Conservatism in Winter

Modern Age, Wntr, 2009 by R.V. Young

When the previous issue of Modern Age was being readied for the press, the elections of 2008 were yet to be decided. As I write this, we approach the presidential inauguration of a man who is arguably the most radical leftist ever to have held the office. The Winter 2009 issue of the journal might, therefore, be said to mark the onset of a "winter" for conservatism in American political affairs. Modern Age does not, of course, have a political program or a set of policy prescriptions to offer as an antidote to this situation; such is not our mission. It is worth observing, however, that the election of any Republican or any conservative hardly seemed feasible during the past presidential election, because the terms of political discourse and hence the popular imagination had been wholly captured by the rhetoric of leftist materialism. Hence the mission of Modern Age is to aid in recapturing the culture: to make it possible for the American people to see the world in terms of what Russell Kirk, following Edmund Burke, called the moral imagination, instead of mere sensation; to act according to sober reflection rather than willful reaction.

In the Republic, Plato famously stresses the importance of music--by which he means something like what we should call the fine arts--to a sound political order. It is for this reason that Modern Age lays so much stress on music and literature. Irving Louis Horowitz provides a remarkably insightful and groundbreaking consideration of the effects of high-quality audio recordings on the way we respond to music, and R. J. Stove's review of a new biography of Sibelius marks a step in the critical rehabilitation of a composer whose music can actually be enjoyed by ordinary listeners. In an era when political campaigns undertake to "rock the vote," it behooves conservatives to take serious account of the kind of music dominating public spaces as well as the iPods of our youth. Similarly, Thomas Bertonneau furnishes more evidence that compelling literature is almost inevitably conservative at its core. It is important that we argue this claim vigorously, since no one whose assessment depended on the popular film version of Out of Africa would have inferred that Karen Blixen's writings evoke an essentially conservative vision of reality, as Professor Bertonneau maintains.

Another sign of the ascendancy of leftist modes of thought in public discourse, both in North America and Europe, is the repression and distortion of the Christian heritage that is so crucial to Western civilization. Hence our symposium on Remi Brague's The Law of God could not be more timely. Comprising essays by Mark Shiff-man, Ivan Kenneally, Ralph Hancock, and Peter Augustine Lawler, this symposium investigates the various strategies, both learned and "waggish," by which Brague probes the flaws in the modern world's apparently massive structure of secularism. In a related but more particular case, John Ferns's review of a new edition of the Tudor Book of Homilies shows that adherence to the wisdom of its founding documents might have spared a noble ecclesiastical institution much of its current disarray and embarrassment.

This issue of Modern Age marks the publication of the final installment in Peter Hodgson's four-part series on the energy crisis. Conservatives must remain constantly aware that science and the rapid technological development that it has made possible are an inescapable feature of the modern world that we endeavor to understand from a conservative perspective. We hope that Professor Hodgson's arguments have provided a stimulus to continuing discussion of the grave issues he treats. Stephen Barr's review of Fowler and Kuebler's Evolution Controversy likewise calls our attention to an extremely important book involving the impact of science on public policy. Professor Barr's piece, like Professor Hodgson's, is likely to be provocative; but, taking into account once more the recent election, it would seem that we conservatives must above all spend some time debating issues of this kind and reconsidering our assumptions.

Ted McAllister's review-essay on a number of recent books on the history of conservatism as a political movement takes up precisely this topic of reassessment, as he seeks to determine how effectively the works he deals with give us a basis for comprehending our current political situation. Gerald Russello's review of a collection of conservative "conversion narratives" also considers the history of the conservative movement, but from the personal perspective of individuals. Both reviews suggest that, although conservatism has not succumbed to what used to be called an "identity crisis," we might do well to engage in an extended reflection upon the relationship between conservative ideas and practical politics, as well as the way a pattern of ideas may reasonably come to be regarded as authentically part of the conservative vision.

The remaining two reviews deal with books on a major figure of conservative history and on a fundamental conservative theme, thereby recalling us to the roots by which our view of the world must continue to be nourished. Ian Crowe focuses our attention on the publication of the second volume of a major biography of Edmund Burke, a work of substantial and magisterial scholarship. Kevin Gutzman reviews a troubling account of the fate of constitutionalism in the United States. Both these reviews and the books they handle recur to the inevitable tension between conservatism as a political vision and the always less-than-satisfactory result of actual political activity. This tension is visible in the anomalous relationship between Burke's political career and his career as a scholar, and in the susceptibility of the original American constitutional order, with all its wisdom and formal perfection, to subversion from within even in an era of ostensible "strict constructionism."