In America, Right and Left are relative terms in that the Right is defined by its relationship with the Left. While the Left flits from novelty to novelty, the Right shouts, “please slow down” while following it around. As Robert Lewis Dabney put it a century ago, “American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition.” His observation has remained true to this day. It is why yesterday’s radical idea is today’s conservative principle.
This is not true in other parts of the world. Radicalism exists, but it throws itself against the defenses of tradition and history. It may break down those walls, as we see in Europe, but the contours of the Right remain in place. European conservatism is the appeal to hierarchy, tradition and permanence. Joseph de Maistre would be shocked by modern Europe, but he would still be able to make out the borders that define the modern conservative forces of Europe.
The opposite is true in America. Take someone from the founding generation and transport him into the middle of the 19th century and he would recognize the forces of radicalism quite easily. After all, the radical abolitionist would look strikingly familiar, having come from the same stock. Transport that man further into time and he would recognize the New England roots of the progressive. Conservatism, on the other hand, would make no sense to him in any age.
That is the problem for conservatives. The rest of the world has traditions, habits of mind and institutions with roots into the mists of time. America is a young society, so the ancient customs are not all that ancient. Most of those were borrowed from Europe during the colonial period. Others were trampled under the hoofs of one prior radical pogrom or another. Modern conservatives are left to conjure an authority due to a lack of tradition and history.
You can see the dilemma here in this speech Michael Anton delivered to Hillsdale College on the end of conservatism and the beginning of a new politics. Anton is part of a project to build a “new” conservatism. Like the “old” conservatism, his starting point is Lincoln and the “second founding” as imagined by Harry Jaffa. Note also that the person introducing Anton is careful to insert the Athens and Jerusalem line into his remarks, signaling his membership in the cult of Jaffa.
The cult of Jaffa and Lincolnism has been discussed at length here and other places, so there is no need to go over it again. Of interest here is the selection of Lincoln as the Abraham of modern conservatism. This is a bit like picking Karl Marx as your starting point for German conservatism. In his time, Lincoln was a radical and not just the bourgeois coffee house variety. He was willing to kill as many of his fellow citizens as needed to impose his radical vision on the country.
The “new right” would no doubt dispute that characterization of Lincoln, but you cannot place Lincoln on the Right during his age. Abolitionism was a radical idea, one that the radicals of the founding generation rejected. John Adams opposed the idea on the grounds that it was worse that slavery. Like many of his generation, he personally opposed slavery, but he understood the danger posed by the abolitionists. Adams would have viewed Lincoln as a dangerous fanatic.
Of course, in his own time Adams was a dangerous fanatic. The people trying to form up a new conservatism love waving around the Declaration of Independence, but that was the most radical document produced to that point. In fact, the entire founding of the United States was a great experiment in radical politics. It is not an accident that America is often called an experiment. The very basis of America is the praxis of radical thought and it continues to this day.
The truth is America has never had much to work with for anyone trying to create a genuine conservatism, because America lacks the history and traditions that would naturally anchor conservatism. Compounding it is that the limited history and traditions that are available are nothing but a long journal of one radical experiment after another in the vain hope of creating that city on a hill John Winthrop imagined when he and his fellow fanatics landed in the New World.
This lack of necessary ingredients with which to fashion a genuine conservatism in America is probably why conservatism has been a failure. When you are reduced to conjuring a novel history in support of novel ideas, as we see with the current “new right” experiment, all you are really doing is engaging in your own form of radicalism, just without the force of authority enjoyed by the Left. Conservatism becomes nothing more than a parlor game for outsiders.
This is why any effort to produce a genuine alternative to the prevailing orthodoxy needs to start with an honest inventory of reality. What can be produced from the materials at hand to create something that can resist the acid of liberalism? The answer cannot lie within the liberal tradition. To go back to 1950, 1850 or 1750 looking for answers to the problems created in those times inevitably means explaining away the defects of liberalism in order to preserve it.
The place to start with fashioning an alternative to the prevailing orthodoxy is not in 1950, 1850 or 1750, but in 2050. Given the current demographic trends, imagine a continent filled with versions of Orania and then contemplate the ideology of a people who can maintain it. This is one lesson we can take from the founders. They tried to fashion a practical solution for their people at the time. The next founding will have to do the same thing, but for a different people.
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