Conservatism
True and False
This
is an excerpt of an essay which will appear, in its corrected,
finished state, in my forthcoming book, Visions of Reality.
There
are few things
more unstable than political labels. Policies which in one decade are
called "liberal" may find themselves called "conservative" in another,
and men who in one age thought of themselves as "liberals" are in
another age regarded as intransigent "conservatives." Yet for all the
migratory propensities of labels, there is nonetheless at the bottom of
labels a certain consistency or core meaning which transcends the
semantic fluctuations of the moment. That men like Edmund Burke, David
Hume, Alexander Hamilton, Alexis de Tocqueville, George Santayana,
Joseph Schumpeter, Michael Oakeshott and James Burnham are all
conservatives hardly anyone would doubt. Nor would very many more doubt
the conservative credentials of Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Milton
Friedman, and Jack Kemp. Nonetheless, it should be clear to anyone who
delves beneath the mere surface of things that the men in the former
list are conservative in an appreciably different way than the men in
the latter list. This is not to say that one group is better or worse
than another, but simply to point out that there are differences that
deserve to be noticed and appreciated. And what, may we ask, are these
differences? To put it briefly, we could put it this way: the men in
the former list, the Burkes, the Hamiltons, the Santayanas, are
non-ideological conservatives. Their conservatism is not a precise
creed; it is a method of interpreting experience. The other
conservatives, the Limbaughs, the Gingriches, and the Kemps are
ideologues. They believe in a precise creed which transcends
experience. They are dogmatic and full of political zeal.
It
is probably unfair
to single out particular "conservatives" and accuse them of being
ideologues, since it really is a matter of degrees, not of kind. There
is a trace of non-ideological conservatism in nearly all conservative
ideologues. The reason for this is that conservatism, traditionally, is
not an ideological political movement. Conservatism is not, as Albert
Jay Nock once put it, "a body of opinion" or "a set platform or creed."
It is, rather, "a purely ad hoc affair; its findings vary with
conditions, and are good for this day and train only." Conservatism
"does not generalize beyond the facts of the case in point. It
considers those facts carefully, makes sure that as far as possible it
has them all in hand, and the course of action which the balance of
fact in that case indicates as necessary will be the one it follows;
and the course indicated as unnecessary it not only will not follow,
but will oppose without compromise or concession."
Edmund
Burke made much the same point
when he wrote: "I cannot stand forward and give praise or blame to
anything which relates to human actions, and human concerns, on a
simple view of the object, as it stands stripped of every relation, in
all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction.
Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in
reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and
discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil
and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind."
Non-ideological
conservatism, then, seeks a more complete view of political
reality--one
which captures all the nuances and subtleties of each particular
situation. It is for this reason that conservatives in the Burkean
tradition mistrust abstract political systems and "metaphysical"
principles founded on "reason." Political reality, Burke would say, is
far to complex to be summed up in a handful of bromides thought up by
some pretentious academic or philosopher. "The science of constructing
a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other
experimental science, not to be taught a priori," Burke gravely warned
his readers in his Reflections on the Revolution in France.
"Nor is it
a short experience that can instruct us in that practical science,
because the real effects of moral causes are not always immediate; but
that which in the first instance is prejudicial may be excellent in its
remoter operation, and its excellence may arise even from the ill
effects it produces in the beginning. The reverse also happens: and
very plausible schemes, with very pleasing commencements, have often
shameful and lamentable conclusions. In states there are often some
obscure and almost latent causes, things which appear at first view of
little moment, on which a very great part of its prosperity or
adversity may most essentially depend. The science of government being
therefore so practical in itself and intended for such practical
purposes-a matter which requires experience, and even more experience
than any person can gain in his whole life, however sagacious and
observing he may be--it is with infinite caution that any man ought to
venture upon pulling down an edifice which has answered in any
tolerable degree for ages the common purposes of society, or on
building it up again without having models and patterns of approved
utility before his eyes."
This, in a nutshell,
is what non-ideological conservatism is all about. Particularly
important is Burke's assertion that "the science of government"
requires "even more experience than any person can gain in his whole
life, however sagacious and observing he may be." Here we have the
conservative defense of tradition. Tradition, for the conservative, is
not good in itself. No, for the conservative, only the good is good in
itself. The reason why conservatives favor tradition is because they
see tradition as a sort of accumulation of many lives of wisdom.
Tradition is something "confirmed by the solid test of long
experience." Or, as the historians Will and Ariel Durant put it: "No
one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime
to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the
customs or institutions of his society, for these are the wisdom of
generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history."
Of
course, this does
not mean that all traditional customs and institutions are good. The
conservative is well aware that some customs and institutions are bad,
either because they were always bad or they became bad over time. All
that the conservative insists is that you have to have very good
reasons before you decide to abolish or reform a custom or institution.
You cannot get rid of a custom or institution merely because there are
some inconveniences associated with it or it is short of perfect. Human
instititutions, by the very fact that they are human, must always be
imperfect. If their imperfections are severe, they can be reformed. But
we should never abolish something merely because it doesn't conform to
our "reason."
From this, it can be
gathered that nonideological conservatism is intransigently
anti-rationalistic. Knowledge, for the conservative, is based, not on
words or ideas, but on practical experience. It contains a large
intuitive component which defies precise articulation. The conservative
believes that concepts and ideas never completely agree with the
reality they represent. Articulate knowledge is symbolic, and as such,
is flawed and inadequate. Reason is therefore regarded as limited. As
Hume put it, reason "sees a full light, which illuminates certain
places; but that light borders upon the most profound darkness. And
between these reason is so dazzled and confounded, that she scarcely
can pronounce with certainty and assurance concerning any one object."
Thus speaks the non-ideological conservative. What
about the
conservative who is not non-ideological? How does the one species of
conservatism differ from the other?
To answer this question, we must needs examine this
conceptual
contrivance called ideology. What, precisely, is an ideology? James
Burnham defined ideology as "a more or less systematic and
self-contained set of ideas supposedly dealing with the nature of
reality (usually social reality), or some segment of reality, and of
man's relation (attitude, conduct) toward it; and calling for a
commitment independent of specific experience or events." When Burnham
describes ideology as a "self-contained set of ideas," what he is
driving at is the dogmatic nature of the ideological creed. Ideologues
are immune to experience. No fact or event will ever convince them that
their ideology is bogus or flawed.
[This concludes the excerpt of the essay "Conservatism True and False"]
