What Does It Mean To Be A "Conservative?"

Conservatives Treasure the Tried and True

In reflecting on conservatism, also referred to as classical liberalism, some historians have commented that the American Revolution is one of history’s only revolutions to actually succeed, while revolutions in France and later in Russia were catastrophic, resulting in murder and tyranny. Edmund Burke, who had championed revolutionary America’s cause in the British Parliament, understood the difference and in his most famous work, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), strongly opposed that revolution even before its murderous Reign of Terror began. The difference between the two revolutions for Burke goes to the heart of what it means to be a conservative.

Burke revered history as well as those institutions that have been tested through the crucible of time. For Burke, the American Revolution was fought not to impose a new order of untried ideas, but to secure rights that had evolved over centuries, from those individual rights provided by the Magna Carta in 1215 to the breaking of the absolute power of the monarchy accomplished through Great Britain’s “Glorious Revolution of 1688.”

Burke was not opposed to change, but he venerated natural change that evolved through time and human experience. The French Revolution, on the other hand, sought through bloodshed and legal decrees to suddenly impose new rights and a new social order that had never before been known in France. The results of radical change in France, like those imposed later by the Bolsheviks in Russia, were disastrous.

In our own country, the nineteenth century was filled with the classical liberalism that was championed and handed on by America’s founders. But in the twentieth century powerful movements in America and throughout the world rejected classical liberalism and began to assert the rights of the collective over those of the individual.

Communists set the collective at war with the rights of the individual; Nazis set the needs of race and nation against individual rights; and fascists and the architects of the welfare state set the material needs of society in conflict with the rights of individuals. Reversing the idea of our founders, they asserted the idea that individuals should serve the state, rather than the state existing at the pleasure of individuals to protect their rights.

It is no accident that those who would overturn the social order and radically change our nation today downplay the teaching of history, ignore giant historical figures, and even distort its lessons. We see references to the efforts of “dead, white men” in attempts to eliminate our religious roots, and to distort the story of America’s discovery and the role of our founding fathers.

By imposing on people ideas that were radical, untried, and alien to human experience, humanity experienced during the twentieth century a century of despotism, depression and war, with approximately 265 million people killed by their own governments. Many believe that the carnage exceeds all previous centuries combined. This barbarous history, so recently experienced, makes clear that Burke was a wise champion for older truths. Indeed, many of these older truths were from the Bible, the world’s greatest chronicle of individual salvation history. It is quite natural then that so many champions of today's conservative movement obtain their world view in transcendent Scriptural truths that have withstood repeated tests from generation to generation.

Perhaps no figure more embodied the spirit of Burke and conservative respect for the tried and true than South Carolina’s own “cast iron man,” John C. Calhoun. He spoke to his time and ours when he warned that “It is harder to preserve than to obtain liberty.”

What Does It Mean To Be A "Conservative?"

Freedom’s Deep Roots in the Hearts and Minds of Man

Irishman Edmund Burke, an 18th century contemporary of America’s founding fathers and an eloquent champion of their cause and ideals, is generally regarded as the philosophical founder of modern conservative thought. However, the roots for what we regard as American conservatism far predates the 18th century. In fact, one American writer on this subject traces its development through five historic cities – Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, London and Philadelphia.

In this long view of history, ideas about the nature and rights of man were molded in Jerusalem with the Old Testament view of a “purposeful moral existence under God.” These ideas were expanded in ancient Athens with the philosophy and insights of Plato, Socrates and Aristotle; they were nurtured in ancient Rome with the Empire’s adherence to universal law intertwined with the Christian understanding of man’s fallen nature and his hope for redemption, brought to Rome by the Apostle Paul. These ideas were then greatly advanced by the development of the parliamentary system in London and the concept of common law, which finally led to the miracle of Philadelphia.

In Philadelphia our founding fathers not only drafted the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution, but in doing so created a national government that balanced the conflicting demands of freedom and order and established a remarkably new and effective model for government. This model was a federalism with powers that were so carefully enumerated, separated and restrained, that it would be a true instrument of the people, protecting their rights and drawing its own legitimacy and powers only from the consent of the governed.

Prior to the miracle of Philadelphia, it was commonly believed that rights were granted by the sovereign. However, in the writings of the 17th century British philosopher John Locke, whose influence on Thomas Jefferson is so clearly seen in the Declaration of Independence, people have rights by virtue of having been created in God’s image. Believing that these God-given rights do not flow from governments, Philadelphia turned the world upside down by declaring that government has only those rights that the people choose to give it.

Locke wrote that legitimate governments are instituted for the purpose of protecting rights. The founders understood that for government to serve this noble purpose, people must be free to form governments and to dissolve them, and that the only legitimate purpose for any government is to protect the rights of the people, which America’s Bill of Rights proclaimed to be “inalienable.”

At the foundation of this “classical liberal” view of rights is the idea that one is free to pursue one’s own life, liberty and happiness as long as in doing so one does not violate the right of others to do the same. In this view, there is no obligation to ensure the best interest of others - nor is there a requirement to be selfish. Instead, each person is free to act in his own behalf, but always respecting the right of others to do the same.

The classical liberals and our founding fathers made no distinction between economic liberties and civil liberties. In fact, one can argue that the right to property and to wealth, both of which are economic liberties, is a necessary protection to such rights as the freedom to speak and to worship, both of which are civil liberties.

The respect for man’s full rights, both civil and economic, endured through the nineteenth century, making America both a beacon of freedom and an industrial powerhouse the likes of which had never before been seen on the face of the earth. Sadly that respect for God-given, inalienable, civil and economic rights would be attacked from within our own borders during the twentieth century.

(This is the second installment in a series of reflections on “What Does It Mean to Be A Conservative?”)