What The Word Means
Writer Wrong On Conservatism
Posted: March 8, 2013
If the progressive urge to smear perceived opponents broadly — often via gratuitous accusations of racism — has not been amply demonstrated by reading the newspapers every day, then read Sam Tanenhaus’ latest jeremiad in The New Republic, a liberal magazine.
For all its verbosity and iruitless pursuit of legitimacy, this 5,500-word screed can be reduced to one supposition: The philosophical origins of modern conservatism can be traced to a single source, Southern statesman/apologist John C. Calhoun. He, Mr. Tanenhaus hastens to remind us, was also a defender of slavery. So there, the connection is made, though he did see fit to leaven it by stating, “This is not to say conservatives today share Calhoun’s ideas about race.”
So what is shared? Precisely this: In their quest to limit the reach and scope of the federal government, conservatives “have fully embraced” Calhounist thought on the right of the minority to, in Mr. Tanenhaus’ words, “resist, ignore, or even overturn the will of the electoral majority.”
There is a cleverness — albeit “too clever by half,” as the saying goes — and a facile convenience to Mr. Tanenhaus’ hypothesis, however half-baked. It is true that during modern conservatism’s gestational period — i.e., the 1950s — the emerging right did express interest in the broad range of Mr. Calhoun’s philosophical legacy, even to the point of wrongly invoking the South Carolinian when questioning the federal government’s aggressive posture during the civil rights era. But Mr. Tanenhaus would have readers believe the conservative dispensation, now as then, begins and ends with an allegiance to “Calhounism.”
Nothing could be farther from the truth. A quick scan of Peter Witonski’s seminal four-volume compilation, “The Wisdom of Conservatism” (Arlington House, 1971), reveals that modern conservatism draws inspiration from sources as far back as Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, and from intellectual vintage as relatively recent as Edmund Burke, Alexis de Tocqueville, John Henry Newman, T.S. Eliot, C.S. Lewis, and Milton Friedman. Modern conservatism found one of its greatest champions in Russell Kirk, who explained what the word meant and what conservatives believe.
The top item on the late Mr. Kirk’s list was this: “Men and nations are governed by moral laws; and those laws have their origin in a wisdom that is more than human — in divine justice.” Another is that “[p]roperty and freedom are inseparably connected; economic leveling is not economic progress.” Kirk also explained that “[j]ustice means that every man and every woman have the right to what is their own — to the things best suited to their own nature, to the rewards of their ability and integrity, to their property and their personality.” As well, “[p]ower is full of danger; therefore the good state is one in which power is checked and balanced, restricted by sound constitutions and customs.” Conservatives believe “the past is a great storehouse of wisdom,” and that man is “not perfectible.”
These notions come not from Kirk, but from men such as Burke, himself a “great storehouse of wisdom.” Indeed, perhaps conservatism’s greatest gift to our republic is respect for those whose who lived before us, which brings to mind G.K. Chesterton’s thoughts about tradition. Respecting tradition, he wrote, means “giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father.”
Truncating conservatism to one source, and then suggesting that adhering to its tenets explains any and all opposition to the progressive agenda, is not just intellectually lazy, but deliberately mendacious and categorically wrong.
For all its verbosity and iruitless pursuit of legitimacy, this 5,500-word screed can be reduced to one supposition: The philosophical origins of modern conservatism can be traced to a single source, Southern statesman/apologist John C. Calhoun. He, Mr. Tanenhaus hastens to remind us, was also a defender of slavery. So there, the connection is made, though he did see fit to leaven it by stating, “This is not to say conservatives today share Calhoun’s ideas about race.”
So what is shared? Precisely this: In their quest to limit the reach and scope of the federal government, conservatives “have fully embraced” Calhounist thought on the right of the minority to, in Mr. Tanenhaus’ words, “resist, ignore, or even overturn the will of the electoral majority.”
There is a cleverness — albeit “too clever by half,” as the saying goes — and a facile convenience to Mr. Tanenhaus’ hypothesis, however half-baked. It is true that during modern conservatism’s gestational period — i.e., the 1950s — the emerging right did express interest in the broad range of Mr. Calhoun’s philosophical legacy, even to the point of wrongly invoking the South Carolinian when questioning the federal government’s aggressive posture during the civil rights era. But Mr. Tanenhaus would have readers believe the conservative dispensation, now as then, begins and ends with an allegiance to “Calhounism.”
Nothing could be farther from the truth. A quick scan of Peter Witonski’s seminal four-volume compilation, “The Wisdom of Conservatism” (Arlington House, 1971), reveals that modern conservatism draws inspiration from sources as far back as Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, and from intellectual vintage as relatively recent as Edmund Burke, Alexis de Tocqueville, John Henry Newman, T.S. Eliot, C.S. Lewis, and Milton Friedman. Modern conservatism found one of its greatest champions in Russell Kirk, who explained what the word meant and what conservatives believe.
The top item on the late Mr. Kirk’s list was this: “Men and nations are governed by moral laws; and those laws have their origin in a wisdom that is more than human — in divine justice.” Another is that “[p]roperty and freedom are inseparably connected; economic leveling is not economic progress.” Kirk also explained that “[j]ustice means that every man and every woman have the right to what is their own — to the things best suited to their own nature, to the rewards of their ability and integrity, to their property and their personality.” As well, “[p]ower is full of danger; therefore the good state is one in which power is checked and balanced, restricted by sound constitutions and customs.” Conservatives believe “the past is a great storehouse of wisdom,” and that man is “not perfectible.”
These notions come not from Kirk, but from men such as Burke, himself a “great storehouse of wisdom.” Indeed, perhaps conservatism’s greatest gift to our republic is respect for those whose who lived before us, which brings to mind G.K. Chesterton’s thoughts about tradition. Respecting tradition, he wrote, means “giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father.”
Truncating conservatism to one source, and then suggesting that adhering to its tenets explains any and all opposition to the progressive agenda, is not just intellectually lazy, but deliberately mendacious and categorically wrong.