What the Right Is: Conservatism

Chapter 1.1 of 'The Freedom Scale'

Why this book | Title Page | Table of Contents
Preface | Introduction
PART 1
Chapter 1 (1.1) (1.2) | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3
PART 2
Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6
PART 3
Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 | Chapter 14
PART 4
Chapter 15 | Chapter 16 | Chapter 17 |
PART 5
Chapter 18 | Chapter 19 | Chapter 20 | Conclusion
Appendix | Works Cited

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Part 1: Left and Right

Chapter 1: What the Right Is

The real right…not all that made-up stuff

1.1

Conservatism

• Movements of conservatism

  • Philosophical (temperamental) conservatism

  • Social conservatism

  • Anti-leftism

  • National-security conservatism

Conservatism

Ask a conservative where his political ideology comes from…

The answer could head in a variety of directions, but if he’s an American, there’s a good chance he will begin with the American founding. He might start with the Declaration of Independence, which gave voice to his core principles, love of liberty, and preference for a strictly limited government…or with the Bill of Rights, written to remind that very same government that it is not the source of those rights—that its proper role is only to protect them.

He might go on to reference the major players of the American Revolution: Madison, Jefferson, Adams, and the rest of the philosopher-statesmen who took the classical-liberal principles of the Enlightenment and sought to actuate them in a brand-new nation.

He might mention the activists and agitators: Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty. Stalwart, fiery Patrick Henry. Paul Revere and the Alarm Riders of April 1775. Thomas Paine, whose Common Sense case for revolution quickly became one of the most widely read written works of all time.

He might speak with pride of those who gave their “lives, fortunes, and sacred honors.” Men like John Hancock (who exhausted the vast wealth of his shipping empire to help fund the Colonial cause), Benjamin Franklin, and the rest of their compatriots, who understood that they “must all hang together, or, most assuredly,” they would “all hang separately.”

Nearly all will name George Washington with solemn reverence, and not just for his military leadership. Washington’s refusal to become a king, and his departure from the presidency after two terms, set an example not just for Americans, but for the whole world: This is what a voluntary, peaceful, non-hereditary transition of power looks like. You see…it can be done. 

Even conservatives in other lands—recognizing the philosophical roots of America to be the “purest distillation”¹ of classical-liberal ideas—may begin with some of these same associations. The American founding was not the first shot in the ongoing classical-liberal revolution, but it was one of the loudest. 

Many would then go on to reference our deeper shared history. The Glorious Revolution and English Civil Wars. The English Bill of Rights and Magna Carta. The  era of the Enlightenment, during which classical-liberal principles changed the trajectory of human history and set the stage for the modern world. Some will mention the better-known philosophers of this groundbreaking period in human history: Locke and Montesquieu. Some will go further, adding names like Blackstone, Grotius, and many more. 

Some will dive deeper into history. Overton, Rumbold, and the Levellers. The seminal explorations of the School of Salamanca. Bottom-up systems of law, such as English common law² or Irish Brehon law. The struggles between barons and kings. The “dooms” of King Alfred. The quasi-meritocratic concepts of Germanic kingship and the deeply human concept of a “law of the land.”

Give the conservative a little time to come up with a coherent statement of his core belief system, and he might say that…