America’s Exceptional Conservatism

In Conservatism: A Rediscovery, Yoram Hazony has done important forensic work on the origins of “national conservatism.” He fully deserves a place in the ongoing debate on the future of conservatism, which this book and his other works have helped stimulate. Unfortunately, however, the book suffers from unnecessary self-inflicted wounds: overgeneralizations from inadequate or ambiguous data; oversimplifications of complex, vexing philosophical issues; a hectoring tone; and obsessing over heretical conservatives rather than our philosophical adversaries. We are told on the eighth page of the introduction that we need to “repent.” I almost stopped reading right there. 

Hazony ambitiously explores conservative thought at three different levels: abstract philosophy; the operational intersection of philosophy and policy; and in specific historical contexts. The merits and demerits of his approach are apparent at all three levels. As Whittaker Chambers said of Ayn Rand’s writings, Hazony deals “wholly in the blackest blacks and the whitest whites.”

Fundamental to Hazony’s macro-theory — and it is theory, not previously buried but now rediscovered stone tablets — is his characterization of the distinction between empiricism and rationalism: The former is good and conservative, while the latter is bad and liberal. There are obvious analytical differences between empirical and rationalist approaches to society; conservatives generally incline toward empiricism, believing as at least a rebuttable presumption that historical knowledge teaches us more than bare reasoning does, and that prudence counsels reliance on experience rather than abstractions. To say conclusively, however, that rationalism leads inexorably to unacceptable outcomes, and therefore has no place in our heritage, as Hazony does, is both wrongheaded and itself a great leap into abstraction. It hardly takes account of distinct circumstances, a focus so fundamental to seminal conservative thinkers such as Edmund Burke. 

In important respects, empiricism and rationalism are less philosophies of substance than conceptual methodologies. They are ways of approaching a problem rather than determinative factors in finding the solution. There is no inherent reason why an empiricist can’t reach socialist conclusions or why a rationalist can’t embrace American conservatism. In addressing discrete issues, particular problems in particular circumstances, one approach may be more useful than the other; facing a different problem in different circumstances, the reverse may be true. Arguing that one of these philosophical tools is inferior, let alone detrimental to Western civilization, is like arguing over the superiority of forks versus spoons.

Moreover, mere mortals are regularly both empiricist and rationalist, sometimes simultaneously. Trying to force what Immanuel Kant called “the crooked timber of mankind” into one abstruse philosophical pigeonhole will surely fail. More importantly, key Western philosophers themselves don’t fit Hazony’s mold. Take John Locke, whom he singles out for a hundred lashes, one of empiricism’s founders (see his Essay concerning Human Understanding) but merely another fallen rationalist in the Second Treatise of Government. Both were published in the same year, 1689. Surely, if John Locke can’t keep things straight for even twelve months, according to Hazony’s lights, perhaps lesser souls can be forgiven for indulging in the guilty pleasure of abstractly reasoning our way through problems, at least as thought experiments. 

Hazony’s assessments of Locke’s analysis in the Second Treatise themselves impair our understanding of liberty’s proper place in American conservative thought, a place Hazony consistently de-emphasizes. Locke’s two Treatises argued against the monarchical absolutism of Robert Filmer and Thomas Hobbes, whom Hazony rightly excludes from the conservative tradition. However, instead of embracing Locke’s critical analysis of individual autonomy (versus state authority) and private property, two essential components of American conservative thought, Hazony concludes that “Locke’s theory . . . pronounces . . . the end of Anglo-American conservatism.” This is unfair, overwrought, and unfortunately typical of Hazony’s rhetoric.

Ironically, Hazony stresses that his logic’s key elements have worldwide applicability. He writes at length about humans being born into families, clans, tribes, and nations, all standing in a hierarchical relationship. This notion has explanatory value in many contexts, but it is hardly accurate for America. Clans? Hazony says these are today often called “communities” or “congregations,” but I’d like to know by whom. Tribes? I’m Scottish by ancestry, but I have no kilts in my wardrobe. Hazony’s persistence in universalizing his conclusions without evidence frequently leads him astray. If he had kept his focus more narrow and more particular, his analysis would have been more powerful. And more conservative.

When Hazony turns to what he calls “Anglo-American conservatism,” he engages in a second Manichaean, rigidly taxonomic exercise, separating conservatism (based on empiricism) from “Enlightenment liberalism” (based on rationalism). Burkean sensibilities, by contrast, appreciate that philosophies can maintain their intellectual rigor while nonetheless confronting and surmounting the exigencies of their day. Philosophical priorities can and will change because circumstances change, only to reappear in times more needful of them. Analogously, Harold Macmillan once answered a reporter’s question on the greatest challenge of being prime minister by saying, “Events, dear boy, events.” 

U.S. conservatism, while it has obvious historical roots elsewhere, especially in Britain, nonetheless embodies our uniqueness. Alexis de Tocqueville, in a Burkean insight, first observed that “the position of the Americans” is “quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one.” It comes as no surprise that conservatism here appropriately responded to our special circumstances. 

No one overseas better understood the American colonists, or what drove them away from the U.K., than Burke. He sought to reconcile their interests with continued political connection to Britain, contrary to George III’s flailing efforts to force the issue of monarchical sovereignty in the abstract. Burke saw that “a fierce spirit of liberty ha[d] grown up” across the ocean, and asked, “If that sovereignty and their freedom cannot be reconciled, which will they take?” He concluded, “They will cast your sovereignty in your face. Nobody will be argued into slavery.” And that is precisely what we did, thus marking the blossoming of American exceptionalism.

Hazony offers five summary principles underlying his conservatism: historical empiricism, nationalism, religion, limited executive power, and individual freedom. Much of what he says regarding these points is legitimate and valuable, but much of it reflects a “pound to fit” approach to history that distorts more than it illuminates. He should have honored Burke’s aspiration: “Please God, I will walk with caution, whenever I am not able clearly to see my way before me.” 

Take historical empiricism. The Constitution’s framers were painfully aware of the enormous difficulties republics faced, starting with Rome, and their often short life spans. Moreover, the Framers’ country had emerged from war with vast territories, by their standards essentially unpopulated, and the palpable prospect of expanding across the entire continent. They gleaned from history every possible empirical lesson, but they understood they were writing a constitution for a potential “empire of liberty,” in Jefferson’s phrase. They had no choice but to extrapolate in a vacuum, well beyond the bounds of their limited knowledge, reasoning from first principles to sustain the unprecedented American experiment. They were seeking not merely “to maintain the integrity of the inherited national edifice as a whole” (Hazony’s phrase), of which they chose only the elements they found suitable, but also to create a framework for something never before contemplated. Turns out their rationalism did not fare badly.

Next, take nationalism. Hazony’s definition of a “nation” suits European ideas of nation-states where citizens with common heritages formed governments, a definition that ironically channels Woodrow Wilson’s notion of self-determination in the Fourteen Points. But this was not U.S. history. Hazony’s notion does not take account of the impacts of waves of migration pouring into the country, or of the seemingly endless frontier (until it closed in 1890), or America’s unique “melting pot.” Europe never saw the like, and Hazony simply does not confront these critical historical distinctions. These factors are basic to America’s exceptionalism, the undirected, unstructured transformation of foreigners into Americans, a process filled, to be sure, with injustices, gaps, and imperfections, but remarkable nonetheless. This was largely a creedal phenomenon, Hazony’s disdain for creedalism notwithstanding, as immigrants sought America as the land of opportunity and acted on their beliefs. One immigrant told his family, “We were born Americans, but in the wrong place.”

I could go on.

Most troubling, however, is Hazony’s analysis of recent American conservatism. He assaults William F. Buckley Jr. and this very magazine for “fusionism.” Who knew that, by aligning with “liberals” such as Frank Meyer to defeat communism and socialism, Buckley laid the groundwork for the Left’s current cultural dominance in America? 

“Fusionism” was practical politics, neither rationalist abstraction nor a retreat from Buckley’s conservative principles. It combined the three then-major strands of conservatism (cultural, economic, and national-security) against common adversaries, a notable divergence from Hazony’s propensity, à la Lenin, to attack those with philosophies closest to his own. What Hazony cannot abide is the blunt reality that American conservatism has, beyond living memory, been more “liberal” in the 19th-century sense, in the Isaiah Berlin “negative liberty” sense, than has European conservatism. Our history and our philosophy are complex and deeply rooted in historical experiences. Hazony may be distressed he can’t pound enough to fit us onto his Procrustean bed, but his failure confirms that our conservatism is truly nationalist, very Americanly so.

Welcome to real national distinctions, real America, and real American conservatism, celebrating liberty and tradition simultaneously, which, given our conservatism, isn’t going to change. Buckley once edited a collection of essays called “Did You Ever See a Dream Walking? American Conservative Thought in the Twentieth Century.” Love it or leave it.