In Defense Of Woke Conservatism

Plus an explanation of the danger of Trump

Nathan Ormond and I disagree about philosophy—and more precisely the existence of God—about as much as any two people can. I think he is wrong across the board when it comes to how to do philosophy and has the pitiably confused view that philosophy teaches us nothing of note. He, in contrast, thinks that all my arguments for God are demonstrably flawed and rest on an errant metaphilosophy, amounting to little more than fancy word-games. Despite our disagreements, we recently found some common ground in our shared opposition to buying animal products; and, as I’ll explain in this article, we may have even more common ground.

Nathan once described himself as a woke conservative. As he defined the terms, I found myself largely in agreement; I think woke conservatism is the demonstrably right political philosophy. But let me be very clear on what I mean by that.

I spend a lot of my blog complaining about the woke. In my view, those who call themselves woke are generally completely wrong about almost everything and have a bizarre opposition to actually doing anything to improve the world. Instead, they have an almost religious fascination with word games and uniquely elite problems. My concern, therefore, is that the woke aren’t really woke, in the sense of awakened to injustice—they’re not really aware of and responsive to the world’s injustices.

If woke just means awakened to wrongdoing and injustice, Peter Singer is a very woke guy. He believes that our mistreatment of animals is a holocaust-level injustice. He thinks that well-off westerners have an obligation to give much of their wealth to charity, and that their failure to do so implicates them in grave wrongdoing. Peter Singer probably thinks there’s a lot more bad stuff in the world—and particularly serious wrongdoing—than most social justice warriors.

In this sense, I am quite woke. I think the world has a great deal of injustice that we’re generally blind to. I think that our failure to help the third world is seriously immoral, and that people have a moral obligation to give to effective charities. I actually agree with the common left-wing slogan that inaction in the face of injustice makes one culpable. For this reason, most everyone is culpable.

I’m so woke—in the sense of awakened to injustice—that I think there’s grave injustice in how we treat shrimp. The fact that we freeze and suffocate to death trillions of shrimps, and almost no one gives to charities that make painless tens of thousands of shrimp deaths per dollar, implicates them in grave wrongdoing. The average woke person probably is more concerned about the fashionable injustices like racism and colonialism than I am, but they’re generally not at all concerned about other kinds of injustices like our treatment of animals. In total, therefore, I’m probably more awakened to alleged injustice than the average woke person. I’m just awakened to different kinds of injustice; kinds that are generally less fashionable to talk about, and which are addressed by actually giving doing demanding things rather than making bullshit diversity statements or land acknowledgements. The grave injustices of the world demand a lot from us; abstaining from meat, giving to effective charities, and so on.

This isn’t just some incidental element of my philosophy. My most important ethical commitment is that lots of terrible things happen to beings whose interests we neglect—future generations, people in other countries, animals tortured on factory farms, animals in nature—and we should try as effectively as possible to end this indignity. My concern with the woke isn’t that they fixate too much on injustice, but that they fixate on the wrong injustices and then stupidly oppose doing anything to actually fix injustice. It would be like if in Nazi Germany you spent all your time complaining about the plight of veterans from the first world war, and then actively opposed sheltering Jews on the grounds it was veteranophobic.

At the same time, though, I’m a conservative—at least in the philosophical sense. I’m quite moved by the traditional Burkean arguments that good things are hard to create and easy to destroy. One reason I oppose radical reforms to our political system is that I think we’re at the most prosperous time in human history; if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. This is also one reason I support conserving the environment; I think that disrupting a long-lasting system that has only recently been adequate for our development is a bad idea.

Now, obviously I don’t think we should keep around all institutions. Some institutions are quite bad, so even if we give some deference towards tradition, we’ll still favor their abolition. I support burning the factory farms to the ground, just like I’d have supported burning the Nazi gas chambers to the ground; sometimes the demands of justice override adherence to tradition.

In short, therefore, I think my political philosophy is well-summarized by the following principles:

1. There is grave and rampant injustice that we should put an end to as quickly as possible. Most of its victims are outside our circle of concern; most people are blind to most injustices. All the injustices that most people are concerned about are a rounding error compared to the grave horrors of the injustices we ignore.

2. We should attempt to preserve institutions to the maximum extent possible while putting an end to this injustice.

This is one reason I find Trump so dangerous. While I am a woke conservative—in the narrow, technical sense I’ve described—Trump is an unwoke anti-conservative. That Trump is anti-conservative is quite obvious to anyone who has been watching him haphazardly decimate the government. If Trump saw Chesterton’s fence, he would call it a very failed fence, and then support forcing Mexico to rip it down.

As a result of his anti-conservatism, he’s been eliminating truly very important elements of the government. I’ve already discussed, for instance, the temporary shutdown of life-saving humanitarian aid, as well as the pulling out of the world health organization. Each of these could kill lots of people. Trump sees the fact that an institution has been around for a while as a positive reason to get rid of it.

But Trump is also deeply unwoke in the sense I described. He doesn’t seem to care about any injustice at all! All he cares about—or pretends to care about—is Americans in the midwest not having jobs and being the victims of crimes. While most people have a moral circle that mostly includes members of their own country, Trump seems to wholly neglect the interests of anyone outside the U.S. and of liberals inside the U.S.. His vanishingly tiny moral circle results in him supporting restricting the free movement of immigrants and cutting off life-saving foreign aid, leaving young kids to die. His only concerns are about Americans.

He is also, as ought to be obvious to anyone, a deeply odious and corrupt man, largely motivated by vengeance. His support for suing a pollster for publishing an unfavorable poll and prosecuting his political enemies are quite dangerous. Trump claims to be about America first; were that his philosophy, he’d be dangerous enough. But really his philosophy is Trump first and America second. Everyone else’s interests are completely ignored.

We ought to have a president who deeply values the interests of everyone and has genuine respect for institutions. The more one counts the interests of the meek and vulnerable the better. So the fact that we have a deeply corrupt, vengeful narcissist, who slashes institutions with revolutionary zeal, and has no regard for the interests of anyone outside the U.S. is quite alarming.