Can American Conservatism Be Saved? « The Dish - 0 views
dish.andrewsullivan.com/...r-he-would-be-a-counterpuncher
conservatism oakeshott culture civility conversation transcendent university
![](/images/link.gif)
-
conservatism in its best sense is about the constant situating of the individual within a cultural and historical context.
-
Individualism can never therefore be an ideology. “I built that” is an excrescent simplification, a form of contempt for tradition and society.
-
the key to a more productively conservative defense of tradition is, it seems to me, a civility in making the case and an alertness to the occasional, contingent need for genuine reform, as social problems emerge in a changing society.
- ...9 more annotations...
-
Today’s Republicanism is, in contrast, absolutist, ideological, fundamentalist and angry. It has ceased to be a voice among others in a genuine conversation about our country and become a rigid, absolutist ideology fueled by the worst aspects of the right – from racism to Randian indifference to the many others who made – and make – our lives possible. A lot of the time, it is quite simply philistine.
-
Here’s what McClay gleans from Oakeshott’s writing that could help the cause of conservative reform: First, the idea of conversation as the model for civilized life. Second, the need to create and preserve appropriate scale in our communities, for the sake of fostering just such conversation. Third, the profound human need for release from the burden of purposefulness, which is perhaps another way of expressing the enduring need for transcendence, an avenue that Rationalism tends to foreclose to us. And fourth, the irreplaceable mission of liberal learning.
-
To translate: civility in public discourse, maximal federalism and subsidiarity, a sense of transcendence to overcome the delusions of materialism and individualism, and a relentless defense of universities as the core places where our society learns to breathe and grow in the light of knowledge and understanding.
-
Is this an agenda? Not in any sense of the word. And that is the point. There is no fixed set of policies that an Oakeshottian conservative will embrace. It will all depend on the time and the place and the problem. He will question change and reform as a constant necessity
-
The issue, in the end, is one of prudential judgment about all these questions, a skill and virtue that can never be reduced to an ideology or “ism”.
-
It’s a way of thinking. And until we revive that manner of thinking, American conservatism will remain defined by its ugliest and dumbest protagonists.