This piece is a short introduction to a series on the big four “conservative beliefs” that I called out in my previous post:
Let’s start with a very brief history of the “intellectual foundations” of modern “conservatism.”
To do that we need to go back to the first decades of the twentieth century.
Herbert Hoover and his laissez-faire, pro-business Republican party brought on the Great Depression in 1929. The refusal of the party to do anything to help the American people for four years precipitatied a huge backlash. FDR won the 1932 election by massive margins. He beat Hoover by 17.7 points in the popular vote. He took the electoral college by 472 to 59.
FDR’s New Deal was immensely popular. It was based on a simple principle: government should apply knowledge and science to the problems of its citizens. It was also a practical, experimental philosophy. FDR said that his administration would try what seemed most rational to solve a problem. If that didn’t work, then they would try something else. Nothing could appeal more to the average citizen, who has no choice but to use this common-sense method in life.
This emphasis on intelligence put “conservatives” at a great disadvantage. As Lionel Trilling said much later when commenting on the state of intellectual life in 1950 in The Liberal Imagination, “the conservative impulse and the reactionary impulse do not, with some isolated and some ecclesiastical exceptions, express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.” Today we would call these irritable mental gestures grievances.
So Russell Kirk set about trying to make conservative irritations more resemble ideas. In 1953 he published his massive tome The Conservative Mind. This book trawled through British and American literature to find any references to status quo thinking, any defenses of the established order, any leanings against change, reform, or progress.
The result was self-admittedly confusing. Kirk’s own estimate was this: “Strictly speaking, Conservatism is not a political system, and certainly not an ideology. It is a way of looking at civic social order.” Wow. “A way of looking.” What way of looking?
In an effort to be more clear, Kirk listed ten conservative principles he distilled from his wide reading. They were:
The Conservative believes that there exists an enduring moral order. That order is made for man and man is made for it: human nature is a constant, and moral truths are permanent.
The Conservative adheres to custom, convention, and continuity.
Conservatives believe in the principle of prescription – that is, of things established by immemorial usage, so that man runneth not to the contrary.
Conservatives are guided by the principle of prudence.
Conservatives pay attention to the principle of variety.
Conservatives are chastened by the principle of imperfectability.
Conservatives are persuaded that freedom and property are closely linked.
Conservatives uphold voluntary community, quite as they oppose involuntary collectivism.
The Conservative perceives the need for prudent restraints upon power and upon human passions.
The thinking Conservative understands that permanence and change must be recognized and reconciled in a vigorous society.
If this list seems like BS, that’s because it is—and has to be. Kirk’s description of “conservatism” as “a way of looking” was fatuous. It is many different and conflicting “ways of looking.” Some of the “ways of looking” in Kirk’s list contradict one another. Others are evidently false. Others are simple common sense, accepted by every thinking person. Others are just tautologies.
Take, for example, point 1. Conservatives believe in an enduring moral order because human nature is constant. One could hardly settle on a more tendentious first principle. Among the ancient Greeks, Herodotus, the father of history, made one of his great themes the relativity of morality. His survey of contemporary cultures taught him that “custom is king”—people’s conception of what is allowed and forbidden depends on their customs. If there is a “human nature,” it is not easily discernible, let alone permanent.
Or take point 2. Conservatives adhere to custom and continuity. Why? What is so magic about custom and continuity? Sure, they make things easy for those who are privileged and for those who can’t or won’t think for themselves. But if the underpinnings of the privileges are false or unjust, then the customs and their continuity should be dismantled as soon as possible. Adherence to the status quo is often a weakness, not a strength.
Similarly, the other eight principles are all BS for different reasons.
Nonetheless, they became immensely popular among “conservatives” because they could stand in for responses to the real ideas and critiques of the ascendant liberal culture in America.
They were taken up by a young, privileged, clever, and racist William F. Buckley who wanted to “stand athwart history,” to stop the march of progressive ideas. It was he more than Kirk who popularized “conservatism,” spewing simplified versions of the “principles” to politicians for easy deployment as sound bites.
This phase of “conservatism” had little success as long as the World War II generation was hale and hearty. They remembered the utter folly of “conservatism” and the disaster it wrought on America and the world.
But by the late 1970s, their children were already losing the lessons of the early twentieth century. In addition, they were being dumbed down by television and mass culture to accept media manipulation uncritically.
By 1980, the B-actor Ronald Reagan could pretend to be a genial old uncle well enough to convince a majority of Americans that “conservatism”—an indigestible conglomeration of grievances, self-contradictory notions, falsehoods, and truths that no one doubts—was a possible political “philosophy.”
The success of Reagan brought “conservatives” out of the wilderness. They could actually win politically with their nonsensical “principles.” That began the period of further consolidation. Ten “principles” were too many. And in Kirk’s formulation, they were all too long to appeal to television audiences.
So that’s how “conservatives” got to the “big four” BS chips: 1. Small government; 2. Low taxes; 3. Strong military; 4. Traditional values. These four notions distill Kirk’s confusing and difficult-to-remember “principles” into something simple and politically useful. As a pseudo-philosophy, the “big four” exist solely to provide a semblance of principle for a hodge-podge of emotions, desires, and drives.
If we can get past Trumpism, we need to beware of ever accepting the big four as legitimate political “principles.”
Now that the preliminaries are over, I will show over the next few posts how each of the four main tropes of “conservatism” is BS. They should never darken our politics again.