Long, long ago, before Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek were even gleams in their grandfathers' eyes, conservatives used to distrust the idea of freedom. It sounded too much like liberty, and everybody knew where that led -- to revolution and angry mobs and tumbrils hauling aristocrats off to a date with Madamoiselle Guillotine.
Tradition, order and a healthy respect for the authority of the state were the conservative family values of the early 19th century. These values were backed by an absolute terror of anarchy -- a constant threat in the simmering Third World streets of London, Paris and Berlin.
But Europe grew up and so did Europe's bratty cousin -- America. And as they older they also grew wealthier and more comfortable with the word freedom. Freedom meant progress and prosperity and even a measure of social equality, not anarchy and revolution and death. If the streets of London, Paris and New York weren't exactly paved with gold, they also weren't filled with howling mobs -- most of the time.
So it's not surprising the conservative value system changed, progressively discounting the importance of the state and putting a higher and higher premium on liberty -- economic liberty in particular. A bourgeois ruling class required a suitable ideology, and the conservative one, inherited from the vanished aristocrats, could be and would be tailored to fit its new owner.
But it would have been helpful if the current high priests of conservatism -- the theologians of the modern Republican Party -- could have consulted those old aristos before they tried exporting their value system (even if only for propaganda purposes) to a country like Iraq.
They might have been better prepared for this:
Mosul Falls, Baghdad in Chaos
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. and Kurdish forces completed their conquest of northern Iraq on Friday by taking Mosul without a fight, but Baghdad and other captured cities descended into anarchy . . .
In Baghdad, Mosul and the southern city of Basra, law and order crumbled as pent-up passions and naked greed spilled on to the streets after 24 years of iron rule by Saddam . . .
In Baghdad, gunmen apparently from the Shi'ite Muslim community in the east-side slums battled paramilitaries loyal to Saddam overnight, U.S. military sources said. . .
Reuters journalists in Mosul saw no military clashes after an entire Iraqi army corps surrendered and its forces abandoned the city. There were just crowds in a frenzy of arson and plunder, stripping buildings and torching a market.
Looting also raged in Basra, where British troops on Friday killed five men trying to rob a bank. Two U.N. humanitarian agencies said it was not even safe to visit Basra during daylight hours . . .
Throughout the day, armed men and youths roamed the streets, robbing buildings and hijacking cars . . .
Well, you get the picture.
It would be easy (and we can certainly expect the conservatives to try) to blame all this savagery on Saddam and the Baath. And it's true: there's nothing like a few decades of brutal totalitarianism to make people forget that they are not, in fact, wild animals.
But you don't have to turn to the pages of Les Miserables to be reminded of something today's comfortable conservatives have never had to learn: When the social order floats on a sea of human misery, it doesn't take much to convert freedom into chaos.
This is how Kanan Makiya, the Iraqi dissident, described events in the city of Mosul in the summer of 1959, shortly after the Iraqi monarchy was overthrown in a military coup -- the same coup that gave Saddam Hussein his first taste of street politics:
For four days and four nights Kurds and Yezdis stood against Arabs; Assyrian and Aramean Christians against Arab Moslems; the Arab tribe of Albu Mutaiwat against the Arab tribe of Shammar; the Kurdish tribe of al-Gargariyyah against Arab Albu Mutaiwat; the peasants of the Mosul country against their landlords; the soldiers of the Fifth brigade against their officers; the periphery of the city of Mosul against the center; the plebians of the Arab quarters of Al-Makkawi and Wadi Hajar against the aristocrats of the Arab quarter of ad-Dawwash; and within the quarter of Bab al-Baid, the family of al-Rajabu aggainst its traditional rivals, the Aghawat. It seemed as if all social cement dissolved and all political authority vanished.
It was, in other words, a fairly close approximation of "the war of the all against the all." And now, 44 years later, both "alls" are picking right back up where they left off.
I don't think there's anything useful that Friedman or Hayek could tell us about all this. Thomas Hobbes, on the other hand, would have a field day.
Update 4/12:
Mosul :: John Simpson :: 1327GMT
The situation in Mosul continues to be extremely tense, particularly between the Kurdish and Arab populations of the city.
A cloud of acrid smoke is hanging over the city and on the roads all the shops are closed for fear of rioting. Burnt-out vehicles litter the side streets.
The uprising here has gone very badly wrong.
It was planned by one of the leading Kurdish figures in the city, in close conjunction with a leading figure on the Arab side, but they'd understood that the Americans would come in quickly.
When that didn't happen the widespread looting and disorder began. Now there's still only a total of two hundred American troops in Mosul and they've had to retreat to the civil airport after being fiercely attacked.
Everywhere you go in this city people ask you where the Americans are. The alliance between Arabs and Kurds has broken down for the time being and there has been shooting between the two groups.
The dangers of all this for the future of Iraq are obvious and as night comes on people here are getting extremely nervous about the prospect of greater violence.