STRANGELY MOURNFUL (via Ed Driscoll):

Twilight of Conservatism: We are living in false hope. (John Derbyshire, 5/10/05, National Review)

The people of Britain have spoken, and the Labor party is back in power with a comfortable, if much diminished, majority of seats in parliament. The leader of the Conservative party has said he will step down, forcing the Tories to their fourth leadership election in eight years. The victorious Labor party got 36 percent of the vote, the Conservatives 33 percent, the Liberal Democrats (a Naderite Green-Left party) 22.5 percent, and "other" (Scottish, Welsh, and Irish parties) 9.5 percent.

The real victory here is Margaret Thatcher's. By annihilating the old statist ideological Left in the 1980s, she forced the Labor party to bourgeoisify itself. [...]

The price of victory, however, was extinction. In accomplishing this transformation of her enemies, Mrs. Thatcher left the Conservative party with nothing to define itself against. Since the fall of the USSR, there is not even an external enemy to concentrate minds. (Hardly anyone in Britain thinks that the war on terror is any of their business.)

If your national economy consists of a large private sector and a large public sector, and if neither big political party is nakedly hostile to either, or looks like doing serious harm to either, then politics comes down to a dull, wonkish tussle between those who think that the private sector is over-regulated and those who think the public sector is under-funded. Right now in Britain the economy is humming along nicely; the welfare state is in reasonable working order; and the public-private mix in life services like health, education, and pensions seems to offer about as much choice as people want. Center-left or center-right? A state that occupies 40 percent of the national economy, or one that occupies 38 percent? Why change?

There isn't much room in there for a strong, principled conservatism. [...]

Is it any better off here in the USA? Hardly. Executive, legislature, judiciary — where can we look for strong promotion of, and adherence to, conservative principles? We think of our president as a conservative, but in what respects can he be said to have advanced conservatism? John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, in The Right Nation , tick off the six fundamentals of classical, Burkean, Anglo-Saxon conservatism:

* a deep suspicion of the power of the state.

* a preference for liberty over equality.

* patriotism.

* a belief in established institutions and hierarchies.

* skepticism about the idea of progress.

* elitism.

"The exceptionalism of modern American conservatism" (the authors go on to say) "lies in its exaggeration of the first three of Burke's principles and contradiction of the last three." All right, let's ignore the last three of those principles and mark George W. Bush on the first three.

It seems downright weird to complain that you've won so completely that there's no one to "define yourself against" anymore. But Mr. Derbyshire seems to have made the fairly rudimentary mistake of considering conservatism to be about means, not ends. In fact, it isn't apparent that he's asked himself what it is he wants to conserve in the first place, other than "freedom." This may be why he's so fretful about not having an enemy anymore. He has no idea what to stand for, without someone to be against.

However, the measure against which any American's conservatism should be judged doesn't actually come from Burke, but from the Founders: "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America"--with the "Blessings of Liberty" having an explicit source: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

To the extent that any President defends and advances those principles he has conserved what is best of America. With the exception of the patently anticonstitutional Campaign Finance Reform law it's hard to find much fault with Mr. Bush.

Meanwhile, we might look at another standard from Edmund Burke that is applicable: "For us to love our country, our country ought to be lovely." Mr. Derbyshire apparently associates conservatism only with libertarianism and nativism, which are defensible enough policies but neither calculated to make our country more lovely if we use the Founders' definitions of what a lovely United States would be like. The conservatism of George W. Bush--the Culture of Life; Ownership Society; Liberty's Century; etc.--on the other hand, is calculated precisely to make the country, and even the world, more lovely:

America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one. From the day of our Founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value, because they bear the image of the Maker of Heaven and earth. Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government, because no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave. Advancing these ideals is the mission that created our Nation. It is the honorable achievement of our fathers. Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation's security, and the calling of our time. [...]

In America's ideal of freedom, citizens find the dignity and security of economic independence, instead of laboring on the edge of subsistence. This is the broader definition of liberty that motivated the Homestead Act, the Social Security Act, and the G.I. Bill of Rights. And now we will extend this vision by reforming great institutions to serve the needs of our time. To give every American a stake in the promise and future of our country, we will bring the highest standards to our schools, and build an ownership society. We will widen the ownership of homes and businesses, retirement savings and health insurance - preparing our people for the challenges of life in a free society. By making every citizen an agent of his or her own destiny, we will give our fellow Americans greater freedom from want and fear, and make our society more prosperous and just and equal.

In America's ideal of freedom, the public interest depends on private character - on integrity, and tolerance toward others, and the rule of conscience in our own lives. Self-government relies, in the end, on the governing of the self. That edifice of character is built in families, supported by communities with standards, and sustained in our national life by the truths of Sinai, the Sermon on the Mount, the words of the Koran, and the varied faiths of our people. Americans move forward in every generation by reaffirming all that is good and true that came before - ideals of justice and conduct that are the same yesterday, today, and forever.

In America's ideal of freedom, the exercise of rights is ennobled by service, and mercy, and a heart for the weak. Liberty for all does not mean independence from one another. Our nation relies on men and women who look after a neighbor and surround the lost with love. Americans, at our best, value the life we see in one another, and must always remember that even the unwanted have worth. And our country must abandon all the habits of racism, because we cannot carry the message of freedom and the baggage of bigotry at the same time.

From the perspective of a single day, including this day of dedication, the issues and questions before our country are many. From the viewpoint of centuries, the questions that come to us are narrowed and few. Did our generation advance the cause of freedom? And did our character bring credit to that cause?

These questions that judge us also unite us, because Americans of every party and background, Americans by choice and by birth, are bound to one another in the cause of freedom. We have known divisions, which must be healed to move forward in great purposes - and I will strive in good faith to heal them. Yet those divisions do not define America. We felt the unity and fellowship of our nation when freedom came under attack, and our response came like a single hand over a single heart. And we can feel that same unity and pride whenever America acts for good, and the victims of disaster are given hope, and the unjust encounter justice, and the captives are set free.

We go forward with complete confidence in the eventual triumph of freedom. Not because history runs on the wheels of inevitability; it is human choices that move events. Not because we consider ourselves a chosen nation; God moves and chooses as He wills. We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul. When our Founders declared a new order of the ages; when soldiers died in wave upon wave for a union based on liberty; when citizens marched in peaceful outrage under the banner "Freedom Now" - they were acting on an ancient hope that is meant to be fulfilled. History has an ebb and flow of justice, but history also has a visible direction, set by liberty and the Author of Liberty.

When the Declaration of Independence was first read in public and the Liberty Bell was sounded in celebration, a witness said, "It rang as if it meant something." In our time it means something still. America, in this young century, proclaims liberty throughout all the world, and to all the inhabitants thereof. Renewed in our strength - tested, but not weary - we are ready for the greatest achievements in the history of freedom.

May God bless you, and may He watch over the United States of America.

This kind of neighbor-love conservatism may be foreign to Mr. Derbyshire but it is certainly conservative, fundamentally American, and, when we realize the aspiration, truly lovely.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 13, 2005 4:30 PM