A Primer On Traditional Conservatism
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Introduction
There’s lots of talk these days about what it means to be a Conservative. If you were to ask ten different people, you’d end up with ten different answers.
In this episode, I want to get back to basics. I want to give listeners a Primer on what I call Traditional Conservatism with the help of other Traditional Conservatives such as T.S. Elliot, Barbara Elliot, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Roger Scruton.
Conserving Tradition
As the name suggests, Traditional Conservatives believe that tradition and custom guide man and his worldview. It is the foundation on which society is built upon.
Each generation inherits the experience and culture of its ancestors and is able to pass it down to his descendants. Our goal isn’t progress, it’s conservation. “Progress” is the name that moderns give the destruction of what our ancestors nurtured. Our goal as conservatives is to conserve and defend everything the Spirit has done in history in such a way as to carry it forward into what the Spirit is going to do.
If conserving tradition is not of concern to you, then you are not a conservative.
The now late Roger Scrutton said it this way, “To dishonour the dead is to reject the relation on which society is built — the relation of obligation between generations. . . Those who have lost respect for their dead have ceased to be trustees of their inheritance.”
Conserving Hierarchy
Traditional Conservatives are concerned about conserving hierarchy. We are not Egalitarians. We believe that each man and woman are equal in dignity before God and before the law, but are unequal in talents, aptitudes, and even outcomes — And, that is okay and how nature works.
Traditional Conservatives believe that human society is naturally hierarchical, and that is a beautiful and glorious thing that should be preserved not steam-rolled. Hierarchy allows for the preservation of a whole community simultaneously, instead of protecting one part at the expense of the others.
Barbara Elliot says it this way, “For the conservative, each man and woman is equal in dignity and equal before the law, but gloriously individual and unequal in talents, aptitudes, and outcomes. The conservative celebrates the uniqueness of individuals and does not level to eliminate differences.”
Conserving Nature
Traditional Conservatives are concerned about conserving nature. However, this is not to be confused for what we see among Progressives Liberals advocating for arseway policies such as the Green New Deal.
The way that Traditional Conservatives approach nature is that we believe that God created it, and therefore we have the responsibility to conserve it. This may also be referred to as the principle of Agrarianism (i.e. preserving the small family farm, open land, the conservation of natural resources, and stewardship of the land).
A Conservative is seeking to work within God’s creation. He gets up with the sun and goes to bed with the setting of the sun. He lives in all four seasons differently, and his view is always towards the Divine.
The Progressive Liberal, however, becomes titillated with his own industriousness and by his own creativity. He becomes an extremely intelligent monkey, and nothing much more than that, and looks not to the Divine, but to his own creation and becomes seduced by that.
This is a huge theme reflected in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings with the Elves working together with nature in places like Rivendell and Lothlorien, and the forces under the command of Sauron who are destroying nature and who have minds of metal.
Tolkien explicitly mentioned this in one of his letters to the Daily Telegraph (Letter 339 in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien) saying, “In all of my works, I take the part of the trees against all their enemies. Lothlorien is beautiful because there the trees were loved . . . The Old Forest was hostile to two-legged creatures because of the memory of many injuries. Fangorn Forest was old and beautiful, but at the same time the story tense with hostility because it was threatened by a machine-loving enemy. Mirkwood had fallen under the domination of a Power that hated all living things but was restored to beauty and became Greenwood the Great before the end of the story.”
Conserving High Culture
Traditional Conservatives are concerned with defending classical high culture. This is the heritage passed on from our ancestors to us, and we have the responsibility to pass it on to our children, which means we must also be concerned about conserving human life because, without it, we don’t have anyone to pass a culture on to.
Conservatives revere high culture in all of its manifestations (e.g. literature, music, architecture, art and Theatre). And, because of this, this separates us from Progressives like BLMers who like to burn down cities, and it also separates us from Trumpists who are eager to start a good ole’ fashioned revolutionary boogaloo on the front lawn of the nation’s capital.
Traditional Conservatives play the long game. T.S. Elliot once said, “the world is trying the experiment of attempting to form a civilized but non-Christian mentality. The experiment will fail; but we must be very patient in awaiting its collapse; meanwhile redeeming the time, so that the Faith may be preserved alive through the dark ages before us, to renew and rebuild civilization and save the world from suicide.”
At the core of this battle is a battle between good and evil. The other side gets to cheat, and we don’t get to. We have to fight and we have to fight clean, and we have to fight fair, because as the late Roger Scrutton once said:
“Conservatism starts from the sentiment that good things are easily destroyed, but not easily created.”
Conserving Patriotism
Lastly, Traditional Conservatives are concerned with patriotism or devotion and love for one’s place.
Unlike nationalists who esteem the role of the state or nation over the local or regional community, Traditional Conservatives hold up patriotism as a key principle and think that loyalty to a locality or region is more central than any commitment to a larger political entity.
C.S. Lewis said it this way, ““With this love for the place, there goes a love for the way of life; for beer and tea and open fires, trains with compartments in them and an unarmed police force and all the rest of it; for the local dialect and for our native language.”
To the Conservative, patriotism is an essential building block of civilization. Culture and community grow out of loving relationships and affinities over time, rooted in place. You simply cannot create a culture or civilization without love of place.
This is why America no longer has a culture, and actually now has what some refer to as an anti-culture. There is no more shared love of place because we are hyper-focused on the liberty of the individual. We have nothing in common anymore. All of the differentiation breaks down a sense of community, togetherness, and oneness. Because of this, we are now left with a nation of lots individuals but no unity or common beliefs or culture — An anti-culture that can only further fragment.
