The Thesis of Conservatism

Carl describes what he believes to be the fundamental argument of conservativism.

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I’ve been researching conservatism intensively to figure out just what it is that conservatives are supposed to believe, and it has become evident that conservatives have done a pretty poor job of explaining to young people why anyone should take their philosophy seriously and what benefits it brings.

When I say “conservative”, I don’t mean the British Conservative Party who, regrettably, are not conservatives; as Tory MP Steve Baker recently put it: “We’re a socialist party now”.

So I thought I would lay out what I consider to be the fundamental argument of what we could consider to be an authentic conservatism, and in doing so hopefully answer some of the following questions: 

What is the purpose of conservatism? How does it view the world? Why does it produce positive results? How can it give young people a sense of purpose and a feeling of security? How does it foster justice and the goodwill between people, which is necessary for flourishing communities? 

The standard against which conservatives measure their moral worth is virtue, but what do we mean by “virtue”? Aristotle defined it as a human good, a desirable state of affairs which exists at the middle point between excess and defect. When being virtuous, a person flourishes; they are leading the life a good person is supposed to lead.  

This isn’t something that can be measured, we have to make this judgement for ourselves relative to where and what we are. The fruits of virtue are luminous and stand out to others; one never needs to describe one’s own virtue, because everyone else can see it. Virtue is what makes us wholesome, strong, and moral; it consists of doing the right thing in each circumstance. And if you wish to be a virtuous man as Aristotle would define him, you must not only do the right thing but also enjoy doing it. 

States of affairs are not created through theory, of course, they are created through action. This makes virtue a state of affairs created by our behaviour over time, which makes time itself an important aspect of conservatism as it is a key component in both virtue and wisdom. 

Edmund Burke most eloquently described this. He observed that each person’s private “stock of reason” is small, but a tradition is the inherited and distilled wisdom of many minds over many generations, each adding to and refining the result. 

This chain of civilisational wisdom is the “great primaeval contract” of society that connects the top of society with the bottom of society, and puts the living in a partnership with the dead and those yet to be born. It creates a three-dimensional view of a civilisation and makes each member of it an inheritor who holds it in trust for future generations with the obligation of preserving it to pass on, and improving it where we can in line with its animating principles. 

In this conservative view, therefore, time becomes a necessary part of knowledge and morality, and this chain of wisdom that we inherit contains many of the good things of which we were the beneficiaries as children, which places upon us an obligation to ensure future generations can be raised with these same benefits while we are the trustees of it. 

This relationship between the past, present and future takes on a sacred aspect; it isn’t merely ours to violate or destroy, it belongs to each person in our civilisation as a continuum, including those long gone and those yet to arrive. This is the relational view of our world that we can use to drill down into the details of our daily lives. 

In our regular lives, we are most focused around the “little platoons” of our families and friends, that radiate out to form overlapping networks which become the social spaces in which we live according to custom and propriety. 

These are based on the stations in life we occupy at any given time, which can change over time, and the relationships between these stations in life and the states of affairs they create contain the moral and nutritional content of our social lives.  

It is our relation to one another that is what is meaningful about the human experience and we should take care to nurture these bonds so they might become strong, for not only our own sake but the sake of those around us. Each relationship is unique, the tone and temperament of it is experienced only by the two people who share it; our relationships wax and wane over time depending on how they are cared for, the effort we put into them and the consideration we have to those people on the other side of them. 

Maintaining good relations with our family and friends makes everyone’s lives happier and more comfortable. We want to know that we can love and trust the people around us and that they’ll be there for us if - or should I say when - we find ourselves in a spot of trouble. The quality of our relationships determines the affection we hold for the place in which we live; whether we are terrorised by abusive parents or caught up in a loving embrace changes how we feel about our intimate spaces, and can turn a happy home into an unbearable prison. 

These feelings extend outwards into our community life. If we don’t know our neighbours, or we have negative relationships with them, then we experience an intangible strife that can manifest as open hostility. This upsets the harmony and rhythm of our daily lives and we should take care to resolve it to the satisfaction of both, for the good of everyone around us. 

If we don’t feel at home in our communities, then we don’t feel at home in our countries. This feeling of alienation pervades our existence and casts an insidious pall over our world, which corrupts every aspect of our lives, often without us even noticing, but it is here that the great chain of civilisation itself is under attack. 

To feel at home, we need to know we are where we belong, and for that we have our stations in life; we start as sons and daughters of fathers and mothers, and we inherit these from our families. We learn how to become friends with one another as we grow up and achieve the station of “adult”, a responsible member of the community. From this we aspire to stations of honour so that we might better serve our communities, such as police officer, fireman, judge, or as a political representative. 

If we’re lucky, we’ll become a husband or wife and have children of our own, which is a necessary thing if we wish for the great chain of our civilisation to have future generations that will inherit those good things we have inherited, preserved and developed. These relationships to one another and the place in which we live is how we form our attachments to our home, our local communities, and our countries. 

If we’re very lucky, we will have had good and virtuous parents of our own who raised us with good habits that we pass on to our own children, and if we didn’t, we might at least have good examples in our communities from which to draw. 

It is towards our children that our considerations should most fall, because prevention is better than cure. Much of the dysfunction of adulthood is accrued during childhood and is much more difficult to repair, and so for the good of the individual and of wider society we should take care to see that the innocence and safety of children is not unduly threatened. 

It is for this reason that the traditional roles we inherit as potential mothers and fathers need to be passed on: because they matter, and they matter because the welfare of the unborn depends on it.

When all of these pieces fall into their proper place, we can look at this state of affairs and realise it takes on a quality that goes beyond ourselves. We aren’t entitled to ruin it for others, just as others didn’t feel they were entitled to ruin it for us. 

The way people live their lives, autonomous from outside interference but with consideration and care for one another, so the entire community takes on the form of a spontaneous, organic order, whose life we should probably take pains to respect.

It is right that we should feel comfortable and at home in our own communities, that are filled with good people living good lives who hold goodwill towards one another, and this state of affairs should be first and foremost in the minds of those who benefit most from it; those people at the top of society have a responsibility to those at the bottom, and those in the present have a duty to the people in the past and an expectation from the people in the future. 

Things that are sacred should not be wantonly violated, so we find ourselves with a responsibility to try and avoid disturbing this undirected system. If public policy must be formulated by the state, then it should consider the needs of these communities before it considers special interests, minority or fringe groups, with an eye towards the continuity of this great chain and the overall health of our civilization. If it is demanded that things change, then the onus of justification must lay on that person who makes the demand. 

There is, of course, a lot here that needs further explanation, which I will do at a later date, but I think this is a good starting point as to why Conservatism is a good thing for the individual and for society in general, and why we should consider it more carefully.