Stranger in A Strange Land

There has been much weeping and gnashing of teeth among so-called conservatives because the selection of John McCain as the GOP nominee. Many have said that he isn’t a true conservative (never mind that his American Conservative Union score says otherwise).

Jonathan Rauch writes in the Atlantic that the problem isn’t that the Arizona Senator isn’t conservative enough, it’s that his “conservative” detractors aren’t really conservatives.

Using McCain’s speech at the Conservative Action Conference, Rauch shows that McCain is steeped in the conservatism of Edmund Burke, the person that many people believed was the founder of modern conservatism.

Rauch describes what Burkean Conservatism is all about:

Burke is the father of modern conservatism, and still its wisest oracle. Tradition-minded but (contrary to stereotype) far from reactionary, he believed in balancing individual rights with social order. The best way to do that, for Burke, was by respecting long-standing customs and institutions while advancing toward liberty and equality. Society’s traditions, after all, embody an evolved collective wisdom that even (or especially) the smartest of individuals cannot hope to understand comprehensively, much less reinvent successfully.

The Burkean outlook takes individual rights seriously, and understands that civic order serves no purpose if its result is oppression or misery. It also understands that social stability, far from being endangered by institutional change, positively depends upon it. Burkeans no more believe in a golden past than they do in a perfect future. For them, the question is not whether society should change, but how.

Burke himself was an advocate of change; he sympathized with the American revolution (while famously denouncing the much more radical French one), proposed curtailing the slave trade, and fought tirelessly to reform the corrupt and monopolistic British East India Company. But he believed change should take a measured pace and should try to follow well-worn social grooves rather than cutting across them. Above all, he abhorred utopian reformers, who, by disdaining real-world constraints and overestimating their own intelligence, invariably worsen what they seek to improve.

When I was trying to find out where I fit in politically, I have to say that I was attracted to Burke and his vision of conservatism. He was skeptical of radical change, opting more for incremental change. He balanced individual rights with social order. It was as Andrew Sullivan has explained a “conservatism of doubt.”

The reason that I like McCain and why I am supporting him is because I think he is true conservative. While all the other GOP leaders were talking about radical change away from some of our cherished traditions, McCain was slow and steady. Think about it: despite his reputation as a maverick, he has been one that cares more about conservation of tradition than in radical notions. I believed he has opposed torture not simply because he himself was tortured, but because of the treaties, and long held practices that the United States has followed for centuries.

The problem with today’s so-called conservatives is that they are too radical. They want to tear down anything and everything that doesn’t fit their views; damn the long held traditions. When the President and many other Republicans think it is okay to ignore past treaties, and the past traditions regarding torture of enemies for the passing need of the present, that is hardly conservative. When they ignore our tradition of welcoming immigrants and turn down any reform proposal that doesn’t simply pack up and ship every illegal immigrant back where they came from, that is hardly conservative.

Rauch notes that the invasion of Iraq was hardly a conservative venture. Remember when the elder Bush had the change to march into Baghdad during the Gulf War, he chose not to. The fear from many in the administration was that to destroy the current regime, would destabilize the country and possibly the region. That was a conservative belief. The goal of the war was to evict Iraq out of Kuwait, not to bring down Saddam, as odious as he was. The fact is, as bad as the regime was, it was what was holding the country together and removing it suddenly would have caused the chaos we are seeing nearly two decades later. The younger Bush and his compatriots had starts in their eyes, believing that Iraq could become an American-style society in the space of a short time. That idea wasn’t conservative and was about as bright as the radical ideas that came from the French Revolution.

I’m supporting John McCain because he is a conservative. Now many liberals don’t like his views and that’s okay; they have a different philosophy. But I consider myself to be a Burkean conservative and I believe Senator McCain reflects those views.

The Republican party really does need to return to its conservative roots. But it needs to understand what conservatism is.

Maybe Rush Limbaugh needs to read up more on his Burke.