You wrote:

“It implies, like “conservatism is a temperament,” that conservatism is not an ideology—that is, it is not a system of ideas that allegedly go together in some logical or natural way.”

If conservatives believe that the preservation of legitimacy is usually necessary because it preserves the general welfare, then that is a rational and consistent set of beliefs.  Conservatism is still an ideology, simply one that is more flexible in application.

So long as conservatism involves a focus on the benefits of legitimacy rather than simply a blind attachment to it, a conservative should be able to oppose legitimacy so long as this is done with a heavy heart, a healthy appreciation for the risks involved, and a desire to replace the old authority with a new one that draws upon inherited traditions and identity.

This is just silly. Do you actually get like money for writing here?

What you offer might be a coherent concept of conservatism, but of very little use, as I’d say about 0,1 % of people would admit that they are conservatives as you describe it. I mean, social democracy in the Nordic countries for instance is probably one of the most legitimate forms of government in the world, 75-80 % vote. According to your definition, politicians talking of the importance of equality between the sexes would then be conservative.

What next: “Conservatives against Ron Paul”, because Dr. Paul undermines the legitimacy of the government and the Federal Reserve. A bunch of revolutionaries demanding that the U.S. constitution be obeyed. Conservatives should stop them.

“Conservatives uphold legitimacy whatever the human cost.”

“1.  Some wrongly imputed to me the view that order for conservatives must be maintained at all costs, even by the most unsavory means. Under my account, however, conservatives defend not order but legitimacy--viz, that species of order which is maintained by near-universal assent. Indeed, it seems to me that conservatives per se have no particular position on whether and how order should be maintained in the absence of legitimacy.  They defend legitimacy precisely to avoid the need for violent or oppressive reestablishment of authority.  “

Mr. Bramwell, please reconcile the two statements.  According to your first statement,
legitimacy should be maintained whatever the human cost.  According to the second,
legitimacy is precisely defined as something that apparently does not require a significant
human cost in order to maintain.  How is one supposed to know that you define legitimacyh
as order maintained with near-universal consent when you claim that this assent is worth
almost any human cost?

As educated men and women, it is time to take a look at these categories of discourse (like Conservative, Liberal, Libertarian, Constitutionalist) and ask ourselves if we have perhaps argued ourselves into severely unrealistic world views that seldom touch down on the ground. It is my experience that to talk about a proposal to determine if it is a fit within our intellectually-held view of the true meaning of one of these categories of discourse is to minimize the effect the proposal has on the lives of our families and neighbors. As luck would have it, however, that body of thought usually characterized as “left” is so tangled up with their categories of discourse such that they touch down on the ground only rarely and then only by accident. That’s probably why they act so crazy.

Unfortunately I do not have the knowledge of history that would enable me to talk much about the wealth of the United States, except to say that much of it has been accumulated in the latter part of the 20th century. I think this would be an uncontroversial claim, but someone perhaps could correct me and give me a reference discussing the wealth of the country in the 19th century.

At any rate, if the great proportion of wealth was accumulated in the 20th century, after World War 2, I would be looking to centralization, both of economic and political power, as the cause, not the Constitution. I would argue that the government has been stable in spite of the Constitution. I think your #5 is dependent upon #3, and there are plenty who would disagree with you about #3 and how constitutional Lincoln’s acts were.

“I would only observe that Lincoln was unquestionably a great man.”

What do you mean by “great?” If by great you mean significant, then you are correct in the same way Napoleon was great, for example. If you mean by great good, then that is certainly questionable.

Let us by all means get back to Lincoln for you cannot simply slough off criticism of your comments by saying that those criticisms are “predictable”. The finding that 2 + 2 = 4 is even MORE “predictable” but that does not in any way diminish its accuracy.

Was Lincoln a “great man”? That depends upon your definition of “great”. If by “great” you mean did he affect the world around him in a way that will live in history, then certainly, Lincoln was just that. By that definition, however, you could also call Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin and Mao “great men” for they, too, affected the world around them in ways that will live in history.

On the other hand, if you define “great” as being noble, honorable and moral, then I must respectfully disagree. For however “pure” a man’s motives may be, that neither determines nor changes the nature of the acts that were committed. For Lincoln’s actions were IG-noble in that he waged total war upon a People whom he insisted were fellow Americans; DIS-honorable in that he waged a barbaric war that frequently degenerating into outright efforts at genocide; and IM-moral in that he had no right under the laws of God or Man to do what he did.

This is the year of the so-called “Lincoln Bicentennial”. It is time - indeed, long PAST time - for a much closer and more objective scrutiny of “The Great Emancipator” than has been and is currently allowed by our present “historians” - Lincoln apologists and myth-makers all.

Thanks, Mr. Bramwell, for this response.  For me at least (I’m the guy who objected to “Weberian") it clarified your original post quite a bit.  I mistakenly saw inconsistencies where in reality your definition was just more “radically” exclusive than I had thought.  Your definition of conservatism is a serious challenge to all of us chirping grasshoppers.

I’m still not wholly convinced on the legitimacy thing though.  If you define legitimacy empirically (it doesn’t matter whether you follow Weber or someone else) but then rule out one type of empirical legitimacy ad hoc, then you’ve thrown away the coherence of your definition.  The door is now open for any chirping grasshopper to jump in and rule out whatever type of “empirical” legitimacy he sees as invalid.  Some might exclude from the definition, say, a legal-positivist type of legitimacy on the same grounds, that it’s unstable (cf. Carl Schmitt in the Weimar Republic).  I thing my basic objection still stands: appeals to “empirical” legitimacy can’t make the question of “true” legitimacy go away.

Thank you for one of the most interesting and provocative articles I’ve seen on this site.  This kind of reality-based criticism (including the article you wrote for The American Conservative) is important.  I hope you’ll be writing here often.

And more from the peanut gallery regarding the poor, old, innocent, and peace loving, antebellum South. And good ole Robert E. Lee, who enslaved free blacks from Pennsylvania when he retreated from Gettysburg. A pox on them all for that dreadful war. Plenty of blame all around.

Although it is not my intention to tout my own horn, at least not on this website,
Austin would do well to consult my recent monograph on conservatism,which will be
discussed at a forthcoming Liberty Fund seminar. In that work I call into question
the leisure practice of assigning “conservative” labels as a conceptual exercise without
noticing social contexts. “Conservative” and “liberals” are nineteenth-century
political markers. They pertain to the reaction to the French Revolution and to the
political ascent of the bourgeoisie. They are not eternal descriptions of dispositions
or of the shifting politics of the National Review and The New Republic. I for one am
not a “conservative” because the term, although I use it as a courtesy, is now
a total anachronism. Rightwing is however not,because at least some of us are reacting
from the right to the neocon and social engineering left. One could attack or
defend Lincoln from the right,although the current celebration of the Great
Emancipator is an act of leftist self-affirmation.