Conservatism and Racism, and Why in America They Are the Same

Chapter 1. Defining the Terms of Discourse

CHAPTER ONE Defining the Terms of Discourse In the first part of this chapter I develop an understanding and definition of conservatism. This is followed by a much briefer discussion of racism and its correlative ideology of white supremacy. Conservatism in America Most of the literature on the American political tradition asserts that the United States is a liberal society, without a significant conservative tradition. I contend that the American political tradition is pervasively conservative with, contrary to much of the literature, liberalism rather than conservatism being the “remnant,” the “illusion,” or the “thankless persuasion.”1 There are three related problems in the study of conservatism in America. The first has been the tendency of historians and social scientists to ignore conservatism in their teaching and research. (In my years of study in political science I was assigned only two books on conservatism, Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France and Clinton Rossiter’s Conservatism in America.) As the editors of American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia write: “The historiography of American conservatism . . . remains immature. For decades, the academic historical establishment largely ignored American Conservatism or dealt with it as some sort of fringe group. Only after the surprising and enduring appeal of Ronald Reagan did most historians begin to take serious scholarly notice of self-proclaimed conservatism. . . . But for now the story of conservatism in America, as told by academics, is fractured and inconclusive.”2 Alan Brinkley, the historian of liberalism, writes, “[T]wentieth century American conservatism has been something of an orphan in historical scholarship .” Brinkley attributes this inattention to conservatism to the tendency of scholars to view it as “a kind of pathology,” a “paranoid style,” but he writes, “A better explanation for the inattention of historians may be that much American conservatism in the twentieth century has rested on a philosophical 7 8 Conservatism and Racism, and Why in America They Are the Same foundation not readily distinguishable from the liberal tradition, to which it is, in theory opposed.”3 This tendency to ignore “self-proclaimed” conservatism or treat it as a kind of pathology is related to the larger tendency of American scholarship to understand the American tradition as profoundly and pervasively liberal, rooted in the philosophy of John Locke. This view was stated most persuasively in Louis Hartz’s seminal 1955 work, The Liberal Tradition in America. Although few scholars today fully embrace Hartz’s thesis, the work exerted and exerts a powerful influence on teaching and research on ideology in the American political tradition.4 The third problem is the tendency to locate conservative thought in the writings of Burke, and finding little self-conscious Burke in the American tradition, it is concluded that there is little conservatism in the tradition or that it is an illusion, a remnant, or a “kind of pathology.”5 Understanding Conservatism Conservatism as a self-conscious ideology is usually understood in terms of a set of enduring principles, usually derived from Burke but in some cases traced to Plato and the Ancients.6 But Huntington is largely correct when he contends that, unlike most ideologies, conservatism lacks what he calls a “substantive ideal” or “vision.”7 Building on Mannheim’s classic essay “Conservative Thought,” Huntington argues that conservatism as an ideology is best understood “situationally.”8 Or as Mannheim wrote, “conservatism . . . is always dependent on a concrete set of circumstances in a [particular] period and country.”9 In other words, conservatism is always a reaction to a challenge to an existing order becoming “conscious and reflective when other ways of life and thought appear on the scene, against which it is compelled to take up arms in an ideological struggle.”10 Situationally conservatism is defined as the ideology arising out of a distinct but recurring type of historical situation in which a fundamental challenge is directed at established institutions and in which the supporters of those institutions employ the conservative ideology in their defense. Thus, conservatism is that system of ideas employed to justify any established social order, no matter where or when it exists, against any fundamental challenge to its nature or being, no matter from what quarter. . . . Conservatism in this sense is possible in the United States today only if there is a basic challenge to existing American institutions which impels their defenders to articulate conservative values.11 Defining the Terms of Discourse 9 Writing in 1954 Huntington did not anticipate...