(Written in the 1950’s)
Democracy is a travesty without the responsible participation of an intelligent and informed electorate. No person can be intelligent and informed without an understanding of both sides of an issue. Russell Kirk’s work The Conservative Mind, provides an excellent opportunity for every citizen to become more responsible through reading a careful and thorough assessment of the historical and ideological facets of conservatism. The importance of this book is measured in large part by the fact that liberalism is ubiquitous in our society; it is unavoidable because it permeates education and communication, and has penetrated virtually every institution of our society. Liberalism is the legacy of Greek naturalism resurrected in Renaissance humanism and promulgated by the majority of the “intellectuals” of the modern society. Its proponents like to find it the cause and concomitant of everything good in Western Civilization.
Conservatism on the other hand is a position which has had few articulate and even fewer popular spokesmen. Most of the persons Kirk discusses will be either unknown or not previously known to be outstanding conservatives for most readers. But conservatism has not lacked for adherents. A conservative is anyone who tries to preserve something which is demonstrably good. The great mass of conservatives has been religious people who have sought to retain the tried and true aspects of their faith against the onslaught of excessive rationalism. Since the educated liberal rationalists have controlled most educational and communication opportunities in the modern world, conservatism has persisted mainly as a passive resistance to intellectual vagary, a somewhat inarticulate solid “common sense” of practical people.
Unfortunately for the conservative cause, the reactionism of vested material interests has frequently been aligned with conservatism in historical situations. In this unnatural but de facto association, the reactionary element has usually been more vocal and has pressed its leadership. This association has given the liberals an opportunity to smear conservatism with the moral irresponsibility that properly applies to most reactionism. In religion, the prophets have been the conservative leaders, trying to persuade the people to hold fast to the good word of God; the Pharisees have been the reactionaries, and the Sadducees have been the liberals. When the people have had no prophet, those of conservative bent have had to suffer somewhat silently under the oppression of self-styled leaders of the right or the left.
Political conservatism is in the main a rather recent possibility. The history of mankind has generally been one of bestial tyranny of man over man. In such cases of tyranny, the only good cause was liberal, to free men from despotic power. But any degree of freedom for the “common man” has usually been short-lived. One shining example to the contrary has been the experiment with constitutional republican government among Anglo-Saxon peoples. The crux of this movement has been voluntary submission to just law as a substitute for forced suppression under the will of the tyrant. British and American society have known during the last two hundred years a freedom for the common man virtually unparalleled in history. The attempt to conserve this freedom for the common man is the essence of political conservatism.
Conservatism in politics becomes a necessity because the maintenance of freedom is a precarious balance. The tyranny of the monarch must not be succeeded by the tyranny of the aristocracy, of the legislature, or of the majority. Perhaps the most obvious generalization of history is that men in power generally abuse that power. Checks and balances of power and decentralization of government provide the only hitherto proven basis for the protection of the freedom of the common man. Such a government appears to the rationalist to be an inefficient basis for economic maximization; the rationalist is presently engaged in attempting to buy the freedom of the common man from him by paying him with pottage. The choice is between a real and present freedom as opposed to a promised carnal security.
Though the able proponents of conscious political conservatism have been few, they have spoken and spoken well, though largely unheard thanks to the careful censorship and insidious ridicule of the liberal canopy. Kirk attempts to impress the reader with the logical clarity, the realism, the responsibleness of the few conservative statesmen who have risen above the reactionary politicians to proclaim the conservative case on the basis of principle rather than expediency. Those of a conservative bent will find Kirk’s book a satisfying witness that they are not alone and that conservatism is intellectually respectable. Those who are uncertain will find an opportunity to test their own hearts for conservative yearnings.
Kirk lists six basic canons of conservative political thought which provide the thread to unite thinkers from Burke to Santayana. These six ideas might be paraphrased as follows:
- Belief in a divine power to which men are responsible, political problems being basically moral and religious problems.
- Delight in the opportunity for the expression of individual differences as opposed to the leveling and equalitarianism enforced in most modern liberal schemes.
- Recognition that men are not equal even though they should be considered morally equal under the law. Tyrants and unprincipled men should not be allowed to replace natural leaders of moral stature.
- Belief that private property and freedom are inseparably connected.
- Belief that man must subdue his appetites and passions to the rule of reason and knowledge. Mob action and anarchy must be checked by principle.
- Recognition that change is not always progress.
Though these canons are neither exhaustive nor mutually exclusive, they do provide an excellent working basis for a conservative thinker to probe his own mind and to perfect the ideological basis of his own conservatism.