The Real Reason That Traditional Conservatism Needs to Be Replaced | James Orr

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Rubin Report – "The Real Reason That Traditional Conservatism Needs to Be Replaced | James Orr"

Introduction

In the March 12, 2025 episode of The Rubin Report, host Dave Rubin engages in a profound conversation with James Orr, Associate Professor of Philosophy of Religion at the University of Cambridge, Chair of the Edmund Burke Foundation UK, and Director of UK Programs for Trinity Forum Europe. The discussion delves into the current state of traditional conservatism, the paralysis and corruption within traditional institutions, and the necessity for a transformative approach to preserve timeless conservative principles.

1. The Crisis of Traditional Institutions

James Orr opens the conversation by highlighting the deep-seated issues plaguing traditional institutions. He asserts that these institutions have become "paralyzed and corrupt and captured," necessitating the exploration of alternative methods to uphold conservative values.

"Our institutions have got so paralyzed and corrupt and captured that we really do have to think of alternative ways."
— James Orr [00:46]

Orr criticizes modern conservatism's reluctance to dismantle failing institutions, arguing that true conservatism focuses on preserving timeless principles rather than the institutions themselves.

"Conservatives want to conserve timeless principles. And institutions are the vehicles and the instruments for implementing those timeless values."
— James Orr [01:09]

2. Institutions vs. Networks

A significant portion of the discussion centers on the distinction between institutions and networks. Orr references Neil Ferguson's metonymy of the "square and the tower" to illustrate how networks possess agility and resilience that traditional institutions lack.

"Networks need an anchoring unit, I suppose, in institutions. But they can't be without institutions."
— James Orr [02:05]

He emphasizes that networks, composed of individuals rather than large structures, are inherently harder to capture and manipulate, making them powerful agents for change. However, without institutional support, these networks lack stability.

3. The MAGA Movement and Traditional Conservatism

Orr critically examines the MAGA movement, aligning it more with a disruptive force than with traditional conservatism. He challenges David Brooks' assertion that MAGA and Trump are "anti-conservative," positing instead that their actions stem from a fundamental desire to uphold conservative values by tearing down ineffective institutions.

"Conservatives want to conserve timeless principles. If institutions have shown themselves to be completely incapable of implementing those values... then the conservative position is to pull them down."
— James Orr [01:09] & [04:14]

This perspective reframes the MAGA movement's actions as a justified response to institutional failure, rather than a deviation from conservatism.

4. Academic Freedom and Institutional Reform

The conversation transitions to the academic sphere, where Orr discusses the challenges faced by traditional institutions like Oxford and Cambridge amid cultural revolutions and "woke" influences. He notes that these universities have been slower to succumb compared to their American counterparts due to their unique collegiate structure.

"Oxford and Cambridge have been much harder to capture... because you've got to go through each college."
— James Orr [09:17]

Orr highlights recent legislative efforts in the UK to protect academic freedom, such as the government's attempt to pass measures addressing institutional corruption and ensuring universities return to their founding ideals.

"It's the first attempt in the west to address this crisis within the universities."
— James Orr [09:17]

5. The Role of Government in Conservatism

A critical theme is the evolving role of government within the conservative framework. Orr references Alexander Hamilton's advocacy for a "muscular government," arguing that an efficient and effective government does not equate to a larger one.

"A smarter and more effective government is in fact a smaller government."
— James Orr [12:14]

He contends that modern conservatism must embrace the use of state power judiciously to reform and renew institutions, diverging from libertarian ideals that oppose governmental intervention.

6. Transatlantic Influences and Future Optimism

Orr expresses optimism about the transatlantic exchange of conservative ideas, noting the inspirational shifts occurring in the United States. He believes that American strategies and successes can inform and invigorate the UK's conservative movement.

"What's happening over there is shifting the parameters of the politically possible. Things are happening."
— James Orr [12:59]

This optimism is bolstered by the enthusiasm and strategic adaptations observed among conservative circles, fostering a hopeful outlook for revitalizing conservatism both in the UK and abroad.

Conclusion

James Orr's insights in this episode of The Rubin Report present a compelling argument for redefining traditional conservatism. By critically assessing the failures of established institutions and advocating for strategic reforms and the utilization of government power, Orr underscores the necessity for a dynamic and adaptable conservative movement. This episode serves as a thought-provoking exploration of how conservatism can evolve to address contemporary challenges while steadfastly upholding its foundational principles.

Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• "Our institutions have got so paralyzed and corrupt and captured that we really do have to think of alternative ways."
  — James Orr [00:46]

• "Conservatives want to conserve timeless principles. And institutions are the vehicles and the instruments for implementing those timeless values."
  — James Orr [01:09]

• "Networks need an anchoring unit, I suppose, in institutions. But they can't be without institutions."
  — James Orr [02:05]

• "A smarter and more effective government is in fact a smaller government."
  — James Orr [12:14]

• "What's happening over there is shifting the parameters of the politically possible. Things are happening."
  — James Orr [12:59]

Final Thoughts

This episode of The Rubin Report offers valuable perspectives on the intersection of conservatism, institutional integrity, and political strategy. James Orr's articulate analysis provides listeners with a deeper understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing modern conservatism, advocating for a thoughtful and principled approach to political and social reform.

Transcript

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[James Orr]

Our institutions have got so paralyzed and corrupt and captured that we really do have to think of alternative ways. I mean, David Brooks this morning, bless him, was trying to say, you know, the MAGA movement, Trump, these are anti. They're not conservatives. Because they want to tear down the institutions and conservatives should want to conserve the institutions. That's not what conservatives want to conserve. Conservatives want to conserve timeless principles.

[Interviewer]

Right, the valuable things.

[James Orr]

Exactly. And institutions are the vehicles and the instruments for implementing those timeless values. And if those institutions have shown themselves however long they've been around, however noble they may seem to be, but if they've shown themselves to be completely incapable of implementing those values, quite the reverse, eroding them, then the conservative position is to pull them down.

[Interviewer]

All right, James Orr, I'm doing a ton of interviews while I'm here at arc. You're the only person that I'm actually going to read the bio for. Some of them were just putting some information beneath their name. But you got a lot of stuff here, so let's just do it. James Orr is the Associate professor of Philosophy of Religion at the University of Cambridge, Chair of the Edmund Burke Foundation UK and Director of UK Programs for Trinity Forum Europe. That kind of sums up what this whole ARC conference is about, doesn't it?

[James Orr]

It does.

[Interviewer]

Little political, little philosophical, little religious, Little of everything?

[James Orr]

Yeah, I think so. And that kind of delicate tango between the institutional and the networked and how we think about was it one of the speakers on the first table was talking invoking Neil Ferguson's metonymy, that distinction between the square and the tower. And it's such a brilliant image that. And I think, yes, the power of networks, what networks can do. But they can't be without institutions. So networks need an Anchoring unit, I suppose, in institutions. But yeah, I think you're right. This gathering does testify to the strength of networks and all the kind of superpowers that networks have, particularly networks of relative, kind of minorities, high levels of trust. They can adapt very quickly. They grow geometrically, as opposed to institutions, which grow in a more linear way. They accommodate disagreement better on the whole, if there is real disagreement, then breaking off a node of the network isn't such a catastrophe as a big institutional split that can paralyze an institution and its functions. They're harder to capture, much harder to capture, because they're made up of people rather than big, you know, big, big buildings or big foundations or whatever. And I think crucially, they're invisible to the naked eye. This is why historians, in fact, until Neil, have been so bad at picking them up, because you've got to go through complex correspondence relationships and, oh, this guy was in this, Went to this school with this guy and he was in this. Went drinking with this guy. They're harder to spot and so harder to take down, harder to target. And so I think what's great about ARK is that it understands all those advantages. Um, it's not deliberately trying to just say, let's tear down all the institutions. It's trying to renew the institutions. But we've got to the point where our institutions have got so paralyzed and corrupt and captured that we really do have to think of alternative ways. I mean, David Brooks this morning, bless him, was trying to say, you know, the MAGA movement, Trump, these are anti. They're not conservatives, because they want to tear down the institutions, and conservatives should want to conserve the institutions. That's not what conservatives want to conserve. Conservatives want to conserve timeless principles.

[Interviewer]

Right. The valuable things.

[James Orr]

Exactly. And institutions are the vehicles and the instruments for implementing those timeless values. And if those institutions have shown themselves, however long they've been around, however noble they may seem to be, but if they've shown themselves to be completely incapable of implementing those values, quite the reverse, eroding them, then the conservative position is to pull them down.

[Interviewer]

So I wasn't in the main room when David Brooks was speaking, so I didn't hear that line, although it doesn't surprise me from David Brooks. But even that, him being up there and saying that, which is clearly counter to, I think what most people here believe, that sort of shows the strength of arc in the first place.

[James Orr]

I think that's absolutely right. I was doing an interview with a Times radio last night. I don't know already why I agreed but they were trying to just frame us. It's just this sense, far right.

[Interviewer]

I did two with them, they did the same thing with me.

[James Orr]

I never learned.

[Interviewer]

I never learned.

[James Orr]

But one of the points I made, I said, look, we would love to have more left leaning people along, but they just don't accept the invitation. And I think it was. But it was important to have a figure like David Brooks there because first of all, it shows that we're not frightened of the other side. We're not frightened of critiques of our own position. We're willing to be open to intellectual diversity, if you want to use the D word in this context, if it's not been so diseased already, because it shows generosity, it shows a breadth and it shows the kind of openness that is essential for any kind of free inquiry. Imagine the equivalent on the left, right. You're not going to get. They're much, much less open to conservative speakers going along and, you know, pricking their bubbles. You're not going to get.

[Interviewer]

They're much less willing to have liberal speakers speak.

[James Orr]

Precisely.

[Interviewer]

Yet conservatives.

[James Orr]

Absolutely right. And so I would have thought we've got a big coalition here ranging from classical liberals right up to conservatives. And I like actually plenty of more reactionary types as well. I mean, I'm not quite sure what you call them. They're not conservative in as much as they want to tear a lot of stuff down. But for the reasons I was explaining earlier, that may be the most authentic conservative position in some situations.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Is that the strange tension that might exist in the subset here that do you go in and reform these things? If we were to look at a list of 100 institutions, is it maybe that 70 need to be reformed, 30 need to be burned, could reverse those numbers? That probably is like the most granular question being asked or the most literal question.

[James Orr]

Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, one of the points that David Brooks made or tried to make was that, you know, he visited Africa and he'd seen all the good that American dollars had done on with the AIDS crisis there. And now, you know, Trump was tearing all of that up. Now, look, okay, maybe that's valid criticism. I don't think it is. Why? Because I think if you go in and you, if you got a sort of a system that is so corrupt and diseased, part of the problem with that system, as I understand it, usaid, is that it was doing good things like the work in Africa, no doubt in the 80s and 90s and so on. But that was that In a way, it was a bad thing because it was masking the terrible stuff, that terrible waste and abuse and fraud on the American tax that it was, as it were, permitting for decades. So I think the idea is, rather than just pull the plaster off just a little bit, just rip the whole thing off, just tear the whole thing down and yes, start again, but slowly, and work out a system that is more transparent and is better equipped. If you've got to the point where an institution has shown itself to be just completely unsuited for its purposes and for its founding aims and, and ideals, just burn it down, salt the earth and work out how you build things up again.

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[Interviewer]

Have you seen any institutions, important institutions, that have not been infected by this woke thing? I mean, even I'm doing an Oxford debate in a couple days. Oxford or Cambridge or. You mentioned to me right before we started, Jordan Peterson had been invited. We were on tour when he got the invite. I had never seen him so happy to be a visiting fellow at. Well, it was at the Divinity School. Yeah, and he got invited. Then there was backlash and they disinvited him eventually. I think you mentioned about a year and a half later that got reversed. But the point is, all of these institutions, the things that we thought would never be touched, it seems to me, have been touched.

[James Orr]

It's a great question, I think, in the UK context. A quick answer to that would be to say there are almost no institutions that have been completely untouched by this cultural revolution. One plea I would make is, in defence of Oxford and Cambridge, is that the rot has spread more slowly first than other UK universities, and certainly more slowly than seems to be the case with the Ivy League. One of our advantages in Oxford and Cambridge is that we're a lot poorer than. I mean, Harvard seems to be basically a hedge fund with a university.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, exactly.

[James Orr]

We are not. And what that means is the leadership tends to be More sensitive to legal liability and reputational risk. The other interesting feature of the, kind of a unique feature of the architecture of power in Oxford and Cambridge is that they are medieval universities. So unlike in America and in Germany and where you've got these basically campus based universities, Oxford and Cambridge is really a basket of quasi autonomous colleges that really have a lot of power and really run their own thing. The university slowly emerged as a kind of supranational body that could call the shots to some extent, but really the power is still with the colleges. Why is that important? Well, it's important because it shows that in any intellectual culture, or any culture at all, that values true diversity, freedom, it's important for there to be those sort of poles of disagreement, I think, of the United States in a sort of a big, very big national version of that, as it were. You've got lots and lots of different states that can experiment in different ways. And that's a sort of sifting mechanism and it works out, it helps you work out what's right and what's working. So Oxford and Cambridge have been, they're much harder to capture, in other words, because you've got to go through each, you got to, as it were, go through each college. Now things are not great. Absolutely. I mean, I would just stand by your initial diagnosis. It's absolutely true. But we've had some successes actually. The Jordan affair with its cancellation 2019 and then it's coming back in 21, was one of, I think, a catalytic factor in the government, the Pretoriary government, who's just been elected, been voted out, pushing through a piece of legislation on academic freedom, which as far as I know, is the first attempt in the west to address this crisis within the universities. Now the new regime has been trying to slow it down and torpedo it and destroy it, but it looks as if it's going to stay in some form. And that's encouraging. I mean, no conservative wants the state to be intruding on the intellectual culture of the university. But again, it is a conservative position for the state to act when it should act, in order to ensure that institutions are recalled to their founding ideals. And that was an interesting example of that. It was a big debate on the right here in the uk. Do we really want to do this? And it was an interesting moment in the emergence of a kind of British New Right that the victory went to those who said we can't just be small state conservatives anymore. If we're going to confront these problems, we've got to learn how to wield power when we've got it.

[Interviewer]

Right. So. And that really would be the difference between a conservative and a libertarian in some sense. And that's what the right seems to be grappling with right now. Do we ever protect anything even when we have to unfortunately use the government, the reactionary right. And again you mentioned some of them are represented here. They're all for that. The more libertarian right or the conservatives, the liberals maybe don't want to do it as much. But this is what conservatism wide 10 conservatism is grappling with.

[James Orr]

That's a, that's. I couldn't have put it better myself. That's exactly right. I mean, is it, I mean, Hamilton talks a lot about, you know, the importance of a muscular government. It doesn't mean a big government. Actually, it may be the case, as I think we're beginning to see in the United States, that a smarter and more effective government is in fact a smaller government. That doesn't mean it's a less powerful government or a government that's not, as it were, making sure that everything is running right. You want an efficient government if you're going to have a smart and effective government, and that will probably mean a smaller government than the governments that we've got at the moment.

[Interviewer]

Let me ask you one other thing, which is I've asked everybody the same exact question. I've gotten fairly similar answers. I would say we're clearly hopeful in America right now. And I think most of you guys are looking at us across the pond and going, boy, there is a lot of hope for America. And maybe some of that can translate here. Do you think it can translate here?

[James Orr]

I do. And in fact, I know that it can. Cause we're feeling it already. A lot of the conversations that I've been having at arc, a lot of the speeches I've been hearing at arc, you can hear, you can feel that kind of infectious enthusiasm coming from across the pond. I mean, a year ago I would be lamenting with my right wing British friends, isn't it just so depressing that we're now just loyal colonials of the 51st state, just wondering what Sleepy Joe is going to do next. But now I'm thinking, gosh, vassalage, I think we could live with this. We'll be happy to take our orders from the Imperial Metropole. But no, seriously, what's happening over there, it's shifting the parameters of the politically possible. Things are happening. No one you could not in our election in July last year. In July20,24, you could not be talking about cuts to the civil service. You could not be talking about waste and abuse. You could not be talking, you know, it was all about fiscal headroom, how do we get more taxes, how can we. I think that debate is going to be. Is going to change forever just. Just on that one issue, and there'll be many others, too, where I think we're going to start going to be taking our cues from our American cousins. And that's kind of appropriate. You know, we taught you all you know, and we're now just. It's only right that we enjoy the benefits. 300 years later, we're happy to help. Good to be with you, Jack.