At first glance, today’s “On the Square” feature by Carson Holloway (Same-Sex Marriage and the Death of Tradition) seems to rehash well-trodden ground in the debate over same-sex marriage. But a closer inspection reveals that Holloway is addressing not only the danger to marriage but an issue that hasn’t been as thoroughly explored: How allegiance to tradition has been all but abandoned—even by conservatives.
First, a society that is deaf to tradition is more likely to err in social policy and do inadvertent damage to itself. Burkean conservatism contends that society is an intricate web of relationships, institutions, and mores, the whole of which is too complex to be grasped by the reason of any individual, or even of any single generation, even one claiming for itself extraordinary enlightenment.
The last phrase strikes me as the key to understanding how we arrived at the present situation. Although such “extraordinary enlightenment” has been claimed by every generation since, well, since the Enlightenment, it seems to have become even more pronounced in the last three—Boomers, Gen-Xers, and Gen-Yers.
At the ripe old age of thirty-nine, it is tempting to say that this belief in generational enlightenment is more symptomatic of the “kids these days.” And indeed it is a temptation I cannot resist. Having spent several years in D.C. around young conservatives I can attest that few of them would take seriously the claim that we should consider the “authority of tradition.” The Catholic kids will give you a respectful hearing, as will most of my fellow evangelicals (if you can back it up with an appeal to scripture). The rest: blank looks of incomprehension that convey the message, “Get outta here with that fuddy-duddy Gen-X authority stuff.” (In fairness, most of the young “conservatives” I’ve met are really fiscally conservative, socially libertarian Republicans that may not be representative of America.)
My generation is no better, though. Nor is the one that came before. On social issues, conservatives born after 1950 tend to be open to any arguments that maximize individual liberty no matter what the impact on the individual or the externalities that affect the community. We are all so extraordinarily enlightened nowadays that we don’t need to look to the past for wisdom. We can create our own, thank you very much. We are, after all, the ones we’ve been waiting for.
June 10th, 2009 | 3:03 pm
Yes, I think you’re onto something. Using Thomas Sowell’s categories of Constrained and Unconstrained Visions (cf ‘A Conflict of Visions’), we are finally learning that libertarians’ unconstrained vision places them, ultimately, closer in alignment to what we call ‘liberals’ than to ‘conservatives.’ The future of the Republican Party depends on how this shakes out. A three-party system of Socialists (unconstrained vision, central planning), Libertarians (unconstrained, minimal planning) and Conservatives (constrained, some central planning needed to incorporate the wisdom of the ages) would perhaps better fit the reality of how people actually think.
June 10th, 2009 | 3:13 pm
“Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.”
— Chesterton
He was right.
June 10th, 2009 | 5:37 pm
Yet not all of tradition is worthy of preserving, as our Lord taught us: “So by these traditions of yours you have made God’s laws ineffectual. You hypocrites, it was a true prophecy that Isaiah made of you, when he said, ‘This people does me honor with its lips, but its heart is far from me. Their worship is in vain, for the doctrines they teach are the commandments of men’” (Matt. 15:5-9).
June 11th, 2009 | 1:06 am
I don’t think people can choose to abandon tradition or to disregard it’s influence on our reasonings. Tradition carries with it a certain authority whether we acknowledge it or not.
In fact, it isn’t uncommon for a conservative these days to point out that the supposed new and fresh ideas of the political left are little more than a repetition of what progressive politics has been for well over a century. And if you like, you can trace that back to Hegel or Fichte.
But progressivism seems to be a particular kind of tradition that praises the dynamic and the novel. It is a tradition that believes that we ought to be improving our beliefs and our values with each generation. The gay rights movement sees itself as part of an ongoing struggle, which includes the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, the civil rights movement of the 60′s, and women’s liberation. That Lincoln would not have approved of gay marriage is beside the point. Lincoln had the courage to stand up to the prevailing injustice of his time, etc.
What’s more, the special attention given to tradition by the traditionalists has never been absolute deference. Thomas Aquinas himself says that an appeal to authority is the weakest form of argument; and tho’ he gave special attention to well-deserving predecessors, he did not hesitate to correct them when his reason showed them to be mistaken.
The problem I think most of us have with tradition is not that we don’t give it its proper authority, but that we don’t know our history well enough to know when tradition is exerting its influence on our thinking. Recognizing this influence requires not simply knowing the basics of history (as we might get out of a high school textbook) but knowing of competing accounts of the same history. This is, of course, difficult to do while young.
June 11th, 2009 | 4:04 am
Perhaps it is more straightforward.
To a progressive, all is prelude and straw underfoot. Top down, bottom up, whatever it takes. To Utopia, and Beyond!!
To a conservative, all is prelude and preparatory, top down and bottom up in God’s image. To Heaven by Grace…
Allowing tradition to exercise authority without some assumption of a benevolent plan is indeed the tyranny of the past over the present and future.
However, assenting to the authority of tradition is not only an example of praiseworthy humility in light of all those who have come before, but it is dependent upon that authority residing somewhere, with someone.
Which makes my mind wonder about the “young conservatives” and what exactly they hope to conserve? Other than personal liberty in the service of personal license perhaps – i.e. the libertarian mode.
If one hopes to call upon the authority of tradition to conserve personal liberty in the service of, among other things, personal betterment, self-mastery, provision for family, formation of conscience, and freedom to worship and work under God, then such conservativism is pointing somewhere beyond the here and now. But it is not Utopia, at least not that of our own making.
Mr. Carter mentions the hearing that Catholic would give to such a discussion. It is particularly apropos to recall the Catholic sense of our Holy Mother Church. Such is maternal authority – exercised in the longing for our good, desiring no other end but our eternal life with the Lord forever.
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