Examining Genuine American Conservatism

In my continuing attempt to define conservatism and to clarify what 'conservatism' means in an American context I am currently re-reading Clinton Rossiter's Conservatism in America (Second Edition Revised, 1962). This is a wise and important book that deserves more attention 45 years after this Second Edition appeared.

But let me remind why this whole definitional project is necessary. If one goes back to my first post, Why Pseudo-Conservatives are not "Conservative", you can see that it is essential that I carefully define what 'conservative' actually means. This is necessary preparatory to showing that most of those Americans usually referred to today as "conservatives" or "neo-conservatives" are in fact not 'conservative' at all but are radicals pressing programs of extreme change in American life which, if they continue to be successful, will probably lead to the decline and fall of what has been admirable in American life and values. To a large extent this is the brunt of Claes Ryn's identification of "the New Jacobins" in his America the Virtuous.

Let me briefly sketch some of Clinton Rossiter's main points. First, he distinguished "Conservatism" with a capital 'C' from small 'c' conservatism, and he did so for an excellent reason. Conservatism (capital 'C') is the tradition of socio-political philosophy going back to Edmund Burke (1729-97). Rossiter rightly claims that since America was founded upon a basically 'liberal' tradition that emphasized, reason, progress, individualism, democracy, liberty and equality, and since nearly all Americans subscribe to this basically 'liberal' philosophy, that Burkean Conservatism is not prominent in America's primary traditions. Remember that Burke's founding of Conservatism was a reaction to the first truly social revolution in modern history, the French Revolution. The French Revolution was a truly social revolution because it aimed at society-wide overthrow of most of the foundations of France up to that time: it aimed to overthrow the monarchy as a system of government and replace it with a republican form of government, it aimed to overthrow the higher social orders of nobility and priesthood as privileged rulers of society, with the priesthood it aimed to overthrow the existence of an Established religion and replace it with Reason as religion, and it aimed to overthrow what remained of a feudal economy with one based more on freedom of enterprise (see William Doyle, Origins of the French Revolution, Second Edition, 1988).

In comparison to the great French social revolution against which Burke inveighed, the so-called "American Revolution" is really more appropriately labeled a War for Independence; it was certainly not a social revolution. Perhaps this is why Burke was relatively sympathetic to American colonial complaints. After the War for Independence America was socially, politically, and legally nearly identical with what it had been prior to that War. Thus, America was founded upon English constitutional liberalism and, since it never had a feudal nobility, a local monarchy or an established religion, it never needed a social revolution; it has been based upon a liberal philosophy from its inception.

So American conservatism must always be seen as existing within this essentially liberal tradition. That is why I quoted Peter Viereck in a prior post so prominently: :

…romanticizing conservatives refuse to face up to the old and solid historical roots of most or much American liberalism…. In contrast, a genuinely rooted, history-minded conservative conserves the roots that are really there, exactly as Burke did…. American history is based on the resemblance between moderate liberalism and moderate conservatism…. The Burkean builds on the concrete existing historical base, not on a vacuum of abstract wishful thinking. When, as in America, that concrete base includes British liberalism of the 1680’s and New Deal reforms of the 1930’s, then the real American conserver assimilates into conservatism whatever he finds lasting and good in liberalism and in the New Deal…. [I]n America it is often the free trade unions who unconsciously are our ablest representatives of the word they hate and misunderstand: conservatism. The organic unity they restore to the atomized ‘proletariat’ is… providential…. So we come full circle in America’s political paradox; our conservatism, in the absence of medieval feudal relics, must grudgingly admit it has little real tradition to conserve except that of liberalism—which then turns out to be a relatively conservative liberalism.(last emphasis added)

Point: Rossiter, like Viereck, shows that American small 'c' conservatism has to be seen as based within an essentially liberal tradition and thus won't be precisely the same as Burkean capital 'C' Conservatism. Indeed, as Rossiter wrote on p. 96:

even in [America's] most conservative moments, when we most want to be at rest, we come to rest on a tradition--the famous Liberal tradition--that speaks out loud and clear in the language of liberty and equality, democracy and progress, adventure and opportunity. This is the reason that no one, neither the foreign observer nor the American himself, will ever quite understand what the American says and does. The American, like his tradition, is deeply liberal, deeply conservative. If this is a paradox, so, too, is America.

However, Rossiter made a point that I believe is fundamental to understanding a force within the American experience that really does come closest to meriting the label "revolutionary": the force set free by American capitalism in the latter part of the 19th century, the force of the Industrial Revolution. Although it is frequently a subordinate point in Rossiter's book, he nonetheless notes that the Industrial Revolution was probably the major revolutionary force in American history (at least, I would argue, until the 20th century). Rossiter (p. 16), when recounting "important events for the rise of conscious conservatism" mentions the French Revolution and Burke's critique of it and then adds "the Industrial Revolution, which made change rather than stability the essential style of the social process...." On pages 94-6 Rossiter enlarges on the significance of the American Industrial Revolution in a passage I consider extremely important and which I here quote at length:

we must... [make] the distinction between change, a transformation of values or institutions in which government plays no direct part, and reform, a transformation... through the conscious use of political authority. Industrialization, which puts children to work in factories, is change; child-labor legislation, which takes them out again, is reform. When men build railroads or invent assembly lines or convert atomic energy into power, thus transforming the lives of millions of people, that is change. When other men pass laws to regulate railroads or raise wages of men on assembly lines or license producers of atomic power, that is reform. Now, if we look again at our history, we find that many of our so-called conservatives, the "wise and good and rich" on the American Right, were in an important sense not conservatives at all. While they could always be counted on to oppose reform, they were casual or at best ambivalent about change. In point of fact, they had an immense stake in social change--specifically, in the transformation of this country from a predominantly agrarian-rural to a predominantly industrial-urban society.... [T]hey worked vast changes in every part of our system. They were, indeed, among the most marvelous agents of social and moral change the world has ever known, and it does them something less than historical justice to classify them simply as conservatives.

The liberals, on the other hand--the great progressives like Jefferson, Jackson, Bryan, La Follette and Wilson--were deeply troubled by the restless, untamed surge toward the Hamiltonian dream of busy factories and bustling cities. Each of these men, in his own generation, saw the order he knew and loved being weakened by the rapid advances of invention and technology. And each, in his own way, looked to reform to chasten change and mitigate its worst effects....

After the Civil War, when at last it became apparent to both sides that government was alone equal to the challenge of change, the progressives shifted their attitude toward political authority from hostility to sympathy, while the men of the Right, who were willing to use government to their own ends but not to see others use it against them, moved into a posture of determined opposition to reform. The paradoxes in the American experience had come to full flower: the agents of change were opposed to reform, the opponents of change committed to it. Small wonder that words like liberalism and conservatism lost much of their meaning for Americans, especially since both sides in the struggle were now arguing in the language of full-blooded Liberalism.

What Rossiter came close to saying here is that it is persons known as 'liberals' and 'progressives' who have been most concerned to 'conserve' the values they saw in American society at its founding and before industrilization and urbanization so profoundly changed it.

Let me just add a note to clarify what I meant above when I said that the Industrial Revolution was the most socially mutative force "at least, I would argue, until the 20th century." I suspect that there have been two forces in American history that have wrought changes coming closest to meriting the term 'revolutionary', the Industrial Revolution that began in the 19th century and the rise of American imperialism that began shortly before the end of the 19th century (see Stephen Kinzer's Overthrow). It is precisely the present-day pseudo-conservative's knee-jerk allegiance to protecting the power of those who run and benefit from huge corporations made possible by the Industraial Revolution and this same pseudo-conservative's thoroughly unbalanced and belligerent support for contemporary American imperialism and world domination that makes the pseudo-conservative the most powerful voice for extremism and radical change on the contemporary American scene. "Conservative" indeed!

Another Set of Conservative Principles

While I'm trying to define the basic principles of genuine conservatism here is an attempt to do something similar by one of the most famous of the New Conservatives of the 1950s, Russell Kirk; click here for his "Ten Conservative Principles."

While I don't have much problem with his ten conservative principles I do believe Kirk took positions, under the influence of Goldwater, Buckley and others, that were contradictory to a genuine commitment to his abstract principles. For example, Kirk says nothing here about what has been justified in the name of American nationalism, 'defense' and 'security.' But many of the things advocated by pseudo-conservatives would significantly conflict with at least these Kirkian principles:

the conservative perceives the need for prudent restraints upon power and upon human passions.

conservatives are guided by their principle of prudence.

conservatives uphold voluntary community, quite as they oppose involuntary collectivism.

As Claes Ryn demonstrates repeatedly in America the Virtuous, there are no apparent restraints upon the nationalistic passions of most of today's so-called 'conservatives'. And 'involuntary collectivism' is enforced by the Patriot Act, NSA spying, and attacks upon the 'patriotism' of any who disagree with the increasingly dictatorial George W. Bush administration.

What Does 'Conservative' Really Mean?, Part 4

I think there is at least one more basic principle of conservatism that I left out in Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3: this involves a distrust of 'direct' or 'plebiscitary' democracy. Ryn, in America the Virtuous (p. 50-1), wrote, "Plebiscitary democracy aspires to rule according to the popular majority of the moment.... The American Framers... had a very low opinion of what they called 'democracy' or 'pure democracy.' They associated it with demagoguery, rabble-rousing, opportunism, ignorance, and general irresposibility.... While envisioning broad popular participation in politics, they sought to shield most of those charged with making decisions from the momentary popular will."

This mistrust of direct democracy may be in part a corollary of the first principle mentioned: since humans are subject to base motives it would be dangerous to trust too much in direct democratic decisions that were not sifted through a system of representation, division of powers, and checks and balances; the latter would increase the liklihood that prudence and moderation would prevail. Again, a problematic tension is created by recognition that governments are frequently more servile to privileged classes and may tend to ignore the less privileged. If a representational system, with division of powers and checks and balances were significantly unfair to less privileged groups and gave little opportunity for change, problems of justice and fairness would likely be created. Such a system might protect against the baser motives of the less privileged while facilitating the selfishness, greed and will to power of the privileged. Indeed, it has been argued that the American Constitution itself was created by and for the more privileged classes of the 1780s (see Charles A. Beard's "An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution", first published in 1913 and still very readable and interesting; of course, as might be expected this book was savagely criticized by others who thought it was 'un-American'; but see Robert A. McGuire's "To Form a More Perfect Union: A New Economic Interpretation of the United States Constitution", 2003; apparently some still believe that Beard's thesis had merit. For an interesting case study of the privileged classes taking advantage of the less privileged in Massachusetts under the Articles of Confederation see Leonard L. Richards' "Shays's Rebellion", 2003.)

What Does 'Conservative' Really Mean?, Part 3

In Part 1 and Part 2 I've tried to present a serviceable definition of genuine conservatism, as opposed to the witchs' brew of contradictory beliefs that William F. Buckley and his colleagues pasted together in the 1950s and arbitrarily decided to call 'conservatism'; the latter should be labelled, as Peter Viereck did, pseudo-conservatism. In this post I continue to cite Claes Ryn's views of conservatism as presented in his America the Virtuous. In Parts 1 and 2 I mentioned two essential elements of modern conservatism: 1) the recognition of baser human motives and the imperative need to exert self-control and social control over them; 2) the emphasis upon the importance of local, face-to-face groups like the family, church, and local community; where local leadership is the fundamental basis of social organization as opposed to distant, centralized authorities which drain localities of their power.

A third key component of conservative belief is an emphasis upon the importance of historically evolved, concrete, existing social institutions which are held to represent the wisdom of ages; since they have developed slowly over many years they are believed to serve real concrete human needs. Ryn wrote (p. 45): “For Burke, a civilized society is the result of a slow, protracted, and often painful process of selection and accumulation.” Favored terms conservatives use to capture this are 'rooted', 'historical', and 'concrete.' Conservatives, harking back to Edmund Burke's critique of the French Revolution, are quite suspicious of ‘human reason’ in the sense of “the old urge to replace historically evolved societies with an order framed according to abstract, allegedly universal principles, notably that of equality." It is important to note that conservatives do not oppose all social change; as Edmund Burke wrote: “A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.” Rather genuine conservatives advocate small, prudent, moderate, evolutionary changes as specific needs manifest themselves as felt by members of society. Ryn wrote (p. 45): "It is necessary, Burke argued, to approach historically evolved society with respect and humility as well as a critical eye and to be cautious in making changes. Innovation may do damage that the reformers in their preoccupation with their own favorite abstract ideas are not able to foresee.” It is precisely this principle that put the 'conserve' in 'conservatism.' Without a priciple such as this no belief system deserves the name 'conservative.'

This is perhaps the stress of conservatism which contains the most potential for mischief. It is often true that existing social institutions were established and continue to serve the needs of privileged groups within a historical society, and as such they deny many of the needs of the least privileged groups. Certainly some American conservatives have recognized this, e.g., Clinton Rossiter, and if reasonable freedom from exploitation is to be built into a society the means of change would have to include channels through which the least privileged groups could effectively make their needs known and achieve reasonable social changes. The conservative's emphatic respect for existing institutions could easily facilitate the will to power, domination and even tyranny that another conservative principle--the imperative need to control such base human motives--wants to minimize and avoid. This is perhaps the central contradictory tension within conservatism.

Finally, at least according to Ryn, conservatism endorses a modest patriotic pride in one’s countries achievements but it opposes excessive nationalism (p. 79): “Nationalism, by contrast [to patriotism], is an eruption of overweening ambition, a throwing off of individual and national self-control. Nationalism is self-absorbed and conceited, oblivious of the weaknesses of the country it champions…. Nationalism recognizes no authority higher than its own national passion. It imagines that it has a monopoly on right or has a mission superseding moral norms. The phrase ‘my country right or wrong’ sums up this attitude…. Nationalist politics is inherently intolerant, tyrannical, and expansionist. It bullies and creates ever new enemies.” It is in large part this ambitious, self-absorbed, intolerant, tyrannical, belligerent, expansionist, bullying nationalism, as best exemplified by so-called 'neo-conservatives' like William Kristol, Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, et. al., that led Ryn to write about what he calls the New Jacobinism.

This is something I intend to pay close attention to in my further readings on genuine conservatism: what is authentic conservatism's relationship to hyper-nationalism and just plain nationalism. Certainly Peter Viereck recognized the danger of what he called "thought-control nationalists." I believe that American nationalism, as aggressively represented by the pseudo-conservative American right, may well lead to the decline and fall of American civilization. I fear crazed nationalists like William Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, Dinesh D'Souza, William F. Buckley et. al. are leading us into a ditch out of which we may never emerge. I see this nationalistic fervor that considers America always the force for Good in the world that must use its power to dominate and control the rest of the world as perhaps the single most dangerous and suicidal trend in American life. To a large degree it is just this remarkably crazy nationalism that explains why pseudo-conservatives can't do foreign policy.

What Does ‘Conservative’ Really Mean?, Part 2

As I said in Part 1 I wish to describe the basic themes and concerns of a genuine, authentic conservatism. My previous efforts at this have been too brief and sketchy. Perhaps some will be surprised to learn of the key tenets of genuine conservatism, especially if you've become used to the pseudo-conservative ideology successfully sold to Americans since the 1950s under the misappropriated terms ‘conservatism’ and ‘conservative.’ The primary concerns of modern political conservatism hark back to Edmund Burke’s critique of the French Revolution first published in 1790; Burke is named by most as the father of modern, self-conscious conservatism. In this post I will present some of the views of Claes Ryn’s book, America the Virtuous.

As I stated in Part 1, perhaps the primary belief of conservatives is that human beings are possessed of base impulses and these need to be controlled if we are to have a civilized society. Such impulses include arrogance, pride, a desire for power over others, selfishness and self indulgence, belligerence, ruthlessness, etc. Conservatives see religion, morality and traditional social institutions as teaching and encouraging control of these baser motives. A morality emphasizing self-control is seen as essential to civilized life. In America the Virtuous Claes Ryn, whom I consider an authentic American conservative, wrote (p. 18) that Enlightenment writers like Rousseau, through a “denial of a darker side of human nature—what Christianity sometimes discusses in terms of ‘original sin’—undermined the ancient belief that checks, internal and external, must be placed on individual and collective action.” Much of modern conservatism is highly critical of the positive view of humans expressed during the Enlightenment and is especially critical of Rousseau. Ryn argued that the Founding Fathers who fashioned our representative, constitutional democracy were for the most part conservatives in this sense. “Constitutional democracy assumes a human nature divided between higher and lower potentialities and sees a need to guard against merely self-serving, imprudent, and even tyrannical impulses in the individual and the people as a whole (Ryn, p. 50).”

Ryn continued (p. 55): “In the West, the decentralized society is deeply rooted in Christian ideas of community and virtue, which are akin to earlier Greek ideas…. The individual’s primary moral responsibility is to make the best of self and to love neighbor. This is a demanding notion of virtue, for nothing is more difficult than overcoming one’s own selfishness and behaving charitably toward people of flesh and blood at close range.” Ryn is distinguishing the latter charity from an abstract commitment to the betterment of people who live at a great distance and are not experienced personally like ‘the downtrodden’, ‘mankind’, ‘the proletariat’, or ‘the poor.’ Ryn wrote that (p. 57): “the effect of the old morality of character is to build self-restraint and respect for others… and to reduce the danger of conflict. The emphasis on curbing arrogance, greed, and other types of self-indulgence increases the chances for harmonious relations.”

Frankly, it’s difficult for me to see how this premise of conservatism can be denied, i.e., the base impulses described definitely do exist and are strong in humans; civilization does require control of such impulses. Perhaps some might differ about precisely which institutions are best able to teach such self-control, but the need for it should not be controversial.

A second prime value of conservatism emphasizes the importance of concrete, local, face-to-face groups such as families, small groups, and local communities. Ryn wrote that (p. 52): "Constitutional democracy assumes a decentralized society in which the lives of most citizens are centered in small, chiefly private, and local associations, what the late Robert Nisbet called ‘autonomous groups.’ These can exercise independent authority. In the decentralized society there are many centers and levels of power. Political authority is widely dispersed, enabling regional and local entities to decide for themselves…. People tend to define their own interests not as discrete individuals but as members of the groups that they most treasure, starting with the family and other associations at close range. By the ‘people,’ then, constitutional democracy does not mean an undifferentiated mass of individuals….”

This is an important and possibly little known conservative tenet. In the 1950s there were a great number of social analyses published heralding the coming of a ‘mass society.’ This was a society where small, local, face-to-face relationships were eroded and replaced by centralized authority that was distant from and less influenced by individuals and their small, primary groups. As the natural authority of small, local, ‘autonomous groups’ was eroded, society was said to be “atomized” and individuals had fewer and fewer local ties with one another; they became more and more an undifferentiated mass. With the spread of urbanization and the consequent shrinkage of locality accompanying a less rural society it is hard to deny that this is true to some considerable extent. Usually such analyses (see Robert Nisbet’s The Quest for Community, first published in 1953) have emphasized the state as sucking up the powers of localities and creating the mass society. I suspect this is because in America it is relatively rare to read mainstream academics who are willing to criticize American industrialization leading to huge centralized corporations as a primary factor in creating atomized ‘mass’ individuals whose primary function is to consume in a self-indulgent fashion. My guess is the two primary motives to growth in the central government in America have been (1) the growth of huge corporations in the late 19th century requiring central government as a 'countervailing power' and (2) the huge increase in government due to a more and more massive 'defense' and 'security' presence (the latter probably due in significant part to the growth of American imperialism beginning in the late 19th century, see Stephen Kinzer's Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq).

Okay, this post is getting too long! I'll continue in Part 3.

Schumpeter on Imperialism, Part 2

Here's another nice quote from Joseph Schumpeter cited by Claes Ryn's America the Virtuous (p. 11). Schumpeter cited Rome as

the classic example of that kind of insincerity in both foreign and domestic affairs which permeates not only avowed motives but also probably the conscious motives of the actors themselves--of that policy which pretends to aspire to peace but unerringly generates war, the policy of continual preparation for war, the policy of meddlesome interventionism.

I believe Scumpeter wrote his essay on 'Imperialism' in 1919 so he wasn't writing on the basis of having observed post-World War II America. Schumpeter died in 1950.

On Confusion Concerning the Term 'Conservative'

Claes Ryn's book, America the Virtuous, presents some interesting remarks on the contemporary American confusion surrounding the term 'conservative.' On pp. 193-4 we find:

A particularly striking example of intellectual bewilderment and helplessness are intellectuals who think of themselves as conservatives but who are unthinkingly embracing much of the heritage of the French Revolution. Another example are putative conservatives who assume that a conservative is someone who is more inclined than others to use military power or bullying against other countries.

Again on p. 210 Ryn wrote:

with regard to present political-intellectual discussion, some widely used terms have changed meaning. Some of them have become useless or, worse than useless, perniciously confusing or deceptive.... Much is not at all what it seems.

It is pseudo-conservatives like William F. Buckley who have confused and deceived us about the meaning of 'conservative.'

Ryn also wrote (p. 21):

Paradoxically, in the United States the new Jacobinism also finds expression among people called "conservatives" or "neoconservatives." This is a curious fact considering that modern, self-conscious conservatism originated in opposition to the ideas of the French Revolution. The person commonly regarded as the father of modern conservatism, the British statesman and thinker Edmund Burke (1729-97) focused his scorching critique of the French Revolution precisely on Jacobin thinking.

Schumpeter on Roman Imperialism, Does This Sound Familiar?

In his book, America the Virtuous, Claes Ryn cited (p. 196) a great quote from Joseph Schumpeter's essay on Imperialism. Does this sound at all familiar? Try substituting 'America' for 'Rome' and 'American' for 'Roman'.

There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were those of Rome's allies; and if Rome had no allies, then allies would be invented. When it was utterly impossible to contrive such an interest--why, then it was the national honor that had been insulted. The fight was always invested with an aura of legality. Rome was always being attacked by evil-minded neighbors, always fighting for a breathing space. The whole world was pervaded by a host of enemies, and it was manifestly Rome's duty to guard against their indubitably aggressive designs. They were enemies who only waited to fall on the Roman people.

This is the kind of world presence the pseudo-conservative hawks, what Ryn calls the New Jacobins after the French Revolution's Jacobins, are convincing Americans to uphold. As Ryn wrote (p. 191):

Neo-Jacobinism is the main factor behind the quest for American world supremacy.... There are grounds for suspecting that, upon gaining a further hold on power, the new Jacobins will gravitate in the direction of more despotic methods. They are already employing systematic demonization and ostracism of their critics.... As the constraints of American constituitionalism continue to deteriorate, military or other emergencies will provide neo-Jacobin leaders widening opportunities for silencing their opponents as well as for imposing general restrictions on civil liberties.

What Does 'Conservative' Really Mean?, Part 1

Obviously one cannot be dogmatic about what a particular political term means because there is always a certain amount of leeway that users of a language have in defining and redefining a word. Yet it is also true that users of a language do not have infinite leeway in redefining a term that has been in use for 200+ years, as has the term ‘conservativism.’ One typical manner of discovering the meaning in use of a term is by consulting a dictionary. The Oxford English Dictionary or OED discovers an early use of the term conservatism in 1835. This makes sense because, although he apparently did not use the word, Edmund Burke, the father of modern conservatism, gave definition to the term in his Reflections on the Revolution in France which was published in 1790.

As I have pointed out before, if one consults dictionaries to discover the meaning of ‘conservative’ we find the following definition in the OED:

Characterized by a tendency to preserve or keep intact or unchanged; preservative.
The maintenance of existing institutions political and ecclesiastical.
Characterized by caution or moderation.

The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines conservative as:

"PRESERVATIVE": tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions;
"TRADITIONAL": marked by moderation or caution; marked by or relating to traditional norms of taste, elegance, style, or manners".

Another way to discover the meaning in use of a term is to go back to a defining moment. The defining moment for the modern use of the terms ‘conservative’ and ‘conservatism’ was Edmund Burke’s critique of the French Revolution in 1790. The Encyclopedia Britannica entry for Burke captures a flavor of Burke’s conservatism. His view

implies deep respect for the historical process and the usages and social achievements built up over time. Therefore, social change is not merely possible but also inevitable and desirable. But the scope and the role of thought operating as a reforming instrument on society as a whole is limited. It should act under the promptings of specific tensions or specific possibilities, in close union with the detailed process of change, rather than in large speculative schemes involving extensive interference with the stable, habitual life of society. Also, it ought not to place excessive emphasis on some ends at the expense of others; in particular, it should not give rein to a moral idealism (as in the French Revolution) that sets itself in radical opposition to the existing order.

Thus a look at dictionary definitions and the thought of the founding father of modern political conservatism yields these emphases: 1) a tendency to preserve or keep intact existing institutions; 2) respect for concrete ‘historical’ process, i.e., those specific institutions that have been evolved through past history; a respect for tradition; 3) social change must occur carefully and be designed with moderation and prudence; 4) social change should be activated by specific felt needs rather than ‘large speculative schemes’ for reordering society.

In addition to consulting dictionaries and examining defining moments, another way of discovering what ‘conservative’ and ‘conservatism’ mean is by examining the writings of more recent authors who espouse similar views and hark back to writers like Burke as a model. Writers like this include Clinton Rossiter and his book, Conservatism in America, Peter Viereck and his book, Conservatism Revisited and Claes Ryn and his book, America the Virtuous: The Crisis of Democracy and the Quest for Empire.

Here I am going to focus upon some of the themes found in America the Virtuous (2003, Transaction Publishers) that define Claes Ryn as a genuine contemporary American conservative.

One theme of authentic conservatism is expressed in this quote from Burke: "All men that are ruined, are ruined on the side of their natural propensities."

Conservatives recognize that humans are possessed of evil impulses that need to be controlled; they would emphasize the human propensity to selfishness, pride, a will to power, ruthlessness, willfulness, self-indulgence, arrogance and belligerence, as examples of the evil human impulses that require control. Control takes place through an ethical emphasis upon self-control as well as the restraints of traditional moral doctrines and institutions (Ryn, p 3). It is the recognition of these potentialities for evil that made conservatives recommend prudent, moderate social change and mistrust the ‘large speculative schemes’ of human reason that could so easily be a cloak for private ambition and will to power. It is not clear how one can deny this conservative observation; human impulses to power, self interest and self indulgence, ruthlessness, arrogance, pride and belligerence are difficult to deny.

[I will continue this catalog of conservative themes in future posts.]