There are two parts to this post. I am addressing two arguments that movement conservatism has deviated from traditional Burkean conservatism.
The notion that Edmund Burke is the father of conservatism is so deeply ingrained in the American intelligentsia that even liberals acknowledge it. Editor of the New York Times Book Review and author of The Death of Conservatism, Sam Tanenhaus admits that Burke was “the great originator of modern conservatism.”[1] The Death of Conservatism was met with widespread liberal acclaim, for obvious reasons. Tanenhaus argues that Obama’s election was the death knell for conservatism. He says that movement conservatives have strayed from their Burkean roots and have become “the heirs of the French rather than of the American revolution.”[2]
One of Tanenhaus’s arguments for movement conservatism’s deviation from Burkean principles is that movement conservatism has become an ideological “orthodoxy,” blindly followed by its adherents. Even when there is supposed evidence that the majority of Americans no longer desire conservative values, movement conservatives are unwilling to compromise. That unwillingness is antithetical to Burke’s politics of prudence. And because the present iteration of conservatism, movement conservatism, is no longer Burkean, it is no longer conservative. Therefore, conservatism, Tanenhaus argues, is dead.
Unfortunately for Tanenhaus, he has severely misunderstood not only the present situation but also the Burkean politics of prudence. By calling conservative opposition to policies ideological and therefore anti-Burkean, Tanenhaus is ignoring the history of Burke’s political life and his views on representation in government.
Burke opposed all forms of abstractions and blind ideology, and prudence dictated his politics. According to Tanenhaus, Burke saw governing as “to engage in perpetual compromise… In such a scheme there is no useful place for the either/or of ideological purism.”[3] Movement conservatism, Tanenhaus asserts, is fanatically ideological. Movement conservatism has a set of ideological principles, “right reason,” Tanenhaus calls it, and if the public disagrees with this ideology, so be it, “because the public is so often wrong.”[4] Tanenhaus opines that “There is a fundamental difference between the two parties and the politics that guides them. The modern liberal worldview is premised on consensus. Movement conservatism emphasized orthodoxy.”[5]
Movement conservatives, such as Charles Krauthammer and Newt Gingrich, paint Obama as a socialist, opposing him steadfastly, ideologically. But, to Tanenhaus, the Burkean “politics of consensus would have required Krauthammer and Gingrich to acknowledge an inescapable fact: the public favored Obama’s proposals. But the politics of orthodoxy imposes no such obligation.”[6]
Applying Burke’s politics of prudence and compromise to this example shows an extreme misunderstanding of Burke’s political life.
Burke has a history of not being swayed by populist public opinion. Burke wrote that
It is said, that twenty-four million ought to prevail over two hundred thousand. True; if the constitution of a kingdom be a problem of arithmetic. This sort of discourse does well enough with the lamp-post for its second; to men who may reason calmly, it is ridiculous.[7]
This interpretation of Burke, as a man lacking principles, who placidly accepts whatever policy the public demands is utterly false. Why then would Burke go against majority public opinion in his efforts to reconcile with the United States of America?
When his constituents in Bristol did not like his opposition to the mercantilist policies regarding the colonies, Burke gave his “Speech to the Electors of Bristol,” where he said,
Certainly, gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion. [8]
To Burke, a representative should not conform his judgment to that of his constituents. He is instead elected on his own virtue and his own judgment. How then, is a loyal conservative opposition to President Obama’s policies ideological, and anti-Burkean, because it goes against public opinion, if Burke himself went against public opinion frequently and Burke thought the will of the majority meant little? Aside from a few short intervals, Burke himself spent the vast majority of his career as a leader of the Loyal Opposition.
The answer is that the conservative loyal opposition is not ideological, is still prudently Burkean in its goal (to preserve American governmental values), and conservatism is still alive.
[1] Sam Tanenhaus.
The Death of Conservatism. New York: Random House, 2009. Print. 16
[2]Ibid. 19
[3] Ibid 18
[4] Ibid 23
[5] Ibid 21
[6] Ibid 23
[7] Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
[8] Edmund Burke, “Speech to the Electors of Bristol,” 1774
