Michael Gerson, a conservative and a noted former speechwriter for the Bush administration, has been writing some interesting stuff lately about American conservatism, about what it should be about. Some of it I agree with; some I don't, and I'll be writing about that in the weeks to come. Today I want to agree with him, and note something he wrote a few weeks ago that discusses conservatives and foreign policy.
Conservatives are skeptical, and rightly so, he notes, of grand social or foreign policy projects: "Traditional conservatism has taught the priority of culture -- that societies are organic rather than mechanical and that attempts to change them through politics are like grafting machinery onto a flower. In this view, pushing for hasty reform is likely to upset some hidden balance and undermine the best of intentions. Wisdom is found in deference to tradition, not in bending the world to fit some religious or philosophic abstraction, even one as noble as the Declaration of Independence."
HOWEVER: "A conservatism that warns against utopianism and calls for cultural sensitivity is useful. When it begins to question the importance or existence of moral ideals in politics and foreign policy, it is far less attractive."
What does he mean? Well, for example, democracy and freedom are not merely philosophical abstractions seeking to upend the traditional order: "At the most basic level, the democracy agenda is not abstract at all. It is a determination to defend dissidents rotting in airless prisons, and people awaiting execution for adultery or homosexuality, and religious prisoners kept in shipping containers in the desert, and men and women abused and tortured in reeducation camps."
Historically, conservatism has not always recognized this: "Traditional conservatism has many virtues -- and a large historical problem. Certainly, established traditions concerning family, manners and military honor deserve our respect, because the human race is often wise while the individual is often foolish. But few human traditions were more deeply rooted in history than human slavery. Many traditional conservatives (though not the Whig Edmund Burke) defended this tradition and criticized the disruptive, religious radicalism of abolitionists..."
And so conservatives must not fall into the old trap, a trap many have identified and warned against over the years, be they Russell Kirk or Frank Meyer or whoever, of merely defending whatever is: "The unavoidable problem is this: Without moral absolutes, there is no way to determine which traditions are worth preserving and which should be overturned. Conservatism assumes and depends on an objective measure of right and wrong that skepticism cannot provide. Without a firm moral conviction that independence is superior to servitude, that freedom is superior to slavery, that the weak deserve special care and protection, the habit of conservatism is radically incomplete. In the absence of elevating ideals, it can become pessimistic and unambitious -- a morally indifferent preference for the status quo."
I think Gerson makes good points here. He could have also supported his ideas by examining the recent history of the post-World War II American Right. Look, why did conservatives so oppose communism and the Soviet Union? Why did our hero Ronald Reagan oppose it? Because of our moral ideals; because communism destroyed democracy and brought us brutal tyrants like Stalin or Mao, because it trampled on the rights of the individual and locked away millions in concentration camps and executed millions more. Because communism denied democracy by crushing the democratic Hungarian revolution of 1956 and the brief breath of freedom seen in Czechoslovakia in 1968. And on and on. The Cold War wasn't merely, for conservatives, about defending American national security (although that was part of it). It was also about defending moral ideals like freedom, liberty, and democracy against a dark cloud of totalitarianism. Communism is pretty much gone. Moral ideals as part of our foreign policy shouldn't be, although they must always be connected and closely identified with national security concerns.
