Symposium: Transcending Liberalism

This article is in response to Go Radical or Go Home and is part of the symposium on “Conservatism: What’s Wrong with It and How Do We Make It Right?”

Mr. Neumayr argues that our Founders were conservatives because they weren’t looking to dismember society. But what we must remember is that they were seeking to change society. The beliefs they held are the seed whence modern liberalism came. One cannot have Rousseau without Locke and Hobbes. We also can’t ignore the deism, or at least irreligiousness, of many of the Founders. Franklin was no traditional theist, Jefferson cut miracles out of his Bible, and Hamilton was far from a zealot. Sure, they drew on what we term “natural law.” But that natural law is derived from an account of nature rooted in Hobbes and Locke, an account of nature that breaks with the tradition of Aristotle and Plato. This law comes not from the harmonious nature of which man is a part, but from the disordered chaos, which man resists through a social compact. That in and of itself is a radical break with traditional Western philosophy.

Gasp. We may have a problem. America may have been founded by *gulp* liberals: Liberals in religion, liberals in thought, and liberals in deed. Our “revolution” may have not been much of a revolution, but it was a radical change. Monarchy toppled? Check. Re-structuring of government and society (the flight of the loyalists left a gaping social hole)? Check. Emphasis on the equality of all men? Check. Tell me some of these aren’t things you associate with Barack Obama.

Now, don’t get too alarmed. This doesn’t mean Howard Zinn was right. What it does mean is that American conservatism will never seem truly conservative as long as it remains entirely self-referential. How can we argue for conserving a natural law whose undermining begins with the philosophers whom we promote? Conservatives must dig for the truth where it can be found. We should acknowledge where our Founders were right. But they were also often wrong. Conservatism must fashion itself not on the coattails of Enlightenment liberalism, but on the unchanging bulwark of timeless principle. The old and new must converge. Maimonides must meet Burke in the consciousness of the conservative; Kirk must stare into the eyes of Christ himself. Conservatism will die if it chooses to associate itself primarily with the bud of modern liberalism. It will live if it seeks truth in all peoples in all times.  It befits the conservative to acknowledge the timeless, not to seek foundations in sand.