A rather striking article was to be found today {well, by this stage in yesterday’s} edition of The Times. Daniel Finkelstein seems to have made one of the first volleys in an effort to define the new form of Cameroonian Conservatism in his weekly opinion piece.

Now this is striking for one reason above all: what originally defined conservatism was its firm and rigid attachment to empiricism. In this fine article for Andrew Sullivan’s blog Jim Manzi stages a conservative critique of the tendency upon the right to simply disparage science itself when confronted with a finding that challenges their core prejudices. He describes the history of conservatism well, explaining why, besides Burke, they have had nothing much in the way of intellectuals. This is because Conservatism is largely the rejection of radical and cerebral concepts for government and instead the embrace of the tangible and tested.

It refused to allow itself to dally with such flighty concepts as ideology and saw such notions as radical reform and revolution as incredibly presumptuous, being people believing themselves to be wise enough to work out what will suit people better than centuries of tradition have, or else entirely delusional and reliant upon outright denial upon observable reality.

So this strange creature of Willets and Finkelstein seems to be as detached from this initial view as is actually possible, certainly far more than social liberalism is from the classical form. Consider this passage:

A dry-stone wall, like the one David Willetts pointed out to David Cameron, does not have any glue or cement holding it together. It holds together because of the way it has been designed.

This illustrates that dry-stone walls obey the laws of physics. What relevance precisely has this to the role of the government with the state? Well, the response would come, it is a mere symbol. A hint of what is to come in a philosophy still to be developed and expanded upon. Very well, but it also symbolises a vast and radical departure from the original brief of conservatism, which was that you would look at how people arranged their affairs and work from there, rather than beginning with architecture and attempting to transpose. That was the approach of modernism, post-modernism and a plethora of other ideologies, yes, but never conservatism.

Or what of this?

This bit of maths explains observations made by biologists. Vampire bats, for instance, feed other bats with extra blood they have collected, even though those others are not related genetically. They expect the same favour in return on another day. This behaviour is known as reciprocal altruism - self-interested and interested in others at the same time.

If Finkelstein is arguing here that we are effectively the same as animals then I, a vegetarian since the age of 7 who went all starry-eyed over Bentham’s ahead-of-his-era advocacy of rights to all fauna, would certainly agree but what precisely can be demonstrated from the eating habits of blood-sucking airborne rodentesques that bears an immense amount of relevance for those of us who are sapient? Precious little, I would argue. And certainly not as much that could be worth it for a Tory, given the risk of raising the spectre of Michael Howard.

Finkelstein proceeds to bring up a popular hobby-horse of his, social psychology, a topic talking about which he is never dull and is invariably upon stronger ground. Yet again, his choice of study is interesting:

A Hare Krishna devotee presses an unwanted flower into your hand and you are more likely to donate, despite yourself.

Has it occurred to him that there is little here that that devotee obtains from the bargain? Support for his organisation, yes, but to what end? To the continuation of his enlightenment. And what exactly can the state offer to any such individual in order to extract reciprocation?

Most troubling of all, though, is his apparently total dependence upon Game Theory. Now what exactly a non-lunatic is doing basing an entire fledgling ideology upon such unsafe soil is utterly beyond me, for a thorough critique can be found here.

Most striking is the revelation by the creator himself, Robert Nash, that he only wrote the bizarrely influential theory due to suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and that as soon as he had recovered he repudiated it entirely as he recognised it for the cold madness that it surely was.

The sinister premise is that the human mind can be understood entirely through the use of maths. As you may anticipate this results in a starkly and cripplingly reductionist view of mankind and its thinking and attempts to a cold a clinical perspective of a structure which defies such treatment inherently. Game theory, we are quite delightfully informed, holds true only of psychopaths and economists.

I find it remarkable that some have made a distinction.

Therefore it seems that this new form of Toryism consists of a theory debunked by its own father and then a series of non-sequiters linked highly tenuously together, followed by a selection of polices that Willets and Finkelstein smile upon vaguely stitched into actual scientific findings like extrapolations on amphetamines.

Similarly, the aim of Tories is not to pour social glue on civil society through public policy, and armies of new laws, nor is to enunciate some new abstract principle of justice that might be at variance with human nature. It is to help society find different kinds of equilibrium.

As fascinating as it is to see the call for rampant social engineering raised so brazenly by Conservatives I have to request what exactly they consider this equilibrium. Presumably there will continue to be a handful of oligarchical mega-rich at the top and a layer of underclass left woefully and hopelessly under-employed owing to this being the natural way of things in the economic system that both founders of this philosophy admire more and have expressed no interest in changing.

How precisely is it possible to assist society without amending this?

This new thinking justifies the Tory preference for decentralisation, favouring smaller, independent institutions in the public sector. It explains why you might want schools, say, small enough for pupils and teachers to know each other properly. And hospitals that care about their own reputation and not just the amorphous NHS ethos.

Ah yes, how did I suspect that Finkelstein’s secret plan to demolish the NHS would come into it? Now I am not one to rant about Jewish conspiracies but it is clear to all who bother to investigate that Finkelstein has stronger views on this matter than he is ever willing to express in a Times op-job. Anyone who has read his outlandish apologetic of Giuliani for his outright lies of the NHS and baldly opportunistic refusal to continue his repetition of the claim for the rest of his pathetic failure of an election campaign will be aware that he is unquestionably from the “Abolish the NHS” wing of the Tories, as one would rather anticipate from a self-confessed Neo-Conservative.

In a rather superb line he suggests “Rudy Giuliani’s point was surely, precisely that. That he prefers the outcome of private medicine to that of a socialised one” and thus the interest of the wealthy who can buy go private in this country as well should be deemed as of more importance than the poor who can not go public in America.

So I suspect that he means rather a good deal more than wanting hospitals to “Care about their own reputation”. I rather expect that he also means “Care about their own finances”. I wonder what Willet’s view is.

It also explains why the new Tories might want to cut inheritance tax. Traditional free-market thinking rather approves of taxing “unearned income”. Reciprocal altruism shows that such income plays an important social role.

No, reciprocal altruism seems to consist of bats feeding each other blood and giving out flowers if you want cash for your cult. As far as I can tell there is no research that says letting the children {for this you should usually read “Adults” given the standard life-expectancy of the rich} of the highly affluent to inherit all of the wealth in any way increases the level of donations to charity or any other such benefits. Until there is Finkelstein is instead engaging in a grand piece of conjecture.

Yes, conjecture. Of the ideological kind that seems to serve convenience more than it does obey reality. Of the variety which conservatives have traditionally disregarded in favour of raw pragmatism, of focus upon the actual world in which they resided rather than attempts to make it fit the outlook or ultimate desire over-arching for their surroundings and the lifestyles of the people within them.

In short, top marks for innovation, extra credit for effort. Always good to see a fresh philosophy out there. The best I can say for this one, though, is that it is a good deal more cuddly than Objectivism.

Edit: Mr. Finkelstein informs me that my statements regarding his views on the NHS are incorrect. Although the urge to respond with “Well that’s what a secret abolitionist advancing his agenda by stealth would say!” the motivational fallacy is an ugly and overused thing so I feel that I should apologise. Consider the above comments regarding his views on that matter mere worthy of nothing save disregard. I leave the article intact to preserve the fruits of my folly.