When asked recently by a few different people how I self-identify politically, I struggled. I have a visceral desire to identify as conservative, but I'm not sure that anyone would understand what I mean with the word. Thoughtful conversations and comments regarding my letter to Conor Friedersdorf and other posts have convinced me that trying to work out the meaning of conservative is necessary for effective dialogue. To begin this conversation, I will consider the origins of the modern conservative movement and what light it sheds on politics in the era of Trump.
The modern conservative movement began in reaction to the French Revolution of 1789. It was (and usually remains) reactive, opposing change rather than advocating for it. As such, it has tended to lack a normative description of how the world should be, and instead has generally opposed changes that threaten the order that is. This was the key idea that drove William F. Buckley, Jr. to found the National Review in 1955 (perhaps raising questions about the extent to which that was such a halcyon day) so that it could be a publication that would "stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it."
Edmund Burke (1729-1797) is usually identified as the founder of conservative political thought. In his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1791), he made a number of arguments against liberalism that have continued to be used in various forms by conservatives.
Among the key ideas that he articulated was a rejection of universal human rights and the embrace of particular rights of particular people anchored in history. These were things that people received from their ancestors rather than things written into the fabric of human nature or human society. Trying to posit such abstract universal claims depended upon a perfect understanding of ultimate reality, which was something that Burke was unwilling to concede. Instead, he preferred to depend upon prejudice, or the intuitive prejudgment of things, rather than on abstract argument:
Burke's emphasis on the inherited wisdom preserved within institutions and traditions made him suspicious of reform. He was willing to acknowledge that English society and government may not be perfect, but cautioned against sweeping change. Instead, reform should be gradual and hesitant, with deference to the way things have been done:
Opposition to legal equality was a key element of Burke's thought. This dimension of modern conservatism is rarely emphasized, and is downright scandalous in our own day, and yet it was central to Burke's rejection of the French Revolution. He recognized that English society was based on legal privilege, which means "private law," or a law that applies to one person but not to another. Privilege was under attack during the Revolution, with the parties in France defined by the extent to which they believed some form of privilege could be preserved without undermining the fundamental equality of all men. Burke believed that such equality destroyed the richness of deference to one's betters. In a striking passage, Burke describes Marie Antoinette (who was still queen of France at the time he wrote) as he saw her before the revolution:
Lest we miss the point of all of this, Burke continued his argument by complaining about the consequences of legal equality. In France after the Revolution, "[r]egicide [the murder of a king], and parricide [the murder of a parent], and sacrilege [breaking sacred law], are but fictions of superstition, corrupting jurisprudence by destroying its simplicity. The murder of a king, or a queen, or a bishop, or a father, are only common homicide." The attack on the privileges of royalty and clergy made even their murder only a common thing. Burke feared the destabilized society created by the desacralization of the established authorities.
These strains of Burkean conservatism are all grounded in a basic insight, which is that society is fragile. He feared that any significant and rapid changes to society would leave everyone worse off in the ensuing chaos. He was conservative because he believed that change would probably make things worse, rather than better. If what we have is one of the better possible political/social/economic orders, then it should be handled with care. In his view, the risk of change far outweighed its potential benefits.
Russell Kirk (1918-1994), a historian at Hillsdale College and a key figure in the modern conservative movement, made a similar argument. In The Roots of American Order (4th ed., 2003), he began by emphasizing the fragility of civilization by quoting Simone Weil that "Order is the first need of all." (3) He followed this quotation with a striking anecdote from a Russian Menshevik (or moderate socialist), who had fled St. Petersburg when the Bolsheviks seized power during the Russian Revolution:
Understanding these core conservative ideas can help us analyze the political debates of the moment with greater precision.
There are elements of Trump's presidency that seem to be in tension with these conservative ideas. His willingness to destroy the international order based on free trade and international alliances would appear to be an attack on this foundational conservative idea. The thorough gutting of the State Department compounds the revolutionary nature of his approach to foreign policy and guarantees that it will last long after he is out of office, whether that be in two or six years. His insistence that political appointees prioritize service to him over all other legal concerns (such as his frustration with Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from overseeing the Mueller investigation) seems to be a similar attack on the constitutional order and institutional structures of our government. Finally, Burke and Kirk, among many others, firmly insisted that the elite had to be morally superior to those they governed, and few appear willing to claim moral superiority for our president.
Nevertheless, in working through this essay, I have been struck by the elements of Trump's thought that fit with the conservative tradition. Trumps attacks on the independence of the press and continual lying on basic factual matters renders conversations about what is taking place in the world into a debate about personal loyalty--either you are for the president and believe him, or you are against him and reject his word in favor of reality. Such deference to those with power has at least a passing resemblance to Burke's praise of Marie Antoinette.
One could also argue that his attempt to push back against increased social and legal equality for minorities would fit with Burke's rejection of equality. Even Russell Kirk indicated that African American toleration of Jim Crow was a sign of the American order functioning well, in contrast to the public protests of the civil rights movement. (He wrote that: "The Negroes, emancipated during the Civil War, labored under greater social and economic handicaps than did the immigrants, but not until the 1950's would there arise among America's black citizens any nation-wide strong protest against their condition. America's society was pluralistic and tolerant enough, generally, cemented by willing allegiance to the written and unwritten constitutions." (469)) The continued marginalization of already marginalized groups is an element of the emphasis on order and stability, and one that concerns me as a Christian.
Even the efforts to bring about significant change by the Trump administration can be characterized as conservative, although there is real tension on this point. Some argue that the world has changed so much so quickly, that the only option left for a conservative is to use political power to tear down the current systems and restore an older order. Buckley's list of commitments for the National Review suggest a similar approach. This sentiment appears to be the meaning of "Make America Great Again." But as the number of institutions that need to be uprooted grow, I wonder if those who claim to be conservative have lost the sense that civilization is fragile, that change is more likely to make things worse than better, and that reform must be slow and cautious for it to improve things. Certainly, one gets the sense from many self-described conservatives that change is much more likely to yield positive results than negative ones. In this regard, it is striking that many of those who voted for Trump were hoping for precisely what Barack Obama campaigned on: Change.
This sense was reinforced when I read a defense of Trump by a young supporter at Hillsdale College, who ended his essay with this admission: "I don’t even know what 'conservative' means anymore, and frankly, I don’t care. But 'conservative' or not, Trump is unifying the GOP around his agenda. This is a debate long settled in the minds of the Republican voter base, although it lives on in a small few." I suspect this sentiment is common and widespread. I'm troubled by its nihilistic embrace of power--Trump won and those who supported him will continue to do so out of sense of personal fealty regardless of whether he is conservative or not.
Does this mapping of Trump onto these conservative principles make sense to you, or do you see it another way?
The modern conservative movement began in reaction to the French Revolution of 1789. It was (and usually remains) reactive, opposing change rather than advocating for it. As such, it has tended to lack a normative description of how the world should be, and instead has generally opposed changes that threaten the order that is. This was the key idea that drove William F. Buckley, Jr. to found the National Review in 1955 (perhaps raising questions about the extent to which that was such a halcyon day) so that it could be a publication that would "stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it."
Edmund Burke (1729-1797) is usually identified as the founder of conservative political thought. In his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1791), he made a number of arguments against liberalism that have continued to be used in various forms by conservatives.
Among the key ideas that he articulated was a rejection of universal human rights and the embrace of particular rights of particular people anchored in history. These were things that people received from their ancestors rather than things written into the fabric of human nature or human society. Trying to posit such abstract universal claims depended upon a perfect understanding of ultimate reality, which was something that Burke was unwilling to concede. Instead, he preferred to depend upon prejudice, or the intuitive prejudgment of things, rather than on abstract argument:
We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason; because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations and of ages. Many of our [English] men of speculation, instead of exploding general prejudices, employ their sagacity to discover the latent wisdom which prevails in them. If they find what they seek, and they seldom fail, they think it more wise to continue the prejudice, with the reason involved, than to cast away the coat of prejudice, and to leave nothing but the naked reason, because prejudice, with its reason, has a motive to give action to reason, and an affection which will give it permanence.If one has imbibed the prejudices of one's society, then one is ready to act well (or at least, as an Englishman should) in any given situation. These prejudgements reflect the wisdom of centuries that mere individuals are unlikely to fully appreciate, and so most people most of the time should (unreflectively) act to defend the situation that they inherited, with the desire to pass it along to the next generation. The embrace of prejudice is grounded in skepticism of each individual's ability to use their unaided, or "naked," reason to understand the world as it actually is.
Burke's emphasis on the inherited wisdom preserved within institutions and traditions made him suspicious of reform. He was willing to acknowledge that English society and government may not be perfect, but cautioned against sweeping change. Instead, reform should be gradual and hesitant, with deference to the way things have been done:
...he should approach to the faults of the state as to the wounds of a father, with pious awe and trembling solicitude. By this wise prejudice we are taught to look with horror on those children of their country [i.e., France], who are prompt rashly to hack that aged parent in pieces, and put him into the kettle of magicians, in hopes that by their poisonous weeds, and wild incantations, they may regenerate the paternal constitution, and renovate their father's life.Burke's "magicians" are liberal reformers in France, who obliterated a society defined by legal privilege and were working to replace it whole-cloth with one based on the legal equality of all men (women's rights were not yet acknowledged in 1791). He believed that an understanding of human nature based on natural rights was reductionistic and too simple. Any new social order based on such an understanding of human nature would be doomed to fail.
Opposition to legal equality was a key element of Burke's thought. This dimension of modern conservatism is rarely emphasized, and is downright scandalous in our own day, and yet it was central to Burke's rejection of the French Revolution. He recognized that English society was based on legal privilege, which means "private law," or a law that applies to one person but not to another. Privilege was under attack during the Revolution, with the parties in France defined by the extent to which they believed some form of privilege could be preserved without undermining the fundamental equality of all men. Burke believed that such equality destroyed the richness of deference to one's betters. In a striking passage, Burke describes Marie Antoinette (who was still queen of France at the time he wrote) as he saw her before the revolution:
...surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in,--glittering like the morning star, full of life, and splendour, and joy. Oh! what a revolution! ... But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters[sic], economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. Never, never more shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.Here one can sense Burke's concern that clever people are trying to replace the glory of royalty with mere numbers, destroying the motives for noble action. His attack on "economists" and "calculators" is a part of his rejection of the enlightenment notion that we can use reason to deduce the best arrangement of society. Such men had desacralized the inspiring beauty of Marie Antoinette and left the French people stuck in a pointless world. And in making this case, Burke insists that even slaves ("in servitude itself") found life more meaningful when Marie Antoinette was a glorious, superhuman being.
Lest we miss the point of all of this, Burke continued his argument by complaining about the consequences of legal equality. In France after the Revolution, "[r]egicide [the murder of a king], and parricide [the murder of a parent], and sacrilege [breaking sacred law], are but fictions of superstition, corrupting jurisprudence by destroying its simplicity. The murder of a king, or a queen, or a bishop, or a father, are only common homicide." The attack on the privileges of royalty and clergy made even their murder only a common thing. Burke feared the destabilized society created by the desacralization of the established authorities.
These strains of Burkean conservatism are all grounded in a basic insight, which is that society is fragile. He feared that any significant and rapid changes to society would leave everyone worse off in the ensuing chaos. He was conservative because he believed that change would probably make things worse, rather than better. If what we have is one of the better possible political/social/economic orders, then it should be handled with care. In his view, the risk of change far outweighed its potential benefits.
Russell Kirk (1918-1994), a historian at Hillsdale College and a key figure in the modern conservative movement, made a similar argument. In The Roots of American Order (4th ed., 2003), he began by emphasizing the fragility of civilization by quoting Simone Weil that "Order is the first need of all." (3) He followed this quotation with a striking anecdote from a Russian Menshevik (or moderate socialist), who had fled St. Petersburg when the Bolsheviks seized power during the Russian Revolution:
At any moment, one's apartment might be invaded by a casual criminal or fanatic, murdering for the sake of a loaf of bread. In this anarchy, justice and freedom were only words. "Then I learned that before we can know justice and freedom, we must have order," my friend said. "Much though I hated the Communists, I saw then that even the grim order of Communism is better than no order at all. Many might survive under Communism; no one could survive in general disorder." (7)The commitment to order runs deep in the conservative movement. Kirk was an ardent anti-communism, so his suggestion that the Soviet state was superior to anarchy is striking. The appreciation for the fragility of civilization and concomitant emphasis on the value of order seems to be the foundational idea in conservative thought.
Understanding these core conservative ideas can help us analyze the political debates of the moment with greater precision.
There are elements of Trump's presidency that seem to be in tension with these conservative ideas. His willingness to destroy the international order based on free trade and international alliances would appear to be an attack on this foundational conservative idea. The thorough gutting of the State Department compounds the revolutionary nature of his approach to foreign policy and guarantees that it will last long after he is out of office, whether that be in two or six years. His insistence that political appointees prioritize service to him over all other legal concerns (such as his frustration with Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from overseeing the Mueller investigation) seems to be a similar attack on the constitutional order and institutional structures of our government. Finally, Burke and Kirk, among many others, firmly insisted that the elite had to be morally superior to those they governed, and few appear willing to claim moral superiority for our president.
Nevertheless, in working through this essay, I have been struck by the elements of Trump's thought that fit with the conservative tradition. Trumps attacks on the independence of the press and continual lying on basic factual matters renders conversations about what is taking place in the world into a debate about personal loyalty--either you are for the president and believe him, or you are against him and reject his word in favor of reality. Such deference to those with power has at least a passing resemblance to Burke's praise of Marie Antoinette.
One could also argue that his attempt to push back against increased social and legal equality for minorities would fit with Burke's rejection of equality. Even Russell Kirk indicated that African American toleration of Jim Crow was a sign of the American order functioning well, in contrast to the public protests of the civil rights movement. (He wrote that: "The Negroes, emancipated during the Civil War, labored under greater social and economic handicaps than did the immigrants, but not until the 1950's would there arise among America's black citizens any nation-wide strong protest against their condition. America's society was pluralistic and tolerant enough, generally, cemented by willing allegiance to the written and unwritten constitutions." (469)) The continued marginalization of already marginalized groups is an element of the emphasis on order and stability, and one that concerns me as a Christian.
Even the efforts to bring about significant change by the Trump administration can be characterized as conservative, although there is real tension on this point. Some argue that the world has changed so much so quickly, that the only option left for a conservative is to use political power to tear down the current systems and restore an older order. Buckley's list of commitments for the National Review suggest a similar approach. This sentiment appears to be the meaning of "Make America Great Again." But as the number of institutions that need to be uprooted grow, I wonder if those who claim to be conservative have lost the sense that civilization is fragile, that change is more likely to make things worse than better, and that reform must be slow and cautious for it to improve things. Certainly, one gets the sense from many self-described conservatives that change is much more likely to yield positive results than negative ones. In this regard, it is striking that many of those who voted for Trump were hoping for precisely what Barack Obama campaigned on: Change.
This sense was reinforced when I read a defense of Trump by a young supporter at Hillsdale College, who ended his essay with this admission: "I don’t even know what 'conservative' means anymore, and frankly, I don’t care. But 'conservative' or not, Trump is unifying the GOP around his agenda. This is a debate long settled in the minds of the Republican voter base, although it lives on in a small few." I suspect this sentiment is common and widespread. I'm troubled by its nihilistic embrace of power--Trump won and those who supported him will continue to do so out of sense of personal fealty regardless of whether he is conservative or not.
Does this mapping of Trump onto these conservative principles make sense to you, or do you see it another way?
Phil-
ReplyDeleteAnother great post. Keep ‘em coming!
I think though that you really have to take socio-economic perspectives into consideration. American society is heterodox in its beliefs (c.f. Bernie supporters voting for Trump in the general election). Trump capitalized on fear and rage. Fear that Americans today are or are going to be worse off than previous generations materially and economically, and rage at the realization of it.
So much of society today is blatantly false: we go to jobs where we are told to meet numbers that, in effect, are arbitrary and meaningless. Managers must produce empty numbers, so stocks can inflate their imaginary value. Rulers pretend to rule, entertainment sells us a lifestyle we can’t afford, a few people get fantastically wealthy, and we’re all supposed to be happy about it (c.f. Adam Curtis’ “Hypernormalization). Meanwhile, find a new stove, washing machine, or refrigerator that will last more than five years, that you can put into a house you can afford to own… It is rage inducing. Especially if you are one of the 40-80% of Americans with little to no savings, living paycheck to paycheck.
So we’ll start with the premise that right now stinks. I think anyone willing to call BS on this is going to cut through the chatter. Thus it is any real surprise that the brand of conservativism exemplified by MAGA, and Democratic Socialism are the two most vibrant movements right now? On the right, I think the MAGA inclination hints at Burke’s idea that people are risk averse. The latent sense of living during the back end of empire is real, and society is casting about for whoever can deliver it for them. Do we then bunker down and wait out the storm? (Rhetorically, it is not a large leap from “build a wall” to then say “the barbarians are at the gates.”)
We have a living memory, and the people to go talk to (Baby Boomers) that can recall a vibrant and expansive America, where people had jobs, money had real purchasing power, There were good and durable things to buy, and more and more people were gaining rights. The chimera that we can go back to that is appealing.
But I think it is not out of any deep-seated philosophical belief, but quite the opposite. It is an acknowledgement that things are bad and getting worse. I don’t think it is out of any deep-seated philosophy that so many people want to reduce the size of government or reduce welfare to the needy. It is a sense of frustration that things aren’t working. Modern conservativism plays with the semantics of this. From a nihilistic perspective: government isn’t working for us, so get rid of bloated bureaucracies and social programs haven’t provided ample solutions to social problems (this can be phrased as DRAIN THE SWAMP). Or it could be phrased in Burkian rhetoric: tear down the rotten structures built over the strong foundation of core values.
I think, as you gathered from our years of conversations during office hours in Bailey Hall, I’m rather saturnine about human nature. I think Trump is dangerous in the sense that his conservativism (just like his liberal tendencies which seemed to vanish circa 2010) is without principle or philosophy. I worry that he is the crowning achievement of mindfulness without spirituality: a person who is wholly within this moment, acting with no regard for the past, no concern for the future, and able only to process what is in front of him through whatever emotion he currently feels.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply! I agree with much of it. I'm trying to find a way to find language that makes it possible to talk across the divide between those who supported Trump and those who did not. I know some who were simply frustrated or fearful as you describe above, but also of others who were concerned about him but felt that supporting him was the best choice for other reasons. Human motivation is complex. I'll continue to think about this.
DeleteI miss those conversations in Bailey Hall. Resuming them here is refreshing.