There is a symposium this week in the National Review centering around the question: Is conservatism a branch of liberalism? I confess the way the question was phrased got my back up a bit. It made me think liberalism was akin to the company with whom I have an account (Wachovia), wheras the particular office I bank at (a “branch”) is conservatism. Much as I may normally prefer the particular to the general, I can’t but think in this instance that the notion of a “branch” is a bit degrading. (Plus, which is now a more plausible concern, my FDIC insurance is routed through the main company.) In any case, I am a participant in that symposium as are Robert George, Chalres Kesler, and Yuval Levin. Below is my article.
American conservatism is devoted to conserving the American republic. Since the American republic is commonly classified as a “liberal” regime, the question of this symposium almost seems to answer itself: Conservatism today serves liberalism. (“Liberalism” in this context refers to its original 18th-century variety, meaning a limited government whose chief aim is to secure individual rights, rather than the modern variety, meaning a positive state that seeks to establish “social justice.”)
Yet it is mistaken to think of conservatism as merely a branch or subsidiary of liberalism. Conservatism may serve liberalism, but it often does so in ways that original liberalism hardly conceived of and that modern liberalism usually rejects. And this it does for liberalism’s good. Liberal theory never developed the tools to sustain itself; it has always required something beyond itself to survive. Conservatism, while endorsing so much of liberalism, recognizes and satisfies this need. Without conservatism, liberalism would begin to wither away. In fact it has already begun to do so.
Conservatism conserves the American republic by supporting its theoretical foundation of natural rights. This “abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times” (Lincoln) is something conservatives are not embarrassed to proclaim, even before the United Nations General Assembly. On this point, they are in full accord with the original liberals. Modern liberals, by contrast, are suspicious of metaphysical truths, advertising themselves as pragmatists while hiding their values behind the process of change.
Conservatism conserves the American republic by supporting the idea of the nation. The nation is necessary for security, for the activities of the common political life, and even for the welfare of humanity in general. What entity other than the nation-state, after all, defends us, enacts our laws, and provides for the well-being of many beyond its authority?
Conservatism not only recognizes the rational case for the nation but leaves space for justifiable feelings of attachment to it, acknowledging that the heart has its reasons that reason cannot comprehend.
Original liberalism was also a friend of the nation and developed such ideas as sovereignty. But it had difficulty from the first in articulating what the nation-state was beyond a contract, and it could never make full sense of feelings of attachment to it, allowing them therefore to develop unregulated. Modern liberalism, by contrast, has grown increasingly uneasy about the nation. It considers patriotism an anachronism and promotes global citizenship and global studies as replacements for American citizenship and education in our own political tradition.
Conservatism conserves the American republic by supporting the biblical religions, which have been the major source of our ethical system, one of self-restraint and belief in something beyond material existence. Conservatives subscribe to the liberal principles of freedom of religion, nonestablishment, and religious tolerance. But they see no contradiction (why should they?) between holding these principles and promoting reasonable measures—whether these concern immigration, fiscal policy, or education—that seek to preserve the central place of the biblical religions in our culture. Original liberal theory was sometimes cool to religion, failing to acknowledge how much liberal society was borrowing from the storehouse of religious capital. As for modern liberalism (setting aside the important faction that is hostile to biblical religions), it has taken the legal norm of religious freedom and twisted it into a new ideal of neutrality among faiths—an ideal reflected in President Obama’s proclamation that America is not “a Christian nation.”
Conservatism conserves the American republic by promoting “the tradition,” which refers, beyond religion and the Enlightenment, to the classical Greek and Roman ideals of virtue and excellence. Conservatives subscribe to the liberal principle of equality of rights, but they do so in no small part in order to allow for the emergence of inequalities and excellences. The tradition also provides a theoretical basis for a hierarchy of standards, which gives conservatives the confidence to criticize the vulgarity that pollutes any society and runs rampant in ours. Original liberalism often had the same inclinations—Jefferson spoke of a “natural aristocracy”—but it engaged too easily in attacks on the classics and, in its rationalist exuberance, went too far in elevating utility at the expense of nobility. Modern liberalism, in its focus on compassion, has had difficulty openly supporting and rewarding excellences. It has also allied itself culturally with relativism, which is the application of the idea of equality to all thought. Relativism makes it harder to support standards except those that touch on equality or diversity. Above all, in our universities, modern liberalism has pushed aside the “old books” in order to make room for diversity and identity politics.
Conservatism is the home today for the few remaining full proponents of original liberalism. It is also the home for those friends of liberalism who believe that liberalism’s defense requires something more than itself. The combination of these different strands of thought within the same movement produces tensions, but it is also a source of the movement’s great creativity. That creativity is best expressed in the view that the public good is not to be found in adherence to the clearest and simplest principles, but rather in the blending of different and partly conflicting ideas. It is above all by acknowledging this fact that today’s conservatism is no mere branch of liberalism.
November 21st, 2009 | 7:46 pm
What a great question! I struggled quite a bit with this when preparing to teach two courses at the same time- one on Conservatism and one on Liberalism. I came up with this as an answer, and would greatly appreciate input and correction (I’d hate to be accused of intentionally lying to my students!):
What is the difference between conservatism and liberalism?
I do think one of the reasons we struggle so much with this question is a failure to carefully define our terms. If by “liberalism” we just mean “classical liberalism” in terms of Hobbes, Locke and the rest, then we can conclude that there are differences between liberalism and conservatism (see below). But if by “liberalism” we mean “the political and social movements of the Western world after the beginning of the Enlightenment”, then we’ve expanded the definition of “liberalism” to include conservatism as part of the historical period which stands opposed to the Medieval and the Classical periods. But that also doesn’t really answer the question, it just broadens it to the point where it basically means nothing.
If we zoom in and take “Liberalism” in the classical sense (Hobbes, Locke, Jefferson, etc), then I would argue that liberalism sees the human person as being fundamentally concerned with “rights,” whatever those are (usually life, liberty, and property). Politics and social order are built up and designed to preserve these rights.
“Conservatism” in the traditional sense of that term (Burke, de Maistre, Adams, etc) views the human person as being fundamentally developed by and grounded in history and tradition, not by rights. Politics and the social order are organic historical growths (and I do think I’m obligated to use the word “organic” when defining conservatism…).
This is not to say that conservatives don’t believe in rights and liberals don’t believe in tradition, but that they put the two in different orders of development and priority. A conservative believes that rights are developed historically, while the liberal believes that history develops around rights.
I think one of the difficulties we face as Americans is what you point out- rights are ingrained in our history. So unlike English history, where you could conceivably point to a period of time when “rights” hadn’t yet developed, and even join 18th century Whig historians in tracing the development of these rights through the centuries, in America no such period exists. So, any conservative desire to preserve tradition would necessarily include “rights” as a fundamental doctrine.
I don’t know if it’s a satisfying answer, but it’s the best I could come up with…
November 21st, 2009 | 8:53 pm
Perhaps there is a branch of of human social order of which liberalism, in its various historical guises, is itself only one stem. The liberal branch has tended to be the most forceful in human history, and America and the United States of America–in its immensely complicated history–represents the most compelling exemplar. Liberalism after all has connotations of liberty and generosity, let alone the virtues of individual self-governance becoming a free man. Liberalism was a branch stemming from something larger than itself–albeit it has (providentially?) become the strongest and most health these days. This branch allows for many twigs let alone leaves, as is good–but with any version of horticulture, it requires good gardening.
Contemporary liberalism shows itself as the full flower–the result of the strength and health of the branch of liberty. Perhaps in its vanity (the beauty and fragrance of its flower is indeed intoxicating) it can no longer see from whence it came. This is surely a problem with any healthy plant, whereby its own health becomes a detriment to its very existence. Roses must be cut at the right time if one wishes to enjoy them or at least find some use for them (like wooing women), otherwise they will shrivel and stink like any ordinary marigold.
Indeed, strong branches can become so burdensome to the tree from which they sprout that a strong storm often comes to blow it away. Here on the Texas Gulf coast the loss of a great and beautiful (and even noble) magnolia tree after the billowing gusts of a hurricane is always a sad sight.
Conservatism may not be so much a branch as the apparent detritus that fell amongst the otherwise unotable shrubbery nearby. Conservatism knows what is necessary to maintain the tree as a whole even if it will never have the beautiful fragrance of the flower. Conservatism maintains the whole with knowledge of what the whole requires, so it represents an abstract appeal to principle. These things are true at all times and places. However, it refuses to let beautiful flowers to lord it over the entire branch.
November 21st, 2009 | 11:02 pm
“Liberal theory never developed the tools to sustain itself; it has always required something beyond itself to survive.”
That is an interesting claim. I would like to have heard more about why that is the case- is the lack of “tools to sustain” liberal theory due to a fundamental limitation in the theory? Is liberal theory therefore always a “branch” of another body of theory?
Yet the reason liberalism has developed is due to the search for a minimalist morality that can be generalized beyond religious and political divisions. The only extent to which liberal theory is reliant on other tools or considerations is merely the desire for common ground between actors, and the willing ‘privatization’ of beliefs around which public consensus cannot or does not develop. It doesn’t seem that liberal theory requires anything further than good will towards others. The extent to which good will requires tools to sustain itself is not different than the extent to which other public goods need tools to sustain them (tools customs, mores, laws, etc.).
November 22nd, 2009 | 12:08 am
It is a shame that the Southern Agrarians do not speak to my own generation. I can tell my friends that the Hispanic artistic expression may be the future. I tell them–I am a typical white guy and I ought to listen to Los Lobos.
But then I wonder if I do not know what I am talking about. I can only rely on the usual “all men are created equal” and this makes me look like an idiot. I have no way to relate otherwise. I hate the definition of people by race–for instance I am a typical white boy.
I make it sound like the Southern Agrarians had something to say, and perhaps they did–but only in terms of others speaking of what is most in terms of themselves. Sometimes one must be emphatic from where one is coming from. It is silly, because there is no something to be preserving.
I myself have never had the opportunity of having to defend myself in some serious definition of who is what.
I do not lack spiritedness, I only lack something for which its aim would be worthwhile.
November 22nd, 2009 | 8:40 am
I like Coyle’s account. I would only add this. I think there are some he calls “conservatives” here, like de maistre, who really are anti-liberal, and others, like adams and burke, who do favor liberalism. mahoney, beneton, and manent call the later conservative liberals
for this reason, the traditional grouping of these “conservatives’ together has problems. adams and burke are much closer to jefferson than they are to de maistre.
while it is true that all the “conservatives” share certain insights, the conservative liberal puts these insights into the service of bolstering and maintaining a liberal regime. the conservative liberal better understands what keeps the liberal society alive than the pure liberal.
i would describe my article as taking a (liberal) conservative liberal approach, in that, for america, there is a need to embrace a more open avowal of liberal principles than burke thought prudent for england. that is why i mention that the american “conservative liberal” does indeed embrace the declaration, etc. to my mind, it is impossible and unwise to do otherwise here. for this reason i do not align myself at all with those thinkers, like r. kirk, who try to exclude the declaration from the american tradition (and lincoln). that can’t work and would put the conservative in tension with the core of the tradition. i’m not going out on the prorch. as for john adams, recall that he was for statements of rights and was one of the moving forces behind the declaration.
would coyle please send me the syllabi for his courses? i would like that.
November 22nd, 2009 | 10:34 am
It is good to recognize that there is left-liberalism, right-liberalism, and a few minor holdouts for genuine conservatism.
Right-liberalism is the belief in a single universal truth, the truth that all men have equal rights, and in America as the providential embodiment of this truth. While there are different cultures, all cultures are conformable with the single universal truth, even Islam, and thus all people, including Muslims and half-literate Mestizos, can be assimilated into America. For right-liberals, the supreme sin is to deny the single universal truth and its corollary that all men are capable of following that truth.
Left-liberalism is the belief in the substantive and moral equality of the human race. It rejects the notion of a single universal truth, because such a truth would be superior to other truths, and because the men who believed in that ostensibly universal truth would feel superior to and would attempt to dominate other men. All truths, all men, all cultures, must be treated equally, just as they are. For left-liberals, the worst sin is to imagine that you are in possession of the truth and that you have the right to expect other people to conform to it.
Both groups hate each other but both are fundamentally liberal. What makes them liberal? The belief in equality (however defined) as the ruling principle.
Conservatism on the other hand is the belief that there is truth, but that it is expressed in different cultures through their traditions. America and its values are an important and worthy contribution to the political and social life of mankind, and superior even to the expressions of other cultures, but this mixture of beliefs and folkways serves chiefly our society and its flourishing. Other countries and peoples with different customs and habits could not easily benefit from our tutelage, especially if it comes at gunpoint. Likewise, their people, if they should emigrate to our country, will likely be unable to benefit from our society and may change it for the worse, destroying any benefit to themselves and also to the native born.
Different cultures may someday recognize different universal truths originating in Western Civilization and its American expression, but differences in climate, history, genetics, and leadership make this merely a long term hope and one that cannot be vouchsafed through any specific policy. We should instead endeavor to preserve our known and inherited way of life in recognizable form for ourselves and our progeny by protecting our independence and our historical demographics.
For conservatives, the supreme sin is hubris and ingratitude, and this is expressed by the desire to undertake experiments in social engineering, whether in missionary colonialism abroad or mass third world immigration at home.
November 22nd, 2009 | 5:09 pm
Dr. Caeser,
I think those are good qualifications to make. There are certainly liberal values in the core of the American tradition, including within the thought of John Adams.
And I also disagree with Kirk’s attempt to marginalize the Declaration. Though I would suggest that the real difficulty is not with the place of the Declaration in the Founding, but with the Articles of Confederation. Are they part of the tradition or not? If so, what role do they play?
Syllabi are on the way, though they’re really nothing spectacular.
November 23rd, 2009 | 9:36 am
Roach, that’s an excellent ‘comment.’ Re: ‘conservatism’ let me ask: Can a person be a conservative and a non-Christian (in the West)?
Also, is there someplace where you’ve expanded on the theme of “lef-right” liberalism? I would like to read that.
Coyle: Let me drop this bomblet, If we’d have maintained the Art. Of Confed we might have been able to save the olde republic beyond the Lincoln years; that the South more accurately and properly reflected the political culture of the founding generation; and if everyone had read “I’ll Take My Stand” back in the 30’s we might not be in the mess we’re in.
November 23rd, 2009 | 10:12 am
Good thoughts, and thanks for drawing attention to the symposium….my crude generalization is left-liberalism values equality (forced when seen as necessary) and right-liberalism values freedom – thus neither one fit very well “conservative,” which to me is a sentiment. Now “sentiment” is taken from Burke and Kirk, both of whom partake a lot of the “liberal” tradition – an umbrella from which we cannot escape……
November 23rd, 2009 | 3:47 pm
After digging back through my notes from a course I’d taken (not one I’d taught) on conservatism, the conclusion at the end of the class was that the clearest definition of “conservatism” was that at the end of the day it is what Dr. Caesar said de Maistre is, simply “anti-liberal.” In other words, the unifying characteristic of conservatism is that it reacts to the extremes of liberalism by falling back on the tradition (with greater or lesser force, depending on who’s doing the falling).
I think this definition is problematic and unsatisfying, but at least it has the merits of drawing together most people we’d label as “conservative” in one form or another, including those with liberal inclinations like Burke and Adams, those with extreme reactionary inclinations like de Maistre and some of the Russian writers (Tolstoy and the like), and the neoconservatives.
I’d love to hear any thoughts on this, mostly because of how uncomfortable it makes me as a definition :)
Bob, that is in fact a bomblet :) Without being a scholar of the Civil War I’m not sure I can reply to your comment (which of course won’t stop me- I am a political theorist after all). My instinct is to say that without the strengths of the U.S. Constitution, rather than preserving the Union via a Civil War (certainly not the preferred method of “preservation”), if we’d stayed under the Articles the whole thing may have disentegrated and regions of states gone their seperate ways…
Again though, not my area, so that’s mere speculation on my part.
November 23rd, 2009 | 3:47 pm
Jim, that post is a keeper.
And the comment is fun…
The way I’ve tried to speak to the Front Porch Republic that you won’t go out onto is to say you can’t be Burkean about America unless you understand that the Dec and its Liberalism is part and parcel of the American cultural inheritance.
Understanding, as coyle surely must given his “broad focus” moments, that liberalism = “democracy” and “equality,” all Ceaser is saying here is what Tocqueville did at the end of Democracy in America: that the task of our times is not to try to return to aristocratic or even to township liberty by way of returning society to those times (although more FPR-style township power/liberty certainly should be sought) but rather to make liberty, understood best by those older examples, emerge as much as it can from democratic society we really are stuck with for the forseeable future.
roach, good stuff, even though Bush was right about the key Iraq decision and even though I’m okay with Americans SLOWLY(i.e., largely legally) becoming even more “mestizaje” and “la raza cosmica” than the Mexicans themselves.
November 24th, 2009 | 1:15 am
All brilliantly, narrowly clear but it omits the fundamental crisis of our time. Another demonstration that Politics, let alone Political Theory is not happily separated from Political Economy. The deformation of character, vulgarity, and self-debasement that make it hard, if not impossible, for most would be citizens to rise out of subject status is a function of their role and that of their families’ role as relatively insignificant cheerful robots at best and angry discardable ‘misshapen’ at worst. There is not much liberty, let alone security into old age for most; hence, the banality of the popular culture engulfs them. Servility unbecoming of a citizen. Hostility of the majority of the population of the teetering Republic for democratic-republican practices and instead, embrace of dionysian pseudo-political spectacles and, well, sheer nonsense and lies that have destroyed sound, limited government over the past 100 years.
Jobless recovery notwithstanding, what is needed to renew the regime is a mission orientation founded on production, innovation, and service to the community, nation, world at large, and posterity itself — no more pretending that short-term profit and speculation is the best we can do coupled with groveling before hedge fund pirates like Soros. A mission orientation that takes a lesson from Solon of Athens, recognizing that the world is ruled by oligarchs – unless and until a committed intervention upends them – and that most people are easily enticed into and enslaved by debt and financial obligations that make freedom, the handmaiden for creativity, an impossibility. Yes Virginia, there is another entity besides, or rather overruling, the nation, and that is financial oligarchy and its hubristic reach is global. The nation or what is left of the Republic serves oligarchy pure and simple; the Constitution and the Declaration have been reduced to liberty slogans and windowdressing. All this pretense to restoring, defending the republic is beside the point until Wall St and London Finance is reigned in and the unpayable, unsustainable debt – personal, private, and state – is reorganized and a substantial portion is written off under the rubric of a wholesale reorientation of policy to that of John Quincy Adams’ Community of Principle among sovereign nation-states, national self-sufficiency, community self reliance, and genuine responsibility for ourselves, our families and those from whose labor we are given all manner of good things.
November 24th, 2009 | 8:15 am
with scott and others, i like the roach as well.
what roach calls right liberalism hardly exists today among liberals, who have glided more to the left-liberal position, except on certain ceremonial occasions when the old universal truths are brought out of the closet only to be put back after the speech is over. perhaps the last spasm of genuine liberal right liberalism came during the kosovo war and was uttered by the likes of joe biden.
the real carriers of right liberalism, according to many analysts, are the neo-conservatives. by this standard, a neo-conservative is someone who has read locke and jefferson but forgot to read montesquieu or burke. i know many so-called neo-conservatives, and most in fact do not fit this description (though a few do). you would have to be a true ideologue not to appreciate the wisdom of the roach. most neo-conservatives have been more hard-headed than is made out; they made a prudential judgment in the context of current international relations, which may or may not have been a correct one, and then some inevitably, in the course of defending it in public discussion in wartime, slipped too far in the direction of right liberalism. the roach, like mahoney and kesler earlier, remind us that the assertion of a truth is not the same thing —far from it–as thinking all can or will (ever) accept it.
all this said, a roachian approach cannot be a substitute for prudential judgments. if it tried to become so, it too would be ideology. i suspect that some who follow roach, though not the roach himself, might not see the concrete interest we have, in certain areas and places, in seeming to be a little but more right liberal than we really are. that can serve our concrete interests, while going too far in a public “cultural” direction might not. (obama might be said to be guilty today of the latter, as in his initial too timid reaction to the fradulent iranian elections.) it is important for readers of roach not to fall into a trap. i have always liked the inspiriting purpose and effect of some right liberal rhetoric, like jefferson’s “all eyes are opened or opening…” as for immigration, i am also sympathetic with roach, provided we see–and some do not–the utility of permitting it where it fulfills our interests, meaning that it results in a useful and productive population that can in fact americanize. “third world” immigration is only a small part of the prudential consideration, which should focus even more on the parts that can, in appropriate numbers, become the “blood of our blood.”
November 24th, 2009 | 2:17 pm
[...] while it is the Progressives who are wary of principles divorced from practice. James Ceaser writes on Postmodern Conservative: “Conservatism conserves the American republic by supporting its theoretical foundation of [...]
December 4th, 2009 | 12:48 pm
[...] while it is the Progressives who are wary of principles divorced from practice. James Ceaser writes on Postmodern Conservative: “Conservatism conserves the American republic by supporting its theoretical foundation of [...]
January 18th, 2010 | 7:22 pm
[...] (and I do mean a while), James Ceasar posted a short piece he wrote for an NRO symposium over on Postmodern Conservative. The question was “Is Conservatism a branch of Liberalism?” Exciting thoughts abound. [...]
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