I encountered an actual Conservative today, with the handle Gen Sherman, commenting on the FiveThirtyEight political blog. It's a rare and refreshing experience. I'm not talking about the fake Conservatives who have been running the Republican Party since the start of the racist Southern Strategy. I mean an Edmund Burke, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower Conservative who believes in governments doing things for the nation, and in discussing ideas, not shouting down Progressives. I don't know whether you remember such people, who are becoming increasingly rare.
Let me tell you a little about Edmund Burke, the Father of Conservatism at the time of the American Revolution. He was quite sympathetic to the Americans, but hostile to the French Revolutionaries of the Terror. Very reasonable, so far, until you hear how his self-appointed followers ran with that idea. Among them were Federalist partisans accusing that "atheist" Thomas Jefferson of a plan to burn down all of the churches in the United States. Sound familiar? Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
For many years I avoided reading the works of Edmund Burke, because he was represented as the intellectual godfather of the entire Conservative movement, which I first became aware of in the person of Richard Nixon. I saw no reason to read someone who inspired such awful people. My mistake, as it turns out, and a big mistake. Not that I agree with Burke on everything, but if that were the standard, I would have to give up reading entirely.
I decided to read Burke after I heard somebody say that Nixon couldn't get elected as a Republican today, because he was too liberal, what with the EPA, and suggesting a guaranteed national income, and making peace in Vietnam, and going to China. In the same vein, Barry Goldwater, who was quite savage about Republican pandering to the Christian Right, said
"I never left my party. My party left me."
To Bob Dole: "Can you believe we're the only Conservatives left?"
I started on Burke's Wikiquote page, to get an overview and see which of his works might be best to start with for further reading. I thought I was there to learn to know my enemy better, in the spirit in which Gen. George Patton read Rommel's book on tank warfare. Little did I know.
It just blew my mind. The man was a Liberal, even a Progressive. Not a Radical, not a Socialist, but nothing like what we called a Conservative even in my younger days, much less now. Conservatism in the US today means little more than cutting taxes and opposing anything that will help Blacks, gays, women, or anybody else who isn't already a member of the club.
To be a true Conservative, you have to identify what you want to conserve that is worthwhile. The racial status quo doesn't count, and similarly for other oppressions and inequities. Burke would approve of preserving the Constitution, as Lincoln did in the Civil War. Both men wanted to end slavery, but not all at once. Part of Burke's plan for ending slavery was a form of Affirmative Action, to make sure that ex-slaves got the education they would need to be full citizens. Burke was also against the misdeeds of unregulated corporations. There weren't many in his time, but some were doozies. He certainly never advocated simply standing still in government, much less going backwards.
You can never plan the future by the past.
A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
What is so astonishing today is that you can make a list of Republican "principles" from the GOP platform, and refute almost every one in a literal quotation from Burke, except for things that had not yet happened in his lifetime. I only have room for a few here, but they will give you the idea.
Cutting taxes/Starve the Beast
Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy. Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists not in saving but selection. Parsimony requires no providence, no sagacity, no powers of combination, no comparison, no judgment.
Afghanistan/Iraq/Iran/The NeoCon agenda
The use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment; but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again: and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered.
The Christian Right
Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.
Corporate Greed, Executive Privilege, and Sovereign Irresponsibility
Resolved to die in the last dike of prevarication.
and the rest of the eight-year impeachment trial of Warren Hastings for a multitude of crimes committed as the head (we would say CEO) of the East India Company (one of the world's first multinational corporations), with the title of Governor-General of India. Burke took two whole days just to read the charges against Hastings at his trial before Parliament, including causing a famine that killed about a third of the population of Bengal, and the destruction of large quantities of company correspondence, that is, evidence.
But there is much more. Here, for example, we can see an opinion that applies to President Barack Obama and to many others of our party on one hand, and to the lying hypocrites and their dupes on the other.
There is a sort of enthusiasm in all projectors, absolutely necessary for their affairs, which makes them proof against the most fatiguing delays, the most mortifying disappointments, the most shocking insults; and, what is severer than all, the presumptuous judgment of the ignorant upon their designs.
And more on the so-called Conservatism of today.
It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the publick to be the most anxious for its welfare.
Men are qualified for civil liberty
in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites,
-— in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity,
-— in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption,
—- in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves.
Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.
I rest my case.
