WHAT IS CONSERVATISM?

“The stupid party.”

 

John Stuart Mill.

 

 Russell Kirk, author of “The Conservative Mind," admitted there were innumerable dull and slow-witted adherents of conservatism, which Edmund Burke likened affectionately to cattle under a great oak ignoring the buzzing flies calling for innovation. But the intellectual history of conservatism, from roughly 1790 onward, is a story of great and learned men who thought deeply about the nature of God, man, and government. Conservatism is a coherent philosophy, a way of life and thinking that, despite being instinctual for most, has led mankind to the greatest happiness over the long course of history. Despite this truth, the liberal axiom about conservatives is they are either a) Dumb, a collection of poorly-educated, superstitious, rigid, and boring people, b) Despite conservatism’s complete disconnectedness from race, adherents are, nonetheless, largely white, and hate brown people, and c) Evil, sometimes brilliant Machiavellis in the vein of Richard Nixon.

 

Tragically, our current political labels have been so thoroughly twisted and abused, they function more to blur and obfuscate than explain. They serve political purposes, not linguistic ones. Part of the confusion is that the thing American conservatives are trying to conserve is classical liberalism. American conservatives are sort of a hybrid of the two great ways. How so? First, we must understand classical conservatism, and hopefully, boiling down 429 pages of Kirk’s genius into two will not overly dilute the Great Idea.

 

Abraham Lincoln once quipped, “What is conservatism? Is it not the tried and true against the new and untried?” It is that but more. Kirk proposes six canons of conservative thought:

 

1.     Belief that a divine intent rules society. Kirk writes, “Politics is the art of apprehending and applying the Justice which is above nature.” The society we live in has been fashioned over time through Providence. God has created an order, and to blow it up for the purpose of experiment and faddish innovation, is to challenge the will of God. Successful governance relies on a cosmic humility, and conservatives accept the mystery behind life as it is. “…there are great forces in heaven and earth that man’s philosophy cannot fathom or plum,” says Keith Feiling.

 

2.       We are lovers of variety and personal freedom. Conservatism is enjoyment of life as it is. It contends against the forces of uniformity and equalitarianism. The word “unity” induces terror. “The people?” Rousseau’s “collective will?” No such things, only individuals, fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God, with unique dreams and goals. Are Americans as one? Are Africans? Are the desires of the Masai bushman the same as the strongman in Zimbabwe or the civil engineer in Kinshasa? Conservatism is independence, freedom, and paradoxically, alongside the stuffiness and conformity sometimes displayed by we who love order, eccentricity. The messiness of capitalism lives inside this concept. Woodrow Wilson dreamed of society as a hive, bees buzzing around in orderly fashion according to complex rules and plans designed by “the experts.” To a conservative, however, this conjures images of cattle herded through chutes by the electric prods of bureaucracy.

 

 

3.       Civilized society requires orders and classes. Inequality itself is neither good, nor bad. Kirk writes, “The only true equality is moral equality; all other attempts at levelling lead to despair.” Society will have its leaders. Better they be chosen by ability, by education, and natural talent. Conservatives like Alexis DeToqueville gave full-throated defenses of aristocracy. They defended monarchy and titles. Burke and others, however, recognized the flaws in inherited nobility. Burke loved the responsibilities and demands aristocracy placed on elites to care for and protect their lieges but hated the incompetency and corruption that inherited or titled aristocracy often led to. Hence, Burke emphasized a “natural aristocracy” built on merit. Greater privileges for the talented did not offend Burke, and he saw failure as inevitable if positions are filled based on identity. Undeniably, chattel slavery fits within the conservative tradition, but I would ask, why would this particular form of bondage be considered so vile while the enslaving of an entire civilization under Communism, which fits squarely inside the Progressive tradition, be considered acceptable?  It seems that decent people recognize both as unmitigated evils.

 

4.       Freedom cannot exist without property rights. Property rights undergird and support all others. Destroy this right, or merely whittle it away, and there is nothing government cannot take from a citizen. Shall not people benefit from the fruits of their own labors? If you cannot keep what you earn or benefit your family and leave the results of your toils to your children, what is the incentive to work or advance the cause of society at all? Ever present in conservatives’ minds is the “Tragedy of the Commons,” the observed phenomenon that when all are responsible for something, the result is rank neglect. Private land is almost always better managed than government land, and is it not self-evident that unearned wealth, be it through legislated redistribution, lottery, or inheritance, is not appreciated as much as what was earned?

 

 

5.       Human sin is real. The failures of mankind lie not in ignorance or institutions but the structures of the human heart. Liberals must answer the question posed by St. Paul: “Why do I do what I do not want to do, and do not do what I want to do?”  In summarizing Nathaniel Hawthorne, Kirk writes, “…the real enemy of mankind is not social institution, but the devil within us…Man may diminish the influence of original sin, but this struggle requires nearly his undivided attention…Only one species of reform really is worth attempting: reform of conscience.” The Bible says the human heart is “wicked.” John Adams claimed the reason man cannot rule himself is not wickedness per se, but weakness. Potato, po-tah-to.  It seems blindingly obvious to conservatives that amongst the many happy and generous thoughts in the human race, lay fear and selfishness, and we must control our appetites, for man is ruled more by emotion than reason.

 

6.       We are skeptical of innovation. “Change is not reform,” noted John Randolph. Change must happen, of course, for reform is the very mechanism by which the body politick preserves its lifeblood. Neoterists, however—lovers of change for its own sake—do little but set fires to haystacks. Peace and prosperity are unnatural, and conservatism protects and preserves the good. The most dangerous species is the Technocrat, the compulsive tinkerer who experiments blithely with the lives of real humans. Kirk expends great energy railing against Jeremy Bentham’s Utilitarianism, the belief that society can be scientifically managed, that everything can be broken into parts, sifted, measured, and rearranged like blocks to create something functional. To a conservative, society is a living organism, and Benthamites would sooner take the legs off to see if they work better as arms. Utilitarianism is the enemy of the good, the true, and the beautiful, and if conservatives are for anything at all, it is those things; They have been available to man since he left the garden. Goethe said the thing revolutionaries love most is their own ideas. But if you examine history, you will find all their bright and shiny ideas, already having been tried, and already having failed. All is vanity. There is nothing new under the sun.

 

Next time, I will explore how American conservatives depart from their classical brothers and how the various branches and eddies of modern conservatism have shaped the American right of the last century. 

BTW, it is impossible to overstate how stupendous is "The Conservative Mind," a truly remarkable, expansive, and beautifully written work.