THE rIGHT IS REACTIONARY, NOT CONSERVATIVE

Rather than an inflexible and backward looking set of beliefs the English philosopher Michael Oakeshott describes conservatism as a particular disposition and way of thinking.  A disposition not idolising "what is past and gone" but one that values "the inheritance of the past" when evaluating what is yet to come. Oakeshott also makes the point, contrary to the argument that teaching about the past is always ex cathedra, that learning about one's cultural inheritance involves a conversation; a situation where one learns "to recognize the varieties of human utterance and to participate in the conversion they compose". 

The English cultural critic Roger Scruton makes a similar point, drawing on Edmund Burke's response to the French Revolution, that conservatism instead of being caught in the past involves a recognition and appreciation of the past, the present and the future.  The emphasis is on continuity as well as change. Scruton writes how society "is an association between the dead, the living and the unborn. It is a shared inheritance for the sake of which we learn to circumscribe our demands, to see our place in things as part of a continuous chain of giving and receiving". While neo-Marxist activists seek to cancel the past and deny Western civilisation's inheritance, Scruton writes "For the conservative, human beings come into this world burdened by obligations, and subject to institutions and traditions that contain within them a precious inheritance of wisdom". 

While there's no denying Western civilisation is guilty of a range of sins including slavery and imperialism, denying women the same rights as men and the worst excesses of capitalism, it's also true the West, more than any other civilisation, has championed justice, freedom and liberty. As argued by Arthur M Schlesinger Jr, "The crimes of the West have produced their own antidotes. They have provoked great movements to end slavery, to raise the status of women, to abolish torture, to combat racism, to defend freedom of inquiry and expression, to advance personal liberty and human rights". Schlesinger also makes the point that it's ironic those radicals committed to critical theory and its numerous offshoots, while denigrating and attacking Western civilisation, draw on European theorists including "Marx, Nietzsche, Gramsci, Derrida, Foucault, Lacan, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Habermas" and "analytical weapons forged in the West". 

As a result of what Schlesinger describes as "the internally redemptive potentialities of the Western tradition" citizens in Western liberal democracies like Australia, unlike those living in theocratic regimes such as Iran and communist states including North Korea and China, have an unparalleled degree of liberty and freedom.

An inheritance drawing on unique concepts such as the inherent dignity of the person, equality and freedom for all, popular sovereignty, free will and a commitment to social justice and the common good.  An inheritance that has evolved over thousands of years that must be nurtured, conserved and never taken for granted.

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