Conservative Movement

the continued adventures of Edmund Burke

By J. L. Bastiat ⋅ May 22, 2008 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

Now, it has for some time been increasingly unlikely that I would get to agree with Andrew Sullivan about something–and in this case I’m led to him by Yuval Levin’s post differing with him, intelligently and at least in part correctly. But I’ll be doggoned if this doesn’t resonate with me, somewhere:

For conservatism to copy liberalism by always seeking “solutions” to problems and convincing “the right coalitions” of people to look to government for the satisfaction of their needs would be a mistake in my view. It may not be a mistake for Republicanism, an amorphous political entity that does what it wants in the pursuit of power. Maybe aiming for a “Sams Club” coalition or a Jewish-evangelical alliance or “durable majority” on Rove’s lines makes sense for a political party or movement trying out new policies for new clients. But conservatism as a pragmatic, minimalist sensibility toward governance, conservatism as a reflexive preference for freedom, conservatism as a school of thought defined by the view that solutions are often worse than the problems: not so much.

(Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish)

Now, if you’re interested in thinking this through a bit more, I have to recommend that you flip through this whole correspondence:

• Sullivan’s comment
• Levin’s reply
• Sullivan’s update/reply
• Levin’s note & reply, with additional reading
• the extensive and thoughtful blog-essay on Burke linked to by Levin

My take? Well, I think Burke is mostly interesting for having written the aesthetics–and, in some measure, demonstrated the rhetoric–that Locke’s own limitations prevented him from seeing as worthy adjuncts to the Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Burke’s essay on sublimity and beauty remains on a par with Kant and Longinus on the topic, and was both inspiration and ballast to Anglo-American culture in the crucial period when Romanticism was arriving on the scene, with its discontents in German and, in English, Burke for the villain (and conscience).

What that has to do with contemporary politics, you puzzle out for yourself!