In overturning Roe v Wade, conservatives on the Supreme Court were clear: Only rights that are “deeply rooted in…tradition” can be constitutionally protected. By “deeply rooted,” what conservatives mean is at the time the constitutional right was granted. Therefore, only rights recognized will before 1787 will be protected in the 21st century.
This radical notion ignores the obvious changes in the last 400 years and struck me as unsustainable at the dawn of the Digital Age. Interestingly—but certainly NOT in the context that I just outlined—I came across conservative essayist Jon Askonas who suggested that a “technological society can have no traditions.” This left me wondering: If conservatives could be open to new idealogical constructs regarding traditions, then could we begin having new and healthy political debates? Or is this just a new skin on the same animal?
I’ve always been puzzled why conservatives could not acknowledge the obvious: Technology and market forces have a greater impact on eroding traditions than political progressives. The Pill was more responsible for the 1960’s sexual revolution, than a century of “free love” advocates. The Bowling Alone phenomena—where Americans are no longer joining civic groups and clubs that promote trust and cooperation in society—was facilitated by entertainment technology ranging from Atari in the 70’s to the smart phone today. In vitro fertilization (IVF) made it easier for gay and lesbian couples to have families, thereby driving the political momentum to legalize gay marriage.
Askonas writes:
“As new technologies enter a society, they disrupt the connections between institutions, practices, virtues, and rewards. They can render traditions purposeless, destroy the distinction between virtuous and vicious behavior, make customary ways of life obsolete, or render their rewards meaningless or paltry. If the institutions that shepherd traditions aren’t regenerated, and if no one adopts their practices, traditions will fade into nothingness…The modern conservative project failed because it didn’t take into account the revolutionary principle of technology, and its intrinsic connection to the telos (i.e. goal) of sheer profit.”
We are in the early days of great technological disruption and many traditions face extinction. A knee-jerk defense of all traditions by conservatives—no matter how problematic (like slavery in the 19th century) or obsolete (like hereditary monarchy)—will ultimately make this kind of conservative “thinking” irrelevant. This inability to stop cultural change driven by technology and market forces may explain why some conservatives resort to demagoguery, misinformation and demonization of their opponents as a means to deflect from their failures to protect traditions they view important.
Askonas’ perspective not only acknowledges wider forces eroding tradition, it may also offer a common ground between conservatives and progressives as we enter the digital epoch. But so far, conservatives have used Askonas’ insight to double down on extreme reactionary policies.
Ideologically, I suspect I am the opposite of Askonaa. I’m a progressive who celebrated the power of technology to disrupt and improve society in the 1990s, only to watch this technology transform society into an Idiocracy, dominated by a 21st century P.T. Barnum. Like many Americans, I long for a return to traditional civic norms we once held that have been disrupted by technology and market forces in the last thirty years. At the same time, I celebrate the breaking of many traditional norms that have prevented people from living their true lives and not ones constructed for them by artificial traditions.
Healthy pluralistic societies have vigorous debates about the forces of change and maintaining traditions. Ideally these debates challenge and refine the positions of both parties, until the strengths of each position are fused together in a compromise that represents the best of both worlds: social ills corrected and positive traditions preserved. But market-driven technology does not go through a social vetting process. This kind of unchallenged social change partially explains the “Party of No” that wants to turn the clock back to a past that never existed.
But what if conservatives acknowledge the reality of technological and market driven factors that impact tradition? On its face, I welcome Askonas’ perspective:
“We can no longer conserve. So we must build and rebuild and, therefore, take a stand on what is worth building. We must be willing to exercise judgment over what constitutes the good life—over what our telos is—and to work to channel innovation in that direction and restrain it where it is destructive…”, he continues, “conservatives have decried any interference in what technologies the all-knowing market chooses to build, while taking no stance on what technologies we ought to build..”
If Askonas is referring to vetting technology platforms that use algorithms to pit people against each other as a means to maximize advertising revenues, I’m open to that. But not if this is a rationale to outlaw the abortion pill. The reality is, there are different paths we can take into the Brave New World of the 21st century. Who and how that path is decided will decide the fate of humanity. Currently that debate is between technology-driven market forces and cultural luddites intent on turning back the way back machine to the 1600’s. Neither will end well.
That is why restoring a healthy debate between the forces of change and tradition are critical in creating a new political equilibrium in the Digital Age. To achieve this, a post-traditional conservative movement must accept the reality of how most traditions change and have the debate about what traditions that are necessary for the human condition to thrive, while at the same time, erasing the vestiges of ignorance and superstition.
Unfortunately, that’s not how some conservatives interpreted Askonas’s essay. John Daniel Davidson took Askonas’ premise and used it as a justification to outlaw no-fault divorce, end subsides for one-parent families and other reactionary ideas.
It is unclear whether Askonas agrees with Davidson’s interpretation of his essay. Davidson and many conservative intellectuals like Sohrab Ahmari—the editor of the magazine that published Askonas’ essay—are no fans of traditional Liberal democracy that grew out of the Enlightenment centuries ago.
With that major caveat, I welcome Askonas’ insight that conservatives accept that technology and the markets play a major role in disrupting traditions. Ideally this breaks down an intellectual barrier between “capital C” Conservatives and “capital P” Progressives, allowing conservatives and progressives a possible new path to find common ground to discuss the critical issues facing us. Or we can continue down the current slippery slope towards social disintegration.