Toward a definition of conservatism

National Review, August 17, 1992 by William F. Buckley, Jr.

The difficulty in defining "conservatism" derives primarily from its frequent use as the defense either of the status quo or of the status quo ante. Thus "conservatives" in the Kremlin meant those who wished to return to Stalinist practices. Moreover, in parts of the world (e.g., Latin America), the word had no ideological overtones. It was in the United States that conservatism crystallized with a meaning that pretty well overtook competing meanings. What caused this transformation was the heavy emphasis of libertarianism, instantly distinguishing conservatism from its association with the nineteenth-century social and economic standpattism of the British.

The conservatives in the United States began to rally during the New Deal years (1933-45). Their reaction was against the centralizing tendencies of what in America came to be known as "liberalism." Up until about the time of the First World War, liberalism was generally used to designate the doctrine that expanded individual liberty; and liberty was generally understood to describe protections from the legendary oppressor of the individual. Thus Woodrow Wilson's famous, "the history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it." The tendency of New Deal liberals was to think of problems in the macrocosmic mode, fit subjects for government reform. Thus, in comprehensive ways, "liberal" government undertook to mobilize the state to combat virtually all social problems including unemployment, agricultural distress, a shortage of electricity, and illiteracy.

Conservatism sought to abide by what is widely known as the rule of "subsidiarity." It asserts that a social problem that can be handled by the private sector should not be taken over by the public sector; and that a problem that can be handled by a lesser unit of the public sector must not be given to a more central unit. Thus, e.g., the care of children of working mothers should be a private responsibility, to be handled where possible by churches or other private associations; only if this is not possible should the responsibility be taken by the township; and only if this is not possible, by the state. Last of all, by the Federal Government.

The vision of conservatism is non-eschatological. Unlike, e.g., socialism or Marxism, it has never conceived of redemptive ends implicit in its conventions. Most conservatives are men and women who have a religious faith, and they reserve their vision of ultimates for extraterrestrial phenomena. It is for that reason that conservatism has been marked mostly by negative importunities against human inclinations, as is the case with the Decalogue, and with the Constitution, both of which emphasize that which ought not to be done.

The conservative believes that the threat is endemic and historically insistent, of the omnipotent state. And that as a state acquires power, so the individual loses it. For that reason it is presumptively against state action, but always allowing for the rebuttability of presumption, which is a logical rule. Conservatism believes also that in free circumstances, the social sector will mobilize to satisfy felt economic needs. During the twentieth century, conservatism addressed its Achilles' heel, unemployment, with special emphasis, developing knowledge and insights that dispelled any probability of unemployment on the scale during the 1930s. Conservatism was especially alert during the years of the cold war to urge that the protection of national sovereignty, and within it of individual liberty, justified enormous corporate sacrifices, and justified also a nuclear deterrent.

The philosophical postulates of conservatism have to do with human equality narrowly defined. The doctrine acknowledges that all men are brothers, and that for this reason the law must not distinguish in its treatment of any human being: especially, conservatism sought to sever any malformed ties between it and slavery and slavery's residue under Jim Crow. But the doctrine held that within the bounds of equal protection under the law, conservatism was obliged to respect vast differences in individual abilities, and resist any temptation at Procrusteanization via, e.g., affirmative action that gave special consideration to special minorities, or confiscatory taxation that sought to level for the sake of leveling. The metaphysics of conservatism were always a source of contention among conservative theorists, some of them inclining toward Edmund Burke in insisting that metaphysics was extra-political and something of a danger to sensible, empirical thought. Conservatism does not attempt to solve problems it can't solve. It is only to this extent that conservatism can be said to be metaphysical. It presupposes limitations in human nature readily understandable to Christians who believe in original sin, otherwise deducible by non-Christian conservatives who study the history of mankind. They know that the propensity to self-indulgence must be denied. And correspondingly, the state must be denied not such powers as are necessary for authoritative action, but such powers as encourage authoritarian action. Believing, then, that most problems derive from a deficiency in human nature, conservatism comes to terms, or seeks to do so, with the limitations of politics: problems are seldom "solved," they can only be ameliorated. Someone somewhere expressed this rule with the apothegm, "You cannot eliminate Skid Row."