by Matt Barr

Conservatism as resistance

Read this important piece by Jacob Sullum at Reason Online about a Seattle area family trying to keep its bed & breakfast open.

In 2003, citing a dearth of local bed-and-breakfasts, the Seattle City Council unanimously approved an ordinance that for the first time permitted B&Bs in neighborhoods zoned for single-family residences. But after the McAfertys opened the Greenlake Guest House B&B last summer, their neighbors decided it was one too many. "I've got people waving at me and I don't know who they are," one complained.

Under pressure from residents alarmed by these excessively friendly strangers, the city retroactively declared the McAfertys' B&B illegal, ordering it closed by the end of this month and threatening fines of $75 a day if they don't comply.

The piece unfortunately includes this tired observation:

Although Americans tend to view the right to earn a living without unreasonable interference from the government as a conservative issue, in this case the conservatives are McAfertys' neighbors, who are using the government to resist change. They are angry about the liberalization that permitted the McAfertys to open their B&B.

Urban planning and zoning are generally seen as tools of the left, as Reason has consistently pointed out in its various critiques of New Urbanism. The McAfertys set up their B&B because they'd been encouraged by Seattle City Council to do so. And, running to court to get your way is the keystone of the post Roe v. Wade American left.

Stretches? Probably. My larger point is that "conservative" is thrown around too often as a synonym for "people I disagree with." If conservatism means "resistance to change," then proponents of Roe are conservatives, resisting efforts to overturn that precedent. Nonsense.

The converse is true, too: Liberal describes "people I admire." Lincoln was "liberal" because he freed the slaves. Ask a dyed in the wool libertarian and you'll hear that Lincoln was a statist — which the American left are today, sure, but by which your libertarian means illiberal. Ask a historian and he'll tell you that Lincoln would have whiled away his time as a family man and country lawyer had not the Kansas-Nebraska Act overturned the Missouri Compromise. Lincoln got (back) into politics and ascended to the presidency because he wanted to defend the status quo: no new slave states admitted to the union.

Sullum begins his piece with the observation that the meaning of "liberal" today doesn't square with its etymology. He's right, but "conservative" doesn't, either.

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