Why I Am a Conservative
By COLIN JUNG ‘24
It is a proud and shallow man who refuses the counsel of others, thinking himself to be wiser than the world. Likewise, it is a proud and shallow age which thinks itself too good for the wisdom of every other age before it. We live in such an age. Conservatives are simply those who regret that we do.
I write this piece because I do not believe that a serious intellectual defense of robust conservatism is often given. Too often, the “conservatism” that is represented by the media, educational institutions or even politicians in high office is merely a half-measure of liberalism, defined more by the ideals it is in opposition to than ideals that it supports.
I do not pretend that this piece is a comprehensive, logical proof of the conservative worldview, nor such a proof against the liberal one. I merely wish to point to the worldview that drove the men who built our civilization and all her luxuries, which we enjoy, and encourage the reader to reflect upon it.
A few disclaimers. The “conservatism” I outline is a “Burkean” or “Classical” conservatism, and the “liberalism” describes “classical” liberalism and its progeny. This means that those who consider themselves “conservatives” or especially “libertarians” will find themselves the subject of my criticism as much as those who consider themselves “liberals.”
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The late Queen Elizabeth II famously gave her first Christmas address to a television audience in 1957. In it, she mentioned, “the speed at which things are changing all around us.” But she did not lament this change at all. Instead, she said simply: “The trouble is caused by unthinking people who carelessly throw away ageless ideals as if they were old and outworn machinery, [who] would have religion thrown aside, morality in personal and public life made meaningless, honesty counted as foolishness and self-interest set up in place of self-restraint.”
Before I delve into conservatism, I must first address the dominant ideology in modern western society: liberalism. I aim to show that the principles of liberalism cause people to think in the unthinking manner that the great Queen described. I aim furthermore to show an alternative to this worldview, conservatism, and show why it is superior to liberalism.
I outline liberalism in the following manner. I will be unfazed by those critics who claim that I “misrepresent” liberalism, for the ideology I lay out governs the way many prominent individuals in the modern West think. If it soothes the reader’s sensibilities to call this ideology something other than “liberalism,” he may certainly do so.
Liberalism’s first principle is individualism, namely, the idea that the principal political unit is the individual. This is exemplified by the idea of the “social contract,” wherein “free,” “pre-political” individuals enter into society, and cede certain “rights” to society for the mutual benefit of all involved. Therefore, liberalism abhors the idea that an individual has responsibilities which he does not enter into freely. Our modern political discussion’s endless focus on rights, the “live and let live” attitude that pervades the West, especially the United States, is a result of individualism.
Liberalism’s second principle flows from its first. It is rationalism — the idea that unfettered reason is the best guide for political organization and the ascertainment of truth more generally. It is easy to see how this is derived from individualism — unlike other forms of decision-making (deference to tradition, organized religion, loyalty to nation and family etc.) a disconnected individual can indeed engage in pure reason alone. From Karl Marx’s calling for the “ruthless critique of everything that exists” to the 1960s hippie calling himself a “free thinker,” rationalism, too, has firmly entrenched itself into Western society.
The next principles are usually associated with “post-liberalisms” of one sort or another. I am sympathetic on a theoretical level to the idea that these ideas are not liberal ideas simpliciter. But being a conservative, I believe that ideas, like men, are responsible for their progeny and therefore believe these principles can justly be attributed to liberalism.
These are tolerance and relativism, the former being a softer (and less consistent) version of the latter. I define tolerance here, not as epistemic tolerance (i.e. tolerance of reasonable beliefs on the basis that the truth can often be uncertain), but the tolerance that some have for clearly incorrect ideas (e.g. that Holocaust Deniers have “free speech” rights). In other words, the “tolerance” that is unique to liberalism is the “tolerance” that says that “one has the ‘right’ to be/do wrong.”
Relativism takes tolerance to the next level. It is all too common to hear the self-contradictory phrase “your truth” or “my truth” uttered, especially by the modern cognoscenti. This is a symptom of late-stage relativism. After all, the relativist goes further than merely tolerating — he says that “one has the ‘right’ to be right,” even if one is, in fact, wrong. Of course, a relativist would never phrase it in that manner, as he believes there is no such thing as universal “right” or “wrong,” and that “right” or “wrong” depends upon the individual person.
I posit that ultimately, that these four values ultimately emerge from a view of human nature. Namely, liberalism’s anthropology is fundamentally optimistic about human nature. The liberal follows Rousseau when he says that “man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains.” Under this view, impositions made against the individual by communities are necessarily detrimental to his personality.
On the contrary, the conservative believes that man is born fundamentally unfree. Conservatism holds, as St. Thomas famously wrote, that “[sunt] duplices, in quibus natus sum[us], … tenebras, peccatum … et ignorantiam” (we are born into the twofold darkness of sin and ignorance). In other words, man, left to his own devices, is misguided both in what to do and what to think, and thus becomes a slave to his own ignorance and base desires. He must therefore be “educated” (literally “led out” in the Latin (of himself)) by society in order to be truly free. Freedom under the conservative view, further, is not merely the right to follow one’s whim. Rather, it is the right to do what is good for oneself. Governor Ron DeSantis recently put this view well when he remarked that “[one] do[esn’t] have the right to do wrong.”
The liberal and conservative views on drugs and education both show the differences between the liberal and Conservative anthropologies and between the two worldviews’ ideas of freedom.
While the liberal believes that unlimited access to drugs increases the individual’s “freedom,” as he is able to do whatever he would like, the Conservative would say that the use of drugs actually diminishes man’s freedom. After all, he who indulges in drugs becomes a slave to them. After all, the formation of a habit of drug use clouds a man’s judgment by perverting his sensibilities. Specifically, pleasure, which is meant to be a sign directing man to his good, is perverted when it directs, as in the drug user, the individual to his detriment. Likewise, pain, which is meant to be a sign directing man away from his detriment, is perverted when it directs, as in the drug user, the individual away from the healthy state of not using drugs. These perversions therefore make it more difficult for him to pursue what is truly good for him, making him unfree.
On parenting and education, a similar divide can be seen. Liberals believe “all ideas” should be let into the classroom, and that books ought not to be “banned,” so that the child may “find the truth” himself. Conservatives, on the contrary, are aware that children, without the guiding hand of educators, are full of misguided ideas and would more likely be led astray by attractive but foolish ideas than be led to the truth. Indeed, all good educators know this intuitively — few would say that the best way for a child to learn mathematics, for instance, is to “figure it out himself,” but rather, to be guided by someone more learned in the field. Conservatives, understanding this, are rightly careful about which ideas are exposed to childrens’ impressionable minds so that not only their intellectual understanding of the truth, but also their sensibilities — such as of justice, disgust and beauty are not perverted (i.e. that they are indignant at injustice, are disgusted by the disgusting and take pleasure in the beautiful.) Liberals likewise often exhort parents not to discipline their children with harshness, on the argument that it prevents him from freely developing into “himself.” On the contrary, the conservative believes that life is like swimming — the man who, by difficult discipline, is trained from an early age, can move freely about the water, while the man who swims “his own way” appears to be free, but in actuality is only free to drown.
This anthropology leads to a humble worldview, in which the individual does not presume to know all there is to know regarding truth and goodness, nor does it presumptuously declare that there is nothing to know. Rather, the conservative worldview defers to society, culture and tradition.
At the same, conservatism, unlike liberalism, is a worldview based not principally upon experience nor ideas (it is no wonder indeed, therefore, that it appeals less to those who think themselves men of ideas). Because of this, conservatism’s principal values are prudence and moderation. Conservatism holds few abstract principles deontologically inviolable, understanding that “There are more things in Heaven and Earth… than are dreamt of in [our] philosoph[ies].”
In contrast to individualism, Conservatism holds, as Aristotle did, that “man is a political animal.” It holds that “pre-political man” is a contradiction, as man is born into countless political societies, from his family to his city to his nation. Conservatism, along with every serious anthropologist in the modern day, wholeheartedly rejects the ahistorical notion of a “social contract,” instead believing that there was never a time when human beings did not live in communities.
For the skeptical, experience, too, confirms that we are not primarily individuals, but members of communities. Simply imagine one was asked “Who are you?” Most everyone would respond by naming their relationships to other persons — “I am my parents’ son or daughter, sibling’s brother or sister, my friend’s friend” — or their membership in a community — “I’m a student at Phillips Exeter Academy, I’m from this locale, or this nation.”
Liberals often downplay this, responding that the “social contract” is not meant to represent an actual event in which actual, “pre-political” people ceded their “pre-political” “rights” to form a society. But if this event did not actually happen, then it makes no sense to think of man primarily as an individual. It makes no sense for example, as liberalism does, to presume that communities have no right to impose standards upon individuals. On the contrary, because persons are principally members of society, and secondarily individuals, a person ought to conform his individuality around the norms of the society as opposed to demanding that societies conform themselves to his caprices. Further, the virtues of loyalty to country, family and community, far from being indefensible or arbitrary (as it is under the liberal worldview), are self-evident to the Conservative. A man who betrays his community, after all, betrays something more fundamental than himself.
But the fundamentally social nature of man only empirically confirms the conservative principle that man ought to submit himself to society. Indeed, the conservative anthropology cannot cohere with the principle of individualism. After all, if the individual is naturally misguided without education and correction by society, it would be nothing short of foolish to put society at the mercy of his whim.
The critic may respond that because society, traditions and culture too, are constructed by individuals, they ought be considered as untrustworthy as the individual himself, even under the conservative worldview. Although I would resist this characterization — societies build men more than vice versa, even under this framing, the argument is invalid. Culture and traditions are the sum of the beliefs of millions of individuals across the ages. This means that culture and tradition represent the points of overlap shared by countless disparate individuals. Two things make it less likely that tradition will aggregate virtues than vices. First, individuals tend to have a sense of shame for their vices, and therefore are unlikely to show them publicly. Second, because vices are infinitely more diverse than virtues (the honest observer will see what Tolstoy saw when he said that “happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”), the principles which aggregate into tradition are more likely to be virtuous than vicious.
The Conservative response to rationalism is similar. Just as the shadow of sin makes the individual an unreliable judge of goodness, the shadow of ignorance makes the individual an unreliable judge of truth.
Because few liberals today (save for some naive Marxists) continue to hold to rationalism, I will not beat a dead horse. History, after all, has already beaten the dead horse of rationalism. From France to Russia, China to Cuba, bloody graves testify that in every instance in which hubristic men dared to follow liberalism’s dictate to “solve” the problem of politics by unfettered reason, society collapses and the vulnerable suffer.
Rationalism failed precisely according to the warnings of Conservatives in every age. The human intellect is flawed, far too flawed to account for everything that could go wrong. It is best, therefore, not to entrust such an important and complex thing as government or economy to that flawed intellect, but rather to follow traditions that have been tested and perfected by time.
I will address tolerance and relativism together. In contrast to these twin principles, Conservatism asserts that “error non ius habet” (error has no right). I will first explain what this does not mean. That error has no right does not mean that no disagreement or discourse is to be tolerated. Nor does it mean that the viewpoint of whoever is in charge is imposed upon everyone. What it does mean is that those viewpoints which are clearly incorrect need not be tolerated. Nazis need not be given free speech rights. At the same time, it means that the debate over “free speech” must be substantive and not merely procedural. It is not enough to assert that one has an opinion and therefore the right to voice that opinion. Under a conservative worldview, a viewpoint must be tolerated if and only if it contributes to the common goods that come from the determination of truth.
Critics may accuse a few things to this point. First, some may say that this principle is contrary to the conservative value of epistemic humility. On the contrary, suppose there was a difficult math problem which has baffled generations of mathematicians. While the rationalist attempts to piece together a solution himself, and the relativist declares there can be no solution because he could not find it himself, the conservative understands that although the answer to the problem exists, it cannot be ascertained fully by the individual’s capacity to reason, and thus attempts to piece together a partial solution considering the input of the generations of thinkers before them. I admit the analogy is incomplete, but it shows that relativism is, contrary to appearances, far from true humility and that the conservative worldview is much closer. Secondly, critics may repeat the tired cliché that “if you restrict harmful and deleterious speech, the ‘other side’ may restrict good speech, so we ought not restrict speech at all!” This argument is as foolhardy as the anarchist who says “if you arrest criminals, then the ‘other side’ might arrest non-criminals, so we ought arrest no one at all!” In other contexts, we are perfectly able to make substantive distinctions in normative policy making. That is, the conservative’s entire argument is that reasonable people can sensibly reason about the good, and therefore, reasonable governments may sensibly refer to the good in a policymaking context. For those still unconvinced, the argument is at best obsolete. It is clear that the modern left has no principled objection to the restriction of opposing speech in the status quo, so the threat is moot.
In summation, the conservative worldview is based upon humility and deference. It understands that the individual’s conscience and reason are dulled by concupiscence and ignorance, and are therefore untrustworthy guides to the flourishing of society. On the contrary, the conservative seeks to conform himself to the wisdom of the ages and to his community, which are more likely to be true guides to flourishing. In this proud age, where it is popular to mention the present year in order to dismiss supposedly antiquated views, conservatism calls us to raise our eyes and seek the eternal truths, which do neither fade nor falter.
