What Is True Conservatism? By Peter Wehner. Commentary, May 24, 2013.
GOP fear of Common Core education standards unfounded. By Michael Gerson. Washington Post, May 20, 2013.
Wehner:
In a
recent column, Michael Gerson wrote about modern conservatism’s “two distinct
architectural styles.” One approach within conservatism, he said, celebrates
those who seek to apply abstract principles in their purest form. The
alternative approach is more disposed toward compromise, incremental progress
and taking into account shifting circumstances.
What’s
worth noting, I think, is that many of those in the first camp consider
themselves to be more principled and authentically conservative than those in
the second, who are often derided as RINOs and “squishes,” as part of the
much-derided “establishment” and who go along to get along. These politicians
continually back away from fights like shutting down the federal government,
preventing an increase in the debt ceiling, going over the fiscal cliff and
filibustering background checks. The failure to engage these battles, and many
others, is a sign of infidelity to conservatism.
Now,
it’s not as if this critique never applies. There are certainly Republicans who
claim to be conservative but don’t have deep convictions, who are in politics
not because they care about advancing ideas as much as they care about power
and titles. But what is of more interest to me is the divide over what a
genuine conservative temperament and cast of mind is. A new book on Edmund
Burke, by the British MP Jesse Norman, helps illuminate this matter. Given the
contours of the current debate, it’s worth recalling what Burke, whom Norman
refers to as “the first conservative,” actually believed.
Let’s
start with moderation, a word many modern-day conservatives instinctively
recoil from but which Burke referred to as “a virtue not only amiable but
powerful. It is a disposing, arranging, conciliating, cementing virtue.”
According
to Norman, Burke believed the proper attitude of those who aspire to power is
“humility, modesty and a sense of public duty.” He was “anti-ideological in
spirit,” deeply distrustful of zealotry and believed self-correcting reforms,
while certainly necessary, should be limited, discriminating, and
proportionate. For Burke, Norman argues, universal principles were never sufficient
in themselves to guide practical deliberation.
“Circumstances
(which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political
principle its distinguishing colour and discriminating effect,” according to
Burke. “The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme
beneficial or noxious to mankind.”
“The
lines of morality are not like the ideal lines of mathematics,” he wrote
elsewhere. “They admit of exceptions, they demand modifications. These
exceptions and modifications are not made by the process of logic but by the
rules of prudence.”
A
Burkean approach would never insist on absolute consistency in conducting human
affairs. Politics is about carefully balancing competing principles, ever alert
to the dangers posed by unintended consequences. It involves taking into
account public sentiments, what Burke called the “temper of the people.” Nor is
politics ever as simple as saying we believe in liberty and limited government
and therefore the application of those principles is self-evident. Burke’s
view, according to Norman, is that “perfection is not given to man, and so
politics is an intrinsically messy business… The function of politics, then, is
primarily one of reconciliation and enablement.” What deeply concerned Burke
were people of “intemperate minds.” What is required of statesmen is wisdom and
good judgment, sobriety, foresight and prudence.
Now
Burke’s interpretation of conservatism was not written on stone tablets
delivered on Mt. Sinai–and even if it were, merely to invoke Burke does not
mean one is properly applying his insights to the here and now. But it does
strike me that as this debate intensifies, and as various people lay claim to
being the True Conservatives, it’s worth reminding ourselves what the greatest
exponent of conservatism actually believed.
