Well over a decade has passed since I last wrote about the “conservative movement” in America. Much has transpired, needless to say, in that time and I must confess as a sort of preliminary caveat that I chose a kind of domestic exile during those years, turning my attention to other matters, influenced in this disengagement from social criticism by a mounting sense of alienation or futility regarding the directions of conservative thought. I was hardly alone in this predicament. Indeed, as “conservatism” gained both in prestige and even political power, that separation became more acute. Instead of rejoicing over the perhaps unanticipated ascendency of right-wing ideas, I myself and some others recoiled, keenly aware that the reason for this eventual eminence of “conservatism” was, at base, that most of the political Right had jettisoned conservatism in favor of something else, something inhospitable to the philosophical and historical underpinnings of what in any decent taxonomy of ideas must be labeled conservative. We have thus come full circle: contemporary conservatism in America began as a small platoon of intellectuals out of step with the cultural mainstream; it grew, flourished, metamorphosed and was betrayed, and is now again what it was in the beginning, for good or ill, the philosophical profession of a small phalanx of domestic exiles.
That is but the barest outline of an understandably complex series of social and intellectual convolutions. My object here is to attempt, briefly, to offer some objective analysis, albeit from my perspective, of the principal currents of thought and opinion that have reshaped the conservative impulse in America and have conformed it to its present image and rationale.
Intellectual conservatism in America began and remains a critical enterprise. If history is to judge the ultimate value of conservative literature in the twentieth century, it will be to attribute to these social dissenters the not inconsiderable merit of voicing alarm over dangerous and excessive popular passions and the manifestations of decay in crucial social institutions and relationships. This was, initially, a predominantly philosophical and literary undertaking, as it had been largely in European conservatism to which earlier American intellectual conservatives felt distinctly connected. It had no visible political agenda. In this century, conservatism in America was principally represented by a loose concord of philosophical humanists, as exemplified by George Santayana or Paul Elmer More.
The importance of this critical posture ought not to be neglected. Conservative writers for at least two centuries had proven adept social diagnosticians indeed. They have usually been the first to detect the odors of social and institutional decay. The current alarm over the wretched state of American education, for example, has a certain jejune quality about it if one recalls that conservative critics, Russell Kirk foremost among them, had been meticulously analyzing and warning about the “crisis” for at least thirty years.
If one chooses to date “self-conscious” conservatism in America from the era just following World War II (perhaps, I concede, an arbitrary choice), one confronts a kind of renaissance of political and social philosophy that rested in large measure on British intellectual history, foremost with the rediscovery of Edmund Burke and, by extension, the cognizable tradition of Burkean thought on English political life via Disraeli and others. This revival almost immediately prompted an understandable linkage: connections were made between the ideas of Burke and the American political tradition found in “Classical American Federalism,” in the outlook of theorists like John Adams and Fisher Ames. But unlike the British paradigm, the kind of political philosophy represented by Classical Federalism summarily died. Attempts by some American right-wing writers to argue that this federalism, essentially, a Hamiltonian viewpoint, survived and flourished in the second half of the nineteenth century are empirically untenable. There is no conceivable way to bring the political philosophy of early American Federalism into harmony with “Classical Liberalism,” the dominant right-wing orientation of the fin de siècle. And the separation, at base, turned on a quintessential philosophical issue: the contention of paternalism (natural aristocracy’s obligation to protect and serve the commonweal) versus some variety of Social Darwinism (the contention that the “fittest” rise to rulership by social competition and are more or less entitled to the rewards gained thereby).
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The Critical Shift
I do not wish to introduce a history of recent conservative opinion as such, but I offer the above reference in order to make what I think is a crucial point: a shift occured from the critical posture of conservatism, philosophical and literary, to the idea of active political aspiration, the notion, if you will, of a “conservative movement.” This was only feasible, of course, if “conservatism,” whatever it was seen to be, could be given both historical credentials and a broader popular base. One of two things had to be attempted: (a) to somehow connect “historical” conservatism (Burke and, indeed, his forebears) with the more recent history of American right-wing politics, or (b) simply accept nineteenth-century liberalism as the foundational credo and call it “Conservatism.” After all, one could argue that “conservatism” was not an explicit philosophical conviction but rather any opposition to change or more progressive opinions.
The theoretical problems of Option (b) were far simpler than Option (a). There was, after all, a fairly coherent body of social theory readily at hand, from Mill, Spencer, Sumner, et al., and additionally a viable political ancestry. But the advocates of Option (a), sometimes dubbed the “Fusionists,” had what were finally insurmountable difficulties. They could not rhetorically refurbish Adams or Hamilton or Chancellor Kent, let alone Burke, and were thus faced with the problem of creating original social and political theory. These conservative men and women had proven to be capable, even penetrating, critics, but most were unused to systematic theory, especially as conservative writers tended frequently to drift away from philosophical discipline into urbane polemics.
The relatively meager amount of solid political and social theory produced during the formative years of contemporary conservatism has always surprised me, considering several factors, including the quality of intellect possessed by so many conservative writers and their acuity in diagnosing social ills. Conservative publicists in general enjoyed a marked superiority in the uses of the language over their opponents on the Left, particularly during those pivotal years of the 1960s and ‘70s. They tended to be keen debaters, if not dialecticians, and their litrary cultivation enabled them to be, at tithes, both provocative and eloquent.
But most were also rather casual theoreticians. Some conservative writers seemed content to make perceptive social criticisms and then respond to their implications by invoking, as social prescriptions, somewhat expansive, if also vague, restatements of the “ancient truths” and “immutable values.” I do not altogether disparage this; the invocation of historically-forged social principles is justifiable and in the hands of some conservatives they were posed with sophistication and even elegance. But if some conservatives could speak, broadly, of the “great tradition” of Western civilization, while other conservatives could argue in favor of prayer in public schools, few, unhappily, could produce work, social prescription, that fell somewhere between extolling the perennial values and reacting to explicit socio-political proposals. In short, few engaged in the business of creating political and social theory rooted, as it must be, in philosophical discipline, historical awareness and analysis of contemporary affairs, addressing the wider-ranging problems with which societies contend. The often formidable intellectual assault on “liberalism” was not accompanied, on the whole, by any depiction of just what a conservatively-grounded society would look like. Having theoretically demolished or wounded many of the pretensions of now conventional middle-of-the-road liberalism, the conservatives offered precious little concrete philosophical guidance in social rehabilitation.
The reluctance to enter the bog of theory appeared to be more characteristic of American conservatism than its European counterpart where systematic theorizing was more apparent and the link between general philosophy and political and social thought more tightly drawn. Looking back, I think American conservatives were decidedly inhibited about pursuing the more or less explicit consequences of their essential ideas and philosophical moorings. Let me describe this by example. It was far from being impossible for the conservative critics to raise very serious doubts on the philosophical plane about those defenses of equality characteristic of the prevailing liberal ethos. Many conservatives did so with not only skill but alacrity. Having wrought considerable havoc to the corpus of egalitarianism, conservative literature strangely pauses, by and large, reluctant to take the next step, to wit, proposing social theory that proceeds on some non-egalitarian assumption, at least on an assumption regarding the nature of equality at variance with the liberal doctrines. This hesitancy must be explained, it seems to me, and I finally can only conclude that the American conservatives were repelled by the thought that such proposals would exclude them from a national consensus. Perhaps curiously, they appeared to relish a certain measure of approval, as, indeed, later events showed. Thus, it was comparatively safe to criticize, even stimulating to do so, but it was too hazardous to propose alternative arrangements. Conservatives had a horror of being designated as “authoritarians,” “elitists” or, God forbid, “fascists.” Of course these are but crude pejoratives, not only inapplicable to conservatives, but likely only to be employed by the intellectual sans-culottes whom the conservatives declared they disdained anyway.
I can applaud a reasonable desire to be and to appear “moderate,” but what American conservatism misjudged was how appreciably unnoticed the “vital center” of American social and political life had gradually shifted, apparently inexorably, toward more Jacobinistic orientations, making the stance of moderation or accommodation incompatible with those philosophical axioms upon which conservatism had stood.
But let us return to our narrative. Option (a) expired, the hope of the Fusionists. And the “conservative movement,” the apparat, political and intellectual, was taken over by the exponents of Option (b). American conservatism was to be a rehabilitated version of nineteenth-century liberalism. This era began with the nomination by the Republicans of Barry Goldwater.
But Mr. Goldwater and his allies could still rely, even if only as a political tactic, on a traditional posture of criticizing the contemporary political arrangements, if not the culture itself. The remedies offered were, of course, primarily a reversion of the principles of liberalism in the age of industrial expansion. This was not an inconsiderable advantage—simply because there was a social malaise and large numbers of people in the country at least sensed it. Whether or not rejuvenated liberalism was the best cure is surely an open question, but, on the political level at least, the politicians of the Right made headway against the disarrayed opposition from the Left. And by this time nearly all the conservative intelligentsia had signed on.
This last phenomenon deserves more than a mere passing nod. It is a startling tale, if one lays any emphasis on intellectual consistency. And if over the ages the conservative attitude was signalled by a suspicion of the doctrinaire, it is wildly paradoxical that, now, there emerged an ideology of the Right to which the academic auxiliaries were expected to submit and did. Their espousal of the glories of individualism and laissez faire was extraordinary. They became, as a quasi-organized secretariat, unabashed defenders of simplistic bourgeois values.
The charge that this political creed was reactionary was in some part true. The historical conservative had always been concerned with premises or principles (or even “essences”), but remained generally flexible and even practical-minded in regard to explicit social and political remedies and measures. In this the historically-rooted conservative could be and often was “radical,” both in the original meaning of the term as advocating fundamental redirections of policy and in the more journalistic sense of favoring, on occasion, explicit social policies also supported, more customarily, by the Left. The current “conservative” of the doctrinaire, politically-aligned type, embracing a far more specific, if less rudimentary, political theory, was frankly interested in more or less specific “restorations” of policy, the dismantling, for instance, of many features of the welfare state or a return to the concept of the free market quite characteristic of the heyday of old-fashioned liberalism.
But this paradigm, reactionary or not, was politically viable. It seemed at least to fit hand-in-glove with many traditional American values and mythologies. It spoke in the voice of patriotism, for one thing, hardly an ignoble stance. It likely was preferable to the overt political alternative posed by most left-wing theorists who advocated a virtual superannuation of traditional institutions. If it did not choose to address itself to the root causes of the cultural maladies, this “conservatism” did not, by and large, exacerbate them to the degree foreseeable in the triumph of a wholly unfettered plebiscitary democracy. Indeed, one might hazard the guess that the expanding influence of this variety of conservatism, that, say, of the right-wing of the Republican Party, can be attributed, in some part, to the fact that the centrist-inclined voter found this political agenda less alarming, in most instances, than the proposed social policies of the Left.
In any event and for a variety of reasons, “conservatism” became not only “respectable” (that is, “mainstream,” the highest of contemporary accolades), but politically successful to a degree that I think startled even the attending intelligentsia.
This epoch is marked by a remarkable occurence, if one almost wholly overlooked: long in the position of criticizing the popular culture, current conservative thought is now largely devoted to defending it! That extraordinary transposition bears looking into. How is it possible that more or less suddenly the dreary vision of T. S. Eliot’s Wasteland, long a favorite image of conservative publicists, gets replaced by surging encomiums about the grandeur and wholesomeness of the social status-quo? Is this mere campaign rhetoric?
I do not think so, alas. I have become convinced that the contemporary “conservative” believes that all the nation requires is the full actualization of a semi-mythic conception of a society restoring many if not most of the putative virtues of the Industrial Revolution, a realization politically and socially feasible by means of comparatively minor socioeconomic adjustments and the continued control of the helm of the ship of state by “conservative” leadership.
I find this an appalling advocacy, both on grounds of blunt historical and cultural realism and, in more normative terms, as being an abdication of the urgent obligations to plumb the depths of what I take to be mounting social despair.
Allow me, then, to make a series of specific rejoinders to this defense of the status-quo, that embraces both what I take to be genuine conservative viewpoints and a rational and humane outlook. I thus would indict this contorted “conservatism” on five charges: (1) economic reductionism; (2) lack of social compassion; (3) facile egalitarianism; (4) environmental brigandage; (5) philistinism.
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Economic Reductionism
Life is more than buying and selling—or even producing. That simple, unadorned statement provides the antithesis of what I shall call “economic reductionism” or the general premise that all or most of social life—and, hence, social policy—turns on economic factors. There have been quite elaborate defenses of this contention (of which classical Marxism is one), but I do not think contemporary conservatives are much influenced by these sophisticated exegeses but are rather more inclined to actually believe that “America’s business is business.”
That is no more true of America, even granted its commercial impulses, than it is true of a community of Australian Aborigines. What economic arrangements a society may choose to make are predicated on the assumption that such arrangements will facilitate and encourage more rudimentary communal ends. The actual postulation of these arrangements would seem to me to be both flexible and practical—in truth, utilitarian in the general meaning of that word. Economic formulations and plans are techniques by which independently arrived at prior social values are realized.
But it is possible that on occasion the tail wags the dog, so to speak. At times, theories about how to economically facilitate social ends become invested with a spurious autonomous legitimacy or authority that eventually reverses the process and the economic paradigm, ostensibly utilitarian, becomes the formative conception of the social order. This brings about two events: first, social objectives are judged in terms of their efficacy by their compatibility with economic theory and, second, economic ends, those posited in the previously pragmatic economic theorizing, are installed as the dominant social goals, replacing those essentially axiological in nature. The question “Does it work?”, (i.e., does it support communal values and goals) is replaced by the question “Is it capitalistic (or socialistic or communistic)?” In short, a theological and ethical orthodoxy is retired in favor of an economic one.
A convincing defense can be made, I believe, for the necessity of a theological or an ethical orthodoxy as a unifying social element, since some general agreement ought to exist regarding social “final ends,” but I see nothing cogent in the justification for an economic orthodoxy. But that, in itself, is not so grave a threat, perhaps, as its underlying conception, its anthropology, that economic relationships are more fundamental to the social fabric than spiritual, ethical and legal ones. Economics is the handmaiden of philosophy, not its mentor—even Adam Smith well knew this.
Why has capitalism, broadly conceived, been traditionally supported by most conservatives in preference to more collectivistic economic arrangements, also broadly conceived? It is because, on balance, most conservative theorists have viewed capitalism as more conducive to the preservation of the social values they espouse than, say, forms of socialism, and that such economic arrangements as capitalism has generally advocated were more compatible with traditional patterns of life among Europeans and Americans. But conservatism’s esteem for capitalism never went beyond these premises, it seems to me, and most conservatives of the past certainly countenanced “mixed” economic arrangements in which a doctrinaire consistency was not insisted upon. Some conservatives were and are socialists, of course, and I see no incongruity in this simply because what unites conservatives are philosophical and not economic affinities.
There once was a certainly stupid and snobbish aristocratic disdain for “being in trade.” That this is evidently so seems to be no justification for exalting the opposite excess, raising the “trader” above other forms of social labor in the distribution of social rewards. We lay precious little emphasis, it seems to me, on “producers,” workers, farmers, artisans, artists, thinkers, who are at the base of some upward (or downward) pattern of the flow of goods, artifacts and services, rewarding far more handsomely the “handlers” of this stream of production, a host of affluent middlemen whose skills are those of the trader and the manipulator. Worse still, we are at a juncture where these essentially ineffectual “traders” increasingly dictate what the “producers” will produce and what consumers will consume, usually with a narrow, even perverted, notion of the activities of both production and consumption.
Why is much conservative opinion in this country on the side of the “traders” and not standing with the “producers” and the “consumers?” That, I would argue, is a historical anomaly.
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Conservative Compassion
Conservative social thought amounts to little if it is not fundamentally compassionate. I think three elements are involved in this conservative compassion. The first is that conservatism, in tone, is not an optimistic persuasion; it lacks the buoyant confidence of “progressive” outlooks, in part because it rejects the concept of meliorism or the inevitability of progress. Indeed, conservatism may, I concede, look back wistfully at past times possibly more tranquil and gracious. But that is not the whole story. The conservative cast of mind may often appear melancholic or at least not ebullient, because it vividly perceives the tragic dimension in existence itself. Life is not, for the conservative, a series of problems to be solved, but frequently is laced by implacable vicissitudes that must be endured and, at best, surmounted. And he sees this, incidentally, as the common lot of mankind. There is much sorrow connected with being alive that no procession of carnivals can finally assuage. Perhaps it is this realization that makes conservatism more concerned with the element of happiness as a social aim than competing ideologies.
In the second place, though conservatism certainly enjoys no monopoly on anguish over social misery, its record is clear on two counts, at least: it has exhibited a remarkably acute eye for the cultural aberrations that create social misery, and has viewed with marked sympathy the pathos of life, considering benevolence to be, on this basis alone, praiseworthy.
Thirdly, conservatism, seen historically, has both understood and admired what are, finally, the basic simplicities of human life, the joys that should fall within the ambit of all men and women. It has put a high premium on family life, essential pieties, freedom from immanent fears, physical and emotional, the rights to enjoy the fruits of labor and property without arbitrary transgression. It has placed much store, controversially perhaps, on the value of each person finding a satisfactory niche in the order of things, some elemental fulfillment, however varied in character.
Conservatism has been likewise suspicious of fulsome social promises not resting upon or even hostile to these rudimentary gratifications and opportunities. In a sense, conservatism embraces a comprehensive egalitarianism (perhaps more significant than statutory “rights”) that is founded upon a wide and deep conception of social membership, of communal affection. The conservative “division of labor” that is admittedly hierarchical, placing some social contributions on a higher plane than others, is finally the antithesis of snobbery, because it celebrates the virtues of the excellent artisan, the good citizen, above the empty status of the cunning manipulator or the dissolute entertainer.
Conservative compassion can be misunderstood, I think, for two main reasons. Since most conservative thought projects the idea that a goodly portion of human misery stems from what can well be called “social pathology” or the defiance of normative restrictions of human social options, the conservative amelioration of misery includes frequently uncompromising attacks on those pathologies. From a “public relations” standpoint, this condemnation is not always conducive to conservatism’s popularity. In the Gorgias, Plato introduces an amusing but also telling analogy in which he contrasts the palatability of what cooks produce, tasty viands much relished but either useless or harmful to bodily health, with what the physician purveys, often bitter and disagreeable potions that yet have the curative capacity. Do cooks or physicians have the most solicitude for the welfare of their clients?
Secondly, conservative literature, its history, has been exceptionally contemptuous of social quackery, the nostrums of charlatans and sophists. But this otherwise sensible detestation of “medicine show” social palliatives is not so straightforward a matter as it might appear, as much social quackery is flattering and enjoys the dubious asset of simplicity and a lack of rigorous thought. It is not surprising, then, that “patent medicine” social theory is widely esteemed and supported. So there is no lack of clarity concerning the meaning of this quackery, an example may be in order. I mean no denigration of the ancient and altogether serious attention paid to the problems of the human psyche when I use as my illustration much of contemporary “popular” psychology. Peruse the shelves of bookstores and observe the vast quantities of printed matter devoted to purported maximizations of emotional wellbeing. A deeper examination of this glossy outpouring of, psychological prescription reveals what it is—empirically unverifiable, intellectually crude, sleekly meretricious, concocted with a view of selling books rather than offering solid insights into the human condition, at best trivial, at worst papering over real psychic ills and hurts and substantial maladjustments with self-gratifying placeboes.
I am far from being sure that, presently, conservatism is generally seen as being compassionate, quite beyond its rejection of simplistic social confidence games. Even taking into account certain biases wherein any shade of social thought save that of some drastic expansion of the welfare state is seen as being inadequately compassionate, present-day conservatism is thought to be hardhearted, even by some of its advocates. Viewed from the sole perspective of political advantage, conservatism has succeeded in attracting broad social support only when its political manifestoes include two elements: excitement, stimulation, even entertainment and, secondly, evident benevolence. Unfortunately the battlelines in America have been drawn too rigidly between excessive demands on the state to undertake social and economic redress and an opposition not only to these pressures, but to many forms of socio-economic amelioration. Human welfare is a dominant concern of government—and the conviction that laissez faire ought to widely prevail as a foundation of social policy is scarcely a conservative attitude. The origins of the anti-state predilections of some current “conservatives” arise not from historical conservatism but from deeply held old-style liberal orientations. It is true enough that a genuine conservatism recognizes the importance and validity of local authority, the significance of the “little platoon” and dislikes the arrogance of distant bureaucracies riding roughshod over regional needs and customs, but, at the same time, conservatism also sees the action of the state, over all, as vital in many areas of social remedy. Indeed, the conservative attitude, a decidedly anti-doctrinaire one, has always been prone to decide, usually on an issue-by-issue basis, what forms of social action are best undertaken by local or regional or even private discretion and those necessarily left to the initiatives of the state. No static formula can be devised to cope with these exigencies.
It seems to be bizarre that much conservative sentiment in America now seems disposed to extol the present conditions of American life. Do such sentiments merely hope to support a political administration widely seen as being conservative, to preserve the political gains of recent years by the Right? I am afraid that I see much social anguish in America that goes substantially untreated and the veneer of prosperity obscures both want and deprivation and a quite unsettling alienation from a sense of social membership and loyalty. Nearly a century and a half ago, Disraeli warned of the creation of the “two nations,” a British national community divided by both economic and cultural disparities. His alarm would be quickened, I think, by events in America where the vision of the “two Americas” looms ever more palpable. The dangers here are obvious, matters of equity aside. I think that contemporary conservatives run a grave risk, in defying the evidence of history: if one wishes to preserve privilege, one dare not, out of avarice or insensitivity, widen the gulf between the privileged and the under-privileged to the point where the latter have no apparent redress other than direct and unstabilizing political action. I am startled, for example, by the delight of some “conservatives” over the recent weakening of the power of the trade unions. Conceding the need to keep the ambitions of unions in reasonable balance, as with all avowed interest groups, American trade unionism has been, on the whole, both moderate and stabilizing in its influence. One would not wish to see it crippled—if only for the reason that its demise as an effective element in labor-management relations would be replaced by ex tempore radicalisms far more hostile and even conceivably injurious to the social peace.
But “conservatism” seems on the wrong side of this and certain other issues. Is it out of a horror for “creeping socialism”? Ordinarily, conservatives have not been so intimidated by labels: “pure” capitalism has long been as extinct as the passenger pigeon and real conservatives have never automatically genuflected at the altar of Adam Smith and his latter-day colleagues, anyway. Communal life is not some Hobbesian jungle where, so often, it is the cunning rather than the circumspect who prosper. America is fast becoming a brittle, harsh, aggressive, rude culture in which both social loyalty and compassion are sacrificed to rampant subjective appetites, a carpe diem compulsion toward spurious gratification. We need, simply, to become gentler, more civil, more reflective, less contentious.
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Egalitarians All?
From a historical perspective, legitimate conservative social thought has included within itself a substantial rejection of the egalitarian suppositions of democracy or has supplanted the more expansive interpretations of the meaning of human equality by restrictive definitions, some of which were and are finally compatible with democracy if it is not narrowly postulated. Today, however, the problem of egalitarianism constitutes a kind of contemporary conservative scandal. The contracting limits of respectable social dispute in America have effectively repressed the more overt critiques of democratic egalitarianism; such ideas fall outside the pale of legitimacy, castigated as being alien and sinister.
What is scandalous about the conservative predicament in this area of thought is twofold: its willingness to accede to the exclusion from legitimacy of what, for convenience, we might term forthright anti-egalitarian points of view and, second, its acceptance of the proposition that the only viable check upon egalitarianism consists of protecting individual rights to “upward mobility”—to adopt, in sum, the view of society as some arena of contest in which all, starting even, produce on the basis of their exertions a graduated social order based necessarily on shifting conceptions of individual achievement. This latter point of view, I would argue, is both anti-conservative and acutely unsound as social prescription.
Let me begin to analyze this condition by asserting that since Plato all conservatives have been united in being anti-democratic if democracy is construed to mean rule by the weight of sheer numbers—or equality, however defined, seen as precluding any qualitative factors in the distribution of social authority.
Human equality can be variously envisioned, either as an inherent condition (of varying descriptions) or as a procedural supposition (all men ought to be treated equally whatever their inherent natures may be). Conservatives have never categorically rejected either of these propositions. The difficulty arises from more precise definitions of these premises. That all men are equal as “children of God,” by virtue of possessing immortal souls, was entirely acknowledged in an era when feudalism, a rigid social hierarchy, flourished. Similarly, “equal treatment” lends itself to multifold interpretation. Does “equal treatment” in terms of, say, voting rights imply equal treatment in the distribution of a host of social honors and material rewards?
What troubles the genuine conservative about equality is that the idea, the principle of equality, is so easily reified into a social theory wherein necessary conceptions of both social ranking and the distribution of labor become irrationally impaired and that the notion of standards of objective judgment, needed for a wise social guidance, is swept away in the flood of some total reliance on quantifying individual interests and appetitions. Does the acceptance of human equality, in various forms, inevitably imply a corresponding equality of desires and interests?
Let us not be coy: the conservative, in the past, has placed intellectual roadblocks in the path of amplified visions of human equality and has, in corresponding fashion, supported the idea of the stratified society as being an inexorable feature of social organization. But why he has done so deserves a fair hearing. Empirically, the conservative has been struck by evident disparities in human capacity that coexist with certain fundamental common, universal and thus equal facets of human nature, essentially those relating to men as spiritual and moral beings. The problem for the conservative has been to carefully decide, in socio-political terms, in what areas of social responsibility and action these disparities deserve recognition to insure the communal welfare, believing that equality, however defined as an abstraction, extends no mandate in itself for arbitrary enforcements of either equal status or equal obligation. And since social life seems inevitably to feature stratification of some variety, it is necessary to frame wise and humane conceptions of social hierarchy. Certainly the conservative does not believe in leaving such hierarchical arrangement to chance, to the “survival of the fittest,” because suppositions about what is merit or power do not always, of themselves, obey strictures either reasonable, just or compassionate.
It is hard for me to imagine, then, a conservative view of egalitarianism that does not, in truth, oppose what is currently construed to be dominant interpretations of equality, either emerging in social theory as the comprehensive enforcement of social leveling, resting upon the “social engineering” of the Left, or the Social Darwinism of the Right that disingenuously parades under the banner of “freedom of opportunity.” The conservative is not so doctrinaire as to yearn for some model social order based on Platonic principles, but he seldom departs from a central Platonic idea: the necessity for social direction by a limited number of the wise and sober-minded who undertake such leadership on the basis of obligation and not personal reward. I do not understand why many conservatives shy so nervously away from the idea of social obligation on the part of the intellectually-endowed and the morally circumspect—from a vital paternalism, indeed—and are reluctant, on the other hand, to invoke traditional conservative reservations about egregious egalitarianism. Have they succumbed to the concept of freedom as being nothing more than unfettered choice instead of asserting that freedom involves the necessity for the discharge of duty and reciprocity of responsibility? To do this is to make of the community a cockpit for the shrewd and the avaricious at best and, at worst, the venue of periodic spasms of moral anarchy.
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Defending Nature
If there is any one motif in the history of conservatism that is vividly apparent, unequivocal and simple to divine, it is a defense of the natural environment, especially the countryside, on grounds both practical, aesthetic and spiritual. It is therefore a matter of amazement to find the greater proportion, by far, of contemporary American conservatives enlisting in the ranks of the enemies of natural conservation. How much current “conservative” literature denigrates, condemns and ridicules the so-called environmentalists?
How can this be? How, indeed, can the preservation of the natural environment from protection against the despoilment of water, air and forests to the retention of primal sanctuaries, be construed as the hair-brained escapades of “radicals”? How can real conservatives make common cause with commercial greed, reckless exploitation and aesthetic vulgarity, defending callous “developers” and rapacious entrepreneurs?
I have striven to find an explanation for this exceptional volte-face and there are some hypotheses that might prove reliable. The first is to repeat that many conservatives are really nineteenth-century liberals under new labels and nothing in the history of this liberalism displays much affection for the realm of nature as a subject for conservation.
But one cannot stop there. Some conservative writers who are not ostensibly liberals show a decided lack of sympathy for conservation. No doubt this is in part the price of being “urbanized,” since, historically, at least, conservatism has possessed a strong vein of agrarianism in its makeup. When J. S. Mill issued his well-known gibe that the Tories were the “stupid party,” he might well have simply said the “country party,” assuming, as many did in his era, that the rural population was dull and provincial. Despite the enthusiasms of early American agrarians, such as Jefferson and Cooper, there has been in the American narrative a striking ambivalence toward the rural elements of the population. They have been seen as the “salt of the earth,” but there has also been the general belief that rural folk were simpleminded and backward. Indeed, despite American reverence for the quasi-mythic phenomenon of the “frontier,” this frontier experience has been seriously misunderstood, particularly in regard to the common belief that the “frontiersmen” were invariably uneducated, even illiterate proletarians. Such was hardly the case. Even now, the inherent conservatism of people who live on the land is misunderstood and unappreciated.
The history of conservative thought is much influenced by both spiritual and aesthetic sensitivities pertaining to the natural order, what we now are apt to call the “environment,” as well as a suspicion and an anxiety concerning the fuller implications of what we currently call the “Urban-Industrial Age.” Indeed, it would have been assumed in the last century that conservatism would be arrayed on the side of the conservation of nature and the protection, too, of rural interests.
But that was before the rise of “dollar conservatism,” its bald identification with entrepreneurialism and the post-Industrial Revolution juggernaut. Mammon has replaced Apollo in the conservative pantheon.
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The Revenge of the Philistines
Philistinism is an ugly word to convey an equally disagreeable idea: a coarse, ill-informed and unsympathetic attitude toward art, a preference for the crude and banal over the exquisite and noble. National tastes are hardly inconsequential concerns and the creative thrust of a culture is a pivotal factor that is frequently revealed by gradations of taste. The social role of art in America—literature, painting, sculpture, music, dance—has been equivocal I think it is fair to say, ranging from the idea of art as a pleasant, if not imperative, social adornment to a view more customary in Western civilization that art, especially literature, is a powerful and irreplaceable element in a culture’s moral and spiritual well-being. In more specific terms, it has been widely concluded that “serious” literature substantially shapes, if not deliberately so, a society’s ethical directions, its base assumptions of the nature of good and evil.
I will not, here, make an assessment of the state of the arts in America, except to register what is, to me, a disquieting impression. Despite the considerable activity in promoting artistic ventures, principally in the so-called “performing” arts, there seems to me to be a distinct paucity of major creative talents in all the arts, writers of significant literary power and influence, world-ranked poets, celebrated painters and sculptors, important composers. There are a few, but only a corporal’s guard. There is a shrinking audience for art, in all forms, of the more sophisticated types and far less opportunity for fledgling artistic talent to mature by the process of public exhibition. This all transpires while an emphasis on public entertainment grows, much of it shallow, some of it repulsive. I am inclined to think that the immense impact of popular entertainment may be mitigating the quality of more serious art in terms of both public tastes and the disinclination of creatively-minded people to devote their energies to socially important areas of artistic activity. There are, to use Paul Fussell’s phrase, some strong indications of a “prole drift,” the shifting of public tastes downward on some scale of artistic excellence toward the habits and preferences of the urban proletariat.
Both a vigorous identification with, and a concern for, the health of the arts has marked past conservative thought. The status of art has ranked high on conservatism’s compendium of cultural indicators. As a matter of fact, in retrospect, a number of conservatism’s critics have contended that the state of the arts and public tastes have dominated, controlled, conservative attitudes toward social change and progress, that conservatism is, at base, an aesthetic persuasion. Perhaps. In any event, it would be unique, historically, to observe the arts not intensely discussed and defended in conservative literature. That literature would be, in spirit if not in explicit particulars, reminiscent of, say, the views of Arnold and Ruskin. Matthew Arnold, in Culture and Anarchy, offers an indictment of the philistinism rife in Victorian Britain that prophetically speaks to our own smug and self-adulatory culture.
As in the case of environmental protection, a good deal of “conservative” opinion is indifferent to the state of the arts in America. Has it adopted the view that art is merely an aspect of the “genteel tradition,” a social adornment?
I live near Phoenix in Arizona, which boasts a struggling symphony orchestra of moderate quality. Support for that orchestra, publicly and forthrightly, has been based on the following rather chilling rationale: commercial and industrial development of the city might be impaired if the municipality did not possess a symphony orchestra, because new business firms, corporations, would not locate in Phoenix unless its amenities included such a musical organization. If one wants a kind of nutshell vignette of philistinism, here it is. Sinclair Lewis’s imagination could do no better.
I am of mixed mind regarding governmental support for the arts in America, although such is an established practice in Europe. On the other hand, I think art deserves governmental support and I am wholly untroubled by the objection that money from taxpayers who only like Bruce Springsteen and Playboy centerfolds would be used to aid serious art. My reservations arise from the American socio-political climate wherein it might be reliably anticipated that governmental support for the arts would amount to governmental influence over them, such influence predictably philistine.
There seems, though, a tacit assumption among some contemporary conservatives that art ought to take its chances, so to speak, in the “marketplace.” I once was present when a Nobel Prize-winning American economist made that explicit argument—and he is generally labeled by the press as being a “conservative”!
Though the Reagan government merits good marks in some areas of policy-making, I must concede that this administration seems to exude a decidedly philistinistic aura. The dramatis personae of that government appear to be a good deal more at home with Frank Sinatra that Placido Domingo; a kind of Norman Rockwell ambiance surrounds them. This is neither here nor there—recent governments of all stripes have not exhibited cultivated tastes—except that if, as many conservatives assert, the Reagan years are a reliable vision of conservatism in power, then I see little intense empathy with or sympathy for the plight of the arts in America. And “plight” is not a hyberbolic term if reference is made to art functioning as a lively element in the formation of the public mind.
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The Rise of Social Dogmatism
We come now to the paramount issue: has “conservatism” in fact joined the coalition that now promotes the establishment in America of a disquieting penchant for social dogmatism? Have conservatives, the arch-critics of such dogmatism, merged, consciously or unconsciously, with that body of opinion now vaguely alluded to as being “mainstream?”
That over-used term “mainstream” demands some explication. Properly understood, its meaning ought to be divided between two quite different spheres, the philosophical and the doctrinal. By “philosophical” I do not refer to explicit philosophical schools of opinion, but rather to the depth and breadth of issues entertained, matters of fundamental allocations of truth and value. Viewed from the historical vantage point, conservatism has not only been in this philosophical “mainstream,” but has encouraged social thought in general to be cognizant of its philosophical foundations.
The “doctrinal” mainstream is something else again and, since the Jacksonian Revolution, I believe that it is accurate to say that conservative thought has seldom fallen within this central current. “Doctrine” I take to mean, here, the realm of explicit social theory and policy. If conservatism has espoused values and concerns very dominant in the cultural ethos of this country at the philosophical level, it has been a minor, if yet important, segment of doctrinal opinion. In defending what it felt were “first-order” principles, conservatism’s interpretation of them fell into bodies of social theory generally opposed to the main drift of American social evolution. The justification for the labors of conservatives, self-acknowledged, has been threefold: keeping alive the “first-order” questions, offering alternatives that have favorably reshaped the history of American ideas from time to time and inhibiting social excesses. These are not inconsiderable attainments.
But it is now possible that contemporary conservatism has slipped into the doctrinal mainstream—and is participating, willy-nilly, in the discomfiting offspring of that centrist flow: social dogmatism.
Let me suggest a few reasons, evidences, of why this may be so. One of the major (and often legitimate) complaints of earlier conservatives was an exclusion from the main channels of communication in America—those held, many believed, by a monolithic liberal monopoly. Indeed, frequently ingeniously and stubbornly, conservatives established their own channels of public discourse, journals, publishing houses, academic foundations. It is difficult to ascertain the overall effect of these organs on the body politic, but I am inclined to think that the results were marginal. By and large, I would add, the access to these conduits of communication were more or less free to all shades of conservative opinion and the spectrum of opinion among conservatives was quite considerable. There were tensions, of course, principally among “traditionalists” and “fusionists” and, certainly with out-and-out “libertarians.” In the 1970s, this conservative continuum was enhanced by a body of “converts,” some of them moderate liberals who shifted ground within a kind of centrist political axis, sometimes called “neoconservatives.” This was the era too, of course, of a displacement to the Right of major voting constituencies, leading ultimately, after the Carter interregnum, to the Reagan Presidency. I shall not analyze that event here, but I do wish to point out that its coming brought with it a decided politicization of conservative opinion. I will argue, momentarily, that during this period “conservatism” tended to become decidedly issue-oriented and eased away from more customary philosophical preoccupations.
But the process to which I should like to refer is a two-sided one: first, the growing access of conservative opinions to the general media and, second, a sharp tendency of some important conservatives to do precisely what the older conservatives had so long belabored the liberals for: doctrinal restrictions within the ostensibly conservative organs of communication.
Both of these eventualities seemed to accustom conservatives to the acceptance of some quasi-authoritative body of doctrines, to see in those doctrines positions that were “respectable” and “not respectable,” shifting all the while away from what I might dare call “Tory radicalism” toward consensus politics in which, as it proved, the “conservative renaissance” of the Reagan Presidency did not in any fashion depart as drastically as many had assumed from the continuity of national policy, save, perhaps, in the region of fiscal and economic affairs, the vigorous attempts to reinstitute a more animated entrepreneurialism. And what came to be thought of as “conservatism” was more and more associated with specific issues, especially economic ones. There emerged no comprehensive social agenda in systematic or philosophical form.
Certainly the nature of American politics is such that dramatic shifts of policy, partisan exaggerations aside, are rare and perhaps generally inoperative and it is also true that conservatism itself has shown a dislike for ideological rigidity and the “issue by issue” orientation has been habitually honored and so certain accommodations were both inevitable and reasonable. But the drift from foundational philosophical moorings—even, for that matter, a drift from philosophical questions—indicated more than mere accommodation. It represented, in fact, a historical metamorphosis of some significance vis-à-vis the conservative posture.
Quite aside from pervasively liberal leanings, many contemporary conservatives appeared to heartily enjoy both respectability and being what they once announced liberals to be: magnates of considerable popular influence in national affairs. That was a decided contrast, may I suggest, from those lean years, conservatives as members of embattled minorities on college faculties, not-too-widely-read social critics, impoverished literatteurs, in short, criers in the wilderness, unappreciated Jeremiahs. People began to keep National Review on their coffee tables without feeling the need for discreet explanation, while the magazine became, itself, more voguish in tone. The tragic shadow that hung over conservatism was dissipating, replaced by robust optimisms, “positive thinking” and what Irving Babbitt once called “humanitarian hustling.”
All this conversion might well be ascribed, if one had an inclination toward conspiratorial theory, to some coup de théâtre by the old enemies of conservatism, if minions of the Left had ever before displayed such deftness, such skill at intellectual intrigue. As it was, much conservative opinion found a comfortable haven under the umbrella of consensus, in the doctrinal mainstream, declaring that America’s problem was one of “freeing up its creative energies,” recalling the vigor of the Industrial Revolution.
But what “conservatism” had joined has proven to be more than a “consensus” of the middle, rather something more elusive, although its outlines are becoming more readily apparent virtually by the day: the emergence of a prevailing social dogma and one that is not “middle of the road” in the customary sense but philosophically more extreme—as the “middle” has somewhat stealthily slipped toward the fuller manifestations of the “revolt of the masses.”
I have referred to this compendium of the doctrinal beliefs as “dogma” because it constitutes a collection of suppositions about which dispute or dissent are not viewed as being a legitimate area of activity. It may be only coincidental, if it is surely paradoxical, that as pluralism in various forms rapidly expands, even jeopardizing some essential social unities, beneath this pluralistic phenomenon grows a half-articulated groping for ideological certitudes.
There are many evidences of the existence of a social dogma in America, most of such indications relating to the limitations upon access to the channels of communication and upon intellectual inquiry and dispute. Some social propositions become sanctified. I cannot explore the entire corpus of this assemblage of dogmatic propositions in this essay and, indeed, it is hardly yet contained in some official manifesto, its specific tenets being matters of analysis and refinement of definition. But I shall cite one proposition that has become dogmatized as an illustration: “one man, one vote.” That proposition means, in essence, that in calculating what is constituted by the majority will or opinion no other factors will be allowed to be taken into account but a quantification based upon nothing other than a physical presence, a body, literate or otherwise. The issue that confronts the American society may not be the principle but its application. In what circumstances, quite beyond the formal franchise, of course, should this dictum of “one man, one vote” apply? No doubt this majoritarian principle, that of the sovereignty of sheer undifferentiated numbers, collides in the social process with some conceptions of the prerogatives implied by the term “individual rights.” How to make Locke and Bentham pull in harness, particularly in view of the difficulty of establishing a thoroughly convincing grounding of such “rights” save in a customary social evolution?
This is solved in American social dogmatism by making the catalogue of dogmatic propositions prior and superior to, finally, any specific enumeration of individual rights. Take Locke’s famed trio of “natural rights,” i.e., “life, liberty and property (or estate).” The operative contemporary definitions of those rights are framed by dogma, thus what is really individual liberty is a freedom whose explicit nature is shaped by a plethora of other social presumptions, preeminently moral judgments. The rights of property are circumscribed by a concept of use that comports to dogmatic propositions. So not only is the dogma sacrosanct, but so is the implicit principle of divining individual liberty, in a broad sense, by the dogmatic test in contrast to other alternative means of definition. Thus, in a perhaps curious way, minority anxieties about “majority tyranny” should not be allayed, except to the degree that some erstwhile minorities have participated in the creation of the character of the dogma that transiently appears in their immediate interests.
I am tempted to continue this discussion of social dogmatics, but my purpose is to consider the conservative predicament. And the predicament may be well-expressed by noting how much conservative opinion is drawn into controversy over what I would designate as “surrogate issues.” That phenomenon can be explained by asserting what appears an obvious fact: as the root causes of social discontent and aberration can no longer be openly discussed, as being inherently “heretical” to the dogma, the national discourse regarding social policy becomes conducted as on the basis of “substitue” or “surrogate” issues less directly provocative. As conservatism became more “issue-oriented,” as previously noted, it also became more involved with the colloquy over surrogate issues—recognizing thereby, if only in terms of vague intimations, the potency of the superinforming dogma.
But the task of conservatism remains both clear and, within the American narrative, historically consistent: it must reject the very idea of a social dogma and dismiss those portions of any materialized dogma that it finds rationally and ethically wanting. Conservatism must not be content to treat with surrogates, but take head-on the underlying causes of social discontent and political folly. It must not be afraid to be out of the mainstream as presently constituted, being hardly alien to the deeper and still insistent aspirations of the American mind. Conservatism is not exotic to the tradition of American social values, even now, unless, of course, figures like Adams, Morris, Ames, Hawthorne, Brownson, Calhoun, Melville and T. Roosevelt are presently eccentric to it.
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To accomplish the conservative task frankly involves the acceptance, once again, of the critic’s posture, the rejection of notions about direct political influences and manipulations. The mission is to pose vital alternatives, to be the good physician ministering, if only intellectually, to the body politic, proving social loyalty not by yea-saying amid the winds of doctrine, but courageously keeping a long faith in the indispensability of human reason.
