What is Conservatism?

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Just a little while ago, I saw a link on Facebook from some under-30 Conservatives, wherein they were discussing just exactly what Conservatism is. I thought I'd throw this out there for the handful of people who want to know. It is not quite "done," being but a section of a much longer work-in-progress dealing with the differences between Libertarianism and Conservatism. If parts of it seem less than fully baked, that is the most likely reason.

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It's never an entirely easy thing to say exactly what a Conservative is. It doesn't help that many of the ideas associated nowadays with Conservatism were formerly identified as "liberal." Even now, in attempting to say what Conservatism is, people often wind up using the term "Classical Liberal." The fact that I have written about Conservatism, common-sense conservatism, laundry-list conservatism, Neoconservatism, Crunchy Conservatism, and Paleoconservatism shows that the waters, shall we say, have been muddied. There are streams within Conservatism, that is, just as there are very few "pure" Libertarians, there are very few "pure" Conservatives. Picking the strands of this tapestry apart and keeping them separate is difficult, as has been noted by writers other than myself', as you can easily make the case that Conservatism is more an attitude and approach to things than it is a universally agreed upon set of ideas, such that one can definitively say, "This is Conservative, it is on the list, that is not Conservative, it is not on the list." That has not, of course, stopped people from making a list (and I recommend you read that one, it is one of the best) of Conservative ideas. In the end, though, Conservatism is less a laundry-list of political points than an approach to life and to governance that presupposes certain truths, certain ideas.

I have little doubt, based on my reading of history, that many of those Conservative ideas reach back to the dawn of history, though they may not have always been employed and understood consistently or articulated as we might today. Some read Aristotle and find a Conservative; more than a few so identify Cicero. You can tell from that that it is not necessary to be a Christian to be a Conservative, though I do think that Conservatism reaches its peak when under the aegis of Christianity.

Conservatism, you might say, is the practice, perhaps the reflexive practice, of prudence, the prudential working-out of some basic ideas about the Divine and Man.

Conservatives, for the most part, take it for granted that there is a Divine order. When I say that they take it for granted, I do not mean to imply that they think the proposition incapable of proof or that no Conservative ever tries to prove it, but more that Conservatives may generally be said to regard the existence of the Divine as a matter so obvious as to require little or no defense. As Dr. Kirk says:

...if you should be seeking for a sound book of a conservative cast that has no religion in it--why, you might as well search for the philosopher's stone; or inquire, with Tiberius, what songs the Sirens sang.

In a similar way, Conservatives further take it for granted that Man is not at the top of that Divine order, that is, there is a Power (or powers) higher than Man, to which men, even kings, are responsible. They further take it for granted that government is part of this Divine order. You can find this idea all the way back at the beginning of Herodotus, if not before. Conservatives might differ on exactly what the role of government should be or what the rewards and perks of governing should be, but they never really doubt that government is a necessary, normal, inevitable, and even Divinely ordained facet of human existence. Conservatives will point out that man is never really without government, not for long, at least not when there are more than a handful of men within walking distance of one another; you may find that this government is overthrown or that government is abolished, but a real, total lack of government, anarchy, never lasts long. Nobody likes it. Conservatives never really doubt that men need governing, not all men being particularly good or particularly intelligent and well-educated--Christian conservatives, in particular, maintaining that Man is sinful and rebellious by nature and by choice. Conservatives may also be said to presuppose that although men may not be counted on to always do what's right, they nevertheless have certain rights. Again, I am not saying that all Conservatives work these things out in rigorous logical detail, but I daresay that most Conservatives wouldn't disagree with me when I say that one cannot say that murder is wrong without presupposing that men have a right to life; that one cannot say that stealing is wrong without presupposing that they have a right to own property; that one cannot say that one really owns property unless he mostly or entirely controls its disposition; that he cannot control the disposition of his property without a certain degree of liberty, and so on. If, then, Conservatives are generally people who believe in the Divine and divinely-ordained concepts of right and wrong, they necessarily believe, necessarily presuppose, that Man has certain inherent rights. They also think that if government is part of the Divine Order, then it must have a purpose and it must, too, have bounds. This whole package of ideas may have found its most succinct and well-known expression in the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men...

In my own case, the question that ultimately brought me from Libertarianism to Conservatism was, "Does government have the right to tax?" Some Libertarians might, possibly, concede that government has a right to tax, but in practice, Libertarians never seem to get around to finding a tax that is acceptable to them. A remarkable number of them (Neal Boortz is an exception) hate the Fair Tax; they hate the income tax; they hate tariffs; they hate property taxes. The more hard-core Libertarians, as I mentioned earlier, will actually tell you that taxation per se is theft, theft by government. It was when I was reading through Paul's words in Romans about government being God's minister of Justice on this world that I began to understand that government is not only legitimate, but God-ordained, and when I began to understand the importance of him saying that "For this reason"--that is, as payment/financing for the enforcement of justice--"you pay taxes," I likewise began to understand that taxation for legitimate, God-ordained purposes is likewise God-ordained and therefore not theft!

It was difficult, having come to the conclusions that government and taxation are both divinely ordained institutions, to remain a Libertarian. On the other hand, in my opinion, "for this reason" rather implies "not for that reason." Government is Divinely ordained, but so are limits to government's role in human life (and this is explained at great length in Lex, Rex). The Conservative abhors lawlessness, but despises tyranny, at the same time acknowledging that human nature being what it is and human limits being what they are, the perfect balance between too little and too much government will not be achieved in this world.

With all this, and more, much more, rattling around in his mind, when there is a question of life or governance to be answered, the Conservative asks questions like, "What will actually happen if we do this? Are the potential consequences worth the risk? Are we competent to the execution of this change? What do the lessons of history teach about the sort of thing we are contemplating doing? What might an enemy do in response to this action? Before we change what people in this area have been doing for decades, for centuries, even for thousands of years, are we certain we understand why they've been doing it and what the consequences of changing it might be?" Prudent questions, the sort of questions that take it for granted that one tampers with a working system, even a badly working system, with fear and trepidation and no small amount of prayer, for men, including the most noble minded and well-intentioned, are flawed and limited and cannot foresee everything. The Conservative knows that the smartest of individuals sometimes make egregious mistakes, but people in mass, over long periods of time, tend to have reasons for doing things the way they do. The famous phrase is that the individual is foolish, but the species is wise. The Conservative approaches the prospect of changing long-established practice and custom, not with hubris, but with humility and respect. This does not mean that the Conservative reflexively opposes all change; he knows that a society must be capable of prudent changes to survive and thrive. Nevertheless, change must be thoughtful and prudent, not hasty, not emotional, not sweeping aside the whole of existing society. The Conservative knows, deep in his bones, that it is all too possible for the cure to be worse than the disease and it is probably better to put up with some small, bearable grievances than to risk catastrophe for the sake of quickly implementing wholesale change, the consequences of which are very hard, if not impossible, to foresee and manage. This idea, too, is found in the Declaration:

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

Further, history provides us with a textbook example of just exactly what I am talking about here: the French Revolution. If you want to know more, try Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, Further Reflections on the Revolution in France, and Letters on a Regicide Peace.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, may be about as good an introduction to Conservatism as I can make in a small space. There is much more to say, of course. You might try clicking on the links given above, if you're interested, or, if you're interested in book-length treatments, you might try Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind, or his The Politics of Prudence, or Mark Levin's Liberty and Tyranny.

Conservative, noun

I was casually browsing through my copy of The Devil's Dictionary when I came across this entry:

Conservative, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.

Too funny...

From Going Rogue

Mrs. MOTW was very sweet and brought home Sarah Palin's Going Rogue for me from the library. Haven't read it all yet, obviously, and may just skim it instead of reading it thoroughly (I am very pressed for time, as always), but just flipping through it, I came across this, and thought it worth sharing. Emphasis, where present, is mine and in bold:

Since leaving office I've frequently been asked, "What does Sarah Palin stand for? What's your vision for the future?"

I welcome the opportunity to share it. Keep in mind, I tell my parents the greatest gift they ever gave me, besides building a foundation of love for family and for healthy competition, was an upbringing in Alaska. The pioneering spirit of the Last Frontier has shaped me.

I am an independent person who had the good fortune to come of age in the era of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. I am a registered Republican because the planks in that party's platform are stronger than any others upon which to build Alaska and America. I disagree with some of the characters in the party machine, but the GOP stands for principles that will strengthen and secure the country, if they are applied. I'm not obsessively partisan, though, and I don't blame people who dislike political labels even more than I do. My husband, for example, isn't registered with any party, for sound reasons, having been an eyewitness to the idiosyncrasies of party machines. I also don't like the narrow stereotypes of either the "conservative" or the "liberal" label, but until we change the lingo, call me a Commonsense Conservative.

What does it mean to be a Commonsense Conservative?

At its most basic level, conservatism is a respect for history and tradition, including traditional moral principles. I do not believe I am more moral, certainly no better, than anyone else, and conservatives who act "holier than thou" turn my stomach. So do some elite liberals. But I do believe in a few timeless and unchanging truths, and chief among those is that man is fallen. This world is not perfect, and politicians will never make it so. This, above all, is what informs my pragmatic approach to politics.

I am a conservative because I deal with the world as it is--complicated and beautiful, tragic and hopeful. I am a conservative because I believe in the rights and the responsibilities and the inherent dignity of the individual.

In his book A Conflict of Visions, Thomas Sowell explains the underlying assumptions or "visions" that shape our opinions and the way we approach social and political issues. He identifies two separate visions: the unconstrained and the constrained.

People who adhere to the unconstrained vision (the label applied to them is "liberal" or "left-wing") believe that human nature is changeable (therefore perfectible) and that society's problems can all be solved if only the poor, ignorant, disorganized public is told what to do and rational plans are enacted. And who better to make those plans than an elite bureaucracy pulling the strings and organizing society according to their master blueprint? No one can doubt that our current leaders in Washington subscribe to this unconstrained vision.

Conservatives believe in the "constrained" political vision because we know that human nature is flawed and that there are limitations to what can be done in Washington to "fix" society's problems. Commonsense Conservatives deal with human nature as it is--with its unavoidable weaknesses and its potential for goodness. We see the world as it is--imperfect but filled with beauty. We hope for the best. We believe people can change for the better, but we do not ignore history's lessons and waste time chasing utopian pipe dreams.

We don't trust utopian promises from politicians. The role of government is not to perfect us but to protect us--to protect our inalienable rights. The role of government in a civil society is to protect the individual and to establish a social contract so that we can live together in peace.

And all the people said, "Amen!"

Look, I've said before that Mrs. Palin is not my idea of the perfect conservative--but her unabashed avowal of the very principle that I have been hammering on for months encourages me. Yes, that is what government is for. It is here to protect our God-given unalienable rights--which is no more and no less than Thomas Jefferson said in our Declaration of Independence. It is not here to serve as a means by which one group of people can plunder another group of people. It is not here as a medium by which one group of people can finance what they conceive to be society's good with money from other people's pockets. It is not here to serve as a means by which you can chuck all responsibility for your health, your retirement, and your children's education.

It is here to protect your rights. That Mrs. Palin understands that is a very big thing with me.

I can think of other conservatives whom I would prefer to see as president, but they ain't a-runnin', at least not yet. Put Sarah Palin up against a looting, statist thug like Barack Obama, and I'll vote for her without hesitation.

As an aside, some of you won't like that I called President Obama a "looting, statist thug." You think it sounds mean.

You are the same people that told me, "MOTW (though I went by my real name then), give him the benefit of the doubt."

And I told you, "I'm looking at his track record, and his track record is that of a not-so-semi-socialist, abortocentrist, leftist, Christophobic, power-grubbing demagogue."

And you said, "You're so mean!"

Almost a year later, I wonder when you are going to admit that I was not mean at all, but simply descriptive. Probably never, even though the truth of what I told you then is now manifest. I was wrong on not one single point that I can recall. And you? You will not admit what this man is, because to do so means admitting that you had no idea what you were talking about, and that, you will never do. It would eat you up alive to admit that I was right and you were wrong.

And as a second aside, I believe I coined the term "Common Sense Conservative" before Mrs. Palin did. See my definition here.

I Lack Passion?

Someone told me the other day that I wasn't passionate about anything.

I don't know about that. I'm sure it seems like it to some. But I think it's more a question of having pretty much come to my conclusions and settled on what I need to do.

I am pretty well convinced that at best, the United States is sliding toward European-style welfare statism and quite possibly balkanization. I really don't anticipate the situation turning around anytime soon. The only thing that could turn it around is another Great Awakening, I think.

One of the things I think I need to do is to do my best to situate myself and my descendants so that we'll be better able to ride out the next--What? Fifty years? A hundred? Who knows? Could be more than that.

We--Mrs. MOTW and I, that is--have pretty much all the material things we really need and can use. Not that there aren't little odds and ends, but truthfully, all we need is to pay off the house and improve and maintain our property so that hopefully, our children can sell the house and split the proceeds when we croak. We've got to maintain, if at all possible, our health and mentality so that we are as little a burden as possible in our old age. And we've got to finish educating and preparing the kids, not merely to make a living, but to help prepare their descendants.

The other thing I think I need to do is to do my best to pass on what I can, what I know, of the Gospel, of the thinking that lies at the roots of any government that genuinely respects and protects man's rights, and the things that have proven practically useful to me or are likely to prove useful to my descendants and others of like mind. That's part of the purpose of this blog. It's true that I also use this blog to vent, but nevertheless, knowing that nothing ever really dies on the internet, I'm in hopes that some people, somewhere, sometime, will find some of these scribblings useful.

There'll be other things I try to pass on, stuff that will not appear in this blog. Sorry. I can't share everything in this forum. But I will share the introduction to a multi-generational project very soon.

Those things are long-term. All the short-term goals pretty much relate to the long-term goals in one way or another.

I suppose this mindset might seem passionless to some. It's not, not really. It's just that I'm more oriented, now, to situating self and family for the long haul. It's a mindset that calls more for steadily glowing coals of thought than for white-hot thinking.

Ideas don't, I think, ever really die. One day, the ideas behind the American Revolution, behind the Constitution, will likely experience a genuine reflowering. And when that day arrives, whether it is, by God's grace, near at hand, or a long time from now, the MOTW family will be ready.

From The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Bible

Emphasis, where present, is mine and in bold:

The most secular, rationalistic, and self-consciously non-Christian of all the Founders of the United States--the aristocratic Virginian and slave-owner Thomas Jefferson--ended up writing the most biblically charged words ever enshrined in a political document:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident," he wrote, "that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it."

Once again, we moderns are so brainwashed and asleep, we fail to appreciate the radical, unprecedented quality of those seventy-nine words--still often denied by totalitarians, judges, and college professors the world over.

As described in the Declaration of Independence, human rights are not privileges dispensed or withdrawn at the discretion of the State. Rather, they are gifts from God which no prince or potentate, no State or sovereign, may take away.

That is the key insight behind the American revolution, not democracy or majority rule--and it is derived not from secular philosophy, but from biblical religion.

"The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records," said Alexander Hamilton. "They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power."

This is a sentiment as old as Genesis: God declared that he made the human being (adam) in his image (tselem) and after his likeness (damut) and gave to him authority to rule over all the earth.

This is also what St. Paul was referring to, writing to the Romans, when he said that knowledge of God can be seen through creation and his law, the knowledge of good and evil, is written on the human heart:

"For what can be known about God is evident to them, because God made it evident to them," Paul said. "Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made. As a result, they have no excuse; for although they knew God they did not accord him glory as God or give him thanks" (Rom 1:19-20).

Thus, the concept of "self-evident" truths did not originate with the French enlightenment or Rene Descartes but actually dates back at least to the Apostle Paul, writing in 60 AD.

Paul adds that, even though the Gentiles did not have the benefit of the Torah (instruction), certain basic standards of morality can be known even without special divine revelation.

"For when the Gentiles who do not have the (Roah) law by nature observe the prescriptions of the law, they are a law for themselves even though they do not have the law. They show that the demands of the law are written in their hearts" (Rom 2:14).

Modern secularists believe that the idea of a self-evident human equality that pervades the U.S. Declaration of Independence came primarily from the agnostic intellectuals of the French Enlightenment; and that the theistic sentiments expressed by Jefferson and other Founders were mere rhetoric, designed to curry favor with Christian colonists.

But nothing could be further from the truth.

While some of the Founders (like Jefferson or Ben Franklin) were not orthodox Christians by any stretch of the imagination, neither were they atheists.

They were steeped, from childhood, in the stories and values and ideas of the Bible; and most believed that, as John Adams put it, "the Bible contains the most profound philosophy, the most perfect morality, and the most refined policy, that ever was conceived upon earth. It is the most republican book in the world."

Men like Washington and John Adams, Ben Franklin and James Madison, were warriors and farmers, writers and statesmen, not parsons.

But a raw religious faith was important to them. George Washington, for example, upon taking command of the Continental Army, ordered that each day begin with a formal prayer in every unit.

"The General commands all officers, and soldiers, to pay strict obedience to the Orders of the Continental Congress, and by their unfeigned , and pious observance of their religious duties, incline the Lord, and Giver of Victory, to prosper our arms," the Order went.

As philosopher Michael Novak argues in his remarkable 2002 book, On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding, the revolutionary political philosophy that gave birth to government "of the people, by the people, and for the people" was based on two primary sources:

1) A simple but deeply rooted biblical religiousity that saw human rights as self-evident and "unalienable" gifts of a benevolent and almighty Creator.

2) A "plain reason" that grew out of rugged, practical experience in self-government.

Revolution based solely on "plain reason," without the moral restraint of religious experience and the fear of God in rulers and legislators, gave birth to the nihilistic atheism, cold calculation, and ultimately bloody massacres of the French Revolution.

The American Founding was different.

It was, as the Great Seal of the United States found on every dollar bill puts it, to be a novus ordo seclorum, a new order of the ages. It was a bold, unprecedented attempt to work out a system of self-government and political freedom that recognized the "unalienable rights" endowed by the Creator and bestowed upon "all" men--not just upon a favored class.

Without the fear of God that religion bestowed upon arrogant and powerful men, the Founders knew, tyranny was never far away.

"Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God?" Thomas Jefferson asked.

George Washington agreed.

"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensible supports," Washington said in his Farewell Address. "Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion."

The widespread, stubborn, not always orthodox or churchgoing but sincere religious faith of ordinary Americans--that Europeans and media elites find so childish and unsophisticated--has been a hallmark of the American republic since the very beginning.

According to Alexis de Tocqueville, the French aristocrat who penned Democracy in America in 1830, "for the Americans, the ideas of Christianity and liberty are so completely mingled that it is almost impossible to get them to conceive of one without the other."

I have often been amused by people who, reading Jefferson's words in the Declaration--let's look at them again, shall we?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men...

are at no inconsiderable pains to explain them away. They so obviously and naturally refer to God that those who opine that the United States is without a Christian foundation must somehow explain them away or ignore them. So far, the "explanation" that I have found most amusing is the simple assertion that he must not have really meant it.

Oh. Perhaps he didn't "mean it" when it came to the rest of the Declaration, too.

But leaving idiotic explanations for Jefferson's words aside, there you have it, right there in the Declaration of Independence: precisely what I have been saying ad nauseam for months: the purpose of government is to secure man's God-given rights. That's what it's for.

Government's job is not to make you comfortable. It is not to make you financially secure. It is not to take care of your health. It is not to "spread the wealth around." Its job is to protect your God-given rights. This is not something I am making up. It's right there in one of our two most crucial founding documents.

Why so insistently hammer on "God-given rights?" Very simple: without God, you have no rights! Look yet again:

...men...are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights...

Strike out "Creator" and what do you have?

...men...are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights...

You have squat, that's what you have. Without the Creator, without God, where do those rights come from? Other men? Who gave them the authority? Who do they think they are? Do "rights" even exist under those circumstances? I think not. If other men--society, that is--determines what rights you do and do not have, ultimately, you don't have any rights. What society determines is law. If society can grant rights--"rights" to health care, for example--it can take those "rights" away.

A "right" that can be taken away--not simply ignored, mind you, but taken away--by a dictator's decree or a public vote is no right at all. It is simply a temporary privilege, misnamed so as to mislead the rubes. And a view of government that doesn't recognize the concept of God-given rights and that government's job is to protect them is a view of government that ultimately puts them at risk.

Edmund Burke Quote # 2

A series of quotes, actually, all from "Speech Introducing a Motion for an Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Disorders in America," May 9, 1770:

...there is no right that may not terminate in a wrong, if it is not guided by discretion.

[snip]

...it behoved you, before you committed the government to a measure which you could not easily recede from, to provide against the consequences.

[snip]

You are not to commit the government to any measure unless you are sure you can carry it through.

Of the things that appall the conservative, recklessly experimental government has to be near the top of the list. I do not mean that new ideas can never be tried; that would be foolish. But it is also foolish to commit your government to policies and/or actions that have neither a track record of working in the past nor any indication that they are based on the realities of human nature, economics, the physical world, etc. It is foolish to commit your government to actions or policies without, like the good chess player, trying to look several moves ahead to see what might go wrong, and provide against it. It is foolish to commit your government to doing something on the basis of no more than a faint hope that you might be able to make it work, the sheer desire that people might, given your sterling leadership, behave differently than they have over the last several millennia. To govern in this way is to commit your country to great risks with no recourse should something go wrong--and, as the plumber in Moonstruck said all those years ago, "Something always goes wrong."

In this world, there are people who are utterly convinced that if only the smart people--who are invariably the ones that agree with them, of course--were in charge, that all would be well. The reality is that even to think such a thing is to show yourself ignorant of the realities and limitations of human nature, and to set yourself up for disaster. Wiser minds proceed cautiously rather than precipitously, ever mindful of the human race's endless capacity to get things Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition.

A Passage from Kirk

No, not Captain Kirk; Russell Kirk. This is from his The Conservative Mind. Point number four will make only limited sense if you haven't read Hobbes:

I think that there are six canons of conservative thought--

(1) Belief in a transcendent order, or body of natural law, which rules society as well as conscience. Political problems, at bottom, are religious and moral problems. A narrow rationality, what Coleridge called the Understanding, cannot of itself satisfy human needs. "Every Tory is a realist," says Keith Feiling: "He knows that there are great forces in heaven and earth that man's philosophy cannot plumb or fathom." True politics is the art of apprehending and applying the Justice which ought to prevail in a community of souls.

(2) Affection for the proliferating variety and mystery of human existence, as opposed to the narrowing uniformity, egalitarianism, and utilitarian aims of most radical systems; conservatives resist what Robert Graves calls "Logicalism" in society. This prejudice has been called "the conservatism of enjoyment"--a sense that life is worth living, according to Walter Bagehot "the proper source of an animated Conservatism."

(3) Conviction that civilized society requires orders and classes, as against the notion of a "classless society." With reason, conservatives often have been called "the party of order." If natural distinctions are effaced among men, oligarchs fill the vacuum. Ultimate equality in the judgment of God, and equality before courts of law, are recognized by conservatives; but equality of condition, they think, means equality in servitude and boredom.

(4) Persuasion that freedom and property are closely linked: separate property from private possession, and Leviathan becomes master of all. Economic leveling, they maintain, is not economic progress.

(5) Faith in prescription and distrust of "sophisters, calculators, and economists" who would reconstruct society upon abstract designs. Custom, convention, and old prescription are checks both upon man's anarchic impulse and upon the innovator's lust for power.

(6) Recognition that change may not be salutary reform: hasty innovation may be a devouring conflagration, rather than a torch of progress. Society must alter, for prudent change is the means of social preservation; but a statesman must take Providence into his calculations, and a statesman's chief virtue, according to Plato and Burke, is prudence.

Various deviations from this body of opinion have occurred, and there are numerous appendages to it; but in general conservatives have adhered to these convictions or sentiments with some consistency, for two centuries.

Those interested may compare Kirk's list with my own summary, and note such points of similarity and dissimilarity as they will, hopefully finding the study of interest.

Fascists, Fascism

Every ignorant fool out there who hollers "Fascist!" at people who oppose limitless welfare spending or homosexual marriage would love for you to forget this (or they don't know themselves), but fascism is just another variety of socialism; that is, it's not a right-wing or conservative thing at all, but rather a leftist phenomenon. It differs from other varieties of socialism chiefly in two ways: it is an explicitly nationalist socialism, whereas other varieties of socialism, especially communism, are more internationalist in their thinking, and it is more willing to tolerate private ownership of capital, as long as the state still directs everything.

I can't tell you how many people shout "Nazi!" or "Fascist!" without understanding--or perhaps deliberately forgetting--fascism's socialist nature. But it's glaringly obvious; the most infamous fascist state in history, Nazi Germany, made it plain: "Nazi" is just an acronym for Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or "National Socialist German Workers' Party."

So, no, fascism isn't right-wing totalitarianism after all; it's another variety of leftist, socialist totalitarianism. The fighting between Nazi Germany and Communist Russia in World War II was something of an internecine struggle between two competing varieties of socialism--and inescapably means that socialism of one variety or another is responsible for the murders and killing of almost inconceivably enormous numbers of people.

For more--and highly recommended--reading on this, see Jonah Goldberg's excellent Liberal Fascism.

Laundry-List Conservatism, Modern Conservatism

More than once, elsewhere, I've said that most people who call themselves "conservative" these days aren't so much genuinely conservative as they are subscribers to something of a "laundry list" of popular ideas associated with conservatism. This is so common that a person could easily be excused for thinking that that is what modern conservatism actually is: subscription to the list. And it's not that the ideas are necessarily bad (though some of them might be...); it's that conservatism isn't the list of ideas, it's the approach one takes to arriving at and using them.

Favoring low taxes (or the Fair Tax) doesn't automatically mean you're a conservative.

Being pro-life doesn't automatically mean you're a conservative.

Favoring states' rights doesn't automatically mean you're a conservative.

Favoring a republican form of government doesn't automatically mean you're a conservative (At least one of the Founding Fathers would have been just fine with a monarchy!).

Favoring traditional marriage doesn't automatically mean you're a conservative.

Being pro-gun doesn't automatically mean you're a conservative (Ever heard of the "Pink Pistols"? No? Go look 'em up...).

Etc. Being a conservative (do follow the link) pretty much inevitably leads to these positions, as they are consistent with maintaining man's God-given rights and human experience over the millennia, but it is the approach that leads to holding the positions, not that holding the positions automatically makes a person conservative in approach. Time and again over the last few decades, we have seen putative conservatives championing positions that fly in the face of man's nature and the facts of history. That's not conservatism; at best, it's typical mixed-up political thinking with a conservative flavor.

Laundry-list conservatives are valuable allies at the ballot box, of course. But the truth of the matter is that because their allegiance to those popular conservative ideas is almost tribal rather than the result of reflection, they are frequently forced to resort to purely utilitarian arguments that do not persuade people that ultimately do not believe there is any purpose or plan to human life, or, worse, they fold when pressed on a point because they have no adequate basis for their thinking. To my mind, this is a big part of the reason that so many Republicans fold on crucial issues when they make it into national politics.

Books to Help You Be an Informed Conservative

Here's my list, in only the loosest order. I know yours will differ, but I hope this proves helpful to someone, somewhere. I will add to it from time to time; the link will be in the "favorite posts" section of the sidebar.

The Bible: God's Word to Man. I don't think you have a snowball's chance of properly understanding the world without it.

Lex,Rex: Sooner or later, every American voter ought to read this book. It is often said that the Founding Fathers of this nation got much of their political philosophy from John Locke, and that is true to a degree, but Locke, Francis Schaeffer suggested, is basically a somewhat secularized Samuel Rutherford, Rutherford being the author of Lex, Rex. The very title of the book--while I am not claiming to speak any Latin at all--can be understood to be a revolutionary statement, as it means, I'm told, law is king, whereas prior to Lex, Rex, the prevailing political philosophy was the king is law. If you want to know why we say that the United States is a nation founded on the Bible and Christianity, you need to start with Lex, Rex.

Persecution: David Limbaugh's exploration of how America's Christian heritage and values are being actively warred against by much of the Left.

Darwin on Trial: Probably the single best volume exploring the battleship-sized holes in evolutionary thinking and evidence. Why is this important for conservativism, you ask? Simple: if you are a conservative looking for a firm base for your conception of man's rights, it helps to understand that nature alone cannot account for man's existence, and that therefore the Creator to Whom Jefferson referred in the Declaration of Independence must actually exist.

The Party of Death: Ramesh Ponnuru explores the increasing devaluation of human life, especially via abortion, in certain political circles, and explains, from a relatively secular point of view, why the subject is important to you, personally.

Slander: Yeah, I know. Ann Coulter. Yes, I would agree that over the last couple of years it seems to have become more important to her to launch some really good zingers leftward than anything else. But it wasn't always this way. While Slander has plenty of zingers, it also has plenty of research and common-sense analysis. I recommend this book as an excellent exploration of the incredible way news and history can be twisted to support a political agenda.

The Truth about Muhammad: Robert Spencer's brief exploration of Muhammad's life and why it (Muhammad's life story, that is) makes it difficult, if not impossible, to rationally sustain the idea that Islam is a religion of peace.

Basic Economics: Thomas Sowell's introduction to the subject, written largely to inform people who would vote knowledgeably. Everybody ought to know something about economics; too many people in this world think they're voting in their best economic interests when they are really voting to be eaten last.

The Tragedy of American Compassion: Marvin Olasky looks at the history of charitable work and giving in America, and explains why there is such a thing as bad charity, and why charitable governmental efforts often actually worsen the conditions they were intended to alleviate.

Invasion: Michelle Malkin explains what's happening to our borders and some of the problems caused by virtually unchecked illegal immigration.

Mexifornia: Victor Davis Hanson covers some of the same ground Michelle Malkin does in Invasion, but from a more personal point of view. Professor Hanson has lived a lot of this material.

Losing Ground: Charles Murray explains why welfare actually creates more poverty.

More Guns, Less Crime: John Lott explains the intuitively obvious: that criminals are less likely to violently assault those whom they think may be armed. Dr. Lott has committed some things that reflect poorly on his personal judgment (you can easily find them out by a little Googling), but in the main, I don't think that his material here has been invalidated. Like I said, it's pretty much intuitively obvious, anyway.

Witness: Whittaker Chambers rats out the very real Communists in the United States in the fifties. Still worth reading, because there are still very real Communists in this country today--and they may be teaching your child in the universities.

The Schaeffer Trilogy: Francis Schaeffer's first three books (The God Who is There, Escape from Reason, and He is There and He is Not Silent), published in one volume. An important step toward understanding the appalling presuppositions underlying many young peoples' worldview. Required reading in the MOTW household--and yes, acknowledging that there is a God does have important ramifications in the political world.

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism: makes clear the very political agenda that is actually behind the global warming scare. Very important to your soon-to-be-voting young'un, as he will be asked to tax himself and his economy almost out of existence to stop a non-existent threat.

The FairTax Book: ditch the IRS with this revenue-neutral tax plan, grow the economy, successfully collect taxes from illegal aliens, make the United States the world's number-one tax haven for businesses--what's not to like?

The Federalist Papers: the Constitution's principal defenders explain the document to the country in the period before it was finally ratified.

The Anti-Federalist Papers: It might surprise some, but there were people who thought that even the very limited federal government outlined in the Constitution would be too powerful. As it turns out, they may well have been right.

The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution: An excellent overview of why the Constitution was put together the way it was and how constitutional government has been under continuous attack since the ink was dry on the document.

The Mystery of Capital: The subtitle--"Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else"--says it all. One of the most important books you will ever read.

Blacklisted by History: The real story about Joe McCarthy--that is, the plain fact of the matter is that he was right, the government under Roosevelt and Truman, and even Eisenhower, was riddled with Communist agents. The proof's all laid out for you here, and serves as a warning about how little your own government can be trusted.

Liberal Fascism: A tremendous book dwelling on the leftist nature of fascism--"Nazi" is an acronym in German, folks, "National Socialist German Workers Party"--with a great deal of history. The chapters on Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt are worth the price of the book all by themselves.

I've seen some of this stuff before, but having it all assembled in one place--well, it hits you hard what leftists would really like to see.

Reflections on the Revolution in France: After the French Revolution but before the Reign of Terror, seminal conservative Edmund Burke wrote this answer to someone asking his opinion of it all. Burke predicted the upcoming horrors of the Reign of Terror with remarkable accuracy, basing his reasoning on classic conservative principles. Timeless.

Democracy in America: Written by a Frenchman during the early nineteenth century, it's a window into what the young Republic was like during a time when the country would, by today's standards, be considered unbelievably conservative.

The Conservative Mind: by Russell Kirk. A tremendous overview of conservatism from Edmund Burke on up to the near-present. It is difficult to understand the modern conservative scene without having read this book.

Where the Right Went Wrong: by Pat Buchanan. Notes some of the differences--which are more frequent than most suppose--between the modern Republican Party's thinking and more classical conservative thinking.

The Gulag Archipelago: by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. If you want to know the truth about socialism--yes, I know the book was about communist Russia, but communism is merely one variety of socialism--from a first-hand perspective, this book is invaluable. Sorry. Socialism is not nice.

Stealth Jihad: by Robert Spencer. Mr. Spencer lays out the case that Islam is being deliberately advanced in the West by means of litigation and intimidation, amounting to a kind of creeping sharia.

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization: by Anthony Eselen. A useful overview of the tremendous heritage left to us by the West.

Crunchy Cons: by Rod Dreher. I don't agree with everything in this book, to say the least, but Mr. Dreher makes some important points, especially as regards what's really important to the fundamental units of society, the family. If you've ever felt a little bit out of place with some conservatives because you bake your own bread and care more about strengthening your family than accumulating more money than you'll ever be likely to use, if you're interested in an approach to conservatism that is more than merely political, this book will intrigue you.

Conservative, Conservatism

When it comes right down to it, it is fairly hard to come up with a concise, yet satisfactory, definition of "conservative." For one thing, like liberal, the word can be applied to more than just the political sphere; there are social conservatives, "conservative" chess players, etc. It might be easier to define conservatism as trying not to do anything stupidly risky, things that fly in the face of common sense, that defy the testimony of God in nature and Scripture, that flout history, that ignore the fallen and depraved nature of mankind; as an approach to life and governance that seeks to limit government to the role laid out for it by God, thereby establishing justice and protecting Man's God-given rights. A conservative, then, would be a person who practices conservatism, especially when it comes to governance.

Two things will be seen immediately: first, that conservatism relies implicitly upon a biblical worldview. In my opinion, this is the principal thing that distinguishes it from libertarianism, which shares many of the same positions concerning man's rights, but lacks an adequate intellectual basis for defending them, and therefore results in some most impractical and imprudent positions. Second, that conservatism is not implicitly wed to one particular form of government, though it might be said to be devoted to one particular governmental aim, the fulfillment of its God-given role as minister of justice. Many putative conservatives these days operate on the assumption that conservatism is inseparable from Western-style representative governance, but this is not the case. The first noted conservative of relatively modern times, for example, Edmund Burke, was a committed monarchist. Granted, he favored the unwritten constitution of England, which guaranteed certain rights to all Englishmen, but he was a monarchist nonetheless. A conservative will not make the mistake of thinking that one can govern Baghdad the same way that one governs Amarillo.

This explanation suffers from being too brief, but it will have to suffice.