Posted on 1/3/2016, 10:45:18 PM by TBP
Conservatives are engaged in deep introspection these days. As they reconsider their direction, they would do well to look back to the formative period of their movement. They may find something there of great value—something many conservatives think their movement embraced, but in truth rejected.
By 1952, liberal candidates had not only captured the last five Democratic presidential nominations but the past five Republican nominations as well. Most observers considered conservatism dead—a philosophy unsuited for modern times. A small number of intellectuals disagreed. They believed that—if redefined—conservatism might be resuscitated. But they passionately disagreed about how it should be redefined.
One group wanted to follow the teachings of the great 18th-century English statesman Edmund Burke. Russell Kirk was the most prominent of this group. In 1953, Kirk—a young assistant professor of history at Michigan State—turned his doctoral dissertation into a book. “Burke’s is the true school of conservative principle,†Kirk argued, and he described Burke’s philosophy so appealingly that Kirk’s book, The Conservative Mind, became wildly successful. Other Burkeans included Clinton Rossiter, a political scientist at Cornell; Robert Nisbet, a sociologist at Berkeley; and Peter Viereck, an historian at Mount Holyoke College. These men, though academics, were gifted writers, and each produced a popular book advocating the Burkean way.
(Excerpt) Read more at staging.theamericanconservative.com ...
I came across this while looking for somethign else and found it interesting.
I had the pleasure of learning from Russell Kirk while at Hillsdale, and he has been a significant influence. I have also been a reader of Buckley for many years, and I met him during his mayoral campaign. (My dad was running for City Council.) I also enjoyed knowing M. Stanton Evans.
Bill Buckley once said that "no sensible conservative movement will proceed without the advice of Russell Kirk."
What do you make of the philosophical argument this writer is making?
before conservative tried to coopt reagan, they tried to coopt burke. personally, I think it’s futile to try to drag his writings across two centuries, and expect him to arrive 100% intact.
I don’t think I have ever been more jealous in my life as I became when I read that you had studied under russell kirk at hillsdale.
I think Libertarians place individuals first.
I think Conservatives place family and community first.
Social Conservativism is indispensable. Burke knew this.
For the Burkeans of 1950s, emphasis on community was at the heart of a properly conceived conservatism. Kirk wrote: "True conservatism . . . rises at the antipodes from individualism. Individualism is social atomism; conservatism is community of spirit."
I disagree with the fundamental point of the article. I am both in reality and at heart an individual, and I do not approve of collectivist "conservatism". I also suspect a collectivist version of "conservatism" would be easily co-opted by today's collectivist communists. They are far more interested in government than decent people are, and they will devote every moment of their lives to government as soon as good people move on to actually producing something. Our only hope for freedom is to limit the absolute size of government. I don't even want government doing things I approve of in many cases!
I agree. The “Conservative” of today is not communitarian and human nature craves it, needs it, yet currently fights it, perhaps because it seems to smack of Liberalism or socialism.
Trump seems intuitively to grasp the idea. The middle class has been destroyed by both those who call themselves conservative and those who call themselves progressive. Trump gets it.
A good fiscal conservative wants to limit government.
A social conservative wants the same thing.
The socially liberal people end up supporting big social programs.
I don’t know about the community part, unless Margaret Thatcher was a libertarian, when she said there is no such thing as society. Just individuals and families.
It they use enough force to compel me to play along with a make-believe "marriage", that will be a severe loss of freedom. I may be there as ordered, but it will require physical chains in addition to a gun to my head. Without the chains, I will take my chances and fight, even against a gun. Without the gun, I will move away even if chained.
If they use enough force to take my property to redistribute to those "in need", first, the truly needy will get less than I give through my church, since so much is wasted in welfare overhead. Second, there is no virtue in charity at gunpoint, which is the implied threat that backs up taking property for wasteful government programs.
If they compel me to pay an employee more than the market rate, that is armed robbery. Instead of the worker directly robbing me, he is voting for a corrupt liberal who rewards him for that vote by robbing me on the worker's behalf. I find armed robbers disgusting, regardless of whether they have the courage to put their own lives on the line or they are sissies who vote for thugs who will do it for them.
Well, there you have it. Both Buckley and Kirk were devout. Perhaps it goes without saying (since the author didn't mention it) that God must be some sort of Janus-headed Kirkean Buckley.
The antithesis, if real, will resolve to one or the other. But another way of considering the problem is the way Dooyeweerd did, following the anti-revolutionary Groen van Prinsterer, by stressing sphere sovereignty instead of an antithetical dichotomy.
I believe there is a common point that ties the two “antipodes” together - and that commonality is the principle of subsidiarity - that philosophy that lies at the heart of what America is supposed to be.
What is subsidiarity?
Decisions should be made at the lowest level possible and the highest level necessary.
Subsidiarity is a principle of social organization that originated in the Roman Catholic church, and was developed following the First Vatican Council. It has been associated by some with the idea of decentralization. In its most basic formulation, it holds that social problems should be dealt with at the most immediate (or local) level consistent with their solution.
“In medical ethics, subsidiarity helps guide decision-making. In social ethics, subsidiarity helps us prudentially judge not only decision-making but allocation of resources. Subsidiarity is an effort at balancing the many necessary levels of society - and at its best, the principle of subsidiarity navigates the allocation of resources by higher levels of society to support engagement and decision making by the lower levels. Despite how often it is stated - subsidiarity does NOT mean smaller is better.” - Catholic Moral Theology
http://catholicmoraltheology.com/subsidiarity-is-a-two-sided-coin/
“Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy and absorb them. (79)” - Pope Pius XI, QUADRAGESIMO ANNO
The problem with radical individualism - libertarianism - is that it posits that a just social order can exist and flourish within a society bereft of exterior transcendent moral absolutes, presuming upon the perfection of the individual, in defiance of the objective reality that man is an imperfect creature. A rational and productive society cannot exist outside of mutually agreed organizing social principals, a social compact, which is exactly what our Constitution is based upon - a hybrid of Natural Law and Divine Law.
Tradition is not to be despised or lightly tossed. Traditions are such because they tend to preserve those things that are time tested. Change done for change sake is typically destructive against those very things that have made possible the survival and continued prosperity of a society.
many will respond that they are socially liberal and fiscally conservative ... But this is a contradiction, since social liberalism lends itself to destructive behaviors that corrupt the very culture necessary to uphold the morality and ethics that serve as the foundation for a free and prosperous society, eventually destroying the financial solvency that allowed for such libertine behaviors and progressive largess in the first place.
In short - absolute individualism (absolute sovereignty) leads to the same fate as does the absolute state that is communism.
Our Constitution is the first ever to strike a balance between the two ... A representative Republic - “if you can keep it.”
Just for fun, I Googled “blinkered conservatives” and “blinkered liberals”. As one might expect, “blinkered liberals” won out in the number of returns; however, “blinkered conservatives” included many references to “conservatives” of the Koran or “conservatives” who occupy the Kremlin!
He has to muck it up a bit to play his favorite duet.
We also found pro-gun righters didn't necessarily support life and were split even on school choice, a big push in KS for some time, even though most of our schools scored quite well.
We now find that our "good schools" were promoting gay marriage or pro-homosexual "rights" all along.
The schools are not only promoting anti-smoking but"pro pot" issues as most teachers are veering very left and lots of pro-gun rights folks, realizing now that public schools are promoting not only gun control but every other liberal Christmas gift imaginable such as males not only in the locker rooms, bath rooms but showers as well.
Good article. I always enjoyed reading Russell Kirk, Robert Nisbet and the Southern Agrarians, among others.
When I subscribed to National Review, back when it was worth reading, you used to also receive Kirk’s University Bookman.
Russell Kirk, like Burke before him, saw society as organic. And that change should come from society itself, as opposed to change imposed upon everyone by government, which is the totalitarian impulse of the Left and their neoconservative cousins.
Burke ping.
Yeah. Great post. Subsidiarity seemed absent in the debate about Obamacare. Let us revive the concept.
Interesting article and good discussion. But was Buckley really a libertarian? He was solid on all three legs of the stool, wasnt he?
FIFY
Buckley was more in the Frank Meyer fusionist camp, I think — an attempt to bridge the gap between libertarians and Kirk-style conservatives.
BTW, Kirk and Meyer despised each other and feuded for years. Bill managed to work with both of them harmoniously.
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