[This is Chapter Three of Murphey’s book Modern Social and Political Philosophies: Burkean Conservatism and Classical Liberalism.]

Chapter 3

AMERICAN BURKEANS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

In the United Stated today, Burkean conservatism is continued by a highly literate group of  predominantly Catholic thinkers. Among them is Russell Kirk, who in The Conservative Mind has summarized Burkean thought as including the following elements :

. The central role of religion. "Belief .that a divine intent rules society . . ., forging an eternal chain of right and duty.”

. Tradition.

. Hierarchy. “Conviction that civilized society requires orders and classes."

. Property. "Property and freedom are inseparable.”  (Historically, however, the conservative in this sense has championed a culture based on landed rather than commercial property.)

. Limitations on will and appetite through prescription. "Tradition and sound prejudice provide checks upon man's anarchic impulse."

. Reform, but carefully and in “cognizance of the real tendency of Providential social forces.”1

This list of elements differs only in form from a similar list given by Willmoore Kendall and George W. Carey. They cited: principled morality, hierarchy, historic rights, entailed inheritance, retention and inheritance, and religion.2

To Russell Kirk, "Christianity is the core of our civilization."  "I am one who embraces the transcendent truth of revelation."  "There exists a legitimate presumption in favor of venerable, usages; for your or my private experience is brief and confused."  "The vague attitude that one is entitled to do as one likes, so long as it doesn't injure somebody else, (is) devoid of spiritual and intellectual discipline."  "Our modern culture: impoverished in spirit and community by an alleged material progress . . .”  “To the conservative of Burke's school, the world is at best a tolerable place, kept in order chiefly through respect for custom and precedent. It may be patched and pruned here and there; but the nature of man remains flawed.”3

Richard Weaver of the University of Chicago is another major figure in twentieth century American conservatism. His book Ideas Have Consequences  is one of the leading expressions of the Burkean worldview. Weaver's main idea is that Western civilization has moved into decadence since the fourteenth century by losing sight of God, the true reality. With that as a premise, he says that "the world is now more than ever dominated by the gods of mass and speed . . . The worship of these can lead only to the lowering of standards, the adulteration of quality, and, in general, to the loss of those things which are essential to the life of civility and culture."  His philosophy is at odds with classical liberalism and the middle class: "The plight of Europe today is the direct result of the bourgeois ascendancy and its corrupted world view." He would prefer a society based on hierarchy: "Where men feel that society means station, the highest and the lowest see their endeavors contributing to a common end, and they are in harmony rather than in competition." In his book The Southern Tradition at Bay, Weaver praises the antebellum South as having been the highest development of American culture. "The Southern tradition has a fourfold root. The most obvious of these is the feudal theory of society . . . Another is the code of chivalry . . . Connected with this is the ancient concept of the gentleman .  Finally there is a religiousness."4

The writings of Eric Voegelin are far more abstruse and theological than is usual with the other highly literate authors of the contemporary Burkean school. Voegelin speaks of the transendent reality of God and of how the salvation of man must depend.solely upon God’s grace, not upon the actions of men.  Any type of “self-salvation” is, so far as he is concerned, a form of “Gnosis,” a heresy.  “Gnosis may be primarily intellectual and assume the form of an indwelling of divine substance in the human soul . . . Or it may be primarily volitional and assume the form of activist redemption of man and society, as in the instance of revolutionary artivists like Comte, Marx, or Hitler. There Gnostic experiences in the amplitude of their variety, are the core of the redivinization of society."  In a passage that is characteristic of his style, he explains that "Gnostic speculation overcame the uncertainty of  faith by receding  from transcendence and endowing man and his intramundane range of action with the meaning of eschatological fulfillment. In the measure in which this immanentization progressed experientially, civilizational activity became a mystical work of self-salvation. The spiritual strength of the soul which in Christianity was devoted to the sanctification of life could now be diverted into the more appealing, more tangible, and,  above all, so much easier creation of the terrestrial paradise." He then adds that "The more fervently all human energies are thrown ihto the great enterprise of salvation through world-immanent action, the farther the human beings who engage in this enterprise move away from the life of the spirit." Voegelin would leave "the transfiguration of the world to the grace of God beyond history" and would not have people presume to attempt it.5

There are quite a lot of other Burkean authors also writing today.  [Note in 2001: Some just referred to are now deceased.]   In fact, the Burkean perspective predominates within the American "conservative" intellectual community, as evidenced, for example, by the composition of the Philadelphia Society.

The late Frank S. Meyer was known as the advocate of a “fusionist” position that held that Burkean conservatives and classical liberals have enough in common to come together in the same philosophy. He was the editor of What is Conservatism?, and in it he observed that conservatives in general, including classical liberals, share certain attitudes: “However varied their religious commitments, (they) all accept, implicitly or explicitly, the existence of an objective moral order."  They all consider "the human person the necessary center of political and social thought.  Whether their stress is upon his freedom and his rights or upon his responsibilities and his duties, it is in terms of the individual person that they think and write . . . They all share, in contrast to contemporary Liberals, a distaste for the use of the power of the state to enforce ideological patterns upon human beings." He said that they all join in "the spirit of the Constitution.”  This includes the limitation of governmental power, the separation of powers, and federalism. And he said that Burkean conservatives and classical liberals are all devoted to Western civilization and to its defense against messianic Communism.6

I might interject that I believe the fusionist position would require a considerable modification of each philosophy. Meyer himself wrote that "there is much in classical liberalism that conservatives must reject - its philosophical foundations, its tendency towards Utopian constructions, its disregard (explicitly, though by no means implicitly) of tradition; . . . it is the source of much that is responsible for the plight of the twentieth century." He added that classical liberals are not aware "of the reality of original sin." Such differences can be minimized, but we readily see that they are extensive. In fact, the differences go much further still: The Burkean has been a severe critic of the bourgeoisie, the classical liberal their main defender; the Burkean has wanted a status society founded on hereditary social hierarchy, the classical liberal a free-floating.society in which ndividuals reach their own level through voluntary interaction; the Burkean has held authority a much higher value than truth, while the classical liberal has been committed most often to rationalistic mental freedom; and the Burkean with his organic view of society has been much more willing to use the State (although not for egalitarian purposes) than the classical liberal finds justifiable. This is not to deny that if each learns from the other they may not come somewhat closer together, since each does in fact grasp a certain “portion of the truth." But a consolidation would be similar to the legal consolidation of two corporations, in that it would require the extinguishment of both original entities.

It is now almost two centuries since Burke.  The contemporary Burkean faces a Western world in which there is no landed aristocracy, no towering church. This inevitably calls for adjustments.  This appears in Meyer's observation that "the conscious conservatism of a revolutionary or post-revolutionary era faces problems inconceivable to the natural conservatism of a prerevolutionary time . . . Today's conservatism cannot simply affirm. It must select and adjudge. It is conservative because in its selection and in its judgment it bases itself upon the accumulated wisdom of mankind over millenia." And this is a profound change. Instead of taking existing institutions on faith, the twentieth century conservative must himself, despite his denials, be very much a rationalist, a model builder, in his own right.  Eventually he faces all of the problems of how to change society to bring it into conformity with his values. His task has been transformed from one of defense to one of innovation. 

We see adjustments in M. Stanton Evans' adaptation of the Burkean philosophy to personal voluntarism. In a chapter in Meyer's book, Evans says that "the conservative believes man should be free; he does not believe being free is the end of human existence. He maintains that man exists to form his life in consonance with the objective order, to choose the Good. But ‘choice’ of the Good can take place only in circumstances favoring volition." Continuing, he says that the conservative agrees with the authoritarian that men are not to be trusted, and his constant concern is to restrain the destructive tendencies he discerns in a fallen humanity. But he does not agree that such a judgment means man should be ruled by an aristocracy. For if men are evil, then potential aristocrats are evil, too, and no man, logically, can be said to have a commission to coerce another."  This is far removed from the statements two centuries ago by Samuel Johnson about "subordination being conducive to human happiness" and about the right of a magistrate to enforce "right opinion."


                                                              NOTES


1. Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1960), pp. 7, 8.

2. Jeffrey Hart, The American Dissent: A Decade of Modern Conservatism (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1966), pp. 192-193.

3. Russell Kirk, Enemies ot the Permanent Things (New Rochelle: Arlington House, 1969),  pp. 31, 34, 36, 44, 66, 188.

4. Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences (Chicago: Phoenix Books, 1948), pp.  v, vi, 38, 43; also The Southern Tradition at Bay (New Rochelle: Arlington House, 1968), p. 47.

5. Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952),  pp. 124, 129, 131, 147.  I have been criticized for including Voegelin in this chapter on American Burkeans, since he was, of course, German.  His role in the Burkean discourse within the United States has been so strong, however, that it would seem deficient to exclude him from a discussion of that body of thought.

6. Frank S. Meyer (ed.), What is Conservatism? (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964), pp. 230, 231, 14, 16, 12.

7. Meyer, Conservatism?, pp. 72, 74.