Conservatism of the traditional sort, without its American classical liberalism, is apt to become curdled in pessimism.
I’ve been thinking a good deal lately about the mood of conservatism — and how the Buckley-Meyer fusion of the pre-existing elements of specifically American conservatism provides an important balance.
Traditional conservatism of the sort described by Russell Kirk on the eve of the founding of National Review is, let us face it, pretty gloomy. It emphasizes the fallen nature of man and the intractability of human nature, which is permanent. It is skeptical of the concept of progress. Conservatives traditionally believe that fallible humans can be constrained only through the deep ruts that culture has cut over time into our habits, and not by any new ideas or innovations. Culture, unlike human nature, varies widely, and where it has set down roots, it is perilous and difficult to change. We are everywhere constrained, however, by stubborn reality, in which every choice has tradeoffs and every advance has costs.
Classical liberalism, by contrast — the founding creed of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Republican Party — is ebullient. It speaks to those things humans universally desire across cultures, at least for themselves. It emphasizes the nearly boundless potential of human creativity, innovation, and productivity. It promises that governing elites can deliver far more by getting out of the way than by trying to constrain the people. If conservatism teaches us that the wisdom of the present generation is insignificant compared with the much larger sample of those who have gone before us, classical liberalism emphasizes the superior wisdom of the many over the few in democracy and free markets. Classical liberalism values written law rather than unwritten convention precisely because the many are required to make or change it, and because it is explicitly known and knowable. Where conservatism emphasizes family and community, classical liberalism lionizes the individual.
When we think about it this way, it becomes all the clearer why the conservative persuasion and the classical liberal idea work better in tandem than either does alone. We are apt to say that this is so because they can be ideologically harmonized, because both are parts of the American patrimony, and because they are necessary components of any political coalition against progressivism and socialism. But it is also because they provide essential ballast to one another in terms of tone, temper, emotion, and mood. Conservatism of the traditional sort, without its American classical liberalism, is apt to become curdled in pessimism, to stifle human potential, and to blind itself to injustice. Classical liberalism, shorn of conservatism, is apt to overdose on enthusiasm, systematically underestimate the real-world obstacles to change, and veer into utopianism. Charles Sumner, the liberal’s liberal among the early Republicans, pronounced that “Nothing can be settled which is not right” — a noble aspiration, but a dangerous way of doing business if one simply fails to consider the costs of overturning too many applecarts simultaneously.
One cannot very well be a conservative as an American and be against classical liberalism, because what would one then seek to conserve of one’s own nation and culture? But the two persuasions need each other for reasons of temper, too.