FROM THE ARCHIVES
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Choices
[Bruce Frohnen 03/15 01:34 PM]Today's posts have made clear that those of us who consider ourselves conservative have some important choices to make. Fifty years ago Clinton Rossiter differentiated among different kinds of conservative, referring to its mainstream as "stand-patters." Is that what we want to be? Is the higher good to which we as conservatives are devoted "more of the same?" That seems to be what those who dismiss Rod's book are implying. "The old world is gone, get used to the new one, embrace it and move on."
No thank you.
The deeper tradition of conservatism always has stood for something far more substantial than present-ism. What Edmund Burke defended against the French Jacobins; what Alexis de Tocqueville defended against the radicals of his own day in Europe and mindless levellers everywhere; what Russell Kirk defended against the mass homogenization of post-war liberalism; what William F. Buckley, jr. defended against the atheist, materialist professorate was the broad tradition of Western civilization. It was a society in which the true, the good, and the beautiful all were recognized as permanent things beyond price. It was a society in which we sought to join with one another in leading a life of virtue. Some political and economic structures are better at serving such goals than others, but these higher goals are the most important things, the things that actually make life worth living. And to simply say "that's all gone" is to abdicate one's responsibility as a human being, an American, and a member of one's neighborhood, parish, synagogue, workplace, family, school, and all the other associations of one's life, to work for a recovery of a reason to live — not just a way of enjoying oneself, but a reason for existing.
The problem today, of course, is that so much of our tradition has been crushed under the weight of materialism, selfishness, and cynicism. But that should not mean that we simply join in the party. When Burke criticized the French for giving in to the impulse to tear down their civilization, he didn't just say "too bad;" he made clear that, even in the worst of times, we have a viable option: to look back in our own traditions for healthy, virtuous elements, be they institutions, beliefs or practices, that we can revive and build on.
Americans still love to associate with one another, they still value decency, they still believe in God, they still want to live in actual towns and attend actual RELIGIOUS services. That's a start, and a far better start than pretending the 1960s was a hurricane that came from nowhere and left us with no choice but to pretend everything is fine, lest we lose power, prestige and money.
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