“Freedom
is a need of the soul, and nothing else. It is in striving toward God
that the soul strives continually after a condition of freedom. God alone
is the inciter and guarantor of freedom. He is the only
guarantor…. Religion and freedom are indivisible. Without freedom the soul
dies. Without the soul there is no justification for freedom.”
-
Whittaker
Chambers – “Witness”
I
didn’t attend the forum on the “common good” a few weeks ago, so the
information I’ve gleaned about it has come from media reports. With that said,
I did find one of the comments cited in the Gazette from Professor Charles
Brown quite interesting
This is what Professor Brown said - “What strikes me
is that conservatives don’t have the faith in peoples’ abilities to come
together, reason together and make constructive changes for the future. It
strikes me that they, too, often say, ‘Well, we’re just better off to just let
things alone...’
While I’m sure that Professor Brown’s thoughts are
sincerely held, I must say that they don’t represent the Conservatism I
explored, studied in depth, and adopted in the late seventies.
I didn’t come by my Conservatism easily. I grew up
in Boston, America’s cradle of liberty and one of the country’s Progressive
strongholds. Until the 1970’s, I would never have considered voting for a
Republican, nor can I recall knowing many Conservatives other than an
occasional acquaintance I tolerated for the sake of politeness.
Things began to change when a friend encouraged me
to read William Buckley’s “God and Man at Yale.” I was surprised to find that
Buckley wasn’t the fire breathing lunatic I’d heard about. Once I passed that
threshold, I decided that further exploration was in order. I read Whittaker
Chambers’ “Witness” next, followed by Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations," F.A. Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom” and
“The Fatal Conceit.” Then came Milton Friedman’s “Capitalism and Freedom” and
Edmund Burke’s “Reflections on the Revolution in France.”
My pilgrimage was complete as soon as I read the
final page of Russel Kirk’s “The Conservative Mind.” I knew that I was a
Conservative and was proud to be part of the movement.
When Professor Brown said that Conservatives “don’t
have faith in the peoples’ abilities to come together,” he couldn’t have been
more wrong. That’s not the Conservatism I have practiced for many years now.
When one looks at the core beliefs of Conservatives,
he or she won’t find a shred of evidence that suggests that Conservatives
“don’t have faith in the peoples’ abilities to come together.” At the heart of
Conservative belief is the principle that people should live cooperatively with
their neighbors and be as free as possible to govern their own lives. Further, they
should be governed by people who promote human freedom and virtue.
If Professor Brown believes that we Conservatives
don’t have faith in people, he has misread us. We do trust people, but we also
understand human nature and recognize, as Founding Father Alexander Hamilton
did, that men aren’t angels and limits must be placed on those men and women
who govern us.
In his recent book, “Constitutional Conservatism,”
Peter Berkowitz described how Conservatism works: “It assumes the primacy of
self-interest but also the capacity of and necessity for citizens to rise above
it through the exercise of virtue. It welcomes a diverse array of voluntary
associations because they are an expression of liberty, to prevent any one from
dominating, and because they serve as schools for the virtues of freedom. And
it recognizes the special role of families and religious faith in cultivating
these virtues.”
Conservatives value liberty. Where the real divide
between Conservatives and Progressives comes in to play is the value Conservatives
place on what Berkowitz called “traditional understandings of order and virtue.”
He says that Progressives see these traditional understandings as obstacles to
freedom. Conservatives, on the other hand, see them as pillars of freedom.
We Conservatives aren’t resistant to change, but we
are the first ones who would say, to paraphrase English poet/philosopher G.K.
Chesterton, “Don’t ever tear down a fence until you know the reason why it was
put up.” Put another way, Conservatives believe “Hasty innovation may be a devouring conflagration, rather than a torch of progress.” (from Kirk’s “The Conservative
Mind”)
We Conservatives are fully prepared
to cooperate with our fellow citizens and leaders. We are willing to compromise
when compromise is called for. Above all, we want to secure the blessings of
liberty for ourselves and for the generations of Americans to come. We believe
these blessings are best preserved when we preserve them freely and
cooperatively. These virtues are nourished, as Berkowitz observed, “by
tradition.” In fact, liberty and
tradition are inter-dependent. They’re like love and marriage from the old
Sinatra tune - “You can’t have one without the other.”
