Pragmatic Conservatism

Edmund Burke and His American Heirs

Robert J. Lacey

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781137592958
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Amerikanische Regierung

This book is a study of pragmatic conservatism, an underappreciated tradition in modern American political thought, whose origins can be located in the ideas of Edmund Burke. Beginning with an exegesis of Burke's thought, it goes on to show how three twentieth-century thinkers who are not generally recognized as conservatives—Walter Lippmann, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Peter Viereck—carried on the Burkean tradition and adapted it to American democracy. Pragmatic conservatives posit that people, sinful by nature, require guidance from traditions that embody enduring truths wrought by past experience. Yet they also welcome incremental reform driven by established elites, judiciously departing from precedent when necessary. Mindful that truth is never absolute, they eschew ideology and caution against both bold political enterprises and stubborn apologies for the status quo. The book concludes by contrasting this more nuanced brand of conservatism with the radical version that emerged in the wake of the post-war Buckley revolution.

© The Author(s) 2016

Robert J. LaceyPragmatic Conservatism10.1057/978-1-137-59295-8_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Robert J. Lacey¹

(1)

Iona College, New Rochelle, New York, USA

End Abstract

Interest in conservative political thought in the United States has increased dramatically in recent years, yet scholars have not come any closer to reaching a consensus on the subject. This should come as no surprise because the conservative tradition consists of many roots and branches, not all of them fully explored. Several critics have argued that the conservative movement today has betrayed its more mature and responsible ancestry by advocating radical change and ambitious enterprises in the name of supposedly ancient principles. ¹ According to this view, movement conservatives strive for reactionary ends by radical means, a return to a mythic past using a scorched earth policy. But these critics fail to provide a full understanding of this more mature and responsible conservative tradition. Other than locating it in the ideas of such luminaries as St. Augustine or Edmund Burke, they have very little to say about the philosophical ideas embodied in this tradition or the thinkers who have made vital contributions to its development.

This book is a study of a lost tradition in modern American political thought that demands recovery. I call it pragmatic conservatism. Its origins can be found in the political thought of Edmund Burke, the eighteenth-century British parliamentarian and man of letters who is widely considered the father of conservatism. While conservatives of many stripes claim to be descendants of Burke, only a select few can rightfully say that they are his legitimate heirs. This is particularly true in the United States, where conservatism has struck an especially radical tone. The false (or illegitimate) descendants of Burke base their lineage on flagrant misinterpretations of—or sheer ignorance about—his ideas. This book aims to set the record straight by presenting a comprehensive exegesis of Burke’s political thought and then showing how three twentieth-century American thinkers who are not generally recognized as conservatives—Walter Lippmann, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Peter Viereck—have carried on the Burkean tradition and adapted it to the modern age.

Based on their observations and reading of history, pragmatic conservatives believe in the sinful nature of human beings and, as a result, uphold time-honored and -tested traditions that have proven effective at restraining our darkest impulses. At the same time, they welcome incremental reform, departing from the way things have been done if the evidence suggests it is necessary. Mindful that no one can know anything for certain, pragmatic conservatives caution against making absolute truth claims, especially those on which either bold social plans are built or apologies for the status quo are made. Instead, they heed the provisional truths constructed by their forebears in response to concrete problems and then embodied in the form of tradition, but only so long as they also stand the test of contemporary experience. They rest their final hopes in political, intellectual, and cultural elites, who have the immense responsibility of making sure that this fragile edifice of wayward human beings, flexible traditions, and provisional truths does not collapse into a heap of chaos and relativism.

In the spirit of Edmund Burke, pragmatic conservatives seek a middle way between the extremes that we face in the modern world, a synthesis of seemingly irreconcilable opposites, including relativism and absolutism, individualism and collectivism, atomistic diversity and organic unity, freedom and order, revolution and the status quo, and rule of the many (democracy) and rule of the few (authoritarianism). Their conservatism is not an ideology or a creed but a philosophical temperament informed by a deep appreciation for the virtues of balance and proportion and a penchant for moderation, deliberation, and gradual change. In their search for a middle way in our dynamic age, pragmatic conservatives always prefer to rely on observed experiences and facts rather than abstract theories and assertions of absolute truth. They hope to devise practical solutions to modern problems by drawing on the available empirical evidence but without abandoning all principles in the name of expediency.

Knowing that politics is an inherently tragic arena, pragmatic conservatives acknowledge the difficult trade-offs involved whenever a decision must be made. What sounds great in theory may be disastrous in practice, and what produces satisfactory results on the whole may undermine those values that give life meaning. The final hope of pragmatic conservatives is to strike a delicate balance, a less than ideal compromise, in a world that defies perfect solutions. For this reason, they eschew simple formulas. The ideas commonly associated with conservatism today—small government, low taxes, absolute property rights, unabashed militarism, and so on—make little sense to them, for they know that these ideas often do not agree with the realities of our complex and ever-changing world.

Pragmatic Conservatism: A Burkean Inheritance

Pragmatic conservatism rests on several core ideas inherited from Edmund Burke. With varying degrees of emphasis, pragmatic conservatives share similar beliefs about human nature, tradition, change, truth, and elites. What follows is a more detailed discussion of these core ideas and how they come together to form a coherent and nuanced political philosophy.

According to pragmatic conservatives, human beings are sinful creatures by nature, prone to selfish and aggressive behavior if left to their own devices, and there is little hope that people can transcend their given nature, no matter how much effort societies devote to educating and rehabilitating them. “History consists, for the greater part, of the miseries brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the train of disorderly appetites,” said Burke, and these “vices” are “permanent.” ² So, rather than trying to transform people, societies must focus on curbing and channeling their more destructive tendencies.

The best way to counteract or restrain these impulses, say pragmatic conservatives, is to foster a reverence for tradition, which embodies the collective experience and wisdom of our ancestors. “Tradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving a vote to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead,” said G. K. Chesterton, the English writer who greatly admired Burke. “Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father.” ³ While it does not discount the opinions and experiences of the living, tradition demands special deference toward our ancestors, whose best practices have worked quite well for many generations, and thus have stood the test of time. One can think of tradition as a collective habit, ways of acting that become so engrained in people that they adhere to them automatically, ritualistically. Serving as a corrective to our natural instincts, this ritualized behavior promotes social stability and predictability.

Revering and obeying tradition does not mean that people should stop thinking altogether. Following custom is not the same as acting slavishly, and it is never advisable to view the past through rose-colored glasses. If a time-tested way of doing things ceases to fulfill its intended purpose and begins to produce undesired outcomes, we must be willing to modify tradition. By temperament, pragmatic conservatives are reformers who recognize the inevitability of change, which they are willing to instigate themselves when the evidence suggests it is necessary. They recognize that the preservation of those traditions that still serve us well—indeed, the preservation of society as a whole—requires flexibility, a willingness to evolve and reform. As Burke put it, “A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation. Without such means it might even risque the loss of that part of the constitution which it wished the most religiously to preserve.” ⁴ But pragmatic conservatives insist that we proceed cautiously and incrementally, minimizing the disruption to any other traditions, lest our impetuous attempts to make improvements undermine social stability. Forever mindful that the best intentions can still produce the worst outcomes, they welcome evolution, but never revolution.

We can never be sure of what might happen as a result of our reform efforts, according to pragmatic conservatives, because we can never see the truth clearly. They recognize the fallibility of human knowledge and reason and, as a result, consider all truth claims provisional. Absolute truth does exist independently of human experience, in their view, but it remains elusive and inaccessible to us, just beyond the grasp of our understanding. If we catch a glimpse of it, we do so indirectly through the prism of our concrete experiences. Thus it is wise to start from the premise of epistemological humility: we can never know anything for sure. But despite the doubt that hangs over us, we still have the capacity to arrive at tentative truths inductively. On the basis of empirical observations made in the past and present—“on the basis of sure experience”—we can make general truth claims. ⁵

Over time, we reify, or make concrete, those truth claims in the form of laws, traditions, and customs, which we must be prepared to modify as new and relevant information becomes available. It is important to stress that, for pragmatic conservatives, the pool of experiences from which we can draw is not limited to the present day. In fact, the experiences of our ancestors matter just as much as those of our contemporaries—perhaps more so because they managed to fashion time-tested truths out of what they endured. Truth, then, is not an immutable product of abstract reasoning or logic, nor is it the preserve of a venerable sage or a vocal multitude. It emerges from the lessons of the past, grows out of the patterns of history. From our ancestors, we inherit traditions and habits that, when reconciled with contemporary experiences, usually serve humanity well. Burke said: “The individual is foolish; the multitude, for the moment, is foolish, when they act without deliberation; but the species is wise, and when time is given to it, as a species, it almost always acts right.” ⁶ In other words, the acquisition of wisdom in this world requires an ongoing dialogue not only with each other but also with our ancestors.

Because it is based on the dynamic world of concrete experience, the epistemology of pragmatic conservatives appears to open the door to relativism and historicism. But, as it happens, they never question the existence of universal truths—truths that remain the same no matter the time or place. They merely insist that such truths cannot be easily deduced through the use of logic or reason and, instead, must be derived painstakingly from a wide range of observed and documented experiences. We arrive at the universal by searching for patterns in the particulars. According to Burke, “the laws of morality are the same every where” but can only be arrived at by examining the “substance” of empirical reality. ⁷

Despite their universalism, pragmatic conservatives understand that their epistemological modesty can easily degenerate into crass relativism (or nihilism), producing a crisis of authority in which it becomes increasingly difficult to discriminate between truth and falsehood, fact and fiction, right and wrong. For this reason, they champion elitism as a bulwark against the erosion of belief in truth. Indeed, they defend political, social, and intellectual hierarchies because they do not believe that everyone has an equal amount of knowledge and wisdom or that the average person can go through life without guidance from his betters. But it is crucial to note that their elitism stems neither from a desire to protect the privileges of the rich and powerful at the expense of the poor and downtrodden nor from a shallow contentment with the status quo. They believe that elites, who ideally are among the best and the brightest, have an obligation to serve as trustees of the people and to safeguard those traditions—or reified truths—on which social harmony depends. When accused of adhering to the desires of the nobility and the rich, Burke reminded his peers in Parliament that his defense of a natural aristocracy did not belie the fact that he would always take his “fate with the poor, and low, and feeble.” ⁸ Ultimately, elites must have a strong sense of noblesse oblige and harness their privilege and talents for the good of others.

Although pragmatic conservatives believe in serving their fellow human beings, their tragic view of the human condition tempers their ambitions. The law of unintended consequences makes them wary of any enterprise designed to improve people’s lives. When such an undertaking actually produces satisfactory results, pragmatic conservatives must still accept the fact that there are no panaceas to the many problems that humanity faces and that even the most Herculean efforts can never do more than mitigate the suffering that so many people must endure. That said, pragmatic conservatives never succumb to hopelessness. They refuse to shrink from their duty and use their tragic sensibility as an excuse to do nothing when action is needed. They know that doing nothing is just another form of action that can have its own unintended consequences.

Because there is no escaping the fact that we must act, the pragmatic conservative rejects the libertarian view that government should always err on the side of inaction and remain limited in size and scope. It has become conventional wisdom that the conservative prefers small government and only makes an exception to this rule in those matters related to national defense and military preparedness. But pragmatic conservatives consider it unwise to make any absolutist claims about the role and form of government because such assertions are based on abstract theories that may not agree with empirical reality. Burke said, “I reprobate no form of government merely upon abstract principles.” ⁹ As it happens, people construct governments in response to concrete problems which arise in a certain time and place. A political structure that did a fine job of solving problems in the nineteenth century may prove disastrous today. Understanding that context matters, pragmatic conservatives cannot embrace any theoretical blueprints detailing the structure and functions of government. In their view, the be...