Spring Break
GW's Conservative Mind
Right wing intellectual diversity has a place on campus
Patrick Ford
Issue date: 3/4/09 Section: Opinion
Conservative political theorist and literary critic Russell Kirk, writing the introduction to his 1953 classic "The Conservative Mind," described the state of conservatism then as follows: "By and large, radical thinkers have won the day. For a century and a half, conservatives have yielded ground in a manner which, except for occasionally successful rear-guard actions, must be described as a rout." Kirk's work, described by conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr. as the primary source of modern conservatism, without which "a dominant conservative movement in America" was inconceivable, tied conservatism to the work of Edmund Burke in Europe and John Adams in the United States. Kirk valued "voluntary community" over "involuntary collectivism," and cited "the need for prudent restraints upon power and upon human passions" as central to a conservative government. Kirk, who privately suggested that George Bush Sr. be hanged on the front lawn of the White House for America's first oil war would feel quite out of place in the new (read: neo) conservative movement.
Conservatism has become so distorted that its intellectual fathers would no longer recognize it. Conservatives that claim to adhere to the US Constitution have little to say about the numerous undeclared wars undertaken since World War II. Conservatives that claim to respect our ancestral statesmen bow to globalism and ignore George Washington's advice to stay out of "the insidious wiles of foreign influence." Conservatives that believe American world hegemony is essential for world stability--or those that even believe that world stability should be an aim of the American Republic--ignore the words of John Quincy Adams warning America against going "abroad, in search of monsters to destroy." Abraham Lincoln described conservatism as "adherence to the old and tried against the new and untried," but those words ring hollow against neoconservatism's gross expansion of government and its complacency in corporate America's destruction of small-town America.
Conservatism has become so distorted that its intellectual fathers would no longer recognize it. Conservatives that claim to adhere to the US Constitution have little to say about the numerous undeclared wars undertaken since World War II. Conservatives that claim to respect our ancestral statesmen bow to globalism and ignore George Washington's advice to stay out of "the insidious wiles of foreign influence." Conservatives that believe American world hegemony is essential for world stability--or those that even believe that world stability should be an aim of the American Republic--ignore the words of John Quincy Adams warning America against going "abroad, in search of monsters to destroy." Abraham Lincoln described conservatism as "adherence to the old and tried against the new and untried," but those words ring hollow against neoconservatism's gross expansion of government and its complacency in corporate America's destruction of small-town America.
Be the first to comment on this story