Peggy Noonan on McCain and conservatism

ReaganiteNYC sends along this intriguing interview from NRO with Peggy Noonan, in which she expands at length on why she's voting for McCain, why she hates how stupid and petty conservatives have become, and how conservatives ought to think about the future. There's plenty to quote from in this excellent piece, but I'll settle on this one (and thank RNYC for sending this along), in which interviewer Kathryn Jean Lopez asks Noonan what conservatism can be said to mean nowadays:

Noonan: I think this is something we should talk about more, and something I would urge NR to address with a greater force or breadth. Bill Buckley and his hardy band -- James Burnham, Jeffrey Hart, etc. -- brought to their task a certain missionary zeal. They thought they had to explain this thing, conservatism, to an American public that had just come through 25 years of the New Deal and had not heard or seen conservatism announced, put forward, or explained in a coherent way in more than a generation. (Russell Kirk of course was very much a part of this project, in perhaps a broader way.) Let me tell you, everyone wants to talk about politics, and the kind of ad McCain should cut, but what about the philosophies that animate our politics? But briefly, my views. You can debate whether conservatism is a philosophy, a program of settled ideas, a school of thought, a way of seeing the world. I tend to see it, to experience it, as a way of being, a way of understanding the world and responding to it. I cannot help but think that knowing there is a God is the start of all conservatism. (Apologies to agnostic friends who are various kinds and flavors of conservative.) Once you know that you know something big. From there you go on to knowing man. "If men were angels . . . " They are not, so you don't want to give them too much governmental power. I'll throw forward some words and phrases meant to be shorthand for a lot. Prudence. A sense of reality. Understanding limits. Respect for tradition -- it didn't happen by accident. The long view. Respect for the individual and his rights. A knowledge that life is worth living, we're lucky to be here. I would add or emphasize, for me, a Catholic sense of mystery -- we don't know all, can't know all, must do our best. I think of ideology as some abstract thing dreamed up by intellectuals and squished down on the heads of human beings -- "You will conform your actions to my ideological assumptions and expectations!" I see philosophy as something that rises up from human beings who observe and live with human beings. Conservatism is not an ideology. That's the last thing it is.

Lopez: I tend to think there will be a serious revisiting of our founding principles -- both 1776 and 1955 (the year National Review was founded) -- after this election, whatever happens. Agree or disagree?

Noonan: You may remember we first spoke of this last spring, in Rome? The first wave will be . . . well, it will be as ugly as the past month. Uglier, as those with some responsibility for the past seven years turn their finger not on themselves but on others. (I happen to think careerism has become an unseen force in much of the fighting. Conservatism didn't used to be a career, it was a sailing against the wind, a pushing back against the age that is pushing you, and it was often lonely, individual, painful. It has been for me.) The second wave will be more important, a real surveying and rethinking. A going back to the texts, Burke to Kirk, but also a deeper attempt to apply conservative principles and insights to reality as it is on the ground. For it must be applied to the reality as it is on the ground, to the facts, or it will not be conservative. Burke respected reality so much his enemies said he worshiped a thing just because it was. So yes, there will be seminars and symposia, and activists will have epiphanies on the Amtrak Acela while delayed at Wilmington. But here's the most important wave. What I have been reminding people in speeches lately is America is not made in Washington. America is made in America. So this is step three, and will happen concurrently and for a long time with step two: look to the states and the counties. Briefly: I don't believe in political saviors -- I don't think life is as a rule that dramatic, clear cut, resolved, or necessarily heroic. But what is happening in the states, and who is leading in and rising in the states, is going to yield up the leaders of the future. The great story of the next few years, and maybe longer than a few, will be what is happening there, and what is happening in the American culture. The McCain-Palin moment will pass; America will continue. Conservatives have to stop looking to Washington, it cannot solve our lives. And it's not a very conservative impulse, to always be looking at and to the federal establishment.

A word about this: