the conservative mind, part three

here are the final three "canons of conservative thought" as laid out in the conservative mind (1953) by russell kirk, the dean of modern american conservatism."

(4) Persuasion that property and freedom are inseparably connected, and that economic levelling is not economic progress. Separate property from private possession, and liberty is erased.

of course, private property is fundamental to many small-l liberalisms as well. the great irony, though, is that property, or that which is appropriated, is very often, as proudhon put it, theft. or at the very least taken by force and with bloodshed. and nowhere is this more true than the american continent. kirk equates property with freedom, but clearly this freedom is only enjoyed by the appropriator. native americans were certainly not freed or liberated by the europeans' conquest and plunder of their land.

note also the reappearance of the word "levelling," just after the previous, third canon: "The only true equality is moral equality; all other attempts at levelling lead to despair." again, some people are superior to others, and levelling is bad because it removes the inherent inequalities among people.

(5) Faith in prescription and distrust of "sophisters and calculators." Man must put a control upon his will and his appetite, for conservatives know man to be governed more by emotion than by reason. Tradition and sound prejudice provide checks upon man's anarchic impulse.

i can't pretend to know what kirk means by "sophisters and calculators," but the key concepts here are "prescription" and "prejudice." the relevant OED definitions of "prescription" are, i think, "The action of prescribing or appointing beforehand; that which is prescribed or appointed; written or explicit direction or injunction" and "Uninterrupted use or possession from time immemorial, or for a period fixed by law as giving a title or right; hence, title or right acquired by virtue of such use or possession: sometimes called positive prescription." in other words, the appeal to prescription is essentially one to tradition, to time-honored customs and practices, that "it's always been this way."

you won't find "prejudice" used this way much any more because of its negative connotations, but kirk is talking again about preconceived notions, opinions, values, etc. and indeed, these preconceived notions and time-honored values go at least as far back as plato: will, appetite and emotion are bad, irrational, and must be repressed. these are the things in people that make them bad.

finally...

(6) Recognition that change and reform are not identical, and that innovation is a devouring conflagration more often than it is a torch of progress. Society must change, for slow change is the means of its conservation, like the human body's perpertual renewal; but Providence is the proper instrument for change, and the test of a statesman is his cognizance of the real tendency of Providential social forces.

curious that kirk saves his most qualified pronouncements for last, but in doing so goes back to his starting point and relinquishes agency in human interaction and affairs over to the divine.

the conservative mind, part two

in the previous post we were able to conclude from russell kirk's first "canon of conservative thought" how, in a backlash against renaissance humanism, conservativism posits the christian god as an active force directing and shaping human activity, including government by theocracy and a natural hierarchy in which certain of god's creatures are inherently superior to others.

the remaining five canons essentially reiterate this, with varying emphases.

(2) Affection for the proliferating variety and mystery of traditional life, as distinguished from the narrowing uniformity and equalitarianism and utilitarian aims of most radical systems. This is why Quintin Hogg and R. J. White describe conservatism as "enjoyment." It is this buoyant view of life which Walter Bagehot called "the proper source of an animated Conservatism."

i have to admit i find this one the most opaque of all: while the appeal to "tradition" is quite intelligble, i have no idea what kirk could possibly mean by "the proliferating variety and mystery of traditional life." i cannot imagine what variety and mystery there might be to traditional life, much less why these would be proliferating. the image i get is that of the scala natura of all the natural world (evoked in Canon 1), the little creatures of the world happily proliferating.

perhaps the "sweet mystery of life" is that there is life and a universe here at all? ok, i'll grant that. but it sounds more to me like mystification than mystery, especially when it's being invoked under the guise of "traditional life." such notions of tradition, "the good ol' days," the way things used to be, are almost always grounded in fanciful speculation. and such fancy and mystery almost always elide real social and material facts of life for those who do not look back on the days of yesteryear favorably. descendents of southern plantation owners have a much different "affection for the proliferating variety and mystery of traditional life," for example, than do the descendents of slaves and sharecroppers.

this becomes even more apparent when kirk himself contrasts this with "the narrowing uniformity and equalitarianism and utilitarian aims of most radical systems." in other words: under traditional, ordered, hierarchical life, variety and mystery proliferate; remove the hierarchy and acknowledge all creatures as equal and thus equally deserving of the good and a good life, as "most radical systems" do, and suddenly the natural world trades in all its variety and mystery for "narrowing uniformity." this is a fascinating insight really. conservativism only accepts difference within a vertically-integrated chain of being; any marker of difference must automatically be valued negatively or positively relative to something else. if you recognize difference but integrate it horizontally along what is an essentially a continuum of equality that does not values those differences one way or another (and that essentially holds the similarities and commonalities to be more important or more valuable than the differences), you effectively reduce or eliminate differences altogether in favor of egalitarianism and utilitarianism. again: differences more more important, more valuable in that they denote some people as better and therefore more deserving of the good and the good life than others. hence Canon 3:

(3) Conviction that civilized society requires orders and classes. The only true equality is moral equality; all other attempts at levelling lead to despair, if enforced by positive legislation. Society longs for leadership, and if a people destroy natural distinctions among men, presently Buonaparte fills the vacuum.

in a system based on natural hierarchies in which some people are inherently superior to others, how in the world can it be that "the only true equality is moral equality"? this one does seem rather puzzling at first, and again it does point out the fundamental contradictions of conservative thought. essentially, i think, kirk's "moral equality" is simply that we are all bad (call it "original sin"). he never comes right out and says it in the open (like he does with respect to hierarchies, finally, here in Canon 3). but you have to go back to Canon 1, and the quote by keith feiling:

"he [the Tory] knows that there are great forces in heaven and earth that man's philosophy cannot plumb or fathom. We do wrong to deny it, when we are told that we do not trust human reason: we do not and we may not. Human reason set up a cross on Calvary, human reason set up the cup of hemlock, human reason was canonised in Nôtre Dame."

right? human reason is flawed because human beings are flawed. evil exists. nothing will change that, nothing can mitigate that. humans cannot be improved.

however -- and remember, this is the principle of moral equality, that all humans are bad, flawed, evil -- hierarchies dictate that some people are superior to others. herein lines the fundamental contradiction of conservativism: we're all bad, but some of us are less bad than others. in the last instance, kirk's "moral equality" really counts for nothing.

the conservative mind, part one

i wish so-called conservative of all stripes -- social conservatives, fiscal conservatives (i.e. classic economic small-l liberals), libertarians, neocons, etc. -- would take up a close and hard reading of the "six canons of conservative thought" as laid out in the conservative mind (1953) by russell kirk, the dean of modern american conservatism. if they did so i wonder how many of them would really and honestly swear by these principles. (the russell kirk center for cultural renewal website offers an expanded list of 10 such principles, and it may be worth cross-checking them against one another, something i may do by way of a conclusion to what i envision will be a multi-part post.) here's the first, and it's loaded:

(1) Belief that a divine intent rules society as well as conscience, forging and eternal chain of right and duty which links great and obscure, living and dead. Political problems, at bottom, are religious and moral problems. A narrow rationality, what Coleridge calls the Understanding, cannot of itself satisfy human needs. "Every Tory is a realist," says Keith Feiling: "he knows that there are great forces in heaven and earth that man's philosophy cannot plumb or fathom. We do wrong to deny it, when we are told that we do not trust human reason: we do not and we may not. Human reason set up a cross on Calvary, human reason set up the cup of hemlock, human reason was canonised in Nôtre Dame." Politics is the art of apprehending and applying the Justice which is above nature.

personally i think belief in a divine intent to the universe is perfectly understandable, acceptable and even noble on some level. i do not think we are the only thing this universe has going for it, nor do i need much persuasion of the existence of an entity or entities possessed of a higher intelligence than us.

but it's quite a step from there to a "belief that a divine intent rules society as well as conscience, forging and eternal chain of right and duty which links great and obscure, living and dead." essentially, the rule of divine intent leaves little room for human agency or will in our endeavors in the world and among each other; society is thus less the product and commerce of human inter-association than the active fulfillment of a divine plan.

this all begs the question of how and why a benevolent god would plan and allow for the gross malfeasances that human society continually and increasingly commits. (the problem of evil is both the cornerstone and the undoing of conservative thinking, as we will eventually discover.) the image of the "eternal chain of right and duty which links great and obscure, living and dead" is nothing less than the scala natura or "great chain of being" that dates at least as far back in western thought as lucretius (1st century B.C.) but ever since copernicus (i.e. the last 500 years) has enjoyed all the currency of heliocentrism. regardless, what's crucial about kirk's invocation of the scala natura here are the notions of order and hierarchy it implies: that is, fundamental inequalities exist among god's creations, certain of which are inherently superior to others. these inequalities become more pronounced in subsequent principles kirk lays out.

the bottom line of kirk's "divine intent" ruling society is a quintessential summation of conservatism: "Political problems, at bottom, are religious and moral problems." however, given that politics, τ&alpha πολιτικη (ta politiké), are "the things of the polis," public or civic matters, the only way that political problems are fundamentally religious or moral problems is if the polis, civil society or the state, is fundamentally a religious or moral entity. and for this to be the case, conservatism must posit a theocracy, defined by the OED as follows:

A form of government in which God (or a deity) is recognized as the king or immediate ruler, and his laws are taken as the statute-book of the kingdom, these laws being usually administered by a priestly order as his ministers and agents; hence (loosely) a system of government by a sacerdotal order, claiming a divine commission; also, a state so governed: esp. applied to the commonwealth of Israel from the exodus to the election of Saul as king.

and the problem with theocracies is, of course, whose god rules? or better still, since for example christianity and islam believe in the same god, whose understanding of god?

we'll come to this problem later -- libertarians, you still with me? -- but for now let us simply conclude by way of kirk's critique of "a narrow rationality" for the fact that it "cannot of itself satisfy human needs" because (in feiling's words) "there are great forces in heaven and earth that man's philosophy cannot plumb or fathom." sure, of course. rationality is not the panacea that francis bacon perhaps thought it was in the early 1600s. should anyone still deny the limits of human reason today, the conservative response with a swift a certain rebuke: "We do wrong to deny it, when we are told that we do not trust human reason: we do not and we may not." in other words, conservatism rejects reason altogether as untrustworthy human folly.

in short, from kirk's first principle we have learned that modern american conservatism is nothing less that a reactionary backlash against renaissance humanism, enlightenment, and rationality as they colluded 500, 600, 700 years ago to overthrow the judeo-christian god as the sole authority and trustee of the human and universal endeavor, who created the universe with an inherent hierarchy of superior and inferior creations and according to a plan and purpose that works actively in the lives of those creations, including its political institutions that are naturally theocratic.