American Conservatism: Thinking It, Teaching It

American Conservatism Defined

116 American Conservatism Defined My students have occasionally asked for my definition of conservatism. I begin with a historical framework. Conservatism emerged as a response to what was perceived as the destructive nature of the French Revolution, New Deal–type welfare states, and the totalitarian threats—fascism and communism—of the mid-twentieth century. At its most decisive, American conservatives, in the spirit of Edmund Burke, were profoundly antiutopian and in opposition to all revolutionary creeds with the exception of what conservatives perceived as the more traditional dimensions of the American Revolution. As such, American conservatives found themselves engaged in a sometimes fruitful but often acrimonious argument with those identified with the Enlightenment project but deeply antagonistic to totalitarianisms of the right and left. Perhaps it would help if I shamelessly stole from Russell Kirk’s wellknown six canons of conservative thought, albeit with my own significant revisions: 1 Conservatives believe that there need to be some moral and ethical anchors and ballasts such that we are not adrift in a sea of postmodernist iconoclasm, a shallow relativism, or, worse, nihilism. As such, there is a tilt toward understanding and learning from historical experience, including a respect although not a veneration of tradition. Such beliefs need not be transcendent, nor be based on universal truths, for instance, natural law or natural rights. American Conservatism Defined 117 2 Conservatives believe that utopian ideologies pose inherent threats to the thin veneer that sustains civilized societies. As such, conservatives mistrust all forms of rationalism, positivism, and any assertion that suggests the perfectibility of human beings. Conservatives are always respectful of the human capacity to descend toward the abyss, whether one calls this human frailty evil or sin or aggression. They also begin with a skepticism rooted in what some have called the law of unintended consequences, the possibility that good intentions can yield destructive ends. 3 Conservatives believe that ideological fixations on societal ideals—whether socialism/communism or laissez-faire, freemarket capitalism—subvert the necessary ad hoc, piecemeal, and situational responses necessary within any particular social order. There needs to be an element of pragmatism within any thoughtful conservatism that asks: Does it work? 4 Conservatives believe that social change is both necessary and inevitable but must be approached with sobriety and caution. Conservatives are to be distinguished from reactionaries and radicals because they hold that what was and what is have greater weight than what ought to be. 5 Conservatives hold a proper respect for the diversity, variety, and perversity of human existence. Indeed, conservatives embrace and seek to nurture such expressions of the human spirit. 6 Conservatives believe in Edmund Burke’s notion that society is “a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.” Conservatives believe that such an organic approach has profound implications for how one educates the young, treats the old, and respects the environment. As the canons suggest, there is nothing that inherently links conservatism to any of the following: right-wing populism, libertarianism, laissez-faire capitalism, fundamentalist Protestant Christianity, or K Street cronyism. ...