nor do they indulge in Hollywood fantasies of a false nirvana.

To conservatives, work is a source of dignity. It is not just a burden under which individuals suffer that government should try to alleviate.

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