A New Traditional Conservative Resurgence is Needed

I have wanted to start a blog like this for a few years, but I haven’t really had a chance or the motivation to do so until lately. After mulling it over, I thought it was only appropriate to do so as there has been a real conversation about the future of the conservative movement within the national Republican Party.

The polarization of politics in the United States has created a trend in the major parties to demand ideological purity, despite the fact that much of what we see from some in the media who are self-proclaimed “conservatives” can sometimes be less than conservative. There are a couple of reasons for this.

101 Flavors of Conservatism

Unfortunately what constitutes “conservatism” in the United States can span through many varieties, including fiscal conservatism, Christian conservatism, neoconservatism, and so forth. Worse yet, many today mistakenly conflate conservatism with libertarianism. Although in many ways these different flavors of conservatism share some philosophical similarities, and sometimes reflect mere emphases in certain areas of conservatism, they sometimes are rather contradictory. For example, a fiscal conservative often finds themselves at odds with neoconservatives when it comes to funding of the military.

Yet one of the oldest strains of conservatism in the United States is the one strain that is far less ideological and presents a better intellectual mechanism for working through a variety of policy issues: traditional conservatism.

What is Traditional Conservatism?

Perhaps the greatest advocate for traditional conservatism in the United States was Russell Kirk. He also happens to be the namesake of this blog. Over a number of decades, starting with his college thesis turned book, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Santayana, Kirk identified a number of principles of conservatism. I won’t reproduce them all here, but I will instead encourage you to read a summary of them from The Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal.

Kirk was heavily influenced by traditional conservative thinkers in Europe such as Edmund Burke. Burke strongly believed the slow and deliberate journey of human wisdom over the centuries and millennia were not shackles to be cast aside, but rather the foundation on which public policy must be built. The traditions and institutions that have been built over time were viewed by Burke as vastly superior to radical innovations and sweeping changes. That is not to say that Burke would not support any change – only that changes must be weighed carefully against the wisdom of the human experience and must be carried out only after careful deliberation about the long-term consequences of the proposed change.

A Resurgence

I can’t pretend that this blog is somehow the start of a renewal of traditional conservative thought in the United States. Far from it. This is merely a place for me to share some of my own thoughts on how traditional conservative approaches to current issues would contribute to a debate of the issues. If, however, by sharing those thoughts here I can encourage others to begin rethinking their own definition of conservatism and to revisit the concept of traditional conservatism when weighing policy questions facing our country, then perhaps that is a ripple that can have a profound impact over time.

Moreover, this blog is not merely here to reach out to fellow conservatives. I have found that many people self-identify as liberal have a skewed sense of what it means to be a conservative. Perhaps they’re not as liberal as they thought, but don’t believe that conservatism fits their own world view. If I can help such a person find their way toward developing a better understanding of traditional conservatism and set aside the mistaken assumptions usually bandied about in the media, in some ways that is a far more admirable result than simply shuffling fellow conservatives around to a new variety of conservatism.