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I am a conservative romantic
[Caleb Stegall 02/27 10:38 AM]Or, I might say even more accurately that I am a conservative because I am a romantic. To those who view this as a contradiction, I say: You don’t understand the meaning of either. It is amusing to me to encounter the same silly objections to traditionalist conservatism over and over again. “Small communities are hell!” “You want to turn back the clock!” and especially, “You romanticize the land!” To which I always want to ask, this is the same America we’re talking about isn’t it? The America from the mountains to the prairies; from the redwood forests to the Gulf Stream waters; the America of purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain? The America that once carried on a torrid love affair with its land, its nooks and crannies, its high places and low places? Yeah, I’m a romantic all right. I don’t think I could be fully an American if I weren’t.
But then comes the description of how hard life on the land really is, as if this fact makes self-evident the folly of the romantic. In fact, it is the difficulty that is at the heart of the romantic attraction Americans once had for their land, their families, their communities, and even their country. It’s putting oneself in service to something more than one’s own desires that is at the core of every romantic impulse in man. This is what makes John Wayne a conservative hero. Let me repeat some bits I’ve quoted before, this time with special emphasis: By deliberately choosing this life of hardship and immense satisfaction, we say in effect: The modern world has nothing better than this to give us. Its vision of comfort without effort, pleasure without the pain of creation, life sterilized against even the thought of death, rationalized so that every intrusion of mystery is felt as a betrayal of the mind, life mechanized and standardized—that is not for us. We do not believe that it makes for happiness from day to day. We fear that it means catastrophe in the end. — Whittaker Chambers
Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth. — Alexander Solzhenitsyn
The only possibility of control and balance is a religious control and balance …. That prospect involves, at least, discipline, inconvenience, and discomfort: but here as hereafter, the alternative to hell is purgatory. — T.S. EilotNote the words of the romantics: effort, pain, death, duty, discipline, inconvenience, discomfort. The prospect that these words might carry the germ of lasting satisfaction and happiness is a prospect American ears have a difficult time hearing today. But as I said earlier, they are the true basis for finding love, friendship, and a meaningful life. Master one’s passions, deny oneself, and love others.
Progressives of all political stripes learn early and often that to get on they better get out, move on, follow every rainbow. “Oh, the places you’ll go,” crooned Dr. Seuss, and we went and went and went until we became a rootless itinerant people. A wandering tribe of modern nomads, lost in our own backyards. Should someone dare to cherish some particular place so much that he would honor the commitment of that love through a strenuous and difficult life he is parochial, sentimental, a romantic, and worst, a loser. Here’s a simple definition of a conservative: someone who knows better.
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