Conservatives…
and Ideologies

Conservatives are often referred to in the media as being “ideological conservatives”. That is a misnomer, a contradiction in terms. Ideologues are the antithesis of conservatives because they exalt time over place. For the ideologue, time is unfolding a better and better society. What has gone before has no import to the ideologue. Ideology is about what is “not” instead of reality; about what could be instead of what exists. Ideologues fit nicely with scientific materialists who believe that we live in a closed system of random origin without outside influence or ideals and we alone are responsible for “getting it right” and that requires time.

On the other hand we have the conservative. Russell Kirk said being a conservative is a:

…cast of intellect or a type of character, and inclination to cherish the permanent things in human existence…to join in resistance to the destruction or the old patterns of life [and] damage to the footings of civil social order…

Note two things in particular that sets the conservative apart from the ideologue. The first is “permanent things”. That is non-negotiable virtues without which a society cannot exist and operate. Ideologues are about changing social order because nothing is permanent. Why? Because, for the ideologue, there is the unfolding enlightenment of man that allows him to move to higher and higher plains of goodness. There is not a good, an ideal, to be cherished because we are making things better and better.

Second, the conservative is “against destruction” of the old social order. This is why conservatives resist ideologues and their ideologies. Conservatives know that ideologues leave in their wake of change dismantled foundations and non-functioning institutions that had served the society before the “change for the better”. On striking example, but by no means the only, is the “better way” of sexual liberation leaving in its wake the broken and destroyed family as it had functioned for thousands of years in the world.

At their core, ideologues are about the rejection of reality and destruction of what is. In place of reality ideologues what to build a “possibility” that has never existed and is not possible. The ideologue represents a smug, self-righteous attitude that by subverting and dismantling the “way it is” there can be a “better way”. This attitude is rejected by the conservative. This is not a rejection of change, for change is inevitable. It is a rejection of the radical change that dismantles what we know for what is imagined. Conservatives desire to maintain the permanent virtues and patterns of life that have been the basis of society since there have been societies and promote change within.

The hubris of ideology ignores the fallibility of man. The ideologue wants to dismiss the accrued wisdom of men through the ages for the enlightened view of modern man. The traditional virtues, tested through time and experience, are found wanting by the 21st century ideologue. They are viewed as oppressive and not in step with what is now happening. For improving the world, wholesale change is needed. Bringing the world in line with the desires of modern man is the way to a better world. This is why there are no “permanent things” or “footings of society” for the ideologue. The desires of man are always changing, so change is inevitable. Tying society to the desire of man means a constantly moving target unmoored to anything permanent.

Virtuous terms do not disappear; just the meaning of them. Take for instance the modified definition of honor. At one time honor meant standing on principles believed regardless of the consequences or impact on the person of honor. But, today we do not see honor as a permanent virtue that is manifested in an individual as part of his character. Honor in a “changed” society is now defined as status, or respect for personal accomplishment. It is an “I did it my way” view of things. Honor is no longer attached to virtue or a part of a person’s character. We honor those judged to be successful at fulfilling his or her personal desires. Honor is now recognition of the individual rather than the individual representing service, sacrifice, or even death for a cause that is virtuous.

A brief examination of the world we now live inn exposes the foolishness of ideologies. Do we really see in the unfolding of time a continuing revelation of a higher and better humanity? Do we see in our world societies finally “getting it right” after centuries of misplace emphases on permanent things? Globalism, multi-culturalism and neo-conservatism are ideologies that are moving us away from the “old ways” to “new ways” that promise an elevated humanity. Is that what we see? One a grand scale we see a movement to a one world economic order doing away with nation-states and on a micro scale it is personal autonomy shedding the shackles of oppressive communities. I am sure you can come up with many other examples.

The dream of ideologues is progress driven by the engine of technology. Ideologues love progress for it is indicative of the better. Surely the new is always better than the old? Progress is defined by the ideologue as moving ahead. We are the most advanced folks because technology has made our lives easy, comfortable and pleasurable. So, we surely must also be the most advanced in ideas and consequent behavior. We march into the future armed with technology and believing that we can ignore the past and create a new social order. To T.S. Eliot’s famous statement:

We are what we are because they were what they were,

the ideologue answers yes…but we must be different because we now know better.

The late Gerhart Niemeyer asserted that ideologies fail because of two reasons. One, they are frauds. They substitute the philosophical questions about what is given for a set of assertions about what is not given. As a willful assertion of unreality or willful denial of reality, ideology is an intellectual perversion. Second, because and ideologue does not embrace reality and act within it to achieve real possibilities they are destroyers of societies not builders.

Two examples of 20th century history…National Socialism and Communism…prove Niemeyer’s point. Going forward in the 21st century we must be vigilant in identifying the unreality and destruction of ideologies. They can come from anywhere. No group or party has a monopoly on ideology. This is where the conservative must play an assertive role in society. Ideologies must be called ideologies. And, the conservative must continue to stand for permanent things and keep the foundations of society from being destroyed. Conservatives look to the past to seek the accumulated wisdom of those who have gone before and the time worn verities that maintain a society. This is not a romantic return to “Ozzie and Harriet. He does not live in the past but is guided by the old order built on permanent virtues that have stood the test of time. Change will come but as a modification of the old not the substitution of a new order built on human progress driven by technology and human desires of modern man.

Not Forgetting 9/11

This was a day that ranks with Pearl Harbor and the assassination of JFK in the memories of Americans living today. A bright, sunny day in the east turned dark and foreboding as airliners were turned into missiles and thousands of non-combatants died in a war we did not even know we were fighting. Some call it a War on Terror, others call it a resumption of the war between Islam and Christianity. Whatever the case, we can never forget that day. Say a prayer for the families of the victims of that day who can never scrub this day from their minds. Say a pray for the leaders of our country as they attempt to keep the citizens safe in an increasingly hostile world where the technology for those who want to harm us is increasingly available.

Living in the World
The Providence of God

Nothing happens by happenstance, serendipity, if you will. There is a purpose and plan for all that happens in the universe. What the purpose and plan is we sometimes cannot know at the time an event happens. There are times when we just rejoice. This is one such time. When I think of this lifetime memory for the Ledford girls I just smile and chuckle for such a cherished moment in their lives. A moment unplanned by man; designed by God!

http://danledford.blogspot.com

Escape From Reason
The Crisis of the Middle Class

This middle class group is, in many ways, a product of the Reformation; it is something to be thankful for as a source of stability. By now, people in this group often do not understand the basis of its stability. They do not understand why they think in the old way; they are continuing to act out of habit and memory after they have forgotten why the old form was valid. Often they still think in the right way—to them truth is truth, right is right—but they no longer know why. So how can they understand their 20th century children who think in the new way, who no longer think that truth is truth nor that right is right?

Francis A. Schaeffer, Escape From Reason

Conservatives…
and Education

It is appalling how little attention is paid to reading and history today. They go had in hand. Television, the internet and cellular phones tell us little about our history. They are technological “now” instruments. You have to put them down to read. And, we do not want to do that. We might miss something!

Education has generally moved from the liberal arts [including history] to technical and specialized learning. And, what is left of the liberal arts is riddled with political correctness. In the academy of today, race, gender and class, with increasing doses of sexual preference, dictate the study of the social sciences. Western civics has become the story of the failure of rich white men, who were probably homophobic, to produce an egalitarian society where every idea has equal validity and importance. You are far more likely to gain admittance to a doctoral program in a US university wanting to study about homosexual black women on southern plantations than the study of any heretofore significant male figure from the 17th to 20th century.

Jude Daugherty, former Chairman of the Philosophy Department at Catholic University maintains that being an educated conservative requires a literary [reading] tradition that puts people in touch with the wisdom of the past. Of, course that flies in the face of those who debunk the past [history] as the story of the oppressive winners who suppressed every dissident voice and view. Even for those who have not bought into the PC view of education, the past and its wisdom still lacks importance. They look at the past as worthless and hopelessly outdated for modern man. The virtues of the past; the rule of law from the past; ideas of society and family from the past; concepts of science and religion believed in the past; none of it has relevance to now and the future. So, why read history?

For conservatives, the past is important and it is imperative that we understand the past. The conservative understands that Western Culture is the foundation of our society. The Greek and Roman classics; Holy Scripture; the early and medieval church fathers; European works on philosophy and science; these all play an important role in the structuring of what we now identify as the west. The conservative cannot understand why someone would espouse the construction of a new order of things ignoring the collective efforts of the past. Preservation of those collective memories of the past is necessary according to Edmund Burke:

…it is with infinite caution that any man ought to venture upon pulling down an edifice which has answered in any tolerable degree for ages the common purposes of society or on building it up again without having models of approved utility before his eyes.

We are 180 degrees from Burke. We reject notions of the past as out of step with the now. We are attempting to build a society without a known foundation. How long can such an edifice stand?

Specifically, this country, the USA, was built by men schooled in foundational works of the past. Conservatives know that, and real conservative educational concepts would propose returning to the classics. Walter Lippmann addressed this matter on the University of Pennsylvania campus in 1940. His topic was, interestingly enough, entitled “Education v. Western Civilization”. He said:

The men who wrote the American Constitution and the Bill of Rights were educated in schools and colleges in which the classic works of this culture were the substance of the curriculum. In these schools, the transmission of this culture was held to be the end and aim of education. Modern education, however, is based on a denial that it is necessary or useful or desirable for schools and colleges to continue to transmit from generation to generation the religious and classical culture of the western world.
Thus there is an enormous vacuum where until a few decades ago there was the substance of education. And that vacuum is filled with the elective, the specialized, the accidental and incidental improvisions and spontaneous curiosity of teachers and students. There is no common faith, no common body of principle ,no common body of knowledge, no common moral and intellectual discipline. Yet the graduates of modern schools are expected to form a civilized community.

Breathtaking! Spoken 68 years ago and unheeded. Where there is no common educational process there is no common anything. Just about sums up where we are today.

Conservatives are not against vocational education. But, for us to have a citizenry that has common principles, knowledge, morals and intellectual discipline, there must be a pursuit by all citizens of the foundation of our cultural formation. Our civilization is becoming increasingly uncivilized, as Lippmann predicted. The education promoted by the true conservative is based on understanding the basis of our western culture and transmitting those principles and virtues to all our citizens. Recapturing such a vision of education is needed yesterday and any other educational philosophy cannot be called conservative.