It would be difficult for the typical observer of American politics to doubt that conservatism is in crisis. At present, Joe Biden’s approval ratings are quite low, despite generally favorable economic conditions. Majorities of the American public disagree with the Democratic party on important issues related to race and gender ideology. In normal circumstances, one would expect this to be a time when the Republican party to be ascendant in a major way. Instead, what we see is a Republican party that seems determined to self-immolate and snatch a devastating defeat from the jaws of what should be an easy victory.
What explains this disfunction among American conservatives? Perhaps conservatism, as an idea, is doomed to end in failure. Or, perhaps, true conservatism has been lost, and needs to be recovered. It is this idea that animates Yoram Hazony in his book Conservatism: A Rediscovery. Hazony believes that a “remarkable fact about contemporary conservatism” can be found in “the extraordinary confusion over what distinguishes Anglo-American conservatism from Enlightenment liberalism (or ‘classical liberalism’ or ‘libertarianism’ or, for that matter, from the philosophy of Ayn Rand).” George Will, in his book The Conservative Sensibility, considers American conservatism based on the idea of conserving the values of the Founders, which were in turn derived from the classical liberal values of the Enlightenment. So, to George Will, American conservatism is about conserving the classical liberal tradition. Not so for Hazony. He believes the broader tradition of Anglo-American conservatism stands in distinction from, and is in many ways opposed to, classical liberalism and Enlightenment values.
Hazony believes that true conservatism needs to be rediscovered, and its recovery is necessary to improve the state of the nation. This is made all the more necessary because Enlightenment liberalism has failed: “The hegemony of liberal ideas, which was supposed to last forever and to be embraced by all nations, has come to an end after only sixty years.” Liberalism has been unable to withstand the challenges of radical Progressivism or Marxism. Because liberalism is fundamentally different from conservatism, liberalism lacks the tools necessary to conserve itself: “For the truth—which at this point cannot be repeated frequently enough—is that Enlightenment liberalism, as a political ideology, is bereft of any interest in conserving anything. It is devoted entirely to freedom, and in particular to freedom from the past. In other words, liberalism is an ideology that promises to liberate us from precisely one thing, and that thing is conservatism. That is, it seeks to liberate us from the kind of public and private life in which men and women know what must be done to propagate beneficial ideas, behaviors, and institutions across generations and see to it that these things really are done.”
Despite this grim assessment, Hazony is hopeful that true conservatism can be rediscovered: “Is it possible for a society whose traditions have grown so faint to revive them? Is it possible for individuals who have grown up in a liberal society obsessed with personal freedoms to become strong conservative men and women and to do what a conservative calling demands of them? I believe it is possible because I have seen it happen many times over the course of my life. It is possible for individuals to discover that they have been on the wrong course, repent, and set out on a new and better course. And this is possible, too, for families and congregations, tribes and nations.”
This is ambitious, to be sure. And due to this ambition, Hazony’s vision of conservatism deserves careful consideration and scrutiny. Over the next several posts, I’ll go over the major ideas in Hazony’s book. As always when I do these book reviews, I’ll be presenting, rather than evaluating, Hazony’s argument, and if anyone has questions in the comments, my responses will be tailored to represent Hazony’s view as I understand it, rather than presenting my own views. My evaluation and critique of the book will be saved for the final posts.
READER COMMENTS
Nick Ronalds
Nov 7 2023 at 9:07pm
It strikes me as an odd argument that liberalism has failed because it lacks the tools to conserve itself. If we judge based on a snapshot of current history, conservatism too has failed, and progressivism has prevailed. Judged by what animates voters at this moment, no conservatism of any definition has succeeded. The argument is self-defeating. An argument worth having is, what political philosophy has the best track record of promoting human thriving? We have abundant evidence from the last few hundred years of history that hands down, it’s liberalism.
Kevin Corcoran
Nov 8 2023 at 6:53am
I think you’re using a different meaning of success and failure than Hazony is. For example, you say if we judge “by what animates voters at this moment, no conservatism of any definition has succeeded.” But Hazony’s measure of success or failure here is not how dominant a political point of view is at a snapshot moment. While Hazony believes that liberalism has failed, he also believes that liberalism is by far the dominant political paradigm, so how well-accepted a political idea is at the moment, or how much it animates voters at a given snapshot, is not the relevant measure of success or failure by Hazony’s lights. He’s not measuring things in terms of their pedagogical success or failure.
Regarding your second point, you say “An argument worth having is, what political philosophy has the best track record of promoting human thriving? We have abundant evidence from the last few hundred years of history that hands down, it’s liberalism.” Hazony would disagree with that assessment – he attributes much of the growth in human thriving over the past centuries not to liberalism, but the tradition of Anglo-American conservatism, which he also believes was the dominant political paradigm up until about sixty years ago. But that will be examined in more detail in future posts.
steve
Nov 8 2023 at 10:21am
How does he define failure. By most objective measures people are better off now than they have ever been. You can choose any specific issue and find a time when that might have been better in the past but taken as a whole, not so. You could also look at a specific period in some specific area of the world and claim things were better, but looking over the entire world and over time and it’s just better now.
Also, gender and race issues arent the only concerns of either party, not even the most important ones and polling is actually mixed so it depends upon which specific issues you are looking at. Finally, if you use the GOP as a proxy for conservatism, which I will concede has major problems, they hold the majority of elected positions in the states, hold the majority in the House and hold the majority in perhaps our most powerful political institution, SCOTUS. Bless you for reading the guy but so far it sounds like whining that because conservatives dont win every election they have no power.
Steve
Kevin Corcoran
Nov 8 2023 at 10:46am
Hazony emphatically does not do this – he does not believe the GOP in its current state in any way represents the Anglo-American conservative tradition he advocates. Part of the reason I read this book was due to my own bewilderment about what conservatism was even supposed to mean – what’s called “conservative” now, or upheld within the GOP now, is in many ways the exact opposite of what was considered the conservative GOP view just ten or fifteen years ago. And on many topics of major importance, the GOP and the Democratic party have completely reversed positions in recent years – without making much difference about who supports which party, of course.
Your other question, about what Hazony would consider to be success in the conservative paradigm, will be explored in more detail in future posts, so I’ll defer that for now.
steve
Nov 8 2023 at 2:59pm
I think it’s because our politics has largely become tribal. Adhering to the tribe is more important than any principles. That plus the cult of personality, which I think is part fo tribalism. I have had many people tell me that their favored politician has never lied. That just blows my mind. All politicians, essentially everyone, lies sometimes.
Steve
Mactoul
Nov 7 2023 at 11:37pm
If liberalism is devoted entirely to freedom, and in particular to freedom from the past. then it has succeeded quite a lot. Are not the sexual revolution, the acceptance of homosexuality and transgenderism, evidences for hegemony of liberal ideas?
Liberalism is essentially a denial of the political nature of man whereby man is hierarchically organized into particular self-ruling morally authoritative communities. The family and the political community are irreducible levels of human organization and the liberal thinkers have been forever engaged in deriving the political community from individuals.
Progressivism is merely one stream of liberalism. It denies the particularity and thus would have a world state.
Enlightenment liberalism accepted the state as an unprincipled exception. Liberalism needs these unprincipled exception otherwise it can not be instantiated.
Kevin Corcoran
Nov 8 2023 at 6:45am
Hazony would agree with much of what you say here, with the exception about Progressivism being a strain of liberalism. He sees them as very different and very much in opposition with each other, although obviously he sees both as incompatible with conservatism. Liberalism, as he defines it (and future posts will flesh this out more) make the freedom of the individual the central principle in their system, from which all other ideas are derived. This is radically different from Progressivism – nobody who’s studied the history of ideas or read the foundational works of Progressive political philosophy (this is a good start) would say that Progressive political philosophy is centered on the primacy of individual liberty. While he opposes both, Hazony sees them as not offshoots of each other, but very different from each other down to the roots.
Richard Fulmer
Nov 8 2023 at 2:40pm
If that is really how Hazony defines (classical) liberalism, then he is fighting a straw man. Classical liberalism does emphasize individual freedom, but also individual responsibility. It also emphasizes people living and working under the rule of law in which people are treated equally regardless of wealth or status and in which people are required to respect each other’s negative rights. If enforced, the later precludes the type of predation common under crony capitalism, socialism, and the type of muscular nationalism that Hazony promotes.
Richard Fulmer
Nov 8 2023 at 1:01am
No idea can conserve itself. Ideas cannot act, only people can act, therefore only people can conserve ideas. Unfortunately, too many Americans have chosen not to defend liberal ideas – some because they don’t understand them, some because they don’t believe them, some because they lack the courage to defend them, some because they’re not willing to make the sacrifices necessary to defend them, and some because they hope to benefit from the creation of a new society that will recognize their self-perceived intrinsic value and reward them as they believe they deserve.
Not if liberalism is understood to be “the values of the Founders.” Here, Hazony is engaging in a bit of verbal sleight of hand: using progressive liberalism in place of classical liberalism. Progressives see any constraint – even those imposed by nature – as oppression, and they seek to liberate people from such oppression. Classical liberals see the constraints of reciprocal respect of others’ negative rights as an indispensable requirement for a peaceful and flourishing civil society.
Kevin Corcoran
Nov 8 2023 at 10:14am
Fair enough – in that case, you can mentally swap the phrasing to “liberalism does not contain the ideas needed to animate the behavior necessary to ensure its own survival” or something similar to that without changing any of the relevant points. (And please mentally carry that phrasing forward for future posts!)
As you point out, many believers in liberalism fail to behave in a way necessary to ensure the survival of the liberal system. And Hazony, for what it’s worth, does not argue that this needs to be the case per se. He agrees that one does not need to accept the liberal system as a “closed and complete system” and may take on obligations over and above it, behaviors of the sort that are necessary to ensure the survival of the liberal system. But the key point is that such action exists “over and above” the liberal system, and that the need for these actions cannot “be derived from liberal premises, nor are any of them promoted by liberal premises…If one is committed to these things, it is for reasons that are entirely ‘external’ to the liberal political system.” Because of that, a system that only requires, as you say, “the constraints of reciprocal respect of others’ negative rights” but nothing over and above that will not be sufficient to, as Hazony says, “propagate beneficial ideas, behaviors, and institutions across generations and see to it that these things really are done.” Seeing to it that such things are done is, in the liberal system, entirely optional. Just so long as you don’t violate someone’s negative rights, your hands are clean and you are free of any obligations beyond that.
Whereas, in the sort of conservatism Hazony envisions, there is more than just the constraints of negative rights. There are positive duties as well, particularly given this strand of conservatisms emphasis on inherited traditions and the duties that exist between generations. Roger Scruton summed up this line of thought when he said “We do not merely study the past: we inherit it, and inheritance brings with it not only the rights of ownership, but the duties of trusteeship. Things fought for and died for should not be idly squandered. For they are the property of others, who are not yet born.” Conservatism teaches that our inheritance is a blessing that gives us great benefits but which also comes with obligations to sustain and pass on these things to the next generation as well. While liberals may, if they so choose, try to ensure these things are done, there is no particular obligation to do so. But the need for these things is (for lack of a better phrase) baked into the essence of Hazony’s conservative tradition.
Richard Fulmer
Nov 8 2023 at 2:30pm
I disagree. Liberalism assumes a government created and enforced rule-of-law framework that requires people to respect each other’s rights and refrain from initiating violence against others and that punishes them when they don’t break (i.e., when they hit, kill, rape, steal, defraud).
This precludes people from living by preying on others. Denied the right of predation, people can survive only by supplying goods and services that others want at a price they are willing to pay.
Such a system rewards the “bourgeois virtues” such as hard work, thrift, civility, tolerance, persistence, and honesty and punishes their opposites.
The problem isn’t liberalism, the problem is that we’ve rejected liberalism and replaced it with a belief in a government whose purpose is the amelioration of all pain. But reliving people of the consequences of their own actions requires forcing others to bear those consequences, thus rejecting liberalism’s prohibition against the initiation of force.
Roger McKinney
Nov 8 2023 at 9:47am
Does Hazony explain why his ancient version of conservatism failed to sustain itself?
Kevin Corcoran
Nov 8 2023 at 10:38am
He does. When Hazony speaks of the ability of a system to preserve itself (or lack of such ability), he does not necessarily mean that it is self-sustaining regardless of whether the ideas of that system are accepted or upheld. For conservatism to be sustained, it still requires the widespread acceptance of conservative ideas and the commitment to a conservative life. If these values are upheld and the conservative life is faithfully lived, conservatism can sustain itself as a system. But if the tenants of Anglo-American conservatism are rejected, because people are persuaded to abandon them in favor of, say, the tenants of Enlightenment liberalism instead, then of course conservatism can’t survive that. And this is what Hazony says has happened, arguing “The trauma of the Second World War persuaded Americans and Europeans to adopt the closed system of Enlightenment-liberal principles as the sole foundation for public life and moral obligation.” Such a thing is fatal to conservatism.
But, Hazony says, there is still a crucial difference. While conservatism can be sustained as long as its ideas are upheld and honored, the same cannot be said of Enlightenment liberalism, because “Enlightenment liberalism provides no resources for maintaining the traditional forms of public life and moral obligation that these nations had previously known.” The animating principles of Enlightenment liberalism are not sufficient to ensure the survival of the liberal system, even if strictly followed and implemented, because so much of the behavior and so many of the evolved social institutions required to ensure the success and survival of a stable society is ultimately optional under liberalism. In theory, Hazony says, the fact that the necessary values and behavior for a stable society must be derived “from sources external to liberalism is not, in principle, fatal” and one can envision a society in the social institutions needed for this cohesion flourished “even as liberal premises are made the official governing doctrine of the state.” But, Hazony says, “This proposal has by now been empirically refuted” and that in practice over the last sixty years we have witnessed “the opposite. Everywhere it has gone, the liberal system has brought about the dissolution of these traditional institutions.”
Whereas, Hazony says, when conservative ideas are upheld, this is not the case, and conservative ideals do in fact carry the tools necessary to ensure the health and success of a social order. But those ideas must be recognized, defended, and upheld – which is his mission with this book.
Mactoul
Nov 8 2023 at 11:34pm
Thus liberalism requires additional unprincipled exceptions in order to be instantiated.
John S
Nov 12 2023 at 10:18am
“tenant” should be “tenets” (sorry, this is a pet peeve of mine)
Very interesting and thought provoking post. I look forward to this series.