Posted on 05/05/2005 10:07:38 AM PDT by kjvail
In the years following the Second World War, a group of writers emerged who became known as America’s “New Conservatives,” prominently including Richard M. Weaver, Peter Viereck, Robert Nisbet, and Russell Kirk. In this case, “new” did not merely indicate a generational transition; these thinkers did not represent a simple return to the conservatism of the 1930s following the emergency of world war. Instead, the New Conservatives articulated ideas and concepts that were unprecedented in American intellectual history. They took their political bearings from a quite novel set of intellectual authorities. Most striking of all, at the very moment of America’s historic victory over the most potent totalitarian threat of the century, their writings were redolent with sometimes sweeping doubts about the “progress” of the Modern Project — and about the individualism at the heart of liberalism’s liberty.
(Excerpt) Read more at newpantagruel.com ...
Redundant? :-)
Unfortunately no, modern "conservatism" as expressed by GW Bush, Newt Gingrich, etc (ie neoconservatism) has little or nothing to do with tradition. That's the point of the post
I know, I know. Just joking. :-)
Thanks. I'll have to read this later. I know of Mark Henrie from his association with the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, which is headquarted on my home turf of northern Delaware.
Check out the following:
Conservatism Begins with Burke
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/899399/posts
Ten Conservative Principles
http://www.FreeRepublic.com/forum/a3acb9ed05dfe.htm
The Errors of Ideology.
http://www.FreeRepublic.com/forum/a3747223372f0.htm
Conservatism and the Founding
http://www.FreeRepublic.com/focus/news/687270/posts
Ordered Liberty: Remembering Russell Kirk
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1009899/posts
OWK's Quest for Conservative Principles (Thread #2)
http://www.FreeRepublic.com/forum/a3b1e5576791a.htm
The Case for and Against Natural law (Bork's Side-step)
http://www.FreeRepublic.com/forum/a380203555431.htm
The Essence of Conservatism
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/943007/posts
The Liberalism/Conservatism of Edmund Burke and F.A. Hayek: A Critical Comparison
http://www.FreeRepublic.com/forum/a390e8c6b6be7.htm
The Pursuit of Liberty: Libertarian and Conservative, Uneasy Cousins
http://www.FreeRepublic.com/forum/a38b697347cc3.htm
Chapter Four, Freedom, Reason, and Tradition;The Constitution of Liberty
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/836099/posts
It is sad that one might run the risk of being banned on a
"conservative" board for standing up for conservatism
In my opinion, Kirk is very inclusive in The Conservative Mind. I doubt he would be very pleased with some of the people calling themselves his followers.
Very good overview of true conservatism.
Anyone who claims that "society" is a meaningful concept but that an "indivdual" is an abstraction is as whacked-out as the most extreme DUmmie.
I agree. The GOP is now "Wandering in the Wilderness", since the demise of Ronald Reagan. AAMOF, the only conservative I can ken in the Bush administration is Condi Rice. And I am neither black nor female, which isn't the point. The point is that the white haired, middle age white men of the Republican Party, have achieved a state of comfort that causes them to go about their affairs with a depraved indifference about their dities to the Republic.
Then you reject the conservative basis of social philosophy. A perfect example of what I'm talking about, "conservatives" that just don't get it.
ping!
Correction, that should read "duties to the Republic".
It was Bill Clinton that tended to "dittie" about in his duties to the Republic.
Since then, the future looks a lot like capitalism or the free market. It may be more or less free and may follow the American or European or Asian model, but communism is dead as a desireable future, and socialism and welfare states have real problems staying afloat. So if you set yourself against modernity you put yourself more or less in opposition to the American model, and if you accept that model -- even with reservations -- you're largely in the camp of modernity. You may be traditionalist in terms of society or culture or morals, but you are to some degree modern if you've accepted modern capitalist America.
Forty or fifty years ago -- even twenty years ago -- one could believe with good reason, that world politics were a battle between a rigidly divided "us" and "them." That was an accurate picture of life during the Cold War. But now it looks like different tendencies are more or less mixed together in all of us.
Plenty of people -- left and right, neo and paleo -- want to return to the firmer lines of division of the recent past. But the problem is that if you are a traditionalist or a libertarian or what have you, you won't always agree with today's right or left. You'll find yourself agreeing more with one side on many things, but disagreeing on some others. For some people this makes it all the more important to have a rigid ideology for a sect or cult, but I'd say it means that one has already gotten away from all that into a world where ideology matters less than what works or what's right.
Doubtless some people are looking for a complete restoration of what came earlier. I doubt that's possible. We're somewhat in the position of Britain after 1832 or 1867. One could sound conservative themes and defend conservative values, but increasing industrialization meant that there was no going back to the agrarian Tory world of the 18th century.
Traditional and Christian values are still important, but one has to apply them in a very different environment than existed in the past.
I don't
I am torn between the distributist and austrian economic models. I think tho, I have been pushed farther into the distributist camp just today.
I engaged in a debate in another thread about bioethics, what was made clear to me was the complete moral bankruptcy of applying market mechanics to life issues and I'm not sure if that isn't inevitable in capitialist societies
u won't always agree with today's right or left.
That's the truth, the dominant forms of these idealogies are all infected with the "enlightenment". There are some writers whom I connect with - EVk-L, Thomas Fleming, Jim Kalb - to name a few. The magazines I read are a pretty good indication of my idealogy - Chronicles, Latin Mass, Seattle Catholic.. etc. These often expouse an idealogy that fundamentally rejects the basic principles of enlightenment and classical liberal thought on which the American polity is (was) based.
Modernity and it's corruption of thought and society goes much deeper than economics tho, I recommend looking at some of Jim Kalb's writings at Turnabout . He does some spectactular critiques of modern thought
For some people this makes it all the more important to have a rigid ideology for a sect or cult, but I'd say it means that one has already gotten away from all that into a world where ideology matters less than what works or what's right.
This I see as a reflection of the corruption of modernity in your thinking. One could see the Truth as a "rigid idealogy" but I prefer to think of it as simply the Truth and that is what matters. Many things "work" I suppose, for the short term usually but that doesn't make them acceptable alternatives.
If you're concerned about negative sides of capitalism or biotechnology, you're probably not a Misean. At any rate "Austrian economics" is no answer to today's cultural problems. There's something very dishonest about Rockwellite paleoconservatism or paleolibertarianism. Either you throw a major monkey wrench into the consumer society, and change things perhaps for the worse. Or you don't, and things go on basically as they do now. Rockwellites never deal with that and presume some combination of laissez-faire and back to religion will somehow change society without involving any real sacrifices or changes, and that's just dishonest.
I used to follow Jim Kalb's writings. He's a very bright guy, but I got the feeling that at heart he wished for a collapse of the present society in order to wipe the slate clean. That seems to me to be dangerous and irresponsible. It reminds me a lot of those a century ago who longed for some great catastrophe to break up the status quo. When it came, it was more horrible than they could imagine.
Henrie's emphasis on feelings of longing and loss has some appeal. It did for me at one point. But there's something very dated about it. Comparisons of agrarianism with cold, mechanical industrialism aren't so relevant when our part of the world has left those "dark, Satanic mills" behind. Whatever's wrong with the world now, it's as far from the world of early industrialism as it is from the agrarian past.
Our society has had its own share of accomplishments, for all its failings and vices. If it collapsed or disappeared, I'd regret the loss far more than anything I'd feel about the ancien regime in France or the antebellum South.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.