Can we send a copy of your diaries to the RNC?

Not that this isn’t a good diary overall, but I know you could have done it better.

My issue is the angle that you took with the policy part. What I expected was linkage to Founders thoughts, or Constitutional concepts. Where I think you needed more detail you went vague.

Why?

Is it just me, or did the main body of my diary disappear?

Are you seeing anything past ‘Argue all you want in the comments, that’s what we do here, my friends.’? Should be about 8 paragraphs that are now invisible, though they show up in edit.

Oh well, I’m trying to figure out what went wrng here….

All of the Founders were heavily influenced by Classical Liberalism. Citations to Locke’s writings were exceeded only by citations to the Bible.

However, someone like a Thomas Jefferson was not conservative.

It is my thinking that as a political movement, we would be better served focusing more of philosophy of the Founders than on the philosophy of Mr. Burke or Mr. Kirk. There is a lot of overlap, and the vast majority of this country still very much appreciates American Exceptionalism and the wisdom on the Founding Fathers.

An appeal to the wisdom of Hamilton, Monroe, and Madison is in my view going to be more persuasive than an appeal to the wisdom of Russell Kirk in that most people have no ideea who Russell Kirk is.

Small steps, followed by more small steps, are what we need (in my view).

I’m not sure the word ‘conservatism’ was in vogue in the 18th century.

It was coined by Chateaubriand in 1819.

As far as ‘words all mean different things now’…

No, they don’t. The meaning is the same, it is just that the center/right has allowed the left to decide thwe terms of the debate. The title Liberal has been misappropriated by the left for decades now to hide their true colors. After all, running as ‘progressive, the ‘new left’ or ‘socialist’ wasn’t working out for them. Which is why they created the ‘neo-conservative’ label to denigrate actual Liberals. David Horowitz’ book The politics of bad faith is a good read on the tactics of the left in this area. If you want to allow them to define the paradigm, that’s your choice. I’m with Hayek (who wrote Why I Am Not A Conservative .

As far as those you inaccurately label ‘liberal’, marxism is closer, but inacurate. Socialism is acurrate. We have had international (Marxism), National (Fascism) and Stealth (Fabianism) socialism before. The home grown American variety would be best called Countercultural Socialism.

Aaron thinks I should have focused on the Founding Fathers, and is ‘disappointed’;

JSobieski also wants to focus on the philosophies of the Founding Fathers rather than Burke and Kirk, because the masses don’t recognize Kirk. [sidebar - I say Burke, not Locke or Hume was their biggest guiding influence. Long story for another time, but I can make a formidable case for that.]

Diogenes wants to argue the meanings and roots of terms liberal and conservative.

Only Scope, Jaded, and Achance have any EPU love today. Sigh…..

I think you successfully tied Kirk’s wisdom-of-the-ages theme to current issues. Bravo I say . . . and you managed to do within the confines of a blog. At lunch, I’ve got time for a blog, but not a dissertation.

And, ending your bullet point on gay marriage with “Bah!” . . . it’s priceless. If you don’t mind, I think I may use it when I next engage some liberal friends of mine in debate. I’ll end major points with a “Bah!” It’ll cause them to fog their teeny tiny glasses with rage (liberals around these parts all seem to wear small glasses; it’s like it’s part of the liberal uniform or something).

Take Care, mailloux

That hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of years of successful convention can be ignored and even painted as failure is a sad commentary on the state of modern education. The left-wing ownership of the task of education has interrupted the continuity and advancement of liberty. Of course, that has been said in many ways by numerous members here lately, so I won’t belabor the point.

I can only agree and recommend. True, you have set the bar high for yourself in previous posts. Thanks for your latest.

But not one that I’m really in agreement with. Not in the sense that it’s an inaccurate interpretation of Kirk, but in that I don’t think that this principle is one that conservatives (American ones, anyways) should accept. After all, if we as a species had remained tethered to the ideas of the past, we would still have merchantilist, or even command, economies. Our ancestors wouldn’t have dared brave the oceans to get to the New World. Democracy would never have flourished as it did in the US and Western Europe. Besides that, I think that this principle makes conservatism too relativistic: after all, that would make a Russian conservative more despotic because of the political traditions of Russia, and not at all in accordance with the ideals of American conservatism.

Furthermore, we don’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. There’s a difference in between Obama’s version of change (which I tautologically posit is unfounded and not based on any sort of historical evidence or introspective thought) and the change envisioned by our nation’s founders (which relied on the underpinnings of what was once considered radical thought, but still conformed to reason and empiricism).

And yes, I know that immediately after Kirk says this, he says that change in moderation is a good thing. However, I don’t think that the “change in moderation” mindset will allow us to do nothing but slow down, and not stop (much less reverse) the march towards Socialism. For this reason, I tend to agree more with Hayek’s “Why I am Not a Conservative”, than with Kirk’s 10 principles, and I think that the Founding Fathers generally would have as well.

You all are teaching me a lot. I don’t have much to say sometimes, because I haven’t read Burke, Kirk, or some of the others, but its great to learn.

You have talked me into wanting to read Kirk, though. I remember seeing some of his books several years ago, but I didn’t know who he was. Now, I can’t wait to read them.

In that, where Goldwater and Buckley seemed much more adamant about rolling back the government, Kirk seemed more a proponent of traditionalism and the preservation of cultural and societal norms. Of course, there’s some overlap due to the fact that the founding fathers, by and large, were for a weaker centralized government than what we have now, but it never seemed to me like Kirk was comfortable with the libertarian-conservative wing of conservative thought popularized by Goldwater and Reagan, though I’ll admit that I haven’t read as much Kirk as I have of Buckley and his ilk. And I’m more than fine with having Kirk as one of the leading figures of the conservative pantheon, if for no other reason than his work in restoring conservatism from irrelevancy in the New Deal era to a political force in Goldwater.

However, I think that conservative thought (particularly fiscal conservative thought) is hindered by this form of thinking, in the sense that, although it is beneficial to look towards the past in forming policy (something that many progressives and some conservatives sadly forget), it’s important to realize that it’s not a bad thing to want to go somewhere that’s not back.

And this more or less brings me back to Hayek’s “Why I am Not a Conservative”. Here, he says that, “[conservatism] may succeed by its resistance to current tendencies in slowing down undesirable developments, but, since it does not indicate another direction, it cannot prevent their continuance. It has, for this reason, invariably been the fate of conservatism to be dragged along a path not of its own choosing. The tug of war between conservatives and progressives can only affect the speed, not the direction, of contemporary developments. But, though there is a need for a “brake on the vehicle of progress,”[3] I personally cannot be content with simply helping to apply the brake. What the [classical] liberal must ask, first of all, is not how fast or how far we should move, but where we should move. In fact, he differs much more from the collectivist radical of today than does the conservative.” He goes on to point out that conservatism is inevitably defined by its opposition to the progressive movement, and that as liberals succeed in their policies, so too must conservative parties be pulled more leftwards. I think that this is where I side with Hayek over Kirk most emphatically. Where Kirk mainly wanted a restoration of sorts to pre-progressive times, Hayek (and I) prefer to move towards something better. It’s something of semantics, but I think it’s critical that we as conservatives are looking forwards just as often as we’re looking backwards, and that the “new” ideas aren’t just coming from liberals.

This puts my diaries to shame. Extremely well done.

In my next post, hopefully coming early next week as I will be out of town visiting the in-laws, I will try to address a little bit of the Kirk-Hayek-Burke triangle. I suspect that I may lean a bit more to old (and I mean OLD) school conservatism than most here at RS do. I have issues with Locke and Tom Paine was a loon in my book (although I cannot deny the positive contribution that he made to the Revolution and our independence).

Burke is more my style along with his contemporary Joseph de Maistre. I also look for inspiration from Aquinas and Loyola. This may not sit well with all here, but I think that a good argument can be made linking the values of American conservatism to the Renaissance era, the medieval period and the ancients (as opposed to the Enlightenment which I find to be much more closely tied to the left – Rousseau, Voltaire, and their disciples Robespierre, St. Just, and the other members of the Committee of Public Safety).

Plus, EPU is not the only one who can write diaries (hint, hint)….

I am of the personal slant that Hume’s influence over the FF’s was wide but not deep. I know for a fact that Burke was read and revered deeply at the time by that whole bunch. Only because of his position in the British Parliament was it considered uncool to cite him directly, because we were at war with them.

But the Constitution smells like Burke wrote it himself. Ditto for a great bulk of the Federalist Papers. Like i said, we’ll get to that.

But there’s nothing keeping you from opening the ball on that. I am no special expert on the pre-FF era, are exactly an authority on the FF themselves. Just start with Wikipedia on John Locke, Davide Hume, and Edmund Burke, and expand outward in research on the internet. You’ll find plenty.

Off topic for this thread but thanks for doing the diary on the incoming EU pres. I had posted this article with similar comments on Pejmans Naomi Klein thread. It really is sweeter than sweet. Don’t know how the rest of the membership will react to his Global Warming position, but I do think that finally Al Bore’s hoax will get more major attention as being just that- a hoax. Now that Obama is promising that the US will take the lead on this garbage, he will surely get smacked by those who already have back tracked on the mandates because of economic pitfalls. And, that was before all of the meltdowns.