Hooray for Principled Conservatives

The nasty tone that marks current exchanges in the public sphere between liberals and conservatives is disheartening and counter-productive (even if it can sometimes be a guilty pleasure). One consequence of this all-out-attack mode is that it stifles internal criticism amongst conservatives and amongst liberals. Any breaking of the ranks is taken as an act of disloyalty.

-- Brian Tamanaha in Hooray for Principled Conservatives over at Balkinization.

A wonderful article which goes through some contemporary conservative criticism of the status quo. In particular, Tamanaha goes on to explain:

A longstanding faith of conservatives--of the Burkean type--is that it is wrong, foolhardy, and doomed to failure, to try to remake a society by massive government (war or legally imposed) intervention. A society has an organic existence shaped by its customs, moral beliefs, and traditions; things change slowly through internal shifts in prevailing ideas. The very notion that we could (or should) invade a nation to help (or forcibly) transform it into a democracy is about as un-conservative as you can get. Principled Burkean conservatives should be howling in protest at the neocons and Bush for trying to justify this adventure in terms of spreading democracy. This is not to say that more democracy in the Middle East is a bad idea, but rather that this is not the way to make it happen.