Yuval Levin, a researcher of the fractured relationship between Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine, recently wrote an interesting post about Burke’s significant appeal for conservatives as a founding father (and it should be noted that leftists won’t stop admiring him either). This raises the question of what a “Burkean Conservatism” might look like. Peter Stanlis, a prolific Burke scholar, takes the term to mean an ability to combine natural and constitutional law with a practical prudence to form a political philosophy at once consistent but almost wholly unsystematic. Society is indeed a contract – but one between God and man, and all generations of humanity that form families and communities.
I think there is much to admire in such a sentiment, one of an anti-ideology……
If ideology is, in some measure, a replacement for God, Edmund Burke wrote against three schools of thought embodied by the French Revolution: the rationalism of Enlightenment philosophers, the romantic sentimentalism of Rousseau and his disciples, and utilitarianism.
Human beings do have rights by virtue of their human nature, but those rights are not bloodless abstractions, nor are they limited to mere guarantees against government. To narrow natural rights to such neat slogans as ‘liberty, equality, fraternity’ or ‘life, liberty, property,’ was to ignore the complexity of public affairs and to leave out of consideration most moral relationships. The evolved wisdom of society shaped the necessary ability to be restrained from actions destructive to self and community and supported the right to have some control placed upon appetite.
Such conservatism is an approach, a style, a sentiment, a bias – against efforts of utopianism, ideology, and the promise of a new future with little consideration of human nature. It is against the pursuit of systematic, ideological aims, such as the actions of state organized “unity.” Civil society is an offspring of custom and convention, not proposition. A “Burkean” philosophy of civil order, then, is not as devoted to particular policy outcomes as to the necessity of protection and a skeptical humility about the ability to effectuate change. A priori abstraction and reasoning are not to be trusted, given the possibility of unintended, unpredictable, and unforeseen consequence.
In sum, human autonomy is an illusion, and a good society requires limits upon appetite – limits often imported through moral, cultural continuity. These, perhaps, are more important for the good socio-political organization of humanity than constitutional right.
How different from much of movement conservatism, and from speech such as George W. Bush’s second inaugural address!
September 21st, 2010 | 8:19 pm
Mr. Jones, I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed this blog. I would hope that somewhere in the resistance exhibited against, first the GOP during the recent primary elections, and in a few weeks against the Democrats in the general election, the Tea Party people might capture something of the essence of Burke’s thought. If they are smart enough to include Burke’s thought into their platform, they may be around for a while.
September 21st, 2010 | 8:21 pm
What Burke contributed to my conservatism (granted, mostly second hand by way of Russell Kirk) is a profound respect for the bindings of society (civic institutions, religious groups, tradition, history, etc.) and how quickly those bindings can be destroyed if changes are made callously.
There’s a paragraph that comes early in “The Conservative Mind” that strikes me as being particularly brilliant and the sentiments it contains have largely guided my conservatism since I first read it:
“Burke has no expectation that men can be kept from social change, or that a rigid formalism is desirable. Change is inevitable, he says, and is designed Providentially for the larger conservation of society; properly guided, change is a process of renewal. But let change come as a need generally felt, not inspired by fine-spun abstractions….Even ancient prejudices and prescriptions must sometimes shrink before the advance of positive knowledge, but the Jacobin mind is unable to distinguish between minor inconvenience and actual decrepitude. The perceptive reformer combines an ability to reform with a disposition to preserve; the man who loves change is wholly disqualified, from his lust, to be the agent of change.”
I wish I could have pasted that under every Obama “Change” poster.
I’m also reminded of a story that I think is from G.K. Chesterton, but I can’t find it and can’t remember where I first read it, but basically a man comes to a wall in the middle of a road and says “whats the point of a wall in the middle of a road? Let’s knock it down.” Another man walks up and replies “Well, someone spent an awful lot of time building that wall, and until you know what its purpose is, it would be best to let it stand.” Ignorance of purpose is not justification for destruction.
I feel as though a good understanding of these ideas would go a long way towards establishing a Burkean conservatism. Many of the political questions of the day practically answer themselves. “Comprehensive Reform” of just about anything is to be opposed (Fin Reg, Immigration, Healthcare, etc.) Gay marriage and non-traditional families ought to be regarded with extreme skepticism. Exercises in democracy building abroad are to be recognized as almost certainly futile, or at the very least as being extremely difficult. Any man promising abstract hope and abstract change should be rejected reflexively. The tea party’s hatred of the establishment is to be met with great skepticism. Etc.
September 22nd, 2010 | 6:47 pm
Excellent observations, Dr. Jones.
September 24th, 2010 | 10:54 am
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Mick's Media, Roger Cook. Roger Cook said: New shared item: What Might a “Burkean Conservatism” Look Like?: Yuval Levin, a researcher of the fractured relati… http://bit.ly/aT6SVg [...]
September 26th, 2010 | 1:38 pm
“Change” as a campaign pledge is a double negative. That this whipsawed generation of sore winners might be shanghaied by such a simple ruse is a particularly acute demonstration that in America, you really can fool all of the people all of the time. Or , at least, enough of them to create an inferior opposition that upholds the principle in place.
Granted a Burke in this time, we would roundly ignore him because his stories are not jejune enough for the sunbeams we aspire to be.
March 1st, 2011 | 8:59 am
[...] beliefs stand in clear contrast to the beliefs of Edmund Burke, the father of modern conservatism. The 18th Century British statesman was a reformer, but hated [...]
March 21st, 2011 | 2:34 pm
[...] of authenticity for any of our country’s newish and modern temporal mental exercises. And so, despite efforts to source American conservatism in the anti-ideology of Edmund Burke and others figures skeptical [...]
April 19th, 2011 | 9:36 pm
It is sad that it is almost considered passé to honor the Constitution, to be a supporter of the rule of law, to love one’s country. When I was a youngster, I didn’t see the purpose for certain liturgical garments or rubrics, didn’t know what they were for or their history and was perfectly fine with relegating them to the rubbish heap of history. I suppose many see no purpose behind an alb or a stole and would be glad to scrap them since they speak more to a history that excludes those ignorant of their meaning and use. The laws of our land, like the sacraments of our churches, have a deep history and importance worthy of preservation. Much of today’s Tea Party, just like much of today’s Left, is all too ready to embrace a Cromwellian iconoclasm. They would destroy what they do not understand. This is not conservatism; it is radicalism which is all too susceptible to anarchism.
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