What Is Conservatism?

NATHAN SCHLUETER

THE QUESTION OF THIS TITLE presents formidable difficulties. Unlike libertarianism, conservatism is not a specific philosophy of government but a generic term that can have a wide range of specific meanings, depending on context. A Muslim conservative is not the same as a Catholic conservative or a Chinese conservative; a European conservative is not the same thing as an American conservative, and, within America, a paleoconservative is not the same as a neoconservative. Conservatism, whatever its form, is bound up with historical particularity.

But this does not necessarily mean that conservatism is completely bound by historical particularity, for there are moments in history when human beings seek to discover and protect transhistorical principles of right. Such moments characterize the history of the West, from the discovery of philosophy in ancient Greece, to Roman republicanism, to patristic and scholastic Christianity, to classical liberalism. Although these moments did not unfold into one another in any smooth, organic, and uncomplicated way, there is an undeniable continuity between them such that one may legitimately speak of a Western philosophical and political tradition. Conservatism seeks to "conserve" the best elements of that tradition.

But while this is true of the conservatism I wish to defend here, the account is far too broad to be of much use in the conservative–libertarian debate. We must begin by narrowing the lens to the specific historical context in which the libertarian–conservative debate originated. That context is post–World War II America. This is not to deny that the debate has much deeper historical roots than this period or that elements of the debate transcend historical particularities (both of these propositions are evidently true, and I will say more about them in what follows), but focusing on this period will help highlight the issues in this debate. In doing so, I am largely following George H. Nash's strategy in his magisterial The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America. But whereas Nash doubts that there is "any single, satisfactory, all-encompassing definition of the complex phenomenon called conservatism," and even suggests that "conservatism is inherently resistant to precise definition" (Nash 2006 [1996], xiii–xiv), I am more hopeful that a unified account of American conservatism can be formulated. As Nash concedes, despite his own doubts, "The very quest for self-definition has been one of the most notable motifs of [conservative] thought since World War II" (Nash 2006 [1996], xv). And indeed one may even learn something from Nash's doubt: Any adequate definition of conservatism will have to make principled (and not merely pragmatic) room for some difference and disagreement while avoiding a lowest common denominator "mere conservatism." Such, at any rate, is the kind of conservatism I intend to define and defend here.

In the following sections I will elaborate on this form of conservatism. First, in the following section, I will argue that conservatism rests on a recognition of the mutual interdependence of liberty, tradition, and reason, what I call the "equilibrium of liberty." The principles of the American founding, I assert, rest on the singular achievement of just such an equilibrium, and the conservatism I wish to defend, therefore, looks to the principles of the American founding. Next, in the section after that, I argue that the principles of the American founding are a form of classical liberalism, which I call natural law liberalism. In the following three sections I give an outline of natural law liberalism with respect to limited government, natural rights, and consent. I next show how the principles of the American founding can be said to be an expression of natural law liberalism, giving special attention to constitutional design and statesmanship. I end my discussion by giving a brief summary of the conclusions of the chapter.

The Equilibrium of Liberty: Libertarianism, Traditionalist Conservatism, Neoconservatism

The case for a unified conservatism can be built from the three primary strains within the conservative intellectual "movement": Libertarianism, traditionalist conservatism, and neoconservatism. Of course, this is a simplified picture. There are "liberaltarian" libertarians who positively repudiate conservatism and seek alliances with progressivism (see, for example, Lindsey 2010), and the Christian right and Tea Party movements don't fit neatly into any of these categories. But the Christian right and Tea Party can to some extent be characterized as grassroots populist movements in search of clarification about their own identity, rather than separate strains within conservatism. Or so I shall argue here.

Each of the strains within conservatism can be said to represent a principle. For libertarianism, that principle is liberty; for traditionalist conservatism, tradition; and for neoconservatism, reason. It is interesting, and perhaps not surprising, that each of these strains also tends to be associated with an academic discipline: Libertarians tend to the field of economics, paleoconservatives to history and literature, and neoconservatives to the social sciences, especially sociology and political science.

The fundamental insight to a sound account of conservatism is that all three of these principles are necessary for human flourishing and that, although they are in some tension with one another, the three principles are interdependent. Taken in isolation, each of these principles not only fails to achieve its own end; it also tends toward monstrous consequences. Set in careful equilibrium, like the constitutional system of checks and balances, each principle not only prevents the perverse tendencies of the others but also provides best for their most wholesome influence and development. We might call this the equilibrium of liberty. Frank Meyer offered something like this principle in his defense of "fusionism," but as Murray Rothbard rightly pointed out, Meyer's fusionism was really libertarianism. Because the equilibrium of liberty is the underlying principle in everything that I have to say about conservatism, it will be useful to say more here about the separate strands of which it is comprised.

Begin with libertarianism. According to Wenzel, "Libertarianism considers liberty the highest political good." In the words of David Boaz, "Libertarians believe respect for individual liberty is the central requirement of justice" (Boaz 1997a, 1). I will of course have much more to say about libertarianism in the following pages, but for now it can be said, in agreement with libertarianism, that liberty, both civil and political, is indeed one of the most important principles of justice. By civil liberty I mean freedom to pursue one's own flourishing without requiring the permission of coercive government. It includes the freedom to pray, speak, give, buy, sell, trade, and cooperate with others on common projects, according to one's best judgments. Political liberty is the right to participate in the decision making of government, through advocacy of issues and candidates, voting, and participation in public office.

Explaining the value of civil and political liberty should not require much space. Civil liberty rests on the equal dignity of human persons, who can achieve their flourishing only through their own self-constituting choices. Civil liberty also unleashes the greatest human potential for discovery, knowledge, and invention, resulting in benefits for all human beings. Political liberty not only serves as an important check on government power, it also reflects human equality. As Thomas Jefferson put it in a letter to Roger Weightman, "The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately" (Jefferson 1975, 585).

But it is worth pointing out here that these two forms of liberty are not identical and can indeed be in great tension with one another. Over sixty years before John Stuart Mill highlighted this tension in On Liberty (1978 [1959]), Thomas Jefferson, criticizing the first post-Revolution constitution of Virginia, wrote that "173 despots would surely be as oppressive as one" and that "an elective despotism is not the government we fought for" (Jefferson 1975, 164). The founders of America regarded the reconciliation of civil and political liberty as one of the most important and difficult political tasks. As James Madison put it in Federalist 10: "To secure both the public good and private rights against the danger of [a majority faction], and at the same time to preserve the spirit and form of popular government, is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed" (Hamilton, Jay, and Madison 2001, 45). The entire architecture of the U.S. Constitution (that is, a written constitution of enumerated powers, bicameralism, federalism, separation of powers, checks and balances, and so on), what Madison called its "auxiliary precautions" and "inventions of prudence" (Federalist 51; Hamilton, Jay, and Madison 2001, 269), are designed to address this difficulty.

Moreover, if it is true that civil and political liberty are great goods, it is also true that they depend on conditions that are a rare and always fragile achievement. Liberal democracy is more circumscribed and threatened today than at the end of the Cold War, despite Francis Fukuyama's famous (or infamous) prediction of its global triumph (see Fukuyama 2006). Those conditions include not only the security provided by well-designed political institutions but also opinions, sentiments, and habits favorable to liberty in the members of the political association. In making liberty the highest political good, libertarians inadvertently undermine those conditions.

I shall support this claim with one example relevant to today's political climate. It is obvious that liberty requires an effective defense against domestic and international terrorism. It is also obvious (at least to nonlibertarians) that effective defense requires powers in the government adequate to the threat, powers of secrecy, investigation, preemption, and quick action, that not only circumscribe the strict boundaries of individual liberty but are also liable to great abuse. Although the use of these powers demands vigilance on the part of citizens, that vigilance must rest on a reasonable recognition of the complex and delicate trade-offs necessary to protect a free society. Libertarians, in promoting an abstract and absolute conception of liberty as the highest political good, undermine the institutions necessary to protect liberty as well as the opinions on which those institutions rest.

Unlike libertarianism, traditionalist conservatism is rooted in a sober awareness of the conditions of human flourishing. Traditionalist conservatives trace their roots to Edmund Burke, who with prophetic insight and eloquence predicted the bloody tyranny that would result from the "liberté" of the French Revolution. Russell Kirk, the father of traditionalist conservatism, saw in Burke the remedy to modern rationalism, whether in the form of progressivism or libertarianism. Against rationalism, Kirk promoted "custom, convention, and old prescription" as "checks both upon man's anarchic impulse and upon the innovator's lust for power" (Kirk 1986, 9).

F. A. Hayek, too, although not a traditionalist conservative, contested rationalist and constructivist theories of liberty, observing that "freedom is not a state of nature but an artifact of civilization" (Hayek 2011 [1960], 107). Sounding much like Kirk, and Burke, Hayek asserted that "there probably never has existed a genuine belief in freedom, and there has certainly been no successful attempt to operate a free society, without a genuine reverence for grown institutions, for customs and habits and 'all those securities of liberty which arise from regulation of long prescription and ancient ways.'" Hayek concluded: "Paradoxical as it may seem, it is probably true that a successful free society will always in large measure be a tradition-bound society" (Hayek 2011 [1960], 122).

But Hayek also exposed a weakness in traditionalist conservatism: Although tradition is a necessary condition for a free society, it is not a sufficient condition. The sting in Hayek's criticism of traditionalist conservatism, which is worth quoting at length, should not conceal its kernel of truth:

... conservatism fears new ideas because it has no distinctive principles of its own to oppose to them; and, by its distrust of theory and its lack of imagination concerning anything except that which experience has already proved, it deprives itself of the weapons needed in the struggle of ideas. Unlike [classical] liberalism with its fundamental belief in the long-range power of ideas, conservatism is bound by the stock of ideas inherited at a given time. And since it does not really believe in the power of argument, its last resort is generally to claim a superior wisdom, based on some self-arrogated superior quality. (Hayek 2011 [1960], 526)

Neoconservatism seeks to address this weakness in traditionalist conservatism by supplying reasoned arguments in defense of conservative principles. Irving Kristol, sometimes called the intellectual godfather of neoconservatism, is often credited with the quip that a neoconservative is "a liberal who has been mugged by reality." The early neoconservatives were modern liberal intellectuals who became disillusioned by what they perceived as failures of progressive social and economic programs. But, rather than abandon government policy altogether, neoconservatives sought to improve it, in part "by taking administrative authority from federal agencies and placing it in local hands wherever possible and by maximizing the choices of individuals" (John Ehrman in Frohnen et al., 2006, 612).

Without question, neoconservatism has helped energize the conservative movement and to give it credibility in the wider culture, but traditionalist conservatives and libertarians question the extent to which neoconservatives have shed their progressivism. In domestic affairs, neoconservatives continued to support the New Deal, the beachhead of modern progressivism. Neoconservatives have also been strong proponents of a muscular foreign policy and of interventionist efforts to plant liberal democracy in troubled regions of the world by toppling despots and engaging in prolonged nation building. Trillions of dollars and thousands of lives later, those regions are more unstable than before intervention. Traditionalist conservatives and libertarians are right to worry that neoconservatism has not entirely shed the rationalist constructivism of progressivism.

In short, libertarianism, traditionalist conservatism, and neoconservatism each rest on an important principle, yet each of them has a tendency to exaggerate that principle at the expense of the others. Liberty, tradition, and reason each require the others for their completion. The equilibrium of liberty is a rare and always fragile achievement that must be won anew in every generation. The American founding was such an achievement, but that achievement is more threatened today than ever before by the strains of rationalism and traditionalism. (Indeed, as I will suggest in my next chapter, there is a rationalist strain in Hayek's own thought that significantly undermines his otherwise formidable system of liberty.) The task of American conservatism is the recovery of the founders' understanding of the equilibrium of liberty, and that recovery requires prudence, the one cardinal virtue explicitly appealed to in the Declaration of Independence.

Put most simply, then, American conservatism is committed to conserving the principles of the American founding, and to renewing the models of political leadership that gave those principles life. It does not regard the American founding as perfect. None of the founders thought it was, and all acknowledged that practical compromises had to be made that were in conflict with those principles. But they believed it to be the least imperfect political regime the world has yet known, able to provide the conditions for human flourishing while at the same time preventing tyranny.

Hayek himself approved of this form of conservatism. Although he famously distanced himself from the label "conservative," Hayek, a native of Austro-Hungary, had in mind the European or Continental form of traditionalist conservatism that existed as a reactionary and rearguard defense of the ancien régime against classical liberalism. But Hayek observed that "liberalism" (by which he means classical liberalism, the tradition of Montesquieu, Locke, Burke, Smith, and Tocqueville) is "the common tradition on which the American polity had been built" (2011 [1960], 519), and thus that conservatives in America can "defend individual liberty by defending long-established institutions" (521).

Classical Liberalism and the American Founding

In short, the principles of the American founding that conservatives defend are a form of classical liberalism. Conservatives today are rightly suspicious of the term liberal, for two reasons. On the one hand, liberalism has come to be associated exclusively with progressivism, an ideology that repudiates the principles of the American founding and promotes in its place the centralized administrative state. Those conservatives should remember that the traditionalist Edmund Burke was a classical liberal in the Whig reform tradition. He was also "the man whom [Adam] Smith [the founder of free market economics] described as the only person who he [Smith] ever knew who thought on economic subjects exactly as he did without any previous communication having passed between them." It was not until the twentieth century, when progressives like Franklin Delano Roosevelt claimed for themselves the mantle of liberalism, that American liberals opposed to the New Deal became known as "conservatives." The semantic change was a seismic shift, and, although it is perhaps too late now for conservatives to recover their rightful title, they must not forget that positive system of liberty that conservatism exists to defend.