Don't miss John J. Miller's Q&A with Gerald Russello, who wrote "The Postmodern Imagination of Russell Kirk," a book that updates Kirk for our time. Excerpt:
[RUSSELLO:] A lot of younger conservatives are breaking with the established right wing and focusing more on individual cultural issues—Rod Dreher has called this a “crunchy con” phenomenon, but I think it is broader than that. That new flowering of younger conservative thinkers may yet bear fruit in politics, probably not in 2008 but at some point.MILLER: Was Kirk the original “crunchy con”?
RUSSELLO: Yes, and no. Certainly Kirk was concerned with what he called the Permanent Things, such as truth and beauty, and found in much of modern life obstacles to realizing them, so in that sense he was a little crunchy. Being something of a bohemian himself, I think he would have appreciated some crunchy efforts to go off the grid, which was easier in his less-regulated time. But I think the terms of that debate are not his; Kirk spoke fondly of certain cities, for example — including old Detroit, and defended family farms and small neighborhoods on the basis of their historical continuity and naturalness, which only roughly corresponds with some of the crunchy arguments I have seen.
I also want to draw attention to this:
MILLER: Kirk always maintained that conservatism was not an ideology. What did he mean by that?RUSSELLO: Kirk contended that ideology is a type of religious dogmatism in a political context, and one completely inconsistent with a conservative outlook. It eliminates the nuances and shades of gray that exist in actual political or social life. “For the ideologue, humankind may be defined into two classes: the comrades of Progress, and the foes attached to reactionary interests,” who are not only incorrect but who must be destroyed. The proponent of ideology “resorts to the anaesthetic of social utopianism, escaping the tragedy and grandeur of true human existence by giving his adherence to a perfect dream-world of the future. Reality [the ideologue] stretches or chops away to conform to [a] dream-pattern of human nature and society.” Because ideology is a replacement religion, when injected into the public sphere it makes politics, at least as Kirk defines it, impossible.
This is what I was talking about when I described Diversity as a religion -- I perhaps should have said ideology (which is a secularized form of religion). Under its terms, you can't do normal politics, because its ideals of virtue are totalizing. That is, you either agree with it, or you identify yourself as a Bad Person Who Must Be Re-Educated. Of course conservatives can also easily fall into the grips of ideology -- witness the ideologues on the NR Cruise who, when informed by Rich Lowry that the US could lose the Iraq War, reportedly reacted as if he were some sort of space alien engaged in crazy talk. Still, ideology is the enemy not only of conservatism -- which properly understood is about trying to understand and contend with the world as it actually is, in light of certain fundamental principles, chief among them the idea that utopia is a false idol -- but also of normal politics in a pluralistic society.
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no conservative would support morals laws -- laws against prostitution, sodomy, pornography, adultery, homosexual relationships, etc.!
I don't know any conservative pols who support making adultery or homosexual relations a crime. I would love to hear names.
I don't know any conservative pols who support making adultery or homosexual relations a crime. I would love to hear names.
In fairness, there are certain SC justices who find it within the legitimate powers of the State to proscribe certain homosexual relations. That is not the same as (personally) supporting making such relations a crime.
In fairness, there are certain SC justices who find it within the legitimate powers of the State to proscribe certain homosexual relations.
If you are referring to sodomy, banning it was mentioned earlier in the list of conservative evils, so "homosexual realations" must be something different.
And he we right: sodomy is a sexual act, not a relationship, and it applies equally to hetrosexuals.
And to second your point, just because the Constitution doesn't prevent something, doesn't make it right. If I was a SC justice, I wouldn't feel I had the right to make my own law, just interpret what the Constitution says.
"In fairness," there's much more than that to be said in support of the assertion that many conservatives have supported, do and/or would support morals legislation pertaining to the issues I listed, in addition to others.
M_David, the love you proclaim for learning the names of politicians in favor of such laws is either disingenous or sincerely mistaken: (i) There certainly are such politicians, and if your stated ardor is sufficient a little research will sniff them out; (ii) there are surely many others who would support such legislation if they thought it would gain them more power; (iii) what I'm saying in my earlier posts doesn't hinge in the first place on there being specific contemporary politicians who assert such views, so claims regarding their existence or non-existence aren't relevant.
Here in Virginia, adultery is still technically a crime, I believe, although it is seldom enforced (a year or two ago, somebody was fined $250 in a rural county, if I recall correctly).
I must admit to some failure of imagination, because I don't see how supporting legislation pertaining to issues of sexual morality is inherently unconservative. Are you saying it's utopian? Or because an understanding of sexual morality frequently draws upon religious belief? But surely Kirk is saying that conservatives oppose a dogmatic adherence in politics to a specific set of ideas and beliefs that doesn't allow for the possibility of their empirical contradiction. In other words, the kind of dogmatic faith I have, from a religious perspective, in the Holy Trinity and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, is not the kind of faith I should have in the efficacy of certain political decisions (i.e. believing in dialectical materialism or in the inherent rightness of any war initiated by the US. He is not making John Rawls's argument for the illegitimacy of religious arguments in the political sphere, because arguments informed by religion do not necessarily make the kind of dogmatic political claims. For conservatives, although there may be moral absolutes that must inform politics, there is still a wide scope for both prudence and practical knowledge.
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