TAC: Claes G. Ryn

Claes Ryn, who teachs politics at Catholic University in Washington, had what I consider the best essay of the impressive bunch. In it, he argues that modern American conservatism has been "enthralled by politics," and has failed to understand and act on the truth that "the activities that shaped the deeper sensibilities and desires of Americans have continued to be dominated by people trying to dismantle what remains of traditional American and Western civilization." Politicians aren't the ones who set the long-term direction of any society; it's those who "capture a people's mind and imagination."

To recover, American conservatism would have to reorder its priorities and most especially put politics in its place. America's crisis is at bottom moral-spiritual and cultural. Though a new alliance of homeless political groups is desirable, a realignment would be unavailing in the long run unelss the old obsession with politics were also broken. The issues most needing attention will make the eyes of political junkies glaze over.

Prof. Ryn says that those who made modern conservatism were foremost political intellectuals, and economics enthusiasts. They weren't all that engaged by morality, religion and culture (except, I would say, to the extent that it was politically useful).

The problem, simply put, was lack of sophistication -- an inability to understand what most deeply shapes the outlook and conduct of human beings. Persons move according to their innermost beliefs, hopes, and fears. These are affected much less by politicians than by philosophers, novelists, religious visionaries, movemakers, playwrights, composers, panters and the like, thought truly great works of this kind reach most minds and imaginations only in diminished, popuular form.

Prof. Ryn says that the modern conservative movement has never really cared about the mind or the soul. Concerning ethics, it trusted the churches to take care of things, but the churches were compromised by the general trends in society. Evangelicals stayed mired in their "accustomed intellectual poverty," and faithful Catholics avoided engaging philosophy and the arts, and satisfied themselves with upholding "orthodoxy." Therefore:

The kind of intellectual, aesthetic and moral-spiritual renewal that might have transformed the universities, the arts, the media, publishing, entertainment, and the churches never quite came off. Without a major reorientation of American thought and sensibility, conservative politics was bound to fail.

Conservatism today, he says, has become "a captive of party, money, and media celebrities." But conservatism, properly understood, wants to conserve "the best of the human heritage because the latter is an indispensable guide to finding and promoting the good, the true, and the beautiful in the present." Achieving that goal requires adaptation to new circumstances. If figuring out how to promote the good, the true and the beautiful now is what conservatives want to do in our present circumstances -- and they should -- then they should get over this "increasingly philistine obsession with politics."