Traditionalist conservatism

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Traditionalist conservatism, also known as "traditionalism," is a political philosophy that developed in the United States. It tends to emphasize cultural renewal and is characterized by an adherence to the principles of prescription (law), custom (law), social order, hierarchy, faith, the natural family, ordered liberty, and tradition. It may be said to have affinities with reactionary thought, and some adherents of this movement perhaps embrace that label, defying the stigma that has attached to it in Western culture since the Enlightenment.

Traditionalist conservatism as an organized intellectual force emerged after World War II in the writings of a group of university professors (labeled the "New Conservatives" by the popular press of the time) who rejected the notions of individualism, liberalism, modernity, and social progress^[1] and revived interest in what T. S. Eliot referred to as "the permanent things" (those perennial institutions that ground society: the church, the family, the state, community life, etc.).

The acknowledged leader of the New Conservatives was independent scholar Russell Kirk, (father-in-law of Dr. Jeffrey O. Nelson, co-founder of the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal), whose most famous work was 1953's The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Santayana (later republished as The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot). Kirk's writings and legacy are interwoven with the history of traditionalist conservatism, with his influence felt at the Heritage Foundation, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and other conservative think tanks.

Other New Conservatives (later known as traditionalists) included University of Chicago professor Richard M. Weaver, sociologist Robert A. Nisbet, and Mount Holyoke College professor Peter Viereck.

Contents 1 Eighteenth and nineteenth century 1.1 Burkean origins 1.2 Early American Traditionalist Conservatism 2 Early Twentieth century 2.1 "The Bookman" and "The American Review" 2.2 "The British Distributists" 2.3 "The New Humanists" 2.4 "The Southern Agrarians" 2.5 "T. S. Eliot and Christopher Dawson" 3 Mid-Twentieth Century 3.1 "The New Conservatives" 3.2 Russell Kirk and the Six Canons of Conservatism 4 Late Twentieth century and Early Twenty-first century 4.1 Traditionalism and the Conservative Movement 5 Related political philosophies 6 Traditionalists 6.1 Contemporary traditionalists 6.2 Prominent traditionalists 7 See also 8 References

[edit] Eighteenth and nineteenth century

[edit] Burkean origins

Traditionalist conservatism could be said to have begun with the thought of Anglo-Irish Whig statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke, whose political principles were rooted in moral natural law and the Western tradition. He believed in prescriptive rights and what he referred to as "ordered liberty" as well as a strong belief in trascendent values that found support in such institutions as the church, the family, and the state.^[2] He was a fierce critic of the principles behind the French Revolution and in 1790 his observations on the excesses and radicalism of the French Revolution were collected in Reflections on the Revolution in France. In Reflections he took to task the radical innovations of the revolutionaries, such as the "Rights of Man". American social critic and historian Russell Kirk wrote that "...the Reflections burns with all the wrath and anguish of a prophet who saw the traditions of Christendom and the fabric of civil society dissolving before his eyes."^[3]

Burke's influence would extend to later thinkers and writers both in his native Britain and in Continental Europe. Among those influenced by his thought were the English Romantic poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and Robert Southey, Scottish Romantic author Sir Walter Scott,^[4] French counter-revolutionaries Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand, Louis de Bonald, and Joseph de Maistre,^[5] and in America President John Adams and those associated with the Federalist Party^[6]

[edit] Early American Traditionalist Conservatism

Burkean traditionalism was transported to the American colonies through the policies and principles of the Federalist Party and its leadership as embodied by John Adams and Alexander Hamilton. Federalists opposed the French Revolution, defended traditional Christian morality, and supported a new "natural aristocracy" based on "property, education, family status, and sense of ethical responsibility."^[7]

Burke's influence in America continued beyond the Federalist Party in the lives and work of such various thinkers and writers such as John Randolph of Roanoke, John C. Calhoun, Joseph Story, and later James Russell Lowell, President Woodrow Wilson,^[8] and Irving Babbitt.^[9]

[edit] Early Twentieth century

[edit] "The Bookman" and "The American Review"

In the twentieth century traditionalist conservatism on both sides of the Atlantic was centered around two publications: the Bookman and the American Review. Owned and edited by the eccentric Seward Collins, these journals published the writings of the British Distributists, the New Humanists, the Southern Agrarians, T. S. Eliot, Christopher Dawson, and others. Eventually Collins descended into the madness of fascism and lost the support of his traditionalist backers but not before the former contributors to his journals left an profound mark on the history of traditionalist conservatism.^[10]

[edit] "The British Distributists"

In the early twentieth century the forebears of modern traditionalist conservatism was found in three distinct branches of thought. The first came from Britain through the efforts of Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton and the socioeconomic system they advocated:distributism. Originating in the papal encyclical Rerum Novarum, distributism employed the concept of subsidiarity as a "third way" solution to the twin "evils" of socialism and capitalism. As a system it favored local economies, small business, the agrarian way of life, and craftsmen and artists.^[11] In such books as Belloc's The Servile State (1912), Economics for Helen (1924), and An Essay on the Restoration of Property (1936) and Chesterton's The Outline of Sanity (1927), traditional communities that echoed those found in the Middle Ages were advocated and big business and big government condemned. In the United States distributist ideas were embraced by the journalist Herbert Agar, Catholic activist Dorothy Day, economist E. F. Schumacher and were comparable to the work of Wilhelm Roepke.^[12]

[edit] "The New Humanists"

Another intellectual branch of early twentieth century traditionalist conservatism was known as the New Humanism. Led by Harvard University professor Irving Babbitt and Princeton University professor Paul Elmer More, the New Humanism was a literary and social criticism movement that opposed both romanticism and naturalism. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, the New Humanism defended artistic standards and "first principles" (Babbitt's phrase). Reaching an apogee in 1930, Babbitt and More published a variety of books including Babbitt's Literature and the American College (1908), Rousseau and Romanticism (1919), and Democracy and Leadership (1924) and More's Shelburne Essays (1904-1921).^[13]

[edit] "The Southern Agrarians"

The third and final group of traditionalist conservatives from the early twentieth century were the Southern Agrarians. Originally a group of Vanderbilt University poets and writers known as the Fugitives they included John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Donald Davidson, and Robert Penn Warren. Adhering to strict literary standards (Warren and traditionalist scholar Cleanth Brooks were to later formulate a form of literary criticism known as the New Criticism), in 1930 some of the Fugitives joined other traditionalist Southern writers to publish I'll Take My Stand, which applied standards sympathetic to local particularism and the agrarian way of life to politics and economics. Condemning northern industrialism and commercialism, the "twelve southerners" who contributed to the book echoed arguments made by the distributists and a few years later joined Hilaire Belloc and Herbert Agar in a new collection of essays entitled Who Owns America: A New Declaration of Independence. The Southern Agrarians had a great influence on New Conservative scholar Richard M. Weaver and writer-farmer Wendell Berry.^[14]

[edit] "T. S. Eliot and Christopher Dawson"

A champion of the Western tradition and orthodox Christian culture, T. S. Eliot was also arguably the "last great poet of the English language." Known for his poem The Waste Land, Eliot was a political reactionary who used literary modernist means for traditionalist ends. His After Strange Gods: A Primer on Modern Heresy (1934) and Notes towards the Definition of Culture (1948) align with the grand tradition of Christian humanism extending back to Edmund Burke, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, G. K. Chesterton, and Hilaire Belloc. Educated by Irving Babbitt at Harvard University, Eliot was friends with, Allen Tate, and Russell Kirk,^[15].

Praised by T. S. Eliot as the most powerful intellectual influence in Britain, historian Christopher Dawson's contribution to traditionalist conservatism was long-standing. Central to his work was the idea that religion was at the heart of every culture, especially Western culture, and his writings, including The Age of Gods (1928), Religion and Culture (1948), and Religion and the Rise of Western Culture (1950). A contributor to Eliot's Criterion, after World War Two Dawson believed that religion and culture were going to be more central to rebuilding the West in the wake of fascism and the rise of communism.^[16] Other traditionalist conservatives influences would be felt by the New Conservative movement of the 1940s and 1950s, including the writings and thought of Bernard Iddings Bell, Gordon Keith Chalmers, Grenville Clark, Peter Drucker, Will Herberg, Ross J. S. Hoffman, and Dorothy Thompson.^[17]

[edit] Mid-Twentieth Century

[edit] "The New Conservatives"

In the 1940s and 1950s the New Conservatives appeared on the academic scene rebuking the progressive worldview inherent in an America comfortable with New Deal economics, a burgeoning military-industrial complex, and a consumerist and commercialized citizenry. University of Chicago professor Richard M. Weaver was among the first of the New Conservatives and his Ideas Have Consequences (1948) chronicled the steady erosion of Western cultural values since the Middle Ages.^[18] Weaver was joined in 1949 by Peter Viereck, whose Conservatism Revisited examined the conservative thought of Prince Klemens Metternich.

The 1950s brought a flowering of New Conservative thought with 1953's The New Science of Politics by Eric Voegelin, 1953's The Quest for Community by Robert A. Nisbet, and 1955's Conservatism in America by Clinton Rossiter. However, the book that defined the traditionalist school was 1953's The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot, written by Russell Kirk, which gave a detailed analysis of the intellectual pedigree of Anglo-American traditionalist conservatism.^[19]

Other New Conservatives included John Blum, Daniel Boorstin, McGeorge Bundy, Thomas Cook, Raymond English, John Hallowell, Anthony Harrigan, August Heckscher, Milton Hindus, Klemens von Klemperer, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Richard Leopold, S. A. Lukacs, Malcolm Moos, Eliseo Vivas, Geoffrey Wagner, Chad Walsh, and Francis Wilson^[20]) as well as Arthur Bestor, Mel Bradford, C. P. Ives, Stanley Jaki, John Lukacs, Forrest McDonald, Thomas Molnar, Gerhard Neimeyer, James V. Schall, S.J., Peter J. Stanlis, Stephen J. Tonsor, and Frederick Wilhelmsen.^[21]

[edit] Russell Kirk and the Six Canons of Conservatism

The Conservative Mind was written by Kirk as a doctoral dissertation while he was a student at the St. Andrews University in Scotland. Previously the author of a biography of American conservative John Randolph of Roanoke, Kirk's The Conservative Mind had laid out six "canons of conservative thought" in the book, including:

1. Belief that a divine intent rules society as well as conscience... Political problems, at bottom, are religious and moral problems.
2. Affection for the proliferating variety and mystery of traditional life, as distinguished from the narrowing uniformity and equalitarian and utilitarian aims of most radical systems.
3. Conviction that civilized society requires orders and classes...
4. Persuasion that property and freedom are inseparably connected, and that economic leveling is not economic progress...
5. Faith in prescription and distrust of "sophisters and calculators." Man must put a control upon his will and his appetite...Tradition and sound prejudice provide checks upon man's anarchic impulse.
6. Recognition that change and reform are not identical...^[22]

Kirk goes on to examine the thought of a wide array of conservative thinkers, including Anglo-Irish statesman Edmund Burke, American Federalists John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, British literati Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey, Southern conservatives John Randolph of Roanoke, John Calhoun, American Catholic political thinker Orestes Brownson, New England writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, British Catholic John Henry Newman, American historian Henry Adams, the New Humanism of Irving Babbitt and Paul Elmer More, and Anglo-American poet and literary critic T. S. Eliot.

[edit] Late Twentieth century and Early Twenty-first century

[edit] Traditionalism and the Conservative Movement

In the United States during the 1940s and 1950s a nascent conservative movement was emerging through the writings of traditionalists such as Weaver and Kirk, libertarian writers F. A. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, and anticommunist thinkers such as Whittaker Chambers, Frank Meyer, and James Burnham. This "intellectual phase" gave way to an "institutional phase" in the 1950s where magazines such as National Review and think tanks such as the Intercollegiate Studies Institute were created. By 1964 the conservative movement entered an "electoral phase" with the nomination of Republican Sen. Barry M. Goldwater of Arizona for president. Goldwater's subsequent defeat resulted in a "New Right" emerging led by figures such as anti-feminist activist Phyllis Schlafly, California Governor Ronald Reagan, direct-mail icon Richard Viguerie, Heritage Foundation founder Paul Weyrich, and others. As the conservative movement matured it coalesced around Reagan, finding its apogee in his 1976 presidential run and 1980 presidential victory.

Traditionalism at this time was still isolated to those scholars such as Kirk, Weaver, Nisbet, Viereck, and classicist Eric Voegelin. In 1957 Kirk founded Modern Age,^[23] a conservative academic quarterly which to this day has remained traditionalist in scope and over the years has published various traditionalist thinkers, such as Max Picard, Andrew Lytle, Richard Weaver, Robert Nisbet, C. P. Ives, Ross Hoffman, and others. In 1960 Kirk founded the oldest conservative quarterly review of books, The University Bookman.^[24]

Also during this time various institutions were created which maintained a traditionalist philosophy. Once such organization was the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, which since its founding had a close relationship with Kirk. Through Kirk's influence (as well as other well known conservatives) it has been a center for traditionalist students, hosting lectures, symposiums, conferences, and debates and publishing both Modern Age and The University Bookman as well as a variety of books by traditionalist scholars through its imprint, ISI Books.^[25]

In the 1970s Fr. Ian Boyd formed the G. K. Chesterton Institute for Faith and Culture, which became a leading center of traditionalist Catholic thought. In the 1980s traditionalist scholar Claes G. Ryn founded the National Humanities Institute^[26], a center for the study of the humanities from the conservative perspective. Former Intercollegiate Review editor Gregory Wolfe founded the Center for Religious Humanism (which publishes a traditionalist arts journal, Image (journal).^[27] In the mid-1990s, after the death of Russell Kirk, the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal was founded and not long after the Howard Center on Family, Religion, and Society was created by Allan C. Carlson and John Howard, both previously of the Rockford Institute,^[28] a paleoconservative think tank with traditionalist leanings. Other traditionalist organizations include the Trinity Forum, Ellis Sandoz's Eric Voegelin Institute, the T.S. Eliot Society, the Malcolm Muggeridge Society, the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts' Center for Faith and Culture, and the University of Kentucky's McConnell Center. A major funder of traditionalist causes, especially the Russell Kirk Center, is the Wilbur Foundation.

[edit] Related political philosophies

There is some confusion over whether American traditionalist conservatism and paleoconservatism are one and the same political philosophy. While there is some overlap concerning principles and even policy prescriptions, traditionalist conservatism differs with paleoconservatism in that traditionalists emphasize culture while paleoconservatives emphasize reactionary political action. Paleoconservatism is also, somewhat, more influenced by Old Right and anti-immigrant politics. Paleoconservatism also is generally understood to be more ideological in nature and more militant in its approach to other conservative political philosophies, including neoconservatism. It may be ventured that paleoconservatism is possibly the political expression of traditionalist conservatism, especially as many paleoconservatives such as former presidential candidate and journalist Patrick J. Buchanan express traditionalist conservative ideas and support traditionalist conservative causes such as cultural renewal and defending Western Civilization. Traditionalist conservatism, however, is older than paleoconservatism (which emerged in the late 1980s among traditionalist conservative academics and journalists in response to the growing influence of neoconservatism), and while many paleoconservatives (Claes G. Ryn, Paul Gottfried) are also traditionalists, not all traditionalist conservatives are paleoconservatives.

[edit] Traditionalists

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[edit] Contemporary traditionalists

Traditionalist conservatism today is primarily centered around the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal, the National Humanities Institute, and the Edmund Burke Society.^{[citation needed]}

Prominent modern traditionalist conservatives include Joseph Baldacchino, President of the National Humanities Institute and Co-Editor of Humanitas; Jeremy Beer; Thomas Bertonneau, Visiting Professor of English as SUNY-Oswego; Bradley J. Birzer, Associate Professor of History at Hillsdale College; Christopher Olaf Blum, Professor of Humanities at the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts; Cicero Bruce, Assistant Professor of English at Southern Catholic College; George W. Carey, Professor of Government at Georgetown University; Allan Carlson, President of the Howard Center for Family, Religion, and Society and editor of Front Porch Republic; James Como, founder of the C. S. Lewis Society; T. Kenneth Cribb, Jr., President of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute; Allan R. Crippen, II, founder of the John Jay Institute for Faith, Society, and Law; Ian Crowe, Associate Professor of history at Brewton-Parker College and director of the Edmund Burke Society of America; Hugh Mercer Curtler, Professor of Philosophy at Southwest Minnesota State University; Rod Dreher, columnist for the Dallas Morning News, [[beliefnet.com]], and editor of Front Porch Republic; Lee Edwards, Professor of Politics at Catholic University of America; William E. Fahey, President the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts; Michael P. Federici, Professor of Political Science at Mercyhurst College; Bruce Frohnen, Visitng Associate Professor of Law at Ohio Northern University College of Law; Paul Gottfried, Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College; Vigen Guroian, Professor of Religious Studies (Eastern Christianity) at the University of Virginia; Mark C. Henrie, Editor of The Intercollegiate Review; Annette Y. Kirk, President of the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal and Publisher of The University Bookman (and Russell Kirk's widow); E. Christian Kopff, Professor of Classics at the University of Colorado, Boulder; James Kurth, Claude Smith Professor of Political Science at Swarthmore College; Peter Augustine Lawler, Professor of Government and International Studies at Berry College; Daniel J. Mahoney, Professor of Politics at Assumption College; Mark G. Malvasi, Professor of History at Randolph-Macon College; Wilfred M. McClay, Professor of History at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga; W. Wesley McDonald, Professor of Political Science at Elizabethtown College; independent historian George H. Nash; Jeffrey O. Nelson, publisher of The University Bookman, and Studies in Burke and His Time (and Russell Kirk's son-in-law); George A. Panichas, formerly of the University of Maryland and former editor of Modern Age; Joseph Pappin III, professor at the University of South Carolina, and editor of Studies in Burke and His Time; James E. Person, Jr., a biographer of Russell Kirk; Gerald J. Russello, editor of The University Bookman; Claes G. Ryn, Professor of Politics at the Catholic University of America, Chairman of the National Humanities Institute, and Co-Editor of Humanitas; Ellis Sandoz, Hermann Moyse Jr. Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Louisiana State University and Director of the Eric Voegelin Institute for American Renaissance Studies; Caleb Stegall, attorney and former Editor of The New Pantagruel; Ewa M. Thompson, Professor of German and Slavic Studies at Rice University; John M. Vella, Managing Editor of Modern Age, The Intercollegiate Review, and The Political Science Reviewer; Gleaves Whitney, Director of the Hausenstein Center for Presidential Studies at Grand Valley State University; Gregory Wolfe, the Editor of Image and Founder of the Center for Religious Humanism; R. V. Young, Professor of English at North Carolina State University and Editor of Modern Age, and John Zmirak, Writer-in-Residence at the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts, especially noted for his culinary and imbibinal expertise manifest in such works as "The Bad Catholic's Guide to Good Living" and "The Bad Catholic’s Guide to Wine, Whiskey, and Songs", two works that are widely credited with bringing traditionalist conservatism into the kitchen.

Traditionalism is also associated with the thought of British philosopher Roger Scruton and in practical politics through the activities of the Cornerstone Group in Britain and the Disraeli-MacDonald Institute in Canada.

[edit] Prominent traditionalists

[edit] See also

• High Tory
• Red Tory

[edit] References