Posted on 08/30/2006 12:29:45 PM PDT by Fiji Hill
August 28, 2006 Issue
Copyright © 2006 The American Conservative
Jeffrey Hart
The terms “liberal” and “conservative” remain in current usage and probably retain value, but the question is a tricky one. We will begin with definitions, but things get difficult when we try to apply the terms to actual politicians and their policies.Let’s start with Hobbes and Locke and their assumptions about human nature. For Hobbes, man’s heart was savage. In the mythic pre-social “state of nature,” life was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” That required the restraints of strong government. For Locke, in contrast, “the state of nature has a law of nature to govern it … and reason … is that law.” Thus the restraints of government could be mild. Perhaps Hobbes was conservative, Locke liberal.
Burke, rather than starting with assumptions about human nature, began with experience and shared history. In practice, he was a reformist Whig. For example, advocating prudence, he urged conciliation with the American colonies, offering everything except formal independence. Adam Smith said that Burke was the only man in England who understood his economic theory; but Burke also urged the importance of the “unbought grace of life.” He would not approve of everything-has-a-price capitalism.
Burke is thought to be a conservative. He did attack the French Revolution. But if we strip away such operatic passages as the one on Marie Antoinette, Burke should be understood as a critic of ideology, “abstract ideas,” “metaphysic dogma.” To the Rights of Man urged by the philosophes, he opposed the actual historic liberties of Englishmen.
Let us try to cut to the core of Burke’s thought. I first tried this in a Columbia graduate seminar taught by Jacques Barzun and Lionel Trilling. I offered this: “Most of the things we do are done by habit. If you tried to tie your shoes every morning by reason, you would never get out of the house. Try playing a violin by reason.” Barzun accepted this and raised me. “Burke,” he said, “wants his morning newspaper delivered on time.” In other words, social institutions are the habits of society. They make society work.
But suppose serious change becomes necessary. For Burke, you don’t judge change necessary by appealing to abstractions, to pamphleteers and journalists. You appeal to the man of experience, the statesman. In the Reflections, the statesman is Lord Somers, who knew the institutions of England and knew in 1688 that James II had to go. That kind of knowledge cannot be taught but only absorbed from experience.
Everyone knows that Burke opposed the abstract doctrines he saw as energizing the French Revolution. Less often realized is that he soon came to see the Revolution as inevitable, without, of course, withdrawing any of his hatred of ideology. In 1791, he wrote:
If a great change is to be made in human affairs, the minds of men will be fitted to it; the general opinions and feelings will draw that way. Every fear, every hope will forward it; and then they, who persist in opposing this mighty current in human affairs, will appear rather to resist the decrees of Providence itself, than the mere designs of men. They will not be resolute and firm, but perverse and obstinate.In the Reflections, more than a year earlier, Burke had not been Burkean enough. The complexities of society can include, as well as complex institutional structure, complex social forces that become irresistible: the French monarchy had been doomed by the accumulation of such forces.Burke was a conservative in the sense of William Buckley’s definition of conservatism as the “politics of reality.” Unfortunately, many supposed conservatives—I will echo T.S. Eliot’s phrase—“cannot bear very much reality.”
Let us try a few notes on presidents and their success or failure in dealing with reality. Through many needed economic reforms, such as the SEC, it can be argued—Conrad Black and other historians have done so—that Franklin Roosevelt saved capitalism. In that sense, in dealing with realities and not ideology, he was conservative. He was also bipartisan in his war leadership and unanimously considered a great war leader.
Harry Truman, a liberal Democrat—the Henry Wallace Left did not think him liberal enough, the Strom Thurmond segregationists thought him too liberal—was also a realist. Against the segregationists, Truman knew the civil-rights revolution was gestating. Against the Wallace Left, he knew the Soviets had to be blocked.
Eisenhower adopted a fatherly persona. But in fact, he was realistic, lucid, even ruthless. He knew the old empires were finished, refused to help the British and French at Suez, refused to help the French in Vietnam. He knew the New Deal could not be repealed, and of Sen. William Knowland, the right-wing hero, he asked, “How stupid can one get?” A complete realist, Eisenhower won re-election in a landslide and, with Franklin Roosevelt and Reagan, another prudent realist, is among the top ten presidents.
That brings us to George W. Bush, the most ideological president in American history. He thinks in abstractions and acts on them. No president stands at a greater remove from Burke’s critique of ideology. His foreign policy—the march of democracy—is immune to fact and, notably in Iraq, to a Burkean sense of history. In economics (supply-side dogma, calamitous debt), in science (Intelligent Design), in his opposition to stem-cell research and therapy, Bush has been a brass-bound ideologue. On stem-cell research, Bush formulates his opposition this way: “It’s wrong to destroy life in order to save life.” His first use of the word “life” refers to a few insensate cells, his second to an actual sick human being. His formulation is self-refuting. As an exercise in the use of the “moral imagination”—a term coined by Burke—let us cut through verbiage to concrete fact: if you had a child with Type I diabetes, a devastating disease, and I said I had a few cells that would cure her, would you turn this offer down? The question answers itself. It also answers Bush.
The common denominator of successful presidents, liberal or conservative, has been that they were realists. Because Bush is an ideologue remote from fact, he has failed comprehensively and surely is the worst president in American history—indeed, in the damage he has caused to the nation, without a rival in the race for the bottom. Because Bush is generally called a conservative, he will have poisoned the term for decades to come.
Jeffrey Hart is a senior editor of National Review and author, most recently, of The Making of the American Conservative Mind.
I didn't even know he was still alive. He used to be printed in the old Jackson owned New Haven Register until he was pulled DECADES ago.
I don't think so. I do support the President, but not on conservative grounds. My grounds for support are entirely pragmatic and necessary, not conservative.
What is interesting about Mr. Hart's analysis is that he argues against idealism and then suggests that to prosecute the war in Iraq is to wallow in idealism. I disagree. We are pursuing a strategic purpose in Iraq (not least among our goals is to ensure that nobody takes us for a paper tiger any time soon).
Thing is, to fully agree even with Mr. Hart's conviction, we must agree that Buckley's definition rules our President out and that it is a realistic and adequate definition of conservatism.
I'm not sure about either of those two propositions, myself.
This is pathetic, even for The American Conservative.
Hart should have submitted it to the LA Times. It could have run alongside pieces by Kevin Phillips and John Dean.
I happen to agree with Mr. Hart's opinion of this president. I voted for Bush three times; twice for governor and once for president. Right now, I wouldn't vote for him as dog catcher. IMO, he's been a total disaster as U.S. president.
At one time, I thought his old man was the worst president we'd ever had (though I voted for him in '88 also) and so I was reluctant to vote for young Bush the first time because I figured he had a lot of his old man in him. Sure 'nuff, my instincts were right.
The ONLY things he's done with which I agree is appoint some conservatives to the federal bench and cut taxes.
I understand your frustration with W., and I share much of it.
However, if Kerry had been elected, we would now have a solid hard-left majority on the Supreme Court, 6-3. Think about that.
As it is, the Court is 4-4-1. If Stevens had retired this year, we might very well have had a majority on SCOTUS for the first time since the 1930s. If he retires next year and we have 52 seats or more in the Senate, it's still possible. Unlikely, but possible.
DUH-pee-yew's problem is that he is arrogant and recalcitrant. He won't listen to any but his sycophantic advisers or his buddies in the high corporate places he had become so comfortable in before his inauguration--the general, who know how to fight a war is poo-pooed in favor of Rummy's bizarre theory of limited engagement, the conservative economist who warns of high deficits in the wake of guns AND butter is silenced in the wake of spending will fuel the economy (albeit temporarily), and the heralder of how illegal immigration hurts the country is said to be an alarmist. True, we all love tax cuts and responsible Constitutionalist Supreme Court appointments but why can't we have a winning strategy in Iraq, and reasonable spending and immigration policies too?
Do you really believe that George W. Bush is worse than James Buchanan, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, or Bill Clinton?
Methinks we have a false-flag newbie, here.
But beyond selling a few magazines and elevating the stature of such writers in their own minds, what positive purpose does all this Bush bashing serve? Here Hart laments the fact that GWB is too "ideological" and "not pragmatic enough". Fine. Was Hart himself pragmatic enough to consider the political ramifications of his anti-Bush diatribe in an election year in which the WOT, and the possibility of Iranian nukes, is front and center? Would Hart truly prefer a leftist pragmatist appeaser to a "compassionate conservative" ideologue? He does not say, but certainly his words will be used as fodder toward electing a congress of appeasers by politically softening up the President from his right flank.
Yes, I held my nose when I voted for this president. Yes, there are things that disappoint me. But I can't understand how on earth we worked ourselves into such a funk with the economic growth rates up, unemployment down, and things basically humming along on the domestic front. Is it the war? OK. 2001 terrorist-supporting nations: Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, Lebanon. 2006 terrorist-supporting nations: Iran and Syria. We are winning this thing and letting the MSM and Dims capture defeat from the throes of victory.
Pretty soon we are going to have to buck up and get to work on winning this election. I, for one, intend to remain part of the solution rather than part of the problem.
You're wrong. And you people who follow this "Republican" Pied Piper need to take off the blinders. Don't any of you think for yourselves or does Karl Rove do your thinking?
I'm a CONSERVATIVE while you're a Bushbot.
>2001 terrorist-supporting nations: Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, Lebanon. 2006 terrorist-supporting nations: Iran and Syria.
Don't forget Libya in 2001.
And I have a bridge....
This isn't conservative, this is from pat buchanan's political rag, which means neo-populist national socialism.
Absolutely correct. Thank you!
By the standards of their time, they were. Just as Jefferson was a "liberal" based on an early 19th century definition of that term. Today's conservatives would have far more in common with Locke, and Jefferson, than today's liberals. I think Hart was referring to the classical definitions, but he should have made that clear.
Yes I agree bump.
Except for the fact that the otherwise forgettable Hart received patronage from a much younger Bill Buckley, would any of us have heard of him???? Probably not.
Now Hart is dredged up by the eccentrics who surround Pat Buchanan in his dotage because Hart is willing to trade actual conservatism for half-vast racism and "blood and soil" politics which got a quite deservedly bad reputation in central Europe in the last century and the reputation of that way of thinking has also has not improved with age.
I once traveled about a thousand miles for what I then saw as the privilege of voting against Karl Rove for College Republican National Chairman. Five of us voted that way against about one hundred who voted otherwise. Terry Dolan and Professor Bob Edgeworth were two of us and are now dead. Three survive. I do not know how the other two feel but I would gladly apologize to Rove who was either a lot better than I thought then or has improved vastly since.
I am not happy with various policies of Dubya but I am verrrrry happy with a nearly reformed SCOTUS represented by Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito, a reinvigorated foreign policy and military policy, whatever their flaws, and a delightfully stubborn administration which does not grovel before leftist onslaughts. Only another judge or two and we may have a voting majority who can read and apply the constitution. Professor Hart will be gravely disappointed, raving enthusiast for abortion and social anarchy that he is.
Personally, I hope that Rove can be persuaded to stick around for another eight years of pushing pins through the voodoo dolls that represent the social revolutionary enemies of our nation and our civilization. His idea of President McKinley as a good role model deserves consideration and his emulation of Mark Hanna and Matt Quay likewise.
AND, just what is a "Bushbot????" Is that a Republican in touch with reality who drives leftist barking moonbats to breathlessly call C-SPAN Commies in the Morning (Washington Journal) to breathlessly grovel before C-SPAN as the "one remaining voice of truth in the American media" (for letting the moonbats call in with their curious conspiracy theories and treating them as though they were arguably human?????
Time for Jeffrey Hart to cart off his undistinguished 90-year old irrelevant carcass to the paleograveyard of broken nightmares where he belongs.
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