I thank the author for this article.

I would ask responders: Do we really have something called “Conservatism” in Amaerica?  Have we ever? Is the idea and movement as foreign to Americans as European Christian democracy?

To define terms:  “Liberal” and “conservative” have become almost meaningless terms, or meaning now the exact opposite of what they once meant.  Chateaubriand coined the word; his movement ought to own it.  For clarity’s sake, I mean by “conservatism” what Europeans mean by it:  the Counter-Revolutionary movement of Möser, Burke, De Maistre, in its Storm and Stress version in Chateaubriand, and in its more Romantic conception, Adam Müller. Karl Mannheim’s great essay on Conservatism is a good summary.  I’ll call it “Real Conservatism”

Ironically, “America” also needs defining.  America was founded in 1861 by Lincoln and his fellow Hamiltonian Whigs, and has not really changed.  Granted, there were two prior foundings.  The First, complete by the early 18th C, was the founding by 4 immigrant groups from England: The VA Cavaliers, the New England Puritans, the Delaware Valley Quakers and their German Anabaptists and Pietist allies, and The Borderer-Backcountry people.  The first of these four we indeed Stuart Conservatives, but by 1776 they were Whigs.  The second two were religious foundings.  The last was proto-Jeffersonian.

The 2nd founding was 1775-1800.  At the end of this founding, Hamiltonianism was defeated, and Jeffersonianism triumphant.  Randolph and Calhoun were Jeffersonians. Clay struggled to keep Hamiltonianism alive.

At the 3rd and final founding, The Hamiltonian-Clay partisan Lincoln completely distorted the 2nd founding. The Declaration’s central concept is NOT equality.  The Constitution makes the Federal govenment only the agent of the STATES, and the States gave it ONLY 18 things to do.  Lincoln made all this a dead letter.  The 10th Amendment is a dead letter, if not the whole Constitution.

Not to return my thesis in the first paragraph:  We have 3 main political traditions in America, none of them Conservative.

1. Jeffersonianism.  The Jeffersonian Party was defeated for good in 1861, and was destroyed by Wilson.  It survives only in the various strands of Libertarianism. Ron Paul is trying to keep it alive.

2. The Whigs in the Federalist, Whig, and Republican Parties, currently embodied in the “Neoconservative” movement (which is Whig not Conservative).  This movement believes in 4 things:

i. Total centralization in a vast nation-state, the states only franchises of the central government.

ii. Federal control of the currency and banking

iii. corporate welfare

iv. Imperial expansion

3. Socialism, begun by Wilson, and finally implemented by his two undersecretaries: Hoover and Hoover On Wheels (FDR).

The only Counter-Revolutionary Real Conservative in American History is Eliot. He got most of ideas from Maurras and the Caroline Divines.  And Eliot left America.  Kirk was not defending a American tradition.  He was trying to bring something into being.  Pragmatism, I would submit if a facade that the 3 movements supra try to use to make reasonable their ideologies. True, Burke and the counter-Revolutionaries were against ideology (another almost meaningless word.  Burke used “armed doctrine").  Still there movement, and Kirks is an ideology by the European meaning of the word.

Kirk was the first serious student of Burke in American intellectual history.  He seems to have known nothing of the Continental Counter-Revolutionaries. He also, though Catholic, seems unaware of Rerum Novarum, Catholic Social teaching, and the Zentrum-Christian Democrataic movement (which isn’t conservative either). 

I invite comments.

Mr. Cundiff, what do your remarks have to do with Mr. Purcell’s enlightening and provocative essay?  “I invite comments”?  It’s just plain rude to hijack the comments thread on someone else’s piece to pursue your own obsessions.  The only things that you did discuss about Kirk you got wrong.  He was well acquainted with both Catholic social teaching and the continental counterrevolutionaries.  His own work on economics fits quite well into the mainstream of Catholic social teaching.

Mr. Cundiff, if you’d like to expound at length on your pet theories, I suggest that you pitch an ARTICLE to the proprietor of this site (or another one, or a magazine), and leave the comments section of other people’s articles for intelligent discussion of those articles.

Having an article published under your own name would have the added benefit of opening up a comment section on your article, where you could debate your own thoughts with all of the attention that they deserve.

“though it must be admitted that traditional moral principles regarding war and peace and race relations were honored more consistently by many New Agers than by some of the “silent majority.”

Huh? The “silent majority” objected to being victims of black crime and to the government telling them who they can and can’t go to school with. They were perfectly correct. As was Kirk who defended apartheid in South Africa and dismissed Brown v. Board as “folly.”

Here is a good article on the subject of conservatives and race. Here is the money quote about Kirk (who, of course was 100% correct about SA):
http://www.amren.com/009issue/009issue.html

“In the March 9, 1965, issue [of National Review] Russell Kirk decried court-enforced black voting rights as “theoretical folly” that the US would nevertheless survive, but declared prophetically that the same dogma in South Africa, “if applied, would bring anarchy and the collapse of civilization.” For Kirk, civilization required apartheid: “In a time of virulent ‘African nationalism,’ . . . how is South Africa’s ‘European’ population . . . to keep the peace and preserve a prosperity unique in the Dark Continent?” White rule, he answered, is a prudent way, “to govern tolerably a society composed of several races, among which only a minority is civilized.” He called for humane treatment of South African blacks but dismissed their leaders as “witch doctors” and “reckless demagogues.” He wrote frankly about the “ ‘European’ element which makes South Africa the only modern and prosperous African country.”

I take it that Sid has already read my book, which
seems to be selling well. In his comment, he has
summed up my second chapter, about the artificiality
of the American conservative tradition, particularly
in its post-World War Two phase. I thought I was
revisiting my own prose when I began to look at his
response. Because of his feudal, manorial context,
Calhoun was the true conservative. Although Kirk
was a magnificent stylist who articulated Burkean
insights, he was an anachronism, who attached
himself to the anti-Communist journalists grouped
around WFB. By the way, T.S. Eliot warned against
this unhappy association--and he was correct to do so.

Paul is, of course, correct, though the problem isn’t simply the artificiality of a particular attempt to create an American conservative tradition; it’s the artificiality of all such attempts. In my own view, Kirk was aware of this--thus, his emphasis on imagination, because only through the building up of a proper imagination could we move beyond such artificiality.

A related problem, however, lies in deciding what direction that imagination will take us.  Kirk and John Lukacs, for instance (each in his own way), are Anglophiles, while Paul’s sympathies lie more fully with the Continental thinkers.  (Despite my admiration for both Kirk and Lukacs, my own lack of ethnic attachment to the British Isles puts me somewhere in between.)

Kirk’s conservative imagination was unabashedly British.  That doesn’t mean, as Sid suggests, that he was unaware of Continental thinkers; it simply means that he was more at home in the British Isles, and the conservative tradition he was trying to give life to draws its force from their.

All that said, I have to agree with Patrick Royson: What does this have to do with Frank Purcell’s article?  As someone with an interest in C.S. Peirce myself (and someone who has noted the same affinities with Kirk), I’m disappointed that the comments thread never had the chance to examine the article.

Sorry--the end of the penultimate paragraph in my comment should read “draws its force from their peculiar traditions.”

I have limited time at present, but a few thoughts. I am less pessimistic than some that there is an American conservative tradition upon which to call. However, and some will not like this, the American conservative tradition by necessity of historical demographic fact has to be Protestant. Any attempt to create a Catholic based conservatism is inherently going to be artificial outside certain communities or regions.

Also, for sheer historical demographic reasons as well, an American conservatism is going to be more British (including Celtic) than Continental.

Conservative traditions are naturally conserved/preserved and not created. But once you get so far down the line, I don’t think there is anything wrong with attempting to recreate one. This is what I think Kirk was attempting. I would clearly be very difficult/impossible to create a conservative tradition where one never existed. (It would be natural if there existed a conservative impulse.)

I am just not as skeptical as Dr. Gottfried and others that one never really existed. Is that the essence of your argument?

Red, there’s a problem with relying on demographics--namely, that there is no Protestant America.  There are different Protestant strains in different parts of America, and the various Yankee forms of Protestantism aren’t conservative.

Meanwhile, some of the dominant strains of Southern Protestantism have more in common culturally with Roman Catholicism, despite our doctrinal disagreements.  And we should never forget that there are significant Catholic communities and regions in the South.

Kirk’s own spiritual progress indicates some of this.  I don’t mean to suggest that there was anything incomplete about his conversion to Catholicism when I say that, in one sense, where else was a Northern conservative to go?

I don’t mean to sound surly after Scott was nice
enough to concede some of my points but it seems to me that
that it may be hard hard to find an articulated
philosophical statement in Kirk, of the kind that I
find in Peirce
and Dr. Purcell. Kirk wrote in apodictic phrases and
literary metaphors; and I enjoyed sampling his prose.
But I never had the sense that he was doing more than
offering his opinions and those of his subjects. He
used the term “liberal” in a very vague way and then
tried to make it apply to a variety of ills that he
deplored. The comparison to Newman may be misleading;
Newman was far more systematic in his exposition
of theology and far more explicitly Catholic.I’m also
not sure that I perceive much unity in the
“conservative mind,” but that’s a subject for another
day.

Patrick Royson I thank for correcting me with respect to Kirk and Catholic Social Teaching.  I’d like to read Kirk on this and ask Royson to tell me where Kirk wrote about this.

Otherwise, it appears that Royson, in attaching me for being off-topic, does not seem to know what the topic is: Russell Kirk.  Kirk and his place in intellectual traditions is exactly what I addressed.  I might be wrong, but I am on-topic.

I thank Mr.Richert for suggesting that Kirk knew the Continentals.  As for me being off topic, I refer the honorable gentleman to my previous comment and in my first response my view of pragmatism and Kirk—also on-topic. To say it again with the typos corrected: “Pragmatism, I would submit is a facade that the 3 movements supra try to use to make reasonable their ideologies. True, Burke and the counter-Revolutionaries were against ideology (another almost meaningless word.  Burke used ‘armed doctrine’).  Still their movement, and Kirk’s is an ideology by the European meaning of the word.” Pray tell, Mr. Richert, how is the off-topic?

I must tell Paul Gottfried that I have not (yet) read his book, largely because I’m a bit short on do-re-mi.  Now I plan to beg and borrow to buy it.  I shall yield to his view of Calhoun, though I don’t see much of the feudal in the Disquisition. I shall re-read it and more Calhoun ASAP. AND I am particularly delighted that Paul Gottfried and I are again on the same wave length. I thank him. 

Red Phillips has responded with good ideas that are compelling.  I thank him and urge him to continue in the same manner.  Yes, my argument is that there really isn’t a conservative tradition in America, and that Kirk was trying to make one.

Mr. Richert’s reply to Red is is very good.  There are indeed different ProtestantismS in America.  I would ask whether after the First Great Awakening, the English Dissenter tradition and the Wesleyan tradition became the dominant one.  I know that among us Borderer Backcountry folk ("Scots-Irish), a split took place—beginning in Ulster—between “Subscriber” Presbyterian (subscribing to the Westminster Confession) and the “non-Subscribers” who stress “inner light”.  The former joined those Highlanders dwelling in the Cape Fear River valley and because today’s Presbyterian chuches. THe latter later became, in the American Backcountry, Particular Baptists, Methodists, and Free Will (General) Baptists.  I thank Mr. Richert.

Paul Gottfried’s 2nd comment shows him definitely to be in the Continental tradition.  When I lived in Germany, German Intellectuals would tell me how Continental they found Eliot and Ezra Pound, and how very English they found Chesterton and C.S. Lewis.  I suspect they politely found the latter two too whimsical.  Ditto Kirk.  Of course, one can mine some gold out of Kirk, Chesterton, and Lewis.  Thinkers like Eliot, Maritain, Max Scheler, Wojtyła, or Ratzinger don’t require a major mining operation.  The gold’s right there at hand. Mind you, I do like Kirk. I just wish he were more Continental.  Newman’s a good mixture of both.

Paul Gottfried writes: “it seems to me that that it may be hard hard to find an articulated philosophical statement in Kirk, of the kind that I find in Peirce and Dr. Purcell.”

There’s no know need for “it seems to me” or even “may be hard to find.” There is no articulated philosophical statement in Kirk.  But that same criticism has been leveled, often rightly, at most of the British conservative tradition.  In pointing out Kirk’s unabashed preference for that tradition, I, in fact, had this in mind.

Part of the reason that I fall between Kirk and Paul on these questions is that I do perceive a failure of Kirk on this point--or rather, the fact that Kirk himself was not enough.  On the other hand, as John Lukacs likes to say, we’re living in an age where it’s constantly necessary for us to restate the obvious.  And the modern (and particularly the American) imagination is so degraded that Kirk’s emphasis on the imagination (to the detriment of articulated philosophy) strikes me as far from the worst way to approach the problem.

Sid writes, “Mind you, I do like Kirk. I just wish he were more Continental.  Newman’s a good mixture of both.”

But then Kirk wouldn’t be Kirk.  And some of us who knew him would find that a rather melancholy prospect.

I need to proofread my comments.  Second para. should begin, “There’s no need . . .”

Sid, I don’t know what in particular (if anything) Kirk had in mind on the question of Catholic social teaching, but I know from my own conversations with him that he was conversant in the subject, had no disagreement with the Church at all, and I too find his writings on economic question (including his textbook on economics as well as various columns and speeches) to be completely consonant with Catholic social teaching.

Kirk despised the term “capitalism,” which he derided as a Marxist term, and his criticisms of libertarians included their trumpeting of the “creative destruction” wrought by capitalism.  He admired E.F. Schumacher, but his greatest influence in this area was Roepke, whose own work was completely consonant with Catholic social teaching.

Grr. More proofing after the fact.  First para. of my latest should read “Sid, I don’t know what in particular (if anything) Mr. Royson had in mind on the question of Kirk and Catholic social teaching, . . . .”

To be sure, RK was a man of letters, rather than a philosopher in the academic sense of the term.  But surely he loved wisdom as few do, and his views seem to me to have a massive (rather than a foolish) consistency.  There is a strong conviction of the authority of the permanent things, in a word (or two) natural law, and the method of moral imagination, Burke’s method, is that described by Newman and Peirce.  I know little like it in French or German thought.

By the way, I was not praising “civil rights” legislation, or legislation by judicial fiat, but commenting that I find in Kirk no trace of that systematic racial contempt which poisoned our souls to such a great extent .  In that he was the precursor of a younger generation.

Thank you Mr. Richert and Prof. Gottfried for giving
“Sidney” encouragement!  You have ony encouraged this
attention-starved person to post more! His postings
are ruining Chronicles website- and now this one.
Mr. Royson is correct- if “Sidney” wishes to push his
pet causes let him write his own article and have it
published online.  Then we could discuss it if we
thought it had merit- or ignore it as the randomly
gathered tid-bits and factoids of information strung
together in poorly formed sentences interspersed
with non-understandable “hip” jargon, put-downs
and non-sequiturs.
You are too good for this!!

Cundiff got it right in the kisser with one of his own homespun Moon Pies.  Congratulations, Mr. Royson.  And I can hear Cundiff, in a stuttering rage, discharging a fusillade of pedagogical epithets – q.v., supra, q.v., cf., supraqvcf….which see everything, whether above or below or peripheral or circumambient to all pedantic thoughts emanating from the center of my cognitive matrix.

Those with no argument use ad hominem.

Readers know who is appealing to their reason, and who to their emotions.

That Kirk liked Roepke means that he was indeed on the right track. This is the Kirk whom I don’t (yet) know.  Roepke’s influence on Erhard, and thus in turn on Germany’s _Wirtschaftwunder_, needs to be better known. After the 30 Years War, it took Middle Europe a century to recover economically and intellectually.  Thanks to Roepke and Erhard, after World War II the economic recovery, at least in the west, was complete in 15 years. Catholic Social Teaching works.

It is the Poe, the Cooper, the Emerson, the Thomas Mann, and the Lincoln whom the English reading public doesn’t know that needs more attention.  Now it seems that the same might be said about Kirk. Posterity might correct these omissions, as it is already doing to Dishonest Abe.

@Bernie

Thanks for the insight on Russell Kirk’s failure of
moral imagination.

Sadly, even the best of us have failures, so I take this
is the case.  The argument “blacks must not be allowed
to vote because they would choose things that we do
not like” reminds me of the Spanish Socialists who
voted against giving women the vote, because they were
afraid that they would be influenced by priests, and
vote against them.

Which means that his imagination was not very ethical
nor moral at that point.

I hope that he did better on other issues.

At the risk of becoming enmeshed with a tar baby,
(or worse- for as the admonition goes only a fool
argues with a fool):"Sidney" doth protest too much- it
is not so much an ad hominem attack as pointing out
there is not much to argue against= no real
coherent, logical, well contructed ideas to
analyse in his numeerous posts (here and elsewhere)
For one can only engage in rational discourse with a
rational being on the other side!
Doubts dear reader?- here is a gem recently written
by the aforementioned “Sidney”: (yes this is a direct
quote)
“Father Phil. A aging hippie stuck in the Woodstock
Music Festival’s mud. Doc Leary’s mushrooms on the
refectory menu. Space Cadet in the sacristy. Flower
child’s stained glass. I’m OK, your OK in the
commune’s confessional. LSD for wafer, pot for
circumcision. I got you, babe [for Midnight Mass].
California Dreamin’ [for the First Scrutiny].
Everybody’s surfing, surfing USA [for the Second].
The extraordinary form is not healthy for children
and other living things. Come on, baby, light my fire
[for the Easter Vigil]. TM for Spiritual Exercises.
Psychedelic for the Application of the Senses. If it
feels good, do it. Having a meaningful relationship.
Situation Ethics. Steal this book. God is dead. Far
out. Groovy, man. Filmore East. Blow my mind. I get
high with a little help from my friends. Strawberry
fields forever. I can’t get no satisfaction. Puff the
Magic Dragon finishes his novitiate.

Comment by Sid Cundiff”
‘Nuff Said.

I must object strongly to the attempt to enlist RK’s authority in support of extreme racialist ideology.  The failure of moral imagination is not his.  He did not advocate a race-based franchise in America, though he might have worried about the political intent and effect of the voter registration drives of the late 1960s.  He clearly did not support the apartheid system in SA — it is easy to imagine him allied with Smuts against Malan; but he was right to fear the attempt to impose liberal ideas of democracy on Africa, especially as it was then.

“I am less pessimistic than some that there is an American conservative tradition upon which to call.”

On rereading, that is confusing. What I mean is that I believe America does have a conservative tradition upon which to call.

The reason I brought up the Catholic issue is because, in my experience, many of the “America has no conservative tradition” folks are Catholics who think that America was corrupted/inherently liberal because of our Protestantism. So as they try to create a conservative tradition, they artificially want to impose a Catholicism on it that is not really organic. See my point? I certainly run into more Catholics who claim we lack a true conservative heritage than royalist who are still sore about the revolution.

Despite the many strains and the liberalization of the Mainline denominations, I do think America has a primarily Protestant ethos, for better or for worse (and it is some of both). Samuel Huntington would agree, and I believe Dr. Gottfried agrees as well. I think that has something to do with our embrace of capitalism, our veneration of “success,” and the Protestant work ethic, among other things.

I think that mainstream liberals (Trilling comes to mind), neocons, and some grumpy paleos all believe that America is inherently liberal. Ironically, it is other paleos, (many of them of the Southern variety), certain religious right types, and radical liberals (America was founded on the backs of blah, blah, blah ...) who think America was conservative.

Clearly there were liberal elements and a lot of liberal rhetoric, but the average man on the street and the actual society on the ground was not liberal. As Mark Henrie said when describing paleos/traditional conservative, it was a liberal conservatism.

Someone make the case that it was not.

I have some thoughts on Kirk and pragmatism that I will post later.

Re Steve

Readers will note that Steven has done nothing to establish the context and the co-text in which the material quoted from me was made. That context and co-text is necessary for understanding.  Readers thus know who is being honest, and who is being deceitful.

Readers of this blog are intelligent and can thus think in enthymemes and metaphors.  They thus have an imagination, literary and moral, and a brain. They also know what an enthymene is, or they know how to find out and have the curiosity to so find out.

“the average man on the street and the actual society on the ground was not liberal.”

Red has made an important observation, and I would only change the word-choice. If by “liberal” he means “socialist” or “Cultural Marxist” he is certainly correct.

On the other hand, The Great Satan (FDR) taught Americans to think that if they have a problem, the government (what Americans mean by “the state") can solve it. More often than not, it can’t.

For example. We’ve paid higher gas taxes and car taxes for the past 30 years, with the understanding that this money would be used to repair bridges, among transport needs.  It didn’t go there.  The politicians spent it on welfare, individual and corporate, to buy votes.  So now our bridges are falling down.

Sid, my man on the street remark was referring to 1776 +/- when the country was “founded.”

Adriana, you wrote: “The argument ‘blacks must not be allowed
to vote because they would choose things that we do
not like’ . . . “

Where do you find this in the passage that Bernie quoted?  Kirk opposed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and with good reason, because it was a tremendous violation of the federalist principle of the Constitution.  He did not oppose suffrage for blacks, which they had enjoyed for almost a century before this masterpiece of centralization was considered.

Red, you wrote that “Clearly there were liberal elements and a lot of liberal rhetoric, but the average man on the street and the actual society on the ground was not liberal.”

But that’s always true, in every society, throughout history.  Tradition, in and of itself, is conservative, and given the nature of man, very few of us can ever fully break the bonds of tradition.  Society, as a whole, never can.  The most conservative social orders in the 20th century may well have been Eastern European societies under communist rule.

None of that, however, goes to the point that I made about the lack of a single “Protestantism.” Instead, you simply fell back on the argument that I’d already questioned, when you wrote: “The reason I brought up the Catholic issue is because, in my experience, many of the ‘America has no conservative tradition’ folks are Catholics who think that America was corrupted/inherently liberal because of our Protestantism.”

There are numerous Protestantisms in America, and the ones that have been dominant throughout most of our history have been liberal.  Trying to construct an American conservative movement on the demographic fact that there are more Protestants in this country than there are Catholics, while ignoring the equally obvious fact that many of those Protestants are far from conservative, is a recipe for failure.

But beyond all that, if “our embrace of capitalism, our veneration of ‘success,’ and the Protestant work ethic” lies at the center of the American conservative tradition that you believe exists, then it’s not simply “liberal conservatism,” it’s liberalism.  The Continental counterrevolutionaries that Paul, among others, admires certainly wouldn’t call this conservatism.  (And, by the way, it’s not a mistake that the “Continental counterrevolutionary” tradition is often called the “Catholic counterrevolutionary” tradition.)

Just to clarify (in case it isn’t already clear), what I’m talking about is the difference between the inherent conservatism of traditional society and a “conservative movement.” The existence of a largely conservative society does not tell us anything about political conservatism in that society.  In fact, conservative political movements, and conservative political theory, arise at time of disruption of traditional society.

The whole Middle American Radicals (MARS) argument was founded on the traditional nature of society, and was an attempt to translate that into a political movement.  It failed, as Sam Francis admitted in the last years of his life.

“And, by the way, it’s not a mistake that the ‘Continental counterrevolutionary’ tradition is often called the ‘Catholic counterrevolutionary’ tradition.”

Mr. Richert is correct, for it is indeed called this. If it were also only true!  Burke wasn’t Catholic, though because of his support of Catholic Emancipation in Ireland and the French Church against the National Assembly’s “reforms”, some accused him of being Jacobite.  Of the Middle European Conservatives, I think only Friedrich von Gentz and the later Friedrich Schlegel were Catholics. I’ll check on this. In France they were indeed Catholics except the conservative extremist Maurras, who called himself “the Catholic atheist”. (I guess we can call Henry Adams and Bernard Berenson “the Marian atheists”, and Ruskin and the early Pound the “Gothic agnostics”.) Eliot, C. S. Lewis, and Charles Williams weren’t Catholics either. Does anyone know about Dorothy Sayers?  Roger Scruton has written with eloquence of why he didn’t take the Road to Rome. He’s in VA now.  Somebody send over Father C. John McCloskey for a chat over a cup of tea!

Of course one must distinguish between _Wertkonservatismus_ (conservatism of values) and the _Strukturkonservatismus_ (social order conservatism). One could make the same distinction in the libertarian positions.

Truth be told, except for loyalty to the concept of the Papal States, there is a tension between Real Conservatism and the Catholic Faith.  One wonders if De Maistre leans more than just a little to the heresy of Fideism, anathemized at Vatican I in 1970 and by The Anti-Modernist oath of Pope Pius X. Even the Syllabus of Errors isn’t quite Real Conservative (at least from my fallible memory; I’ll check on this too).  Catholics are more Thomist-Aristotelean than subscribers to Burkean prescription.  When Benedict XV put Maurras on the Index, and for good reason, Action Française’s large Catholic following fled in a rush, led by the Neo-Thomist Maritain.  Also, Christian Democracy of the Windthorst-Adenauer-Leo XIII version isn’t Real Conservatism. 

If the Magisterium is tense toward Real Conservatism, it is utterly hostile to Nationalism.  So too Neo-Thomism. cf. Maritain’s attack on “integral nationalism”.  And, of course, nationalism isn’t Real Conservatism either. 

As to Mr. Richert’s other post, I am curious, How would he have remedied Jim Crow laws with respect to voting rights?  Maybe he isn’t old enough or wasn’t in the right place to have witnessed these; I am. I too hold the federal principle; I hold other principles.

“Just to clarify (in case it isn’t already clear), what I’m talking about is the difference between the inherent conservatism of traditional society and a “conservative movement.”

This is a distinction close to the one I was attempting to make between value and social conservatism. I was typing my post when it was posted

Sid, if you can conceive of no other way to remedy violations of voting rights except through the destruction of the U.S. Constitution and the massive centralization of power, then I’m afraid you have a rather limited imagination.

Which of those European thinkers you listed in your second comment back would have thought that the violation of voting rights was of such fundamental importance that he would have violated his principles to end it?

Scott, I wasn’t suggesting that the Protestant work ethic, etc. was “conservative.” I was suggesting they reflect a dominant Protestant ethos. Those are some of the things Samuel Huntington points to. (I don’t have a problem with those things, particularly the work ethic, but I do think they can be taken to excess.)

Although I do think I am less hostile to capitalism than some paleos, I would never suggest that that is a “center piece” of conservatism. The fact that they became a center piece was I think partially a reaction to Communism.

But I think Catholics get Protestantism wrong. (I’m sure the opposite is true as well.) Sure there are a lot of denominations. But most of those denominations are variations on a theme. But they are generally in the Protestant Reformation mold. (There are a few exceptions that are significantly different like the Quakers, but by and large they are similar.)

So I don’t accept the premise of multiple strains of Protestantism unless you want to be a splitter instead of a lumper. Conservative Calvinist Presbyterians have more in common with Conservative Wesleyan Methodists than either has with Catholicism.

The mainline denominations are not inherently liberal. Recall that the main voices in the early Fundamentalist/Modernist debate (Machen for example) came from inside those mainline denominations. The liberals won the battle for the control of the denominations and the seminaries, but they lost the battle for the soul of Protestant Christianity. The rise of evangelicalism is a direct response to the victory of the liberals in the mainline. The people walked. Even to this day, the average parishioner in the mainline churches is much more conservative than the hierarchy. This is esp. true in the South. (A lot of Methodists churches in the rural South differ very little from the Baptist church next door.)

Recall that modern evangelicalism arose from Fundamentalism. It was the more ecumenical and less separatistic aspect, but it emphasized the fundamentals of the faith.

The problem with evangelicalism is that it is trying to be theologically conservative but culturally modern. These are two incompatible goals. I wish they would see that.

But if Protestantism is an inherently corrupting/liberalizing force, then why is the South (the Bible Belt) more conservative than the North? (Religion is not the only factor, of course.) And why is America more conservative than Europe?

The Euros think that Americans are all fundamentalist Bible thumpers, and by comparison we are.

Do an experiment. I’m going to do this at some point and write it up. Randomly pick Protestant denominations that are generally considered conservative and evangelical from across perspectives. Wesleyan, Reformed, Charismatic, etc. Go to their official websites and look at their statement of beliefs. Do the same with denominational seminaries if you like.

You will see an incredible amount of uniformity. Often it takes someone in the know theologically to even pick out the denominational distinctives. I think you will be surprise at the uniformity you will find. Again, unless you are a splitter, you will not find multiple Protestantisms.

“Again, unless you are a splitter, you will not find multiple Protestantisms.”

Red, that will come as a shock to most conservative Protestants, and rightly so. Try telling it to Clyde Wilson, for instance, and see what his reaction will be.

“Conservative Calvinist Presbyterians have more in common with Conservative Wesleyan Methodists than either has with Catholicism.”

And both have more in common with Catholicism than they do with liberal Presbyterians and liberal Methodists.  But the statistics show that most Presbyterians and most Methodists in the United States belong to the liberal branches of those denominations.

That, Red, is the point, and no attempt to obfuscate it will allow you to create an exclusively (or even primarily) Protestant conservative movement.

“Sid, if you can conceive of no other way to remedy violations of voting rights except through the destruction of the U.S. Constitution and the massive centralization of power, then I’m afraid you have a rather limited imagination”

Other than my not having an imagination (indeed my enemies think it all to vivid!), and other than this being a paradigmatic case of the false dilemma fallacy, Mr. Richert is quite correct.  I am NOT in favor of destroying the Constitution.  Is Mr. Richert suggesting amending it?  Or is he saying that an interpretation of the Equal Protection clause be enough to get rid of the absurd Jim Crow “Grandfather Clause” and supposed “illiteracy” tests?  (maybe it would be). Or would to do so be “destruction”?  And just how much centralization we’re to have is made clear in the 9th, 10th and 14th amendments of the very Constitution Mr. Richert and I wish to preserve from destruction. Or perhaps I’ve just misunderstood Mr. Richert: Does he favor Jim Crow with respect to voting? Or favors something else so much more that he allow it?

“Which of those European thinkers you listed [...] thought that the violation of voting rights was of such fundamental importance that he would have violated his principles to end it?”

Voting rights WERE among the fundamental principles of those listed, and ranked high in their list of principles. Certainly Burke, for starters, and very loudly throughout his career. (I’ll be glad to provide citations). And all the French Conservatives, all of whom opposed Absolutism, and all of the German with respect to local town councils (Moser), to the Reichsaufloesung (die Romantiker), and then to right to vote in the successive German Diets of the pre-1871 Bund.  Friedrich William IV though that God Himself alone should have the vote as to who should be Kaiser, and told the Frankfurter Versammlung so in 1849. The Ritterstand made it very clear that any constitutional solution, be it in the Reich or in the Laender, should have one chamber of the legislative authority where they alone should vote. Windthorst, not a conservative, made it very clear in the Kulturkampf that Catholic rights were not to be violated.  As for Adenauer on voting rights, his position is clear.

Among the thinkers not mentioned would be the entire Whig Tradition and Hume with respect to Charles I’s 10 year suspension of Parliament (and thus no voting), and the entire Tory and Hume Tradition to Cromwell’s doing the same.  Both Whig and Tory, Catholicphobic one and all, thought James II had the same one tap (they were wrong.  I am unaware of the conservative Peel’s views on Catholic emancipation and the Great Reform Bill.  Yet it was the conservative Disraeli who granted the general franchise, to Carlyle’s (no conservative) consternation.

Then there’s an unmentioned American named Tom Jefferson, who, in a work called _The Declaration of Independence_ said that governments could be altered and utterly abolished when rights (including voting rights regarding taxes) were not secure.

All the above were in favor of voting rights in principle; none were Absolutists or Bonapartists.  Need more? 

By the way, Anderson’s biography of Windthorst is so far good; I’m about 100 pages into it.

And at the end of a typically long disquisition, Sid, you still hadn’t begun to answer the question as I put it:

“Which of those European thinkers you listed in your second comment back would have thought that the violation of voting rights was of such fundamental importance that he would have violated his principles to end it?”

“And both have more in common with Catholicism than they do with liberal Presbyterians and liberal Methodists.”

But at some point they become so liberal that they cease to be authentically Christian. When they deny the Trinity for example. So of course we have more in common with Catholic Christians than Presbyterian anti-Trinitarians.

“But the statistics show that most Presbyterians and most Methodists in the United States belong to the liberal branches of those denominations.”

Most belong to the liberal branches, but that does not mean they are liberal, anymore than belonging to the Catholic Church means you follow their doctrine. Like I said, this is esp. true in the South, where a lot of people have remained in the mainline denominations because that is where their parents went to church.

But most Protestants are not mainline. Most Protestants are evangelicals of one sort or another.

“Red, that will come as a shock to most conservative Protestants, and rightly so.”

The partisans of each denomination will certainly tell you they are very unique. That is what partisans do. But there is a broad orthodox consensus. And they are united certainly around the importance of sola fide and sola scriptura. The soteriology of almost all the Protestant groups is in line with the Reformation. (Minus the degree of election question.)

I think this exchange illustrates the fundamentally important nature of this question. An American conservative movement that is not primarily Protestant would not be an American conservative movement. It would not be an organic product of the culture. It wouldn’t really be conserving. It would be altering.

Hasn’t conservatism in many ways only become an entrenchment of yesterday’s revolution? 

1950s conservatives (e.g. Kirk, Weaver, Buckley, et alii) opposed the civil rights movement, opposed desegregation, opposed miscegenation, and opposed the very concept of political equality; Weaver openly defended the KKK.

Neocons and mainstream “conservatives” today, and the occasional Sid Cundiff, however, preach the opposite, defending a perverted form of 1950s liberalism, the very thing conservatives originally opposed.  Just read National Review writers defending MLK, equality, human rights, diversity, bla bla bla, and condemning racism, nativism, bla bla bla.

Of course I’m saying nothing new here.  Paleos have written many articles on this very topic.

But if conservatism is something more than defending yesterday’s revolution (a form of 1950s liberalism), then what is it? 

Some want to regress into a form of ‘culture’, but ‘culture’ is largely a creation of the 19th century (e.g. by the likes of Matthew Arnold, et al.).

Perhaps there is not _a_ conservatism, if it is based in tradition, but various forms, based in various traditions.

Cicero inevitably equated his natural law in Roman ancestral tradition (the mos maiorum), with ‘ancestral’ being the operative word here. If conservatism is to be greater than yesterday’s revolution, then why not turn towards the venerable traditions of our ancestors?

Perhaps for some such traditions will be Anglo or Celtic, for others Germanic, et al. 

Regardless, as products of the UK or Europe, we certainly have more in common with each other than we do with many others, especially the third-world invaders that are taking over our country.

Although some non-Westerners may appreciate Western Civilization, it is not an ancestral tradition.  For us Westerners, it is both a source of appreciation and an ancestral tradition. 

I’m rambling on here, and will stop, as non of the above ideas are adequately developed, but maybe you can get a sense of what I’m saying.  Traditional conservative societies always had a respect for the ‘ancestral’.  Perhaps it’s time to bring this back.

“One wonders if De Maistre leans more than just a little to the heresy of Fideism, anathemized at Vatican I in 1970 and by The Anti-Modernist oath of Pope Pius X.” - Sid Cundiff

I assume you meant 1870, Mr. Cundiff, but I wish to comment on De Maistre.  His position was that reason could mislead, but the Church (meaning the magisterium, headed by the Pope) could not, so in case of an apparent conflict, one should adher to the teachings of the Church rather than to one’s reason.  I don’t see how this is heresy or leaning towards it.  The only alternatives would be to choose one’s own reasoning in preference to the teachings of the Church, which would be heresy, or simply to remain in a state of agnostic doubt, which most people could not sustain for very long.

I’ll stipulate that I am speaking here of people who have the gift of faith, who know their obligations to the Church, either as members or planning to join, who are not invincibly ignorant.  Of course, only God can know what is really in a person’s heart or soul.

The heresy of fideism is that humans cannot reason to the existence of God or to any truths about the natural order.  De Maistre took no such position.

“Traditional conservative societies always had a respect for the ‘ancestral’.  Perhaps it’s time to bring this back.”

Absolutely.  And that’s why, despite the fact that I’ve been willing to waste words and time on this discussion of a conservative “movement,” I’m not actually all that interested in such a beast.  Paleoconservatism, at least as far as I’m concerned, is simply a shorthand way of referring to the worldview and way of life that has characterized most men most of the time since the Golden Age of Greece.  In other words, it’s what’s best about Western civilization.

No political movement, especially one focused on centralized governmental institutions, will revive and pass on that legacy.  Families and parishes and communities can.

That’s ultimately why many people who can’t get past the idea of a “movement” or who see political action as the focus of their lives find Chronicles or paleoconservatism unsatisfying.  So be it.

They wouldn’t have like the monastic movement of the early Middle Ages, either.  But from it flowed the high civilization of the later Middle Ages.

“Movement” probably is the wrong term.

@Adriana

What I find amazing is that Kirk (and others)turned out to be 100% correct on South Africa 30 years before the end of apartheid. How can anyone look at the mess that is Zimbabwe and say otherwise? Incidentally, South Africa (already the AIDS, child rape and crime capitol of the world)has just started its first “land reform” efforts. Guess whose land will be “reformed.”

As for Kirk calling black leaders “witch doctors,” consider this. Mbeki has called AIDS a plot by the white man to exterminate Africans.

“And at the end of a typically long disquisition, Sid, you still hadn’t begun to answer the question as I put it”

I did answer your false dilemma it by rejecting it.  Voting Rights WERE of such fundamental importance to these thinkers that they WERE their principles; to violate voting rights, as they conceived of them WOULD have violated their princples.  Sheeesh.

“Neocons and mainstream “conservatives” today, and the occasional Sid Cundiff, however, preach the opposite, defending a perverted form of 1950s liberalism”—Bede

Burke the liberal?  Next we’ll hear of Luther the Jesuit.  But with the word “occasional” you’re half way to home.

Kirt, The De Maistre I’ve read (_Considérations sur la France_, Du Pape, Les soirées de St Petersbourg, Examen de Bacon, etc.) has a dark view of human reason.  He often seems to disparage any RATIONAL religious tenets.  But I’ll assume you know him better, and yield to your judgement. Maybe I’m thinking of Donoso Cortes.

Scott seems to ignore the reality of many different versions of the Catholic religion.  Can anyone deny that there are different versions of Catholicism by region and nationality and/or ethnicity?  Even beyond that, there are far more leftwing Catholics than rightwing ones.  The paleocon movement wasn’t created by Catholics, it was first promoted by almost only protestants and one or two Jews.  Scott also claims that the Middle American Radicals (MARS) failed as a political force, but for some reason Scott doesn’t think the Catholic politics he believes in has failed.  Maybe he has a point in seeing that every major urban center in American is dominated by corrupt Catholic political machines.  But the fact that in every region dominated by Catholics, leftwing politics and corruption appear to be the result should tell us something about the possibility of a Roman Catholic American conservatism.

“Scott also claims that the Middle American Radicals (MARS) failed as a political force, but for some reason Scott doesn’t think the Catholic politics he believes in has failed.”

Where, pray tell, Mr. Watson, in the hundreds of thousands of words I have written, have I ever expressed a belief in a “Catholic politics”?

Or, for that matter, where have I discussed “the possibility of a Roman Catholic American conservatism”?  In this thread, I’ve attacked the idea of a purely Protestant American conservatism, but the alternative I’ve put forward is an American conservatism that cuts across the Protestant/Catholic divide.

Just as a side note, I have, on this very website, been the first to criticize the recent political actions of supposedly conservative American Catholics (forget the liberals).  When we were talking about a “movement,” however, I had assumed that we were talking about the intellectual underpinnings, not the voter in the voting booth.  Silly me.

And finally, I should have followed the lead of Patrick Royson, and abandoned the thread when it immediately went off the rails.

Better late than never.  See y’all on another.

For the record, I don’t think I said that an authentic American conservatism would be “purely Protestant.” What I think I said is that it can’t be primarily Catholic.

What a long thread it is, and I am partly to blame for
the way they took it to a logical conclusion.

I believe that when Kirk discussed black suffrage on
pragmatic rather than principled points his ethics
suffered.

No, he did not object to blacks voting, but he was
against taking action to prevent their voting rights
being taken away. Kind of being against theft but not
being willing to pay the salary of the police.

Mr. Richert, you do not like the centralization of power
that followed from having the law enforced, but what
was your alternative? Keeping the law from being
enforced? Have a law in the books that is constantly
disobeyed, with no consequences whatsoever?  There are
people who dislike the police too, but not to the poing
that they’d condone robbery and murder in order to
keep them away from the community.

If the centralization of power bothered you so much,
you should have offered a way to enforce the law
that avoided the centralization of power. If not,
accept that laws are to be obeyed, and when not obeyed,
enforced.

Scott- Better late than never- Welcome to “Sidney’s”
tar baby!!!!  Let it go- It devolves into a mindless
quagmire of non-sequiturs, and dead ends!

This website- and Chronicles is better than this!
I enjoyed talking with you after the Rockford Latin
Mass Seminar.

“the purpose of government is to maintain the good and ordered society, not protect rights.”—Outlaw supra.

What a wonderful definition of Mussolini’s ideology!  Pray tell, Was it lifted from the work of Giovanni Gentile? Carl Schmitt? Al Hamilton?  Thomas Hobbes?  that Corsican gentleman, Buonaparte?  a proclamation from The Mayor of the Munchkins?  But let readers judge for themselves if it be Conservatism:

“I have little to commend my opinions, but long observation and much impartiality.  They come from one who has been no tool of power, no flatterer of greatness; and who in his last acts does not wish to belye the tenour of his life.  They come from one, almost the whole of whose public exertions has been a struggle for the liberty of others; from one in whose breast no anger durable or vehement has ever been kindled, but by what he considered as tyranny; and who snatches from his share in the endeavours which are used by good men to discredit opulent oppression, the hours he has employed on your [i.e. French] affairs [...]; they come from one who [...] when the vessel in which he sails, may be endangered by overloading it upon one side, is desirous of carrying the small weight of his reasons to that which may preserve its equipoise.”

Edmund Burke, _Reflections on the Revolution in France_ (1790), the last paragraph, spelling and punctuation the author’s, emphasis added.  Doubtless for Thomas Paine, Christopher Hitchens, and their latter-day admirer Steven a book of “mindless quagmire of non-sequiturs, and dead ends”, were he ever to read it. Those who have so read may then lecture me on the meaning of Conservatism. Kirk most certainly read it and was Burke’s greatest American interpreter, as Scruton is his English, all of which informed readers know.

Burke the liberal?  Sure and why not?  That’s what he was called a hundred years and more by folks who thought he went off the deep end over the whole French thing.  Because liberty was a major preoccupation with him.  And a cause which the French Rev did little to further.  If the Bushies want to call me a liberal because I don’t like their war, fine.  It was a label K-L (don’t ask me to spell it out, don’t know how to get umlauts here) didn’t seem to mind for himself, and I don’t need to be more right than he, do I?

Maybe I do.  I recall Wilhelmsen pouring scorn on those so-called conservatives who admired Burke, that toady of the Hannoverian usurpers.  No, he didn’t use the word toady.  He didn’t have to.  And long live King Francis!

Now the whole Catholic question interests me greatly.  I think the Founders set up a pretty Catholic thing here, though their inspiration was largely Masonic — and Quaker.  They realized all of America would never agree on a common scriptural vision, but could come together on the basis of natural law, which, it turned out, Catholics and even Jews could be comfy with.  Religion (assumed to be Protestant) could influence each state in a different way, but had to be kept out of the national discourse, much as it was banned in the Lodge.  Bit of irony here, what?

Glad to meet another admirer of Burke. Have your read
“The Great Melody” of Conor Cruise O’Brien? 

There was something that Burke was, beyond conservatism
or liberalism: he was a politician who understood
his craft and its tools, and was appalled at the French
Revolution because a lot of theorizers with no idea
of what it takes to pass wise laws started to rule
a country. His horror was not so much at their ideas
as to their willingness to experiment, to try on their
theories on whole populations

Burke would hate neo-cons for that same reason.

The problem with conservatism defending the ancestral
is that they may go too far back.

Go back far enough, and Christians will be thrown to
the lions in the traditional way…

Mr. Cundiff,

Are you telling me that the idea of “voting rights” is not a rank liberal idea? What did the quote you supplied have to do with “voting rights” anyway.

You mentioned De Maistre at one point. Did he support “voting rights?” He favored the Crown. Was the King elected? If so I must have missed that part of history class. I always thought Kings had a claim on the throne. Please direct me to where it was you learned about this election of Kings. I really feel silly that I could have missed something that big.

Billy Bob

@ Adriana, “The problem with conservatism defending the ancestral
is that they may go too far back.”

Yep.  That’s what the Nazis tried to do, a recrudescence of ancestral paganism under a thin veneer of Christian symbols.  You don’t even have to go back to Rome; trace my paternal line (of Yorkshire) back around 1,100 years and we were worshipping Odin and fighting against Alfred the Great’s Christian kingdom, but I’m glad THAT part of England’s ancestral heritage (Viking paganism) has been jettisoned.  Although a residual part of me still is tempted to excoriate the effete “Fat Underbelly” of Southern England ;-) (Joke, that was a JOKE, people...)

Here’s another:  a Yorkshire boy went to a public school down south, and his math teacher asked him the difference between acute and obtuse angles.  The boy said, “The Northern Angles are acute, and the Southern Angles are obtuse!”

But then, to be fair, George Orwell had no illusions about the North OR the South of England.  He described the peculiar virtues and vices and illusions of both, with a clear eye, in his essay, “North and South”, here:

http://www.george-orwell.org/North_And_South/0.html

Bless you, Frank Purcell.  The Evangelical “Theocons” are the Useful Idiots of the Hamiltonian Neocons, the American version of Social Democrats are the Useful Idiots of the Cultural Marxists, and now it is quite clear to me that the Paleoconservatives are becoming the Useful Idiots of Klansmen and the fans of Carl Schmitt (or the Schmitt of 1918-1935). 

BUT NOT MR. PURCELL!  HE knows his Burke, and thus knows genuine Real Conservatism from fake. (He also knows the problems with Burke— the problems with the 1688 Revolution. Burke thought it restored the Polybian “mixed constitution” which would protect rights.  It in fact began a slow process to the elected dictatorship/Caesar called the Prime Minister. I should add that the Australian and German constitutions overcame this problem)

A double blesssing:  Mr Purcell also knows Faux Catholics aren’t Authentic orthodox Catholics.  No Catholic may believe in race as a category. NO CATHOLIC WOULD DENY VOTING RIGHTS BASED ON RACE. The overwhelming majority of Catholics aren’t even “white” people.  Look for Faux Catholics to join the Pius X Society (if they’ll take them) in a few years, or when when we have a Latin American, Semitic, Asian, or African Pope.

BUT NOT MR. PURCELL! And Kirk came around too. I urge the sponsor of this site to have more articles from him.

Ditto, Adriana.  Double Ditto if she’s Catholic. Keep up the good work. Now there are three of us!

Outlaw I thank profoundly. He is proof positive and in print of the Paleocon infiltration by those whose views are largely the Klan’s. I need say no more.

Democracy and “voting rights” are the liberal myths most difficult to leave behind.  I haven’t exercised my voting rights for several elections now, which has saved me the trouble of digging through the minutiae of evil to try to determine who is “the lesser evil”.  And of course, if the election is too close as in 2000, both sides reach for their attorneys and the affair is decided by the unelected Supreme Court anyway.

This election, for the first time in many years, I’ll vote for Ron Paul.  He’s a positive good rather than a lesser evil and hence has no chance of winning.  Even so I’m supporting him with what little money I have and my vote if he makes it to the Texas primary, just to give exposure to his ideas.

But for the most part, I agree with the bumper sticker wisdom of “Don’t vote; it only encourages them.”

Well I do enjoy praise, so don’t stop!  Just don’t dis my peeps to make me look good in comparison.  I like to think my views are pretty much in the paleocon mainstream, maybe spiced up with a little arcane lore.  It is a gross libel to say that we are on the whole a bunch of white supremacist anti-Semites, though some of us have some issues with the late Mr. Lincoln, and more of us with this Netenyahu person.  A friend of mine, indoctrinated by years of National Review, says, Of course M.E. Bradford was in favor of slavery, and now we hear that Dr. Kirk was in favor of apartheid, but all of that is nonsense.  The mere fact that we disagree with Mr. Bush to a considerable degree doesn’t make us Nazis.

But Kirk did support apartheid.  He also opposed the civil rights movement, equal rights, desegregation, and miscegenation.  Weaver did as well, and openly supported the KKK. 

It is the neocons today who say that “conservatism” is to champion “equality” and “human rights,” not those originally of the New Right.  It seems that many neocons today and mainstream “conservatives” want to paint a politically correct veneer over the authentic, historical conservative movement.

@Bede

So Kirk at one time was wrong. Are we to be bound by his
errors because he was right on a lot of other things?

You might as well, if you admire several saints of
the Catholic Church, do not wash your hands before
handling food because they never did it (and went
around spreading disease when giving Holy Communion).

Everyone, even the best of us makes mistakes. The best
we can hope is to be able to recognize them and make
amends.

Frank Prucell:

I don’t know whether Kirk would have considered himself a pragmatist.  He did espouse the virtue of the ancient concept of prudence, but was very skeptical of modern theories like pragmatism.

I don’t know much about Pierce in particular, but even his version of pragmatism involves the metaphysical reality of ‘truth’ only in so far as it confirmed in practice; e.g. in science, prediction and control.  And although history plays a small role, this is not a historicist theory; it presupposes a progressive view of history, which is why Priece’s ideas evolved into those of Dewey.  In most of pragmatism, there is no metaphysical realism, as truth is only function of process. 

Kirk did believe in an independent order, what he called the Permanent Things.  What he meant by this, however, lacks philosophical explanation.

He certainly did not mean by it what neocons / neoliberals mean when they talk about their abstractions and human rights.  Kirk wholeheartedly opposed this Enlightenment nonsense.  When neocons speak of “natural rights,” or some form of transcendent order, or realism, they are usually speaking of a means to overturn or revoke historical precedent.  They have repacked the Enlightenment god of Reason.  They are no friend to history, which is why they have set up the bogeyman of “historicism.”

Kirk in many ways followed Burke, who was influenced by Cicero.  Cicero developed a theory of natural law (lex naturae, not ius naturale), which, although a product of the mind of God, is equated with the traditions of his ancestors (the mos maiorum).  This natural law is not a way to revoke history, but is a manifestation of it.

When Kirk said he opposed desegregation, he said he did so on the grounds that it would be dangerous to disrupt an ancient institution like segregation.  It has existed throughout all of history, and thus would be a historical norm. 

This is the type of historical realism, Ciceronian natural law, to which Kirk was accustomed, which is different in kind from pragmatism.

Bede
http://www.conservativetimes.org

Adriana,

In other words, we should paint a politically correct veneer over 19th century and early 20th century conservatism until the neocons get it right in the 1970s?

Bede
http://www.conservativetimes.org

Bede and I may be inhabiting different universes of discourse.

If by human rights we mean the body of natural law that says that there are some things you just don’t do to another human being, I don’t see that any real conservative has ever been against them.  See Burke’s impeachment of Hastings, especially the eighth day.

I am quite sure that Kirk opposed the idea of attempting to tear down the whole structure of South African society.  Does that mean that he somehow endorsed the theory and practice of apartheid as such?  I don’t see that.  For one thing, it was the outgrowth of a school of Dutch neo-Calvinism he had nothing in common with.

Miscegenation?  I think Kirk would have advised against it, at least in most cases, but also against the state legislation against it — and against federal meddling with the state laws.  Certainly as a Catholic he didn’t think the Church should be forbidden to give its blessing to the sacrament on the part of any couple deemed by canon law capable of administering it to each other.  Perhaps you think the Catholic Church is and has always been wrong to bless racially mixed marriages, and that Kirk was wrong to accept baptism into the Church.  I do not.

Weaver a Klansman?  Weaver who remained a leftist for some years even after Vanderbilt?  Do not overinterpret the sympathetic treatment, in his doctoral dissertation, of a literary depiction of the Klan as it was, or was believed to have been, during the early Reconstruction period.

Richard M Weaver: “some of the means, for example the Ku Klux Klan, were irregular, but essentially it was the political genius of Jefferson, of Washington, of Madison, and of Pinckney expressing itself in times of trouble and oppression.”

Kirk on apartheid:  In the March 9, 1965, issue of National Review Russell Kirk declared prophetically that the same dogma in South Africa [voting for blacks], “if applied, would bring anarchy and the collapse of civilization.” For Kirk, civilization required apartheid: “In a time of virulent ‘African nationalism,’ . . . how is South Africa’s ‘European’ population . . . to keep the peace and preserve a prosperity unique in the Dark Continent?” White rule, he answered, is a prudent way, “to govern tolerably a society composed of several races, among which only a minority is civilized.” He called for humane treatment of South African blacks but dismissed their leaders as “witch doctors” and “reckless demagogues.” He wrote frankly about the “ ‘European’ element which makes South Africa the only modern and prosperous African country.”

Kirk on segregation:  “It would be reckless indeed to tamper with an institution as ancient as segregation.”

Kirk on miscegenation: “We have no right to tamper recklessly with human nature or with the delicate fabric of our civil social order.”

I might say that the Catholic Church about miscegenation
would be, provided both partners were catholic, the
less degree of consanguinity between them, the better.

They frowned on inbreeding, and with good reason…

“Human rights” are a product of the Enlightenment, a product of the god of Reason, and have been used as tools to overturn and nullify historical precedent and historical norm.

Ciceronian natural law, of which Kirk was quite fond, is almost diametrically opposed to the modern notion of human rights.  It is not a means to refute history, but rather a manifestation of it.  Although based in God, they correspond to and are a manifestation of a Roman’s ancestral tradition (mos maiorum). 

It is this very notion of the “ancestral,” which also influenced Burke, and which the neocons repackaged as “historicism” and against which the neocons have declared war (except when it involves one little piece of land).

Sam Francis said:  “The attack on ‘historicism’ is intended to reject the Burkean appeal to tradition....  [Straussians] seem to deny the distinction and adopt an antihistorical universalism based on natural rights that leads them to embrace what is, at bottom, the worldview of the left.”

I fail to see how miscegenation could be construed
as “tampering with human nature”, since it is human
nature to pair-bond with a human of the opposite sex
and cooperate in the rearing of children that result.

Actually, forbidding miscegenation **is** tampering
with human nature, or interfering with the choice
to pair-bond.

(actually, if you wanted to get nasty, you might say
that the worst “tampering with human nature” happened
when Christianity sought to enforce monogamy, going
up against the traditional, honored custom, of
concubinage).

A good knowledge of the Ancient World leads you to
appreciate how revolutionary Christianity was, and is.

As Chesteron said, a conservative most of the times
wants to conserve the gains of hte previous revolution
and a revolutionary might well be trying to undo that.
A good example of that would be the comment of Pierre
Gaxotte that in Europe (specially France) syndicallism
was reactionary because it wanted to roll back the
Le Chapelier Law, a creation of the French Revolution.

Burke worked in three “rights” traditions:
-- natural law
-- the English legal tradition of the Common Law, out of one concept of which he develops his theory of prescription
-- Locke and the events of 1688-89.

And, in his last years, he begins to have sympathy with the Tory tradition of “hegemonic freedom” and Divine sanction.

That’s one reason he’s such an engrossing thinker.

If the Polish-Scheler school of Personalism had been around back in Burke’s day, he might have borrowed from that too.

With respect to Bede’s quotes from Weaver and Kirk, these are so fragmentary and chopped up that it is unclear to me in some cases whether these writers had in mind the subject which Bede attributes to them, let alone the opinion on that subject.

With respect to Adriana’s comment, it is absurd to attribute to the Catholic Church the opinion the less degree of consanguinity the better.  The Church is not in the business of breeding human beings.  Marriages between brothers and sisters is forbidden and between first and second cousins, although it’s not difficult to get dispensation for second cousin marriages and not impossible to get it for first cousin marriages.  The Church neither opposes nor advocates miscegenation, but is indifferent to it - and I think that is the healthiest attitude to have.

I am sorry that my comment is a little flippant, but
the fact is that the Church spends a lot of time
deciding if a marriage is valid or not according to
consanguinity.

I mean, if you cannot marry your sister, ever. If you
can only marry your cousin by buying a special permit,
and you can marry anyone else unconnected with you
without any fuss, that means that the less consanguinty
the less problems you have to get married.

Endogamy - a lot of problems getting permits
Exogamy - no problem.

So, what do you think that the position of the Church
is?

The comments Bede (and others make) about respecting
ancient institutios can come dangerously close to
multiculturalism.

After all, if Southern segregation is to be preseverved
for being a traditional part of their society, then
why not condemn Spain for destroying such traditions
as human sacrifice by the Aztecs?  It certainly was
ancestral, it certainly helped cement the social fabric.

Just pray that there are no Mexican conservatives who
want to get back the Old Time Religion.

Reading the comments of Sid, Adriana, and Frank Prucell, I feel as if I just accidently wandered onto some neocon site.

Way to enforce the strictures of political correctness, guys.

Mr. Cundiff,

You boldly asserted that “voting rights” are a key component of conservatism. Are you kidding me? That is an absurd and patently untrue statement. Do you mind backing that up with some non-contemporary authors.

So I guess it was conservatives who championed women’s suffrage. It was conservatives who championed civil rights legislation? If you believe that you are delusional.

Perhaps you want to rephrase or retract that statement. It is making you look unlearned and silly.

“NO CATHOLIC WOULD DENY VOTING RIGHTS BASED ON RACE.”

Is that so? So I guess there was universal suffrage in Old Testament Israel, the social order of which was dictated by God.

Show me the Bible verse that requires or even suggests universal suffrage.

This has nothing to do with the Klan. (Where the heck did that come from? That was out of left field.) It has to do with the long held conservative doctrine of limiting the vote.

Billy Bob

Sir Anthony:

In case you did not notice, in the last Conclave, there
was a possibility that the cardinals would elect as Pope
and African cardinal.

In which case all Catholics would be expect to obey him
and to believe that he was infallible (only ex cathedra
and in matters of doctrine).

So, that tells you something about how PC the Church is

Adriana,

I don’t care whom the cardinals elect.  I’m Anglo-Saxon Orthodox.  I’d never follow an African.

William:

You are correct in what you say.  Sid is either historically illiterate, delusional or a neocon propaganda minister.

Regarding equality and the Bible, no where in the Bible is the institution of slavery condemned - a fact pointed out by many classicists.  Paul might have criticized how a particular slave was treated, but the institution was never criticized. 

So much for “equality” in the Bible.  The very concept of “equality” is a modern creation.  Regarding Kirk, he supported a Medieval notion of aeqitas (fairness before God and a judge) but that’s as far as he took it.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not a Kirk worshiper.  I, like Paul Gottfried, think he had many faults.  But I think we should give him his fair due.  He was not some neocon worshiper of equality and political correctness, like Adriana and Sid here.

If you people think that “conservatism” is about equality and voting rights, then you are at the wrong place.  You need to go hand out at the Corner with Jonah Goldberg.

“...that means that the less consanguinty
the less problems you have to get married.” - Adriana

No Adriana, it means that once you are outside the third degree of kindred, you have no problems whatsoever - it doesn’t matter if you are within the 4th or 40,000th.  To draw a parallel, a municipality may well have setbacks of 10 feet from a property line for structures, but on occasion make exceptions to permit 8 or 6 feet.  But that does not mean the further the setback the better - 200 yards better than 100, 5 miles better than one mile.

The entire human race originated from incest, so it is not a sin against the natural law, but a taboo, albeit a strong one.  It is also an area where morality is tightened under the new covenant.  In that respect it is comparable to the taboo against polygamy, which is also not a sin against the natural law and was tolerated in the Old Testament.

Adriana and Frank: Don’t let Anthony scare you away with name calling and his own rigid party line.  Some humans has bumper-stickers for brains.

Two thoughts before dawn:

1. Much as I like Kirk, the more sagacious conservative thinker and the more perspicacious interpreter of Burke is Roger Scruton.  Scruton’s own essay, “Reflections on the French Revolution”, equals even Burke’s magisterial treatment.  True, Scruton isn’t the Catholic Kirk, but then the Catholic Faith (and Christian Democracy) are not the same as conservatism.  And Mr Scruton is alive, entering a new and exciting phase in his thought, – and he’s even living among us in upper Virginia!

2. Kirk and Burke think in quite different mental habits and are men of very different temperaments.  Kirk reminds me more of the man Chesterton than Burke.  And the man who seems most similar to the man Burke, surprisingly, is Orwell. 

3. What Hannah Arendt did for the Aristotelean tradition – grasp its essentials, and then take it in a new direction with a new foundation – the conservative tradition might have found the German Early _Romantiker_.

Time permitting, I’ll try to sketch out the second observation as the day permits. A pity really that webpages have such a short life.  Reflection takes time.

@ Anthony, “I’m Anglo-Saxon Orthodox.”

What?  What the...???  Where was the hidden rabbit-hole I’ve just fallen into?  And whatever Anthony the caterpillar is smoking in his hookah, I want some.

What is “Anglo-Saxon Orthodox?” As a proud grandson of England, I demand to know.  Are all their masses said in Old English?  “Faeder ura eo hart in heofonum” (that’s “Our Father who art in Heaven”, for the non-Orthodox among us...) And if Anthony the “Anglo-Saxon Orthodox” is against miscegenation, then where does he stand on mixed marriages between Anglo-Saxons and descendants of Roman Britons, like the (to some extent, non-European) Roman Ninth Legion who were stationed in York circa 300 AD and then settled down with local wives?

Just imagine how much North African blood there was in the ancient Roman Legions stationed in Britain and Germany.
Sho’ nuff, Brother!

Cicero for one believed in ancestral justification; vide ‘mos maiorum’; it was the tradition of his [Italian] ancestors that he wanted to maintain; to breed with non-Italians was highly discouraged.  Breeding among related clans or families was the norm of the ancient world.

According to Cicero to breed with non-Italians was
strongly discouraged..

How many here are of Italian descent?  If you are not,
why are you so fond of quoting a guy who seems to have
thought of your forefathers as less than human?

Know your history. For the Greeks, the master race was
Greeks, and the others only fit to be slaves. For the
Romans, all non-italians were fit to be slaves.

If you admire those guys so much, and agree on everything
they said, you should offer yourselves as slaves to the
first Italian you meet.

Adriana,

You would probably be much more at home at the website of First Things.

@Donald

Why? Are those at First Things better at logic than
you are? Or have they studied history for real instead
of picking and choosing what they like? Please
enlighten me.

It is common for groups of people to say “We are the
masters, everyone else is inferior”. The problem is
that they cannot all be masters, and for you to agree
that a group you do not belong to is indeed master
it means to betray your own.

The old saw is “every man a king and every other man
his servant” A says it and thinks that A is to be
king and B to be his servant. B thinks that B should
be king and A his servant. There is a conflict there,
but since it strokes the vanity of the one hearing it,
they overlook the contradiction.

So it is that people of non-greek extraction can admire
the wisdom of Aristotle who said that slavery was OK
if it was not-greeks who were enslaved. And people of
not italian extraction find admirable the unwillingess
of Cicero not to mingle his noble blood with the inferior
one of their forebears..

It is called self-hartred, I think.

@ Adriana:  “If you admire those guys so much, and agree on everything
they said, you should offer yourselves as slaves to the
first Italian you meet.”

Well although I’m mostly Germanic and Celtic, I’m one-sixteenth Italian, and for a while I allowed myself enthusiastically to be enslaved by a Greek mistress.  Does that give me license to call myself at least a “privileged servant of the Master Race?” ;-)

(Joke, that was a JOKE, people......)

@Kirt

It is true what you say about the prohibitions for
marriage but I note two things.

That while the Chruch made a lot of rulings about not
marrying close relatives, and how close you could be,
there was none about marrying strangers of other ethnic
groups. They just had to be batpized into the One True
Church.

And, in a close knit community, given enough time,
everyone ends up being related to everyone else, and
it is only if you marry an outsider that you avoid the
hassle of asking the Church for permission - since
everyone in your community is some sort of cousin.

@Sir Anthony

Orthodox what?

Orthodox Christian?
Orthodox Muslim?
Orthodox Jew?
Orthodox Odinist?
Orthodox Mithraist?

Does your rites include blood sacrifice? Do you have
sacred orgies?

Regarding a passing comment on Maurras and Action francaise. Neither Pope Benedict XV nor Pope Pius X condemned Maurras—Pius X actually had words of praise for him. It was actually Pius XI who condemned AF. Pope Pius XII lifted the condemnation a decade later. The most likely explanation is that Pius XI was mistaken.

Maurras desired little more than the status quo ante 1789. Of course, that has little meaning in the American context. However, it gives a clue to a type of conservatism that seems to make many of the posters here uncomfortable.

In essence, it advocated hierarchy, anti-democracy, Catholic social teaching, and the philosophies of Aquinas, Plato, and Aristotle (not pragmatists).

Regarding the “conservative mind” and Protestants. Of all the authors included as examples in Kirk’s “Conservative Mind”, most were Catholics or high church Anglicans. I can’t think of an evangelical, or even a Calvinist, among them. If “conservative” is tantamount to “counter-revolutionary”, then the Reformation was revolutionary and anti-conservative at its very roots.

Unfortunately, there has been little discussion on Mr. Purcell’s thesis since it is incoherent, or perhaps simply incomplete since it drops names without making explicit connections.

Do we really want to replace the “Conservative Mind” with the “American Mind”? Are we truly more comfortable with New Agers and Alan Watts than with Mallock or Brownson? It does, however, explain the total lack of influence of Kirkian conservatism in the public square today.

@Charles:

Your commen