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Home , Alexis de Tocqueville, Edmund Burke, Russell Kirk

No. 19

The Roots of Modern Conservative Thought from Burke to Kirk Edwin J. Feulner, Ph.D.

merica is the most successful and enduring exper- who nurtured the roots with their and Aiment in in human . It has sur- awareness. vived foreign invasion and terrorist attacks, world The roots intertwined with “the Christian under- wars and a civil war, a great depression and not so standing of human duties and human hopes, of man small recessions, presidential assassinations and scan- redeemed,” and were then joined by medieval custom, dals, an adversary culture and even the mass media. It learning, and valor.2 is the most powerful, prosperous, and envied nation The roots were enriched, finally, by two great exper- in the world. iments in law and that occurred in London, What is the source of America’s remarkable suc- home of the British Parliament, and in Philadelphia, cess? Its abundant natural resources? Its hardworking, birthplace of the Declaration of Independence and the entrepreneurial, can-do people? Its fortuitous loca- U.S. . Kirk’s analysis thus might be called tion midway between Europe and Asia? Its resilient a tale of five cities—, Athens, Rome, London, national will? and Philadelphia. Why do we Americans enjoy , opportunity, Much more could be said about the philosophi- and prosperity as no other people in history have? cal contributions of the Jews, the Greeks, and the In The Roots of American Order, the Rus- Romans to the American experience, but I will limit sell Kirk provides a persuasive answer: America is not myself to discuss the roots of modern conservative only the land of the free and the home of the brave, but thought that undergird our nation and which for a place of ordered liberty. more than 50 years have explicitly reinforced the The roots of our liberty run deep. They were idea of ordered liberty. planted, Kirk says, nearly three thousand years I will focus on two great champions of liberty and ago by the Hebrews, who perceived “a purposeful order: , the eloquent British parliamen- moral existence under God.”1 The Greeks strength- tarian of the late who was a supporter of ened the roots with their philosophical and political American even as he was an implacable opponent self-awareness, and were followed by the Romans, of the French , and , the Ameri-

1 Russell Kirk, The Roots of American Order (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1974), p. 672. 2 Ibid.

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can master of letters whose seminal work The Conserva- speare, declaring, “His words contain an ampler store tive Mind, published in 1953, “catalyzed a self-conscious, of political and moral wisdom than can be found in unabashedly conservative movement” in America.3 any other writing whatever.”5 Two significant political thinkers who provided Married in 1757 to Jane Mary Nugent, the daugh- an intellectual bridge in the 19th century: Alexis de ter of a Catholic physician, Burke now called London Tocqueville, the French historian and author of the his home. classic work , and Lord Acton, Burke took on the editorship of a new publication— the British historian and eminent apostle of liberty which continues to this day—The Annual Register, cov- also merit consideration. ering the major political events and papers and unusual events of the year. It was excellent training for Burke’s Edmund Burke political career, for he had to “analyze the whole com- Although separated by almost 200 years, Burke and mercial, financial, constitutional, and foreign interests Kirk shared much, including a deep respect for cus- of Great Britain and its empire.”6 tom and tradition, an abhorrence of ideology and radi- While editing the annual volume brought Burke calism, and a belief in the politics and policies of pru- prestige, it could not pay his way. And so, with a wife dence. Kirk’s biography of Edmund Burke is superb, and children and household expenses, he was drawn and I have used it freely in this . into politics and the Rockingham faction of the Whig Born in in 1729, Edmund Burke was the party. It was a natural alliance, as the Whigs were lov- son of a successful but not wealthy lawyer. Reared ers of freedom and private . as an Anglican, he was enrolled at the age of fifteen In July 1765, the Marquis of Rockingham became at Trinity College. His was the usual education of the prime minister and almost immediately appointed time. His favorite English authors were Shakespeare, Burke as his private secretary. In December of the Spenser, and Milton. Among the ancients he favored same year Burke was elected to the House of Com- Virgil, , Homer, and Juvenal. mons and began a career in Parliament that lasted 29 In the spring of 1750, young Burke moved to Lon- years. He became a national and international figure don to study law but eventually entered the profes- by his opposition to King George III’s colonial policies sion of letters, publishing several books over the next in America and India and his passionate condemna- decade, including Philosophical Inquiry into the Origins tion of the . Wherever it occurred, of the and Beautiful—an indication of his far- “the denial of roused Burke to greatness.”7 ranging mind. In the Sublime and Beautiful, Burke chal- Burke’s Speech , his Speech on lenged the strict of the Enlightenment. He Conciliation, and A Letter to the Sheriffs of were elo- knew that we cannot neglect the passions in the arts quent but unsuccessful attempts to persuade George III, or in politics. He aligned himself with the French phi- the Parliament, and the public of the folly of ’s losopher Pascal that “the Heart has that the policy toward the colonies and the danger of forcing cannot know.”4 Americans into accepting that policy. Burke became Not yet 30, Burke found himself a literary celebrity. convinced that the colonies were lost to Britain, and Sir compared Burke with Shake- he was among the first to endorse our independence. At the same time, he remained a firm believer in and

3 George Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 (Wilmington, Del.: ISI Books, 1996), p. 67. 5 Ibid. 4 Russell Kirk, Edmund Burke, A Genius Reconsidered (New Ro- 6 Ibid., p. 37. chelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1967), p. 33. 7 Ibid., p. 41. No. 19 3

supporter of the institution of the British , of civil ,” Burke writes in Reflections, “and the although not of each individual monarch.8 source of all good and all comfort.”11 In the Bristol Sheriffs letter, Burke set forth his History too is central to Burke’s thinking because philosophy regarding the obligations of a represen- history reveals the divine purposes for man in the tative to his constituents—a philosophy, lamentably, temporal order. Burke believed that history taught that is little practiced in the modern U.S. Congress. those in public office the cardinal virtue of temper- Burke said that the wishes of constituents should ance and encouraged them to be restrained in their certainly carry weight with their Member of Parlia- use of power. History provided explicit warnings from ment, but: the days of ancient Rome to the present against those seeking radical change through revolution—a His own unbiased opinion, his mature judg- that Acton would immortalize almost a century later. ment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not Burke concurred with other political thinkers that to sacrifice to you, or any set of men living. These “society is indeed a contract,” but unlike Hobbes and he does not derive from your pleasure—no, nor Rousseau, he believed it was a contract between God from the law and the constitution. They are a and man and between all the generations of history— trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he the past, present, and unborn generations.12 is deeply answerable. Your representative owes Burke’s life was one long attempt to forestall you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and revolution. He foresaw the he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacri- but was unable to prevent its coming. He predicted fices it to your opinion.9 that Ireland would go the way of America if reforms were not promptly made, and so it happened. He Burke’s reference to Providence provides another prophesied that the French Revolution “would rend clue to Burkean conservatism. “The principles of true Europe limb from limb until subdued by force and a politics,” Burke said, “are those of morality enlarged.” master,” and that too came to pass. He did not share Burke’s politics are a branch of which separates the smug optimism of the Enlightenment that all him sharply from Machiavelli and the modern idea change was good and tradition was a thing lightly that power is supreme in politics. Burke’s basic politi- cast aside.13 He was for gradual change rooted in the cal principles are based on the classical and Christian institutions of society. , derived from God and perceived by good Appalled by the blood that flowed from the guil- men through “right reason.”10 lotine and through the streets of , Burke resolved One is tempted to say that for Edmund Burke reli- that Britain would “not share in ’s folly and that gion is the only thing. Throughout his most famous the whole of the civilized world must be awakened” work, Reflections on the Revolution in France, Burke to the menace of Jacobinism.14 He attacked, in particu- argues that lies at the center of civilized soci- lar, the fallacy of the “” proposed by the ety, that without religion, there can be no order or even French because he saw in this abstract comfort in society, only chaos. “Religion is the basis notion a desire to be freed of all duties. But as Nobel

11 Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, edited by 8 Ibid. Thomas H. D. Mahoney (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Educa- 9 Ibid., p. 90. tional Publishing, 1952), p. 102. 10 Peter J. Stanlis, “Burkian Conservatism,” in American Conserva- 12 Ibid. tism: An Encyclopedia, edited by Bruce Frohnen, Jeremy Beer and 13 Kirk, Edmund Burke, p. 131. Jeffrey O. Nelson (Wilmington, Del.: ISI Books, 2006), p. 107. 14 Ibid., p. 151. 4 No. 19

Laureate F. A. Hayek put it nearly two centuries later, vative stands with Burke, holding that the real rights “Liberty and responsibility are inseparable.”15 of man are rooted in custom, tradition, and faith— Unlike England’s “” of 1688, that reform is essential, but that wholesale change is which was more reform than revolution, Burke insist- catastrophic.19 ed that the French Revolution of 1789 would uproot The essential difference between Burke and the human society and lead first to anarchy and then to French revolutionaries was theological. Burke pos- dictatorship. The French Revolution, he said, was sessed a Christian understanding of human nature “metaphysical madness” based upon a terrible misun- which Danton, Robespierre, and the other derstanding of human nature.16 rejected. To the revolutionaries, was At first, his warnings had little impact on Parlia- superstition and an enemy. To Burke, it was “man’s ment—, a fellow leader of the Whigs, greatest good and established order to be the fun- considered the French deposing of Louis XVI and the damental of civilization.”20 It provided the civilizing resulting “people’s democracy” a “triumph of underpinning of society, regardless of the individual’s and liberty.” Burke decided to go directly to the people particular denomination. with his concerns and wrote one of the most brilliant In contrast, the French leader Danton works of English , Reflections on the sought constant ferment and spoke of a “cauldron” in Revolution in France.17 which every impurity of society would be “burnt out.” While the French revolutionaries talked incessantly But Burke declared that the just society was not a bub- of abstract rights, Burke described what he called “the bling cauldron but a spiritual corporation, formed by real rights of man” beginning with the right of men to a covenant between man and his God.21 live in a based on the rule law. A frequent charge against Burke was that after “Whatever each man can separately do, without decades of defending the oppressed—in America, trespassing upon others,” he wrote, “he has a right Ireland, India, and England—he “betrayed his love to do for himself, and he has right to a fair portion of liberty and justice” by defending the old regime of all which society, with all its combinations of skill in France (even Tocqueville taxes Burke for being too and force, can do in his favour.” In this partnership, sympathetic to the French monarchy). But there was Burke said, “all men have equal rights but not to equal no difference in principle between Burke’s defense of things….” the American colonies and his attacks on the French He insisted that liberty must be prudently mea- revolutionaries. In each instance, he adhered to moral sured. “The restraints on men, as well as their , natural law and prudence as the best strategy to resist are to be reckoned among their rights.”18 political tyranny (the rule of man vs. the ) Nowhere is the yawning chasm between the mod- and injustice—and this was true whether speaking of ern conservative and the modern liberal more apparent kings or democrats.22 than in a discussion of “rights.” The modern liberal is Whatever the differences between Burke and Toc- the proud successor to the Jacobins’ notion of abstract queville about the vices and virtues of the French mon- rights, finding new ones every day in their vain pur- suit of perfectibility and Utopia. The modern conser- 19 Edmund Burke, On Taste, and Beautiful, Reflections on the French Revolution, and A Letter to a Noble Lord, edited by 15 Friedrich A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: Univer- Charles W. Elliot, LL.D. (New York: P.F. Collier & Son Corpora- sity of Chicago Press, 1960), p. 71. tion, 1968), p. 390. 16 Kirk, Edmund Burke, p. 153. 20 Kirk, Edmund Burke, p. 152. 17 Ibid. 21 Ibid., p. 169. 18 Ibid., pp. 160–161. 22 Ibid. No. 19 5

archy, they were agreed on the importance of religion, lish islands in the sea of radical thought; they pro- custom, and law to the maintenance of an orderly and vided the defenses [the definition] of conservatism, civil society.23 on a great scale, that still stand and are not liable to How then to summarize the conservatism of fall in our time.”27 Edmund Burke and his influence on American con- servative thought? Burke stood for preservation of the British constitution, with its traditional division In the early 1830s, some four decades after Edmund of powers, as “the system most friendly to liberty and Burke’s death, a young French lawyer and aristocrat, order” in all Europe. And in Russell Kirk’s words, Alexis de Tocqueville, visited America. From his one- Burke stood for the preservation of the “larger consti- year visit there issued a remarkable book, Democracy tution of civilization.”24 in America, which Harvard Professor Harvey Mans- In Burke’s writings and speeches can be found field describes as “at once the best book ever writ- reliance upon tradition and custom for public and ten on democracy and the best book ever written on private guidance; conviction that men are equal in America.”28 the sight of God but nowhere else; devotion to per- It is an extended essay on the natural rise of democ- sonal freedom and ; and opposition racy in America and those things that threaten it, to doctrinaire change. including a , excessive materi- As Burke wrote: “By the unprincipled facility of alism, and an “insatiable” desire for equality. changing the as often, and as much, and in as The same equality that permits each citizen to many ways, as there are floating fancies or fashions, conceive vast hopes, Tocqueville writes, “renders all the whole and continuity of the commonwealth would citizens individually weak.” At each step up the lad- be broken. No one generation could link with anoth- der they find “immense obstacles that they had not at er. Men would become little better than the flies of a first perceived.” While it is possible to conceive of a summer.”25 degree of freedom that might satisfy people entirely, The above beliefs articulated by Burke form a sig- he says, “men will never found an equality that is nificant part of the intellectual foundation of modern enough for them.”29 American conservatism. Equally applicable in this cen- For Tocqueville, there are three reasons for a tury, recently released from the threat of , nation’s success: its material circumstances, its , are Burke’s stern warnings against a fanatical elite that and its “mores,” that is, its moral habits and customs. demands conformity to its ideology. “To them [the The young Frenchman found that America had no French revolutionaries],” he wrote, “the will, the wish, special advantages as regards its circumstances. the want, the liberty, the toil, the blood of individuals As to its laws, he notes that the federal form of gov- is nothing. Individuality is left out of their scheme of ernment gives America “the power of a great repub- . The state is all in all.”26 lic and the security of a small one.” Local institutions Burke’s ideas, Kirk writes, “did more than estab- operate to moderate the potential of democ- racy and give people “both a taste for freedom and the

23 Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the Revolution, trans- lated by John Bonner (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1856), pp. 27 Ibid., p. 61. 16, 248. 28 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, translated, edited, 24 Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind From Burke to Santayana and annotated with an introduction by Harvey C. Mansfield (Chicago: Company, 1953), p. 15. and Delba Winthrop (Chicago: of Chicago Press, 25 Ibid., p. 39. 2000), p. xvii. 26 Ibid., p. 60. 29 Ibid., p. 513. 6 No. 19

skill to be free.” Among such institutions are local gov- who said: “Of all writers, [Tocqueville] is the most wide- ernment, a free press, an independent judiciary, and ly acceptable, and the hardest to find fault with. He is respect for individual rights. Judicial power in particu- always wise, always right and as just as Aristides.”34 lar checks and directs the movements of the majority, helping to correct “the aberrations of democracy.”30 Lord Acton Echoing Burke’s belief in the civilizing role of The same might be said of the 19th century English religion, Tocqueville says that the central reason for historian John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, the the success of American democracy, as compared first Baron, famous for the maxim, “Power tends to cor- with the failure of other , is America’s rupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” With moral habits. these somber words, the historian Gertrude Himmel- “For the Americans,” Tocqueville writes, “the ideas farb says, Acton places himself in the tradition of polit- of Christianity and liberty are so completely mingled ical and philosophical pessimism, even as Tocqueville that it is almost impossible to get them to conceive of marveled at the optimistic future for America.35 one without the other.” For them, Christianity is not But what saved Acton from unrelieved pessimism a set of “sterile beliefs bequeathed by the past” but was his refusal to succumb to philosophical or histori- beliefs “living in the depths of the soul.”31 cal determinism. He believed, with Edmund Burke, American society might have sunk into an “irre- that man was a free agent capable of choosing the sponsible ,” Russell Kirk argues, had good. The forces of were “constant and variable,” it not been held together by the “cement of Christian Acton wrote, but so were “the truth and the Higher teaching.” Tocqueville understood that without virtu- Purpose.”36 ous customs and prudential laws, the people become Lord Acton was a man of the 19th century, who was ’s “great beast.”32 born three years before Queen Victoria ascended to Tocqueville is often cited for another antidote to the throne and died the year after her death in 1902. radical individualism—the capability of Americans to He was a devout Roman Catholic (although an oppo- associate with one another voluntarily (akin to Burke’s nent of the doctrine of papal infallibility), a pessimist, “little platoons” of society) in accordance with their and a moralist—a combination with little appeal in the own will and reason, instead of relying on what Mans- early decades of the 20th century, when optimism and field calls “a centralized, ‘schoolmaster’ government to materialism were riding high. take care of them,”33 or what has However, with the coming of Nazism and Commu- called “the nanny state.” nism, writes Himmelfarb, hard truths about politics By his investigations into American life, his acquain- and power received new attention. Acton’s epigrams tance with England and the writings of Burke and oth- denouncing racism and statism appeared increasingly ers, his political career (he served in the Chamber of in editorials, dissertations, and speeches. Thus, those Deputies), and his unassuming erudition, Tocqueville who had become skeptical of a , secular and was certainly qualified to comment on society and optimistic, discovered in Acton a philosophy “reli- government. That he was eminently qualified to do so gious in temper, able to cope with the facts of human is borne out by comments such as that of Lord Acton, sin and corruption.”37

30 Kirk, The Roots of American Order, p. 447. 34 Ibid., p. 181. 31 Ibid., p. 448. 35 , Lord Action: A Study in Conscience and 32 Kirk, The Conservative Mind, p. 195. Politics (San Francisco: ICS Press, 1993), p. 239. 33 Mansfield and Winthrop in their introduction to Tocqueville, 36 Ibid., p. 240. Democracy in America, p. xviii. 37 Ibid., p. ix. No. 19 7

For all his erudition—he was said to have more Southern agrarian who taught English at the Univer- than 20,000 books in his private library—Acton never sity of Chicago; and , an ex-Soviet produced a single volume for publication. His life-long spy turned fervent anticommunist. intellectual task—the History of Liberty—was “the Traditional conservatives, classical liberals, and greatest book that never was written.” But long before anticommunists all agreed that the central values and “democratic despotism”—to use of civilization were in danger. The place of the indi- Tocqueville’s phrase—had begun to haunt the world, vidual and the voluntary group had been seriously Acton predicted they would some day “threaten our undermined by the growing power of . civilization.”38 Freedom of thought and expression were threatened by power-seeking minorities. All these developments Russell Kirk had been fostered by a philosophical view that denied Which brings us to the last of this quartet of con- all absolute moral standards, questioned the rule of servative thinkers, the redoubtable Russell Kirk. law, and contributed to a disbelief in private property In his introduction to The Liberal Imagination, pub- and the competitive market. lished in 1950, the liberal critic Lionel Trilling wrote What intellectual theme could unite the different that “liberalism is not only the dominant but even the strains of conservatism? Hayek provided part of the sole intellectual tradition” in America. The conserva- answer in The Road to Serfdom (1944) with his stern tive impulse, he said, was not thoughtful at all, but admonitions about economic planning leading to dic- made up of at best “irritable mental gestures which tatorship. His knowledge of the totalitarian nature of seem to resemble ideas.”39 led him to conclude that man does not and Trilling was not alone in his dismissal of conser- cannot know everything, and when he acts as if he vatism. In The Liberal Tradition in America, Louis Hartz does, disaster follows. In April 1945, hundreds of thou- explained that by conservatism what was really meant sands of Americans were introduced to Hayek when was European , something altogether for- a slightly abridged version was published in Reader’s eign to the American experience. Digest. The book went on to sell more than one million In Conservatism in America, Clinton Rossiter con- copies worldwide. cluded that because America was “a progressive coun- In Ideas Have Consequences, Professor Richard Weav- try with a liberal tradition,” conservatism was simply er traced the moral dissolution of the West to the rise of “irrelevant.”40 nominalism, rationalism, and materialism under the We cannot blame Trilling, Hartz, and Rossiter for Enlightenment. Weaver was a man of contradictions. their profound misunderstanding of conservatism. At On the one hand, he believed that mankind had begun the time of their writing—the early 1950s—there was the “slide down the slippery slope” away from the only a small band of disparate conservative writers transcendental in the 14th century. He also believed and thinkers whose philosophical differences seemed that man “will prevail over the of time” by to outweigh their similarities. “persuasive speech in the service of truth.”41 The writers included Friedrich A. Hayek, a classical In Witness, Whittaker Chambers declared that the liberal born in Austria; Richard Weaver, a nation and the world faced a transcendent crisis not of politics or power but of faith. Ever the pessimist, 38 Ibid., p. 4. 39 Matthew Spalding, “Preface,” in Lee Edwards, A Brief History of the Modern American Conservative Movement (Washington, D.C.: 41 Edwin J. Feulner, Jr., The March of Freedom: Modern Classics in The Heritage Foundation, 2004), p. 1. Conservative Thought (Washington, D.C.: The Heritage Founda- 40 Ibid. tion: 2003), p. 398. 8 No. 19

Chambers believed that he was leaving the winning ate young American scholar, who had discovered a side (Communism) for the losing side, but that “it great truth and wished to communicate his discovery is better to die on the losing side than to live under to the world. Communism.”42 What had Kirk discovered? It was at this critical moment that a young, Modern American conservatism rests securely unknown scholar published an intellectual history of on the words and deeds of a gallery of conserva- Anglo-American conservative thought since the late tive giants beginning with the founder of the “true 1700s that permanently changed the public perception school of conservative principle”—Edmund Burke. of conservatism and laid the groundwork that would Burke was not a lonely voice in the wilderness but transform the American political debate. only the first of a remarkable group of writers and Russell Kirk was only 34 and a lowly instructor of political leaders, including John Cardinal Newman, history at Michigan State College in the spring of 1953 Sir , and in Great Brit- when his seminal work, The Conservative Mind, was ain; Alexis de Tocqueville in France; the remarkable published. Many liberals joked that the title was an Adams family—John, John Quincy, and Henry— oxymoron, but they stopped smiling when they read , and in Kirk’s “eloquent, defiant, impassioned cri de coeur for America. conservatism.”43 These were not second-rate scribblers and political His book was a 450-page overview of the most impor- hacks but men of distinction and purpose who made a tant Anglo-American conservative writers and politi- profound difference in the thinking of their countries cal leaders since the American Revolution. It was also by their exposition of and commitment to first prin- a scathing indictment of every liberal nostrum from ciples. Kirk says that the essence of conservatism lies human perfectibility to economic . in six canons: The Conservative Mind begins not with a whimper 1. A divine intent rules society as well as con- but with a bang: —“political problems, at bottom, are religious and moral problems.” “The stupid party”: this is ’s 2. Traditional life is filled with variety and mys- description of conservatives. Like certain other tery, while most radical systems are - summary dicta which nineteenth-century liber- ized by a narrowing uniformity. als thought to be forever triumphant, his judg- 3. Civilized society requires orders and classes— ment needs review in our age of disintegrating “the only true equality is moral equality.” liberal and radical philosophies. 4. Property and freedom are inseparably connected. The passage stunned complacent liberals who had 5. Man must control his will and his appetite, concluded that conservatism could express itself only knowing that he is governed more by emotion in “irritable mental gestures,” and it brought up short than reason. gloomy conservatives like Whittaker Chambers, who 6. “Change and reform are not identical”—society declared that in becoming a man of the Right he had must alter slowly. joined the losing side. Not so Russell Kirk, a passion- Before the liberals had caught their breath, favorably reviewed The Conservative Mind, as did Time, which devoted its entire book section to 42 Ibid., p. 294. 43 Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since it. For weeks, the New York Times listed the work in its 1945, p. 65. column of recommendations. Forty-seven of the first No. 19 9

50 major reviews in publications ranging from the Sat- gyman; a farmer who “holds fast” to the wisdom of urday Review to the Yale Review were laudatory. his ancestors; a truck driver in the very heart of the No American conservative had ever before received metropolis; a proprietor with an ancient name endeav- such glowing notices from the intellectual main- oring to moderate inevitable change by “prudence and stream. The political wrote good nature”; an old-fashioned manufacturer, diligent, Kirk that with one book, he had done the impossible: shrewd, and just; a physician who knows human he had broken “the cake of intellectual opposition to nature too well to talk of social perfectibility; a lawyer the conservative tradition in the United States.” In so who understands we cannot divorce ourselves from doing, he had made American conservatism intellec- history; a schoolmaster who knows there is no reward tually respectable, and even appealing. without labor. The true conservative is a man of the As the conservative historian George Nash has said, future rooted in the past. other conservatives like Richard Weaver and Whit- All of these true conservatives, Kirk says, prefer the taker Chambers had constructed “genealogies of evil old and the tried to the novel and the dubious, and men and pernicious thoughts; here, at long last, was a in whatever they do, endeavor to safeguard the insti- genealogy of good men and valuable thoughts.”44 tutions and the wisdom of the past, not slavishly but In the last chapter of The Conservative Mind, Rus- prudently.46 sell Kirk separates himself from the doomsayers by If we had to pick the thinkers more responsible arguing that the principal interests of true conserva- than any other for planting the intellectual roots of tism and old-style libertarian democracy were coin- modern conservative thought, I believe we would ciding. Confronted by arrogant collectivists and the select Edmund Burke and Russell Kirk, each of whom eager architects of the New Deal and its successors, presented “a profound critique” of their contemporary Kirk writes, American conservatives will “defend society and “a vivid image” of how that society might constitutional democracy as a repository of tradi- better itself.47 They were separated by almost two hun- tion and order,” while intelligent democrats will dred years but united in their adherence to the price- “espouse conservative philosophy as the only secure less principle of ordered liberty. This unites them, and system of ideas with which to confront the planners this provides the basis for the conservative tradition. of the new order.”45 Kirk points out that even Harvard Professor Arthur Concluding Thoughts M. Schlesinger, Jr., a Jackson-FDR Democrat, admitted In conclusion, the gulf between winning the bat- the pressing need for an intelligent American conser- tle of ideas—which I believe conservatives have won vatism. Which is what Russell Kirk provides in The with the help of Burke, Tocqueville, Acton, Kirk, and Conservative Mind. others—and translating those ideas into laws that There was another critical contribution of the genuinely diminish government’s power and influ- author: Kirk was proud to be a conservative. The true ence while expanding the choices available to the indi- conservative, he insists, is not the cruel caricature of a vidual is a very wide one—much wider than we con- “dull, boorish, bigoted and avaricious being” presented servatives initially realized. by most liberal and radical journalists and politicians. In his splendid history of the , The true conservative, Kirk says, could be many Oxford Professor Max Hartwell points out: different people: a “resolute and strong-minded” cler-

46 Ibid., pp. 440–442. 44 Ibid., p. 67. 47 David Frum, “The Legacy of Russell Kirk,” , 45 Kirk, The Conservative Mind, p. 413. December 1994, p. 16. 10 No. 19

In the history of ideas there are identifiable peri- potential hegemony. To quote Richard Weaver, “Ideas ods in which an idea about how society should have consequences.” be organized is clearly articulated and circulat- But ideas are not self-implementing or self-sustain- ed and acquires legitimacy and acceptance. The ing: they must be linked to action. Translating even idea is then embodied in laws that control and the best of ideas into policies and laws that reverse condition the actions of populations…. the statist domination we have had in America for the last 70 years is certainly a daunting but not an “Rhetoric is not enough,” Hartwell emphasizes. impossible task. “Only when ideas are accepted and also become laws Viewing our challenges from the shoulders of these does the world change.”48 giant thinkers, I believe with all my heart and mind Thus it is possible to win the war of ideas but fail and soul that it can be done and that it is being done to change the way the world works. Let me be clear: across this great land of ours. I believe absolutely in the power of ideas, in their —Edwin J. Feulner, Ph.D., is President of The Heritage Foundation.

48 R. M. Hartwell, A History of the Mont Pelerin Society (Indianapo- lis: , Inc., 1995), p. 216. This essay was published , 2008.