Conservatism Reappraised
POSSONY, STEFAN T.
Conservatism Reappraised The Conservative Mind. By Russell Kirk. Regnery. 458 pp. $6.50. Reviewed by Stefan T. Possony Author, "A Century of Conflict"; Professor of International Relations,...
...Yet, I am not sure that Mr...
...Following the orthodox interpretation, Mr...
...Yet, he ignores Burke's interpretation of the Revolution of 1688...
...While not disagreeing with this interpretation, Mr...
...Can we regenerate ourselves without changes and innovations...
...But Adams was one of the greatest innovators in our political history...
...Kirk places his emphasis on some of the more ephemeral aspects of conservatism...
...Edmund Burke formulated the basic conservative principle in these words: "It is far from impossible to reconcile...
...the use both of a fixed rule and an occasional deviation...
...Yet, Mr...
...sacredness of an hereditary principle of succession in our government with a power of change in its application in cases of extreme emergency...
...Yet, traditions are neither always ancient nor always wise...
...He does not mention Walter Lippmann's The Good Society...
...Even in that extremity . . . the change is to be confined to the peccant part only, to the part which produced the necessary deviation, and even then it is to be effected without a decomposition of the whole civil and political mass...
...It is a system of thought concerned with the crucial questions of responsible political action: Under what conditions is change necessary or unnecessary...
...Hence, he fails to discuss some excellent writings of John Stuart Mill...
...while Ludwig von Mises, the "inheritor of Ricardo and Cobden, cannot accurately be described as a conservative...
...Kirk has contributed to a better understanding of conservatism...
...Condillac and Bentham are misinterpreted at least in part...
...Kirk extols the wisdom of ancient tradition...
...Doubts are cast on Hamilton's conservatism, but Henry and Brooks Adams's credentials are accepted...
...Realizing that the American Revolution does not quite fit into his pattern of conservatism, the author consoles himself by asserting that Edmund Burke fought George III because the latter was an "innovator...
...He also ignores Burke's point that the French Revolution was unnecessary, since the French rebelled "against a mild and lawful monarch with more fury, outrage and insult than ever any people has been known to rise against the most illegal usurper, or the most sanguinary tyrant...
...Reverence for the wisdom of our ancestors" cannot be "the first principle of all consistent conservative thought," but merely a presumption which should be tested in each case...
...My criticism starts with the author's semantics...
...Kirk ill at ease when he discusses slavery...
...And the significance and inner necessity of the gradual merger between conservatism and liberalism (old-style), and, more specifically, the relationship between a conservative state and a market economy, escapes the author completely...
...My second point of dissent is that the author does not always correctly interpret the writings of those whom conservative thinkers have criticized...
...The volume contains some illuminating passages and original documentary materials...
...A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation...
...In my view, conservatism is trine of change, not the glorification of the status quo...
...Kirk sings the praise of John Adams...
...Kirk's lack of a firm basis of evaluation...
...He is at times so uncritical a partisan of what he conceives to be the conservative mind that he seems almost to believe that a stupidity uttered by a true or pretended conservative ceases to be a stupidity...
...In the same breath, however, he says that "no satisfactory answer was possible" to the problem of slavery in the United States, casts a few implied aspersions on the opponents of slavery, and is quite evidently at a loss to understand how he can call himself a conservative and yet condone the outright abolition of an ancient institution...
...Kirk himself advocates "regeneration" and "restoration" in the United States...
...their blow was aimed at a hand holding out graces, favors and immunities...
...The method of conservative policy is to reach a truly humane society by means of slow transformations which preserve good and workable institutions and aim at applying necessary reforms while avoiding social and political upsets...
...The chapter on John Adams is excellent...
...How should changes be effected...
...The conservative believes that tampering with viable traditions usually has disastrous political and social consequences...
...Moreover, Wilhelm Roepke, who describes himself as a neo-liberal, is by implication made into a conservative...
...The conservative objection to radicalism is not that, since change is not necessarily reform, shunning all change is therefore the most sagacious solution to political problems...
...How far should they go...
...What changes should be avoided...
...This same fear of innovation makes Mr...
...The objective of conservatism is a civitas humana...
...Kirk has written an interesting and stimulating book which teaches us much about one of the most important and most neglected strands of Western political thinking...
...As a reader who is convinced of the immeasurable superiority of Burke over Robespierre and of Tocqueville over Marx, I feel that Mr...
...Then, too, if "innovation" necessarily leads to disaster, conservatives should be hesitant to advocate a change of regime in Russia...
...It also accounts for a most serious omission: the disregard shown for the work and historic role of Robert Peel...
...This lack of comprehension is probably at the bottom of some of the book's confusion...
...I do not know much about John Randolph of Roanoke, but, taking Mr...
...Kirk abhors...
...He often overlooks materials which are in the best tradition of sound conservatism simply because the writers may be commonly classified as "liberals...
...Their revolt was from protection...
...Honesty and a felicitous style are among the book's outstanding virtues...
...Prejudice may sometimes provide a guide to action until a sound judgment has been formulated, but it can hardly serve as a permanently useful criterion...
...The author cannot extricate himself from these perplexities because he does not distinguish between the objectives and ideals of conservatism and the techniques of conservative policy...
...Walter Bagehot, a foremost conservative thinker, receives scant and misleading attention...
...Kirk's analysis at face value, he strikes me as a narrow-minded and quixotic reactionary rather than a conservative??hardly a man to be put in the same class with Burke, Lecky, Newman, Santayana and Disraeli...
...Though it has its limitations, reason is still the oldest and best tried of human institutions...
...He admits that "human slavery is bad ground for conservatives to make a stand upon...
...Moreover, it is one of the most ancient and venerable prejudices of the human species that the employment of reason conforms more closely to the moral obligation of man than what Burke called "the delusive plausibilities of moral politicians...
...Professor of International Relations, Georgetown University There are few things as badly needed today as a reasoned analysis of conservative thought...
...Hence his somewhat misleading emphasis on the importance of prejudice...
...The conservative argument is a rational criticism of the irrational fallacies of radicalism...
...The praise of non-reason should be left to the romanticist and the revolutionary...
...The misreading of Marx??whom, incidentally, he considers to be an idealist malgre lui and prefers to Bentham??is even more basic...
...My third criticism is directed against Mr...
...But if the "wisdom of our ancestors" were accepted uncritically as a safe guide to action, every Frenchman would have to give unreserved approval to the French Revolution, whose theories and practices Mr...
Vol. 37 • January 1954 • No. 4
