A Harsh Winter Still

The introduction to last winter’s issue
of Modern Age began by reflecting on
the challenges facing “Conservatism in
Winter” at a time when numerous political
commentators were predicting a longterm
ascendancy of “progressive” politics
and policies ushered in by the election of
Barack Obama as President of the United
States. At that time I maintained that no
return of authentic and lasting political
reason could be expected without a prior
restoration of cultural and moral integrity
to American society. The recent discomfitures of Mr. Obama and his allies are no
reason for premature rejoicing on the part
of conservatives. And while we may be
permitted a smile at the way an exceptionally
severe winter swept across the entire
Northern Hemisphere on the heels of a
series of well-publicized embarrassments
for the strident prophets of global warming,
harsh weather is hardly a cause for excessive
glee, since everyone’s toes are pinched
by the chill. Schadenfreude at the prospect
of every party and persuasion joining conservatism
“in winter” would not only be
unseemly; it would be ill-advised.

It is incumbent upon conservatives to
persevere in the tasks that have always
been ours: to remind our fellow men and
women of the truths that are the landmarks
of our earthly pilgrimage. Insofar
as we attempt to participate in electoral
campaigns and make political alliances, we
must strive to be “wise as serpents” while
remaining “innocent as doves”; for we are,
after all, “as sheep in the midst of wolves.”
Skeptical resistance to the intrusions of
meddlesome government is a definitive
characteristic of conservatism; hence, it
hardly behooves us to indulge in breathless
anticipation of the results of polling data
concerning probable voters. While there
are undoubtedly different degrees of competence
and integrity among administrations
and varying levels of prudence and
effectuality among legislative programs,
the best of them serve but for a season; and
none of them dispenses us from the grueling
business of getting through the vagaries
of mortal life among men and women
who are sinners like ourselves. We do well
always to recall that a sly master of merry
tales, St. Thomas More, located the perfect
society literally “nowhere.”

The essays in this issue engage conservative
ambivalence about political activity in
two different ways: the first two directly,
the latter two by way of literary dramatizations
of those perennial truths that it is
the conservative’s mission to expound and
extol. Carl Bankston provides a shrewd
critique
of the standard (liberal) reading
of Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience
as the literary charter of progressive
social activism. Bankston shows that, to
the contrary, Thoreau’s diatribe is a libertarian
demand that government restrict its
activity and generally leave the individual
alone. Nevertheless, Bankston takes note
that Thoreau’s provision for individual
liberty offers little basis for the social stability
that makes such freedom possible.
“Reading this old essay as a living document,”
he maintains, “requires us to look
at what it really says and, above all, to
argue with it.”

John Caiazza considers the relationship
between “American Catholicism
and the Catholic Church” and concludes
that, although the Church in this country
is often seen as a liberal institution, its
proper political orientation is conservative.
The Church needs to acknowledge that
conservative principles are more in keeping
with her traditional morality and the
social stability necessary for the flourishing
of strong families, and conservatives
can certainly benefit by allying themselves
with the Church’s institutional durability.
Both conservatism and Catholic Christianity
are rooted in the maintenance of and
adherence to tradition, and it is something
of an accident of American history that
they are somewhat estranged in this country.
Both prefer to see projects initiated and
issues resolved at the local level. But perhaps
the final implicit conclusion of Caiazza’s
piece is that political theory—the way
things rationally ought to be—rarely attains
anything close to perfect correspondence
with political realities. Conservatism will
no more find a constant temporal ally in the
Catholic Church than in any other institution,
secular or religious, with its own
particular agenda. What transcends the
worldly realm of politics is another matter
altogether.

Our other two articles deal directly
with literature, but their underlying political
insights are more lasting and profound
than daily punditry concerning electoral
politics and policy “initiatives.” Mary
Beth Garbitelli and her father, Douglas
Kries, investigate the novels of Jane Austen
in light of Aristotle’s Politics and discover a
remarkable resemblance in the thought of
these two quite different writers, as well as
striking divergences. The point of course
is not that Emma Woodhouse was engaged
in Peripatetic theorizing in her strolls
around Highbury with Harriet Smith, but
rather the continuity of the Western moral
and political tradition, which is more concerned
with the long-term flourishing of
communities than with an administrative
agenda. Similarly, Richard Harp investigates
usury as a moral and spiritual issue in
The Merchant of Venice, showing that ethical
and economic considerations can never be
truly separated.

The comprehensiveness of the traditional
literary vision is exemplified by the
poems included in this issue of Modern Age.
Robert Champ offers wistful realizations
of a distinctly twentieth-century composer
and of an image that no man could have
seen until the last fifty years. Anthony
Esolen and Stella Nesanovich on the other
hand dramatize charismatic voices of the
distant past, the Old Testament prophet
Daniel and the medieval mystic Julian
of Norwich. All of these poems provide
a means for that contemplation of the
deeper realities, which is the finest cultural
achievement, and which furnishes the ultimate
justification of all political arrangements.

This issue proffers a wide range of book
reviews. Thomas Albert Howard considers
a book on European anti-Americanism,
and there are reviews of books of broader
historical focus: Terry Pickett on the German
Right, J. Daryl Charles on liberal
ism and natural law, and A. S. Duff on the
political theories of the Canadian political
philosopher George Grant.

There are also reviews that deal with
literature: David Middleton and James
Matthew Wilson both address volumes
of poetry whose authors manifest a commitment
both to careful verse craftsmanship
and to the craft of living. Middleton
finds in Jack Gilbert’s poems an expressive
tribute to the good life in close touch with
the land, for which the poet renounced a
life as a university professor. Wilson, on
the other hand, finds in a volume of verse
by Richard Wakefield a poignant sense of
nostalgia, but also indignation over a lost
agrarian world—a casualty, in large measure,
of overweening politicians. Both
reviewers direct our attention to the realm
of life that precedes politics, or, better, that
is political in a deeper, Aristotelian sense,
rarely acknowledged in the political chatter
of the mass media.

Finally, the “Documentation” section
features a selection of verse in English by
the distinguished French literary scholar,
Robert Ellrodt. Ellrodt began writing
English poetry decades ago, and we are
especially pleased to publish a letter he
received from T. S. Eliot commenting on
the (then) young Frenchman’s efforts at
bilingual creativity. In addition, we offer a
translation of a rather poetic piece of Spanish
prose by the Colombian thinker, Nicolás
Gómez Dávila, that dramatically lays
out what separates a traditional perspective
from that of “progressives” of all varieties.

We thus add to the evidence gathered
from our own country signs from abroad
that the liberal arts and the generously
humane vision they provide continue to
survive the illiberal machinations of contemporary
liberalism. While the political
forecast may still be wintry, conservatism
continues to enjoy and nurture a hope that
will never be part of an electoral campaign.

—RVY