A Greener Shade of Right

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“We live today in cities and suburbs whose form and character we did not choose. They were imposed upon us, by federal policy, local zoning laws, and the demands of the automobile. If these influences are reversed—and they can be—an environment designed around the true needs of individuals, conducive to the formation of community and preservation of the landscape, becomes possible. Unsurprisingly, this environment would not look so different from our old American neighborhoods before they were ravaged by sprawl.”

The New Urbanists sound an awful lot like pre-war traditionalist conservatives. It could even be argued that the anti-globalization protesters of Seattle and Milan, far from being true radicals, are really reactionaries playing at being revolutionaries; they are not so much agitating for more “progress” as they are condemning the forms that “progress” has taken.

Conservatives’ suspicion of what they call “social engineering” is perhaps the deepest theoretical underpinning for their antipathy to conservationists. Of course, considering the catastrophic damage inflicted by the infamous “social engineers”—Nazi and communist—of the 20th century, this revulsion is understandable. But taken to an extreme, it generates an understanding of government that is clearly at odds with early views from Christian and classical sources.

Good government, according to these teachings, prudently and wisely helps to create the conditions necessary for humans to attain their particular good. One of the ways a state does this is by helping to provide for those “common” things that no human can provide for himself or herself.

Political scientist Barry Shain has argued in The Myth of American Individualism that a communal, not individualistic, understanding of society permeated the thinking of early European Americans. Our forefathers were more than willing to countenance a good deal of government-sponsored “social engineering,” as long as it was enacted and enforced at the local level—a level that reflected community norms, traditions, and beliefs. Until relatively recently, Americans assumed that freedom consisted only in community, and that, within broad limits, a community could act justly through its government to reinforce its values.

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