As the members of America\u2019s \u201cconservative\u201d party struggle to get a hold of themselves following this past election, they should revisit\u2014or visit\u2014the thought of modern conservatism\u2019s \u201cpatron saint,\u201d Edmund Burke. \u00a0<\/p>\n
If anything distinguishes conservatism from other brands of political thought it is its affirmation of tradition.\u00a0 <\/em>This Burke makes clear.\u00a0 This attachment to tradition, in turn, is inseparable from its disavowal of \u201cmetaphysical abstraction.\u201d\u00a0 Radicals of all types think that they can surmount their cultural traditions\u2014their civilization\u2014by bringing them before the tribunal of their own intellects.\u00a0 Burke is having none of it.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason,\u201d Burke famously wrote, for \u201cwe suspect that this stock in each man is small [.]\u201d\u00a0 Human reason, far from preceding<\/em> tradition, is actually dependent upon it. Thus, rather than rely upon their own reason, individuals \u201cwould do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations and of ages\u201d\u2014i.e. tradition. \u00a0<\/p>\n This lofty conception of Reason for which radicals are known\u2014F.A. Hayek called it \u201cthe fatal conceit\u201d\u2014gives rise to a morality of ideals <\/em>or principles.\u00a0 <\/em>For example, the radicals of the French Revolution upon whom Burke set his sights touted the ideals of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.\u00a0 Radicals in other times and places have centered their attention on Human Rights, say, or Virtue, Piety, Democracy, and the Will of the People.\u00a0<\/p>\n There is nothing wrong with ideals and principles as such.\u00a0 The problem sets in when they are treated as if they were timeless and self-evident truths that can be effortlessly grasped by people everywhere.\u00a0 It is when we ignore the fact that these ideals and principles are meaningful only within the context of the specific traditions within which they developed that trouble promises to ensue. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n As Burke says, we must guard against \u201cthe metaphysic sophistry\u201d and \u201cdelusive plausibilities\u201d of radicals who would divest our ideals of \u201cevery relation\u201d so that they are left standing \u201cin all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction.\u201d\u00a0 We must take care to remember that it is \u201ccircumstances\u201d that \u201crender every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.\u201d<\/p>\n Those who follow a morality of ideals aspire to be something like \u201ccitizens of the world.\u201d\u00a0 Those who recognize that morality is rooted in tradition, however, know that \u201ccharity starts at home,\u201d as we say.\u00a0 They recognize, in other words, that it is our families, churches, and local<\/em> communities\u2014our \u201clittle platoons,\u201d Burke called them\u2014that make us into the moral beings that we are.<\/p>\n Given that the family is the quintessential \u201clittle platoon,\u201d it is with the imagery of the family that Burke chose to drape the relationship between the citizen and his state.\u00a0 The English, he wrote, \u201cclaim and assert our liberties,\u201d not as deductions from abstract principles, but \u201cas an entailed inheritance <\/em>derived to us from our forefathers, and to be transmitted to our posterity [.]\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Burke explains that in giving to \u201cour frame of polity the image of a relation in blood,\u201d the idea of an inheritance conjoins \u201cthe constitution of our country with our dearest domestic ties\u201d while \u201cadopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family affections [.]\u201d<\/p>\n The turn from a morality of ideals toward a traditional morality that Burke urged has been heeded by many a conservative.\u00a0 The same, unfortunately, can not be said of Republicans.\u00a0 Neither do they seem to share his skepticism of Reason.<\/p>\n But if the members of America\u2019s \u201cconservative\u201d party did <\/em>listen to Burke, maybe they would realize a few things.<\/p>\n First, because the best intentions of even the brightest of folks often have wildly unpredictable consequences, top-down societal schemes for which Big Government is known must be resisted at every turn.<\/p>\n Translation: a genuinely federal, or constitutional, government of the sort mapped out by the Founders must be the goal for which every conservative works.<\/p>\n Second, national defense is one thing.\u00a0 International crusades or wars for Freedom or Democracy or any other ideal are something else entirely.\u00a0 Every conservative must recognize them for the utopian, and inevitably destructive, fantasies that they are.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Third, massive third-world immigration of the kind that America has been promoting for nearly a half-of-a-century conservatives must strive to end.\u00a0 The morality embodied by our institutions generally, and our constitutional institutions particularly, is culturally-specific.\u00a0 That is, it is Eurocentric.\u00a0 The vast majority of today\u2019s immigrants are strangers to Western moral norms, when they aren\u2019t outright hostile toward them.\u00a0 And in any event, not only are there no institutional arrangements in place to encourage them to become literate in our ways.\u00a0\u00a0 The spirit of our times encourages\u00a0non-Western immigrants\u00a0to resist assimilation.<\/p>\n Familiarity with Burke is necessary if the members of our conservative party are going to start acting like conservatives.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As the members of America\u2019s \u201cconservative\u201d party struggle to get a hold of themselves following this past election, they should revisit\u2014or visit\u2014the thought of modern conservatism\u2019s \u201cpatron saint,\u201d Edmund Burke. \u00a0 If anything distinguishes conservatism from other brands of political thought it is its affirmation of tradition.\u00a0 This Burke makes clear.\u00a0 This attachment to tradition,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n