Crooked Timber’s Henry gets the discussion started by examining where the current crop of Neo-Conservatives stand in relation to their political forebearers, Burkean and/or traditionalist conservatives. Related to this, I started writing a response to this essay by Mark Henrie in the lastest New Pantagruel tracing the political, philosophical, cultural, and religious foundations of Traditionalist Conservativism, but I was never able to complete it. The CT discussion, however, has rekindled my interest. First, I highly recommend Henrie’s essay. It is long, but it very clearly lays out what it means to be a big-C Conservative. You will note that the current crop of little-c conservatives bear little resemblence.

I found myself nodding in agreement with many of the notions put forth by Henrie — an emphasis on community and family, and social good. Then there is the economic perspective — a “third way” between capitalism and socialism as defined by Wilhelm Roepke, with the Market bound within social institutions to avoid the inevitable pitfalls of the Market, consumer materialism and social instability. Despite his snarkiness about the 1990s under Bill Clinton, Henrie sounds unconvinced of the Neo-Cons desire to bring democracy to the Middle East. Henrie also believes that the current emphasis on national defense is compatible with Conservative thought — I stopped nodding my head here, though it had more to do with my own feelings toward national security matters rather than any commitment to Conservativism.

Back to Crooked Timber. I guess in my own partially-informed way, I’ve been waiting for this civil war as well. What I wonder, however, is whether the Traditionalist Conservatives will strike out on their own and attempt to wrestle power from the Neo-Cons in the Republican party to bring more continuity to the party’s platform. Despite my interest in Conservative political philosophy, I can’t quite bring myself to be a Republican, as the party’s corporatism and near-religious commitment to Darwinist economic policy (ironic, no?) doesn’t sit well.

Posted on 13 May 2005