Recapturing the Conservative Conscience
On what feels like an almost daily basis, I get asked the same question: “Are you a conservative?”
Usually, this is a predicate to an attack on some unorthodox political position I’ve taken – like my support for organized labor, marriage equality, or treating immigrants and refugees with a basic human decency. In other situations, it’s a litmus test for political support – simply saying yes is enough in some places to earn or lose a vote. It’s a question that I’ve struggled with over the years. In my youth, I would have simply answered “yes.” Over the years, I’ve found it harder and harder to answer in an unqualified way.
After studying law, I find I am almost unwilling to answer at all until the questioner defines what they think “conservative” actually means.
We find ourselves today in the midst of modern American conservatism’s mid-life crisis, where more and more people seem to have diverging views on what the definition actually is. With the passing of the great conservative thinkers of the past – Buckley, Kristol, et al – and the rise of talk radio and the internet, conservatism seems to be searching for a voice. With more outlets come more potential spokesmen, and in the Trump era it’s hard for anybody these days to figure out just what conservative orthodoxy is anymore.
David Brooks, in the New York Times, talks about this existential conundrum in last weekend’s column, and it’s been a frequent discussion point in the pages of conservatism’s flagship outlet, National Review. Katherine Miller of BuzzFeed wrote a great piece months ago on the subject.
One of the key points that Brooks brings up that I see rarely discussed is the idea that conservatism, as an ideology, is not restricted to politics. We forget that. We spend all our time weaponizing ideology for use in political battles, so much so that we tend to forget that the titans of conservative thought spent plenty of time on “conservative” things that had nothing to do with politics. Conservatism was not merely a political philosophy, it was a way of life that embraced and revered tradition, history, education, intellectualism, and faith.
As Brooks wrote,
“The very essence of conservatism is the belief that politics is a limited activity, and that the most important realms are pre-political: conscience, faith, culture, family and community. But recently conservatism has become more the talking arm of the Republican Party.”
This is where I find the current incarnation of conservatism, as espoused by talk radio and internet click-bait websites, to be distasteful. The brand of populism and “government is the problem” rhetoric, mixed with a healthy dose of demographic demonization is not the conservatism that drew me into the GOP when I was a teenager, and it wasn’t what kept me in the party long after my idealism began to wane. What has kept me here, I suppose one could say, is my fundamental conservatism, in the widest definition of the term. I respect tradition, heritage, faith, education, and family – these are things that I value above all else, and they have guided me throughout my adult life.
I am a traditionalist. I am drawn to the ancient, to the learning and knowledge of the past, to the rituals and thinking that has been a part of the American tradition, and the western tradition largely over the last centuries. One of my most prized possessions is an Anglican Book of Common Prayer printed in 1721. Touching that book, flipping through the yellowed pages to the Psalms Christians have been singing for millennia, brings forth a quiet reverence for the past that I find helps anchor me in today’s turbulent world. That the Church that published that book still exists and will exist long after I am gone is a tonic for me. I still wear a tie to the office. I hold my wine glass by the stem. I stand at attention for the National Anthem. I love baseball, bourbon and books. I read Cicero for fun, and I’ve got a bust of him in my home office. I married late, well into my thirties, because I knew I would only do it once and I wanted to get it right. I don’t preach – I simply live my life the way I think it should be lead and let how I do it speak for itself. Some call it old-fashioned, but I call it respect for tradition.
That, to me, is conservatism – respecting the past, trying to live an upright and moral life, staying true to my principles, avoiding hypocrisy, embracing fairness, and thanking God daily for the blessings He’s bestowed on me and my family. Those translate politically into a reverence for the Constitution – not simply as I understand but also how it’s been applied through the courts, a respect for authority, a love of freedom, a desire for limited government, free enterprise, and a desire for equality of opportunity so that every man and woman can achieve their full potential. That’s how I’ve come to define conservatism, and it’s more than just politics and ideology. Being conservative means more than simply holding a certain view on various policy positions or claiming to have done more than skim “The Road to Serfdom” or some other prolix Austrian school economic scribblings. Conservatism is not simply about holding certain political views – it’s an outlook and a way of life.
In those ways, I’m profoundly conservative. But my conscience is troubled.
That’s why I am having such a hard time this cycle. Conservatism, at least what I’ve described above, is profoundly missing from this presidential cycle. The policy positions most touted by the erstwhile “conservative” candidate bear little resemblance to the positions I’ve been led to believe represented Goldwater-style conservatism for my entire life. Those positions, coupled with the way he’s lived his life, bear absolutely no resemblance to the kind of conservative ethos I adopted as my own as a teenager. What’s worse, it seems as if a lot of people I respect have chosen to simply fit blinders over this fact in a desperate desire to win back the White House and prevent a second Clinton administration.
I have a hard time understanding why.
Politics has to be about more than simply winning. Conservatism has to be about more than just a laundry list of policy positions. We should be willing to lose and fight another day if winning means the permanent corruption of things that, up until this point, have been considered sacrosanct. And we should have more faith in our institutions and our Constitution that we can withstand four more years of policies we disagree with without it signalling the end of the American experiment.
That’s where my conservatism – my love for tradition and the past, and my faith in things bigger than me – gives me hope. We have been here before. As Goldwater said,
Our people have followed false prophets. We must, and we shall, return to proven ways — not because they are old, but because they are true. We must, and we shall, set the tides running again in the cause of freedom. And this party, with its every action, every word, every breath, and every heartbeat, has but a single resolve, and that is freedom — freedom made orderly for this Nation by our constitutional government; freedom under a government limited by the laws of nature and of nature’s God; freedom balanced so that order lacking liberty will not become the slavery of the prison cell; balanced so that liberty lacking order will not become the license of the mob and of the jungle.
That return needs to start on November 9.
