A reader raises the question (and I suspect objection): What is genuine conservatism? It's a fair, reasonable question to pose, given my frequency of prattling on about contemporary conservatism's lack of authentic conservatism; its transformation into what the historian Richard Hofstadter usefully called "pseudoconservatism."
The answer is as varied as the question's answerers. No two liberals or two progressives and for damn sure no two socialists would provide identical answers as to what liberalism, progressivism, or socialism is. Unless one is a by-the-book ideologue, political philosophies are deeply personal, and thus reflect personality. So all I can do is offer my formulation of genuine conservatism, which relies on admittedly selective readings of Edmund Burke, as well as Russell Kirk, one of Burke's 20th-century exegetists. I'll keep this short. This is, after all, a blog post, not a term paper.
First, Burke would have abhorred Tea Party conservatism, which it isn't. "When I hear the simplicity of contrivance aimed at and boasted of in any new political constitutions," he groaned, "I am at no loss to decide that the artificers are grossly ignorant of their trade, or grossly negligent of their duty." The key word there is "simplicity," which, of course, has spanned "conservative" thinking from (original) Goldwaterism to Cruzism. The Arizona senator who launched much of today's pseudoconservative madness not only aimed at but boasted of simplicity as a political project, and his philosophical inheritors — the Texas senator is merely one of millions — have lived up to Barry's once-simplistic will. The negative that introduces this paragraph is, to my way of thinking, one leg of genuine conservatism.
Second, genuine conservatism, in my view and Burke's, respects the forces of change. "We must all obey the great law of change," wrote Burke. "It is the most powerful law of nature, and the means perhaps of its conservation." Burke's recognition of sociopolitical change as the conservation, or preservation, of society is the bedrock of an authentic conservative philosophy. What follows in Burke's passage distinguishes conservatism from its more restless philosophical opponents. "All we can do, and that human wisdom can do, is to provide that the change shall proceed by insensible degrees. This has all the benefits which may be in change, without any of the inconveniences of mutation."
Third, Kirk reformulated and only slightly modified the above-cited Burkean sentiment in what I regard as a pronouncement of extraordinary wisdom: "Conservatism never is more admirable than when it accepts changes that it disapproves, with good grace, for the sake of a general conciliation." There's something remarkably Eisenhowerian about that line, whether we think of the Kansan's gracious, conciliatory wartime management of squabbling allies or his presidential acceptance of New Dealism. Graciousness, I would submit, rounds out any genuine conservatism.
Yet, so that we avoid pseudoconservatism's simplicity, any valid interpretation of genuine conservatism can't be as simple as what I have laid out. That is to say, Franklin Roosevelt, the founder of modern progressivism, was a conservative. The liberally sainted John Kennedy was a conservative. Indeed, Barack Obama is a conservative. None these leaders ever held to radical change; each was, or is, cautious, meditative, and vastly conciliatory. Change by sensible but incremental degrees has historically defined progressivism as conservatism, and vice versa.
It is this philosophical confluence that always puzzled me about Andrew Sullivan's "conservative" blog posts and essentially aligns me, a leftist, with the conservative Bruce Bartlett — whom I pitied, here, only yesterday. I rarely disagreed with Sullivan, and for that matter, from what I gathered, he rarely disagreed with me. Same goes with everything I've read and heard from Bartlett, as well as many other sane conservatives who have been righteously — and on their end, gratefully — banished from Bedlam. We all agree, I'd wager, on a good 80 percent of What Is To Be Done? Our philosophical similarities swamp our disagreements, genuine conservatism melds with modern progressivism, and near 80 percent of the American electorate would, in any moment of honesty, ponder our assorted proposals and say, Well, yeah, sure, they seem reasonable to me.
In brief, What is genuine conservatism? The answer, I'd say, is that it's very much like smart progressivism — incremental, gracious, and conciliatory.
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p.s.: I have reopened the comment section for this post. I welcome your thoughts, be they agreements or objections.