My political journey in recent years has been a steady movement from Burkean conservatism (with a considerable dash of Catholic neoconservatism learned from Michael Novak) towards what in Europe would be called Christian Democracy.[1] This movement culminated in my switch of party affiliation from Republican to American Solidarity. Nonetheless, I remain a small "c" conservative in many ways and offer these preliminary thoughts on reforming American conservatism.
The term conservative has become an umbrella that includes Burkean conservatives, warmongering Neo-conservatives, libertarians, paleoconservatives, paleolibertarians, nationalist populists, nativists, and white supremacists.
The assault on the Capitol by Trump's insurrectionists requires that conservatives recapture the meaning of the word and, in so doing, to reject and expel those who think violence and racism are conservative principles.
I learned about conservatism from the works of Russell Kirk. Some of those principles seem especially pertinent to today's concerns:
Liberals and radicals, the conservative says, are imprudent: for they dash at their objectives without giving much heed to the risk of new abuses worse than the evils they hope to sweep away. As John Randolph of Roanoke put it, Providence moves slowly, but the devil always hurries. Human society being complex, remedies cannot be simple if they are to be efficacious. The conservative declares that he acts only after sufficient reflection, having weighed the consequences. Sudden and slashing reforms are as perilous as sudden and slashing surgery.
Or, one might add, sudden and slashing riots.
Constitutional restrictions, political checks and balances, adequate enforcement of the laws, the old intricate web of restraints upon will and appetite—these the conservative approves as instruments of freedom and order. A just government maintains a healthy tension between the claims of authority and the claims of liberty.
Or, as Edmund Burke said:
The only liberty that is valuable is a liberty connected with order; that not only exists along with order and virtue, but which cannot exist at all without them. It inheres in good and steady government, as in its substance and vital principle.
Obviously, what we saw at the Capitol was neither liberty nor order, but rather the breakdown of the social norms and morals that underlie an ordered society. As Kirk wrote:
We couple the words “law and order”, and indeed they are related, yet they are not identical. Laws arise out of a social order; they are the general rules which make possible the tolerable functioning of an order. Never the less, an order is bigger than its laws, and many aspects of any social order are determined by beliefs and customs, rather than being governed by positive laws.
This word ‘order’ means a systematic and harmonious arrangement — whether in one’s own character or in the commonwealth. Also ‘order’ signifies the performance of certain duties and the enjoyment of certain rights in a community.
Social disorder follows from internal disorder:
Order is the first need of the soul. It is not possible to love what one ought to love, unless we recognize some principles of order by which to govern ourselves. Order is the first need of the commonwealth. It is not possible for us to live in peace with one another, unless we recognize some principle of order by which to do justice.
As a first item of business, a truly conservative party must reject those who are unable to govern themselves and unable to live in peace with each other.
Some of us hoped that Donald Trump might lead a movement that would address the divide between what Joel Kotkin calls the Yeomanry and the Oligarchs and their acolytes in the Clerisy. Mea culpa. Sadly, what Trumpism seems to have confirmed is that right of center American populism is inextricably bound up with toxic nationalism, nativism, and racism.
I realize that it is rather naive of me to hope that the mix of Catholic social thought and Christian Democracy embodied by American Solidarity will come to power anytime soon. But I firmly believe that it is the best hope of the Yeomanry.
Recommended reading:
[1] There was an interesting article in the December 19, 2020, issue of The Economist on the differences between UK Conservatives and German Christian Democrats:
These two philosophies have much in common. They both sit on the centre-right as natural parties of government, with reputations for fiscal prudence. Their ideologies are mushy. Each abhors big thinkers: there is no equivalent of Marx or Mill when it comes to either outlook. Pragmatism is a point of pride for both; generally, keeping lefties out of power—or at least constrained—is enough of a purpose. . . .
. . In the Christian Democratic worldview, power should be diffuse, spread across local, regional and national levels.
In other words, Christian Democracy is premised on subsidiarity.
