The year 2016 marked a dramatic change of political course for the English-speaking world, with Britain voting for independence from Europe and the United States electing a president promising a revived American nationalism. Critics see both events as representing a dangerous turn toward “illiberalism” and deplore the apparent departure from “liberal principles” or “liberal democracy,” themes that surfaced repeatedly in conservative publications over the past year. Perhaps the most eloquent among the many spokesmen for this view has been William Kristol, who, in a series of essays in the Weekly Standard, has called for a new movement to arise “in defense of liberal democracy.” In his eyes, the historic task of American conservatism is “to preserve and strengthen American liberal democracy,” and what is needed now is “a new conservatism based on old conservative—and liberal—principles.” Meanwhile, the conservative flagship Commentary published a cover story by the Wall Street Journal’s Sohrab Ahmari entitled “Illiberalism: The Worldwide Crisis,” seeking to raise the alarm about the dangers to liberalism posed by Brexit, Trump, and other phenomena.
These and similar examples demonstrate once again that more than a few prominent conservatives in America and Britain today consider themselves to be not only conservatives but also liberals at the same time. Or, to get to the heart of the matter, they see conservatism as a branch or species of liberalism—to their thinking, the “classical” and most authentic form of liberalism. According to this view, the foundations of conservatism are to be found, in significant measure, in the thought of the great liberal icon John Locke and his followers. It is to this tradition, they say, that we must turn for the political institutions—including the separation of powers, checks and balances, and federalism—that secure the freedoms of religion, speech, and the press; the right of private property; and due process under law. In other words, if we want limited government and, ultimately, the American Constitution, then there is only one way to go: Lockean liberalism provides the theoretical basis for the ordered freedom that conservatives strive for, and liberal democracy is the only vehicle for it.
Many of those who have been most outspoken on this point have been our long-time friends. We admire and are grateful for their tireless efforts on behalf of conservative causes, including some in which we have worked together as partners. But we see this confusion of conservatism with liberalism as historically and philosophically misguided. Anglo-American conservatism is a distinct political tradition—one that predates Locke by centuries. Its advocates fought for and successfully established most of the freedoms that are now exclusively associated with Lockean liberalism, although they did so on the basis of tenets very different from Locke’s. Indeed, when Locke published his Two Treatises of Government in 1689, offering the public a sweeping new rationale for the traditional freedoms already known to Englishmen, most defenders of these freedoms were justly appalled. They saw in this new doctrine not a friend to liberty but a product of intellectual folly that would ultimately bring down the entire edifice of freedom. Thus, liberalism and conservatism have been opposed political positions in political theory since the day liberal theorizing first set foot in England.
Today’s confusion of conservative political thought with liberalism is in a way understandable, however. In the great twentieth-century battles against totalitarianism, conservatives and liberals were allies: They fought together, along with the Communists, against Nazism. After 1945, conservatives and liberals remained allies in the war against Communism. Over these many decades of joint struggle, what had for centuries been a distinction of vital importance was treated as if it were not terribly important, and in fact, it was largely forgotten.
But since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, these circumstances have changed. The challenges facing the Anglo-American tradition are now coming from other directions entirely. Radical Islam, to name one such challenge, is a menace that liberals, for reasons internal to their own view of the political world, find difficult to regard as a threat and especially difficult to oppose in an effective manner. But even more important is the challenge arising from liberalism itself. It is now evident that liberal principles contribute little or nothing to those institutions that were for centuries the bedrock of the Anglo-American political order: nationalism, religious tradition, the Bible as a source of political principles and wisdom, and the family. Indeed, as liberalism has emerged victorious from the battles of the last century, the logic of its doctrines has increasingly turned liberals against all of these conservative institutions. On both of these fronts, the conservative and liberal principles of the Anglo-American tradition are now painfully at cross-purposes. The twentieth-century alliance between conservatism and liberalism is proving increasingly difficult to maintain.
.... But to have a strong and intellectually capable conservatism, we must be able to see clearly what the Anglo-American conservative tradition is and what it is about. And to do this, we have to disentangle it from its old opponent—liberalism...--- "What Is Conservatism" (2017) By Ofir Haivry and Yoram Hazony @AmericanAffairs.
I tend to think of Conservatism as a humane, anti-philosophical tradition (or if it has an esoteric philosophy, it is skeptical in tenor) rooted in a status quo bias grounded in gradualist risk aversion, cognizant of human folly, and willing to embrace a plurality of human value (e.g., beauty, craftsmanship, nobility, understanding of history, the classics, etc.) in education and averse to relentless embrace of public utility or moralism (recall here). This tradition is opposed to diverse forms of tyranny. When American conservatives, even when taught by Leo Strauss and his students, embrace the Enlightenment project of Jefferson and Lincoln, I see them as adapting the virtues of conservatism to local their milieu. By now, the Enlightenment project, liberal democracy, and even the welfare state are part of our tradition, and so deserve careful conservation. Let's call this Type 1 conservatism.
As an aside, if one believes in providence, Type 1 conservatives are essentially tragic figures breaking the historical tidal waves and orienting these toward less bad outcomes they cannot endorse themselves. When one rejects such providence, Type 1 conservatives are essentially heroic--mocked from the point of view of reason and justice--who use their rhetorical and tactical genius to domesticate the ambitions of reason.
By contrast, Haivry and Hazony treat contemporary exponents of this Conservative anti-philosophical tradition as misguided. Sensing a world-historical moment, they construct a nationalist, religious Conservative philosophical tradition not just by a list of names ("Sir John Fortescue, Richard Hooker, Sir Edward Coke, John Selden, Sir Matthew Hale, Sir William Temple, Jonathan Swift, Josiah Tucker, Edmund Burke, John Dickinson, and Alexander Hamilton. Men such as George Washington, John Adams, and John Marshall...would also have placed themselves in this conservative tradition rather than with its opponents, whom they knew all too well") but also by emphasizing the "shared common ideas and principles" of these men, who on their account "saw themselves as part of a common tradition of English, and later Anglo-American, constitutionalism." Of these names, they spend most of their time on Fortescue (1394–1479), who was previously unknown to me and I am pleased to learn about, and Selden (known to me, in no small part, due to Haivry's work), who deserves more study. In turn, they connect Fortescu to the history of Biblical Hebraism.
Haifry and Hazony, treat Conservatism as a constitutional tradition, which embraces national distinctiveness, and that, as a matter of principle, stands both against authoritarian absolutism (associated with certain forms of monarchy/empire) as well as liberalism (associated with another form of universalism, namely rationalism, which is connected to Grotius and Locke). This conservative tradition is both pragmatic and gradualist, and proceeds by trial and error (which is why practice of common law matters so much to it), but rooted in natural law and the teachings of revelation and an embrace a national church (which provides basis for national unity and lack of dangerous conflict over what revelation teaches). To prevent misunderstanding, Haivry and Hazony are aware that Locke is ordinarily classified as an empiricist (in epistemology and psychology), but they treat him as a rationalist because of the axiomatic "elements of Locke’s political theory".... [that is, the “perfect freedom” and “perfect equality” that define the state of nature"]... "are not known from experience."
In sum, their let's call it Type 2 conservatism as a philosophical tradition has five core commitments:
(1) Historical Empiricism. The authority of government derives from constitutional traditions known, through the long historical experience of a given nation, to offer stability, well-being, and freedom. These traditions are refined through trial and error over many centuries, with repairs and improvements being introduced where necessary, while maintaining the integrity of the inherited national edifice as a whole. Such empiricism entails a skeptical standpoint with regard to the divine right of the rulers, the universal rights of man, or any other abstract, universal systems....
(2) Nationalism. The diversity of national experiences means that different nations will have different constitutional and religious traditions. The Anglo-American tradition harkens back to principles of a free and just national state, charting its own course without foreign interference, whose origin is in the Bible. These include a conception of the nation as arising out of diverse tribes, its unity anchored in common traditional law and religion. Such nationalism is not based on race, embracing new members who declare that “your people is my people, and your God is my God” (Ruth 1:16).
(3) Religion. The state upholds and honors the biblical God and religious practices common to the nation. These are the centerpiece of the national heritage and indispensable for justice and public morals. At the same time, the state offers wide toleration to religious and social views that do not endanger the integrity and well-being of the nation as a whole.
(4) Limited Executive Power. The powers of the king (or president) are limited by the laws of the nation, which he neither determines nor adjudicates. The powers of the king (or president) are limited by the representatives of the people, whose advice and consent he must obtain both respecting the laws and taxation.
(5) Individual Freedoms. The security of the individual’s life and property is mandated by God as the basis for a society that is both peaceful and prosperous, and is to be protected against arbitrary actions of the state. The ability of the nation to seek truth and conduct sound policy depends on freedom of speech and debate. These and other fundamental rights and liberties are guaranteed by law, and may be infringed upon only by due process of law.
The key genealogical move is to suggest that the American revolution founding is not exclusively indebted to Lockean rationalist-radicalism, but that "there were already two distinct political theories" in America one conservative one, associated with Hamilton, and the other more radical one associated with Jefferson (who is lumped together with English radicals influenced by Locke: "Richard Price, Joseph Priestley, Charles James Fox, Charles Grey, Thomas Paine" who were Burke's target.) The high point of the radicals is the Declaration, and the high point of the Conservatives is the Constitution, which then gets corrupted -- there is always an ejection from Eden! -- by the influence of Jeffersonian separation of Church and State and, then, destroyed by FDR's New Deal. (They skip over Lincoln, which is odd.)**
It should be obvious, at once, that Haivry and Hazony have great difficulty finding a place for the non-Lockean, liberal tradition one can associate with the younger Burke and now primarily known to us from the writings of Hume, Montesquieu, Smith, Madison, Constant, Sophie de Grouchy, and, more recently, Hayek, or Shklar--this tradition has considerable overlap with their their Type 2 conservatism, but rejects their (2)-(3) as organizing principles (and has a more positive views about immigration). In my view, this non-Lockean tradition is not conservative because it also recognizes the political and prudential utility of having a normative and systematic ideal guiding one's pragmatic choices (see, for example, Hume's Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth), but it does so through a willingness to embrace a second-best ameliorative stance that gets articulated by way of dynamics of historical, practical reason. If one is interested in the complex interplay of different strands of liberalism, one could usefully start with Jacob T. Levy's excellent Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom.
In fact, Haivry and Hazony often sound like Hayek in their critique of what they call 'rationalism,' but are suspicious of his cosmopolitanism and lack his interest in commerce and trade.* Once this anti-Lockean Liberal tradition is allowed back into the historical story, one can immediate see that Liberalism has a lot more resources than Haifvry and Hazony recognize. The include resources for folk one may well understand as Type 1 conservative and that have long been comfortable, perhaps too comfortable, on the political Right.**
But let me close with an observation. Haivry and Hazony berate liberals for failing to grasp the menace of radical Islam. Let's grant, for the sake of argument, that liberalism has been slow to articulate a proper response to it. But Haifvry and Hazony spend so much time trying to distinguish (Lockean) liberalism from their own Type 2 conservatism that they forget that their greatest difficulty is to distinguish themselves from ethno-religious-nationalists with a fondness for authoritarianism. (This is not to deny they have some such resources--their nationalism is self-consciously not ethnic.) In fact, even if one grants that Type 2 conservatism is a genuine historical tradition, Haifry and Hazony overlook the fact that totalitarianism is not the only species of tyranny opposed by liberals and, bless their souls, Type 1 conservatives: after all, we recognize that non-totalitarian, ethno-religious-nationalism (i.e., folk that reject their (4)-(5)) is the other true menace of our times (a case can be made that it often merges with versions of radical Islam), and we think that Type 2 conservatives like Haivry and Hazony run the risk of becoming the intellectual handmaidens of such petty, yet nasty, tyrants.
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