What is a conservative, anyway?
When Lee Haywood called and invited me to write for The Conservative Clearinghouse, I was deeply honored, and I expressed to him my commitment to scribble for the site as often as my schedule permits. I like and respect Mr. Haywood, of course (and really, who doesn’t?), but more importantly, I believe in the mission, and I’m happy to contribute to the advancement of our cause.
But what, exactly, is our cause? When we speak of, and refer to ourselves as, “conservatives,” what do we mean? These are important questions because, outside of our tight-knit “little platoon” (as Burke would say) of hyper-informed, ever-vigilant patriots, there is a lot of confusion about us.
Most of that confusion has been created by a mainstream press made up of smug, self-righteous left-wing activists who describe themselves as “journalists.” They loathe conservatives and everything we stand for. Consequently, they demonize every politician who dares to proclaim a right-of-center position. “Journalists” at CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, ABC, and at virtually every newspaper in the country have persuaded their audience (“low-information voters”) that we are hateful, racist, bigoted, intolerant, mean-spirited, homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic, etc.
But the bias of the press is a subject for another day.
The most persuasive and eloquent political writer I’ve ever encountered is Russell Kirk, “the Wizard of Mecosta,” (Michigan), who passed away just before the Gingrich revolution got underway in the 90s. I can think of no scribbler more qualified to pontificate on the nature of conservatism.
I will forgo the obvious tenets–smaller government, lower taxes, reverence of the Constitution, the traditional family–of which even the low-information voters are aware, and focus on principles too often overlooked. Some of these are fruits of the “illative sense,” a magical, subconscious sense of “knowing” that arises from instinct, intuition, and experience. As far as I can tell, progressives altogether lack the illative sense, and that’s a birth defect, of sorts, that irreparably distorts their worldview.
Here are a few of the principles Kirk considered fundamental to our philosophy:
Belief in an enduring moral order.
Adherence to custom, convention, and continuity. ”The fact that humanity has lumbered along tolerably well in obedience to a tradition,” Kirk observed, “creates a legitimate presumption in favor of retaining that tradition; the burden of proof rests upon the innovator.”
Prudence–meaning gradual, modest change, when change is necessary. “Sudden and slashing reforms,” he wrote, “are as perilous as sudden and slashing surgery.” Our disposition is to preserve, rather than to change. We long for a sense of permanence. “The conservative,” Kirk wrote, “favors a reasoned and temperate progress; he opposes the abstract cult of Progress, which assumes that everything new necessarily is better than everything old.”
Variety–an acknowledgment and embrace of orders and classes, as well as variations in ability and outcomes. Inequality is an inevitability, because people are not equally endowed with merit, intelligence, and ambition.
Ordered liberty as opposed to absolute liberty, which is anarchy. Kirk sneered at libertarians, in part, because of their excessive devotion to individual liberty (license), at the expense of order in the commonwealth.
These are but a few of Kirk’s tenets, and they may strike some of you as insufficiently revolutionary for the modern era. Duly noted. “The thinking conservative,” he wrote, “must take on some of the outward characteristics of the radical: he must poke about the roots of society, in the hope of restoring vigor to an old tree half strangled in the rank undergrowth of modern passions.”
On the subject of education, Kirk was particularly “radical,” and his concussive blows against the Deweyite establishment are as timely today as they were decades ago: “Is it any wonder that our educational administrators, to escape from the spectacle of their own failure, turn to purposeless aggrandizement…as a means of concealing from the public the gigantic fraud they have put upon the nation? Here the task must be one of assault and reconstruction, rather than simply one of defense.”
Here’s another Kirkism sure to ring true among modern education reformers: “The arrogant claim of many educationalists that they have a right to train ‘the whole child,’ and to form his character and his opinions regardless of the prejudices of his family and his church and all the older agencies for education, must be denied by the conservative.”
For our purposes here, I have confined my research to two of Kirk’s books, The Politics of Prudence, and Prospects for Conservatives. But his most profound works, in my view, are his magisterial autobiography, The Sword of Imagination, and Enemies of the Permanent Things, which is nothing short of a master class in rhetorical combat.
We have barely scratched the surface, but if you need a reminder of our core beliefs, there’s probably no better source than “the Wizard of Mecosta.” Russell Kirk gave us a portrait of conservatism that was (and is) a thing of beauty–ethereal, linguistically archaic, and occasionally downright medieval in its extirpation of the Left.
Charles Davenport Jr. (cdavenportjr@hotmail.com) is a columnist and freelance writer. He and his wife live in Kernersville, N.C. with “Moose,” their giddy Golden Retriever, and a gorgeous feline by the name of “Nikita.” Fun facts: Charles played drums for a heavy metal band for 12 years, and when he needs a good laugh, he reads Calvin & Hobbes.