The Conundrum of Conservatism
The three conservatisms and their prospects
I was delighted to read Paul Gottfried’s essay for the January 2024 issue of Chronicles. While I have learned much from Gottfried’s analysis of American and European conservatism over the years, this essay strikes me as an immediate classic. Without spoiling too much of the content, I want to comment on key aspects of its observations.
I have noted time and again that there is a vital difference between what I call Values Conservatism and Sociological Conservatism. The former describes most people in the official Conservative Movement, as well as the impulses of even those who are sick of the Neo-Conservatives and seeking other, more confrontational paths forward. Sociological Conservatism describes a vision of society that has perhaps been best detailed in the work of Robert Nisbet, and which in the Western world has largely expired, or perhaps been conquered.
Gottfried interacts with these two types of conservatism and adds another: what he calls, following Sam Huntington, “situational conservatism.” (Huntington would call my own Sociological Conservatism “aristocratic conservatism” and Values Conservatism “principles-based conservatism.” Gottfried uses Huntington’s phrases here). These are the types that leads to Gottfried’s title “Three Conceptions of Conservatism.”
He notes, in agreement with my own understanding, that “Huntington’s second concept of conservatism based on principles… is now the most widespread understanding of conservatism." Importantly, this view of conservatism is universalistic and stresses that the such a political instinct is “not connected with the interests of any particular group nor indeed is its appearance dependent on any specific historical configuration of historical forces.”
In other words, for this model of conservatism, echoing the overall impulse of present-day political thinking, the principles adhered to by conservatives aren’t civilizationally-bound but can be derived from and applied to anyone the world round. Naturally, such universalism permeates not only the GOP activists, but also international socialists, classical liberals, libertarians, and certain types of theocrats as well.
Today’s conservatives, representing this postwar instinct, are fundamentally at odds with the Old Conservatism that prized (in the words of Huntington) “the reaction of the feudal aristocratic-agrarian classes to the French Revolution.” Today’s conservatism is not at all aristocratic, and sees in Capitalism and individualism a healthy replacement of the landed feudal order of the Old World. Gottfried is careful—and insightful—however to observe that as the Old World (the true representative of what can be termed “Western Civilization”) collapsed, the aristocratic impulse did not simply disappear but was transferred to certain groupings in the New World. While these inheritors of Old Europe have themselves since been conquered, they could once be found in the Old South, opponents to unfettered commercialism, and propertied antagonists to democracy and equality.
Gottfried observes:
The novels of Sir Walter Scott were steeped in this idealization of England’s lost aristocratic age, read and reread by America’s Southern planter class, as Roland Osterweis shows in Romanticism and Nationalism in the Old South(1949). Even the children of frontiersmen were quick to identify themselves with the European gentry after they acquired estates in the antebellum South. Eugene D. Genovese underlines this point in Roll, Jordan, Roll (1974) and his other magisterial works on the Southern slave economy and the world that the Southern master class built. Genovese focuses on the honor ethic and noblesse oblige this dominant class tried to personify, as it emulated European aristocratic standards of behavior.
The first families of Virginia, and more generally Southern conservatives, long identified themselves with the Cavaliers, who fought against the English Puritans in defense of King Charles I in the English Civil War. Whether these self-identified American aristocrats are in fact descended from the royalists may matter less than the monarchist legend they preserved, one that was very much alive in the years leading up to the American Civil War.
The dynamic between Principles Conservatism (modern) and Aristocratic Conservatism (pre-Modern) is fascinating, of course, but there is another type of conservatism which once served Aristocratic Conservatism well. But in the post-Managerial Age it has actually joined forces with the Left. That is what Huntington calls Situational Conservatism: the impulse to conserve and protect the Regime that presently exists. Gottfried writes:
By this standard, it may be necessary to view woke left administrators pushing back against their opposition as defenders of “conservative” interests. Since in this case it is the cultural leftists who are responding to their power being challenged by a populist right, it is the left-wingers here who can be situationally described as “conservative.” Please note that Huntington’s third concept refers to a situation in which any group of defenders of established institutions are resisting those who challenge their control. If that is indeed the case, then it shouldn’t matter what those institutions are advocating or imposing, in order to designate their defenders as conservatives.
This is a Machiavellian understanding of Conservatism that endeavors to look past anything transcending the present moment (whether history in the case of the Aristocratic instinct or principles in the case of Principles Conservatism) and interpret all things political in terms of power dynamics. Included here, obviously, is the so-called Friend-Enemy Distinction that animates the New Left.
Gottfried, like myself, is a qualified Historicist and believes that “Conservatism develops out of conflict.” The clash between the populist “Right” has animated a sort of counter-revolution by the present Regime that rabidly seeks to defend (conserve) its own power structure. Aristocratic Conservatism itself became self-aware in the midst of the rationalistic revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries. And today, after Western Civilization has been triumphed over by American Civilization (which first conquered Heritage America), further clashes are redefining situational conservatism; after all, politics is forever in flux and Regimes come and go.
The lesson here is obvious: if the conservation of our heritage is no longer possible, and if we reject Principles Conservatism as hopelessly universal, conservatism itself is an impulse that caters to the strength of the Regime. If the Right-wing was at one time allied with the vestiges of a Conservative spirit, today it can no longer be. The Revolution against the West has permeated every aspect of our society, from commercial and corporate organizations to the internet to the actual halls of Power. Conservatism therefore, on a Machiavellian scale, must be done away with.
It is important to note that, on a personal level, we can still point to the various high points of the Western experience as guideposts for our way forward. We can still be advocates for the Old West; historical awareness is a fundamental characteristic of meaningful social action. But we are enemies of the Regime, we no longer stand with Power as a protector of our way of life; but we see in Power the face of the enemy that seeks our continued destruction.