Stephen Tonsor of the University of Michigan history department is not often mentioned among the intellectual heavyweights of American conservatism. But reading his work gives one the impression he should be better known. For the Postmodern Conservative, skeptical of standards for socio-political “efficiency,” distrustful of the hegemonic pretenses of Enlightenment modernity, and set against all secular utopias, Tonsor’s incredulity toward temporal meta-narratives (even as religious faith abides) can be a lot of fun. Let us paraphrase: liberty and equality, whatever their status as ideal concepts, are social creations. They cannot be divorced from social reality and the context in which they are embedded. To consider them in the abstract is to lose meaning. Abstract perfection is practical defect; the shadowy world of abstract philosophy is inferior to the realms of ethics, politics, and history where the common good – the object of civil society – can be fostered by the exercise of prudence. Conservatism reenacts the past not as a past program but as a set of beliefs and values which are translated into the current idiom. The vernacular architecture of socio-political conservatism must be decentralized, organic, and rooted in past experience. This worldview is Roman; its political philosophy Aristotelien and Thomist; its concerns moral and ethical; its culture Christian humanist. It is free of metaphysical anxiety and alienation because it is communal with no hope for a utopian order. Sin and tragedy are not a consequence of inadequate social engineering, but a consequence of moral disorder.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011, 3:05 PM
September 7th, 2011 | 10:57 pm
Forget, please, modern “conservatism.” It has been, operationally, de facto, Godless and therefore irrelevant. Secular conservatism will not defeat secular liberalism because to God both are two atheistic peas-in-a-pod and thus predestined to failure. As Stonewall Jackson’s Chief of Staff R.L. Dabney said of such a humanistic belief more than 100 years ago:
“[Secular conservatism] is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today .one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution; to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt bath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth.”
Our country is collapsing because we have turned our back on God (Psalm 9:17) and refused to kiss His Son (Psalm 2).
John Lofton, Editor, Archive.TheAmericanView.com
Recovering Republican
Blog: JohnLofton.com
JLof@aol.com
September 9th, 2011 | 4:08 pm
My only qualm with the above is the statement that tragedy is not the result of social engineering, but of moral disorder. While true in the abstract, it invites a passivity in accepting bad and destructive behavior by seeming to ignore actions, policies, institutions, etc. that can be implemented and encouraged to either decrease the tragedy or lessen its impacts.
Can we social engineer Utopia? No. Are we responsible to act (individually, corporately, whether through public or private institutions) to encourage “better” behavior which may lessen inevitable tragedies? I think so. Entire law lectures are built around the moral culpability of “acts of ommission” vs. “acts of commission” and I understand that there no easy solutions to this quandry. We must, however, wrestle with it.
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