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Russell Kirk |
The following essay by Russell Kirk is reprinted in its entirety
with permission from the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal. This essay
is adapted from The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Conservatism (New York: The Devin-Adair Company,
1957). Copyright © 1957 by Russell Kirk, renewed © 2002 by Annette Kirk. Used
by permission.
A friend of mine, whom we shall call Miss Worth, fell into a conversation with a neighbor—Mrs. Williams, let us say—who, the day before, had sold a fine old building, long in her family, to be demolished that a lot for used-automobile sales might take its place. Mrs. Williams had certain regrets; but, said she with finality, “You can’t stop progress.” She was startled at Miss Worth’s reply, which was this: “No, often not; but you can try.”
Miss Worth did not believe that Progress, with a Roman P, is a
good thing in itself. Progress may be either good or bad, depending on what one
is progressing toward. It is quite possible, and not infrequently occurs, that
one progresses toward the brink of a precipice. The thinking conservative,
young or old, believes that we must all obey the universal law of change; yet
often it is in our power to choose what changes we will accept and what changes
we will reject. The conservative is a person who endeavors to conserve the
best in our traditions and our institutions, reconciling that best with
necessary reform from time to time. “To conserve” means “to save.” . . .
[Consider] Cupid’s curse:
“They that do change old love for ne,
Pray gods they change for
worse.”
A conservative is not, by definition, a selfish or a stupid
person; instead, he is a person who believes there is something in our life
worth saving.
Conservatism, indeed, is a word with an old and honorable
meaning—but a meaning almost forgotten by Americans until recent years. Abraham
Lincoln wished to be known as a conservative. “What is conservatism?” he said.
“Is it not preference for the old and tried, over the new and untried?” It is
that; and it is also a body of ethical and social beliefs. The word
“liberalism,” however, has been in favor among us for two or three decades.
Even nowadays, though there are a good many conservatives in both national and
state politics, in neither major party do many leading politicians describe
themselves as “conservatives.” Paradoxically, the people of the United States
became the chief conservative nation of the world at the very time when they
had ceased to call themselves conservatives at home.
What with our stern opposition to the radicalism of the Soviets,
however, and our national abhorrence of collectivism in all its varieties, a
good many Americans now doubt very much whether they care to be called liberals
or radicals. The liberals, for a good while, have been drifting leftward toward
their radical cousins; and liberalism, in recent years, has come to imply an
attachment to the centralized state and the dreary impersonality of Huxley’s Brave
New World or Orwell’s 1984. Men and women who sense that they are
not liberals or radicals are beginning to ask themselves just what they believe,
and what they ought to call themselves. The system of ideas opposed to
liberalism and radicalism is the conservative political philosophy.
What is conservatism?
Modern conservatism took form about the beginning of the French
Revolution, when far-seeing men in England and America perceived that if
humanity is to conserve the elements in civilization that make life worth
living, some coherent body of ideas must resist the leveling and destructive
impulse of fanatic revolutionaries. In England, the founder of true
conservatism was Edmund Burke, whose Reflections on the Revolution in France
turned the tide of British opinion and influenced incalculably the leaders
of society in the Continent and in America. In the newly established United
States, the fathers of the Republic, conservative by training and by practical
experience, were determined to shape constitutions which should guide their
posterity in enduring ways of justice and freedom. Our American War of
Independence had not been a real revolution, but rather a separation from
England; statesmen of Massachusetts and Virginia had no desire to turn society
upside down. In their writings, especially in the works of John Adams,
Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison, we find a sober and tested conservatism founded
upon an understanding of history and human nature. The Constitution which the
leaders of that generation drew up has proved to be the most successful
conservative device in all history.
Conservative leaders, ever since Burke and Adams, have subscribed
to certain general ideas that we may set down, briefly, by way of definition.
Conservatives distrust what Burke called “abstractions”—that is, absolute
political dogmas divorced from practical experience and particular
circumstances. They do believe, nevertheless, in the existence of certain
abiding truths which govern the conduct of human society. Perhaps the chief
principles which have characterized American conservative thought are these:
(1) 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.
At heart, political problems are moral and religious problems. The wise
statesman tries to apprehend the moral law and govern his conduct accordingly.
We have a moral debt to our ancestors, who bestowed upon us our civilization,
and a moral obligation to the generations who will come after us. This debt is
ordained of God. We have no right, therefore, to tamper impudently with human
nature or with the delicate fabric of our civil social order.
(2) Variety and diversity are the characteristics of a high
civilization. Uniformity and absolute equality are the death of all real
vigor and freedom in existence. Conservatives resist with impartial strength
the uniformity of a tyrant or an oligarchy, and the uniformity of what
Tocqueville called “democratic despotism.”
(3) Justice 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. Civilized society requires that all men and women have equal
rights before the law, but that equality should not extend to equality of
condition: that is, society is a great partnership, in which all have equal rights—but
not to equal things. The just society requires sound leadership, different
rewards for different abilities, and a sense of respect and duty.
(4) Property and freedom are inseparably connected; economic
leveling is not economic progress. Conservatives value property for its own
sake, of course; but they value it even more because without it all men and
women are at the mercy of an omnipotent government.
(5) Power is full of danger; therefore the good state is one
in which power is checked and balanced, restricted by sound constitutions and
customs. So far as possible, political power ought to be kept in the hands
of private persons and local institutions. Centralization is ordinarily a sign
of social decadence.
(6) The past is a great storehouse of wisdom; as Burke
said, “the individual is foolish, but the species is wise.” The conservative
believes that we need to guide ourselves by the moral traditions, the social
experience, and the whole complex body of knowledge bequeathed to us by our
ancestors. The conservative appeals beyond the rash opinion of the hour to what
Chesterton called “the democracy of the dead”—that is, the considered opinions
of the wise men and women who died before our time, the experience of the race.
The conservative, in short, knows he was not born yesterday.
(7) Modern society urgently needs true community: and true
community is a world away from collectivism. Real community is governed by
love and charity, not by compulsion. Through churches, voluntary associations,
local governments, and a variety of institutions, conservatives strive to keep
community healthy. Conservatives are not selfish, but public-spirited. They
know that collectivism means the end of real community, substituting uniformity
for variety and force for willing cooperation.
(8) In the affairs of nations, the American conservative
feels that his country ought to set an example to the world, but ought not to
try to remake the world in its image. It is a law of politics, as well as
of biology, that every living thing loves above all else—even above its own
life—its distinct identity, which sets it off from all other things. The
conservative does not aspire to domination of the world, nor does he relish the
prospect of a world reduced to a single pattern of government and civilization.
(9) Men and women are not perfectible, conservatives know;
and neither are political institutions. We cannot make a heaven on earth,
though we may make a hell. We all are creatures of mingled good and evil; and,
good institutions neglected and ancient moral principles ignored, the evil in
us tends to predominate. Therefore the conservative is suspicious of all
utopian schemes. He does not believe that, by power of positive law, we can
solve all the problems of humanity. We can hope to make our world tolerable,
but we cannot make it perfect. When progress is achieved, it is through prudent
recognition of the limitations of human nature.
(10) Change and reform, conservatives are convinced, are not
identical: moral and political innovation can be destructive as well as
beneficial; and if innovation is undertaken in a spirit of presumption and
enthusiasm, probably it will be disastrous. All human institutions alter to
some extent from age to age, for slow change is the means of conserving
society, just as it is the means for renewing the human body. But American
conservatives endeavor to reconcile the growth and alteration essential to our
life with the strength of our social and moral traditions. With Lord Falkland,
they say, “When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.”
They understand that men and women are best content when they can feel that
they live in a stable world of enduring values.
Conservatism, then, is not simply the concern of the people who
have much property and influence; it is not simply the defense of privilege and
status. Most conservatives are neither rich nor powerful. But they do, even the
most humble of them, derive great benefits from our established Republic. They
have liberty, security of person and home, equal protection of the laws, the
right to the fruits of their industry, and opportunity to do the best that is
in them. They have a right to personality in life, and a right to consolation
in death. Conservative principles shelter the hopes of everyone in society. And
conservatism is a social concept important to everyone who desires equal
justice and personal freedom and all the lovable old ways of humanity.
Conservatism is not simply a defense of “capitalism.” (“Capitalism,” indeed, is
a word coined by Karl Marx, intended from the beginning to imply that the only
thing conservatives defend is vast accumulations of private capital.) But the
true conservative does stoutly defend private property and a free economy, both
for their own sake and because these are means to great ends.
Those great ends are more than economic and more than political.
They involve human dignity, human personality, human happiness. They involve
even the relationship between God and man. For the radical collectivism of our
age is fiercely hostile to any other authority: modern radicalism detests
religious faith, private virtue, traditional personality, and the life of
simple satisfactions. Everything worth conserving is menaced in our generation.
Mere unthinking negative opposition to the current of events, clutching in
despair at what we still retain, will not suffice in this age. A conservatism
of instinct must be reinforced by a conservatism of thought and imagination.
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