Why Conservatism is Best
Conservatism is a superior form of governance than progressivism for it is grounded in permanent truths and experience. In the American political tradition, it has been conservatism and the Republicans who have usually been correct about the issues of the times. Not always, but often.
Though the partisan vehicle for the Right in American history has varied, there has always been a party that has represented that conservatism. For example, as has been noted in Modern Age, Henry Cabot Lodge, a titan of American history and conservatism, traced the Right-wing of American politics from Washington and the Federalists to the Republicans of Lodge’s time and, I would add, today. As Colin Dueck explained,
“From the very start […] there had always been one party—whatever its name—dedicated to a robust federal union, human liberty, balanced progress, constructive legislation, internal improvements, constitutionalism, and the protection of U.S. national interests at home and abroad. From the 1790s into the very early 19th century, that party had been Hamilton and the Federalists. During the 1830s and 1840s, it had been Daniel Webster and the Whigs. And since the 1850s, that role had been assumed by Lincoln and the Republicans. In the end it was really one continuous political tendency: ‘the party which at different times has borne these three names has been … in its essential characteristics and qualities, the same party’.”
It is for that reason that even though generations of conservatives and Republicans have favored different approaches or policies at different times, one can easily trace broad political trends and alignments throughout the nation’s history. Therefore, it shouldn’t be surprising that Russell Kirk identified American conservatism from John Adams and John Calhoun to T.S. Eliot and more. It is a deep tradition in American history. This is why the tendency of some contemporary conservatives to reject and ridicule their own legacy and history, as if the Right has never achieved anything before now, is a mistake.
Regardless, there is an important point to recall. Conservatism by its nature is, as Sir Roger Scruton noted, not common in intellectual circles. In other words, it is rare to see conservative intellectuals under the traditional definition of intellectual, which states that intellectuals are those people who exclusively deal with ideas. However, as Scruton notes and the endurance of right-wing political parties throughout Christendom demonstrate, in society as a whole there exists conservatism. It might be an instinct, sometimes not articulated, but it is there. However, when revolution and radicalism attack society conservatism becomes intellectual to meet the challenge. Or, as Patrick J. Buchanan wrote in Right from the Beginning, “The right and honorable duty of men of words and men of thought is not simply to seek and record abstract truth, but to deploy our talents, the arguments of the mind, to defend the treasures of the heart: family, faith, and country. When a man of thought uses the weapons of the mind to attack his own—family, faith, or country— this, to us, is truly the trahison des clercs, the treason of the intellectuals.”
Furthermore, conservatism is based on tradition. Oftentimes tradition is difficult to define and explain (therein lies the role of the conservative intellectual and statesman, to give expression to the conservative position in the political sphere), but tradition is believed and accepted by a vast number of people as the default position. Tradition may be defined for our purposes as the belief that a practice is good, desirable and should be retained for the future. Or, as others have defined it, enduring answers to permanent questions. For instance, the rights of parents to raise their children or the right to life or private property. The basic starting point of conservatism is such established and permanent things. It is experience, the view that tradition is inherited knowledge and experience should guide us. To use Edmund Burke’s understanding, it is the community of souls past, living and future in trusteeship.
Additionally, since conservativism (in the social and cultural sense) is the default position of society, it stands to reason that when Liberalism seeks to change society or reform something, it will find that it is, usually, at a disadvantage. In that way, Liberalism is a challenge to social order for it is always seeking new reforms and changes to make. It bears, or should always bear, the burden of persuasion. Conservatism on the other hand follows the politics of prescription, which means that change must be cautious, prudent and within the framework of the specific social order and, above all, the Natural Moral Law.
As such, the Right usually can count on the silent majority (the non-intellectual whole of society) for support. As the English historian Hilaire Belloc said, usually it is safe to bet on the side of tradition. As such, the Right will generally have an easier time campaigning to represent the Left as out of touch and extremist, since more often than not, they are. In that way the American right has an advantage, that America is a center-right nation. This doesn’t mean that the right will always win. For example, the Sexual and Cultural Revolutions of the late sixties have done immense harm to our social order, and the Right since the sixties has been striving to overturn, with mixed results, these revolutions. However, since there is still a conservative instinct in the majority, the Right has tools to fight and preserve what is left of the social order, or, hopefully, restore it.
Throughout history this conservatism has met the challenges of the nation time and time again. It was this conservatism through the Republican Party that ended slavery and made a greater Union. It was the Republicans that led the nation into industrialization, becoming an economic powerhouse and made America a Great Power. It was the Republicans that did the Square Deal, extended citizenship to Native Americans, corrected the excesses of the New Deal, supported NATO, the Marshall Plan, the rollback strategy against Communism, ended the Korean War, the interstate highway system, DARPA, would have ended victoriously the Vietnam War but for Watergate, brought victory in the Cold War, restored America’s economy over and over again and have represented law, order, competence and normalcy time and again.
The historian Robin Harris has mentioned that a right-wing party requires a reputation for competence and capacity to govern, as well as patriotism. How many times has the Republican Party presented itself as the party of governance, order and stability? Under Harding it had to restore the nation’s normalcy after the chaos of Woodrow Wilson’s administration. It is the Republicans who have ended innumerable wars and deterred who knows how many others. It was the GOP that gave the working class a voice after the chaos of the sixties or the extremism of Democrats under Biden-Harris.
Sure, there have been many mistakes and many occasions when the GOP has been wrong (the Iraq War clearly comes to mind). Despite its mistakes, its divisions and its faults, it is the Republican Party which carries forth the banner of a the “union, human liberty, balanced progress, constructive legislation, internal improvements, constitutionalism, and the protection of U.S. national interests at home and abroad.” The greatness of America is, in part, to paraphrase Pat Buchanan, the political freedom accorded to the common man, the living standards of the working class and the fact that it is a society which not only guarantees freedom and prosperity for ordinary people, but it also allows for extraordinary people to rise.
It is the Republican Party that gives voice time and time again to that silent majority which loves their country, but is not represented in Establishment circles. It is this party that protects America, and has, for its mission, what William Buckley Jr. defined as “the historical responsibility of the conservatives.” That is, “to defend what is best in America. At all costs. Against any enemy, foreign or domestic.”
In short, there is much that is grand of the Grand Old Party. And its political inheritance, its traditions and its heroes are cause for celebration and pride. I will never understand those Republicans that hate all of their party except a few figures, but that is part of the fun. A huge, intellectually diverse party that fights among itself but is guided historically by different applications of the same principles. To keep this party together is always a challenge, but it is necessary for the proper governing of the United States. May it govern long and well!
